0:00:01 [MUSIC PLAYING]
0:00:02 Hey, what you doing?
0:00:04 Programming our thermostat to 17 degrees
0:00:06 when we’re out at work or asleep.
0:00:08 We’re taking control of our energy
0:00:10 use this winter with some easy energy saving tips
0:00:12 I got from FortisBC.
0:00:14 Ooh, conserve energy and save money?
0:00:16 Maybe to buy those matching winter jackets?
0:00:18 Uh, no.
0:00:20 We’re also getting that whole matching outfit
0:00:21 thing under control.
0:00:24 Discover low and no cost energy saving tips
0:00:27 at fortisbc.com/energysavingtips.
0:00:28 Matching tracksuits?
0:00:30 Please no.
0:00:32 What the research says is that people who are having sex
0:00:34 within a few hours when they sleep
0:00:37 have better markers of sleep and recovery.
0:00:39 So does masturbation not have the same implications?
0:00:42 Well, what was so interesting about this research
0:00:45 is that Kristen Holmes is the vice president of performance
0:00:46 science at WU.
0:00:49 Who has access to health data from hundreds of thousands
0:00:51 of people and her groundbreaking research
0:00:53 will tell you the secrets of achieving perfect health
0:00:54 and performance.
0:00:56 The key to your health is your circadian rhythm,
0:01:00 which are physical, mental, and behavioral changes
0:01:02 that happen in a 24-hour cycle.
0:01:04 One of the most known circadian rhythms
0:01:06 is being asleep during the night,
0:01:09 and it has massive health consequences.
0:01:12 For example, we know that shift workers, on average,
0:01:13 are going to die 15 years sooner.
0:01:16 But if you’re awake for two hours between 10 PM
0:01:20 and 4 AM, two days per week for 25 days of the year,
0:01:23 you qualify as a shift worker.
0:01:26 You are putting yourself at increased risk for cancer,
0:01:28 cardiovascular disease, mental health issues,
0:01:30 you can have trouble having children.
0:01:31 I mean, that’s terrifying.
0:01:32 We know that.
0:01:34 We haven’t adapted to blue light.
0:01:35 The light we get from screens.
0:01:38 Yes, if you’re viewing light between the hours of 10 PM
0:01:41 and 4 AM, it actually has a pro-depressive effect.
0:01:42 So this goes on and on.
0:01:44 And a lot of people are like, I have to go to bed at 1 AM
0:01:45 because I’m a night owl.
0:01:46 Total BS.
0:01:47 You’re making a choice.
0:01:49 And if you want to perform consistently,
0:01:51 increase your tolerance for stress
0:01:53 and take control of your life.
0:01:54 You need to–
0:01:56 we want to eat most importantly.
0:01:58 We need to–
0:02:01 [MUSIC PLAYING]
0:02:10 Kristen, why do you do the work that you do?
0:02:15 I am irrationally passionate about human flourishing
0:02:19 and the framework’s policies, basically,
0:02:21 determinants of human flourishing.
0:02:24 And I’ve kind of dedicated my life
0:02:29 to understanding how the physiology and psychology work
0:02:34 together to help people take control of their health
0:02:38 so they can understand how to apply their energy
0:02:40 and attention in a way that’s truly rewarding.
0:02:41 What is your job title?
0:02:43 I’m the vice president of performance science,
0:02:46 principal scientist at Woop, which
0:02:49 is a physical monitoring technology company.
0:02:51 And what does that mean?
0:02:54 So I’m trying to make sure Woop is a thought
0:02:56 leader in human performance, so trying
0:02:59 to see around the bend to understand what’s
0:03:03 going to be important for tomorrow in terms of understanding
0:03:06 how we can take control of the trajectory of our health.
0:03:07 What are the markers that are important
0:03:09 that we need to be tracking?
0:03:11 What are the behaviors that we need to be engaging in
0:03:14 in order to move those metrics around in a way
0:03:16 that is health-promoting?
0:03:18 I look at a lot of the high stakes, high stress environments.
0:03:21 So professional athletes, frontline health care
0:03:26 clinicians, and military operators.
0:03:32 So understanding some of these extreme professions and crafts
0:03:34 and what the physiology and the psychology looks like,
0:03:40 we can then abstract and, I think, in some ways,
0:03:44 generalize what that means for the regular population who
0:03:47 are experiencing less extreme demands on their time
0:03:50 and their energy and their cognitive bandwidth.
0:03:53 And do you conduct your own studies?
0:03:54 Yes.
0:03:58 Yeah, so I’m a principal investigator on many studies,
0:04:01 which means that I’m kind of leading those experiments
0:04:03 from kind of A to Z. And I have a team that
0:04:06 is kind of supporting that research
0:04:09 in various aspects of expertise.
0:04:11 But yeah, I mean, one of the studies
0:04:13 that we published in May was looking
0:04:15 at 1,000 paratroopers in Army Alaska.
0:04:19 So super extreme environments, harsh.
0:04:23 But the Army came to us.
0:04:27 Alaska, in general, has a very high suicide rate.
0:04:31 This base in Elmdorf, Alaska, has a lot of mental health
0:04:34 issues, a lot of suicide, and they’re
0:04:36 trying to understand what is actually going on here.
0:04:38 And we were able to run a study where
0:04:43 we showed that there’s actually one behavior, one behavior that
0:04:48 was surfaced that was the most predictive of positive
0:04:51 psychological functioning in these soldiers.
0:04:55 And that one behavior was sleep/wake timing.
0:04:59 So the more consistent and more stable the sleep/wake,
0:05:03 the sleep onset and offset of these soldiers,
0:05:07 the higher levels of positive psychological functioning.
0:05:12 So workplace resilience, less homesickness,
0:05:16 more feelings of control, more positive social networks.
0:05:19 It bubbles up in every single piece of research
0:05:20 that we do at WOOP.
0:05:24 Sleep/wake timing, I think, is the mother of all performance
0:05:25 optimization behaviors.
0:05:28 Sleep/wake timing.
0:05:30 So is this the same thing as your circadian rhythm?
0:05:32 Yeah, so this is one of the most–
0:05:34 I think when we think about circadian rhythms,
0:05:38 which is just physical, mental, and behavioral changes
0:05:43 that happen in a 24-hour cycle, and your biological clock
0:05:46 is orchestrating these rhythms.
0:05:48 OK, so I’m going to have to pause and take this right back
0:05:51 to monkey-level stuff.
0:05:53 What is a circadian rhythm, as if you’re explaining it
0:05:54 to a 10-year-old?
0:05:57 Yeah, so it’s basically physical, mental,
0:06:04 and behavioral changes that happen over a 24-hour cycle.
0:06:06 OK, so here’s my read on it.
0:06:09 Correct me if I’m wrong.
0:06:13 There’s a clock in my head.
0:06:19 Yes, the suprachiasmatic nucleus is the master clock.
0:06:21 OK, which is somewhere in my body.
0:06:23 It’s in the hypothalamus.
0:06:24 So it’s in my brain.
0:06:27 And this clock regulates every cell in my body.
0:06:29 Cell, tissue, organ.
0:06:35 OK, and it controls the release of a chemical, which
0:06:40 makes those cells, organs, every part of my body do stuff.
0:06:42 Yeah, so it is your hypothalamus.
0:06:46 So the suprachiasmatic nucleus responds to light,
0:06:48 and it responds to darkness.
0:06:48 OK.
0:06:52 OK, so that’s like the most pronounced entrainment
0:06:55 cue for this master clock.
0:06:58 And it then tells, it sends signals to every cell tissue
0:07:01 in your body as to what it needs to be doing
0:07:04 in the presence of light, in the presence of darkness.
0:07:09 And when we are viewing light at a phase of the natural light
0:07:14 dark cycle, that is, if I am awake when I should be sleeping,
0:07:18 or I am sleeping when I should be awake when my body anticipates
0:07:22 that, it causes huge amounts of stress in the system.
0:07:26 If we do this once or twice, not a big deal.
0:07:29 But if we’re doing this chronically,
0:07:35 it has massive health consequences–
0:07:40 cancer, metabolic disease, cardiovascular disease–
0:07:44 100% of mental health issues, there
0:07:47 will be some level of circadian disruption.
0:07:52 OK, so when this light information comes in
0:07:55 and tells these clocks what to do,
0:08:00 if I am going outside of my natural biological preferences,
0:08:02 that is circadian disruption.
0:08:07 And if you think about how many folks are walking around
0:08:10 this circadian disruption, it is mind blowing.
0:08:14 I mean, basically the kind of the definition that’s
0:08:19 been thrown out there is, if you are awake from the hours of 10
0:08:24 PM to 4 AM, if you’re awake for two hours between 10 PM
0:08:32 and 4 AM, for two days per week, for 25 days of the year,
0:08:38 you qualify as a kind of card-carrying shift worker.
0:08:42 And you likely have significant circadian disruption.
0:08:44 Which means that I have–
0:08:46 You are at risk for some of the–
0:08:48 and it’s not going to happen tomorrow.
0:08:52 But if you continue on that pattern that I just described,
0:08:57 you are putting yourself at increased risk for cancer
0:09:01 and cardiovascular disease, metabolic dysfunction.
0:09:03 You can have trouble having children.
0:09:07 It impacts fertility, mental health, psychiatric disorders.
0:09:08 There isn’t a disease or disorder
0:09:12 that circadian disruption doesn’t touch.
0:09:15 So a way of thinking about this so that I and everyone else
0:09:19 can understand is there’s this master clock in our hippothalamus.
0:09:21 Look at me.
0:09:24 This master clock regulates all of the other clocks
0:09:26 throughout our entire body.
0:09:28 And there’s millions of them, basically.
0:09:32 And the thing that the master clock is using as a signal,
0:09:35 the clock in our brain, is light and darkness.
0:09:37 That’s its most reliable.
0:09:40 That’s the signal that cares about it listens to the most.
0:09:42 But there’s other signals as well.
0:09:46 And if that master clock, if I’m up at 4 AM
0:09:49 and I’m looking at a light at 4 AM,
0:09:51 that master clock is going to start firing off chemicals
0:09:53 to all the other clocks.
0:09:55 And then all the clocks are going to be out of sync.
0:09:57 Because then when I wake up, it’s light and then–
0:09:58 You’re confusing.
0:09:59 I’m confusing my body.
0:10:01 And it’s firing off in all kinds of different ways.
0:10:03 So I need to form an alignment, which
0:10:06 means basically sleeping at the right time,
0:10:08 exposing myself to darkness at the right time, et cetera, et cetera.
0:10:10 Your body loves regularity.
0:10:14 And the problem is modernity is not set up for that.
0:10:16 We have access.
0:10:19 I think all the circadian research, unfortunately,
0:10:24 was done after the advent of electricity.
0:10:31 So we’re kind of fighting this access to constant light.
0:10:34 And we’re starting to see the, I think,
0:10:39 deleterious effects or the negative consequences of exposure
0:10:42 to light really after the sun goes down.
0:10:46 We haven’t adapted to blue light after dark,
0:10:47 after the sun goes down.
0:10:49 We have not adapted to blue light.
0:10:50 Blue light being the light we get from screens.
0:10:51 Yes.
0:10:55 There is a study that looked at the timing of light
0:11:00 and its impact on mood and brain circuits.
0:11:03 And they saw that if you’re viewing light between the hours
0:11:06 of, again, this is kind of this magic window of time, 10
0:11:11 PM and 4 AM, it actually has a pro-depressive effect.
0:11:15 So it impacts your dopamine system, reward, motivation.
0:11:20 So when we wonder, oh, why does this mental health crisis?
0:11:23 I mean, we have to look at light first.
0:11:25 And I just don’t know.
0:11:27 And I think what’s hard about the discussion
0:11:31 and hard about this behavior is that it’s
0:11:37 really hard for people to not engage with their phones
0:11:38 before bed.
0:11:40 It has its own addictive properties.
0:11:45 But we just have to understand that our relationship to light
0:11:49 will directly influence the trajectory of our health.
0:11:51 There’s just no question about that.
0:11:54 To understand this from a more sort of prehistoric
0:12:00 ancestral lens, if we go back tens of thousands of years
0:12:03 to how maybe some of our ancestors used to live,
0:12:06 they would have food at certain times
0:12:08 and they would have a light exposure at certain times.
0:12:09 They didn’t have artificial light
0:12:11 and invented that yet.
0:12:13 The modern world is very much the antithesis of that.
0:12:14 We have food whenever we want it.
0:12:19 I can order a cookie at 3 AM if I want to eat a cookie at 3 AM.
0:12:22 And I can watch a YouTube video that I have a CEO,
0:12:27 for example, like and subscribe at any hour of the day.
0:12:29 So is this kind of like a misalignment issue
0:12:32 with the way our body was designed by nature
0:12:34 and the world we now live in?
0:12:39 Yeah, we have not evolved to digest food in the middle of the night
0:12:42 or to view light in the middle of the night
0:12:45 or to be super active in the middle of the night, which has happened.
0:12:48 And it does, it creates this misalignment.
0:12:52 And I think what’s interesting if we are to kind of look at
0:12:57 individuals or societies currently that don’t have electricity,
0:13:03 it’s really interesting to I think see some of their behaviors,
0:13:05 some of their sleep/wake behaviors.
0:13:06 And this is fascinating.
0:13:10 There is a study done looking at kind of a hunter/gatherer type
0:13:13 of society who don’t have access to any electricity.
0:13:14 And when you observe their sleep/wake times,
0:13:17 they all fall asleep within 15 to 30 minutes of each other.
0:13:21 And they all wake up between 15 and 30 minutes of each other.
0:13:25 So this whole notion of chronotypes is like kind of like total BS.
0:13:27 It’s like, because I think that’s, you know,
0:13:30 I think that’s the reason a lot of people are like,
0:13:33 “Oh, I have to go to bed at 1 a.m. because I’m a night owl.”
0:13:36 No, you’re making a choice, generally speaking.
0:13:38 Now, this isn’t healthy populations,
0:13:42 not people who have circadian disorders and things like that.
0:13:45 Generally speaking, like if you were to throw everyone in this building
0:13:49 on a mountain in Colorado, and this experiment has actually been done,
0:13:52 with no electricity, we will literally all fall asleep within 30 minutes
0:13:54 of each other after 48 hours.
0:14:00 Like that is how powerful these light/dark signals are to our body.
0:14:05 And I think that just those two examples are really compelling in that,
0:14:10 you know, we have evolved to kind of wake up and fall asleep
0:14:11 in relation to this light/dark cycle.
0:14:13 So all of this stuff we say to ourselves,
0:14:14 because I say that to myself all the time,
0:14:16 I’ve told myself I’m a night owl.
0:14:17 Yeah.
0:14:19 And I’ve given myself the whole coronet touch feel.
0:14:20 Yeah.
0:14:21 That’s BS.
0:14:25 Yeah, in my opinion, the way I interpret the literature,
0:14:29 it seems that, you know, the variability that I think is talked about,
0:14:33 or how we think about it as a society in terms of there’s chronotypes
0:14:37 that are, you know, very, you know, you fall asleep.
0:14:41 You want to, you’re genetically predisposed to fall asleep at 1 a.m.,
0:14:44 and I’m genetically predisposed to fall asleep at 9 p.m.
0:14:46 Yeah, I don’t think it’s that kind of variability.
0:14:50 I think the variability maybe is an hour at the most, maybe an hour and a half.
0:14:52 Obviously, it’s age-related as well.
0:14:59 But for the most part, I don’t think this variability is as pronounced as what we say it is.
0:15:00 Sleep.
0:15:00 Yeah.
0:15:07 So conventional wisdom says it’s all about how many hours you spend sleeping.
0:15:10 We already, this has already been shown to be not true.
0:15:14 Sleep duration is important, right?
0:15:16 And we can put a pin in that.
0:15:20 But sleep regularity predicts all cause mortality.
0:15:24 And this is just recently published, actually, not by my team.
0:15:33 But looking at, it was actually UK Biobank, 60,000 people, 10 million sleeps,
0:15:36 objective measure of sleep.
0:15:42 And they found that sleep regularity predicted mortality and independent of sleep duration.
0:15:46 So it’s not to say that sleep duration doesn’t matter,
0:15:48 but that is absolutely incomplete advice.
0:15:53 How much time you spend in bed doesn’t necessarily predict how long you live.
0:15:58 It is the degree to which you stabilize when you go to bed when you wake up that predicts mortality.
0:15:59 What did they find?
0:16:00 What was the conclusion of that?
0:16:04 Was there a sort of a percentage variance in those that had irregular and regular sleep?
0:16:05 Yeah.
0:16:08 So the sleep onset, offset times, I’m not sure.
0:16:12 But actually, this is research that my team is doing and that we have not published yet.
0:16:20 So this is preliminary data, but we’re actually able to determine down to the minute
0:16:24 what is a tolerable level of variability.
0:16:31 So for the most elite athletes on the planet, the 0.001%, 18 to 23 year olds,
0:16:39 we know that 70 minutes of onset, offset variability at 70 minutes,
0:16:44 we will see a sharp decline in markers of recovery.
0:16:47 Heart rate variability, resting heart rate,
0:16:53 which is a indicator of how you will adapt to load the next day.
0:16:54 To stress the next day.
0:16:55 To stress the next day.
0:16:56 So life flow.
0:16:58 So sleep wake time is really important.
0:17:01 And we’re doing research across every age bucket.
0:17:07 And but you can imagine that if these are the most robust humans on the planet
0:17:14 and they have 70 minutes of variability, that is tolerable within that population.
0:17:20 Some are a little bit sooner in terms of the or can deal with less variability.
0:17:25 And others can deal with slightly more variability, but the mean is 70, 70 minutes.
0:17:28 So you can imagine for individuals who are more vulnerable,
0:17:33 who have less or less robust physically, mentally, emotionally,
0:17:37 their tolerable level is going to be a much narrower.
0:17:42 What’s going on inside of the body when we increase the variability
0:17:47 or that we don’t have a regular sleep and a regular wake up time?
0:17:49 What’s actually going on from like a chemical physiological perspective?
0:17:54 Yeah, so one of the things that suppressed is melatonin.
0:18:00 And circulating reductions in circulating melatonin have been shown to be linked
0:18:09 to every disorder and disease in the body, every disorder and disease in the body.
0:18:13 When we have suppressed or reduced circulating melatonin,
0:18:19 that is going to impact us on every level and make us more vulnerable to disease and disorders.
0:18:26 So that is probably one of the most important thing when we have super unstable sleep wake time.
0:18:32 We are going to have suppressed melatonin production, which leads to inflammation in the body.
0:18:37 It’s melatonin, I think, is one of the big players in the story.
0:18:38 Growth hormones?
0:18:45 Yes, yes. And typically, if you’re not going to sleep late,
0:18:52 you will not release human growth hormone as you’ll get less of a ballast of release.
0:18:53 And why does that matter?
0:18:55 That’s when all the physical restoration happens.
0:18:57 So all the regeneration physically.
0:19:01 So if we’re bypassing that, we’re basically all the work that we did in the gym
0:19:06 or everything that we did during the day, we’re just not going to recover from that
0:19:08 in the same way that we would if we were getting that sleep.
0:19:12 Is growth hormone essentially the thing that causes our muscles to grow and repair?
0:19:13 Yeah.
0:19:18 I sometimes think this because I think if I’m sometimes in my life because I’m quite busy,
0:19:23 I have to make the decision whether to go to the gym or get a great night’s sleep.
0:19:26 And the more I’ve learned about growth hormone in the body and whooping all those things,
0:19:31 I’ve started to make the decision towards sleep versus going to the gym.
0:19:36 Because my brain now goes, well, you’re not going to get the recovery and sort of restoration anyway.
0:19:36 The benefits.
0:19:40 Yeah, the benefits of going to the gym if you’re poorly slept that night.
0:19:45 Yeah, I think if it’s if you’re consistently getting decent sleep
0:19:50 and just getting going to bed and wake up a few more times,
0:19:54 you know, I would say it’s okay to prioritize exercise sometimes.
0:20:02 But sleep is is very important and is probably the thing that needs to be prioritized first.
0:20:04 How consistent are you with your sleep?
0:20:06 Very consistent.
0:20:07 I had that in 2017.
0:20:13 You started trying to sleep within sort of 25 to 30 minutes every single day.
0:20:14 Yeah, the same sleeping window.
0:20:15 That’s right.
0:20:22 Yeah, and yeah, it was a paper that came out by Andrew Phillips actually in the summer of 2017.
0:20:28 And it basically was a four year study that was conducted at Harvard University looking at students.
0:20:32 And they were basically students sleep and they’re trying to see, okay, you know,
0:20:40 what aspect of sleep is predictive of things like GPA and other, you know, measures of kind of flourishing.
0:20:47 And what they found is that basically sleep-wake time predicted GPA.
0:20:48 What’s GPA for people?
0:20:49 Oh, sorry, grade point average.
0:20:52 Yeah, so it’s the difference, you know, the more regular, you know,
0:20:56 it’s the difference between getting an A and a B by just stabilizing sleep-wake time.
0:21:01 And so at that time, I was working with, you know, tons of collegiate athletes.
0:21:10 So NC2A athletes, professional athletes, so EPL, you know, NBA, NFL, MLB, you name it,
0:21:13 like the biggest high performers, like in the world.
0:21:17 And I started tracking this, you know, just manually.
0:21:22 At the time at WOOP, we didn’t actually track this, this wasn’t automated.
0:21:24 I had to, like, you know, kind of do this in Excel.
0:21:29 And then sure enough, you know, sleep-wake time started predicting all these performance metrics
0:21:30 that people care about.
0:21:34 And we started rolling in some subjective measures.
0:21:36 We had internal load, we had external load, of course.
0:21:39 So all those objective measures, but I started rolling in some subjective measures.
0:21:46 And sure enough, sleep-wake time just continued to ladder up to all these performance variables
0:21:47 that people care about.
0:21:51 So I started, of course, you know, because I have access to all of these data.
0:21:54 I started, I’m like, “Shit, I need to, I need to, like, start stabilizing my sleep-wake
0:21:55 time.”
0:22:01 And sure enough, summer 2017, I just, like, that’s basically, like, my non-negotiable.
0:22:06 And yeah, I mean, I haven’t been sick since 2017.
0:22:10 I had a little tiny head cold that lasted 48 hours.
0:22:15 But since then, I literally have not had a sniffle, a stomach ache.
0:22:20 I didn’t get COVID, like, I literally have not been sick.
0:22:27 And you know, I do a lot of other things well, but that has been the single biggest change.
0:22:29 Just sleeping and waking up at the same time.
0:22:30 That’s it.
0:22:31 What is your routine there?
0:22:32 How do you ensure that happens?
0:22:36 Yeah, so the key to that is stabilizing when I wake up.
0:22:39 So even when I travel, and I do travel, and I travel internationally, I travel to the
0:22:45 West Coast, I try to maintain my home time zone as much as I can, as long as I can fulfill
0:22:49 my business commitments and social, you know, there might be a social element as well.
0:22:53 But for the most part, I stabilize when I wake up.
0:22:55 So I keep that consistent.
0:23:00 Even if I can’t go to bed at the same time, I ensure that I wake up at the same time.
0:23:06 And that basically sets my circadian rhythm, so I will then feel sleepy at the right time,
0:23:09 and I can kind of keep that virtuous cycle going.
0:23:17 If I have short sleep, I just basically try to build in a nap prior to 1.30 for 30 minutes
0:23:18 to an hour.
0:23:19 So I don’t accumulate sleep debt.
0:23:21 This is another thing that we can talk about.
0:23:27 Sleep debt is wild in some of its correlations, like psychological safety and executive function.
0:23:33 But yeah, so that’s how I manage short sleep, but I always try to wake up at the same time.
0:23:36 So I’m getting that bolus of light at the same time every single day.
0:23:38 And what time do you wake up and go to sleep?
0:23:46 So I go to bed around, I kind of get into bed usually around 9.15, 9.30.
0:23:55 I read for a half an hour, 45 minutes a book, printed page, dim light, and then I fall asleep
0:23:56 usually around 10.
0:24:02 And then I wake up like at 6.14, no, I’m just kidding, like around 6, around 6.
0:24:08 You know, whenever I talk about these subjects, the rebuttolike is one you might be able to
0:24:09 predict.
0:24:12 It’s from a group of people that I can’t yet relate to.
0:24:13 Yeah.
0:24:15 Do you know who I’m talking about?
0:24:16 Parents.
0:24:17 Oh, yeah, yeah.
0:24:22 Well, shit, I’ve had two kids, so I totally understand the whole parenting thing.
0:24:23 So yeah, I mean, there’s no question.
0:24:27 There are going to be times in your life where you’re literally a shift worker because you’re
0:24:34 caring for a sick parent or a sick child or you just literally have kids and they’re young.
0:24:35 You’re a shift worker.
0:24:42 I mean, there are things you’re making decisions to go out and socialize in times that maybe
0:24:44 aren’t optimal for kind of human functioning.
0:24:48 But yes, there’s no question that there are periods in your life where it’s going to be
0:24:50 harder.
0:24:55 That said, there are some things that you can do to mitigate some of the negative effects
0:24:58 of both direction and timing.
0:25:03 And one of those things is dialing in your feeding window, which is another kind of circadian
0:25:04 behavior.
0:25:11 So the timing of when you eat is pretty important and can at least check some of the boxes in
0:25:16 terms of its impact on metabolic functioning and heart health and things like that.
0:25:18 So let’s talk about that then.
0:25:19 Meal timing.
0:25:24 What do I need to know about when I should be eating, what I should be eating and the
0:25:28 implications that has on my circadian rhythm, my body clocks?
0:25:29 Yeah.
0:25:30 So it’s in the literature.
0:25:33 There’s time restricted eating and there’s time restricted feeding.
0:25:36 And time restricted feeding generally, if you’re reading the literature is going to
0:25:41 refer to mouse models, time restricted eating will refer to human studies.
0:25:43 Mouse models being studies they did in mice.
0:25:44 Sorry.
0:25:50 Yeah, mice studies done with mice are just time restricted feeding and humans would be
0:25:52 time restricted to eating.
0:25:57 And not to confuse us with intermittent fasting, which I know is a hot topic and people love
0:26:02 talking about it, time restricted eating basically has a circadian component.
0:26:05 So it’s really about the timing of when you’re eating your food in relation to the light
0:26:06 dark cycle.
0:26:09 Intermittent fasting is basically just reducing calories.
0:26:15 And so time restricted eating does not have a calorie component to it.
0:26:17 It’s more about the timing.
0:26:22 And there’s been some, a lot of interesting studies that have been done that show if you
0:26:33 eat within kind of eight to 12 hour window, you will have much better metabolic outcomes.
0:26:36 And this is pretty, this is well-established.
0:26:43 And if we see in the whoop data that if you stop eating three hours prior to when you
0:26:53 sleep, to when you fall asleep, markers of sleep and recovery are exponentially better.
0:26:56 So timing of meals really does matter.
0:27:03 And there’s no question that we know this from other research, you’re more primed to
0:27:07 metabolize food closer to when you wake up in the morning.
0:27:14 So earlier in the day, you’re going to be much more primed to utilize the nutrients that
0:27:15 you’ve digested.
0:27:20 So does that mean we should be eating, we should have sort of an earlier eating window?
0:27:21 Yes.
0:27:22 Yes.
0:27:23 You know, Brian Johnson.
0:27:24 Of course.
0:27:25 Yeah.
0:27:26 I know he stops eating at 11 AM.
0:27:27 Which is crazy.
0:27:28 Which is insane and not super practical.
0:27:33 I think if you can stop eating around when the sun sets, you’ll position yourself to
0:27:35 improve your metabolic health.
0:27:39 And I would go so far to say that, you know, regardless of what it is you’re eating, because
0:27:43 a lot of folks cannot afford to, you know, eat high quality food.
0:27:44 That’s just a reality.
0:27:51 And a lot of those folks do suffer from, you know, at higher rates of cardiometabolic dysfunction.
0:27:58 But if we can just consolidate our eating window to eight to 10 hours, we get ourselves
0:28:02 like 60% of the way to our kind of metabolic goals.
0:28:05 Again, it’s not to say that content and quality does not matter.
0:28:07 It absolutely does.
0:28:16 But if we can’t focus on that for whatever it might be, consolidating our eating window.
0:28:21 So eating every single one of our calories between, you know, an eight to 12 hour window,
0:28:24 we will improve our health.
0:28:25 And what’s your eating window?
0:28:27 So I do about 10 hours.
0:28:28 Okay.
0:28:29 Yeah.
0:28:32 So I definitely, I pretty much don’t eat after the sun goes down.
0:28:34 When you say the sun goes down.
0:28:35 Sunsets.
0:28:36 Yeah.
0:28:37 Is that like 5 PM?
0:28:38 I mean, now it’s early.
0:28:39 Yeah.
0:28:40 So I give myself like an hour.
0:28:41 4 PM.
0:28:42 Window.
0:28:43 Yeah.
0:28:44 Like right now it’s, it’s definitely early.
0:28:49 But for the most part, I can kind of get away with it based on my lifestyle.
0:28:53 So ideally between sort of 7 AM and 4 PM.
0:28:57 And then just make sure you’re not eating, you know, two to three hours before you fall
0:28:58 asleep.
0:28:59 Yes.
0:29:06 That’s the big key, I think is, is you want a nice big buffer between, yeah, when you,
0:29:11 when you have your last calorie and when you go to sleep, because that they’re both.
0:29:16 So digestion is a parasympathetic activity, right?
0:29:20 So that means, so your autonomic nervous system has two branches, your parasympathetic and
0:29:25 your sympathetic, your parasympathetic is your rest and digest, right?
0:29:28 We also want to be in a parasympathetic state when we’re sleeping.
0:29:35 So when we are digesting food, we’re basically kind of confusing our system in terms of where
0:29:37 it should apply its resources, right?
0:29:42 So it basically diverts resources away from, you know, the sleep and the restoration.
0:29:44 And that’s where, you know, if you have a big meal, you’ll notice your heart rate is
0:29:46 really is a lot higher, right?
0:29:48 And your stress score is higher, right?
0:29:50 Some of the features on, on the whoop app.
0:29:53 And when you are not having to digest, you’ll see your stress score is lower.
0:29:56 You’ll see your heart rate is lower.
0:29:59 Your heart rate variability would be higher in those situations.
0:30:04 We want to make sure that when we’re sleeping, we are not diverting any resources away from
0:30:05 sleep.
0:30:06 I mean, alcohol is another one, right?
0:30:11 If you just metabolize alcohol, you’re diverting, you know, significant resources away from
0:30:16 the regeneration and the recovery that needs to happen during sleep by bouncing you out
0:30:18 of deeper stages of sleep.
0:30:20 So same sort of effect happens with food.
0:30:24 And we see this, you know, at population levels on the whoop app, it’s just very apparent
0:30:31 that meal timing and alcohol are really the two biggest disruptors to a good night’s sleep.
0:30:34 So interesting because I’ve always wondered there was a time in my life where I routinely
0:30:38 ate super late at night because I would work very, very hard during the day.
0:30:40 I would basically forget to eat.
0:30:44 I’d get home maybe nine or 10 at night.
0:30:50 I would then order the food at nine or 10, which means it comes at 11 or 12.
0:30:52 And then I’d eat 11 or 12.
0:30:53 Yeah.
0:30:54 It’s very stressful for your system.
0:30:55 Yeah.
0:30:56 Tell me about it.
0:31:01 The interesting thing that I started to notice was when, when I did that, I woke up feeling
0:31:02 like I hadn’t slept.
0:31:03 Yeah.
0:31:04 I’ve always wondered why.
0:31:11 So I arrived at the zone sort of self-constructed conclusion that if I put food into my body
0:31:15 at midnight, it basically keeps my body on for a couple of hours.
0:31:16 Yeah.
0:31:17 That’s exactly right.
0:31:18 That’s a perfect way to describe it.
0:31:23 I would see the, exactly that in the whoop data, which is, I would see that my heart
0:31:26 rate went up to about 70 beats per minute for the first three hours.
0:31:30 It was almost like my body was, was still walking around or something to start on.
0:31:33 And then three or four hours in, it would start to fall again back to, I don’t know,
0:31:34 45, 50.
0:31:35 After you’ve metabolized the food.
0:31:36 Yeah.
0:31:40 And we know, you know, there’s a really nice study that looked at basically everyone is
0:31:44 eating the exact same meals and they’re relatively the same age.
0:31:47 Like there’s a really beautiful design.
0:31:51 And they basically looked at folks who are eating after 3 p.m. and folks who are eating
0:31:52 before 3 p.m.
0:31:59 And the folks who ate a bulk of their calories before 3 p.m. had significantly better metabolic
0:32:02 outcomes and lost more weight.
0:32:07 So again, there’s no calorie restriction component here, you know, they’re all kind
0:32:13 of eating similar diet, similar macronutrient distribution, similar calorie content.
0:32:17 And it’s the folks who were eating a bulk of their calories prior to 3 p.m. who had
0:32:18 the best outcomes.
0:32:19 Exercise.
0:32:24 One of the issues that I have sometimes in my life, today is one of those days where,
0:32:28 because I was up very early this morning, it meant that I didn’t go to the gym this morning,
0:32:33 which means I’m probably going to get home after being in the studio, being in the office
0:32:39 today, at maybe 7, 8 p.m., and I’m super hungry then, usually, right?
0:32:41 And I also need to work out.
0:32:44 So sometimes what happens is I choose to work out first and then obviously it makes the
0:32:45 meal late at night.
0:32:49 But there’s also days in my life where I end up working out and I’m known for this at like
0:32:52 11 or 12 p.m. at night.
0:32:58 And there was this old train of thought that that was a good thing to do because people
0:33:01 would say, “Oh, you’re going to be tired when you get in bed.”
0:33:03 But that doesn’t seem to be what happens.
0:33:04 Yeah.
0:33:05 Do you feel more energized?
0:33:06 I feel more energized.
0:33:07 Yeah.
0:33:08 Well, not surprising, right?
0:33:13 You know, adrenaline, cortisol, like all of the kind of hormones and chemicals that
0:33:19 you’d need to kind of get to a place where you can exert that energy are kind of flowing
0:33:23 through the system and it takes time for them to go back to normal levels.
0:33:27 So to kind of get back to homeostasis is going to take some time.
0:33:34 And so, yeah, I mean, it would make sense that you’re kind of activated after exercise.
0:33:41 So for some folks, there is a lot of individual variability, I think, with exercise timing.
0:33:45 Some people are impacted more, but I honestly think that it has more to do with the light.
0:33:49 You know, usually if we’re in a gym, it’s generally well lit, right?
0:33:55 You’re not in a dark gym, so you’re getting exposure to light, which is going to make
0:34:01 you feel like more activated and it’s, again, telling your body that it’s time to be awake
0:34:02 and alert.
0:34:07 On that point of light, there’s a school of thought that says you should look at lights
0:34:09 when you wake up in the morning.
0:34:11 My partner always gets up in the morning, walks out into the balcony and sits out there
0:34:12 for 10 or 20 minutes.
0:34:13 Oh my gosh.
0:34:14 I love that.
0:34:15 Yeah, she’s the best.
0:34:16 This is so annoying.
0:34:18 She gets everything right.
0:34:20 I love it.
0:34:26 Yeah, but for sure that you want to get light within, you know, 100,000 lux is pretty much
0:34:31 what you want to get within, you know, five to 20 minutes of waking up to tell your body
0:34:32 it’s time to go.
0:34:33 100,000 what?
0:34:34 Oh, lux.
0:34:37 So just like photon energy.
0:34:42 So pretty much if you’re outside for five to 20 minutes, it sounds like your girlfriend
0:34:44 is like nailing this protocol.
0:34:49 You’ll get all of the photon energy that you need to tell your system that it is time to
0:34:50 be awake.
0:34:53 Can’t you just go looking into a lamp or something?
0:34:57 It will just take longer because it doesn’t have the same light intensity, but if you’re
0:35:01 waking up, you know, prior to when the sun gets up, yeah, turn all the lights, you know,
0:35:03 you want to try to mimic day as much as possible.
0:35:06 And then once the sun does come up, it’s good to get outside.
0:35:11 And before you get in bed, you referenced that you read books versus being on an iPad
0:35:15 or screens, et cetera.
0:35:22 Does the same philosophy and principle apply to light exposure before sleep as to food exposure
0:35:23 before sleep?
0:35:24 Oh, no question, right?
0:35:25 Absolutely.
0:35:29 We want to try to restrict light basically after the sun goes down.
0:35:33 We want to dim our home environment to the degree that we can.
0:35:37 We want to try to minimize all artificial light in the lead up to bed.
0:35:39 All artificial light?
0:35:40 Yes.
0:35:41 Yeah.
0:35:42 We want to dim as possible.
0:35:45 So, you know, there are a lot of night, like blue light blocking glasses, the filters that
0:35:50 you can put on your iPad and your phone, activate all of those.
0:35:55 But again, like we don’t, we want to protect our melaton release, right?
0:36:00 And for all the reasons I kind of have explained, when we don’t have it is linked to every disease
0:36:01 and disorder, right?
0:36:03 So we know this.
0:36:05 So we want to protect our melatonin release.
0:36:10 And the only way we can release melatonin is by darkness.
0:36:16 We need to be exposed to darkness in order for that master clock in our brain to know
0:36:18 that it’s time to go to sleep.
0:36:24 And again, be able to tell our body, our tissues and organs and cells and our body what it
0:36:25 needs to do at that moment.
0:36:30 When I was at the Woop headquarters in Boston not so long ago, I saw them working on sleep
0:36:31 masks.
0:36:34 And I think I’ve always been quite dubious about sleep masks.
0:36:37 You know, you get on those planes and they hand you a sleep mask in the little bag.
0:36:41 I always put a bunch of weirdos, you know, like putting that, strapping that thing to
0:36:42 your face.
0:36:43 Yeah.
0:36:44 Embarrassing.
0:36:45 I’m one of those weirdos now.
0:36:46 Yeah.
0:36:47 I mean, it’s hard.
0:36:51 Even the little dot on your, you know, from your alarm clock or your TV is going to emit
0:36:53 enough light.
0:36:58 We’re so sensitive to light, artificial light.
0:37:01 So natural light, like the moon, totally fine.
0:37:06 But any other type of light is really going to impair our ability to get into these deeper
0:37:10 stages of sleep where all the restoration and regeneration happens.
0:37:11 Do you use a sleep mask?
0:37:12 I do.
0:37:13 Yes.
0:37:14 What’s your sort of routine there?
0:37:20 Um, yeah, just when I start to feel sleepy, I just put it on and go to bed.
0:37:22 Do you listen to anything when you go to sleep?
0:37:23 No.
0:37:24 I don’t.
0:37:28 Is there, are you aware of any research that might indicate that listening to serial
0:37:32 killer documentaries at 3 AM?
0:37:41 I think in principle, anything that activates you stimulates you cognitively or makes you
0:37:42 energized.
0:37:43 You probably want to avoid reading.
0:37:44 Yeah.
0:37:45 Interesting.
0:37:46 But I think there’s a group of us out there.
0:37:52 I’m yet to meet them, but I know that I’m not alone that like to listen to horror and
0:37:59 thriller and serial killer stuff at, um, you know, very late at night and it helps us to
0:38:00 sleep.
0:38:01 Or at least that’s what we tell ourselves.
0:38:05 If you perceive it as helpful, it probably is, you know, and I think that’s where, and
0:38:10 if your objective data shows that you’re getting, you know, the requisite time in these deep
0:38:13 stages of sleep, then go with it.
0:38:18 I think, I think what is actually, there’s definitely the cold, dark, quiet, right?
0:38:19 You need your room to be cold.
0:38:20 You need to be cold.
0:38:21 Dark, you need to be quiet.
0:38:22 So there’s environmental stuff.
0:38:26 You need to, um, you know, stop eating a few hours before bed.
0:38:30 Ideally, um, you need to have stable sleep, big time, ideally, these are all things that
0:38:33 are going to drive getting into these deeper stages of sleep.
0:38:37 But the other thing that you probably do really well is you manage stress throughout
0:38:38 the day.
0:38:44 You know, like you, I think that’s another, like the things that we do during the day,
0:38:47 how we, you know, whether or not we’re living our values, right?
0:38:49 Do our behaviors align with the things that we care about?
0:38:51 Are we thinking about the things that we want to be thinking about?
0:38:54 Are we managing our relationships effectively?
0:39:02 So all the things that can manifest as stress, negative stress, um, will invariably rear
0:39:03 its head during our sleep.
0:39:08 But if we’re managing those things during the day proactively and relatively well, generally
0:39:12 speaking, like sleep should happen, you know, pretty naturally.
0:39:16 There’s a huge group of people who listen to podcasts like this.
0:39:21 And as they listen to these podcasts, they just feel more depressed about their situation.
0:39:26 You know, because they believe they’re trying their very best and they’re still struggling,
0:39:28 especially as it relates to sleep.
0:39:32 I think I’ve always wondered what the message one can send to them.
0:39:37 And also, you know, I think there is a huge component of sort of personal responsibility
0:39:41 and choice that you speak about as well, and that I believe in as well.
0:39:47 But what is the most compelling message for those people that do have a choice?
0:39:51 They know deep inside, much of it is a lack of discipline.
0:39:53 They know they could not watch YouTube.
0:39:55 They know they could put their phone away at 9pm.
0:39:57 They know they could not eat the cookie super late at night.
0:39:59 They know they could shoot deep down.
0:40:02 They know they could make a different set of choices, but they listen to these podcasts
0:40:03 over and over again.
0:40:07 Whenever I have the health experts on, maybe they even take notes, but they just don’t
0:40:09 do it.
0:40:15 What is the most compelling thing you can say to those people that do have a choice,
0:40:22 and continually choose a bad option to get them pushed over the fence to the positive
0:40:26 circadian rhythm, body clock loving side?
0:40:34 Yeah, so if people are trying to develop new habits, you have to understand how that new
0:40:37 habit links to your values.
0:40:40 So the things that you believe in, the things that you say you care about, right?
0:40:47 If I know growth and impact are my two most important values, presence is another one.
0:40:50 What do I need to do every single day to back into that?
0:40:57 So I can align my behaviors with the things I say I care about, and I think when folks
0:41:05 are struggling, they don’t really know who they want to be in the world, and they don’t
0:41:08 maybe understand exactly what it is that they value.
0:41:12 They’re fuzzy about their desires, about their values.
0:41:16 And I think when you’re fuzzy about your desires and the things that you value, and if you’re
0:41:21 flinging yourself in all sorts of directions, emotionally, physically, mentally, right?
0:41:27 And I think that’s kind of the project is figure out what you care about, and then align
0:41:30 your behaviors and create outlets in your life.
0:41:38 And that frankly might mean getting rid of people who don’t support those values.
0:41:48 And I think we’re way too lenient on our circle of friends in the sense of, you know,
0:41:56 I think we keep people around in our life who don’t necessarily help us become a better
0:41:58 version of ourselves.
0:42:00 Have you had to shed some people?
0:42:03 Yes, absolutely.
0:42:05 Why did you shed them?
0:42:08 Because it didn’t really support who I wanted to be.
0:42:11 Who did you want to be?
0:42:18 I wanted to be able to wake up at a very simple level with as much joy and energy as I could.
0:42:23 And I wanted to be present for my kids.
0:42:45 So I think folks are engaging in behaviors that, I think, you know, create a situation
0:43:00 where — yeah, I don’t know how to say this, but I think, you know, for me, you know, I
0:43:06 grew up in a household where, you know, my mom was an alcoholic, you know, it was a tough
0:43:18 environment, and she ended up dying of cirrhosis, and it’s not easy, so being in that kind of
0:43:19 environment.
0:43:29 So I think for me, you know, you end up — it’s crazy how when you live that life, you end
0:43:34 up repeating those patterns.
0:43:42 And I think, you know, I had to, you know, even though for me, personally, I made choices
0:43:47 where, you know, I really have never drank alcohol, right?
0:43:54 Because I saw how it destroyed my family, but yet I was still hanging around with people
0:44:00 who were engaging in these behaviors, and it just was impacting me at my core.
0:44:06 And it didn’t mean that I didn’t love those folks, but I had to get away, you know, and
0:44:12 a lot of this was, you know, related to, you know, I was in an environment at a university
0:44:18 where, you know, that was just like the norm, like, it is just wild to me how educational
0:44:26 institutions normalize binge drinking at a level that is just so destructive.
0:44:34 And, you know, and just to be — I supposed to just be around that all the time, like,
0:44:40 was just really not allowing me to show up daily as the person that I wanted to be, even
0:44:42 though I wasn’t engaging in that behavior.
0:44:50 Like, it still, like, it just, yeah, it just made me feel like I couldn’t be the version
0:44:52 of myself that I wanted to be.
0:44:59 So yeah, it’s just a lot of hard decisions, you know, but I let go of a lot, you know,
0:45:06 to be able to create an environment and infrastructure that supported who I wanted to be in this world.
0:45:14 When I talk about being able to change your behavior and break a habit, it is nothing
0:45:19 in the context of someone who is ensnared by an addiction of sorts.
0:45:23 It’s not, it’s a completely different conversation.
0:45:29 What is it like growing up with a mother who you observe at a very young age?
0:45:30 You were how old?
0:45:32 I mean, my whole life.
0:45:33 Your whole life?
0:45:35 Yeah, like she.
0:45:43 As a child, when you see a parent someone you love that is sort of gripped by addiction,
0:45:44 what is that like?
0:45:55 Yeah, I mean, I think at a fundamental level, you just feel depraoritized, I think, generally.
0:46:03 You know, like you, you know, I think you feel, you know, you’re unsupervised number
0:46:05 one.
0:46:10 There isn’t a lot of supervision, you know, so you end up like really having to defend
0:46:12 for yourself.
0:46:13 My dad worked a lot.
0:46:20 You know, he was definitely workaholic, such a good man, so much integrity and, and, but
0:46:25 I think that was his form of escape, but it kind of leads, you know, you got to figure
0:46:28 out how to eat, you got to, you know, you got to figure out how to do a lot of the basic
0:46:30 stuff on your own.
0:46:39 So you develop a lot of independence, I think, but it, it’s hard to, you know, form emotional
0:46:45 attachments, I think, as an adult, unless you really work through that, you know, because
0:46:50 you’re, you’re afraid that you’re not going to be taken care of.
0:46:54 What did you come to understand about your mother’s addiction and what she was struggling
0:46:56 with, if anything at all?
0:47:04 Yeah, I mean, I think what was so sad about that time period is, is, you know, I think
0:47:05 it was well understood.
0:47:13 You know, I think a lot of those behaviors, I think, to degree are normalized, and I don’t
0:47:18 know that they’re the connection between depression, you know, she was, it’s no question.
0:47:22 She had massive seasonal effect disorder, which is one of the reasons why I’m so interested
0:47:28 in, you know, kind of everything related to, to light and, and just the opportunity there
0:47:34 for, for, for health, but, you know, she had major depressive disorder and, you know, was
0:47:37 not diagnosed properly.
0:47:38 I don’t even remember.
0:47:44 I have no idea if she ever even went to the doctor to, you know, to try to get treated.
0:47:53 So, you know, I think the, the biggest thing that I learned is that we can actually make
0:47:54 choices.
0:47:59 And I know that there are, you know, when you look at regions of the brain, we understand
0:48:03 that people are predisposed, but I think there’s a lot of things that we can, we can actually
0:48:10 control to reduce our vulnerability to, to some of these diseases.
0:48:15 How has that experience defined and shaped you when you look back and connect dots?
0:48:22 Yeah, I mean, I just, I always, you know, I was very competitive, high level athlete
0:48:27 representing the U.S. and, and so there’s definitely trying to understand my own body
0:48:32 and my psychology so I could perform my potential, but there’s no question that like this whole
0:48:38 everything that like underpins the work that I do is, is trying to, to understand, you know,
0:48:48 how we can improve our own situation so we can, you know, self-actualize and, and live
0:48:49 our potential.
0:49:02 And, so that was, I always, you know, felt so bad, you know, for my mom.
0:49:03 Why?
0:49:12 You know, that she wasn’t able to become the version of herself, like I wasn’t able to
0:49:27 realize her potential, and she had so much, I can’t believe you did this to me.
0:49:31 Would you like a tissue?
0:49:32 Thanks.
0:49:39 You’re very, you’re a very special person and it all makes, makes a ton of sense why
0:49:43 you’ve got such an incredible, incredible drive and mission to you.
0:49:47 I didn’t, I didn’t know any of those, what you just said, but I’ve never talked about
0:49:48 that publicly.
0:49:56 So I’m just, yeah, what a, what a wonderful way to channel such an imaginable pain to
0:50:02 then sort of fix, you know, hundreds of thousands of people’s other lives and help them get
0:50:05 closer towards their own potential.
0:50:16 Yeah, I, and I never want to like project my values onto other folks, but, but I think
0:50:21 that’s always been like at the core of like why I do what I, I do is, and the reason why
0:50:28 I coached for so long is I just love seeing people like realize their potential or understand
0:50:32 their potential knowing that we’re always, of course, a work in progress.
0:50:41 But I just like, I want like everyone to be able to wake up and feel, you know, be energetic
0:50:46 and be able to like really, really live the things that you care about, you know, and
0:50:53 just an understanding, I think the path to that, you know, requires some work, you know,
0:50:57 in terms of making sure that you’re attending to some of these non-negotiables that we’re
0:51:02 talking about. And I think sometimes it takes folks time to connect those dots and there’s
0:51:09 a lot of wonderful learning that comes with that. But I think if I can kind of help accelerate
0:51:15 some of that wisdom and keep people from experiencing, I think some of the pain that I felt, you
0:51:16 know, it’s worth it to me.
0:51:22 It’s the most incredible, incredible thing that you’ve committed your life to because
0:51:26 mean you’re both aware that there’s going to be a ton of people who are either on a
0:51:31 path towards such an addiction or are currently enthralled by such an addiction and the work
0:51:36 that you’re doing, the message you’re spreading is going to prevent and lift some of those
0:51:40 people out of that situation, which has a wonderful karmic effect on the world. And
0:51:46 I think if there’s anything that we can convert our pain into, it is exactly that.
0:51:52 I want to talk about alcohol. I’ve recently quit drinking alcohol. I think it was about
0:51:56 three to four months ago now. It was so interesting. I had a conversation with some of my friends
0:52:02 and my best friends. I said this on a podcast a couple of months ago. And one of my friends
0:52:08 was an alcoholic. So he managed to quit alcohol and he’s writing a book about it. And then
0:52:12 as I look across the group of my other friends, none of them are alcoholics, but they’re all
0:52:16 sort of casual drinkers. And we were sat there together around this table having dinner and
0:52:21 he was telling us about this book. He’s writing about quitting alcohol. And I was thinking
0:52:28 that book that he’s writing doesn’t necessarily resonate with me because I’ve never felt
0:52:33 like I’ve had an addiction or really to be honest, any problem with it. I was such a
0:52:38 casual drinker. I would have maybe one glass of wine a week if that. There’s probably months
0:52:44 I’ve gone without any alcohol at all. So I couldn’t think of a reason to quit. So really
0:52:48 I was saying to him, is there another book that someone else could write for me that
0:52:52 just takes those people that are those casual drinkers that are right on the fence and just
0:52:56 gives us a reason to nudge over the other side. And because I have this podcast, I thought,
0:53:02 you know, I’ll just try and quit and see if, see what the implications are for my life.
0:53:09 Alcohol, health, circadian rhythms. What do you, what’s your perspective on all of this?
0:53:16 Well, I like to think about it. I love this, the principle of non neutrality, right? And
0:53:23 this is how I like to think about behaviors and how I’ve kind of always thought about
0:53:31 it is if you’ve got a series of behaviors, we talked a lot about sleep and you know,
0:53:36 physiological things and you’ve got the psychological things and they’re either going to support
0:53:40 your values kind of who you want to be in this world or they’re not. And I think that’s
0:53:45 the lens with which I look at alcohol, you know, in what way is this supporting my values
0:53:53 of growth and impact and presence and compassion and tolerance, you know, the things that are
0:53:58 like core to who I want to be in this world. And I think when you look at it through that
0:54:02 lens, the choices become really clear to me. If you’re honest with yourself and you have
0:54:10 some degree of self-awareness, understand what you care about, I think choices become
0:54:18 a lot clearer. Like there’s way, way more clarity about how to live your life in the
0:54:21 micro, which is really what we’re talking about. There’s just many choices throughout
0:54:25 the day. Does it, does it, does it support who you want to be in the world or does it
0:54:32 not? And there’s very little gray actually. And the gray are excuses in my view. And we
0:54:38 can rationalize and make stuff up, you know, all day long, right? To, to, to make ourselves
0:54:46 feel better. But when you can step back from all of that and look at it really, you know,
0:54:52 taking yourself kind of out of the equation and look at it from a very objective standpoint,
0:54:57 you know, I think a choice like alcohol becomes very clear.
0:55:07 It helps me to socialize, Kristen. Yeah. If you need alcohol to bond or to, you know,
0:55:14 form a connection, there’s probably something else going on that is unaddressed and from
0:55:25 my perspective. Is there such a thing as such a small dose of alcohol that it doesn’t matter
0:55:28 in your opinion? Yeah, I mean, I think it depends on who you
0:55:36 are. And I think there’s a lot of individual variability there as, as well. I know resveratrol
0:55:43 is, is something that’s talked about a lot. And there’s, you know, suppose there’s in
0:55:50 wine and grapes, there’s resveratrol and that’s been linked to enhanced health and well being.
0:55:54 But I think you’d have to drink like 10 bottles or something to get the amount of resveratrol
0:56:02 to actually make a, to make a dent. I don’t think that’s the argument. So yeah, I don’t
0:56:06 know that really any amount of alcohol is going to be, is going to be helpful. And we
0:56:12 know from the literature that just one to two drinks per week will can have, you know,
0:56:18 negative implications on, on health. So it’s actually, I don’t know that any, like even
0:56:21 in a moderate amount of alcohol is good for you.
0:56:24 What’s the implications for our circadian rhythms that we’ve been talking about?
0:56:28 Yeah, it’s mainly because it impacts sleep. It’s going to impact when you go to bed and
0:56:33 when you wake up. So I think that’s the biggest, the biggest impact. And I think, again, when
0:56:42 we go back to melatonin, you know, it’s when you’re disrupting that, that sleep onset offset,
0:56:48 that’s going to obviously have all the downstream negative effects that we, we’ve already spoken
0:56:52 about. So I suppose if we’re drinking, we were staying out later, so we’re exposing ourselves
0:57:00 to light. So yeah, there’s lots of, we’re going to be eating later. There’s other behaviors
0:57:06 that accompany drinking that kind of, you know, pile on the, the negative effects.
0:57:10 I was reading some research from the sleep foundation. And it says that a 2007 study
0:57:16 with 29 young adults found that moderate doses of alcohol up to one hour before bedtime reduced
0:57:22 melatonin production by nearly 20%. That’s the study on alcohol and melatonin in young
0:57:30 adults. A 2018 study of 4,908 Finnish participants found that sleep quality was, was reduced by
0:57:41 9.3% after one glass of wine and by 24% after two glasses of wine and by almost 40%, 39.2%
0:57:46 after three or more glasses of wine or an equivalent amount of alcohol. Yeah. Which
0:57:52 is really, really staggering that your sleep quality will, could dip 40% after three glasses
0:57:53 of wine.
0:57:58 Oh yeah. It’s, I mean, we see it is, we just finished this analysis actually looking at
0:58:02 alcohol and markers of recovery. So heart rate variability and heart rate and literally
0:58:07 with every drink, it is just, there’s a linear relationship in the decline, like in it is
0:58:15 significant. So I mean, yeah, it’s, we’re talking even one drink will produce clinically
0:58:19 significant reductions in heart rate and heart rate variability.
0:58:26 This was maybe the most compelling motivator for me to quit alcohol was when I got my
0:58:29 weeb the first time and then I think it was someone’s birthday or something. So we went
0:58:33 out and I had a glass of wine or something. I woke, I woke up the next day, looked at
0:58:36 my heart rate variability, which is the, a measure of how well I’m going to be able
0:58:39 to deal with stress and load and all those things the next day, how well my body’s going
0:58:44 to be able to deal with life. And it was flashing red, which is like a warning. And it says
0:58:48 on there, when I clicked on the flashing red thing, it was like, did you have a really
0:58:55 stressful day? Are you sick? Or did you drink alcohol last night? And I felt so targeted.
0:59:00 I was like, how does this thing know that I had one glass of wine last night with my
0:59:05 friends? Why is something flashing red with inside of me? People keep diaries on weeb,
0:59:09 don’t they? They keep like the journal. I think they do. Yeah. So it’s a goldmine of
0:59:13 information. Really? Yeah. What have you learned from that in terms of alcohol? I imagine that’s
0:59:20 where a lot of the conclusions. Yeah, we see a 6% reduction in next day recovery after
0:59:24 alcohol on average. So this is, you know, one drink to tendering, you know, it’s just
0:59:32 basically looking at the average is 6%. Okay. So the average of recovery. So if someone’s
0:59:36 had it, if someone was binge drinking, they could have a 30 or 40% reduction. Yeah. But
0:59:43 it kind of, and we might, and that specific data point might, we might have controlled
0:59:49 for, you know, the 30 drinks or, you know, it’s probably somewhere in the range of five
0:59:54 drinks, you know, per night. And the average recovery reduction is 6%. And that’s relying
0:59:59 on self-reporting, right? So I wonder if there’s biases. There might be, yeah. People that
1:00:05 had 10 drinks think they had four. Yeah, exactly. I don’t remember how many drinks I had. So
1:00:09 yeah, or your drinks I had. Interesting. Super interesting. The other thing we obviously
1:00:15 drink is coffee. Yes. Caffeine. Surely there’s a correlation between circadian disruption
1:00:19 and caffeine. Yeah, so that’s definitely one of the circadian, it definitely can disrupt
1:00:26 circadian rhythms if we’re having caffeine, you know, within 8 to 12 hours, I would say,
1:00:31 of when we intend to sleep. It’s going to impact our sleep onset, of course. And even
1:00:38 if we’re, you know, tired enough where we have, you know, we’re sleep deprived, we might
1:00:43 fall asleep, but it will invariably end up disrupting or fragmenting our sleep. So we’re
1:00:46 not kind of getting into that deeper stages of sleep or not achieving the sleep quality
1:00:51 that that is going to, you know, allow us to wake up feeling restored and refreshed.
1:00:56 So timing of caffeine is really important. All of this conversation makes me have a huge
1:01:01 amount of empathy for shift workers. And when I say shift workers, I don’t, I don’t mean
1:01:09 people work in, you know, warehouses. I mean, doctors, nurses, firefighters, the police,
1:01:17 truck drivers, people that are baking. Yeah, anyone who’s up between the hours of, you
1:01:20 know, for more than two hours between the hours of 10pm and 4am is considered a shift
1:01:25 worker. So it’s, yes, there’s a lot of, a lot of individuals walking around to our shift
1:01:31 workers, but people who are, you know, literally up during the biological night, you know,
1:01:37 it’s a huge sacrifice. We know those folks on average are going to die 15 years sooner.
1:01:43 And as, you know, shift work is considered a carcinogen by the World Health Organization.
1:01:48 It’s, you know, shift work is those folks make an enormous sacrifice.
1:01:52 They’re going to die 15 years sooner. On average.
1:01:58 I mean, that’s terrifying. I know.
1:02:01 Is anybody, is anybody trying to solve for that? Yeah, I mean, that’s a lot of the work
1:02:06 that I do is looking at shift work, you know, and trying to understand, you know, what other
1:02:13 levers, you know, can we deploy to offset some of the, the, the impact of being awake
1:02:18 during the, the biological night, and, you know, time to eat as a lever, you know, really
1:02:27 thinking about when we’re eating protein, you know, when we’re viewing lights, you know,
1:02:34 what do the, what’s the cadence of, of, of, you know, on/off. So we minimize the disruption
1:02:39 to circadian rhythms. I mean, the fact is like the roster size at these hospitals are
1:02:46 just simply not big enough to be able to, I think, deploy schedules that mitigate some
1:02:53 of the, the risk associated with this disrupted circadian rhythm. But it is frightening.
1:02:57 And, you know, there is a lot of work to try to understand how we can mitigate some of
1:03:04 the, the negative effects, but it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s a tough problem to solve.
1:03:08 It’s not just, I guess it’s not just that those individuals will die, you know, on average,
1:03:13 15 years earlier, but their quality of life, I imagine, won’t be as good because if they’re
1:03:20 not sleeping consistently. Yeah, I mean, depression, suicide. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s higher,
1:03:27 you know, for, for folks in, in these professions, you know, who are having to operate counter
1:03:34 to the naturally dark cycle. So let’s talk about that in mental health depression, suicidality.
1:03:37 What’s the correlation there between. Yeah. So there’s a lot of interesting research.
1:03:42 I mean, you know, one is just, you know, we talk about just the layperson. So getting
1:03:47 outside of shift work, we come back to shift work. You know, if you look at this, most
1:03:54 folks experience social jet lag, right, which is basically characterized as, you know,
1:04:01 a big difference between our weekday sleep schedule and our weekend sleep schedule, right?
1:04:08 So pretty much anyone, you know, between 20, 20 to 30 probably is, you know, kind of falls
1:04:13 into this bucket of having social jet lag. But one of the things that we want to, a research
1:04:19 study we saw looking at specifically a social jet lag in college students, they saw that
1:04:28 for every hour of variability between weekday and weekend schedules, they saw a 17% increase
1:04:35 in non-suicidal ideation. So these folks aren’t committing suicide, but they’re fantasizing
1:04:40 about committing suicide. And that increases 17%. And this was more pronounced than individuals
1:04:47 who were already vulnerable. So kind of coming back to circadian disruption being present
1:04:52 in a hundred percent of mental health issues, we can see where shift workers would be extremely
1:04:58 vulnerable, right, to mental health issues, given that their variability, and we look
1:05:03 at the WOOP data, it’s basically random in terms of looking at their sleep wake time.
1:05:09 It’s so variable that it’s like, we can’t even see a pad. It’s random, which is frightening.
1:05:12 Why is that frightening?
1:05:21 Because the more variability you have, like the more psychological and physiological negative
1:05:24 consequences there will be.
1:05:28 Is there a correlation here between how we deal with stressful events in our lives as
1:05:30 well? Because I’m assuming there must be.
1:05:36 Yes, absolutely. Managing stress throughout the day, and the degree, or even during the
1:05:46 night, can definitely increase your tolerance for stress. So deploying breathwork, for example,
1:05:55 as on-demand self-regulation tool to pay down in the moment stress can be, and to activate
1:05:59 the paracentric branch of the nervous system, can be really powerful. So I kind of call
1:06:04 these mini moments of deactivation. So doing that proactively for folks who are in these
1:06:11 high stakes, high stress environments is an amazing strategy. Because lots of those folks,
1:06:17 again, if you think about just baseline, when you are engaging in shiftwork and you’re awake
1:06:23 during the night, your system is humming at a kind of a stress level that is above what
1:06:30 would be normal. Like your system is having to work so much harder to maintain homeostasis
1:06:34 because you’re doing exactly the opposite of what your body wants to do.
1:06:39 So all the kind of biological preferences are being bypassed when you’re up during the
1:06:46 biological night. So to pay down some of the stress, these mini moments of deactivation
1:06:52 are absolutely critical for that population. So that means just literally taking 30 seconds
1:06:56 where you’re doing the physiological side, for example, which we know has emerged as
1:07:01 being the most efficacious breathwork technique in the moment to reduce not only in the moment
1:07:06 anxiety and stress, but actually, you know, your perception of anxiety and stress, like
1:07:13 in the future, the physiological side, it’s basically a double inhale followed by an extended
1:07:22 exhale. Perfect. It’s exactly right. So basically, like when you’re crying, it’s, you know, you
1:07:27 kind of do that double inhale followed by an extended exhale. But that like reduces stress
1:07:34 in the moment in a really powerful way. If you do that, you know, five, 10 times, you
1:07:41 end up activating the parasympathic branch. So you’re reducing your heart rate. And, and,
1:07:46 and, you know, kind of doing that throughout the day is a great way to mitigate negative
1:07:47 stress accumulation.
1:07:52 There’s a pretty unfortunate paradox, a pretty tragic paradox in the fact that our shift
1:07:58 work is some of them like doctors, especially are the people that we need to be most focused
1:08:03 firing on our cylinders exactly. Yeah. But those are the people that are from what I’ve
1:08:07 learned today about the circadian rhythm, most likely to suffer with things like focus
1:08:12 and sleep and all of those things that are imperative to showing up well. Yeah. I mean,
1:08:17 there’s a relationship, you know, we know that with every 45 minutes of sleep deprivation
1:08:23 accrued on the platform, we see a 5 to 10% next day decrease in mental control, mental
1:08:29 control, executive function. So we measure this with an M back and a stoop. So these
1:08:36 kind of performance tests to measure executive function. And we see for every 45 minutes
1:08:43 of sleep debt accrued, we see up to 10% decrease or decline in next day executive function.
1:08:47 And what does executive function mean for people that are? Our ability to make decisions.
1:08:54 Okay. Use the word they’re sleep debt. What is sleep debt? So that’s basically what you
1:08:59 need versus what you actually got. And that’s highly individual, right? And that’s one
1:09:04 of the kind of beautiful things on the platform is that we learn your, your body, we learn
1:09:09 how efficient sleeper you are, we learn what your optimal sleep wake time should be. And
1:09:14 we basically tell you how much time you need to spend in bed. So a lot of the work that
1:09:19 my, my team has done specifically at whoop is to try to understand, you know, what is
1:09:25 this relationship of sleep debt to other performance metrics that we care about, right? That tell
1:09:30 us a story about someone’s ability to kind of function in their environment. And one
1:09:38 of the studies that we did was looking specifically at business executives. So CEO types. And
1:09:44 we, we basically looked at is this, this one is a six month study looking at two different
1:09:51 cohorts, but, you know, I think equal distribution between men and men and women. And, and what
1:09:55 we saw was for every 45 minutes of sleep to debt accrued in these business leaders, we
1:10:03 saw a 5 to 10% decrease in next day executive function. So the leaders ability to make decisions
1:10:10 in the presence of sleep debt, you know, gets, gets worse the more sleep that you accrue.
1:10:16 We did a follow up study and this one was wild. So we basically looked at it was roughly,
1:10:23 it was about 70 business executive CEO types. And we looked at all of their objective markers
1:10:29 of sleep debt being one of them. And we look at the psychological safety of their direct
1:10:32 reports during team meetings.
1:10:38 And define psychological safety for your, how, how safe you feel to show up in your
1:10:47 environment as your true most authentic self. And what we saw is again, for every 45 minutes
1:10:53 of sleep that the leader had, there was a significant decrease in psychological safety
1:10:59 of the direct reports. So they felt less safe in their environment to show up as their
1:11:05 true self when their leader had 45 minutes of sleep debt accrued. And, and some of these
1:11:09 folks were carrying a couple hours of sleep debt. So, and there was a linear relationship
1:11:13 between the amount of psychological safety and the amount of sleep that the leader had.
1:11:18 So what was so interesting and I think compelling about this research is that the leader had
1:11:24 no idea they couldn’t perceive their own cognitive, physical, and emotional declines, right?
1:11:30 But that’s what’s so insidious about sleep deprivation is that you can’t really tell
1:11:38 when you’re operating at a lower level. You just adapt to that lower level of functioning.
1:11:43 But everyone around you can feel it, right? Just with how you hold your face, how you
1:11:50 emote, the kind of eye contact you make, how tolerant you are. And you, and you think about
1:11:56 how sleep deprivation, you know, it did, and I think this is really what this research
1:12:02 surface is. It’s just, it’s not just sleep deprivation just doesn’t impact me, right?
1:12:06 It’s going to impact every single person I come in contact with. And from a business
1:12:13 perspective, just from a sheer like numbers perspective, Google did a study called Aristotle
1:12:17 and they looked at cycle, they looked at a bunch of different metrics related to team
1:12:22 performance. And what emerged in that study is being most predictive of team performance
1:12:27 was the degree to which the team had psychological safety felt safe in their environment to kind
1:12:35 of show up as their true self. And they brought in to the tune of $4.5 million more than teams
1:12:38 who are lacking psychological safety.
1:12:43 So this is like a really important concept that I don’t think a lot of people talk about.
1:12:48 But when we go back to this concept of the principle of non neutrality, right? And what
1:12:55 are behaviors that promote, enable you to live your values and kind of show up as your best
1:13:01 self as consistently as possible, minimizing sleep debt is right there at the top of the
1:13:02 list.
1:13:07 And as it relates to sort of accident and injury, is there correlation between sort of injury
1:13:12 of oneself and accidents you commit on others correlation between that and sleep debt?
1:13:18 It’s very well established that the more sleep debt you’re carrying, you know, the more accident
1:13:27 prone you are, you know, the more risk you’re going to take. And yeah, we see this in the
1:13:32 medical field, we see this, you know, in, you know, just car accidents. And yeah, it’s
1:13:34 the list goes on and on.
1:13:39 Car accidents. A 2016 study by the Foundation for Traffic Safety found that drivers who
1:13:47 reported that they usually sleep four to five hours per day had 5.4 times the crash rate
1:13:53 of drivers who usually sleep for seven hours or more a day, which is horrifying.
1:14:01 Yeah, I know it’s, yeah, I mean, when we think about, you know, sleep, it’s, it’s, we’re
1:14:08 not getting better at it as a society. And I think we’re kind of coming at this conversation
1:14:12 from the wrong lens, you know, we’re telling folks just to spend more time in bed without
1:14:17 addressing the behaviors that are actually enable us to fall asleep and stay asleep.
1:14:22 You know, that’s to me, that’s, that’s the conversation. And, and it’s not about spending
1:14:27 more time in bed. And yeah, that might be what needs to happen. But it’s, it’s about,
1:14:32 you’re not going to get there for folks who, who are not thinking about all the circadian
1:14:36 things that we’re talking about. And, you know, some of the environmental stuff, the
1:14:42 cold, dark, the quiet, yes, that matters. But, but at a foundational level, I think folks
1:14:48 are not engaging in the behaviors that are going to enable us to pay down the sleep deprivation.
1:14:52 The other study that I found that was super interesting was that a 2021 study found that
1:14:58 less than seven hours of sleep is associated with increased risk of injury. And if this
1:15:03 is sustained for at least 14 days, the risk of muscle and bone injury is 1.7 times, almost
1:15:09 two times higher. So if someone that goes to the gym a lot and likes to work out, if
1:15:14 I have a high sleep debt, then I’m much more likely to get an injury, almost two times
1:15:18 more likely to get an injury if that’s sustained, which is crazy.
1:15:25 Yeah, it is. Yeah. And you know, I’m so grateful that I think folks are finally realizing that
1:15:32 sleep is the greatest natural performance and answer that we have on this planet. Yeah,
1:15:37 it’s, and that is certainly super evident in all the research that we’re doing.
1:15:40 What about sleep and sex?
1:15:47 Sex with a partner is a health-promoting behavior. And we have found that in our research.
1:15:48 What research have you done?
1:15:54 Yeah, I mean, we just, we actually haven’t published it yet. So this is preliminary data,
1:16:01 but people who are reporting that they’re having sex before bed. So within a few hours
1:16:07 of when they intend to sleep with a partner, have better markers of sleep and recovery.
1:16:09 You said with a partner very intentionally there.
1:16:15 I did. Yeah. We don’t, we don’t see the same effect when folks are, are having sex without
1:16:16 a partner and reporting it.
1:16:18 How do you have sex without a partner?
1:16:23 I mean, that, all right, I should say a partner, like a spouse or a boyfriend or, you know,
1:16:27 someone you’re consistently with. So we’re not, we’re talking about, I guess, not one
1:16:29 night stands. Sorry, I should have clarified it.
1:16:31 I thought you meant with, without a human at all.
1:16:34 Oh, got it. Yeah. We’re talking, I’m talking about human sex here. Yeah.
1:16:37 Does masturbation have the same implications? Do I have?
1:16:39 We didn’t, we didn’t see big effects with masturbation.
1:16:42 Are people reporting that they’re on loop?
1:16:42 They sure are.
1:16:43 They are.
1:16:48 I should say that it is completely optional to track. So people can opt in to track these
1:16:54 things. Again, it is completely de-identified. We have no ability to know who’s doing what
1:17:00 in terms of journal tracking and behaviors. But yeah, so we don’t actually see any big
1:17:06 effects with, with masturbation and any markers of sleep and recovery. So no, no strong, no
1:17:07 strong effects there.
1:17:12 We said something earlier about exercising before bed. Now, if I have sex before bed,
1:17:21 and you know, it lasts a long time, is that not then going to produce a ton of adrenaline
1:17:23 and wake me up again?
1:17:31 So after, so it depends. If you ejaculate, then you will then release oxytocin, which
1:17:40 is kind of a calming chemical. So guys, typically after they ejaculate, feel sleepy because
1:17:42 of the release of oxytocin.
1:17:45 But then that goes back to my point about masturbation. Don’t you release oxytocin when
1:17:46 you masturbate?
1:17:49 Yeah. I think, I think that oxytocin is about connection.
1:17:50 Okay.
1:17:56 Right. So it’s, it’s, that’s, I think that’s, and that might be why we see these strong
1:18:04 effects when you’re having sex with a partner or a spouse is that you’re, you’re getting
1:18:08 this benefit of this, this beautiful connection with your partner and spouse, provided it
1:18:10 goes well.
1:18:15 And then you release this oxytocin, which is, you know, kind of makes you feel connected
1:18:23 and safe. And so all of those, I think those, that kind of condition helps, I think you
1:18:25 fall asleep and potentially stay asleep.
1:18:29 It does make sense. Cause I do get very, very tired after I’ve had sex with my partner.
1:18:31 And I’ve always wondered why that is.
1:18:38 I don’t know that women, it seems to have women want to maybe stay up and snuggle and
1:18:47 talk a little bit more after sex. So, but, but guys, it seems get sleepy and fall asleep.
1:18:52 And or want to run off or a bit of a stereotype that goes back quite far prehistorically. The
1:18:55 other thing I would love to talk to you about, because it’s become a huge obsession in my
1:19:00 life is this word, I guess it’s not a word, it’s an acronym, HRV, heart rate variability,
1:19:05 but become absolutely obsessed with it. Maybe a little bit too obsessed with it, one might
1:19:08 argue. I just check it every day. So the first thing I do when I wake up in the morning as
1:19:15 I look at it, just to understand how my body has recovered from the night before. What
1:19:17 is HRV?
1:19:23 It’s most simply the time interval between heart beats and it’s a function of the heart,
1:19:28 but it originates in the autonomic nervous system. And as we talked about, the autonomic
1:19:34 nervous system has two branches, the parasympathetic and the sympathetic. Parasympathetic, the
1:19:38 rest and digest, sympathetic is fight or flight. And they’re both competing to send signals
1:19:44 to the heart. When you are super recovered, your heart is going to be responsive to both
1:19:51 branches of that autonomic nervous system in a very kind of dynamic way. So whatever
1:19:56 you want to do and what’s happening in your environment, you’re able to basically make
1:20:02 a match the more recovered you are, if that makes sense. So you’ll be able to respond and
1:20:07 react to environmental stress in kind of a more high-performing way, I suppose is the
1:20:17 best way to say it. So heart variability is kind of a measure of that ability to adapt
1:20:19 to your environment a functional way.
1:20:27 And a high heart rate variability, which is more varying beats, heart beats is better.
1:20:31 Yeah, more variability, the better. So a higher heart rate variability should be correlated
1:20:35 with a better adaptation to environmental stress.
1:20:40 So a low heart rate variability would sound something like this. Boom, boom, boom, boom,
1:20:46 boom, boom. Very, very consistent, not good. A high heart rate variability will sound like
1:20:55 boom, boom, boom, boom. So really varied. Perfect. It’s a beautiful description.
1:21:02 That variation is better. You’d think that if something was consistent, it would be better.
1:21:07 I know, in all other cases it is. But in the case of heart rate variability, it’s very counterintuitive.
1:21:12 What’s great is heart rate variability is modifiable to a degree.
1:21:15 What’s a good, what’s an average heart rate variability?
1:21:19 So it’s all based on genetics. It’s really tough, right? Because I don’t know what your
1:21:26 heart rate variability was when you were born, right? So I don’t know what your potential
1:21:31 for heart rate variability is. And I think that’s the only thing that I think we can
1:21:37 say and I think how people need to think about it is when you come on to the root platform,
1:21:40 for example, you’re going to get your heart rate variability. You’re going to develop
1:21:46 a baseline. And I think what people need to understand is that every behavior you’ve,
1:21:52 every choice you’ve kind of made leading up to that moment is going to determine your
1:21:58 baseline heart rate variability. So if you drank and take drugs and have a lot of childhood
1:22:05 trauma, that might actually yield a lower baseline heart rate variability relative to
1:22:13 your own potential, right? So it’s very hard to compare because of all of that, but then
1:22:18 just genetics, heart size, gender, like all of those things, biological sex, all of those
1:22:24 things have an impact on your heart rate variability, on your baseline. So you don’t want to compare.
1:22:28 There’s no good that said, I think the higher the better, generally.
1:22:30 What’s the average?
1:22:35 It depends on age. So it decreases, every year, your heart rate variability is going
1:22:41 to decrease a bit. I think it’s like three to four percent or something, which is kind
1:22:47 of a lot. The average on the root platform from the 20 to 30 year olds is somewhere in
1:22:56 the tune of kind of 65, 70, 30 to 40 year olds, a little bit lower, 40 to 50s, it’s kind of
1:23:02 in the 50s range, I think. So definitely it gets worse as you age, but I think why people
1:23:07 are obsessed about it is it’s just, it is a really good marker of just the overall state
1:23:10 of your mental, physical and emotional health.
1:23:12 Do women and men have variants in their heart rate?
1:23:18 They do, yeah. So generally, men would have a higher heart rate variability than women,
1:23:21 I think, at baseline, bigger heart size.
1:23:27 I’m trying to get my heart rate variability up. What are the most important things for
1:23:30 me to be thinking about? Because it seems to be a bit of a mystery, this heart rate
1:23:31 variability thing.
1:23:35 So there’s definitely some things that will directly impact your heart rate variability,
1:23:40 sleep wake time. So stabilizing when you go to bed to wake up, wake onset being kind of
1:23:44 the number one part. You want to wake up at a regular time every single day, you want
1:23:47 to get a huge ball of sunlight as soon as you wake up, you want to get a lot of natural
1:23:53 light during the day. All of these things are going to impact inflammation and cortisol,
1:23:59 all of the things that are kind of circulating in our body that we need to be circulating
1:24:02 and when we’re not doing some of these behaviors, they’re not circulating in our body, which
1:24:09 have negative downstream effects. You want to mitigate stress throughout the day. So
1:24:17 stress is not bad, but we need to proactively manage bouts of stress with appropriate levels
1:24:26 of rest. When we are going, going, going and we can only sustain that for so long. So just
1:24:31 being proactive with stress rest cycles throughout the day, really important. As we go, we want
1:24:36 to eat a bulk of our calories in the morning, lots and lots of protein. We want to make
1:24:41 sure that we get lots of protein. I think folks don’t probably get enough protein. We
1:24:50 get lots of protein, bias early in the day. Stop eating a few hours before bedtime and
1:24:56 make sure you’re hydrated throughout the day. Yes, absolutely. So I can go down a very deep
1:25:03 rabbit hole in terms of optimal training protocols, but, but in some, we want to make sure that
1:25:09 we’re polarizing our training in that we’re doing, you know, zone five, which is, you
1:25:15 know, kind of max effort where we’re at a breath a couple times a week. Okay. Two to
1:25:20 three times a week. And then we want to do zone two, which is kind of, you know, just
1:25:27 a low level, you know, 60% of our max heart rate. We want to do that for, you know, 200
1:25:33 to 300 minutes per week, which I know sounds like a lot. The, the recommendations 150 minutes,
1:25:37 I think it’s a little, I don’t think that’s enough, frankly, but if we’re talking about
1:25:43 optimizing hearty variability, that would be the protocol we want to strength train a few
1:25:48 times a week. That would be a way to maximize interplay between the cardiovascular and the
1:25:51 nervous system. Right. There is definitely a way to train to do that. And what I just
1:25:55 described, we’ll kind of get you there roughly. So we talked about time restricted eating
1:26:01 or stopping our feeding window three times four, three hours before we intend to sleep.
1:26:07 Huge. No alcohol. Obviously, again, if we’re interested in optimizing our ability to adapt
1:26:12 to environmental stress, that is an improve our hearty variability. Really important.
1:26:18 We, we, we abstain from alcohol. And then I would say, you know, spending sufficient
1:26:22 time in bed is going to be really important. That is not accumulating sleep debt.
1:26:28 What about having friends? Yes, connection, you know, folks being around individuals who
1:26:36 support your values is absolutely essential. We talked a little bit about exercise there,
1:26:42 but there’s also just like the general sedentary nests of our lives. I was looking at some
1:26:48 research a couple of years ago, which I included in my first book, which shows that we get
1:26:51 in the Western world, we’re getting increasingly more sedentary. It’s kind of like this downward
1:26:58 graph that just shows every year, people move less because we’ve got Ubers now and we have,
1:27:03 we’re working more in offices and we’re working even more from home now and we’re optimizing
1:27:09 activity out of our lives. And surely that has an implication for heart variability as
1:27:10 well.
1:27:13 There’s no question that sedentary behavior, you know, I think where we go wrong is we
1:27:18 think I can wake up and work out for an hour and then that gives me license to sit for
1:27:23 the rest of the day. But we know that for individuals who are sitting for more than four
1:27:32 hours in a row, so consolidated sitting for four hour blocks is associated with increased
1:27:38 mortality rates. So four hours of sedentary behavior, which, you know, consolidated, right?
1:27:46 So the ideal protocol, if we want to, you know, basically improve all these parameters
1:27:49 of health that we’re talking about, specifically heart variability, you want to break up your
1:27:54 sedentary time. So every, you know, half an hour to an hour, you’d want to get up, move
1:27:59 around for five minutes or so, and then get back to your work.
1:28:05 In 2020, you wrote an article where you offered five ways to improve our HRV. And HRV, as
1:28:08 I say, is super important because it’s linked to all of these health markers. It’s linked
1:28:13 to immunity. It’s linked to all of these things that really, really matter. And one of the,
1:28:16 there was a couple of sort of surprising suggestions you made in that article. One of them was
1:28:18 about practicing gratitude.
1:28:28 Yeah. I mean, I think what the research says is that actually receiving gratitude has the
1:28:38 most powerful effects on our mood and our feelings of well-being. So if I were to receive
1:28:42 a thank you letter, for example, and really internalize that, that’s going to have the
1:28:49 biggest long-term effect on my feelings of well-being. But there’s also great research
1:28:56 that shows giving thanks as well and expressing gratitude also has, you know, lots of positive
1:28:58 implications for our psychological functioning.
1:29:05 And I guess this brings into focus the psychological element of health and HRV and sleep and all
1:29:10 of these things that we’ve talked about like stress and anxiety. You’re currently finishing
1:29:12 a PhD in psychology, right?
1:29:13 That’s right. Yes.
1:29:18 And again, it links to something that was written in that article as well where you talk about
1:29:20 a growth mindset. Again, that’s psychology.
1:29:21 Yes.
1:29:27 Why does this matter? This growth mindset thing, this, you know, gratitude psychology, why does
1:29:28 that matter?
1:29:34 Yeah. I mean, it, I think it relates to just our, you know, whether or not we feel that
1:29:41 growth in the future is possible. You know, do we, do we feel like we have the potential
1:29:48 to grow and to learn? And do we feel optimistic about the future? I mean, that’s really what
1:29:52 growth mindset is, right? And, and you can imagine if you don’t feel optimistic about
1:29:57 the future, you don’t feel like growth is possible. You feel really limited in your
1:29:58 capabilities, right?
1:30:04 And you feel limited in your happiness. So I think that, yeah, there’s, I think a really
1:30:11 strong connection between, you know, believing that the future is positive and, and that
1:30:16 is going to manifest in, in a measure like heart rate variability, you know, it’s going
1:30:20 to, it’s going to manifest physiologically.
1:30:22 This is an author called Sean Anker.
1:30:24 Oh, Sean Aker. Yeah.
1:30:25 From Harvard.
1:30:26 Yeah.
1:30:27 Yeah. Aker.
1:30:28 Yeah.
1:30:31 There’s a lot of work on this idea of growth mindset as a way to sort of counteract stress,
1:30:32 which I find fascinating.
1:30:33 He does. Yeah.
1:30:38 He found that doctors in a positive state of mind perform diagnoses 19% faster and more
1:30:43 accurately than doctors that are neutral. And he also found that positive employees
1:30:48 are 31% more productive than negative employees.
1:30:57 Yeah. And I, and I, and I think our life circumstance, you know, kind of certainly can tilt us and
1:31:03 one direction or another, but I do think that we have a genetic predisposition to, you know,
1:31:08 the cup is a half empty versus half full. You know, I think there’s something to, to
1:31:13 that, to that research and that literature, but all the things that we’re talking about,
1:31:18 I think provide a foundation, right? So a lot of the physiological stuff that we’re
1:31:22 talking about, the circadian stuff, the sleep stuff, the recovery stuff, right? The stress
1:31:26 management, you know, when we’re eating our food, the, how we’re training, right? All
1:31:37 of these things kind of position us to, I think, leverage our, our mindsets in a way
1:31:41 that is the most productive, right? When we’re not kind of taken care of these physiological
1:31:45 things, you know, we don’t feel like we have purpose. Talk to us. We don’t feel the skills
1:31:49 and resources to do the things that we want to do in our life. It’s really hard to talk
1:31:56 ourselves into a better future, right? And it’s hard to kind of move around our mindset.
1:31:59 But if we can just kind of attend to some of these physiological and psychological things,
1:32:04 we can actually start to take more control of our mindset. So I think a lot of times,
1:32:08 this is, I think, frustrating in the field of psychology, we talk about how, we talk
1:32:12 about gross mindset without actually talking about the behaviors that actually underpin
1:32:17 that, you know? And, and, and that’s, I think a lot of the work that I’m trying to do is,
1:32:23 is that, you know, there’s, there’s these core influences, physiological and psychological,
1:32:33 that if we can understand and build an infrastructure to allow those, those kind of behaviors to
1:32:39 come to life in our everyday, we’re in a position then to have like a growth mindset, right?
1:32:44 But without that, that, that foundation of good habits and good behaviors, of good habits
1:32:48 and behaviors, it’s hard to believe that the future is, is bright.
1:32:52 It brings into question something that I know a lot of people think when they hear conversations
1:32:56 like this, they think, oh, but I just don’t have the motivation, Kristen, you know, and
1:33:02 there’s this ongoing conversation about which comes first. Is it the action or is it the
1:33:07 motivation? There’s clearly, in my life, I’ve seen this clear two way link by through what
1:33:12 I do and how I feel and how I feel and what I do. So if I want to influence the other,
1:33:16 I do the other. I, if I want to feel great, I have to focus on my actions. And if I want
1:33:22 to act great, I’ll focus on how I feel, for example, you know what I mean? Because people
1:33:25 hear, you know, the discipline that you practice in your life and they go, oh God, she must
1:33:32 have so much motivation. You know, the people that are watching junk TV at 3am in the morning
1:33:36 and eating junk food at 3am in the morning, they look at you and go, she’s got just, she
1:33:41 just got something I just haven’t got. So I can’t relate. You know, I can’t become
1:33:47 a Christian. What is the message those people need to hear? The ones that feel like motivation
1:33:49 is their problem.
1:33:58 I mean, I think it’s understanding how do we actually produce energy, right? Because
1:34:05 that’s really, at the core, what motivation is, right? It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s the energy,
1:34:13 right? And a couple of things influence our energy production or put a ceiling on motivation.
1:34:24 It’s called, oh, it’s appraisal. So how we, how relevant we think a task is and, and then
1:34:33 how we are perceiving the task. Is it hard? Is it easy? Is it challenging, right? So appraisal
1:34:37 and perception are going to work together to put a ceiling on your potential for motivation.
1:34:44 Okay. So appraisal I hear is being like the why, like why this matters.
1:34:46 Totally. That’s how relevant is it to me.
1:34:48 So interesting because in my book, I wrote this thing called the discipline equation.
1:34:52 And I think, you know, I think you’ve kind of summarized it a little bit there.
1:34:55 Yeah. Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean, this is well understood, right? In the field of
1:35:01 psychology and physiology that, yeah, you, you, we all have potential motivation in the,
1:35:04 the two things that move around is how we appraise the situation and how we perceive it.
1:35:09 So in my discipline equation, this is the equation. Discipline equals the strength
1:35:14 of one’s Y plus the reward of the pursuit minus the cost of the pursuit.
1:35:19 Perfect. I love that. Yeah. That’s beautiful. And I think that would hold, that holds up
1:35:30 clearly. Yeah. For sure. But I think, and I, I would, I said, you know,
1:35:35 one of the reasons why I think my teams were always so successful is I just deployed that
1:35:40 principle over and over again in my environment. I help my, my athletes understand the why,
1:35:47 their personal why, like why were they showing up every single day to the field? How was that
1:35:53 attached to their individual values, not my team values, to their personal values, right?
1:35:59 And then I made the environment challenging, right? So they could get excited about the
1:36:03 work that they’re doing every day, right? And I tried to do that on an individual level.
1:36:08 And that’s why a lot of teams underperform, frankly, is that they don’t, leaders don’t
1:36:13 understand the relationship between appraisal and perception. Like I literally think if
1:36:16 you can understand that, and you’ve written a book about it, right? So people can read
1:36:23 this book. And if leaders can adopt the, understand the importance of setting, of creating infrastructure
1:36:30 where you tap into the person’s individual values and how that relates to the task,
1:36:37 you have motivation. Like you will, you will increase the ceiling for potential motivation.
1:36:41 It makes me think in some ways that people listening to this right now are without knowing
1:36:49 it in a upward reinforcing spiral towards the person they want to be, or in a downward
1:36:54 reinforcing spiral away from the person they want to be. Because if you’re showing up and
1:36:58 acting in the right way, then you’re going to release energy, you’re going to feel good,
1:37:02 which means you have a better chance of showing up and acting in the right way. And that spiral
1:37:05 goes upwards. But if you’re showing up in the wrong way, it means you’re probably going
1:37:09 to be a little bit depressed. You’re going to be, have a lot of circadian disruption,
1:37:12 you’re not going to feel great, which means you have less chance of showing up in the
1:37:17 right way, the energy, low energy, all of those things are downward spiral. So if you’re
1:37:22 in that downward spiral, I would, I would guess the way, the only way to break out of
1:37:25 it, I mean, is you listen to a podcast, but that’s not going to help you break out of
1:37:32 it alone. It’s going to start with you making one different decision at one point, and that
1:37:37 can be a tiny, tiny, tiny decision. Yeah. And I think that’s a lot of the work I’m doing
1:37:40 right now is trying to figure out what is that actual taxonomy though. If someone really
1:37:45 wants to make change, where do they start? Where do they start? You know, I’m going to
1:37:51 say it, sleep, wake time, like wake up at the same time every day and get as much as light
1:37:58 as humanly possible within that will set the tone for the rest of the day and put you in
1:38:03 a position where you can fall asleep at a regular time night after night. Like you have
1:38:09 to address that. The second thing is I would consolidate your eating window, you know, keep
1:38:13 it within a 10 hour timeframe, eat all of your calories within a 10 hour timeframe and
1:38:17 try to leave a couple hour buffer between when you tend to sleep in your last calorie.
1:38:23 Like just those two things are pretty low barrier to entry, right? And that will increase
1:38:29 mood. You’ll improve your body composition, right? Just by narrowing that window, you
1:38:34 will, you know, all the effects that we talked about in terms of the cardio and metabolic
1:38:38 effects from just stabilizing sleep, wake time, the mood effects from stabilizing sleep,
1:38:43 wake time, that will back you into having a better relationship with light, right? Which
1:38:49 we know light is at the core of human health and functioning. So those two things I would
1:38:54 say is the place to start. And I think the downstream effect of just those two things
1:39:02 is pretty profound. And then I think in parallel, just figuring out who do you actually want
1:39:08 to be in the world? Like, what is your, what do you want your identity to be? You know,
1:39:14 and I don’t know that people actually think enough about that. And there’s so many distractions
1:39:21 in this world. I mean, we can just drown ourselves with just stuff that’s, it’s just coming at
1:39:26 us content all the time. And we, we can’t discern, we haven’t done the work to be able
1:39:32 to discern what, what is, what is actually important to us. Like we don’t have the capacity
1:39:36 to direct our thoughts and our attention in a way that’s rewarding, right? Because we,
1:39:42 we haven’t built that skill or that muscle. So I think like getting that under control
1:39:47 is another way is, is like really figuring out what is my relationship with technology?
1:39:53 Like, what do I want that to be? You know, how do I actually want to spend my, my, my
1:40:00 time? Have you written that down? For sure. Absolutely. And what format does that take
1:40:05 or what medium did you use? Oh, vision board or something? Oh, just like pen and paper.
1:40:11 I mean, I have, yeah, I mean, I ever know, you know, I, I, I revisit this quarterly. Um,
1:40:15 you know, what do I value? What do I care about? How do I want to spend my time? And
1:40:20 that has been the basis for which I make all my decisions. What does your ever note say?
1:40:26 Oh, I mean, in terms of like my, how I think about why I have my list of, of values, right?
1:40:31 That it always starts there, right? What are your values? So growth, impact, tolerance,
1:40:38 compassion and presence. Those are my top five values. And I, and I, I meditate on those.
1:40:43 I, whenever I, you know, I’ll look for, I have some of my favorite authors that have
1:40:48 written extensively about all those different things, like, you know, James Baldwin on compassion
1:40:55 and tolerance and, um, um, I ran on, on impact and growth. I love her work. But yeah, I mean,
1:41:03 I think really connecting to what do those beliefs and values actually look like in action?
1:41:09 Right? If I don’t know what, what, what growth looks like, if I don’t know what tolerance
1:41:14 looks like in action, how do I actually play that out in my, in my, in my day to day? Right?
1:41:18 So you have to, you have to write about it. You have to internalize it. And then you have
1:41:24 to practice that behavior. Right? So in, in, I ever noticed it’s, I have a kind of like,
1:41:28 what does this look like in action? Like, what are the things that I can do that I can practice
1:41:33 to live these values? And then it’s having an outlet for those things. What, what kind
1:41:38 of things do I need to do? You know, like my PhD, that’s not a goal. I don’t have any
1:41:44 goals. Like goals are total BS in my view. It’s, it’s like living your values. Like the
1:41:50 my PhD allows me to live my values of a growth and impact. Right? If I want to be, if I want
1:41:55 to impact health at scale, I need to have the credibility. I need to know how to run experiments.
1:42:03 I need to be a scientist. Right? And, and so it’s not, yeah, the, I’m reaching this goal
1:42:09 of getting a PhD, but it’s allowing me to live my values of growth and impact. And, and I
1:42:14 think that’s where folks kind of get it wrong. Is they’re like, I want to run a 10 K. And
1:42:18 then what’s happens after you run the 10 K? And I use that principle in, in my life, like
1:42:25 I’m not, it’s, it’s like, I’m always just trying to live my values. And I, and I don’t evaluate
1:42:33 success on like achieving something. It’s all about my scorecard is am I living my values
1:42:40 to my fullest? Like that to me is a win. And that’s how I evaluated my environment when
1:42:47 I was coaching collegiate. It was like, are we living our values? And when you do that,
1:42:54 you kind of always, you always win, you know? And I has a, you know, kind of second order
1:42:59 effect in terms of how you think about competition, right? Like that’s another area where like,
1:43:06 I don’t compete. I stopped competing a decade and a half ago. Like we wouldn’t even like
1:43:10 our when, you know, my team at Princeton, like these are just little things, but when
1:43:15 we talk about going back to like an infrastructure to support your values, like we didn’t even
1:43:21 list our opponents. Like I didn’t want them thinking about how I didn’t want them like
1:43:27 changing how they acted throughout the week, how they trained the quality, what they did
1:43:34 behaviorally based on our opponent. That didn’t matter. Right? If you want to perform consistently,
1:43:40 you need to, you know, show up every single day with quality, right? And being willing
1:43:51 to apply yourself in a way that is going to, you know, create the output that leads to
1:43:57 the kind of quality that allows you to replicate, you know, performance levels. And it’s about
1:44:01 learning and development. And it wasn’t about an opponent, right? And that’s why that’s
1:44:06 why teams underperform, right? That’s why individuals underperform is they’ve got this
1:44:11 arbitrary kind of metric that they’re, or like team that they want to beat that they’re
1:44:14 focused on, right? Or person that they want to beat that they’re focused on. Instead of
1:44:19 looking, okay, what is my bar? Like, and, and going back to that question, am I actually
1:44:25 living my values? I think everything kind of works itself out. If you can just do that.
1:44:30 Kristen, we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question
1:44:34 for the next guest, not knowing who they’re going to be leaving it for. The question that
1:44:43 has been left for you. What is the last thing that you would say? And I imagine the context
1:44:47 though, and this is just me taking a guess is that if there was a last thing that you
1:44:50 had to say, what is the last thing that you would say?
1:44:57 I think figure out who you want to be in the world. And then set up your life so you can
1:44:59 be that person.
1:45:05 Kristen, thank you. So incredibly inspiring in so many ways. I, you know, I would, I would
1:45:12 promote woop, but I feel like you already have just by being so inspiring, so smart, so wise.
1:45:19 And that’s, I mean, everything that whoop is in a nutshell. There’s so many thank yous
1:45:23 that I want to give you for so many different reasons. But I think the most important thank
1:45:30 you that I’ll give you is for both the hundreds and thousands of lives that your work has
1:45:36 nudged in a better direction and transformed in many cases, but also for the millions and
1:45:41 millions and hundreds of millions of lives that you’re going to nudge in a much better
1:45:48 direction over the course of the next decade and decade and decade and decade. It’s a tremendous
1:45:55 service to humanity having the potential service to humanity, having the skills, the storytelling
1:46:00 abilities, the wisdom and that deep innate sense of drive that you have. And it is a
1:46:07 service to humanity that humanity increasingly, unfortunately needs. And I’m so excited to
1:46:10 watch that play out for you. I deeply believe this is the very start of your journey in
1:46:15 many respects, even though you’re several decades into the work that you do. But there’s
1:46:18 something tells me that this is just the beginning. So Kristen, thank you for your generosity.
1:46:20 Thank you for your wisdom and thank you for your time. Appreciate you.
1:46:23 I appreciate you so much, Steven. Thank you for all your good work.
1:46:33 [MUSIC]

0:00:06 -Hey, whatcha doing? -Programming our thermostat to 17 degrees when we’re out at work or asleep.
0:00:12 We’re taking control of our energy use this winter with some easy energy saving tips I got from Fortis B.C.
0:00:16 Ooh, can serve energy and save money? Maybe to buy those matching winter jackets?
0:00:21 Uh, no. We’re also getting that whole matching outfit thing under control.
0:00:27 Discover low and no-cost energy saving tips at fortisbc.com/energysavingtips.
0:00:30 -Matching Jacksons? -Please, no.
0:00:35 What I have here is a variety of different shapes and sizes of poop.
0:00:37 Yeah. What does this tell us about our health?
0:00:42 Well, if your poop looks like this, to me, that’s grounds to talk to a doctor.
0:00:45 -Doctor Will Gulswit. -We’re a renowned gut health doctor.
0:00:51 -Who has a wealth of information on this? -How we can improve our gut health through food and lifestyle changes.
0:00:55 We are currently living through an epidemic of gut health issues, and if we want to be healthy humans,
0:00:59 we absolutely need a healthy gut microbiome in order to accomplish that.
0:01:02 So, let’s break this down. First of all, microbes are invisible.
0:01:06 On your thumb, there are as many microbes as there are people in the UK.
0:01:11 Really? And gut microbes play a critical and essential role in controlling whether or not you suffer from depression.
0:01:15 Because 95% of the happy hormone is produced by the gut.
0:01:18 It controls your cognition, your memory, your energy levels.
0:01:24 Your gut is the place where you are making decisions, and study after study after study shows us that when people eat more food,
0:01:28 not only do they empower the gut microbes, but also, they lose weight.
0:01:32 They’re less likely to die of heart disease, less likely to be diagnosed with multiple different types of cancer.
0:01:33 -No way. -Yes.
0:01:35 -Do you live alcohol? -The science is clear.
0:01:38 When we drink to the point of having a hangover, is that dehydration?
0:01:42 Absolutely not. The issue is you have caused significant damage to your microbiome.
0:01:49 But the gut is forgiving, and the choices that you make today within 24 hours will have an effect on your microbiome.
0:01:55 I want people to eat a diet where they can eat as much as they want without restriction, and still achieve their weight goals.
0:01:59 And this is completely possible by consuming a diet button.
0:02:12 Dr. Will, if someone’s just clicked on this conversation, and they’re deciding whether to listen or not,
0:02:16 what would be the pitch to those people? What’s the benefit if they stick around?
0:02:21 Welcome to what I sincerely believe will be a life-transforming conversation for you,
0:02:26 because the issue is that we are currently living through an epidemic of gut health issues.
0:02:29 If we look across the board, this is everywhere.
0:02:34 And it’s not just digestion. This is so much more than that.
0:02:38 We need this now more than ever, because ultimately, if we want to be healthy humans,
0:02:42 which to me is one of the highest goals that we should hold for ourselves,
0:02:48 if we want to be healthy humans, we absolutely need a healthy gut microbiome in order to accomplish that.
0:02:51 What’s your sort of academic professional background?
0:02:53 Gosh, where do we begin?
0:02:59 So, I graduated from Vanderbilt University with a chemistry degree.
0:03:04 That was my college, and I went to Georgetown, which is one of the top medical schools in the country.
0:03:10 I spent three years at Northwestern as an internal medicine resident.
0:03:13 I won the highest award that they give while there.
0:03:20 Then I was the chief medical resident, and I spent four years training as both a gastroenterologist in the hospital
0:03:22 and also working on clinical research.
0:03:31 So, I didn’t expect when I finished all this that I would be continuing to publish papers at any point in my life in the future.
0:03:36 But now, in my work with Zoe as their US medical director, I’ve been heavily involved in clinical research again.
0:03:40 You mentioned a big G word there, gastroenterologist.
0:03:41 Yeah.
0:03:43 What is that?
0:03:48 We are the specialists in terms of basically like the intestines, the gut.
0:03:50 So, if I were to summarize it, I would say guts and butts.
0:03:51 Guts and butts.
0:03:52 Yeah.
0:04:02 The conversation around the gut microbiome and the gut generally has exploded really since 2006-2007 time.
0:04:10 Before then, I mean, to be fair with you, I think as far as I’m aware, and I’m not that close to doctors or hospitals or research,
0:04:17 I’ve only started hearing about the gut microbiome in the prevalence that I have in the last two years, three years.
0:04:21 What is the central misconception that most people have as it relates to their health?
0:04:29 That guy that looks into the mirror and goes, “I don’t like what I see here. I don’t feel good. That’s curled up. They’re bloated. They’ve got gut pains.”
0:04:35 The current line of thinking will say it is X, but there’s something that you believe it is.
0:04:38 What is that?
0:04:42 Well, I think that all of these things ultimately connect back to our gut microbiome.
0:04:45 And I think that’s the piece of the puzzle that’s been missing this entire time.
0:04:48 It was sort of this black box.
0:04:50 If you eat well, you will improve your health.
0:04:54 If you do this, you will improve your health.
0:04:59 What we were missing was the understanding that all of those choices ultimately impact these gut microbes.
0:05:04 And by impacting these gut microbes, you can actually transform the physiology within your body.
0:05:05 Gut microbes?
0:05:05 Yeah.
0:05:06 What is that?
0:05:13 Gut microbes is my nerdy way of talking about these micro-organisms that you can’t see them right now.
0:05:16 But they’re there.
0:05:22 If you hold up your thumb, literally on your thumb, there are as many microbes as there are people in the UK.
0:05:23 Really?
0:05:27 And they cover our entire body from the top of our head to the tip of our toes.
0:05:31 Every single external part of our body is covered with these microbes.
0:05:37 But the main spot is actually deep inside of us, which is our colon, the large intestine.
0:05:41 In that spot, you can find 38 trillion.
0:05:46 Now these, when I say microbes, it’s referring to the fact that they’re microscopic and they’re alive.
0:05:48 It’s mostly bacteria.
0:05:54 In addition, the bacteria could also be fungi, could be parasites, could be viruses.
0:06:00 But we have 38 trillion of these mostly bacteria focused and concentrated within our colon.
0:06:03 So when we talk about the gut microbiome, we’re really referring to them.
0:06:04 How did they get there?
0:06:06 So you started in your mother’s womb.
0:06:13 And evidence these days would suggest that you’re already starting to come into contact with these microbes.
0:06:20 But for the most part, you haven’t really met them yet until the water breaks.
0:06:25 And in that moment, for the first time, you are exposed to the world.
0:06:27 And the world is covered in microbes.
0:06:31 Everything that’s alive, everything, has a microbiome.
0:06:36 Could be a plant, could be an animal, could be an insect, could be us.
0:06:42 So when mom’s water breaks, these microbes then enter into the uterus and you meet them for the first time.
0:06:47 But you are particularly exposed to them as you pass through the birth canal.
0:06:54 And this is basically like nature’s way of being like, hello, welcome to the world and meet your partners.
0:06:56 They’ll be with you for the rest of your life.
0:06:59 And they’re here to help you and they will make you healthier.
0:07:05 And this is the result of co-evolution that goes back over a billion years.
0:07:13 We have been evolving, which is crazy, because humans have only existed for three or four million years.
0:07:19 But these microbes were the first life on the planet and all life evolved with these microbes.
0:07:27 And things like, for example, our immune system is the product of evolution that started a billion years before humans even existed.
0:07:35 We always think of ourselves as one organism, but you’re making the case that I’m maybe 36 trillion or whatever you said, organisms in one.
0:07:37 And we would call you a super organism.
0:07:41 And that sounds like a Marvel character, which is cool and we’ll take that.
0:07:49 But that’s actually completely true because the issue is that if we withdrew these microbes from you, if you were like hypothetically,
0:07:55 you know, we could talk about the bubble boy from the 1970s, where they actually did this.
0:08:00 They tried to have a child live in a sterile world because he had a specific immune deficiency.
0:08:06 So their thought was if we keep him separate from all the bacteria, then he’ll never have a problem.
0:08:08 But the issue is that there are consequences.
0:08:12 There are consequences to living without microbes because we need them.
0:08:21 So and through this process of co-evolution, literally from the very first human, we grew to trust them.
0:08:26 And we trusted them with things that are critically important to us and our success as humans.
0:08:32 And we allowed them to integrate into our physiology in a way where once again, if we don’t have them, we’re in trouble.
0:08:37 And that includes things like digestion, breaking down our food, which to me is like, that’s the essence of life.
0:08:44 Like you can’t get energy into your body without this and they help us to accomplish that, but they also train our immune system.
0:08:51 We talked a moment ago about what happens when you’re born and that’s the very beginning of training your immune system.
0:09:00 And during those first three years of life, it has a massive impact on whether or not you develop allergic issues, autoimmune issues down the road.
0:09:02 They affect our metabolism.
0:09:12 Our researchers at Zoey has overwhelmingly shown that they play a critical and essential role in controlling, for example, your blood sugar, your blood fat response after a meal.
0:09:26 They affect your mood, literally your energy levels, whether or not you suffer from depression, your cognition, your memory, your ability to focus, all affected by these microbes.
0:09:28 They affect our hormones.
0:09:42 So in women, conditions like endometriosis, polycystic ovary syndrome associated with damage to the gut microbiome, in men, erectile dysfunction, which, I mean, to be honest, is not talked about enough.
0:09:49 Perhaps because we’ve stigmatized this, but the guys that have this issue, this is like the most important issue to them.
0:10:06 And so when you think about all these things, whether it be digestion, our immune system, our metabolism, our hormones, our mood, our brain health, like to me, this is an overview of everything that matters for human health from my perspective as a medical doctor.
0:10:10 And is my gut microbiome different to yours?
0:10:14 Do we all have different sort of jungles inside of us?
0:10:15 We are all different.
0:10:19 And this is one of the things that makes us actually profoundly different.
0:10:22 So to be honest, this is mind blowing.
0:10:35 If we looked at your genetic code and my genetic code, even though clearly we are different people, our genetic code would be 99.99% the same.
0:10:40 It’s a small part of our genetics that is different between us as humans.
0:10:48 But our microbiome, these 38 trillion microbes that are living inside of us, they can be completely different.
0:10:53 So as a classic example, let’s pretend that you have a twin brother, identical twin brother.
0:10:53 All right.
0:10:55 So you share the exact same genetic code.
0:10:58 You share the same mother for the vast majority of cases.
0:11:03 You would have shared the same childhood and largely the same upbringing and food and things like this.
0:11:09 And our research shows that only about 25% of your microbes would be shared, even though you come from the exact same place.
0:11:11 You would be 75% or more different.
0:11:14 So you and I, it’s hard to say exactly.
0:11:21 Like if our diet was, you know, quite similar, then we would have a more similar microbiome, but it still would be more different than the same.
0:11:22 And how much then?
0:11:29 So I’ve got twin, we’ve got completely different gut microbiomes, these sort of microbes that live inside our bodies.
0:11:37 How much of our microbiome can be associated back to disease and things like that?
0:11:41 In your view, what percentage of disease do you think links back to the gut microbiome?
0:11:45 Well, it’s hard to say globally, right?
0:11:48 It’s hard to give an exact number.
0:11:53 You would have to, I think, go condition by condition to say, but what I would say is this.
0:12:02 My, you know, the reason that I became very interested in this as a gastroenterologist is that I was convinced and I continued to believe this to be true,
0:12:08 that every person that walked through the door to see me had a gut microbiome problem, right?
0:12:16 People with ear roll bowel syndrome, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, celiac disease, acid reflux, go down the line.
0:12:20 Every single one of these, when we study them, we discover that they have got issues.
0:12:26 But the other thing, if you expand that, one of the things that I would always do, you know, I’m about to go see a patient.
0:12:28 I’m going to walk into the room and you take the chart off the door, right?
0:12:33 You hear, if you’re the patient, you hear that you’re in the room and you hear the chart come off the door.
0:12:35 The doctor flips it open and what do I do?
0:12:38 I take a look at their medical history.
0:12:46 And when you look, what you see is a laundry list of conditions that have been associated with damage to the gut microbiome.
0:12:50 So they’re here to see me for their digestive problem like ear roll bowel syndrome.
0:12:58 But when I take a look, I see that they have hyperlipidemia, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, history of major depression.
0:13:01 They may have autoimmune condition, right?
0:13:07 So, and then it starts to implicate these different systems that like we have not classically associated immune,
0:13:13 like autoimmune issues or metabolic issues or cognitive issues or mood issues.
0:13:16 We haven’t classically associated those things with the gut microbiome.
0:13:17 Yet they are.
0:13:20 And so to me, do I need it like for that particular patient?
0:13:23 Do I need a poop test to tell me that they have a damaged gut?
0:13:24 Absolutely not.
0:13:26 It’s already clear.
0:13:29 And what’s the relationship between our gut microbiome and our immune system?
0:13:34 I was reading the introduction to your book that 70% of the immune system is the gut.
0:13:36 Yeah.
0:13:44 The walls of your intestine are actually the home of your immune system.
0:13:49 We classically would think of the bone marrow as being in the place where the immune system exists.
0:13:49 That’s not true.
0:13:52 That’s where the immune cells are born there.
0:13:57 But then they basically emigrate out and then they take up residence and live within the walls of your intestine.
0:14:02 And by the way, this makes complete sense from an evolutionary perspective
0:14:07 because our gut is actually the most vulnerable part of our body.
0:14:09 This is where we come into contact with the outside world.
0:14:11 Your skin, you may think of that.
0:14:13 No, your skin is a wall.
0:14:15 Your gut is the place where actually you are making decisions.
0:14:21 Do I absorb and allow this into the body or do I reject and keep it outside?
0:14:24 And in order to help facilitate that, yes, we need our immune system there.
0:14:27 But the other thing that we need is we need a barrier.
0:14:34 We need something to basically section off the inside of the intestines and keep things separate.
0:14:37 So what we have is called the epithelial layer.
0:14:39 And this is quite humble.
0:14:45 Like given how important this is in our body, it is just a single layer of cells
0:14:50 that are being held together by this kind of cement called tight junctions.
0:14:54 They stick together on one side is 70% of your immune system.
0:14:57 On the other side are 38 trillion microbes.
0:14:59 And when this barrier breaks down,
0:15:04 this is how things that are inside your intestines can get access to your body.
0:15:12 Get into your bloodstream potentially cause a whole body infection and then the immune system is forced to react.
0:15:17 And when this is like we have an infection, that’s really important.
0:15:21 We, this is why we have an immune system to protect us in that setting.
0:15:29 But what’s happening in the 21st century, what started in the 20th century is chronic inflammation.
0:15:34 And chronic inflammation is the result of a broken barrier.
0:15:41 When that gut barrier breaks down, now we are giving access to our body to things that aren’t supposed to get access.
0:15:48 And the result is that the immune system stays perpetually active because it is constantly trying to clear stuff out
0:15:51 because the barrier is broken.
0:15:55 And for those who are wondering, so Dr. B, then how do we, how do we fix the barrier?
0:15:59 Not to put the question into your mouth, Steven, but please.
0:16:01 The answer is the microbes.
0:16:06 The answer is the microbes because they are the stewards of the gut barrier.
0:16:09 They help to repair it every three or four days.
0:16:13 You actually completely transform and recreate your gut barrier.
0:16:14 So it’s not the one that you were born with.
0:16:19 It’s the one that you developed in the last three or four days and you will turn that over.
0:16:24 And when it turns over, we need these gut microbes to help us to form a strong gut barrier.
0:16:29 So because it’s constantly turning over, this is where the microbes come in and they’re critically important.
0:16:32 Again, the microbes, when you reference microbes, you’re talking about the bacteria,
0:16:35 the yeast, the parasites, the viruses that exist in our guts.
0:16:37 And how long did they live for?
0:16:39 You said they turn over in three days.
0:16:41 Does that mean that they live for three days, typically?
0:16:45 So the gut barrier turns over every three days.
0:16:45 Yeah.
0:16:45 Yeah.
0:16:47 So, and those are human cells.
0:16:48 So those are not the microbes.
0:16:49 Okay.
0:16:49 Okay.
0:16:56 So those are your human cells keeping the microbes separate from your immune system and your body.
0:17:01 These microbes, they are turning over like literally every 20 minutes.
0:17:02 They’re dying every 20 minutes.
0:17:04 So, well, not necessarily dying.
0:17:05 Replicating.
0:17:06 Replicating.
0:17:06 Okay.
0:17:07 Right.
0:17:15 And so if we think about this, if we had, if you had one microbe in your intestines right now and we feed it something,
0:17:19 whatever it may be, good thing, bad thing, whatever, 24 hours from now,
0:17:24 that microbe will have spawned at least a thousand new microbes.
0:17:33 So if you think about the power that exists there to amplify choices, starting with one and ending 24 hours later with a thousand, it’s crazy.
0:17:40 There’s this really interesting sort of reframing in the introduction of your book, which is really simple,
0:17:45 but it does cause you to, I think it’s a really powerful frame to think through about what we eat and how we eat,
0:17:52 which is where you say that each of us consumes an average of 1.3 kilograms of food per day, keeping the math simple.
0:18:02 That’s 475 kilos of food per year, meaning we’ll consume about 36,300 kilos of food during our lifetime.
0:18:12 And in contrast to the couple of milligrams of medicine that we take, it really makes you realize that food is in fact the medicine that we’re feeding our body at all times.
0:18:17 We think we sort of compartmentalize food over here as this energy source that quenches hunger.
0:18:19 And then we have medicine over here to fix stuff.
0:18:19 Yeah.
0:18:25 But in fact, you’re doing 36,000 kilos of food in your lifetime.
0:18:33 So the thing that’s having the biggest sway on your medical, your sort of physiological health and your gut health is of course the food.
0:18:34 The food is the medicine.
0:18:41 Well, I think that there’s two important takeaways from that because there was a study actually that changed my life in 2014 that came out.
0:18:49 This was published in the journal Nature, which is literally the top journal on the planet, and the author was Warren David from Duke University.
0:18:57 And you have to understand, if we go back, this is almost 10 years ago, in this moment, we didn’t know if food changed microbes in humans.
0:18:59 We didn’t know this.
0:19:01 This is new information.
0:19:03 We knew it in mice, but it’s not the same.
0:19:05 Mice are not humans.
0:19:11 So what they did to try to prove this is they put people on diametrically opposed diets.
0:19:16 So a completely 100% plant based diet versus a completely 100% animal based diet.
0:19:23 It was only a five day study, which is interesting because within five days you can actually see massive results.
0:19:33 And the key, one of the key takeaways from this study is that the choices that you make today within 24 hours will have an effect on your microbiome.
0:19:41 In that study, when they changed a person’s diet 24 hours later, you could already see things underway shifting.
0:19:48 So now the other thing to keep in mind here is that I think is really important is the gut is forgiving.
0:19:53 I mean, to a degree, you can only beat it up so much, but the gut is forgiving.
0:19:58 So this doesn’t mean that there are foods that are on the table and off the table.
0:20:06 Everything is on the table, but what we want is we want to create a weight or a disproportionate consumption of those high quality foods.
0:20:09 Because when we do, we are lifting these microbes up.
0:20:14 Explain that process of food and the impact it has on the microbes.
0:20:16 So is it like watering certain microbes?
0:20:18 Is that a way to think about it in simple terms?
0:20:24 These microbes are as alive as you and I are, Stephen, and we need to eat.
0:20:27 If I don’t eat, I get quite hangry and they do too.
0:20:32 And but it turns out that the reason that they took up residence because they could have been anywhere,
0:20:36 they could have stayed inside soil or lived on a plant or something like that.
0:20:42 They chose to live inside of you and the reason why they are inside your colon is because they get access to nutrition.
0:20:43 You do that for them.
0:20:46 You go out, you find food and you deliver that to them.
0:20:53 Whatever goes into your mouth, whatever it may be, it will come into contact with these microbes and they will consume it.
0:20:57 And and this becomes their energy source because they are alive.
0:20:59 They need energy.
0:21:04 So but the choices that you make impact which microbes get to eat.
0:21:11 So not every single microbe likes kale, not every single microbe likes sugar,
0:21:14 but there are some that like sugar and some that like kale.
0:21:17 And when you make these choices, whatever it may be,
0:21:24 those choices ultimately are going to feed specific families and microbes, lift them up and allow them to thrive.
0:21:29 So when we talk about, you know, improving dietary quality and you hear me talk about this in fiber fueled,
0:21:36 which is a message that I started sharing publicly back in 2018 and the book came out in 2020.
0:21:42 Or if you listen to Tim Spector, who published the paper that I’m about to talk about,
0:21:49 the science is clear. The way to lift the microbes up is by eating a variety of plants.
0:21:53 Now in Tim Spector’s paper that originally came out, it’s called the American Gut Project.
0:21:59 But by the way, the British Gut Project was a massive and critically important part of the study.
0:22:05 In that study, you have to understand the magic number that they came to was 30.
0:22:09 A lot of that had to do with just the technique that they were using to measure.
0:22:13 It doesn’t mean that 29 is bad and 30 is fantastic.
0:22:18 It’s all on a spectrum. 30 different plants per week.
0:22:20 Yeah, 30 different plants per week.
0:22:28 So the key is we want varieties of plants and every single plant choice ultimately is fuel for a healthy gut microbiome.
0:22:32 So that’s fruits, vegetables, whole grains, seeds, nuts and legumes.
0:22:34 It’s not just veggies. It’s not just kale.
0:22:39 And to me, one of the things that I’ve always tried to do, whether it be as a medical doctor or as an author,
0:22:41 I want to meet people where they are.
0:22:46 So if I were consulting with you, I want to know where you stand right now.
0:22:48 And then we’re going to set realistic goals.
0:22:54 So for a person who’s eating 10 different plants per week, which by the way is more than I was eating 10 years ago,
0:22:57 to go to 30 instantly, that would be quite hard.
0:23:00 And when it’s hard, it’s more likely to become unsustainable.
0:23:03 I would go from 10 to 15.
0:23:05 And when you hit 15, I would be celebrating.
0:23:11 How many plants does the average person eat in the Western world? America, the UK, Europe?
0:23:12 Do you know?
0:23:18 I believe in the American Gut Project, the number was around 10 to 15 for the average person.
0:23:22 It was a minority of people that were hitting 30 per week in that study.
0:23:28 It’s interesting. When I did my Zoe test, I got my results back and it did say that I had quite a narrow gut microbiome
0:23:30 in comparison to my partner.
0:23:34 And I was thinking about this, I was like, you know, whenever we go somewhere, whenever we go to a restaurant,
0:23:38 she orders new things all the time.
0:23:44 And if you look at our fridge, it’s like tahini and this and all these plants, especially in the top part of our fridge.
0:23:46 It’s all like fermented stuff.
0:23:48 She eats like she’s like a rabbit or so.
0:23:54 She just eats anything and she eats diverse food and she orders new things and then there’s me.
0:23:56 I like what I like.
0:24:00 And if I go to a restaurant, anyone that’s been to a restaurant with me like three times could order for me
0:24:08 because they know until I got my Zoe results back and it was pretty alarming because she had her microbes
0:24:14 were like a like the Amazon rainforest and mine were like, you know, a park at the end of the street.
0:24:18 You know, I think that it’s important to start with food that you like.
0:24:24 Yeah, we’re all like that, what you described, but the issue is finding that motivation to push yourself.
0:24:27 To me, this is the this is the piece of the puzzle.
0:24:29 Like again, this was a black box.
0:24:31 We didn’t know anything about the gut microbiome.
0:24:35 We just had like nutritional ideas being tossed at us.
0:24:37 Now this is filling in the gaps where it’s like, hold up.
0:24:39 No, nutrition affects the microbes.
0:24:41 The microbes affect us as humans.
0:24:43 Now we can connect those dots.
0:24:48 And to me, I find this very empowering and motivating to know that that exists and to know that those choices,
0:24:54 every single meal is an opportunity to follow this concept and add more diversity to your plate.
0:24:58 But the other thing is you mentioned that your partner is eating fermented food.
0:25:00 This is a lost art.
0:25:03 People have not been consuming fermented food in the Western world.
0:25:07 And the research is quite clear and standing out at this point
0:25:13 that actually there was a fascinating study out of Stanford University randomized controlled trial.
0:25:20 The intervention was to add fermented food to the diet in people that had not been consuming fermented food.
0:25:25 And what they found eight weeks later is that they had increased the diversity within their gut microbiome.
0:25:27 What does that mean?
0:25:32 If your microbiome is the park at the end of the street adding fermented food, we can we can make it into a jungle.
0:25:36 Give me some examples of fermented foods and what is the fermented part?
0:25:37 What does that mean?
0:25:45 Well, first of all, we mentioned that all all life on this planet has a microbiome.
0:25:51 So there was an interesting study where they analyze the microbiome of apples and discovered that when you eat an apple,
0:25:56 like you just grab an apple off the of the fruit bowl.
0:26:00 That apple has about 100 million microbes that are a part of it.
0:26:01 So they’re already there.
0:26:07 And those microbes have been a part of that apple’s life helping it to grow from a flower to a fruit.
0:26:14 OK, so now these microbes, they are also involved in the life cycle of that apple.
0:26:18 So when the apple goes to spoil, the microbes are the ones doing that.
0:26:22 In fact, I would argue that when food spoils, I actually find that reassuring.
0:26:26 If food doesn’t spoil, we should be concerned.
0:26:29 The microbes are helping to facilitate that spoilage that takes place.
0:26:31 And that’s because the earth is taking it back.
0:26:35 It’s this it’s the cycle of life that’s going to turn into dirt.
0:26:43 Right now, fermentation is where we actually grab that process and we control it almost like a magician.
0:26:44 We’re shaping it.
0:26:55 And what we’re having is we’re empowering certain microbes to protect that food so it does not spoil and they transform it.
0:27:00 So if you were to take a cabbage, you know, you don’t need to do anything special to this cabbage.
0:27:03 You literally just buy cabbage, perhaps at your farmer’s market.
0:27:12 Chop it up, put it into a mason jar, pack it in there and add a sea salt brine solution, a salt water solution.
0:27:17 And you basically put this into, you know, a nice cool space.
0:27:19 Give it a week.
0:27:24 You will have sauerkraut sauerkraut is not salty cabbage.
0:27:24 It’s tart.
0:27:26 It’s bitter.
0:27:28 It’s acidic.
0:27:29 It’s delicious.
0:27:37 When you make it yourself, it is completely different than the sauerkraut that I grew up on that came from a can, which was soft and disgusting.
0:27:39 So this is what fermentation is.
0:27:41 It’s transformation.
0:27:48 The microbes specifically bacteria and yeasts are transforming the food for us.
0:27:52 And when they do this, they also are eating.
0:27:56 So because they eat, they grow stronger and they multiply.
0:28:02 So you are creating a food that is high in microbes, which we could call probiotics.
0:28:08 It has been transformed to unlock the nutrition, which we could call prebiotics.
0:28:13 Prebiotics are the parts of our food that actually feed the microbes inside of us.
0:28:24 It’s their food, prebiotics, and they are releasing new chemicals that can have beneficial effects on your body, which we call postbiotics.
0:28:27 You find all of this in that one jar of sauerkraut.
0:28:32 So that to me is a super food and it could be sauerkraut.
0:28:34 It could be kimchi.
0:28:38 Pickles, like pickles are not meant to be a vinegar thing.
0:28:42 By the way, vinegar is the product of fermentation.
0:28:46 But pickles were never meant to be, hey, add cucumbers and some vinegar and call it a day.
0:28:52 Cucumber, true pickles are meant to be that you take the cucumbers, you don’t skin them.
0:28:55 You allow the microbes that are on the surface to do their job.
0:29:01 And you put them into a salt water solution with some, you know, some dill, some garlic, black peppercorns.
0:29:05 And a couple of days later, you will have a pickle.
0:29:09 I want to make sure I’m super clear on those three biotics that you mentioned.
0:29:14 So prebiotics are the food for microbes.
0:29:19 Probiotics are the microbes themselves.
0:29:23 And then postbiotics are the compounds that the microbes make.
0:29:25 Is that roughly accurate?
0:29:26 That’s roughly accurate.
0:29:32 And there’s a minor caveat, which is that for these things, prebiotic and probiotic,
0:29:36 they have to have beneficial effects on humans in order to count.
0:29:36 Okay.
0:29:42 So we can’t call it a prebiotic because it has just an effect on microbes.
0:29:44 Sugar has an effect on microbes.
0:29:45 That’s not a prebiotic.
0:29:46 Ah, okay.
0:29:46 Okay.
0:29:48 So, and the same is true for probiotics.
0:29:54 Now, the original conception of probiotics that most of us have, it comes from a capsule, right?
0:29:59 And the reason why we can call it that is because we have demonstrated through clinical studies
0:30:05 that the specific types of bacteria or, or yeasts in some cases that you find in that capsule
0:30:08 have been proven to be beneficial to humans.
0:30:10 So the prebiotic is a food.
0:30:13 The probiotic is actually alive.
0:30:14 Yep.
0:30:15 And then the postbiotic is not alive.
0:30:19 That’s a compound that’s produced by the things that are alive.
0:30:20 That’s right.
0:30:25 And the key with all of this is the postbiotic.
0:30:30 So one of the, and these can be things that are completely beneficial and good to us as humans.
0:30:33 An example of this are the short chain fatty acids.
0:30:40 Short chain fatty acids are the product of consuming fiber or resistant starches.
0:30:42 And they come into contact with your microbes.
0:30:46 Again, you would not be able to get these if you were sterile.
0:30:49 Can I just drink them in a can postbiotics?
0:30:51 Is there not a can of postbiotics that I can just drink?
0:30:57 Well, so they’re coming out now with supplements that are these postbiotics in some cases.
0:30:57 Okay.
0:31:04 And the issue that I’ve taken with them and I’ve actually discussed with some people within the supplement industry.
0:31:11 Let’s not assume that that’s going to do the exact same thing that eating a high fiber diet is going to do.
0:31:13 It’s not the same.
0:31:16 So let’s then talk about what happens with those.
0:31:22 I’m assuming that the postbiotics compounds are the things that have all the health benefits.
0:31:28 So the reason why the gut microbiome is so healthy, the reason why these microbes are so beneficial is because they produce postbiotics.
0:31:31 And these postbiotics help our body in various ways.
0:31:31 Yes.
0:31:40 So we mentioned earlier, we were discussing how we have this gut barrier that’s key to protecting our immune system.
0:31:45 And I mentioned that the microbes are the stewards of that barrier.
0:31:48 It’s the postbiotics.
0:31:58 It’s the short chain fatty acids, butyrate, acetate, propionate that are produced by these bacteria that builds the wall.
0:32:06 When you want to build your wall and protect your body and reduce inflammation, you need more of this.
0:32:08 Now, it’s not that’s not the only thing that they do.
0:32:22 Those postbiotic short chain fatty acids also directly affect your immune system, directly affect your metabolism, get into your bloodstream, pass throughout your entire body, cross the blood brain barrier.
0:32:27 They have the ability to actually get access to your brain and can affect your brain.
0:32:31 And we could talk about different ways that they can do that.
0:32:42 But the point is that this is what really matters because the microbes produce these short chain fatty acids and these short chain fatty acids have healing effects throughout the entire body.
0:33:00 And when we see human studies looking at fiber consumption and showing us how beneficial fiber is to us as humans, I want everyone to understand the reason why fiber is beneficial to us as humans is because fiber comes into contact with microbes.
0:33:02 And those microbes release short chain fatty acids.
0:33:04 That’s what’s happening.
0:33:05 Metabolism.
0:33:09 Metabolism is the, I’ve been learning a little bit about metabolism recently.
0:33:14 When people think of metabolism, they think of the speed in which I process my food.
0:33:18 So people in society say, I’ve got a high metabolism, which means they’re probably going to be quite skinny.
0:33:22 A low metabolism means, you know, I’m probably going to take longer to process my food.
0:33:26 What is the role between the relationship between my gut and my metabolism?
0:33:31 And I’ve probably defined a metabolism wrong there, but what is the relationship?
0:33:35 Well, metabolism is basically dealing with the currency of energy, right?
0:33:38 So, and it is the engine that drives us as humans.
0:33:42 And so how do these microbes affect our metabolism?
0:33:49 Well, we have research at Zoey looking at this directly called the predict one study.
0:34:01 And in that we were looking at like, what is the thing that tells me predicts what your blood sugar response is going to be to this food or your blood fat response after a meal.
0:34:04 And when you start to line these things up, they’re individually different.
0:34:05 They’re not the same.
0:34:11 But if you look at both of them, the gut microbiome plays an essential and critical role in each.
0:34:22 So in other words, if we know what your gut microbes are, then that empowers us to be able to understand why you have high blood sugar, why you have low blood sugar.
0:34:32 Now, if we want to get super nerdy and detailed into the weeds a little bit of how this is actually happening, it does come back in many ways to these short chain fatty acids.
0:34:33 They’re not the only thing.
0:34:36 We’re, you know, in some ways, we’re reducing it a little bit too much.
0:34:38 So I just want to be clear to everyone.
0:34:40 There’s other things going on too.
0:34:53 But these short chain fatty acids, they have the ability to basically activate certain receptors and cells that will basically like allow us to have more sensitivity to insulin, to reduce fat storage, to enhance fat burning.
0:35:05 So at the end of the day, when we think about these sort of measures of metabolism, because there’s certain things, blood sugar response, blood fat, cholesterol levels.
0:35:11 Visceral adiposity, meaning like fat that exists around our stomach.
0:35:19 When you look at all these things, the gut microbes play an essential role in regulating every single one of them and the short chain fatty acids tend to be the key.
0:35:25 I read in your book that 60% of poop is bacteria, which just blew my mind.
0:35:30 Yeah, and I think that this is an important conversation to have because we have stigmatized poop.
0:35:32 We’re not allowed to look in the bowl.
0:35:34 We should be looking in the bowl.
0:35:40 And the reason why is because if I were a cardiologist, I would come over and I would check your pulse.
0:35:42 I would listen to your heart.
0:35:50 And those vital signs would allow me to have an idea of how you’re doing in terms of like just on a basic level, your cardiovascular health.
0:35:51 All right.
0:35:52 I’m a gastroenterologist.
0:35:58 If I want to know the basics of what’s going on with you and your body, I need to know how you’re pooping.
0:36:08 And what your poop looks like because 60% of it is microbial in origin because it is not just the excrement of your food.
0:36:14 What your poop looks like allows me to have insights into your gut health.
0:36:15 And we’ve actually proven this.
0:36:25 We’ve actually proven this at Zoe because what we found, we did a study called blue poo and we fed people blue muffins.
0:36:30 It had a blue food dye and basically it’s quite simple.
0:36:35 You eat the muffins and then you wait to see when they show up in the toilet bowl.
0:36:43 And based upon that time, which is basically your gut transit time, how long it takes for the blue dye to pass through your intestines.
0:36:49 We could tell you what’s going on with your gut microbiome.
0:36:51 We could talk about cardiovascular risk.
0:36:54 We could talk about visceral fat.
0:37:01 All quite simply tied to your gut transit time based upon eating a blue muffin.
0:37:05 So these things, many of these things that you and I are discussing today,
0:37:10 whether it be the gut connecting to our metabolism, our immune system or whatever it may be,
0:37:16 we can connect them back to these simple measures like what does your poop look like?
0:37:21 Or how long does it take for you to have a bowel movement?
0:37:23 The gut transit time, that’s super fascinating.
0:37:27 I do want to talk about poop as well, but the gut transit time,
0:37:32 that’s the time it takes from a muffin to go from my lips to the toilet bowl.
0:37:34 And is a high gut transit time better than a low one?
0:37:40 And what is determining whether I have a good gut transit time or not so good one?
0:37:49 Yeah, so gut transit time is a personal measure of the health of this entire digestive system.
0:37:55 The reason why you do the blue dye, by the way, instead of like eating beets or something like that,
0:37:58 is that the blue dye, we have like clinically validated this.
0:38:04 So this paper was published in the journal Gut, which is the top European gastroenterology journal.
0:38:11 And there’s a couple of specific time points that we can use to sort of cut off these measures.
0:38:12 The first is 14 hours.
0:38:16 If you are less than 14 hours, that is very fast.
0:38:18 The other is 58 hours.
0:38:22 If you are more than 58 hours, that’s a very slow.
0:38:23 All right.
0:38:28 So you eat these muffins and then you basically just record when do they show up?
0:38:33 And the average person is somewhere on the range of 24 hours or 48 hours.
0:38:38 Typically one or two days after eating the muffins, that’s when you start to see this.
0:38:40 And those are both considered to be normal.
0:38:46 Now, if we were to break these things out into less than 14 hours, more than 58 hours,
0:38:52 or these two sort of peaks at 24 and 48, what you start to see is that this is four groups.
0:38:57 And these four groups, every single one of them is a little bit different in terms of their gut microbiome,
0:39:00 a little bit different in terms of their gut diversity.
0:39:05 And we can make associations between these things and what people are eating.
0:39:11 So the high fiber consumers are all showing up in the middle, which means normal.
0:39:15 And the low fiber consumers are the people that are showing up on the outside.
0:39:18 And it brings us to one of the properties of fiber that’s kind of fascinating,
0:39:25 which is that whether you have diarrhea or constipation, there’s only one thing that can correct both of those.
0:39:29 Diarrhea and constipation are both fixed with dietary fiber.
0:39:32 It helps to normalize our stool, bring it back to the middle.
0:39:34 So in a perfect world, where do we want to be?
0:39:37 We want to generally be pooping about once a day.
0:39:43 So you want your gut transit time to be about 24 hours or less.
0:39:47 That being said, like as a person unhealthy, if it takes two days for this to show up in their poo.
0:39:50 No, I wouldn’t characterize them as being unhealthy.
0:39:53 But I do think like this is one of the things that we can look at.
0:39:59 That’s simple. It’s nearly free and available all of us to try at home.
0:40:04 So yeah, so you would have said that if someone’s going to the toilet three or four times a day or more,
0:40:06 then there’s probably a fiber problem.
0:40:08 There may well be a fiber problem.
0:40:16 And if they’re sort of chronically constipated, it’s also probably a fiber problem at the heart of it.
0:40:17 Generally speaking, yes.
0:40:22 Now, I will say that fiber is not as simple as I wish that it was.
0:40:30 And the reason why I bring that up is that for a person who’s low on their fiber consumption
0:40:36 and they may suffer with these issues, increasing fiber is hard for them.
0:40:43 And many people don’t feel well if they go too hard too fast when they do this.
0:40:44 It folds them over.
0:40:44 They feel in well.
0:40:47 I was in the exact same spot 10 years ago.
0:40:51 If I tried to eat like, you know, chili with a bunch of beans, I was not happy.
0:40:53 So I preferred to stay away from that.
0:40:59 So the point that I’m trying to make about this, the reason why people struggle with fiber
0:41:05 is because we are 100% reliant on our gut microbes to digest our fiber for us.
0:41:09 We don’t have the enzymes to break them down, to break down fiber.
0:41:11 The gut microbes are doing it.
0:41:19 So if you have a damaged microbiome and you never eat fiber, you can’t expect your microbes to be good at digesting fiber.
0:41:25 Our microbes, they learn and they get good at the stuff that we allow them to practice.
0:41:31 So when we start to add more fiber, the way that I recommend that people do this is to start low and go slow.
0:41:39 That just means adding a little bit at a time, slowly over the course of at least weeks, if not months.
0:41:44 And this is what allows your gut microbes basically to keep up and adjust to what you’re doing.
0:41:45 What about fecal treatment?
0:41:51 You said there that if our gut microbiome is damaged, it’s not going to be great at processing the fiber.
0:42:00 So can’t I just get someone’s poop who has, you know, that 60% of their poop is the microbes and eat it?
0:42:04 Or do some kind of fecal treatment where I put it in my body?
0:42:07 So this is actually being done.
0:42:17 Now we’ve been doing fecal transplants where we would take from a donor and put it into a person for an infection called C. diff.
0:42:20 And we’ve been doing this for more than 10 years.
0:42:23 And it is fascinating.
0:42:35 The studies with fecal transplants in humans have not been as successful as they were for the C. diff.
0:42:45 So we would love to say that we could treat ulcerative colitis, which is inflammatory bowel disease with a fecal transplant.
0:42:50 Generally, it seems that we cannot, at least where we stand today.
0:42:59 But there is something interesting that we found in one of the studies on this topic, which is that there was one study where, again, these studies are small.
0:43:02 Like we need bigger studies to really fully understand this.
0:43:12 There was one study where they did have a couple of people with ulcerative colitis who went into remission, meaning that their disease was no longer active after a fecal transplant.
0:43:15 And they asked the question, what was unique?
0:43:19 And they found they all had the same donor.
0:43:30 So what we think is that there’s probably specific donors for specific diseases that could actually potentially fix those issues.
0:43:34 Because at their roots, they are gut issues.
0:43:37 I think that the future of fecal transplant is very promising.
0:43:40 But the complexity of figuring out who are these donors?
0:43:47 Like, could I be a good donor for some specific disease that I don’t even have myself and don’t know anything about?
0:43:49 Possibly. And this is what we have to figure out.
0:43:52 And how do these poop transplants happen?
0:43:56 Is it orally or is it some other way?
0:43:57 Are they injecting this poop?
0:43:58 Are they putting it up their butt?
0:43:59 What are they doing with it?
0:44:00 There’s a couple ways.
0:44:03 So the classic is a colonoscopy.
0:44:08 So the way that I would always administer it is that the patient comes in for a colonoscopy.
0:44:09 They’re completely asleep.
0:44:12 They’re not aware of anything that’s happening.
0:44:14 And during the procedure, I basically release this stuff.
0:44:15 It’s a liquid.
0:44:17 It’s not as gross as it sounds.
0:44:18 So that’s a tube up the butt.
0:44:19 The colonoscopy?
0:44:20 Yeah.
0:44:21 That’s a tube up the butt.
0:44:21 Okay.
0:44:22 Yeah, that’s a tube up the butt.
0:44:28 Now, the new technology that’s been emerging in the last few years is that they can actually dry out the stool.
0:44:31 So they lyophilize it and put it into capsules.
0:44:34 You have to take a ton of capsules in order to do this.
0:44:37 But this is an alternative choice.
0:44:38 It’s like, you could start taking this.
0:44:41 What I think would be interesting is the capsule breaks.
0:44:43 Well, hopefully not.
0:44:46 I mean, I’ve had a couple of mega, a mega three capsules break and it’s a nightmare.
0:44:47 So, oh dear.
0:44:50 Yeah, this is not what we want to be.
0:44:51 Yeah.
0:44:58 Um, what, what we’re transitioning towards like the past was this big event.
0:45:01 You had to come in and get a big procedure colonoscopy.
0:45:04 Well, to do that repeatedly is simply not sustainable.
0:45:05 That’s not realistic.
0:45:09 Now what we’re entering into is the possibility that you could do this every day.
0:45:11 You could just take your poop capsule every single day.
0:45:13 God love to be the CEO of that company.
0:45:16 That’d be so fun.
0:45:18 I mean, I think that, I think that this is going to happen.
0:45:22 You just need, yeah, but I think we need the, the technology is there.
0:45:23 The technology is there.
0:45:24 So what do we need?
0:45:28 We need to identify who are the proper donors for this.
0:45:32 And we need to run the clinical trials to prove that it will work.
0:45:35 But to me, this is a super probiotic because it’s not just, you know, most
0:45:39 probiotics are just one single strain and they can be beneficial.
0:45:41 I’m not disparaging probiotics in any way.
0:45:43 They can definitely be beneficial.
0:45:48 But what we’re talking about is a new future where you’re actually reconstituting
0:45:49 a healthy microbiome.
0:45:54 And Steven, on this topic real quick, it is fascinating because some of the
0:45:59 people who are in this space, they’re worried about the way the world is going
0:46:01 in terms of microbes, right?
0:46:04 So there’s been this concept that perhaps you’ve heard about where,
0:46:10 which is that there’s like been this great extinction event that’s taken
0:46:18 place, right, where many species of animals are dying and, and they’re gone.
0:46:22 Microbial scientists are worried because the same thing is happening on a
0:46:24 microbial level.
0:46:29 So if you were to compare our microbiome as Westerners to a person who
0:46:35 lives in a more primitive environment in Africa, we have half the microbes
0:46:36 that they do.
0:46:41 And so what these scientists are doing is they’re saying, what if those
0:46:46 microbes that you find in those people, what if we need them?
0:46:49 What if we evolved and they’re required for us?
0:46:53 So they’re creating a bank where they’re collecting these poop samples from
0:47:00 like primitive tribal people and saving them in the event that it turns out
0:47:06 that the only way back is to actually take the poop from these people and
0:47:10 create super probiotics that would help to reconstitute our microbiome.
0:47:13 I’m so compelled by this idea that there’s going to be this range of
0:47:15 supplements in the future that are just like poop capsules.
0:47:16 I don’t think there’ll be supplements though.
0:47:18 I think it’ll be completely regulated.
0:47:20 Well, what I mean by that is there’s a difference in regulation between
0:47:24 supplements and pharmaceuticals.
0:47:27 And I don’t think they’ll have any choice but to regulate this on the
0:47:28 same level that you would a drug.
0:47:31 Because in my head, I have this idea of, you know, if this really takes
0:47:36 off, people with great poop are going to be, you know, expensive.
0:47:38 Dude, I think my stock is rising.
0:47:44 If you want my poop, you will have to pay for it.
0:47:46 But it’s going to be expensive if you only go to that because you’re
0:47:50 healthy, you go to the toilet once a day, it’s going to be like gold.
0:47:51 And that’s the fascinating thing.
0:47:55 Poop is on the biggest comeback in the history of comebacks right now.
0:47:58 Maybe that’s where we live in a post-AI world.
0:48:00 Maybe that’s the currency we trade in, you know what I’m saying?
0:48:02 Because we’re going to have little else to do.
0:48:08 So I, you know, gosh, that is a dark disturbing vision for the future.
0:48:10 But I could see where I could see where that’s possible.
0:48:14 I mean, I do think like it’s fascinating to consider that what we
0:48:18 once disparaged as completely worthless has turned into the powerful
0:48:22 treatment that doctors are administering in the hospital to treat the
0:48:28 uncurable infection and now is the future of science.
0:48:29 It’s going to be so interesting.
0:48:32 Could like, you know, change the class system in the country.
0:48:35 Like, you know, like upper class could just be people with the best poop.
0:48:38 And then lower classes, if you’ve got like a really narrow gut microbiome
0:48:40 and your poop is useless, you can’t sell it to anybody.
0:48:43 Well, it’s kind of fascinating that you say that because the issue is that
0:48:46 if you look at the microbiomes of countries that are less developed
0:48:51 than the U.S. and the U.K., you know, they, they, they have less money,
0:48:56 which the result of this is that they eat a more basic diet,
0:49:00 which often is based upon whole grains and legumes, right?
0:49:03 Like that’s the essential like beans and rice is like the essential diet.
0:49:08 Yet these things are actually so good for our gut microbes.
0:49:12 Like to me, legumes are the least talked about food that we should be talking
0:49:14 about because they’re high in fiber.
0:49:19 They’re high in resistant starches and polyphenols, all of which are pre-bodics.
0:49:22 And this is why when people eat more beans, they live longer with less disease.
0:49:26 So it’s kind of interesting because like popper food, cheap food is the food
0:49:29 actually that is the best for us because it feeds these microbes.
0:49:32 Lazy Westerners are going to get on a boat like they did once up on a time,
0:49:36 the colonists to go get the incredible, you know, the gold and the diamonds
0:49:39 and whatever else they, it’s claimed that they stole from Africa.
0:49:42 And they’re going to get back on that boat and go over there and start stealing poop.
0:49:44 I think that I could definitely see that happening.
0:49:51 There has actually been fights over when they discover prehistoric poop like
0:49:52 fossilized poop.
0:49:55 There’s fights over who gets to control that because if you think about it’s
0:49:57 like Jurassic Park, right?
0:49:59 In the beginning of Jurassic Park, there’s that amber with the mosquito
0:50:02 and the needle goes in, you extract the DNA.
0:50:06 What if we could extract the DNA from prehistoric poop and study that and
0:50:09 potentially use that?
0:50:13 The poop studies that have been done really compel by them because I hear
0:50:16 that there’s been a lot of sort of poop transplant studies done in mice as well.
0:50:17 Yeah.
0:50:19 And what are we seeing from those studies?
0:50:24 Well, okay, so we’ve talked about these different conditions that are connected
0:50:30 back to our gut microbes and part of the way that we prove this, of course,
0:50:36 we want human research, but part of building our argument and filling
0:50:40 in the pieces of the puzzle is like mouse research.
0:50:45 And these mice, we have complete control and they’re much more simple to manipulate.
0:50:50 And so we have the ability to do a fecal transplant, even potentially from a human
0:50:53 to a mouse and then see what happens.
0:50:57 And so let me take you through a couple of examples of what we have seen
0:50:58 in clinical studies.
0:51:02 I’m more than happy to point people towards the studies that I’m referring to.
0:51:03 Classic study.
0:51:05 They took identical human twins.
0:51:08 So again, we were talking about this in the beginning of the episode.
0:51:13 Identical human twins, same genetic code.
0:51:17 And in this case, one was obese and one is thin.
0:51:20 And they have a different microbiome.
0:51:28 And when you transfer human poop into mice, you also transfer the body type.
0:51:38 Even when you feed the mice the exact same food, the exact same number of calories.
0:51:41 So we hear about this calories and calories out concept, which by the way,
0:51:46 we could talk about if you want to, but it’s not perfectly true.
0:51:49 And this is showing you the complexity that exists.
0:51:53 Your microbiome impacts how you work with those calories.
0:51:59 The mouse that receives the obese microbiome, it’s like swimming against the current.
0:52:04 The microbiome is making it basically so that that mouse absorbs all of those calories.
0:52:08 And then the thin mouse mouse, it’s like swimming with the current at your back.
0:52:09 It’s a lot easier.
0:52:11 You consume the same number of calories.
0:52:12 You don’t gain any weight.
0:52:14 That’s just metabolism.
0:52:18 By the way, we have studies also diabetes can be transferred.
0:52:21 We have studies in humans where you can actually do a fecal transplants
0:52:27 from a person who does not have diabetes to a person who does have diabetes
0:52:32 and their blood sugar measures will improve in humans.
0:52:34 We have immune studies.
0:52:38 You can take a person who has ulcerative colitis, which we were talking about a moment ago
0:52:44 and transfer their poop into a mouse and that mouse will have ulcerative colitis.
0:52:57 We have mood studies where you could take a human who has anxiety or depression or PTSD
0:53:07 and transfer their poop into a mouse and the mouse receives the mood phenotype.
0:53:13 Basically, again, this needs to be studied more in humans.
0:53:14 We are more complicated.
0:53:21 You can’t just cure diseases like this by transferring poop among humans yet.
0:53:24 But when it comes to mice where they are less complicated,
0:53:28 it’s very clear that the microbiome plays a central role in these conditions
0:53:32 because you can transfer the condition using human poop.
0:53:37 Take me on a journey of what that poop is doing. I get the skinny poop from a skinny twin
0:53:39 and I put it into a mouse.
0:53:41 The mouse gets skinny or I get the obese twin.
0:53:44 I take the obese twins poop and I put it into a mouse.
0:53:47 The mouse gets obese.
0:53:50 What’s going on in that mice’s body to make it obese?
0:53:55 I’m assuming it’s basically picking up some of the microbes
0:53:59 which are impacting the gut microbiome, which is creating a post-biotic compound
0:54:04 which is influencing its metabolism or something like that.
0:54:09 So if you have a microbiome designed to produce short-chain fatty acids,
0:54:11 you and I could eat the exact same meal,
0:54:14 but the person who has the microbiome designed to create short-chain fatty acids
0:54:16 will get more short-chain fatty acids.
0:54:20 The product of this is that those short-chain fatty acids
0:54:23 now will have effects throughout the entire body,
0:54:27 including affecting our metabolism, affecting our blood sugar,
0:54:29 affecting our insulin sensitivity,
0:54:31 affecting our blood lipids after a meal,
0:54:33 affecting fat storage,
0:54:35 whether or not you turn on fat storage
0:54:38 or whether you turn off fat storage and turn on fat burning.
0:54:42 It really does shine a light on this calories-in-calories-out thing
0:54:44 because, yeah, I mean, there’s so many people.
0:54:46 I’ve talked about this a few times that I just think
0:54:49 you just have to eat below the required amount of calories for your body
0:54:50 and you’ll lose weight.
0:54:53 But in that example, it proves that there’s this other process going on
0:54:55 that’s going to determine,
0:54:57 I guess, is it how many of those calories go through
0:55:01 or is it just how your body processes that energy?
0:55:05 – Part of it is thermogenesis, meaning fat burning. – Yeah.
0:55:08 – Part of it is also what you poop out. – Okay.
0:55:12 They’ve actually found that people who have a healthier microbiome,
0:55:14 they poop out more calories.
0:55:17 Ah, okay, interesting.
0:55:19 What do you think of the calories-in-calories-out thing?
0:55:21 If someone comes to you and they say,
0:55:24 “I want to lose weight, Doc,”
0:55:26 and they say, “I’ve heard this calories-in-calories-out thing is the answer.”
0:55:27 So I’m just eating this.
0:55:30 I mean, lots of pizza, but I’m just having less calories.
0:55:32 I don’t like that, obviously.
0:55:35 So to me, dietary quality is the key.
0:55:37 There’s too many examples where dietary quality…
0:55:44 So first of all, our weight, our health is not entirely determined by our weight.
0:55:45 Is it a major factor?
0:55:46 Yes, it is.
0:55:48 But there’s so much more.
0:55:51 So dietary quality, study after study after study,
0:55:55 shows us that dietary quality is crucial to the health of our microbiome
0:56:00 and also to our global health, our longevity, and our risk for disease.
0:56:05 So to pretend that it doesn’t matter would be completely false and inaccurate.
0:56:08 The idea that calories is the only thing that matters…
0:56:10 What I do want to say is this.
0:56:15 There is some truth to the concept that calories matter.
0:56:17 There’s absolutely some truth to this.
0:56:20 If you reduce your caloric intake, you will lose weight.
0:56:25 The problem is that your body will compensate by slowing down your metabolism.
0:56:29 And so then it puts you in a predicament where you can’t continue to do this.
0:56:33 It’s not sustainable because that weight loss eventually will stop.
0:56:39 And then your appetite signals will grow so much that you will start to overeat.
0:56:43 And then when you overeat, not only do you gain the weight back, you rebound.
0:56:44 Yo-yo.
0:56:46 You yo-yo and you go above where you were before.
0:56:47 Wow.
0:56:51 And the problem with this is that when people lose weight, they don’t just burn fat.
0:56:52 They lose muscle mass.
0:56:57 Like all weight loss is associated with a loss of muscle mass.
0:57:01 When you gain the weight back, the muscle doesn’t come back.
0:57:02 You’re just getting fat.
0:57:06 So the issue is you end up less healthy than when you started.
0:57:12 To me, what I want is I want people to eat a diet where they can eat as much as they want
0:57:16 without restriction until they are full.
0:57:19 And still achieve their weight goals.
0:57:24 And this is completely possible by consuming a diet that’s high in prebiotics
0:57:32 because we hear so much about ozempic or regovi, which is semi-glutide.
0:57:36 We hear so much about this and it’s a GLP-1 agonist.
0:57:46 GLP-1 is a gut hormone that exists within our body and it makes us feel full.
0:57:52 We can stimulate GLP-1 through our dietary choices.
0:57:56 If you eat the right food, which is basically a high prebiotic diet,
0:58:01 you will activate the GLP-1 and you will naturally feel full.
0:58:07 And the result of this is that in the process of actually activating your normal satiety signals,
0:58:08 you will consume less calories.
0:58:11 Satiety signals are basically hunger signals.
0:58:12 Hunger signals.
0:58:12 So basically–
0:58:13 Feeling full.
0:58:17 Yeah, so the issue that we all have is that we eat an ultra-processed diet.
0:58:22 An ultra-processed diet, number one, makes us ravenous.
0:58:23 Like we can’t stop.
0:58:24 We want it so bad.
0:58:28 Number two, it doesn’t activate those fullness signals.
0:58:32 And so the result is when we eat an ultra-processed diet, we overeat.
0:58:34 And then you feel like trash.
0:58:35 You feel like trash for a couple of hours.
0:58:38 And that is the result of you overeating.
0:58:42 You’ve thrown yourself metabolically out of balance.
0:58:44 Don’t we all love the meal?
0:58:46 That tastes great.
0:58:50 But you eat until you’re full and you stop and actually feel energized.
0:58:55 And don’t need to take a nap or drink an energy drink to compensate for what you just did.
0:58:58 And that happens when we do this the old-fashioned way.
0:59:05 By old-fashioned, I mean like prior to modern history when ultra-processed foods came into existence.
0:59:10 If we go back to the old way of eating, you would simply eat until you activate these hormones,
0:59:16 things like GLP-1, which is concentrated in this drug or peptide YY.
0:59:19 These are gut hormones that basically tell our body when to stop eating.
0:59:21 Everyone’s going crazy about a Zempec.
0:59:22 I keep hearing about this drug.
0:59:24 I think Elon Musk recently said he had had it.
0:59:29 And I know a few other people that have started taking a Zempec there.
0:59:34 I would say none of them are overweight necessarily.
0:59:37 But they’re doing it because it’s now been framed as kind of super drug,
0:59:42 which can help you drop weight super quickly by making you feel satiated.
0:59:43 Yeah.
0:59:44 What do you think of a Zempec?
0:59:45 Well, I come back to this.
0:59:51 So first of all, let me say that for people who need it, I’m glad it’s there.
0:59:54 I don’t think that the entire world needs a Zempec in order to be healthy.
0:59:55 Is there any side effects or?
0:59:57 100%.
0:59:58 100%.
1:00:04 First of all, digestive symptoms, massive, massively common digestive symptoms.
1:00:08 But there’s also long-term risks and many of which we don’t simply know much about
1:00:12 because people haven’t been using the drug long enough for us to really fully understand
1:00:13 what happens if you use it.
1:00:16 Because once you start using it, you’re not going to stop.
1:00:19 If you stop, you gain all the weight back.
1:00:22 So once you start using it, you’re basically committing to however old you are.
1:00:26 You’re going to be doing this for years on years, you know, decades.
1:00:28 We don’t know what happens after a couple of years.
1:00:34 Isn’t it kind of skipping a step in the process of developing the gut microbiome, taking a Zempec?
1:00:38 Yeah, I think that’s the point is that if we, so, you know, if we look at our countries,
1:00:43 the U.S. and the U.K., there’s a major fiber deficiency.
1:00:46 And I don’t think, you know, I realize I’m out there pounding the drum on this, but I
1:00:52 don’t think this is talked about enough, perhaps because people don’t think the fiber is sexy.
1:00:56 But I think fiber is sexy because it’s so crucial and important to our health.
1:00:59 And this is an example where this is 100% true.
1:01:03 So 95% of Americans are deficient in fiber.
1:01:06 The average woman is getting 15 grams of fiber per day.
1:01:09 She’s supposed to be getting at least 25 in the U.S.
1:01:12 The average man is getting 18 grams of fiber per day.
1:01:13 He’s supposed to be getting 38.
1:01:17 It’s a massive, massive deficiency.
1:01:21 And the issue is that the fiber is what actually empowers the gut microbes.
1:01:26 By the way, through short chain fatty acids, the fiber is what empowers the gut microbes
1:01:31 through short chain fatty acids to release these gut hormones like GOP1 and peptide YY.
1:01:37 So my thing is this, because again, like our health is not determined exclusively by our weight balance.
1:01:39 There are other things other than that.
1:01:43 Why don’t we try consuming these foods?
1:01:47 The average American is 10% of their calories from plants, fiber containing food.
1:01:51 What if we can make that 30% or 50%?
1:01:54 I think that we would see a massive difference.
1:01:55 There was a study that was done.
1:02:01 It’s one of my favorite studies of all time by a professor in New Zealand.
1:02:03 His name is Andrew Reynolds.
1:02:06 And he compiled all of the available data on fiber.
1:02:09 What happens when people consume more fiber?
1:02:11 Here’s what happens.
1:02:14 They lose weight.
1:02:16 They are less likely to have a heart attack.
1:02:18 They’re less likely to die of heart disease.
1:02:21 They’re less likely to have a stroke.
1:02:23 They’re less likely to be diagnosed with diabetes.
1:02:27 They’re less likely to be diagnosed with multiple different types of cancer.
1:02:30 They’re less likely to die of cancer.
1:02:32 Their blood pressure goes down.
1:02:34 Their blood sugar control improves.
1:02:35 Their cholesterol goes down.
1:02:40 Okay, like that’s sitting there for us.
1:02:43 Available, all we have to do is make the dietary changes.
1:02:47 And again, what happens in that process is you consume more fiber.
1:02:49 It comes into contact with your gut microbes.
1:02:53 They release short chain fatty acids and they have healing effects throughout your entire body.
1:02:55 So to me, I agree with you.
1:02:58 I think that we’re missing this middle piece.
1:03:02 And when we’re reaching for something that’s an expensive drug, it’s very expensive.
1:03:07 We’re reaching for something that’s an expensive drug and it has a very real risk of side effects.
1:03:13 And it also has risk in the sense that we just don’t know what happens after you take it for a couple of years.
1:03:19 I don’t understand why we would do that when think of the benefits that I just listed by simply increasing your fiber intake.
1:03:23 I have so many conversations with my friends about various drugs that they’re taking,
1:03:28 performance drugs, medaffinil, Zempex, etc.
1:03:37 When I speak to them, they’re very passionate that there’s no side effects on all of these sort of things that I consider cheating.
1:03:48 And I have to caveat this because there are some people who are in a situation with diabetes or other cardiovascular issues
1:03:53 who can have their lives saved with some of these drugs.
1:03:57 But for the most part, the people that I know that are consuming these drugs aren’t doing it for that reason.
1:04:01 They’re doing it for vanity reasons or for performance reasons where it’s like taking a shortcut.
1:04:04 And every shortcut I believe in life comes with a cost.
1:04:11 You’re talking like a doctor. You’re talking like a doctor because basically what you’re talking about is risk versus benefit.
1:04:17 And the way that I think and every other doctor thinks about their patient is does the benefit outweigh the risk.
1:04:20 But there is always risk in association with these drugs.
1:04:26 And what makes me different from most other doctors, where I turn to the corner in my career,
1:04:32 is when I started to ask the question, “Why are we waiting until we get to the point that we need to write a prescription for a drug?
1:04:34 Why are we waiting until that point?
1:04:43 Why are we not intervening in a much earlier point where we could transform a person’s life and get them to a place where they never actually get this disease?
1:04:46 Or if they get this disease, it’s so much easier for us to control that.
1:04:58 And this is, so to me, what I come back to is basically what you’re getting at is why would we take a drug if we could change our diet and our lifestyle and actually protect ourselves?
1:04:59 It’s easier.
1:05:00 It’s much easier.
1:05:01 Yeah, it is much easier.
1:05:04 There’s no doubt, but the problem is you pay a price for that.
1:05:06 And the price is unobvious.
1:05:13 So you’ve got an easier option where the benefits are clear and the cost, the risk is unobvious.
1:05:17 A logical human being would take that path if they can afford it.
1:05:18 I agree.
1:05:23 The issue is that these are not the same things though.
1:05:30 And what I mean by that is that you have diabetes, like hypothetically.
1:05:32 I hope you don’t.
1:05:35 Hypothetically, you have diabetes.
1:05:36 Okay, cool.
1:05:39 We give you a drug for your diabetes.
1:05:42 That drug covers up the issue.
1:05:47 I can get your blood sugar down, but that’s not fixing the problem.
1:05:50 I’m not actually fixing your diabetes, right?
1:06:00 So to me, we shouldn’t equate taking a drug and controlling a disease on some level.
1:06:06 But truly what we’re doing is we’re just putting a sheet over the problem so you don’t see it anymore, right?
1:06:08 Does it result in better outcomes long term?
1:06:11 Are you healthier as the result of controlling your diabetes with a drug?
1:06:13 100% yes.
1:06:14 No doubt.
1:06:16 But what if we could reverse your diabetes?
1:06:25 Diabetes, type 2 diabetes, which is the kinds that people acquire as an adult, is highly reversible.
1:06:27 Most people don’t realize that.
1:06:32 You don’t need to be drug dependent on diabetes drugs in order to fix this issue.
1:06:35 Take them when you need them, but let’s work on the root cause.
1:06:40 And by working on the root cause, we can actually reverse the true problem and get you back to a place where you don’t need the drug at all.
1:06:43 But doesn’t that require discipline and willpower and motivation?
1:06:51 Well, I think it requires understanding the path forward and making choices that are sustainable and that make you excited.
1:06:55 I would never ask a person to make choices that make them miserable.
1:06:59 I’m asking people to make choices that make them feel great, make them feel energized,
1:07:07 and yet at the same time actually are contributing to better health so that they can live longer with less disease and be in a position that I want to be in,
1:07:12 which is that I want to be in my 80s and still like cutting a rug and dancing, like dancing with my grandkids.
1:07:15 So let’s close off on this subject of poop.
1:07:22 My team actually prepared some poop samples earlier on because I was wondering as a gastroenterologist,
1:07:27 I wondered that if you could look at someone’s poop and determine whether they have good gut health,
1:07:30 and if you can understand what’s going on in their body just by how their poop looks,
1:07:32 because poop comes in many shapes and sizes.
1:07:40 So what I have here is a variety of different shapes and sizes of poop.
1:07:46 For anyone that can’t see, we’ll look at the screen if you’re listening to this podcast on Spotify or YouTube.
1:07:48 Different shapes and sizes of poop here.
1:07:51 This is real human poop.
1:07:56 So I’m going to pass you that so you can play around with it.
1:07:59 And why does the shape and size of our poop tell us anything?
1:08:00 Why does it matter?
1:08:03 And how is it indicating something that’s pertinent to our overall health?
1:08:11 Well, because it goes back to what you mentioned earlier, which is that 60% of the weight of our stool is actually microbial in origin.
1:08:15 So if you want a window into your microbiome, look at your poop.
1:08:18 You don’t necessarily need to go and do an expensive test.
1:08:21 Quite simply, looking at your poop is one of the ways that you can tell what’s going on.
1:08:32 So there was a study that was done in the 90s a long time ago, and it was less than 2,000 people exclusively in the city of Bristol.
1:08:36 And it led to the creation of a chart called the Bristol Stool Scale.
1:08:38 Right here, I’ll put it on the screen.
1:08:40 Yeah, and we’re going to run through this.
1:08:43 But before we do, I want to mention a few things real quick.
1:08:51 As the U.S. Medical Director of ZOE, I’m proud of my contribution as a gastroenterologist as a physician to the work that we’re doing there.
1:08:58 And we not only did the Blue Poo Study, which we’ve talked about already, which is that you can eat your muffins and figure out your gut transit time.
1:09:00 But we also did a couple of other things.
1:09:11 One is called the Blue Poo Challenge, where we had over 20,000 people across the planet who were basically eating blue muffins and then reporting back to us on what was going on with them.
1:09:18 And then more recently, so again, the Bristol Study was 2,000 people exclusively in the city of Bristol.
1:09:28 We recently did the largest study across the entire U.K. on poop and what people were doing in terms of their bowel movements.
1:09:36 So it was called the Big Poo Review, and we had 142,000 people from across the U.K. basically fill out a 17-question survey.
1:09:39 And part of what we were looking at was their Bristol stool form.
1:09:41 We were also looking at how often they poop.
1:09:44 By the way, the average person poops 1.7 times per day.
1:09:49 And we were also looking at how it associates with different conditions.
1:09:53 So as an example, one in five people in the U.K. are constipated.
1:09:56 One in six people in the U.K. have diarrhea.
1:09:58 So it’s interesting to take a look at all these things.
1:10:04 So now getting into the Bristol stool chart, the dream.
1:10:06 That is real poop.
1:10:10 It’s lovely.
1:10:12 This is the dream.
1:10:13 This is where we all want to be.
1:10:15 And this is a Bristol 4.
1:10:25 The Bristol 4 is the classic where I come walking out of the bathroom in slow motion and rock music is jamming and doves are flying in slow motion.
1:10:27 And I just am such a stud.
1:10:29 And that’s after a Bristol 4.
1:10:31 My wife knows what happens when I come out looking like that.
1:10:33 It’s soft and formed.
1:10:36 And it’s like a sausage or a torpedo.
1:10:38 So pretty smooth.
1:10:44 Now, when we move from a 4 to a 3, a 3 is not that big of a deal.
1:10:47 But it is getting some cracks and crevices in it.
1:10:50 And we’re moving towards constipation.
1:10:56 Now a 3, you know, a little more fiber, a little more hydration, some exercise.
1:11:01 These are simple things that can help to get you back to a 4 if you’re having one of these, a 3.
1:11:06 But that moves us to a Bristol 2 where we are truly getting into constipation territory here.
1:11:11 And basically this is like if you took a whole bunch of marbles of poop and jammed them together.
1:11:17 So it still forms into something, but it looks like a pack of marbles of poop that are stuck together.
1:11:20 So that’s a Bristol 2 stool. That’s constipation.
1:11:26 And then finally a Bristol 1 is when you’re having the rabbit pellets and they’re hard.
1:11:28 They’re not easy to get out.
1:11:31 And sometimes they’re a lot bigger than this. These are small.
1:11:36 So you would form this up into what would be like a golf ball.
1:11:41 And that golf ball would be like a Bristol 1.
1:11:42 Okay.
1:11:48 All right, you form it up into a hard ball like this, but perhaps even bigger.
1:11:51 And it’s actually hard for a person to pass this.
1:11:57 It’s so big. It’s so hard that your bottom has a problem relaxing to let it out.
1:12:01 Okay, so Bristol 1 and 2 are forms of constipation.
1:12:03 Let’s go back to the middle.
1:12:04 We’re going to start from 5.
1:12:07 The stool is soft. It’s not hard.
1:12:15 It’s not lumpy bumpy. It’s soft, but it’s starting to break into blobs, different pieces of poop.
1:12:25 So, and we’re moving towards, we’re moving towards diarrhea where like just like fragments of solid stool are a Bristol 6.
1:12:33 And then when it’s just like, or the other thing a Bristol 6 could be like a cow pie where there’s no form.
1:12:44 It’s just someone plopped down this formless patty and a Bristol 7 finally is straight liquid, straight liquid.
1:12:48 And how is this pertinent to our gut microbiome, our health?
1:12:49 What does this tell us about our health?
1:12:55 There’s been now multiple studies, including our work at Zoe on the blue poop study that was published in the Journal of God.
1:13:01 There’s not been multiple studies where basically what they found is that if you can look at which of these Bristol types you have,
1:13:06 it does give us some insights into your gut microbiome and what’s happening there.
1:13:09 So now where do we want to be in a perfect world?
1:13:13 We want to be somewhere on the spectrum of three, four or five.
1:13:15 We ideally want to be a four.
1:13:19 You’re not unhealthy if you have a three or a five.
1:13:27 So if this type four poop, which is kind of like a sausage, it’s kind of like a smooth sausage is optimal.
1:13:28 How does one do that?
1:13:30 What is turning it into a type four?
1:13:31 What are they eating doing?
1:13:33 Yeah, interesting question.
1:13:41 One of the things that we found in the big poo review, which is our nationwide survey of 142,000 people.
1:13:51 We actually looked at what they were eating and we were able to find associations between fiber intake and specifically plant-based food intake and having a number four.
1:13:58 So in other words, we found associations between fiber intake and basically plant-based food intake and having a number four.
1:14:06 So basically what that means is the people that were having a number four bowel movement were consuming more legumes, whole grains, fruits and vegetables.
1:14:18 The people who were having, whether it be a type one or a type seven, they actually were quite similar in terms of their diet, which is that they actually were consuming lower amounts of fiber.
1:14:34 Now, the other thing to look at too is actually some studies have found that people who have more on the spectrum of constipation tend to have a higher fat diet, tend to typically consume more animal products, which of course are higher in fat.
1:14:42 And people that are more on the loose or diarrhea side of things tend to be consuming more plant-based foods.
1:14:50 So now you could have a very healthy diet and be having a Bristol five, and that actually is not problematic.
1:14:59 And the reason that you’re having the Bristol five is because you’re consuming so much fiber that actually you’re producing a lot of short chain fatty acids and those short chain fatty acids.
1:15:01 They’re like lubricants for your poop.
1:15:06 And the gut transition time, how does that relate to these different types of poop?
1:15:14 As you were saying that I was thinking the one in seven, the type one and the type seven, the type one being those sort of hard nuts and the type seven being basically diarrhea.
1:15:22 I was assuming that those are the poop types that would happen with a lower and a super high gut transition time.
1:15:23 That’s right.
1:15:26 So a slow gut transit time, which is a gut transit time more than 58 hours.
1:15:29 So again, and this is all with the blue muffins.
1:15:31 You eat the blue muffin.
1:15:33 It comes out 58 hours later.
1:15:39 You are more likely to be having a Bristol one or Bristol two, which is the classic constipation form.
1:15:45 There’s no way, no way that you would have slow gut transit time and have a Bristol seven.
1:15:46 That’s not possible.
1:15:47 A diarrhea.
1:15:48 Yeah, a diarrhea.
1:15:52 So diarrhea comes out fast and these sort of hard nuts they take typically a long time.
1:15:53 That’s right.
1:15:55 And the reason why this is happening.
1:16:07 So when water moves through the intestines, because a ton of water moves through the intestines and one of the jobs that our colon has, the large intestine, is to pull the water out.
1:16:14 So the more time that something spends inside the colon, the more it’s actually going to do that pull the water out.
1:16:18 This is the reason why when we have fast transit, it’s high in water.
1:16:23 And this is also the reason why when it’s slow transit, it’s extremely dry.
1:16:25 Okay, so that’s the shape and size of the poop.
1:16:27 But what about colors of poop?
1:16:29 I’ve got some different colors of poop here.
1:16:32 I’ve got some red, some blue, some black, some green, some whites and some yellows.
1:16:33 Yes.
1:16:37 How is color pertinent to health and everything we’ve been discussing?
1:16:38 All right, let’s break this down.
1:16:40 So first of all, why is our poop brown?
1:16:43 The answer to that question has to do with bile.
1:16:46 Bile is produced by our liver.
1:16:49 It’s actually involved heavily in digestion of fat.
1:16:54 So when we, for example, eat a fatty meal, our gallbladder will squeeze.
1:16:57 People that have gallbladder issues know what I’m talking about.
1:16:59 You eat a fatty meal, your gallbladder squeezes.
1:17:06 Bile then mixes in your intestines with the food and the bile helps to absorb the fat.
1:17:09 That bile is what makes our poop brown.
1:17:14 Now that becomes particularly relevant if we’re talking about a white poop.
1:17:15 People poop white?
1:17:16 Some people poop white.
1:17:17 No way.
1:17:18 Yes.
1:17:28 And the reason why a person would have a white poop is if there’s a blockage that stops the bile from mixing with their intestines.
1:17:35 On the flip side, if you are struggling to process your fat, you could have a yellow poop.
1:17:40 So, and this could be a person who has like a pancreas issue, for example, chronic pancreatitis.
1:17:45 And so if they’re not able to digest their fat, they have a fatty poop.
1:17:47 It may come out yellow.
1:17:52 And one of the things that they’ll notice is that there may be an oil slick at the top of the toilet bowl.
1:17:53 Right.
1:17:54 That’s fat.
1:17:55 Oil is fat.
1:17:56 So, all right.
1:17:58 You’ve never had a, have you ever had a green bowel movement?
1:18:00 None of your business.
1:18:03 It’s the day of question.
1:18:04 I haven’t.
1:18:05 Okay.
1:18:06 I have.
1:18:07 Oh, really?
1:18:08 Yeah.
1:18:09 There’s a couple of reasons.
1:18:10 Some are healthy, some are not.
1:18:15 So, you could have a, you could have diarrhea, like from an infectious cause.
1:18:18 An example could be something called Giardia, which is a parasite.
1:18:20 And that’ll give you a green poop.
1:18:23 But you could also go too hard on the smoothies.
1:18:27 I was drinking like 40 ounces of green smoothies a day and my poop would come out green.
1:18:28 It’s interesting.
1:18:30 We’re going to, we’re about to get into some that are really important.
1:18:33 Before I do that, let me just mention real quick the blue.
1:18:39 So the blue poo, you could get a blue poo from eating blueberries, particularly if you eat a lot of them.
1:18:44 Or alternatively, of course, this is the blue muffin, the blue poo challenge.
1:18:50 So, and perhaps what we could do in the show notes is give people the recipe for how they can go about doing that if they, if they’re interested.
1:18:52 All right.
1:18:54 Red and black.
1:19:00 So we have to talk about, let’s start with red, because of course red, we think about blood.
1:19:07 And, and I have a rule, which is that if you see blood in your stool, that’s not normal.
1:19:10 And to me, that’s grounds to talk to a doctor.
1:19:15 And, you know, then there’s different levels of intensity of how seriously we check it out.
1:19:27 But Steven, colon cancer, which can present with red stool, colon cancer is the number two cause of cancer death in our countries.
1:19:32 In the United States, 150,000 people are diagnosed per year.
1:19:38 It’s highly preventable and it’s shifting towards younger people.
1:19:50 There has been a change in the last few years in terms of colon cancer, where, you know, as an example, a person of your generation, you and I are pretty close, I think, but I’m a little bit older.
1:19:59 A person of your generation is four times more likely to be diagnosed with rectal cancer during their lifetime than my parents were.
1:20:07 And twice, twice times more likely to be diagnosed with colon cancer compared to my parents generation.
1:20:11 So there’s been this shift and it’s also affecting younger people.
1:20:17 So my point is this, I’ve had patients who come to me, they go, I saw a little bit of blood in my stool.
1:20:24 Do a colonoscopy and discover that they have a massive polyp, which is a precursor to cancer.
1:20:30 And by removing the polyp, we just basically stopped them from developing cancer.
1:20:36 So I take it seriously when you see a poop that is coated in red.
1:20:44 All right, now that red may be just on parts of it, like it is here, where that’s typically bright red coming from the bottom.
1:20:53 So that would be either something in your rectum, could be hemorrhoids, could be an anal fissure, could also be a polyp in the rectum.
1:21:00 But I think what I come back to is I would encourage people to get checked out because just seeing the bright red blood doesn’t mean it’s hemorrhoids.
1:21:04 Don’t assume that, right, particularly with cancer shifting towards younger people.
1:21:06 I think it’s important to get checked out.
1:21:11 On that point about cancer shifting towards younger people, is that because our diets are changing?
1:21:12 I think so.
1:21:17 I think it’s the shift generationally that’s taken place in terms of our diets.
1:21:20 I also think that there’s some microbiome element.
1:21:28 The connections between the gut microbiome and colon cancer are as powerful as any type of cancer.
1:21:37 And at the same time, what protects us, and I think you know where I’m going to say, it’s the fiber and the short chain fatty acids.
1:21:49 And in that study that I was mentioning earlier from Andrew Reynolds, the professor from New Zealand, actually there was a powerful association between fiber consumption and protecting ourselves from colorectal cancer.
1:21:57 So powerful that for every gram, five grams of fiber that we increase in our diet, we are getting a significant reduction in our risk.
1:22:02 So it’s not just do you eat fiber or not, it’s actually how much fiber do you eat and the more the better.
1:22:07 You know what I should mention real quick, red stool can also come from eating beets.
1:22:12 It will almost always happen like literally, you know, 24 to 48 hours after you eat the beets.
1:22:14 So don’t be surprised when that’s the case.
1:22:16 You may see a little bit of red stool.
1:22:20 Black stool can come from benign places.
1:22:22 So an example is bismuth.
1:22:24 So like peptobismal.
1:22:28 So you have a stomach ache, and then you take some peptobismal.
1:22:32 And so, but the issue with this is it will actually give you black stool.
1:22:36 So if you’re having a bad stomach for a couple of days in a row, it could turn black.
1:22:45 But the other thing that turns your stool black that people need to know about is a slow GI bleed bleeding into your stomach specifically.
1:22:48 Because that bleeding is happening higher up in your intestines.
1:22:52 And then it has to pass all the way through like intestinal transit time, right?
1:22:56 Because there’s such a delay by the time it gets down to your rectum, it’s now black.
1:22:58 It’s not red anymore.
1:23:01 So black stool can be indicative of bleeding.
1:23:07 The way that we can differentiate this is when it’s blood, it smells terrible.
1:23:09 Now we’re going to start smelling our own paper.
1:23:10 Yeah.
1:23:12 Well, you don’t have to stick your nose into it.
1:23:15 It’s so clear, like it would be so clear.
1:23:16 Okay.
1:23:23 When I’m in the hospital, I will be walking through and I can literally tell when a consult is coming because I can smell this diagnosis.
1:23:24 Really?
1:23:25 Yeah.
1:23:28 So anyway, the stool will turn black.
1:23:31 It will smell terrible and it will be like tar.
1:23:34 That’s what makes it different than if you were to, for example, take peptobismal.
1:23:45 I’m really interested in this idea that we can give our gut microbiome to our kids, but also in the twin studies, they have such a diverse gut microbiome.
1:23:53 So how much of our gut microbiome are we inheriting from our parents, our grandparents, et cetera, if any at all?
1:23:55 Well, we’re certainly inheriting some.
1:24:01 And particularly when we’re kids as a newborn, you’re going to most closely resemble the gut microbiome of your mother.
1:24:11 And that association and sharing is much more profound if you were born through a traditional vaginal delivery and if you’re breastfed.
1:24:19 So that connection between mom and baby actually helps to facilitate the transfer of microbes to the baby that leads to health.
1:24:26 And this is part of the reason why when you disrupt these things, which by the way I should mention, sometimes these things are inevitable.
1:24:31 So I have three kids. They were all born by cesarean. It’s not the way that we wanted it to be, but it’s what happened.
1:24:34 You can have healthy kids who are born by cesarean.
1:24:48 So but when we disrupt these things, whether it be cesarean section or bottle feeding instead of breastfeeding or antibiotics, we see downstream the same effects.
1:25:04 Increased likelihood of obesity, increased likelihood of allergic conditions, including food allergies and asthma, increased likelihood of autoimmune conditions, including celiac disease and type 1 diabetes.
1:25:12 So when you disrupt the developing gut microbiome in that child, you increase the risk of these things happening subsequently.
1:25:28 And there’s been some interesting studies where they will look at the microbiome, they’ll look in the diaper of a child who’s six months or a year old and they can based upon that they can predict who within the next four to five years is going to develop an allergic or autoimmune condition.
1:25:37 So so getting back to the sharing of microbes, like yes, there is this connection between mom and child, but actually this is an evolving thing throughout our life.
1:25:42 And there’s new research that I think is really important about human connection.
1:25:54 And in this study, what they found is that people who shared spaces together through connection, they number one had a healthier gut microbiome than people who live by themselves.
1:25:57 Number two, they share more microbes together.
1:26:04 So like for example, me with my wife, we share more microbes together than I do with my siblings.
1:26:05 Wow.
1:26:13 And then the other thing that was kind of fascinating from this study is the strength of the relationship matters.
1:26:20 So I think we can all agree sometimes relationships are in a good place and sometimes they’re in a bad place, right?
1:26:29 And that’s like a full spectrum in different conversation, but actually where it is on that spectrum impacts your gut microbiome.
1:26:38 They found that the couples that were sharing the most microbes were the ones that actually had the most connection in terms of their relationship.
1:26:42 Whereas the people who were disconnected from one another, they weren’t sharing so many microbes.
1:26:46 Now you could say like, is that because they’re having less sex?
1:26:50 Could it be that they just like physically aren’t even close to one another?
1:26:55 I suppose that’s all possible, but these are also people where they like they controlled for their diet.
1:26:56 So it’s not a dietary thing.
1:27:08 So like I think that the, you know, the takeaway from my perspective is the power of human connection is more important in 2023-2024.
1:27:12 It’s more important in this moment than it’s ever been.
1:27:17 And many aspects of our life are pulling us away from this.
1:27:24 Our devices, social media, I mean, I’m very active on social media, but let’s be transparent about this.
1:27:32 This is pulling us away from the ability to sit down with another person, look them in the eye, talk to them, have a meaningful conversation and feel connected to that person.
1:27:36 And because you feel connected, you reap the rewards, which do include better gut health.
1:27:42 But that’s super interesting because it does make a case that the people we surround ourselves with, we tend to think of psychology, right?
1:27:45 We tend to think that surround yourself with a certain type of person.
1:27:49 It’s good for your psychology if they’re positive or they’re negative, et cetera.
1:27:56 But there’s actually a case that people, the people we surround ourselves with have an impact on our physiology, our bodies, our biology, our gut microbiome.
1:27:59 And that has an upstream effect on everything.
1:28:06 That’s true, but you also can’t disentangle or separate out from the fact that the positive influence of a person also really matters.
1:28:07 Yeah.
1:28:12 Because where you’re at from an emotional perspective, and I think this is an important thing for people to understand,
1:28:17 that where you’re at from an emotional perspective does manifest in your gut health.
1:28:25 And this is the reason why, for example, if a person is going to go and do public speaking and they’re not comfortable with public speaking,
1:28:30 they may just have a little bit of jitters, a little bit of nausea or queasiness.
1:28:38 But it can also snowball into something bigger and worse, such as full-do-over type of cramps, right?
1:28:43 So, and that’s, many people will manifest their stress in their gut.
1:28:45 That’s an acute example.
1:28:51 By acute, I mean like this specific situation context that you’re involved with.
1:28:54 But what happens if your life is stress?
1:29:01 And the answer to that question is actually very clear, because people who, for example, have childhood trauma,
1:29:08 they will subsequently go on and be far more likely to develop digestive issues, but other gut-related issues.
1:29:12 And there was an interesting study, Stephen, that was done among two-year-olds.
1:29:14 Who were adopted.
1:29:19 And they studied the gut microbiome of these kids.
1:29:26 And downstream, they were able basically to identify that the fact that they came from an adopted home,
1:29:29 even though it was before age two, like they can’t remember this.
1:29:36 Even though it was before age two, the fact that they were from an adopted home, it affected their gut microbiome.
1:29:42 It affected their response to stress, and it also affected the way that their brain works.
1:29:48 And they actually were able to show this through functional MRI technology, where they looked at the brain and how it was activating.
1:29:50 Just because of that sort of early trauma.
1:29:51 Early trauma.
1:29:57 So, and not everyone who has gut issues has been exposed to trauma.
1:30:03 But I think it’s important for people to understand that if you have been exposed to trauma,
1:30:06 this can be a very important part of your healing process.
1:30:08 That’s the message that I want to get out into the world.
1:30:14 And the reason why I bring that message is because I’ve had people who are in my clinic and they’re like Dr. B,
1:30:17 I do everything that you tell me to do.
1:30:19 And I do it by the book.
1:30:25 I eat, I sleep, I exercise, I do yoga, I do and I meditate.
1:30:27 And despite that, they’re not getting better.
1:30:35 And in those relationships, what ends up happening is typically after a couple of visits, we start to get comfortable with one another.
1:30:36 We trust one another.
1:30:40 And when you get to that place, they will share with me something that happened to them.
1:30:44 And then I make it clear, this is the reason why.
1:30:48 When you heal the wound of the trauma, you actually heal the gut.
1:30:50 And it’s amazing because they’re like a rocket ship.
1:30:52 Because they’re doing all the right stuff, right?
1:30:54 They’re eating right, sleeping right, exercising.
1:31:02 And the minute you take away this thing that is chaining them down and holding them back, the minute you release those chains, they shoot to the moon.
1:31:05 And it’s like the greatest thing to see.
1:31:13 And I would say that like in my clinical career, that has been the most rewarding thing above anything else, far more than like getting a person to eat more fiber.
1:31:14 What about alcohol?
1:31:16 I’ve recently quit drinking alcohol.
1:31:17 I’m glad you did.
1:31:18 Why are you glad I did?
1:31:25 Well, let me be the first to say that I have not completely quit consuming alcohol.
1:31:31 But if we remove my imperfect self from this picture and just look at the science, the science is actually quite clear.
1:31:33 Our gut is damaged by alcohol.
1:31:36 So let’s take a step back for a moment.
1:31:38 If I want to clean this table, right?
1:31:39 We’re all done.
1:31:40 We want to clean it up.
1:31:41 What are we going to do?
1:31:43 We pull out rubbing alcohol.
1:31:45 It destroys microbes.
1:31:48 Alcohol destroys microbes.
1:31:53 And when we drink to the point of having a hangover, is that dehydration?
1:31:55 Absolutely not.
1:32:05 And I’m of the belief based upon the research that I’ve seen that what’s happening when you’re having a hangover is that you have caused significant damage to your microbiome.
1:32:12 And this is the reason why it takes 24 hours or more for you actually to start to feel like a human being again.
1:32:15 What you see with alcohol is disturbing.
1:32:18 It’s more than just liver disease.
1:32:23 There are many different health related conditions that are tied back to alcohol consumption.
1:32:28 And the thresholds that we’ve set where we say people, it’s okay, like it’s moderate alcohol.
1:32:34 If you have up to three drinks a day as a guy or up to two drinks a day as a woman, like that to me is ridiculous.
1:32:36 That’s a lot.
1:32:48 But the study that changed everything for me was where they actually monitored levels of something called bacterial endotoxin or lipopolysaccharide.
1:32:52 This is something that is not supposed to be in our bloodstream.
1:32:57 When it is in our bloodstream, it’s because there’s been damage to the gut barrier.
1:32:59 And it causes inflammation.
1:33:03 This is the exact same thing that can cause us to get extremely sick.
1:33:06 But at a minimum, it is causing inflammation in your body.
1:33:19 And they did a study where they were basically monitoring levels of this lipopolysaccharide after alcohol consumption and in association with blood alcohol levels.
1:33:24 And what they showed in the study is they were parallel lines.
1:33:29 Blood alcohol level goes up, lipopolysaccharide level goes up.
1:33:34 Blood alcohol level turns down, lipopolysaccharide level turns down.
1:33:36 They were the exact same thing.
1:33:45 So when I saw that, to me, even when we’re consuming minimal amounts of alcohol, we are potentially causing problems for our gut microbes.
1:33:47 What is the brain-gut connection?
1:33:53 So the brain-gut connection is referring to the fact that your gut’s best friend is the brain.
1:33:57 They’re talking to each other right now, and they are inseparable.
1:33:59 You can’t get away from that.
1:34:02 There’s a number of ways that your gut will talk to the brain.
1:34:05 So part of it is the release of neurotransmitters.
1:34:12 95% of the serotonin in your body is produced by the gut.
1:34:14 Serotonin is the happy hormone.
1:34:17 It’s what makes us feel energized.
1:34:19 It’s what gives us great mood.
1:34:22 And in some ways, it also gives us focus.
1:34:25 You would think that it comes from your brain.
1:34:30 When we treat a person with major depression, we treat them to increase serotonin levels.
1:34:35 Yet only 5% of the serotonin in your body actually is produced inside your brain.
1:34:39 95% of it is produced within your gut.
1:34:45 Serotonin can signal the brain through a nerve called the vagus nerve.
1:34:50 The vagus nerve is like a super phone between the brain and the gut.
1:34:54 It would be like if you were in London and I were in the United States,
1:34:57 and I had a direct line to you where I just picked this up and I go,
1:34:59 “Yo, Steven, I need to talk to you.”
1:35:01 That’s the way that this works.
1:35:04 Your gut is talking to your brain directly on that phone line.
1:35:10 So serotonin, dopamine, 50% of dopamine, which is the reward hormone produced in the gut.
1:35:13 There are over 30 neurotransmitters produced in the gut.
1:35:16 There’s also the vagus nerve that we just talked about.
1:35:21 And finally, your gut is producing metabolites, postbiotics,
1:35:25 that can cross into the brain and have an effect.
1:35:26 We mentioned this earlier.
1:35:31 Short chain fatty acids from fiber have the ability to cross the blood-brain barrier
1:35:34 and actually influence things like our mood, our focus.
1:35:39 There was one study with kids where by increasing short chain fatty acids for those kids,
1:35:43 they actually were able to increase their focus because they were having trouble with focus.
1:35:48 You’ve repeatedly talked about fiber and this thing you call short chain fatty acids.
1:35:52 In your book, you said you believe that they’re the most healing nutrient in all nature.
1:35:54 I think that’s actually true.
1:36:01 And I also would characterize them as the most anti-inflammatory molecule that I’ve ever come across.
1:36:07 Am I right in thinking we eat fiber, the bacteria in our microbiome breaks down that fiber,
1:36:11 and it produces this thing, the short chain fatty acids.
1:36:15 The stories just can start it though.
1:36:19 The stories just can start it because the issue is that that’s the simple part.
1:36:23 These magicians that live inside of us release these short chain fatty acids for us.
1:36:24 By eating fiber.
1:36:27 By eating fiber or resistant starches.
1:36:34 But then those short chain fatty acids go to work and our immune cells,
1:36:40 our human cells have receptors to receive these short chain fatty acids
1:36:43 and act upon the information that they receive.
1:36:46 So you could think of them as like a signaling molecule
1:36:49 in the sense that your gut microbiome is not talking to your body
1:36:52 and telling your body what it wants your body to do.
1:36:53 So it’s training it.
1:36:58 Yeah, but it has the ability to like flip genes off and on.
1:36:59 Okay.
1:37:01 It has the ability to turn down your immune system.
1:37:05 So as an example, when I think about autoimmune conditions,
1:37:09 if we were to get like super into the details of autoimmune conditions,
1:37:13 what you would discover is that we need more short chain fatty acids
1:37:16 to empower these specific cells called T regulatory cells.
1:37:19 And those T regulatory cells would actually turn down our immune system
1:37:20 and protect us.
1:37:24 So and it’s not to say that autoimmune diseases are exclusively
1:37:26 the result of a fiber deficiency.
1:37:29 There is certainly a genetic component,
1:37:33 but there was a genetic component 200 years ago, 300 years ago.
1:37:37 And yet those conditions really weren’t that much of a problem back then.
1:37:41 So many of these conditions didn’t have a name until the last 100 years.
1:37:46 And the emergence of them, many of them have increased 500%
1:37:48 in the last 50 years.
1:37:49 Why would that be?
1:37:51 It clearly is not genetics.
1:37:54 So it has to be related to our diet and lifestyle.
1:37:56 And ultimately, when we talk about our diet and lifestyle,
1:37:58 we’re talking about our microbiome.
1:38:01 And really that one of the most important places to start,
1:38:02 as you say, is with the fiber.
1:38:03 I think so.
1:38:06 You said earlier on, we have to start slow and low with fiber.
1:38:07 Yeah.
1:38:09 And that’s because we’ve got to build up those microbes
1:38:14 that respond to the fiber and turn it into the short chain fatty acids, right?
1:38:16 Your gut is like a muscle, right?
1:38:19 Like this is the way that I want people to understand this.
1:38:23 Your gut is like a muscle and a muscle is capable of work,
1:38:25 but it has limitations.
1:38:28 And the more that the muscle has been trained,
1:38:31 the more capable of work it is.
1:38:39 So if you lift weights, you might start at 50 kilos.
1:38:42 If we’re doing a bench press, you might start at 50 kilos.
1:38:45 And then you go to 55 kilos.
1:38:46 And then the 60 kilos.
1:38:47 And you work your way up.
1:38:49 And that’s the process of growing strong.
1:38:52 And your gut works the exact same way.
1:38:55 So if you expose your gut to food,
1:38:59 specifically a diverse mix of different foods,
1:39:01 you are training your gut.
1:39:05 And your gut will become more capable of consuming those foods over time.
1:39:09 And then you can eventually get to a point where you don’t have to then restrict
1:39:14 based upon your capabilities because the capabilities are limitless.
1:39:16 Now you can eat whatever you want.
1:39:18 And is all fiber the same?
1:39:20 No, not all fiber is the same.
1:39:22 Fiber is a very generic word.
1:39:24 Fiber is like the word protein.
1:39:27 No one would claim that the protein in a fish is the same as a protein in a bean.
1:39:30 Yet both of them contain protein.
1:39:33 Fiber is unique to individual plants.
1:39:38 There are many, many different forms of fiber to the point that we don’t even know how many exist.
1:39:39 So what we know is this.
1:39:41 It’s rather simple though, right?
1:39:43 Despite that complexity, it’s rather simple.
1:39:47 All plants contain fiber.
1:39:51 Every single plant has unique forms of fiber.
1:39:53 We do split it into two major types.
1:39:55 These are again, umbrella terms.
1:39:58 These are big labels.
1:40:01 Soyible and insoluble fiber.
1:40:04 The soluble fiber is the kind that dissolves in a drink.
1:40:05 It disappears.
1:40:07 You don’t even know that it’s there.
1:40:10 Yet typically the soluble fiber is feeding the microbes.
1:40:13 That’s the pre-biotic fiber.
1:40:16 Insoluble fiber is the kind that’s the grit.
1:40:18 So like if you were to add it to a drink, it’s not dissolving.
1:40:20 It’s going to be there no matter what.
1:40:23 You could boil the drink, but there’s still be fiber in it.
1:40:28 So insoluble fiber most of the time is not the pre-biotic fiber,
1:40:30 but it does still serve a purpose.
1:40:34 It helps in terms of your bowel transit, which affects your gut microbes.
1:40:39 It helps in terms of your bowel movements, which affects your gut microbes.
1:40:43 It helps in terms of other things such as your cholesterol and your blood fat control.
1:40:47 So both types of fiber, both soluble and insoluble have advantages.
1:40:50 You don’t need to worry about those individually.
1:40:53 You just need to know that plants have fiber.
1:40:56 Every single plant has a unique form of fiber.
1:41:00 And every single plant will feed unique families of microbes as a result of this.
1:41:04 You have these F goals you talk about in the book when you’re recommending diets
1:41:07 that you think people should consider.
1:41:10 And I think it’s important because this word diet is quite stigmatized, right?
1:41:13 And it can lead to like disordered eating and things like that.
1:41:15 So I think it’s important for us to talk about that a little bit,
1:41:17 but I do want to know what these F goals are.
1:41:18 And when you use the word diet,
1:41:22 you’re not saying something that’s unsustainable in short in order to have a short term.
1:41:23 I’m saying actually the opposite.
1:41:25 Like I want people to have abundance.
1:41:27 In fact, I would, if you were to ask me,
1:41:31 what is the biggest misconception that exists in the gut health space?
1:41:36 My answer to that question would be that people are very quick to restrict
1:41:39 and less quick to add back.
1:41:43 So with regard to F goals, this is my general framework.
1:41:45 It is not the like only thing,
1:41:49 but this is my general framework for how I remember to organize my day
1:41:52 in terms of foods that I’m trying to seek out.
1:41:55 Each letter represents different categories of food.
1:41:57 So F, fruit.
1:42:01 I think fruit has been inappropriately villainized.
1:42:03 I think fruits are amazingly good for us.
1:42:06 In fact, people that consume more fruits are less likely to have diabetes.
1:42:08 They also lose weight.
1:42:09 Fermented.
1:42:10 We’ve talked about fermented.
1:42:14 You can add more diversity to your microbiome by adding fermented food.
1:42:15 We need this.
1:42:17 G, G stands for greens.
1:42:21 Greens have almost no calories yet tons of nutrition.
1:42:22 That’s good.
1:42:26 And grains, by grains, I don’t mean refined grains.
1:42:28 I mean unrefined grains.
1:42:30 So like whole grains.
1:42:32 So good for us.
1:42:36 Those are gut microbiome foods high in fiber and resistance starches.
1:42:39 O stands for omega-3 supersedes.
1:42:42 So that’s chia, flax, hemp, and also walnuts.
1:42:44 Those contain omega-3 fats.
1:42:47 Those are healthy fats that we need more of.
1:42:49 A stands for aromatics.
1:42:52 So that’s onions, garlic, shallots.
1:42:53 They’re delicious.
1:42:57 They’re also great for your heart and protect you from cancer.
1:42:59 L is legumes.
1:43:03 So legumes includes beans, peas, and lentils.
1:43:07 I would go back to saying like to me, this is the number one.
1:43:09 The number one superfood.
1:43:12 Because they’re gut health foods and they’re longevity foods.
1:43:17 And if we look at the evidence with heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes,
1:43:22 all across the board, you’re going to see these reduce your likelihood of having those diseases.
1:43:29 S, when I got to S, I kind of lost my mind because I felt like I have more that I want to say.
1:43:31 So let me just pack it all in.
1:43:34 So S stands for shrooms, meaning mushrooms.
1:43:36 Mushrooms technically are not plants.
1:43:37 They’re fungi.
1:43:41 But they contain fiber and are incredibly good for us.
1:43:43 So they are honorary plants.
1:43:46 S also stands for seaweed.
1:43:51 So most cultures don’t consume seaweed, but like for example in Japan, they do.
1:43:53 And they’re incredibly healthy as a result of this.
1:43:57 It’s another source of unique types of plants with unique sources of fiber.
1:44:02 And the last is, I’m going to, in the book I said sulforaphane,
1:44:07 which refers to a cancer fighting chemical that you will find in broccoli sprouts.
1:44:11 But I want to rephrase this to say sprouts.
1:44:13 So sprouts to me are superfoods.
1:44:15 There’s something magical that happens.
1:44:17 What is a sprout, by the way, for people who are wondering?
1:44:26 You could take any seed and if you quite simply add water,
1:44:29 you will unlock nature.
1:44:32 Because basically that seed is waiting to germinate and grow.
1:44:36 So when you enter this code of basically like unlocking it with water,
1:44:38 it comes to life.
1:44:41 It opens up and out shoots this plant.
1:44:43 And that plant is the sprout.
1:44:49 And the sprout is tremendously high in fiber, protein, but also phytochemicals.
1:44:52 There’s unique chemicals that you will find in these plants.
1:44:59 In a disproportionate level compared to, for example, I mentioned broccoli sprouts.
1:45:08 Broccoli sprouts have 50 to 100 times more cancer fighting chemical than adult broccoli has.
1:45:16 So eating a pinch of broccoli sprouts can provide just as much benefit as eating ahead of broccoli.
1:45:22 So interesting. So if you’re a parent and you follow the F goals diet that you lay out in your book,
1:45:25 the interesting thing I find is if you’re a mother and you’re having a child,
1:45:28 you’re then going to pass on some of your microbiome to that child.
1:45:37 And also I was reading about that mice study conducted that shows how the western diet induces a loss of microbial diversity
1:45:39 that can compound over a series of generations.
1:45:41 Yeah, that was a Justin Sonnenberg study.
1:45:48 So Justin Sonnenberg is the guy that I’m a big fan of. He’s out in Stanford and he actually wrote a blurb on my first book, Fiber Field.
1:45:56 And so the issue is that we want to understand microbial loss that can occur over generations
1:46:00 because clearly our generation is different than our grandparents.
1:46:07 And it’s hard to do with humans because it takes us like these days 30 or more years to create a new generation.
1:46:10 So but with mice, you can do this very quickly.
1:46:16 So he basically started off with mice with a certain level of microbial diversity.
1:46:21 The diversity of the microbiome is a measure of the health of their microbiome.
1:46:24 And then he saw what happened with a low fiber diet.
1:46:31 And so basically what he saw is that if you put them on a low fiber diet, that mouse will start to lose diversity.
1:46:34 And then it will transfer that onto its offspring.
1:46:42 And then that offspring who’s still on a low fiber diet continues to lose diversity and transfer that onto their offspring and so on.
1:46:53 And what he found was that if during this process you intervene and you add back the fiber, you can actually restore on some level the diversity within the microbiome.
1:46:55 You can wake them back up. They can come back.
1:46:59 But the issue is you won’t get all the way back to the starting point.
1:47:05 So there is a certain level of loss that has taken place as a result of those choices that were occurring over generations.
1:47:15 If your grandmother has 1200 species of microbes in her gut as a child, but by the time your mother was born, she had 900, that’s what your mother got.
1:47:23 Then if your mother loses 300 species in her microbiome, now you start off with 600, half of what your grandmother originally had.
1:47:24 Right.
1:47:30 And at some point the loss of those species becomes problematic because each of those species is there with a purpose.
1:47:32 We evolved to have them.
1:47:35 And when they’re absent, they’re not able to do their job.
1:47:41 And the other microbes may not be able to step up to actually do the job of what’s missing.
1:47:47 It’s just such a great case that keeping ourselves healthy is keeping our children healthy as well in many respects.
1:47:48 And we also live with our children.
1:47:54 So we’re creating an ecosystem in our homes of these microbes on everything.
1:47:56 I think that’s completely true.
1:48:12 And I also think that when we think about generational issues that exist, so in many studies they’ll say, if your parents had this, then you’re at risk for this.
1:48:26 And we have assumed that these are genetic things, yet much of the genetic research, much of which has been done by Tim Spector, my partner at Zoey, much of that has not played out to prove that it is in fact genetic.
1:48:33 I think what’s happening is not just the transfer of microbes, I think it’s also the transfer of lifestyle.
1:48:44 And the lifestyle that gets transferred by generation is if it’s unhealthy, then unfortunately you’re transferring along the problems that come with that.
1:48:45 Interesting.
1:48:49 So you’re transferring the lifestyle and the microbes which weren’t able to deal with the lifestyle that caused the disease.
1:48:50 Right.
1:48:51 So interesting.
1:48:54 Sexual attraction is the last thing I want to talk to you about.
1:48:56 Sexual attraction in the gut microbe.
1:48:59 You mentioned earlier sort of erectile dysfunction.
1:49:00 There’s pheromones.
1:49:04 There’s all of these sort of sexual components that lead us to having a great sex life.
1:49:14 What is the link or the association between the gut microbiome and sex and erect good erections and desire and libido, if any at all?
1:49:22 First of all, I think it’s quite clear that when people are sick, which of course they have a damaged gut microbiome, when people are sick, like they’re not, the libido is gone, right?
1:49:24 That’s a part of that territory.
1:49:35 Libido is also associated with hormones and there’s a number of different hormones that our gut microbes have the ability to impact for women estrogen.
1:49:38 There’s a term that’s called the astrobalome.
1:49:48 And astrobalome sounds a little bit like microbiome because basically what we’re referring to are the microbes that control estrogen levels in women.
1:49:51 So the gut microbiome creates estrogen.
1:49:53 It controls the recirculation of estrogen.
1:49:54 Okay.
1:50:00 So estrogen has this circular pattern and in that circular pattern, it can basically be pooped out.
1:50:05 Or it can enter back into the system and the gut microbes are the gatekeepers.
1:50:10 So they have the ability to actually control estrogen levels in the body on a certain level.
1:50:15 This is the reason why if you look at estrogen driven conditions.
1:50:16 Breast cancer.
1:50:21 Breast cancer, ovarian cancer, endometrial cancer, endometriosis.
1:50:26 What you discover is that in these conditions, there’s damage to the gut microbiome in all cases.
1:50:39 So it provides the suggestion, not yet proven, provides the suggestion that damage to the microbiome may be fueling alteration of these estrogen levels.
1:50:40 All right.
1:50:52 The same is also true with testosterone or androgens, male sex hormones, which by the way, of course, all men have estrogen and all women have male sex hormones as well.
1:50:53 It goes both ways.
1:50:57 It’s just the dominance between the two genders.
1:51:04 So there’s a bacteria called clostridium syndens that’s been known to basically affect male testosterone levels.
1:51:20 So and there are conditions, for example, polycystic ovary syndrome in women that it’s the imbalance between the estrogen and the androgens that’s strongly associated with the manifestation of this condition polycystic ovary syndrome.
1:51:24 And we suspect that the gut is central to this.
1:51:25 Okay.
1:51:30 So first of all, the first point is that hormonal related issues are connected back to our gut microbes.
1:51:31 All right.
1:51:33 So libido sex.
1:51:36 Like these things obviously have a hormonal element to them.
1:51:45 And this is the reason why erectile dysfunction or I’m quite sure not as well studied because it’s not as easy to provide like a diagnostic label to this.
1:51:50 But female sexual desire, I’m quite sure would also be associated with the gut microbiome.
1:51:52 I’m quite, I’m almost positive of this.
1:52:02 The question that I come back to that I find to be very interesting is that the role is the role that the microbes play in matchmaking between two human beings.
1:52:03 Between two human beings.
1:52:05 Making me attracted to another human.
1:52:06 Yes.
1:52:08 So and I come back to basic questions.
1:52:10 So now look, I’ve been married for 10 years.
1:52:13 So it’s been a long time since I’ve been a single guy.
1:52:19 But I think we can all relate to you’ve been on a date and there was something not not personality.
1:52:26 There was something about the person, perhaps the smell that you noticed that you’re just like, this is a turn off.
1:52:28 This is not going to work.
1:52:29 Right.
1:52:32 Or it could be in the way that a person kisses.
1:52:41 And these compatibility issues, I’m convinced actually come back come from the gut microbiome that they are in a way matchmakers and that we’re looking for good partners.
1:52:44 I can’t put my finger on exactly what that means.
1:52:46 What makes a good partnership?
1:52:53 But we do know that that partnership we discussed earlier ultimately has an effect on your gut microbiome because you’re going to share.
1:53:00 I am convinced that sexual attraction is brought back to these things and in animal studies, it’s harder to do in humans.
1:53:11 But in animal studies, they have actually discovered that the pheromone levels, how you smell, you’re sort of like, you know, hey, attracting this hormone is connected back to the gut microbes.
1:53:22 So kissing is connected to the gut microbes, pheromones are connected to the gut microbes, sexual desire and libido and male erection are connected to the gut microbes.
1:53:25 I don’t know where the line exists, where it would stop.
1:53:26 I think it’s all connected.
1:53:27 Okay.
1:53:30 So if I want to be more attractive, do I just need to eat some sprouts?
1:53:31 What are you saying here?
1:53:36 Because is it about compatibility or is it about gut health?
1:53:38 I think that it’s very clear.
1:53:42 So attraction is a complex thing.
1:53:43 Of course.
1:53:46 We all have a different take.
1:53:51 You know, I mean, I have friends who there’s someone that they find attractive and it’s completely different for me, right?
1:53:54 And that’s all like, that’s good.
1:53:59 Like I’m glad that we have a different take because variety is necessary in terms of the genetic pool, right?
1:54:02 Like we need everyone, different people to want different things.
1:54:17 That being said, I kind of feel like the, there are certain inequalities in a person that we would universally agree are attractive.
1:54:20 And those tend to be measures of health.
1:54:22 We usually think, yeah, you’re right.
1:54:23 Yeah.
1:54:26 Because I was going to say we think of them as physical things, right?
1:54:28 Things we can see with our eyes, typically.
1:54:34 Or things we can consume with maybe our ears, you know, jokes or humor or wit or personality or whatever.
1:54:40 But it’s completely plausible that there is invisible things.
1:54:45 Well, I don’t think that the visible things can be disconnected from the invisible things.
1:54:56 And that’s one of the messages from the show today is that even the way that you look, the radiance of your skin, your youthful appearance, your body shape.
1:54:59 And there’s many forms of body shapes that are attractive.
1:55:07 I mean, I’m not saying that there’s only one, but these are manifestations of what’s happening on the inside.
1:55:09 Would you recommend supplements?
1:55:13 I know you’ve produced your own supplement, which I have here.
1:55:17 And I’ve actually been drinking as we’ve been talking called 38 Terra, is it?
1:55:18 38 Terra.
1:55:21 And 38 Terra, what that means is 38 trillion.
1:55:25 So this is in reference to the 38 trillion microbes that live inside of us.
1:55:29 And this particular product is called daily microbiome nutrition.
1:55:38 So in this product, we are using specific ingredients at specific doses that have been clinically proven to have an effect and to have a benefit for your body.
1:55:41 That includes things like improving your gut microbiome.
1:55:43 It also means improving your bowel movements.
1:55:48 We talked about going from a Bristol one or two or a Bristol six or seven back to a Bristol four.
1:55:52 That’s what I’m talking about right now, but also reducing digestive symptoms.
1:55:57 So these are the benefits that we would get from regular use of a pre-biotic.
1:55:58 It’s easy.
1:55:59 It’s a powder.
1:56:01 You’ve been drinking it.
1:56:02 I think it tastes pretty good.
1:56:03 I don’t know what you think.
1:56:04 I was shocked.
1:56:05 Yep.
1:56:06 And it was so delicious.
1:56:07 Yeah, refreshing.
1:56:08 I’ve actually finished it all.
1:56:11 I started the interview with it in this bottle here and it’s all gone.
1:56:13 Where do people find this 38 Terra?
1:56:15 38 Terra is available at our website.
1:56:20 So you come to 38terra, 38terra.com.
1:56:24 And we are launching in mid January for the first time.
1:56:27 We’re launching in the US and Australia.
1:56:34 So in the UK, it may be more difficult to get access to, but just be aware that if there’s enough of a demand,
1:56:36 then we would serve that demand.
1:56:38 But if I am in the UK, I can still order it.
1:56:41 There would just be probably shipping costs and stuff like that.
1:56:42 Just pay the shipping cost.
1:56:43 Okay.
1:56:44 Super interesting.
1:56:49 I’ve learned so much today and it’s crazy because I didn’t think I had much else to learn about the gut microbiome.
1:56:53 I had lots of conversations about it, but it’s really, it’s inspired me.
1:56:58 It’s informed me and it’s given me a sort of actionable blueprint to start taking action in my life.
1:57:03 And if I were just to close that out, you know, what are the takeaway messages for everyone?
1:57:09 Eat a wide variety of plants, fruits, vegetables, whole grains, seeds, nuts, legumes, every single one of these.
1:57:10 Coffee?
1:57:11 Coffee counts.
1:57:12 Great.
1:57:13 Absolutely.
1:57:15 So add more variety to your diet.
1:57:17 Add fermented food to your diet.
1:57:19 Get outside and exercise.
1:57:20 Get a good night’s rest.
1:57:22 Hug that person that you care about.
1:57:24 Focus on human connection.
1:57:26 Like these to me are where the priorities are at.
1:57:30 Many of these things, by the way, are completely free.
1:57:35 We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question not knowing who they’re going to be leaving it for.
1:57:37 And the question that has been left for you.
1:57:41 When have you been happiest in your life?
1:57:45 You may define happy in any way you like.
1:57:48 Happiness is, I think, what really matters.
1:57:56 And we, I think we have a problem in today’s world of excessively fixating on the objective things like, like money.
1:57:59 And losing track of the things that are less measurable.
1:58:01 I have no clue how happy you are at home.
1:58:03 I have no clue, right?
1:58:06 I have an idea of where you’re at financially.
1:58:10 Yet this is where the essence of life is.
1:58:14 And to me, my happiness comes from my family.
1:58:23 It’s the side of me that you wouldn’t know unless you like literally were my friend in Charleston, South Carolina and spending time with me, the real person, right?
1:58:31 But regardless of what you see on this camera or here on this episode, we are real people with real lives.
1:58:39 And to me, my happiness comes from the pursuit of things with my family, doing everything within my power to fight for them.
1:58:41 And also just to enjoy time with them.
1:58:43 That’s what it’s about.
1:58:45 That’s a beautiful answer.
1:58:47 Thank you so much, Dr. Will.
1:58:54 You have a remarkable ability to communicate, but also you have a wealth of knowledge that is unrivaled as it relates to the issues we’re talking about today.
1:58:56 And it’s really, really incredible.
1:58:57 You’re really, really incredible.
1:59:04 And you’re doing so much fantastic work for so many people because it wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I learned about the gut microbiome.
1:59:10 And I know because I can see the data that the society at large are on a journey of now understanding the gut more and more.
1:59:14 And the research that’s coming out every year is pushing us closer to that understanding.
1:59:20 And that understanding will unlock the things that we’re all aiming for in our lives which culminate in what you said there, which is happiness.
1:59:21 So that’s the work you’re doing.
1:59:23 You’re increasing public happiness.
1:59:26 And I think that’s something that’s an incredibly worthy mission.
1:59:27 So I thank you for that.
1:59:34 On behalf of all the people that are listening today that got to this part in the conversation and that don’t have a means of reaching you directly.
1:59:36 Thank you on behalf of all of us.
1:59:40 Thank you. I’m honored to come on the show with you.
1:59:45 And for people who want to continue that conversation, this is why I put things out into the world.
1:59:49 And you can find me on social media as the Gut Health MD, Instagram, Facebook.
1:59:53 I am on TikTok, but I think a 14 year old stole my handle.
1:59:56 So the Gut Health MD underscore is how you’ll find me there.
2:00:01 But also you can come to my website, theplantfedgut.com, sign up for my free email newsletter.
2:00:02 That’s how I communicate.
2:00:05 Like I think the most effectively, like I break down studies there.
2:00:07 So come sign up for my email newsletter.
2:00:10 And if you want to check out 38 Terra, you can learn more there as well.
2:00:12 I’m going to put everything in the show notes.
2:00:15 I’m also going to put in the show notes, which is the first time I’ve ever done this.
2:00:19 I’m going to put the brief for this conversation in the show notes.
2:00:26 And what the brief is, it’s essentially all of the research my team did and they condense it down into about 10 pages.
2:00:31 And I think that’s really important because we’ve covered so much ground here today that someone just listening,
2:00:35 someone who was having like a second screen experience or was doing the dishes or on the tube or whatever.
2:00:37 There’s a lot there.
2:00:42 The 10 pages you’ll find in the show notes summarise this conversation, the key takeaways and the actual insights.
2:00:46 And this is something I’m actually going to start doing on an ongoing basis.
2:00:50 Also the materials we discussed in this conversation, like the Bristol Stool Chart
2:00:54 and all of the other information that you talked about, which will pull from you after this conversation,
2:01:00 will be in the show notes, including links to find Dr. Will everywhere on social media and on his website.
2:01:03 Amazing. That sounds so cool. Can’t wait to check that out.
2:01:06 Do you need a podcast to listen to next?
2:01:13 We’ve discovered that people who liked this episode also tend to absolutely love another recent episode we’ve done.
2:01:16 So I’ve linked that episode in the description below.
2:01:18 I know you’ll enjoy it.
2:01:28 [Music]