Episode Description:

Are you spending hundreds of dollars a month on supplements you can’t even remember why you’re taking? Dr. Pedram Shojai exposes how the $50 billion supplement industry has convinced health-conscious people to swallow 20-30 pills daily—creating more confusion and expense than actual health benefits. He reveals the uncomfortable truth: most people are medicating symptoms they don’t have, optimizing pathways that aren’t broken, and actually creating deficiencies through nutrient competition and over-supplementation.

In this practical discussion, Dr. Shojai provides an evidence-based framework for strategic supplementation, including the three core supplements most people actually need and a decision tree to eliminate unnecessary pills. You’ll learn why “test, don’t guess” is the most important principle, discover which of three supplement user types you are, and understand why the healthiest people aren’t taking the most supplements—they’re taking the right ones for specific needs, for appropriate durations, and they know when to stop. This episode will save you money, reduce your pill burden, and help you focus on what truly moves the needle in your health.

Listen to the episode on Spotify here or on your favorite podcast platforms and check out the Free 5-Day Reset here.

Podcast show notes:

Key Topics Covered

The Supplement Trap [00:00:00]

• The reality check: counting bottles in your supplement cabinet
• Why people spend $300-500/month on 20-30 pills daily
• The uncomfortable truth: more supplements don’t equal more health

The Industry’s Dirty Secret [00:03:00]

• How the $50 billion supplement industry creates anxiety about deficiencies
• Marketing psychology: universal deficiencies, optimization promises, and biohacker fantasies
• Why you’re medicating symptoms you probably don’t have

Hidden Problems With Over-Supplementation [00:05:00]

• Nutrient competition and interference (calcium blocks iron, zinc competes with copper)
• Creating deficiencies by over-supplementing
• Liver and kidney burden from processing excess nutrients
• The cost of expensive urine from mega-dosing water-soluble vitamins

Three Types of Supplement Users [00:07:00]

1. The Deficiency Corrector (appropriate use): Confirmed deficiencies via testing, targeted supplements temporarily, retest and adjust
2. The Optimization Chaser (the trap): Already healthy but wanting peak performance, taking everything that might help
3. The Symptom Medicator (misguided): Treating symptoms with pills instead of addressing root causes

Evidence-Based Priority Stacking [00:09:00]

Tier One – The Foundation: Test, Don’t Guess

• Vitamin D [00:10:00]: 40% of Americans are deficient; test 25-hydroxy vitamin D; dose 1,000-5,000 IU with K2
• Omega-3s [00:11:00]: Poor omega-3 to -6 ratios in most Americans; Omega-3 index test targeting >8%; dose 1-2g combined EPA/DHA daily
• Magnesium [00:11:00]: RBC magnesium testing (not serum); 300-400mg; glycinate for sleep/calming, threonate for brain, citrate for constipation
• B12 [00:12:00]: Critical for vegetarians/vegans; absorption decreases with age; 500-1,000 micrograms daily of methylcobalamin

Tier Two – Targeted Therapeutics [00:13:00]

• Probiotics: After antibiotics or for confirmed gut dysbiosis only
• Digestive enzymes: Temporary support (30-60 days) while healing the gut, not a lifelong crutch
• Vitamin C: During active infection or immune challenges, days to 1-2 weeks maximum
• Adaptogens: For verified HPA axis dysfunction, 6-12 weeks on, 4 weeks off to avoid suppressing root issues

Tier Three – Usually Unnecessary [00:15:00]

• Most multivitamins are “expensive urine” with subtherapeutic doses
• Kitchen sink formulas with 20+ ingredients provide ineffective dosing
• Exception: Prenatal vitamins during pregnancy

The Decision Tree Framework [00:16:00] Before adding any supplement, ask:

1. Do I have a confirmed deficiency or clear symptom? (No = don’t supplement)
2. Have I addressed the root cause? (Sleep, stress, diet, movement)
3. Is there evidence this supplement addresses my specific issue?
4. Can I get this from food or lifestyle changes?
5. How will I measure if it’s working?
6. What’s my timeline for reassessment?

The Core Three Supplements [00:17:00] For most people, these three cover the most common, impactful deficiencies:

1. Vitamin D3 + K2 (morning with fatty meal, monitor every 6 months)
2. Omega-3s (1-2g EPA/DHA with meal, monitor index annually)
3. Magnesium (evening, 300-400mg, monitor symptom resolution)

The One-at-a-Time Protocol [00:18:00]

• Weeks 1-2: Establish baseline, track symptoms on 1-10 scale
• Weeks 3-6: Add ONE supplement only, track same metrics
• Week 7: Assess improvement or changes
• Weeks 8-12: Retest and evaluate
• Never change multiple things at once or you won’t know what helped

The Paradox of Optimization [00:20:00]

• The healthiest people aren’t taking the most supplements
• Supplements are tools, not a lifestyle—meant to correct deficiencies temporarily
• The more you optimize sleep, stress management, real food, and movement, the less supplementation you need
• Your body is intelligent and often heals without pharmaceutical-grade intervention when given proper foundations

Understanding Practitioner Incentives [00:22:00]

• Acupuncturists get paid for needles, chiropractors for adjustments
• Many naturopaths and functional medicine practitioners generate revenue from supplement sales
• Medical doctors are incentivized to prescribe drugs quickly
• Important to understand these business models when receiving recommendations

Action Steps

1. Audit your current supplements using the decision tree
2. Eliminate everything you can’t justify with clear reasoning
3. Get tested for core nutrients (vitamin D, omega-3 index, magnesium)
4. Stop taking anything you can’t identify a clear purpose for
5. Check in with yourself in two weeks

Key Takeaways

• Simplicity is the primary medicine
• The goal should be fewer supplements over time, not more
• Supplements should correct deficiencies, support healing temporarily, and bridge gaps—not replace healthy food, sleep, or stress management
• Test, don’t guess
• When you stop managing dozens of bottles and start trusting your body’s wisdom, health becomes simpler, cheaper, and more sustainable

Resources Mentioned

Testing recommendations: 25-hydroxy vitamin D, Omega-3 index, RBC magnesium, serum B12/methylmalonic acid

Third-party tested omega-3 brands: Jeff Bland, Thorne (mentioned as “the gin”)

Various forms of magnesium: glycinate, threonate, citrate

Testing recommendations: 25-hydroxy vitamin D, Omega-3 index, RBC magnesium, serum B12/methylmalonic acid

This episode is for educational purposes only and not intended as medical advice. Consult with qualified healthcare practitioners for personalized guidance.

www.theurbanmonk.com

The post The Supplement Trap: What You Actually Need appeared first on The Urban Monk.

Shawn Stevenson is the creator and host of The Model Health Show, featured as the #1 Fitness & Nutrition podcast on iTunes. He’s one of my favorite people in this space. You’ll see why…

Listen to the episode on Spotify here or on your favorite podcast platform and check out the Urban Monk Academy here.

Get Shawn’s new Family Cookbook HERE.

Podcast transcript:

Eating Together – with Guest Shawn Stevenson

[00:00:00] 

Welcome back urban monk here with an old buddy Shawn Stevenson. He’s been around the block have known him for years. I love the work that he’s doing. Why. It’s just a raw, honest, uh, sane voice in the health and wellness space. He’s not touting the miracle stuff he’s telling you what to do in lifestyle and the parameters that actually get the job done without all the hyperbole, uh, love honest people who are telling the truth. It’s not the quick easy fix, but it is the way forward. 

 Today we’re going to talk about. Eating together. We’re going to talk about spending time as a family spending time with loved ones, all the important stuff that we all know we should be doing. Sean jumps into the science. He delves deep into the why. And I think after this, you’re going to want to break bread, whether it’s gluten or gluten free with the people you love in your life. 

Enjoy.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Sean, it is so good to see you. I’m so happy to be back in touch with you. Uh, you’re one of my favorites on planet [00:01:00] Earth, man.

Shawn Stevenson: On earth. That’s huge, man. I’m so grateful. So grateful for that.

Dr Pedram Shojai: You, um, you’re one of the most authentic, Originally, you know, you’ve been here for a long time doing this stuff and you’ve just stayed true to the message and true to the real stuff. There’s a lot of flashy shit that’s come and gone. Um, health and wellness, you know, shiny objects. There’s, there’s a lot of that we could talk about.

Um, but you’re, you’re a dude that’s been seasoned, that’s been around talking about stuff like sleep and eating with your family. And you know, just that, that really important key lifestyle stuff. That’s so highly leveraged, but sometimes it’s not as sexy to talk about because it doesn’t seem like a get rich quick scheme.

And so I just love this conversation and I love being able to have it with someone who’s been around the block and I know you do your homework. So how’d you get into this as your next big project?

Shawn Stevenson: I didn’t know you were going to do this, but you said the key word. You [00:02:00] said sexy. You said sexy. And you know what? I think that my gift and, you know, kind of my Dharma, you know, what I was kind of put together through my own patchwork quilt of life experiences was to make these topics sexy, you know, because like you said, humans are a lot like big, you know, Uh, adult weird cats, you know, just shining object and we’re just chasing after.

And, um, I just had a whole image of the play cats, by the way, which the film apparently didn’t turn out very well. Um, but with that being said, really bringing some, uh, attractiveness to the things that are most pertinent, that are most obvious because we humans have been doing them for thousands and thousands of years.

And they helped us to become the very, very remarkable species that we are. But today we are just inundated with so much, so much of everything, everything. [00:03:00] And so I believe that we are, uh, in an age of great distraction. You know, I see kids hanging out now with their friends on their phone, right? So the kids get together as five friends.

They’re hanging out together, but they’re all on their phone. They might stop to share a meme or something. But that’s hanging out now. They’re not really connecting. They’re literally in another place, you know, these devices divide us and, but there’s a right use of, of technology for sure. You know, and that’s part like right now and being able to see my friend and to connect, but we also do this in the real world.

And that’s the thing for us to understand. Like this can be a bridge, this can be a supplement. But we cannot replace the real food of human connection and the biggest data set that we have on human longevity. I know the guy, all right, Harvard director of the longest running longitudinal human study on how long we [00:04:00] live, how long humans live, and he came into it much like myself.

He’s very skeptical. You know, I’m not, let me not say that. We’re not very skeptical, but we tend to be more skeptical, but open, all right? And so he went into the data because he felt like the lifespan is going to be determined by, you know, diet. It’s going to be determined by, you know, health care access, by exercise, all these different things.

But their data revealed that the number one factor that determines how long people live and how long they live healthfully, that’s the key. Is the quality of their relationships humans with what he refers to as strong social bonds live longer and more healthfully than anyone else. And this was mirrored and kind of like that conversation a couple years ago that I had with him was an affirmation, but the jumping off point for me, even connecting with him in the first place [00:05:00] was a huge meta analysis.

It’s one of the biggest studies ever conducted on human longevity. It included 148 studies and about 300, 000 humans and the researchers compiled all the data on the various lifestyle factors of these, you know, again, 300, 000, uh, human beings. And what stood out in the data was that humans who have strong social bonds, humans who have strong, healthy relationships had a listen to this bedroom had a 50 percent reduction.

In all cause mortality, right? A 50 percent reduction from death from essentially all causes when people have healthy relationships. And yes, obesity mattered. Yes. Uh, quitting smoking mattered, like all these things we know to be true, but this was by far the most impactful thing on how people, how long people live.

And [00:06:00] I’m on a mission to, you know, I’m shouting this from the rooftops, but also, you know, doing my, my brand. of communication, which is let’s make this sexy. We know that relationships matter, but we don’t know that it matters this much. And we’re living at a time when we’re more fractured than ever. We’re superficially connected.

We’ve got all of these quote friends and followers. We are more fractured even in our own house, let alone the fact that we are this generation, you know, the most recent generations. have been more and more separate from, uh, you know, our, our, our parents, grandparents, like we evolved in tribes and being close together.

And so so many families are, are, are distant, but now we’re distant in our own households because we can be under the same roof, but be in completely different universes because of our devices. Right. And so this message is more important than ever not to [00:07:00] villainize our devices. But to use them with intelligence so that they’re not using us and to make sure that we’re getting these.

And this is what we’ll talk about. I’m going to pass it back to you, but these are epigenetic inputs. Our relationships are one of the most powerful epigenetic controllers. So the things that are above genetic control, determining how in which genes, what kind of compilation of our genes are getting expressed and how other genes are getting muted.

And we can kind of dig in on why. And how it’s affecting our gene expression. 

Dr Pedram Shojai: I want to quickly highlight, double click, underline what you said in just within the context of the impact would have the nuclear bomb that would go off in the pharma industry. If they had that kind of results with anything, right? I mean, you have big blockbuster drugs that are barely performing 1 percent over high placebo [00:08:00] responders and they are pummeling the cable news networks with advertising.

Day in, day out saying, take, you know, whatever it is, here’s all the side effects, but it doesn’t matter because I’ve told you to do it enough times. You’re going to do it ridiculous amounts of propaganda and messaging for meager results. This is so huge. The problem is. How the hell are you making money telling people to make friends and hang out with their family?

So there’s no, it’s not market driven because there’s no blockbuster drug on it. But I just want our listeners to hear the magnitude of the importance of something like this. There is no drug that can do this, this well,

Shawn Stevenson: Not even close, not even close. And then just to reframe it, we’re talking about a 50 percent increase in your longevity, a 50 percent increase, a 50 percent [00:09:00] boost in your longevity when you have strong social bonds. And versus, like you said, meager results. And part of this is because again, our relationships impact so many facets of our health, our metabolic health, what’s going on with our hormones, our microbiome, the list goes on.

All these boxes are getting checked in this powerful cascade versus we have a system that has I almost said perfected, but that would be the wrong term that has personified and kind of focused on isolating one thing, right? Oh, GLP 1. We got it. All right. this is a true, this is coming from, I’ve been in this field for 22 years.

I’m a college educated nutritionist. All right. In my book before this whole massive wave of these GLP 1 drugs came, In my book that, you know, I wrote [00:10:00] essentially in 2020, um, in 2019, 2018, I was working on this book. I was talking about all manner of these, uh, appetite, appetite regulating hormones, neurotransmitters.

You know, I was talking about GLP 1. I was talking about CCK. I was talking about adiponectin. Because in school, of course, I got a little, little sprinkling of like leptin and ghrelin there. They exist there around, but the stories, the human body is so magnificent. We still don’t know a fraction of the stuff.

All right. And so, but I was looking at this through the lens because again, I didn’t know that these were in the pipeline of how food and how certain exposures, environmental exposures. lifestyle factors that we kind of put in this blanket statement, you know, exercise how all these things affect GLP leptin and all this stuff.

And so they found this. isolated thing. And the market has exploded because they are effective in doing a certain thing. Now, when you mentioned [00:11:00] those drug commercials, I just, because my, my youngest son is 13 and, uh, he plays AAU basketball here in LA and I’m in Irvine a lot, you know, in your neck of the woods, you know, these different tournaments.

And, uh, so we started watching a lot more NBA. And because of that, I, you know, we haven’t had cable for years, but I got like a little program, whatever, YouTube TV or something. So we could watch some of these games, but there’s commercial breaks between them. I have never in my, I’m talking every commercial break.

There’s a drug ad. And one of them that just kept coming on, on repeat over and over again was for the GLP, uh, GLP one drugs. And this one was Uh, I think it was Manjaro, but in this particular one, again, there’s only two countries that really allow this. And New Zealand has so much more stringent regulations on what people can, these companies can, can do because [00:12:00] in these commercials, they’re putting on all of this imagery of joy of happiness and the particular commercial they’re in like a flight simulator, like basically a skydiving simulator, right.

Getting blown around. And they’re like, why there’s some other people line dancing. While they’re saying, you know, uh, violent diarrhea, you know, vomiting death. Right. And I look over my son. I’m like, what if the violent diarrhea happens while they’re in the flight simulator? He’s like the, the poop’s going to go up, dad, you know, it’s going to hit the fan.

You’re going to hit the ceiling. And, um, but you know, we’ve got, uh, and many of us, especially if they’re listening to this, they’ve, uh, they’re, they’re aware they’re awake to this. They could see this stuff that’s happening right in front of us. But for many people, this is very powerful. It’s called programming, you know, and it’s just like normalizing this capacity to [00:13:00] ask your doctor to tell your doc, tell your doctor the drugs that you want and not having a real relationship.

And just kind of feeding into the system that already exists, regardless of how, um, well intentioned a physician might be, or even the person, because they want to get a result. They want to be in the flight simulator. They want to line dance and be happy. I want that. This is the way to do it. Ask your doctor for this new drug we have for you.

So I’m saying all that to say that, you know, right now there is never in, in, in again, my 22 years, I’ve never seen such a. Such a massive wave of people who are interested in being healthy, who are proactively. And by the way, let me, let me say this too. I’ve never met somebody who didn’t want to be healthy.

All right. I had a clinical practice, clinical practice for many, many years. Everybody wanted to be healthy. They might have stories as to why they can’t have that health. You know, my, [00:14:00] my family, you know, my background, all the things that I’ve been through, you know, I don’t have the resources, all these different things.

I’ve seen all these reasons why they’ve, you know, Relented, they’ve developed and learned helplessness, possibly, and they say, you know, well, that’s not for me, but they want it. If they could have it, they’d get it. And so right now there’s this movement putting, uh, we can’t say putting it into people’s hands, waking people up to the fact that it’s already in their hands.

The power is in your hands already. And I believe, you know, being somebody again, food was my bridge into this, into my own health, into impacting the lives of so many people. But then I saw a gap. I saw that even with the best diet, even with the exercise dialed in, if people aren’t sleeping, they’re not healing.

They’re not, they’re not there. That can be the thing that’s tearing their immune system apart. Insulin resistance. The list goes on and on. Once we got that right, we got people well. Even through that exercise, [00:15:00] you know, I trained as a strength conditioning coach for many years as well. The university that I went to, all of these things matter.

Stress, you know, meditation. I’ve been meditating for, you know, almost 20 years now too. Okay. I love it. I love it. And the most powerful thing appears to be our relationships because guess, guess what influences my meditation practice more than anything? My family. My family. All right. Guess who impacts my exercise practice more than anything?

My family. My sleep. My family. What I’m eating. My family. My friends. My community. Are the biggest influence on all the choices that I’m making. So it’s an epi social controller. All right. But to dig in on the epi genetic portion of this. And why I’ve married this together with a very obvious, but maybe not so obvious way.

How do we get this input? Well, the way that we’ve done this traditionally, when the [00:16:00] tribe comes together is when it’s time to eat is, you know, if people want to visualize what we see, um, with, uh, this kind of dramatization of something that’s historic, a luau, right? So it’s like, of course there’s song and dance and all these beautiful things.

But this was something that existed where people were hunting and gathering and everybody had a job. Everybody was everybody was participating and celebrating the fact that we are exchanging. We are imbuing this food from nature to be a part of us as people and to celebrate that. And also it was through that, that history was passed down as well through song and dance because there’s certain things about us, music, sound, deeply embed stuff.

I can, I guarantee you, if I played a certain song right now from somebody [00:17:00] had, maybe they haven’t heard in 30 years. All right. It might be a Snoop Dogg song. All right. Or it might be a Billy Joel song, but you’re going to know those lyrics front and back because music embedded that. And so if you want to think about that paradigm, that’s when everybody got together under the umbrella of food and celebration.

And so with all the busyness of our lives. I was looking at how, how can we marry these together? Is there data on this? And this is what I found. I’m going to rattle off three quick studies. One study was conducted by researchers at Harvard and they’d been tracking, uh, family eating behaviors and health outcomes for years.

And I couldn’t believe that nobody knew this. And the, of course, you know, there’s sometimes these, you know, some of these scientists are not very vocal and able to communicate. And so I found this data and they found that essentially when families eat together on a regular basis, which I’ll, I’ll give some specifics on what that regular basis means.

Thank you. [00:18:00] They found that they had a significant increase, like radically higher intake of vital nutrients that protected those family members from chronic diseases. Like that’s weird. And they ate significantly less,

Dr Pedram Shojai: same food, same meals,

Shawn Stevenson: yes,

Dr Pedram Shojai: food, same meals. Yes.

Shawn Stevenson: they also found significantly less consumption of ultra processed foods by these family members, namely chips and soda.

And these kind of, um, villain esque compounds in food that are kind of tied to some chronic diseases. They tended to eat less of those things when they were eating together with their family. There was something strange here. Now pivot that over into I’m a big minimum effective dose guy for education.

What does it mean? Consistent? Like on a regular basis? What does it mean? Well, a study published in the journal pediatrics looked at the health outcome for children and they found that when children ate with [00:19:00] their family, At least three meals a week. Three was that minimum effective dose, three or more meals a week.

So their parents, caregivers, um, you know, the adults were entrusted with caring for them. When they ate dinner with them, at least three meals a week, they had a dramatically lowered incidence of developing eating disorders and obesity. Their risk of developing obesity plummeted when they ate with their family on a consistent basis.

And you couple that with, and I’ll just share one more, this really interesting study that was done looking at, because for me, I also, I’m always looking at what’s the argument. What’s the argument? Because that sounds nice. You had to sit down and eat with your family. I didn’t do that when I was a kid. I ate what I can.

I’m not exaggerating. I can count on my hands. How many times I sat down and ate a meal with my parents. My mother and my stepfather, one of them was always gone. And the other one just kind of just wasn’t like the kids, my, me and my brother and sister would just kind of grab [00:20:00] food and sit around somewhere, find a place to sit.

We didn’t have that unless it was a holiday. Right. And so for me, that brings up the argument of access. Well, that sounds nice. You could sit and eat with your family. Well, this study was done on minority children who were generally in this context of a lower income environment. And they found that when these children ate with their family members, At least four meals a week, didn’t matter which meal, lunch, dinner, breakfast, didn’t matter.

A lot of it was breakfast, actually. And, the researchers noted, when the TV was never or rarely on, these children ate five servings of fruits and vegetables at least five days a week, and dramatically less consumption of ultra processed foods, chips and soda. There’s something psychological that changes the environment when you know we have a culture of eating together.

And it’s protective regardless of where we are on the social spectrum, the income spectrum. If my family would have known that this would have helped the health of [00:21:00] us, you know, my parents, the health of their children, I know that they would have been more adamant about doing it. They just didn’t know.

They didn’t know that it matters. And so that’s just scratching the surface. I kind of focused on kids there a little bit, but there’s a lot of data on adults as well.

Dr Pedram Shojai: There’s a lot to be said around breakdown of traditions last 50 years. I mean, the, the way three, four generations ago probably did, it was different than the last couple of generations. I’m curious. Did you find any data suggesting that being together like this epigenetic expression and what’s happening when you’re just with people, is it bringing down cortisol levels?

Is it shifting secretory IGA? Is it fixing certain secretions in the microbiome or hydrochloric acid? I mean, there must be all sorts of endogenous pathways and endocrine functionality that gets triggered when you’re sitting down with your [00:22:00] loved ones and saying, it’s safe. We get to eat.

Shawn Stevenson: I’m going to lead into it and then bullet point what those are. But I think a very telling kind of, uh, overarching, like a meta picture at this. was a study that was done with researchers at IBM. So people working in tech, which can be, you know, very stressful. And they, they were tracking these workers and they found that when they were able to consistently quote, make it home for dinner and have dinner with their family on a consistent basis.

And Their work morale stayed high, productivity stayed high, and their stress levels stayed low or manageable as far as like, you know, just being able to, this is the key word, metabolize stress. They were able to metabolize stress, but when obligations or choices led to them not eating with their family on a consistent basis, Work productivity plummets, job satisfaction [00:23:00] plummets, stress levels skyrocket.

And so this is really the place to look is the impact that it has on stress. Being around people that you know and love, as you know, you’ve talked about this many times as well, it changes our chemistry, right? And this is, a lot of this is very, very unconscious. One of those hormones that is getting its time in the, in the sun right now is oxytocin.

You know, both of us again, been talking about this for years and our mutual friend, Sarah Gottfried, uh, as well. And I remember she’s jumping in my mind for some reason, but I remember her saying that women do oxytocin really good. Women do oxytocin really good being around other women, but oxytocin has gotten a couple of nicknames, the love hormone, cuddle hormone. I don’t like to place a label on any of these because they do so many other things and so many other things are involved in love and feelings of affection, but it’s very powerful in that. And so just [00:24:00] being around, especially close proximity to people that you care about, you start to produce more oxytocin.

Now here’s why this matters. Oxytocin is one of the few compounds that we’ve seen. has this neutralizing effect on cortisol. All right. And obviously cortisol has gotten so much conversation over the years. A lot of it is skewed too far into it’s a bad guy. It’s not, we need cortisol deeply. We cannot, we cannot live without it, but when it’s produced.

Too much too low at the wrong times and heavy amounts all these different things. It can really mess this up a lot All right Oxytocin has been found to kind of come in and balance out neutralize Cortisol bring it down and this speaks to let’s step out a little bit What are these two things involved in our nervous system parasympathetic?

Sympathetic, right? Sympathetic being that fight or [00:25:00] flight. Parasympathetic rest and digest. Rest and digest. So this marries so perfectly with our food and with sitting down and eating a meal together because we are going to assimilate that nutrition so much better. Di and this is what we know, digestion is improved when we eat with others.

assimilation, elimination, all of these things are improved because of this shift over to that relaxation, parasympathetic rest and digest. And let me take another little pivot really quickly and just talk about one of the psychological implications. Today, When we are so fractured, when we have massive epidemics, I just was talking with, uh, incredibly, he’s arguably the top psychiatrist out there right now, a Harvard [00:26:00] psychiatrist.

And he was sharing with me that this mental health epidemic, it’s not because of, you know, better testing, you know, it’s not because of, you know, we’re just, uh, you know, we’re just looking for it. It he’s, he’s seen it in his practice. an explosion of all manner of mental health issues. And today, depression, if people don’t know this, and this is according to the NIH, it’s the number one cause of disability and absenteeism today in the United States.

Number one cause. And so we are existing in an environment where we feel so isolated. We feel alone, even if we’re with other people. And it’s because we’re not truly connecting. It’s a part of it. There’s many layers to this, but this is an incredible, this is an important part of this. And I gotta share this.

We have a psychological need to feel seen. To feel like we matter. [00:27:00] To know that we exist. And that we have value and we cannot have that affirmed if our parents, if our caregivers, if our teachers, if the adults in our life are not truly seeing us and being present. This epidemic with children and their technology is because of us, us in our, you know, iPhone teddy bears that we’re sleeping with.

All right. This has become normalized. And so the kids are just being born into it. We have a need to feel seen and sitting down at the dinner table together. It’s a unifier. It’s an opportunity for our children, for our significant other, for our family members to know that they matter, to look at them, to see them, to listen to the sound of their voice, to be present with them, to let them know that their voice matters, that their perspective matters, that they have [00:28:00] value.

And so I just want to add that little pivot point in there of just this kind of psychological and all the thing that does because all of our thoughts create chemistry in our bodies. And we’re instantly releasing a cascade of tonic chemicals, you know, things that are affirmative that reduce inflammation.

That’s another thing seen in the data is when we’re eating with our family member, when we’re in close proximity to people that we love, we have a shift over in a gene in our gene expression that, um, that involves genes related to inflammation. And inflammation, as you know, is another one of those things that’s killing us.

It’s not, but it’s not, it’s not all bad if we need inflammation, but if it’s too high, yeah, it could take us out prematurely.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Quick commercial break. If you have not checked out my new sanctuary course, do yourself a favor. Why do I feel that home is so important because. We could run and [00:29:00] we could run, but eventually you come back to a place called home. If it is not a healing sanctuary, that makes you feel. That you are restoring, resting, recovering that you feel safe. Physiologically neurologically psychologically, emotionally, spiritually, you are not getting the safe Harbor. 

You need to heal your body. And move in the world the way you want to check out the course, just go to my site, the urban monk.com. You’ll see it there.

There’s so many places to go with this. I want to start by saying there’s. Someone listening to this right now that is pondering how they would need to rehabilitate themselves back into three dimensions. Right? Like the idea of sitting at a table with people that you don’t have. Relations with and haven’t really engaged with in three, four, five years sounds daunting, right?

So you have this like I’m isolated as a human and I don’t really hang with my family side of this And then you [00:30:00] also have the orthorexic side, which is like everything is poison. Everything is gmo Everything is out to get you you could have one organic chia seed with you know Uh filtered water and that’s your dinner and that’s the only thing that’s going to not give you cancer And so all these stressors around food supply You And the stressors around isolation coming together at the table.

How do we rehab our way into this? How do we tip to our way back to the dinner table and, and kind of, you know, light the fire again and get back to this tradition.

Shawn Stevenson: Yeah. That’s a great question. Thank you for that. Because the number one thing it’s already, it’s already happened. If somebody’s like, I want this, the awareness is the first domino. The intention is so powerful. That power of intention and just knowing that this is something that I want to do and moving towards that is going to start to reveal and bring things as a fold.

Now, if this has not been your culture, no one said this was going to be easy, especially if kids are involved and [00:31:00] they have a certain culture and way that they like to go about stuff. Everybody has their own personality, their own hopes and dreams. But this brings into the power of presence right now.

Right. Us getting off of our devices. And understanding a powerful truth. We know our family members. We know our kids. We know our significant other better than anybody. We know them. We know what motivates them. We know what demotivates them. We know exactly what to say and do for them to do things that we kind of want them to do.

All right. And, but sometimes, honestly, again, like I know the things that my wife likes, but sometimes just, I rebel. Like, why do I gotta, why don’t you just, you know, I’m just, it’s that internal, but I make myself suffer when I don’t just speak to her, give her the things that she wants, communicate in the way that she likes.

And then everything works out for me, you [00:32:00] know, but it takes me to be present to suspend my own biases. And there’s this powerful quote that’s coming up for me. That was from St. Francis of Assisi. And he said, seek first to understand and then to be understood, right? Seek first to understand and then to be understood.

And so if we’re paying attention and seeking to understand our children, we know exactly what to do to get them on board with sitting down and having a great family dinner together, just spending time together like this. We know what to do. Now I can give you a couple of examples. Um, you know, my, my two youngest are my, my sons and One of them is very much the last minute guy, alright?

Paper’s due tomorrow, I’m gonna work on it tonight. You know, he’s had [00:33:00] three weeks. Like, that’s, he’s that personality. Um, but also very, uh, a lot of variety, a lot of, uh, sporadic, you know, joy, you know, like, Hey, you want to go do this? Yeah, let’s go. Like that kind of thing. My youngest son, complete opposite.

As soon as he gets home, he wants to do his homework. It’s his choice. Never told him a time, not once he wants to take care of this thing. So he could do whatever he wants. He loves routine. He loves to know what’s coming. A sporadic pop up of something that is, I’m talking, it needs to be explicitly, explicitly joyful.

He doesn’t want to be involved. He’d rather not, not to say that he won’t, but he’s going to have some grumbles. All right. And so I know the two personalities of my kids. And so having, and this is the key, and I’m, so I’m going to give a tip here as well. [00:34:00] Having it scheduled checks the box for just about everybody.

All right. If it’s not scheduled today, it’s not real. So just like we’ve got all these worked tasks, schedules, meetings, all this stuff with people who are not our family, doesn’t our family matter enough to, to put them on the schedule on the calendar, those family dinners, keeping in mind three nights a week is the minimum effective dose.

It doesn’t have to be nights by the way. It could be brunch, Sunday brunch. Two dinners, whatever, however you want to stack it. All right. So that’s the key schedule it. So my youngest son knows it’s coming up. And also my oldest son knows is there anyways, but he would be open to a pivot like last minute, like, Hey, actually such and such going on.

We’re going to move the family dinner to tomorrow. Uh, no, I’m sorry. I know family dinner is supposed to be tomorrow. We’re going to do it tonight. He’d be cool. Cool. Let’s do it. My youngest son grumbles. All right. So this brings to the next tip. [00:35:00] Since I know both of them, I’m going to bring in a mental reward because this is the key.

They’re addicted. We’re all addicted to our devices. My kids. I mean, not so much, not so much, but we are, you know, we, uh, we really are, uh, video games, TV. All this stuff is so, so seductive and attractive. We need to replace it with something of equal or greater value. That’s the key. So somehow, some way, I don’t know how it happened.

Maybe it was an unconscious intention, but so many nights for years, we, during our dinner, sitting down and eating together, we would end up like having like a freestyle battle or like, you know, like my, my youngest son got an iPad and like somebody would make beats. And then we’d all just kind of like freestyle, you know, and eventually I got a little microphone off of Amazon.

We pass this around, you know, sometimes it’d be dancing involved, you know, like we’ve just, [00:36:00] just creative. Like it was a creative mental exercise, expression, and fun. We’ve got so many videos of us doing this and that led to, and, and, and Pedram, I don’t know if I share this with you. When the smarter family cookbook came out, I went to New York, I took my family with me, you know, I went to the good morning America, but I went on this incredible show called sway in the morning and sway was a MTV VJ for many years.

And he has one of the most iconic, um, voices and shows dedicated to, you know, kind of the urban hip hop culture. And he just like the week before I think like LL Cool J was there, you know, Missy Elliot, like all these icons and in that space. And I’m coming up there to talk about health and wellness for the community.

And so that’s what I came there for. That’s that the artists when they come, they do a freestyle at the end. All right. I didn’t come there for that. All right. But when my oldest [00:37:00] son met the host, he whispered in his ear. That my dad can freestyle. I had no idea. I thought the interview was over. It was phenomenal.

It was great interview ended on a high note, but the host, he starts like turning on these music, his DJ cues up some music, he was like, there’s a healthy, you know, healthy hyena in the building. I heard he’s got bars. And I’m just like, what? You can see my face on the YouTube video. Like, I’m just like, what is happening?

But I was prepared. I was prepared. And I just literally freestyled off of what was happening in the room, you know, and created this epic moment. I even put my kids into the bars. And that family culture, my point being, we take our culture with us. That’s one of the most powerful takeaways from today. The reason that we’re making the choices that we’re making is because of this larger culture scape.

Right? It’s an invisible guidance system for us. That’s what culture [00:38:00] is. It is affecting our thoughts, our beliefs, our actions, and our beliefs about reality is based on our culture. And the culture we need to focus on, everybody listening to my voice right now, focus on the culture inside of your own household.

Focus on that. I know myself included, we’ve spent a lot of time trying to change the larger culture scape. I feel like I’ve made a couple of dents, which is awesome, but the most powerful impact I’ve ever made, and that’s just the feedback that I’ve gotten over the years, which I finally paid attention to, is my family.

On that trip to Hawaii, which was the first time I’ve been to Hawaii, and seeing the Luau, on that trip, I cannot, I cannot tell you, even on the flight over, This woman, she had to be mid 60s, 70 years old. She was getting on the plane and she stopped, she was like, I just gotta tell you, your family is so beautiful.

And I was just wondering if, if you could [00:39:00] adopt me. And I’m just like, that is the cutest thing. But I just, I didn’t even process it then. Because I’m used to that. But after the trip, it really hit me like, whoa. Because people kept coming up to us, even in Hawaii, you know, just wanting to be around my family.

And I know it’s because we take our culture of connection and health with us and it’s infectious. There’s a lot of other stuff that’s infectious out there that people are thinking about in a negative perspective. But love, connection, good health, those things are infectious too.

Dr Pedram Shojai: There’s someone listening to this saying, you know, lucky you, you’ve got a great family are, you know, we got a shit show over here. We have a hard time. I sit down and ask my kids how they’re doing. They’re like, fine. Right. And, and that to me is an invitation to keep trying and keep going. And the art of engagement.

for someone who hasn’t been doing this for a while might [00:40:00] look a little different than freestyling, but it could be, you know, like I have a friend, they play Rosebud thorn, like what was good about your day was, but you know, what’s budding and, and having certain tools that allow for you to stoke conversation in an area that might potentially have gone stale or never really blossomed in your family life, but it’s so, Vitally important for, so for someone who hasn’t been watering this soil, right, for a while, how would you tiptoe in?

How do you make it less awkward? How do you get them to sit around and not be draconian about you sit down and you sit with your family, right? Like people kind of overshoot this mark and then it gets weird and it gets hard. Right.

Shawn Stevenson: Yeah, yeah. And just to be clear, every, every tool is, is applicable. All right. You know, kind of whatever it takes. Sometimes you just got, you got to be like that. But again, if we want it to be sustainable and to feel like a [00:41:00] choice, it’s understanding the temperament, the desires, the motivation of our family members.

And doing things to, to pull them all into this family, family unit, family culture. And I gave that example of the rap battle, but this could be anything. This could be, you know, everybody is getting together and maybe telling a story, you know, sharing something that what is the weirdest thing that happened in your day to day?

Or, you know, what is something that really pissed you off today? Let’s go, let’s go around and have a piss off story. You know, if you know, you’re, if your family is like on that kind of energy, Which, you know, um, I’m trying to think of a family that’s just chronically pissed off. Maybe the Adams family. I don’t know.

Um, but like, they’re going to be families that that really vibes with and that’s okay. You know, this could be a game, you know, having games at the table. You know, there are quite a few families that I’ve talked to over the years that actually do that. Because for me, we’d have, you know, a lot of times actually after dinner, we’d have a game.

But some families play a [00:42:00] game during dinner. And I was like, really? That’s that’s interesting. People’s like literally playing Monopoly while they’re having their dinner together. And so experiment, give yourself permission, but keep in mind your family’s temperament. Don’t come in necessarily with like, I like this thing.

If you know your family, cause this also tends to happen by the way, especially today, families tend to have like a standout, um, pop culture connection. So whether that’s Harry Potter. Whether that’s Marvel, whether that’s, you know, I don’t know, Fifty Shades of Grey, that’s crazy. That’s crazy. Whatever it might be, tie in some of that kind of energy and entertainment.

So with Harry Potter, maybe you guys have a Harry Potter trivia game. And I know there are tons of like little card decks and things like that that you bring into the, into the family dynamic. And now they get to participate in Harry Potter and be a [00:43:00] part of it, you know, in, in a really interesting way. So I’m going in on so many options.

Music is huge, you know, having some, some background vibes. You know, um, that’s huge as well. And also just for creating the kitchen environment for you to cook in and enjoy, uh, the process of cooking and being in the kitchen. Um, there’s so many different ways to go about this. And I would say also something that’s coming up for me is, you mentioned it actually, going, everybody doing the, you know, going around basically and sharing, was it the Rose Thorn? 

Dr Pedram Shojai: Sorry, the, the rosebud

Shawn Stevenson: Rose

Dr Pedram Shojai: right? Which is what’s the, what’s the rose, what’s budding in your life and what’s the thorn in your side today. Um, and it’s, it’s just one of many ways to elicit, uh, emotional intelligence and dialogue in a culture that, and you brought it up at the top of the call. [00:44:00] Man, it’s been hijacked, right?

Our ability to communicate has been superseded by our ability to sit there and be told what’s cool, what to think, what’s popular, what’s trending by the social feeds and all the crap. And so we almost have to rehabilitate ourselves into being back in a room with our loved ones and having something to say.

But from what I’m hearing, this is life or death. I mean, 50 percent bump in longevity is no joke.

Shawn Stevenson: Yeah. And also I want to throw this in there too. The environment itself, knowing the thing that’s dividing us, we want to make it a screen free environment, you know, and this could be some people put their phones in like a little box, you know, but my kids, we just don’t bring it to the table. And this was established early on, you know, even my youngest son just getting a phone.

He doesn’t bring that bad boy to the table. A lot. Matter of fact, to be honest, my kid doesn’t have his phone a lot, which is unique. And I know that I know it’s unique, [00:45:00] but it’s just the thing. Cause we also keep him engaged. You know, we keep him not to say he’s not on his phone and he’s texting and he’s connected with his friends, but just being a part of his life and also bringing in his friends, like creating, you know, there’s play dates are are out here on the streets.

It’s a new term for me still, you know, because we just played, we went out and played. Um, but I saw recently when I mentioned about kids hanging out on their phones together, it reminded me because I saw my son do it. Uh, he just got together with his best friend. I took them to the movies, hang out at the mall, you know, I kept my distance, you know, they let them hang out.

But I saw there’s a moment where they’re both hanging out, but they’re both on their phone. And I saw after maybe five minutes, my son put his phone down. He put it down and just sat there. And he waited for like, you know, maybe a minute. And then he started talking to his friend, like trying to get him basically get him out of there.

You know, he’s like, so what did you guys, you know, [00:46:00] eat for Thanksgiving? You know, like he, I was like, Whoa, that’s amazing. He’s aware. He has these checkpoints, you know, to check in with himself. And so make it a front phone, free environment. Um, You can use food as a tool as well. I found that that’s really helpful.

But again, you gotta be mindful of the personality type. Um, you know, so family dinner tonight. What do you guys want for dessert? Right? And, or even in the planning of the family dinner. You know, if you know you got family dinner on Wednesday night. You know, checking in with everybody. Hey, who, um, taco night?

Or, and kids are very good with options. Right? Not even open ended, but like this or that. We all love options. And so, you know, there’s so many different ways. Again, if we’re paying attention to our family, we can find a way in. No one said that it’s going to be a straight line or that it would be easy, but it will be well worth [00:47:00] it.

It will be well worth it. Eventually it will manage itself and everybody will be healthier and more connected for it.

Dr Pedram Shojai: you know, it’s funny as I think the last time I had you on my show, you were writing sleep and sleep was such a big deal in your life because it was a big part of your journey and all that. But if you look at the two things we’ve talked about, Sleep being book says eight hours a night out of your 24 and meals being at least two to three of those hours.

If you are doing it right, frankly, between all the meals and all that, let’s just say two hours, that is more than a third of the time and the majority of the time you’re at home. And so these are highly leveraged places to do the things that make you well. Like you can’t be well without sleep. And from everything that we’ve learned in the last hour, you, you [00:48:00] simply cannot live a long, healthy life without tapping into the magic juju of being with loved ones and bringing it around the family table.

So you’re like a leverage guy, man. Like you’re finding the highest leverage places for health and wellness. And helping people find those. So I really appreciate that because these are, these are the places where I think we can get the most bang for our buck.

Shawn Stevenson: You just said one of my favorite words. It’s where we’re connected, you know, leverage. Yes. I’m always seeking that. I’m always aware that there is a point here, you know, there’s something that’s going to get leveraged, whether it’s, you know, in the context of somebody, you know, getting well, whether it’s the context in a family connection or healing, yeah, there’s always leverage.

There’s a, there’s a leverage point and I’m always looking for it.

Dr Pedram Shojai: What’s the name of the book? Where can people find it?

Shawn Stevenson: It’s called the eat smarter family cookbook and it’s available everywhere books are sold. Uh, I’m grateful to say it’s a, it’s a national bestseller and all that good stuff, but [00:49:00] If you just even look at the reviews on Amazon, it’s a, I don’t, I don’t know these people, you know, these wonderful people who’ve gotten copies, but people are making the food.

Go to one of these chefs shows, cookbooks, people aren’t frequently making the food and posting it on Amazon. And I didn’t ask people to do that. You know, nobody, a lot of these, you know, they’re not necessarily, uh, professionals at plating food and stuff like that, but people are. There’s something about this book that is motivating people to actually make the food and invite their kids in and kids are making the food.

And that was my intention. That was my intention. That was kind of, I didn’t come out and say that, but I was really hopeful that families would get their kids involved because the skill of cooking is on the endangered species list. And I talk about that. And by the way, I didn’t mention this. There’s over 250 peer reviewed [00:50:00] references embedded into the content of the book with beautiful story with, you know, so even with that, I use the Marvel universe and the superheroes.

So there’s sequences where I’m tying this, all these like fancy pants, complex studies into the superhero scenario so that everybody can understand them. It’s fun to read. So it’s got this great education and why we’re doing some of the things that we’re doing in this book. But most importantly, I, I’m a big fan of deliciousness.

I’m a big time foodie. I love, I love food. And we even express the joy of food and how it’s supposed to be. You know, so there’s, it’s not about deprivation or restriction. Everybody’s invited, no matter what your diet framework is. We have plenty of delicious meals for you as well. And again, Eat Smarter Cookbook.

Eat Smarter Family Cookbook. Uh, everywhere their books are sold. www. eatsmartercookbook. [00:51:00] com

Dr Pedram Shojai: Love it. Sean. Always good to see you keep up the good work. Looking forward to our next encounter.

Shawn Stevenson: Same man. Can’t wait. Thank you.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Well, I certainly hope you enjoyed that as much as I did love the guy. I’ve been, like I said, I’ve known him for years. I just love that he’s holding it down for the things that are important. Get his family cookbook. Do yourself a favor, share this podcast with the people in your life that you want to spend some time eating meals with. 

Listen to the podcast, take the cookbook, make a couple meals together. Get back with your people. Get back to communicating, drop the devices. Let’s come back. To each other, let’s come back to vitality and it starts. At the next meal. I’ll see you in the next one.

The post Come Together for Meals with Shawn Stevenson appeared first on The Urban Monk.

Kristin Kirkpatrick, RD, MS, author of Skinny Liver and upcoming book, Regenerative Health Kristin Kirkpatrick is a best-selling author, an experienced presenter, and an award-winning Dietitian. She is the President of KAK, Consulting, LLC, a dietitian at the Cleveland Clinic Dept of Department of Wellness & Preventive Medicine in Cleveland, Ohio, and a Senior Fellow at the Meadows Behavioral Healthcare in Wickenburg, Arizona.

Kristin is also a contributing writer for TODAY.com, Eating Well Magazine, Costco Connection, and Cleveland Clinic Essentials and has appeared on both local and national shows such as the TODAY show, NBC Nightly News, Fox Business, Bloomberg TV, and the Dr. Oz show. Kristin is also a Nutrition Expert with the NBC affiliate for Denver, Colorado. In January 2017, Kristin published her first book, Skinny Liver: A Proven Program to Prevent and Reverse the New Silent Epidemic—Fatty Liver Disease. In February 2024 Kristin will release her second book, Regenerative Health: Discover Your Metabolic Type and Renew Your Liver for Life.

Kristin has over 25 years of experience in health management. She holds an M.S. in Health Promotion Management from American University in Washington, D.C., and a B.A. in Political Science from The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. She is licensed as a Registered Dietitian in the state of Ohio. In May 2012, Kristin received the Ohio Outstanding Dietetic Educator of the year award and, in 2013, received alumni of the year from her high school, Gilmour Academy.

Listen to the episode on Spotify here or on your favorite podcast platform.

Podcast transcript:

Welcome to the Urban monk podcast, with Kristin Kirkpatrick. She is one of my favorite types of interviews because she is in the trenches. She’s working with people every single day, all around the subject. Matter of food. It’s one thing to say, Well, you should eat like this, or you shouldn’t do that.

It’s another thing to have the rubber hit the road and try to apply this advice in real lives. And this is what she does. So, uh, really, uh, honest, heartfelt and sobering conversation with somebody who knows their stuff when it comes to food.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Kristen, it is great to see you. Welcome to the podcast.

Kristin Kirkpatrick: Thank you so much. I’m so happy to be here. I’m so excited.

Dr Pedram Shojai: This is fun. Listen, you and I have a lot of interesting synergies. Uh, and I love working and talking to people who actually work with people. Because it’s not some mental laboratory where you come up with theories and see if you could spin them online. You have a person that comes back and says, Wow, that didn’t work.

Dr Pedram Shojai: I’m still overweight. I’m still inflamed. That was disgusting. And that feedback loop is appropriate for someone who’s in clinical practice. Just a quick, like, who, who is this chick, um, for the audience? Uh, where, where are you coming from? What have you done?

Yeah. So, um, I’m a registered dietitian, been dietitian for over 20 years. Uh, my entire career has been spent at Cleveland clinic and integrative medicine. Uh, which was a great opportunity for me because it’s like the clinic is like, I, we used references the other day that were like star Wars references, but I would say clinics like the millennium Falcon, where it’s like, There’s so many pieces and parts, but it gives me the opportunity to like, really tap into like really different types of brains and different theories. So that’s been great for my career. But, um, yeah, I’m just, I’m just in the business of trying to work with people to change behavior surrounding food, which when you say it sounds so simple, but it’s so difficult. So difficult to change that behavior.

Dr Pedram Shojai: If you look at just the chem chem lab, a part of that business, you have flavors and odors and colors and textures, uh, and then addictive elements being built into food every single day. We know that this happens. They’ve admitted that it happens yet. We continue to buy products that are designed to make us addicted to it.

Dr Pedram Shojai: So just that part of the, that part of the conversation alone could be a three hour talk, like, Oh my God, like this is, they’re stacking this food against our best interest so that we keep buying this thing that may or may not be good for me.

Right. Right. And I, and I oftentimes say that to my patients, um, even my patients that are saying like, Oh, this is a healthy meal that, that I’ve been able to get at the grocery store. What do you think about it? And a lot of times I like to remind them that the FDA that manages all of these front of package claims still has not yet defined healthy. I mean, they will because now we’ve had this six months to one year kind of call for comments where the FDA is saying, okay, we’re going to define healthy. What do all of you guys think about it? What do all the clinicians, what are the average consumer think about it? And so I think that will be defined, but healthy needs to be defined within the aspect of your own life, your own preferences, et cetera. Not everything that you get at the store, even though it says all these great things to try and lure you in is healthy. So to your point, I think a lot of times consumers really want to make the right choice, but they’re kind of lured into the wrong choice, um, through smoke and mirrors. That’s, that’s really what I see.

And I always tell people like, you know, have you ever seen an apple at the grocery store with like five claims on it? High in vitamin C, a lot of fiber. Like you, you don’t need those claims. Cause you know, the Apple’s good for you. You know, it’s good for you where you need. All the claims is the products that may not be good for you.

And they’re trying to tell you why it will be good for you.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Honestly, it’s hilarious. Once you put on that lens. Go to the grocery store. I get kicked out of grocery stores cause I’m always filming and making fun of stuff. Right. Um, sorry, can’t do that here, but you start looking at it and you’re like, Oh my God, every single product is an advertising billboard and every single product has marketing messaging when you’re walking down the central aisles, right?

Dr Pedram Shojai: Not, not the, not the stuff around the periphery. And all of a sudden you’re like, this is, this is sales copy.

Yeah.

Dr Pedram Shojai: food that needs sales copy, to your point, um, I gotta question that. Like, why are you trying to convince me to eat your stuff? No one has to

Right. You’re convincing me Yeah, Right. Exactly. Right. And even like, it’s just so interesting looking at kind of the, you know, the grocery store people, when you talk to grocery store people, they’ll tell you what a difficult business it is, but they’ll also really admit to the fact that there’s rhyme and reason to every single solitary aspect. So even looking at like, what’s eye level to, let’s say our eight year olds. That’s what’s attractive. What are they walking by? What’s not going to be eye level to them is going to be a whole grain cracker. It’s going to be something that’s like a little bit more colorful, a little bit more kid friendly. So then you get the aspect of the kid trying to tell you, Oh, please get me this, please. You know, so there’s that whole thing, but like, yes, that the modern day grocery store is a real challenge because there’s so much choice and we do have some data showing that the more choice you get. Um, the more likely you’re going to make a bad choice, right? Because there’s just so much it’s overwhelming. I often, um, I often say that like my ideal grocery store is one where you walk in, you see the name of what the food is and you see the ingredient label and nothing else. All right. That’s it. But you just see the ingredients and not to say that the numbers are not important. They could be very important. Someone with, with hypertension might really have to look at sodium, for example. But the ingredients tell the story. Those ingredients tell the story. So if your ingredients stink, and then you’ve got, like, all these claims about what’s good about it, that’s when you really should start saying, okay, well, the ingredients don’t look good. Why am I being sold? To your point. So I think it’s a great point.

Dr Pedram Shojai: do you do that for folks? I mean, we live in a market economy, right? Your food Smurf, um, you know, meditation Smurf and lawyer Smurf or teacher Smurf is listening right now saying, I don’t know how to read these stupid labels.

Right.

Dr Pedram Shojai: so, I mean, there’s apps, there’s a lot, there’s a lot out there now. How do you counsel your clients on that?

A lot of times I will put it down to the basics and I’ll look at ingredients like when I say look at ingredients, I mean the actual number of ingredients. So I will say, Hey, like, let’s start with that. If you see something that is five or more ingredients, it doesn’t mean it’s not a good choice. But it might warrant you to kind of say, okay, why are there five or more ingredients?

Why are there not two ingredients or one ingredients? Okay. So that, that’s kind of number one for looking at that. So putting it really high level. Um, the other thing I suggest is that the more marketing there is, the more likely they’re trying to convince you. So that’s kind of another red flag that might come up. And then the last one is, you know, sometimes I like to look at what Michael Pollan said about food. I just think he’s so interesting and he defined food is something that comes from nature is fed from nature and will eventually rot. So when you’re making those choices at the grocery store, 90 percent of your choices should meet that definition of food. It’s coming from nature. It’s fed from nature. And we can really get in the weeds about what fed from nature means, right? So that if you go into like meat and you look at bison versus a factory cow, um, one is fed from nature. The And will it rot? Right? Will it rot? If you put this in your house, how long before this thing goes bad? So I think that’s another way to kind of look at that. Um, we used to do these grocery store tours in all parts of Cleveland through Cleveland clinic for, for anyone that wanted to attend. And we would take that definition of food. We would go through every aisle and we would have people start saying, Oh, this is food, but this may not be food. So that was a real eye opener we saw for individuals, like trying to determine. Okay. What’s the best? I want to have cereal. That’s a really tough one. Like what’s the best cereal? So number of ingredients, does it meet that criteria for food or just some high level ways of looking at it? You go deeper than that.

And it’s too confusing, but you know, remember you’re competing against really smart people in marketing who know exactly how to get you to put that in your cart. All right.

Dr Pedram Shojai: One of the kind of origin stories of cereal, as you said, that as an example was, I thought it was general mills that ended up having to find a way to dump off all their excess wheat because of the, um, the subsidies. And they’re like, well, what do we do with all this? And so they came up with this concept of cereal and start pushing it on people and marketing to people.

Dr Pedram Shojai: And after one generation, people that were having, you know, eggs and bacon and, you know, maybe You know, whole wheat toast or whatever they were having switched over to having cereals that then had to be fortified with all the stuff that they forgot to keep eating. Right. But it wasn’t a thing. I mean, there was muesli in Germany, but it wasn’t like a food item that was actually what people ate until someone decided to productize it, which is crazy to me.

It’s crazy. And it’s, you know, it’s, it’s interesting because I feel at least from the pediatric stand, um, it’s still being in some ways pushed today. Like I just think of my appointments that I attend with my kids. And a lot of times the doctors will say, Oh, we need to get more nutrients. So fortified cereal is a great option here. So we still have kind of this like mouthpiece of, well, it’s fortified. So let’s, let’s consider this. So, you know. It could also have a million different colors and all these additives and, you know, let’s not even get into the sugar, but, so it’s still kind of still being promoted as a good way to get your vitamins and your minerals, right? Um, an easy way to do that. So that’s challenging. And especially, I mean, whether it’s an adult or a kid, the, the more muesli from Germany is a great example. the more likely someone, especially if they’re used to having their taste buds, touching other processed foods throughout the day, the more likely they’re going to taste it and use that word cardboard.

Oh, this tastes like cardboard. I got to add something in it. So I think part of it is also, we’re, we’re so accustomed to really craving and desiring these, these ultra processed foods. Then when we have something that’s not ultra processed, it’s just not hitting the bill. It’s just like, that’s boring, this has no taste, uh, as a dietitian I hear the cardboard one all the time, like, you know, someone wants to have, have steel cut oats, steel cut oats, well that’s a little cardboard ish, can I, can I put a bunch of, a bunch of sugar in it?

That will make it better. Right? So, we’re just so like, it’s part of the addiction process, but it’s also what our taste buds are used to and what they’re accustomed to. Right.

Dr Pedram Shojai: against a multi billion dollar industry that is trying to push cardboard on people, um, with sugar on top to make it palatable, but then they get addicted to sugar and their candida goes up and their microbiome gets screwed up and they get into toxemia and they end up with chronic disease, which then feeds another multi billion dollar industry called healthcare.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Oops. Right. And so like we’re sitting here literally like we’re like UN peacekeepers. Trying to just save lives when, you know, the arms manufacturers are just keeping the war going, right? And so it’s very difficult trying to get someone to eat a carrot when it doesn’t taste like a ding dong, right? And

Right. Right.

Dr Pedram Shojai: the fortified diet could mean, and, and, you know, I just, I was just in the middle of this like food wars thing, which was, um, quite, quite an interesting experience, um, between the vegans and the, the meat people.

Dr Pedram Shojai: I don’t really have a dog in the race, I was just trying to Help people understand perspectives, but I’ve found that both sides have dug in their heels and have become fundamentalist in ideology, which I don’t think is science. Right? And so, you know, anyone wants to talk about it? Pedram’s in the middle.

Dr Pedram Shojai: We can have a conversation. Um, but you know, someone can say fortified means eat the rainbow. Someone else can say fortified me means eat organ meats. Right? Um,

Right.

Dr Pedram Shojai: but that is

High source of nutrients.

Dr Pedram Shojai: that is, that is fortified. Right? Um, Right. That is absolutely fortified through nature. And just cause I put fully in something doesn’t mean it has the spectrum of phytonutrients that my, my body, my microbiome need.

Dr Pedram Shojai: So you have been working to personalize nutrition for people for decades, right? People come in with their ideologies. Hey, I’m a vegan person. Hey, I’m a meat person. I’m a, what I’m a cardboard person. Right? So how do you meet them where they’re at to actually help them? No,

number one, um, you know, not identifying who you are based on your diet. So when you say, I’m a vegan, that’s identify, that’s, that’s, that’s you. That’s as part of my persona. This is who I am and everything that goes along with it. Um, so really kind of looking at your dietary pattern is something separate than you as a person, because when you make it part of your identity, you get a little bit more, um, tunnel vision and it’s like hard for you to see other Aspects. of what could be out there. And really what we know is that when you think about, I get this question all the time and no one, no one likes the answer cause it’s, it’s boring. And it’s people consider it to be a non answer, but people say, what’s the best diet out there? Like what is the number one diet? Number one diet is the one you can stick with. And that has a good level of nutrient density, right? And that’s the basics of it. So I think instead of just saying, well, I’m a vegan, um, you know, we have to go towards, well, I like some of these foods that fit into the vegan diet. I also like to have wild fish.

I also like having a cheeseburger every once in a while. So give me some guidance on the best cheeseburger to get. And then your environment. Um, you know, I had this patient who came to see me. He had a massive heart attack, almost died, came to the Cleveland Clinic. He’s a cattle rancher from Texas. This guy loved his meat, right?

So he comes to Cleveland Clinic, they save his life, and two weeks later he ends up in my office. And he’s charming like you wouldn’t believe, sitting with his wife, Alice. And he says, Kristen, I’m going vegan. Whoa. That’s That’s a big change from what you’ve been used to, right? He goes, no, I’m going to do it.

I, I, this is a wake up call. This cattle rancher, right? And so I first looked at Alice and I said, Alice, what do you think about this? And I know you’re the cook in the family and how do you feel about this? And she’s like, how do I feel about it? I’m not going vegan. Are you out of your mind? And you know, she said, are you out of your effing mind? So she was very passionate about the fact that this was his decision, not her decision, and it was that moment where I knew this guy was not going to be able to keep a vegan diet, right? Even despite high motivating factors from a heart attack. cook’s not, yeah,

that’s not happening.

Dr Pedram Shojai: PB and J for lunch,

Yes. yeah.

no, it’s not happening.

It’s not happening. So, you know, I think, um, oftentimes we just look at diet and it’s just diet. I’m going to eat this. And we don’t look at what is my sleep look like? What does my support system look like? So we don’t take in that whole aspect of how dietary change can be enhanced, or we could find barriers, um, to be able to reach it, right?

He had the best intentions. High motivation. There was no way this guy was going to succeed at being vegan. Not with his wife not on board, that’s for sure.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Yeah. Did you tell him that in not so many

Yes. Yes. So I said, um, I said, I don’t know if vegan is the right step to take right now because it’s such a diversion from what you were used to. But I think that we’ve got a lot of data on what could be good post heart attack. Um, what could be considered heart healthy where we can have some plant based options, but you can also probably still enjoy some of the foods that you really loved before the heart attack occurred. And that also could speak to a better quality of life. Like do you want to be miserable and never have a heart attack again?

Which that’s not a guarantee either. There’s plenty of, let’s not to get back to the grocery store conversation, but there’s plenty of vegan foods at the grocery store that, you know, are not good for you. A lot of cookies are vegan, right? So, um, so that word loses meaning to me unless we kind of address it in the context of what does the rest of our diet and lifestyle look like.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Honestly, I think the middle needs a better publicist. Um,

Right? Right. It’s a good way to put it.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Right. Because the extremes have, I mean, look, everyone loves extremes. The, you know, red team, blue team, you know, us versus them. And something I’ve noticed in this kind of, this comes up as you’re saying this is there’s a mentality that’s almost like.

Dr Pedram Shojai: I’ve been a sinner and now I’m born again. Right. Where it’s like your, your ideology shifts to your identity. Like your, your entire identity has to be this thing. And you know, this guy’s like, he didn’t stand a chance, right? Like good luck going out with the good old boys in Texas as a cattle

Right.

Dr Pedram Shojai: you know,

Getting your tofu.

Dr Pedram Shojai: getting your tofu.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Yeah. They’d laugh them out of the room. It’s, it’s very hard to be fair. It’s very hard being vegan in a world that’s not supportive. Right. It is. Um, But the identification as I’m a vegan person instead of I eat this way is an interesting phenomenon to me. Where, you know, I’m, I’m a car, I’m a carnivore diet, and people, people really become the, the identity that they need so that they can fill the gap instead of maybe doing some meditation and finding out who they are.

Dr Pedram Shojai: So to me, I think there’s this. There’s a, there’s a fundamental, um, you know, it’s, it’s infantile, right? What’s happening out there. And so you got to navigate all this crap, right? Like I, that’s not, that’s not my fight. I just like stepped into it and was like, ew, right. But you are in that every day. So you’ll have someone come in and say, look, I swear by this, this is who I am.

Dr Pedram Shojai: So then you got to work around those parameters, I would assume.

All right, got to work around the parameters You know if someone comes in and says oh, I absolutely want to be vegan This is this is my goal in life. Then what I’ll do is I’ll try and break it down not by telling them not to be vegan, but by giving them more of a limited timeframe. So I’ll say, okay, let’s just do this.

Why don’t we try and be vegan for two weeks and let’s really work hard at doing that. And I’m going to guide you towards the best way to do that. And then on week three, we’re going to reconvene. And we’re going to talk about what worked and what didn’t work, right? So that gives a little bit more context, a little bit more specifics to that type of goal. Um, and not to say I would ever talk someone in or out of a dietary pattern that they want to take, but I will challenge them and say, what are some of the foods you think you might really miss? Um, what are some things that like maybe something from your childhood that you had that you really want to embrace, or have you done the education to look at how to prevent? some nutrient deficiencies that could pop up in a vegan diet like calcium, like iron. And we have studies on that as well, right? So I think, um, making sure they’re not identifying with it. Yes, but even giving them that short term goal. And that’s the same thing I do when someone comes in and they say, Hey, I’m here today because I want to lose a hundred pounds. Oh, okay. Well that’s, I can’t even wrap my head around a hundred pounds. So why don’t we do this for three weeks? We’re going to try and lose three pounds. Then we’re going to reconvene and we’re going to tack on some more, but we’re going to go in three pound increments. You can wrap your head around that. So really kind of like challenging people to understand how to look at the goals they have, um, within the context of what’s realistic, what’s in their environment and what worked in the past. You know, what worked in the past is a great indicator. Yeah. Oh, I tried to go vegan 10 years ago, but that didn’t work.

Okay, let’s, let’s spend some time there. Why didn’t it work? And what are the things that didn’t work that we could probably change this time to try and make it work? If it’s even possible.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Yeah, but if this is yet another Hail Mary that you’re gonna fail on, then

Dr Pedram Shojai: two months from now, three months from now, you’ve proven to yourself that you suck at something and then you start to have negative self worth and you realize that you’re not gonna be good at any of these things and then it’s just gonna be a downward spiral.

Dr Pedram Shojai: You’re not going to succeed if you keep making unrealistic goals for yourself. I appreciate that perspective a lot.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Um, food. As medicine food for vitality. This is something that I’ve just finishing recording a summit on this. So it’s, you know, top of mind obviously is there is a way to consider. Your diet as something that nourishes and enhances your experience as a living Breathing human and empowers yourselves and makes you feel great and vital versus poisoning yourself, right?

Dr Pedram Shojai: And so there’s all these perspectives that we also have to be careful not to step on the the bipolar land good bad you know land mines

Right. Right.

Dr Pedram Shojai: That to me seems like a healthier operating system. Like, how does this make me feel? Am I more vital? Do my joints not hurt? So how do you shift the dialogue to say, let’s just feed your health and vitality and the rest of this crap will follow.

Yeah. Um, so I think that the conversation I try and have with my patients is very similar to some of the wording that you used, which was, okay, if I’m going to have this, I’m going to have this food today. How is that going to drive my day? I mean, even looking at it from a day to day perspective. So today I am going to go skiing or today I have 50 podcasts.

I’m just going to be sitting all day. You’re dying on both of those days should probably differ. a little bit because when we start looking at how will this food fuel me? So looking at the concept of fuel and nourishment, it is different based on what your goal is for that day, what you’re really needing to accomplish that day. So I think that’s kind of one way to look at that is okay, let’s let’s look at the goal of the day or let’s look at the goal of the month. Um, and let’s make our goals more health related and not vanity related and there’s nothing wrong with I want to get into a lower pair of jeans. There’s nothing wrong with that. But those types of goals tend to not be sustainable because even if you reach that goal through massive restriction and misery, your other genes are eventually going to become normal again because you won’t be able to maintain that, right? So I think that’s, that’s what people lose in the perspective is I just want to lose weight or I’m just not going to have this food anymore.

And they think that that is kind of the golden egg of health and longevity and vitality, but it’s not the golden egg if it can’t be sustained for longer than a month. So I think that’s why it’s so important to give some flexibility perspective and literally looking at what does my day look like? And here’s what my food should look like because of it.

Dr Pedram Shojai: As you say that, I think of my truck in the garage. It’s not going anywhere today, so I don’t need to go gas it up. Right. But if I’m driving around all day, I find myself at the gas station and the idea of sitting here podcasting or, you know, whatever desk example we can use, you don’t need to go gas up the truck as much either, right?

Dr Pedram Shojai: You might need, you know, fuel for your brain, but you’re not running a marathon today. Right. And

Right.

Dr Pedram Shojai: I think, shit, cause you know, my meal size doesn’t change. My caloric intake doesn’t change when I’m at home all day. How do you get people to be mindful of that, to catch themselves, uh, you know, in, in their dosing of food?

Yeah. Um, it’s interesting. So I did this experiment. I always say that if I’m going to recommend something to a patient, I have to do it myself. For at least a few weeks. I have to have perspective. Um, so I’ve, you know, tried everything under the sun, but I did this experiment. Uh, my whole family was going down to Dominican Republic.

I’m half Dominican. So we spend a good amount of time there and I, and it was me and my brother. So this is like, I don’t know, it was probably before I was married. We always eat like pigs when we’re in Dominican Republic. I mean, it’s just the tostones and lots of white rice. And it’s just, we, we don’t focus on that.

So I said, okay, listen, here’s what we’re going to do on this vacation. We are going to put ourselves on a hunger scale. And one is I want to eat my own arm and 10 is I got to take my pants off. Okay. We’re always going to be a four, a five or six. And so. Okay. We don’t listen to the cues of hunger, and we miss the cue of fullness because once we’ve gotten to fullness, we’ve overeaten. So when we put ourselves in that scale, we came out of a two week trip and everyone had lost weight. And we didn’t alter what we actually ate while we were in Dominican Republic. And we still had the fried foods and the white rice, but we put ourselves on that hunger scale. So My point here is that when you start listening to your hunger, when you listen to gremlin coming in and saying, Hey, we need some fuel. That’s when you eat and when you no longer feel that hunger, that’s when you stop. And what happens is we stop when we feel fullness. So I always tell my patients there’s no physiological reason for fullness. Other than, Hey, the food tastes great. The food’s addictive. I’m going to keep eating it. That’s why you become full or you’re distracted.

There’s a whole bunch of reasons, but leptin sends the message to the body. It’s time to stop eating. We got enough fuel for the next four hours. It’s like that gas tank clicking off. We keep eating beyond leptin and leptin isn’t come at fullness. It comes when we have that lack of hunger. So eating till you’re no longer hungry and not till you’re full. Is like, wow. Once you master it, you’ve mastered this concept of portion control. You really have, because you’re listening to your hunger.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Okay. There’s a lot there. I want to stay on this for a minute. On one side, we’re in kind of a juicy conversation I like to have around awareness and attention and, and checking in with oneself. Hey, am I hungry right now? Am I, am I needing another bite of this? Which requires us to. Turn inward and be aware instead of, you know, the conversation or, you know, the, hopefully not the nightly news that’s in front of us while we’re eating.

Dr Pedram Shojai: And then the other side of the conversation, um, Um, tends to also skew into dark alleys, which is, well, the, the, the leptin and the ghrelin are compromised because of the environmental toxins and you know, all of our, you know, our dysbiosis and all these things. And so you don’t stand a chance because your satiety hormones have already been disrupted.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Right. And so. There’s a couple. So the victim side of that is I don’t stand a chance. So I’m going to lose the, the, the other side of that is, well, don’t eat toxins and don’t expose yourself to toxins. And that system is resolved. So there’s probably a third or fourth in there, but that’s just, what comes to mind is let’s take away the excuses.

Dr Pedram Shojai: And then how do we instill the awareness knowing that at that moment, those are the bad food decisions. That’s the, that’s, that’s really the crux of it there. In my, in my view is you’re sitting in front of the food. You’re putting the food in your own mouth. You could have stopped. Why didn’t you?

Right. And, and, and think about it this way. Like when you’re out to dinner with someone, or, or even just sitting with your family at a meal, how often we pick up a fork and it never leaves our hand. Right. Just think about that. Like pick up the fork at dinner and rarely do we put the fork down, take a bunch of chews, right?

There’s data looking at chewing more, slowing down the whole system of what occurs when we chew more, but we tend to not put the fork down. So, um, and that’s, you know, that’s kind of, we can look at it in the past than the aspect of, Oh, put your fork down, but really literally putting your fork down in between bites. is something we tend not to do. So that’s part of, I think, kind of this, this mindfulness part is it will not occur. I would say the third part. So what, so what you said is the inclusion of ultra processed foods, which we have no ability to be able to stop eating. It’s really hard to do that. Um, but I think like just slowing down the process, which might be even more challenging because we are a society that’s all about rushing. Right? We’re eating in our car and we’re distracted and but slowing down the process of food. Just the concept of eating it sometimes can help with being able to recognize that I don’t need any more food anymore. Um, and the reason I always say that portion control doesn’t work really well is that people that struggle with portions are typically the same people and at least in my practice that are struggling with ultra process foods. Right. And I remember sitting as a kid in the eighties and seeing like the potato chip devil, like literally this was an ad and he was a devil and he said, you can’t eat just one and he’s holding the potato chip. You’d never see that ad today because that devil was absolutely accurate. They don’t want to, you know, don’t advertise that. Right. But,

Dr Pedram Shojai: onto us.

Oh shoot. Right. Oh my gosh, that was a bad ad. But, but that’s the whole point is that you can’t eat just one. You can have one, one, um, you know, you can have a head of broccoli or a half a head of broccoli and be like, that was really enjoyable and I’m done. You can’t do that with potato chips most of the time.

So, so, so there’s different, um, there’s different compounds within the foods we chose. So to your point, I think it goes back to making the right decision. And that’s where I think the baby steps approach is a little bit more realistic. Right. Instead of me saying, okay, well, we’re going to cut all the ultra processed foods in your pantry and your fridge.

And this is what I’m going to do when I’m going to visit you in your kitchen. Um, you know, we have to look at it from a different perspective, instead of saying, okay, I’m going to take away these potato chips. What do you think you could have in place of it that you won’t feel deprived? So that’s the conversation we have to have.

And that might take a half hour. So it’s a much longer process than people give it credit for. Unfortunately with insurance. You know, if I have someone in my office for a half hour, I’m, I’m lucky. All right. So the insurance is the other, um, you know, we should have unlimited timeframe, uh, for dietetic visits, but

Dr Pedram Shojai: Yeah, good luck. Good luck with that. Um, yeah, I don’t, I don’t think the insurance model works. I think the middleman has ruined the game and I think that it disintermediates the relationship. I’d rather pay you the money and listen in because I expect the value because I understand that I’m paying the money.

Dr Pedram Shojai: But you know, the insurance just dings my card and I don’t even, I don’t even know what I get from it. A couple things came up. One, Really interesting. We were having a conversation two nights ago around our dinner table where, you know, three or four times I’m, I had to lean into my daughter and be like, stop talking with your mouth full.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Right. And then I’m like, God, why is this kid? And I’m like, Oh my God, my wife and I do it. Both of our moms are notorious. Like they, they lived in these big families where it’s like, you gotta get, you know, you just, you gotta get a word in and there’s too many kids. And you know, and so I was like, Oh shit, this is, I can’t yell at her over this.

Dr Pedram Shojai: This is learned behavior. And so as you were saying that I’m thinking, okay, we’re going to play a new family dinner game where. The person who talks has to put down their fork, which means they’ve chewed their meal, then they speak, and then the next person can speak and you rotate and learn to be mindful around whether you’re chewing or eating and take the time.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Um, because for me coming from a big family, like background. Yeah, it wasn’t a thing.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It’s true. It’s, it’s,

Dr Pedram Shojai: going to do that tonight.

Put the fork down. Put Literally. Physically. Put it down in between the chews and, um, chew more. I think, I think some of the studies show around 40 chews. Now, most, most adults and kids are not going to, to do that. Um, they’re not going to go through that process, but I think, I think we lose a lot of, Mindfulness, right?

I mean, this is definitely a cliche type of project, but it is something that we did in kind of our mind body classes that we ran. You know, the first class we would always ask, we would have everyone put a raisin in their mouth. They had to keep that raisin in for 30 minutes. couldn’t, couldn’t chew it.

That just had to kind of stay towards the back. And then every few minutes we would say, how is the raisin changed? What does the texture taste like? Is it sweeter? Um, so it changed over the process and people were like, Oh my gosh, I’d never had any clue that if you kept a raisin in your mouth this long, it would change throughout time and it would, there would be all these things we could discuss.

Usually I have a handful of it and I’m down in it. It’s right. So it’s kind of like this. That’s an extreme example of mindfulness, but it kind of goes to the point of when we slow it down, when we chew, um, when we give ourselves the opportunity to have a family meal without a timeframe, it speaks more to the mindfulness of the meal and the pleasure of the meal versus you got to get, you got to get this down because you’ve got homework now

and we got to sit down and watch TV.

All right.

Hope you’re enjoying the podcast back to it in a second. If you have not seen my interconnected series, I highly recommend you do so. Just go to the urban monk.com go under films. That’s in series and you can see it there. I think it’s our first two episodes. Uh, we’re doing a free screening of, and if you like it, you can get it from there. Really informative, really important to understand why the microbiome, why the vegetables, why all of it. Um, and would, it.

has to do with your health back to the show.

Dr Pedram Shojai: right.

Dr Pedram Shojai: I mean, the first one is a legitimate excuse, uh, to a certain degree. I think, I think the kids are over homeworked. Um,

Dr Pedram Shojai: yeah, but if you’re in a hurry to finish dinner to watch TV, you’re lost, right? That

Right, you’re

Dr Pedram Shojai: that, yeah, that is a bad deal. Right. But yeah, I mean, we had this last night. I mean, they, they come home from ski racing.

Dr Pedram Shojai: It’s 7 p. m. We got to feed them, get them in the showers. And then they still have, my son has like an hour and a half of homework,

Right.

Right.

Dr Pedram Shojai: you not hurry dinner? And so the, the lifestyles are so compressed that it is something that is very, I just want to acknowledge the people listening. It ain’t easy.

Dr Pedram Shojai: It ain’t easy, right? Time is

not easy. It’s not easy. And I share that all the time. I’m I’m people often say like, Oh, I bet your kids are the perfect eaters. They are the exact opposite of perfect eating. I struggle every single solitary day. I’m trying all the tactics. I’m doing everything I can to get a little bit more nutrient density and it’s always a fight. So it doesn’t, you know, life happens so we can take theory and really good data and interpret it into how something should be. But then life happens. and you’ve got homework or you’ve, you have to prepare for something the next day at work. So, you know, we have to kind of get into this concept of gentle nutrition where we’re also not just completely killing ourselves because we might have a bad night.

We might have a night where the meal’s not perfect. Meal’s not always going to be perfect. All right. But if the meal’s pretty good most of the time and everyone likes it and people are getting some sort of nutrient density, that’s a whip. It’s not going to happen seven nights.

Dr Pedram Shojai: There’s a lot to be said around in the old days, everyone would just stop and hold hands and someone would do the Lord’s prayer and just stop time for some gratitude, take a breath and shift the mindset of the table prior to prayer. Bringing on the food and it, that, that did, that did stuff, right? That did that slowed you down.

Dr Pedram Shojai: It instilled gratitude. It pumped the brakes a little bit and shifted mealtime into something that was a little more sacred. How much of that helps when you’re counseling folks, when they start instilling those types of rituals back in, and it could just be gratitude. It doesn’t have to be the Lord’s prayer, right?

Dr Pedram Shojai: But putting in, uh, interjecting a parasympathetic. Pulse to say, hold on, we’re doing something different now. Slow down.

Right, right. Yeah, and in our family a lot of times before dinner we’ll, um, we’ll go over our peak and our pit of the day. What was the best part of the day and what was the part of the day that like wasn’t, wasn’t as great as it could have been. And that’s sometimes, and we’ll do that before we eat, right?

So we’ll kind of share, here’s what happened in the day. Um, so I think everyone will have some sort of different tactic of how to do this. The interesting thing is with most of my patients, it’s a struggle to even get the family to sit down, let alone let’s stop before we eat. So everyone’s eating in different rooms. Um, a lot of times I have families where the kids get one meal and the parents get another. So that’s a real challenge. And again, I under, as a parent, I understand that challenge. It’s not judging it whatsoever. Um, so even the fact like we’ve gotten away as a culture. of sitting down and just taking 45 minutes. Um, we’re just kind of like, it’s like a means to an end. It’s dinnertime and it’s like, let’s just gobble it down and then let’s get the heck back to our rooms and do our own thing. So it, you know, I don’t really even approach the, what do we do when we’re at the table yet? Because I can’t even get most of my people at the table. So that’s really the challenge, right? So, um, I mean, I’ll settle for, can you all sit at the island? Can you sit at the kitchen island? Okay. We don’t have to, to set the table. I do, I do like try and convey to my kids the importance of dinnertime, family dinnertime. And what I do with that is like the importance of setting the table, which might sound ridiculous, but like, where does the fork go?

And based on what we’re eating tonight, what utensils do you think we need? So we’ll have that whole conversation. And I made fun of half the time for it. But it starts to like, you know, get their mind frame into this is what I did when I was a kid and hopefully it, it follows through to what they’ll do with their families.

Dr Pedram Shojai: I’m so broke. I can’t even pay attention. That’s where we’re at, right? That’s where we’re at is,

Right. Here’s the food. Eat it.

Dr Pedram Shojai: I mean, where I would probably, where I go mentally with that is take away the flippant devices. Stop

gosh. Yeah.

Dr Pedram Shojai: time back from the attention economy, at the very least, if the homework is overwhelming.

Dr Pedram Shojai: So if you’re, you know, letting them browse or play the stupid apps, I mean, it’s a dumpster fire. We got rid of YouTube a long time ago, but then we’d get them, you know, some game on their iPad. And then, through that game, they’d request 27 other games through the ads that they would see. And, and I just be like, what is this?

Dr Pedram Shojai: And I just sat with him for a couple hours and be like, Hey, let me, let me hang out with you while you’re doing this thing. And the degree to which the advertising just crawls over into your kid’s brain. And some of it was like sexually explicit ads for like kids that snuck through. And I was just like, gone, gone, all of it gone.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Like, this is insane. Right? Like we, we don’t stand a chance.

Yeah. And isn’t it crazy? I’ve done the same thing. Isn’t it crazy when you tell your kid, like, I’m just going to sit in the room while you’re watching this,

Dr Pedram Shojai: Totally.

you know, they’re kind of like, okay.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Mom,

Right. Like, Oh,

okay. All right. No, I’m just going to be working in the background. Right.

But it’s crazy what you hear and what they’re being exposed to. That sometimes we don’t even,

we’re not even aware. And I will say there’s a food perspective to it as well. Yeah. I mean, I’ve been at the store where my kids will say, well, I, I heard, you know, I heard from like all my friends at school are talking about this YouTuber and he’s got this chocolate bar and I got to get it. And I’m like, well, what if it tastes like crap? Like you got to get it because it’s like 5 and this YouTuber is saying that this is his chocolate bar. Like, are we, are we thinking about like what this, you know? So yeah, that’s tough.

Dr Pedram Shojai: yeah, as a parent, it’s, you know, the, the orcs are crawling over the walls and you have like, you know, three archers left, right? Like,

right, right, right,

Dr Pedram Shojai: Okay, so yes, it’s difficult, but you don’t stand a chance if you don’t draw the line. Um, you know, we can spend another hour on that, but I want to talk about the thesis that’s come out of your recent book.

Dr Pedram Shojai: You all have proven something that I find to be very encouraging, right? The regeneration of tissue, the, the promise of healing, um, the turnaround, right? So tell me what you have done. Tell me Why that’s so important. And let’s get into this other part of the work that you’ve just brought to the world.

Yeah. So, um, we really focused on metabolic and liver health. And, you know, again, if we, if we look at the liver just to give that one Oh one, it’s got like, Hundreds and hundreds of different processes in the body, right? Digestion, filtration, metabolism, detoxification, hormonal blood clotting. It’s all these great things that the liver does. So, when the liver becomes compromised for any reason. It trickles down to other organs because it touches so many organs, right? There’s so much blood flow that goes in and out of the liver. And so there’s so much impact with other organs. So what we really looked at was the dietary principles as well as some lifestyle principles as well, um, and inflammatory principles. that help with creating a liver that has too much fat, too much scar tissue occurring, too much inflammation occurring, and literally reversing that process through the regeneration of more healthy liver cells. So that’s kind of the high level concept of what we’re looking at, but of course it could really be boiled down to a lot of intricate things that any one of us could be experiencing.

So dysbiosis in the microbiome, it’s a great example of that, right? The liver, um, well, 75 percent of, of blood from, you know, the intestines going into the portal vein, going into the liver. When we have things like leaky gut or gut, or we have like SIBO, um, that hugely impacts it because the blood that’s going in and out. is going to be blood that needs major toxification, right? Major detoxification. So, um, I think the, the message is we’ve got something that is taking care of a lot of parts of the body. There’s a lot of hope because it is the only organ that does regenerate, literally can regenerate. Um, but that you got to do something about it.

You can’t just sit around and say, well, this is going to take a long time. I’ll be dead by the time I get cirrhosis. You have to look at this and say, what are, what are my modifiable, non modifiable risk factors? What can I do today? What are the steps I can do today to kind of regenerate this whole concept within my body?

Right,

Dr Pedram Shojai: ago, I’ve been public about this. We were in Portugal and Spain and you know, it was, it was a win in Rome summer and just have the gelato with the kids and the wine with the wife and the pasta and the gluten and all that. And I came back and I couldn’t sleep.

Dr Pedram Shojai: I’m like, why is this guy not able to sleep? Right. And it wasn’t like, Oh, you meditated off. And I started looking into the literature and I was like, Oh my God, I, not only did I get leaky gut, the endotoxemia, um, is leading to my liver, the liver’s in charge of the clock genes, all sorts of stuff. And the second pass of the liver is for endotoxins.

Dr Pedram Shojai: And so I got deep into the literature on endotoxemia being like, Oh my goodness, it’s an alarm signal from inside the body trying to say something ain’t right. And the liver doesn’t know how to talk. So you get maybe if you’re lucky, some tinnitus or some, uh, you know, some insomnia to tell you something ain’t right way before you end up with a diagnosis of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease.

Dr Pedram Shojai: So you’re not talking about stem cells here. You’re not talking about peptides here. You’re talking about food.

right, right.

Dr Pedram Shojai: How do, how do we eat our way out of this?

So I think, um, you know, you can look really high level and look at. The antioxidant capacity of certain foods. Um, and just say, okay, these foods have high antioxidants. They have high bioactive compounds that we know can fight against cellular damage. We have cellular damage within liver tissue that’s been compromised because of too much fat, literally fat in the liver. Um, so high antioxidant diet is 1 concept. I often say that like when we look at like all the governments. Recommendations for fruit and vegetables. It’s like, I’ll have seven servings of fruits and vegetables every day. People can’t really wrap their head around it. And most people will say, well, who’s got that kind of time? But I think it’s because a lot of people don’t break it down into, like, really color. And so that’s 1 of the things that I always communicate, you know, if you just get. 5 to 7 colors, and it doesn’t have to even be a serving, just get more colors, just get things that have a lot. High polyphenols, high photonutrients that tends to be really beneficial to liver health based on the data based on some of that, some of that, um, there’s certain things, you know, it’s interesting that we, we can’t control, right?

So we, we looked at a lot of research looking at what happens to your liver in utero. So if you’re, if your mother has fatty liver, if your mother has gestational diabetes, you are much more likely. To also develop that yourself, and it becomes harder for you to reverse it because you were compromised to begin with. So we found that data as well as non modifiable great example, but it doesn’t mean there’s not hope. So I think we have to kind of break down the genetics. Versus what can I control? The good news is you can control a lot of things moving more, having more color. Um, you know, even again, not portion controlling, but even thinking on this mindfulness that we’ve already discussed, not overfueling. All right, so you use the example of your, your truck. So when you’re pumping gas, and the thing clicks off. If we sit there, we say, Oh, we’re still going to continue to like. continue to like pump the gas, right? Um, it’s going to get on your shoes and then could have a fire. It’s all these horrible things that can happen, but yet we do it with food all the time, right?

We keep pumping the gas, keep pumping the gas. That example was, was so spot on. So I just think, um, you know, we have to know that there’s hope, but you, you have to make changes. You have to make moves. And I want to like remind everyone. there continues to be zero pharmacological treatments for this condition. So we don’t have an opportunity like other conditions to say, I’ll just take a pill. All right. So we lose that opportunity with non alcoholic fatty liver disease. It has to be lifestyle mediated.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Uh, quick 101 on this, um, and we’re kind of running to the bottom of our hour, but I, I, I really want to, The liver will deposit fat because of the gasoline spilling on the gas station floor. That’s how we deal with it, right? And so,

Dr Pedram Shojai: the relationship of sugar, calories, and liver storing fat, just so people understand that, because I have another question to follow that.

Yeah, so the liver has a huge role in releasing sugar as fuel when it senses that the body doesn’t have enough, um, and taking on sugar when it needs to store it. Okay, so there’s this whole role that it plays. We think that the sugar is just pancreas and that’s about it. No, the liver plays a huge role in this. So when the liver becomes a little bit compromised, What happens is that and it gets too much sugar, like way too much sugar and zero fiber, zero other nutrients, um, it starts storing, storing, storing, and it has really no use to figure out what to do with this, especially if you’re insulin resistant and you’re already getting this misalignment of really signals of how much insulin is necessary to take blood sugar to the cells, to the muscle, etcetera, right?

So insulin resistance is a lack of sensitivity. You don’t, you’re not sensitive enough to figure out how much to pump out here. So it starts storing this sugar as fat. This is the connection between really the fat in the liver and the sugar. Or refined carbs, right? I put them in the same boat. Whether it’s a piece of licorice or a piece of white bread.

Same boat. Same boat. Lacking fiber, high glycemic load, etc. Um, so it stores it as fat. And what happens is, and then there’s also some fatty acid metabolism misalignment as well. Um, but the more fat we get in the liver, the more that healthy tissue is replaced by the fat. The fat serves no purpose, really.

Okay, like, I mean, only brown fat serves a purpose in our, in our body. And that ain’t what you’re seeing in the liver. So, um, that’s really how this kind of progresses. So really looking at this concept of, okay, how do I get my blood sugar under control? Could be one of the first steps towards getting that liver health back into where it should be.

Dr Pedram Shojai: How long for the turnaround, in your experience, when they shift the diet?

Yeah. Um, usually, I mean, some of the studies we’ve looked at were about 12 weeks, which I would argue is a short amount of time, right? 12 weeks is a very short amount of time. Um, so 12 weeks is probably the gold standard, but I think even within a few weeks, really changing dietary patterns can, can have a really profound effect. Um, and it’s true. You talked about like not being able to fall asleep and you could look at the same concept related to alcohol metabolism in the liver. So, you know, what I tell my patients is when you have alcohol, it’s a toxin, liver is like, oh my gosh, this toxins here and it stops every process down in order to convert that toxin and get it out of the body.

That’s the only goal. So blood sugar is not managed well because it’s like the liver’s like, I can’t do anything else right now. I got to get this toxin out. And what happens after it gets it out is you wake right back up. So even though alcohol is a sedative, three in the morning, you’re going to wake up and not going to be able to fall back asleep. So it’s a great example of kind of what you said is that when it’s working so hard, it will do it at the compromise of working for other organs. All right. It just, it just doesn’t have that capability.

Dr Pedram Shojai: And honestly, I feel like the liver, um, the heart works a lot, but the liver is probably the hardest working silent organ in the body. Um, and it just does so much that we don’t give it credit for. Um, and we just beat it up all the time. Not just with the, the blood sugar, but you know, the, the perfume at the, the store, the, you know, all of the things that, that are exotoxins as well.

Dr Pedram Shojai: The poor liver takes it.

Right. What are we putting on our grass?

Dr Pedram Shojai: Let me let me, let someone in the front door. Um, are you, are you have a heart out? Do you have a heart out at 10?

Nope. Not at all.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Okay, we’re going to wrap it in like two minutes anyways, but let me just let her in real

Okay. Okay.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Sorry. I was supposed to leave the front door open and I, it was just partially latched so she couldn’t get in.

worries.

Dr Pedram Shojai: yeah, my bad. Um, non alcoholic fatty liver disease. The book says 25 percent of the population, that’s one in four people, have this. This isn’t trivial, this is epidemic proportions. It’s just that people aren’t falling over, dying overtly from it.

Dr Pedram Shojai: So people are like, well, whatever, right? How bad is

Or having symptoms. Yeah.

It’s really bad and that’s, that’s really probably, um That’s probably a low estimate. There’s probably a lot more people that have the condition. I mean, if you’re diet type 2 diabetic, you’re like 80 percent more likely to have fatty liver as well. So a lot of times we’ll look at inclusion, um, as a form of diagnosis.

Um, so my co author who’s a hepatologist, he would look at that when he’s trying to diagnose sometimes. Do you have type two diabetes? Do you have certain waist circumference, etc? But it’s probably a lot worse than what we think. Yes, it’s slow moving, but the problem is you don’t get the symptoms until your liver is really damaged a lot of times. So that’s the issue is that like we ignore it because we don’t have any symptoms that we can identify to the liver. We might have symptoms like fatigue or brain fog that we’re not even aware of. Put into the liver, right? Like, Oh, I’m just so stressed or I’m so tired, you know. Um, but once you start getting more symptoms that are a little bit more severe, a lot of times you’re in kind of the second stage. which is like a Nash or the area where we have more fibrosis or inflammation. So the inflammation signals are occurring really rapidly, and that’s when it’s like people are like, Oh, shoot, I really have to take care of this. So, you know, my whole point is like, let’s not wait. Let’s see if we have a diagnosis and let’s take the steps now. Not only will it help this organ, it’s going to help all the other organs as well.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Yeah, in the liver is trying to orchestrate a lot. It conjugates our hormones, it helps with the storage of energy, our metabolism, all these things that are kind of, that are off in metabolic syndromes that we all have now because we all have gasoline on our shoes. And so the idea of fixing that conductor in the orchestra, um, Really can change a lot of things in people’s stars, and that’s where I find this is a really high leveraged play is if you can fix this, then all the systems of the body start to get much more harmony because everything’s running through the liver, and if that’s the catch point where things are stuck, if you’re losing capacity in the liver, that’s just it’s a friction point where all the blood’s got to pass through.

Dr Pedram Shojai: It’s bad. It’s bad when the liver is not working right.

Bad when the liver’s not working right, right? And we, you’re right, we don’t give it the attention that it deserves. I, I remember, um, this is my second book on liver health and I remember when I was writing the first one and people have been telling me like, Oh, what, you gotta write a book, gotta write a book.

So finally I started writing a book. What’s it about? And I was almost like, Oh, it’s, uh, it’s about the liver. Right. And then I’d wait for their like disappointed reaction.

It wasn’t about the brain. It’s Not sexy.

at all. Right. Like, it’s like, Oh yeah, it was kind of like, I’d say it under my breath and then just, you know, um, but it’s true, right?

Like, so you, the heart is sexy. The brain is sexy and it should be, it plays such a huge role. But you can have, um, you know, if, if your liver doesn’t work, you don’t work. And that’s just the bottom line. That’s the high level, bottom line liver doesn’t work. You don’t work nothing about you is going to work. Um, you know, that, that is why it’s such an amazing organ and we don’t give it the credit it deserves because really it doesn’t get the news that it should get.

Dr Pedram Shojai: But if you look at the, the other news, and we’re like adding 70, 000 tons of synthetic chemicals to our environment every single day, and you know, we’re making all these new chemicals and the body does not know how to process or conjugate out. Where does that stuff go, folks? It’s gotta go through your liver, right?

Dr Pedram Shojai: And so the liver is working over time And so the liver is working over time. and not getting the support and love it needs. And we’re feeding ourselves in a way that it’s also doubling down on the same organ. So because the liver has multiple jobs, the liver is also taking multiple punches. So that’s where I find this to be incredibly important.

Dr Pedram Shojai: And again, a leveraged play, fix your liver, fix your life. What’s the title of the book? How can people find it? Um, I think that I just, I’m a, I’m a big fan of, I’m a big fan of the work that you’re doing and feel that, um, folks who get it need to read this tonight.

Yep. Well, thank you for that. It’s called regenerative health. And, uh, you can get it at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, um, you know, if you go to my website, you can, you can get it there as well, but Amazon’s probably the best place to get it. And, um, yeah, I think we, we tend to agree. Uh, it’s a really important, important book about something that most people aren’t noticing.

And so that’s why it makes it even more important.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Great. And for those of you who love, uh, the way Kristen rolls, she was also a guest in the vitality summit, which if you’ve heard this before, um, the event starts, uh, you need to hear what we talked about there because, uh, we, we talked about a lot of different things, um, that are related, um, yet different.

Dr Pedram Shojai: So Kristen. Thank you. Great to have you on the show

Uh, such an honor.

Dr Pedram Shojai: best of luck. in all of it. You’re great.

Thank you so much.

Okay. That’s rap. Hope you enjoyed it. Uh, check out her book, check out her stuff. She’s brilliant. I really enjoyed meeting her. I really enjoyed interviewing her. She was also in my vitality summit. Both times walked away thinking I like her. I’ll see you in the next show.

The post Navigating the Maze of Nutritional Choices with Kristin Kirkpatrick appeared first on The Urban Monk.

Dale Bredesen, MD, received his undergraduate degree from Caltech and his medical degree from Duke University. He served as resident and chief resident in neurology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and as postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Nobel Laureate Professor Stanley Prusiner. He was a faculty member at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) from 1989 to 1994 and was then recruited by the Burnham Institute to direct the Program on Aging. In 1998, he became the founding president and CEO of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging and adjunct professor at UCSF. From 2013 to 2023, he returned to UCLA as a professor and director of the Easton Center for Alzheimer’s Disease Research. He is currently Senior Director of the world’s first precision medicine program for neurodegenerative diseases, which is at the Pacific Neuroscience Institute.

The Bredesen Laboratory studies basic mechanisms underlying the neurodegenerative process and the translation of this knowledge into effective therapeutics for Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative conditions, which has led to the publication of over 200 research papers. He was the principal investigator for the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at UCLA. He established the ADDN (Alzheimer’s Drug Development Network) with Dr. Varghese John in 2008, leading to the identification of new classes of therapeutics for Alzheimer’s disease. His group has developed a new approach to the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease, the MEND protocol, and this approach has led to the first description of a reversal of symptoms in patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and early Alzheimer’s disease. Dr. Bredesen is the author of two New York Times bestsellers: The End of Alzheimer’s: The First Program to Prevent and Reverse Cognitive Decline and The End of Alzheimer’s Program.

Listen to the episode on Spotify here or on your favorite podcast platform.

Podcast transcript:

Beating Alzheimer’s- A Proven Path with Dr Dale Bredesen

Welcome urban monk, the podcast it’s back full swing. Excited to share Dale Bredesen. Uh, Dr. Bredesen’s work was foundational. His lab at UCLA is the first of its kind demonstrating the reversal of Alzheimer’s disease. Yes, that’s right. He did not find a miracle pill for a single vector solution. He realized that it’s complicated and therefore it had to be solved with what lifestyle, but lo and behold, it worked so really important work, really important thesis. In that we’ve been doing this wrong, man.

We’ve been chasing the drugs because guess what? You could patent those and make billions of dollars. Oh, wait. You’re not making the billions someone else is, but that’s not necessarily the way we need to solve these problems. Dr. Bredesen’s lab. Solved this problem and has a solution around Alzheimer’s that is scientifically validated. Proven to work, enjoy the show.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Welcome to the podcast. I’m a big fan of your work. I’m excited to have you here.

Dr Dale Bredesen: Thanks so much, Pedram. Great to be here.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Yeah, great to be catching up with you. Um, as, uh, another chapter of your life has commenced, your UCLA days have now, ended and now you’re doing some interesting work, , that I wanna talk about, but I wanna, I. Introduce my audience to you and your work a little bit. Um, just for, for those who don’t know you, um, obviously you’ve been a, you know, the voice in Alzheimer’s, but if you could give me maybe the, the bird’s eye view of how you started, how you came to studying, uh, Alzheimer’s, and how that kind of became your work over the last couple decades.

Dr Pedram Shojai: It

Dr Dale Bredesen: Yeah, great point. You know, I actually got interested in the brain as a freshman at Caltech. I read a book called The Machinery of the Brain, and I thought, wow, you know, I was kind of hooked. I had been interested in computers before that and I was interested . And how the brain is similar to a computer.

Dr Dale Bredesen: And of course when I went to medical school, I found out brain diseases are the ones that are the least treatable. And all these things from Alzheimer’s to Lewy body to ALS and on and on and on that are just, uh, death sentences. So I got interested in lab work and say, okay, how can we actually get to the point of doing something? And the big surprise, after 30 years in the lab. Is that these diseases aren’t what we were taught. And so we started translating the research into, you know, could we actually do something? And the exciting part is we could, we started seeing people getting better for the first time. Uh, published that back in 2014.

Dr Dale Bredesen: So, uh, that’s where we are. There’s been a lot of controversy, a lot of pushback because people simply don’t wanna think of these. As things that are beyond their typical monotherapy, you know, pharmaceutical therapy. So they keep telling you there’s nothing you can do. There’s nothing you can do. But again, we see it again and again and again.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Yeah, it’s, it’s really easy to go big brother on this and say, well, of course no one’s interested ’cause there’s no drug and there’s no, you know, billion, billion dollar . Or patent on this deal. Um, and you, you broke, you broke the concrete on this one, right? Back in 2014. You demonstrated, um, very specifically that there is a, a, a possibility and not just a possibility.

Dr Pedram Shojai: There are results in reversal. So let’s talk about what happened in, in that, because that, that’s groundbreaking and that changed everything as far as I’m concerned.

Dr Dale Bredesen: And definitely changed, you know, what we were thinking about. So what had happened was we were literally searching for drugs for years in the lab, and we noticed that amyloid precursor protein, so the one protein sitting in neurons sitting, especially at synapses, the thing that gives rise to the amyloid that characterizes Alzheimer’s disease, which is just a tiny piece of this overall receptor. This thing has a really interesting property, so it is a switch. So I know it’s interesting to me, you have done so much on balance. I don’t think there’s a better disease to talk about balance than Alzheimer’s disease. It is balance within brain signaling. It is balance of evolutionary, uh, approaches versus what, how we are living today. It is all about balance. It’s really, uh, very interesting to me. So what we found is. This molecule that sits here, when things are good, you have enough nutrition, you have enough blood flow, you have enough oxygenation, hormones, nutrients, all of this. It is cut at a single site and it gives you two fragments.

Dr Dale Bredesen: One for outside the cell, one for inside the cell, and it’s really about connection. So your brain is in a mode of connection. You make synapses, you keep synapses, you make and keep new memories. But that same molecule, when things are bad, you have inflammation, you have less blood flow, you have less sleep, you have, uh, invasion by pathogens from your oral microbiome or from leaky gut.

Dr Dale Bredesen: Any of these things, the same molecule will now be cut at three different sites. Producing four peptides, so you can literally follow the molecules here. And two now are for outside, two for inside. And what they are are talking instead of connection, it’s protection. So you literally, just like you go from sleep to wakefulness, you flip from connectivity to protection. And so that’s why you’re making this amyloid that has been vilified in Alzheimer’s disease. It is actually a protectant and sequestrant it literally. Covers pathogens and kills them. So it is part of your innate immune system. So all these drugs that are trying to rip the amyloid outta your brain are missing that.

Dr Dale Bredesen: You really wanna know why it’s there. So we had the first patient, actually, I gotta call, this is a, a person who worked for the CIA. I got a call years ago. Uh, she’s by the way now, now a brain health coach, uh, and doing great. Uh, and so she was at that point just about to turn 67. She’s now 79 and doing great.

Dr Dale Bredesen: Just did a hundred mile bike ride a couple of weeks ago. Uh, and she, you know, I was, uh, sent, she was sent to me. I’d said, look, I haven’t seen a patient in 20 years. We are working with transgenic mice and cells and fruit flies, what we called alts, slimers and uh, and Alzheimer’s. These are the things we are working with.

Dr Dale Bredesen: And I said, but you know, I’m happy to talk to her because we were trying to do a clinical trial that had been turned down because it was more than one variable. We said, yeah, it’s more than one variable disease. So when she came and we spent two and a half hours going through this whole idea of here’s this new idea, this is what our research has shown us. I thought I would never hear from her again, but three months later, I got a call from her at, at my home on Saturday morning and she said, I’m doing absolutely great. My memory’s better than it’s been in 20 years. Her mother had died of Alzheimer’s. She was actually, uh, getting ready to commit suicide. She was hoarding pills. She talks about this actually. In the book, the first survivors of Alzheimer’s, she was patient zero. And so, um, she’s done well and she’s now, you know, 11 plus years out. So the idea was, let’s quit thinking about this as a simple disease like pneumococcal pneumonia, and let’s start thinking about this again as more of a balance so that this is really about a network insufficiency. It’s driven in humans largely by two things, reduced energetics, increased inflammation, so anything that, again, it’s a supply and demand. You are balancing this ability to make, to keep your a PP. On the connection side and not on the protection side. When you have to protect yourself from pathogens, from toxins, from reduced nutrients, from various exposures, from poor sleep, all these things, you flip that to the other side, you’re now making the amyloid.

Dr Dale Bredesen: You’re making the tau, which by the way, the, the, uh, phospho tau is also a very nice antimicrobial, in this case, protein. And so this is all about Not molecules trying to give you Alzheimer’s. These are molecules trying to protect you. And as I said earlier, you can literally follow the pathways. Estradiol, for example, binds to its receptor, enters the nucleus, turns on hundreds of genes.

Dr Dale Bredesen: One of them is the one that cuts the a PP at a single site, gives you the connection side. On the other hand, NF kappa b. Associated with inflammation also enters the nucleus, changes a transcription of hundreds of genes, and two of them are two that actually cut to give you the four downsizing peptides, the protective peptides. So it’s a beautiful story and it actually makes a lot more sense than saying your protein just folded up incorrectly because when you remove the, the incorrectly folded up protein, you don’t get better.

Dr Pedram Shojai: It’s funny, the, the metaphor of a guy cover covering his head when he is getting punched at and blaming him for trying to protect himself, um, is what we’ve been doing for . Or 20 years.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Um, and so what is it? The brain doesn’t feel safe. The brain goes into shut down and protective mode. You mentioned energy, uh, and you mentioned inflammation.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Let, let’s follow those two, if you will. Is it energy being drawn off into a wartime economy because, you’re, you’re fighting all sorts of other things and just not getting enough available ATP to the brain? Um, or is it the energy specifically just getting mis misch channeled, not necessarily being a deficit.

Dr Dale Bredesen: Both. So what happens is you, your brain is getting energy. It’s gotta have the blood flow, it’s gotta have the mitochondrial function, it’s gotta have the oxygen saturation, it’s gotta have something to burn. Ketones or glucose, of course, are the only options. So it’s gotta have all those Things to make it be supported. And what happens is, just as you said about the wartime economy, you can either use those for connectivity. So again, very much like what happened to our country, by the way, when the pandemic hit, we now have an insult, which is now SARS-CoV-2, and we’re being told. Shelter in place. Socially distanced, don’t go into work.

Dr Dale Bredesen: And what happens? We go into a recession, same thing happens in the brain in Alzheimer’s. You’re now switching from this. I can make new synapses. I’m gonna learn new things. I can store new information to wait a minute, I’ve gotta put my resources into protection. I am under assault. And so now I have to protect myself.

Dr Dale Bredesen: So I’m going to make Amyloid. I’m going to make phospho. I’m going to make things that kill pathogens and that sequester them away from me and I’m going to pull back so that I will be protected. I’m gonna live with a slightly smaller brain with fewer synapses so that I can survive.

Dr Pedram Shojai: I’m assuming there’s the usual suspects, right? Um, the, the internal pathogens, you know, obviously you mentioned, um, SARS two, but you know, Epstein Barr, all these things that, that can, you know, lie latent in the body, you know, the bacterial infections. What about environmental toxins? What about the things that are kind of jumping into our houses and creating, uh, some of these issues are, are we seeing that as well as the body is going into defense mode?

Dr Dale Bredesen: Absolutely. So it’s interesting and we, we had our, our first treatment way back in 2012. Uh, and we noticed that there was a group of people that were not getting better and we didn’t understand that, you know, that there were these various toxins. And so I started calling their spouses and looking into their histories and what, what would, what had we missed here?

Dr Dale Bredesen: Because initially we were looking at nutrients. We were looking at support, but we were not looking at toxicity, and we started to realize, wait a minute. These are people who have grown up or been exposed to very toxic areas. So it basically boils down to three things. It’s inorganic, toxins, metals, mercury, things like that. Uh, you know, air pollution is one of the ones, unfortunately, second organics. So toluene, benzene, formaldehyde, glyphosate, all these things. And then number three, Is biotoxins, things like trico theses, uh, and uh, okra toxin a, uh, and gliotoxin and things like this. So any of these are, your brain recognizes as toxin exposure. And it’s interesting, the amyloid that you make not only is a good antimicrobial peptide, but it is also a very tight binder of metals, especially divalent metals. Like copper and zinc. So it is produced. Also binds iron by the way. Uh, and so again, you are responding with something that is part of your innate immune system. And just as in, uh, covid, you know, you die from cytokine storm because you’ve got your innate immune system really active, but your adaptive has not yet been able to clear the pathogen In Alzheimer’s, you die of cytokine drizzle. Because you’ve got a lower level, but, but you still are not clearing whatever it is that is now activating, which, unlike with covid, it can be many different things as you indicated.

Dr Dale Bredesen: It can be oral bacteria, it can be sinus bacteria, it can be Lyme disease, it can be tick-borne illnesses, it can be mycotoxin. Any of these things, uh, are all potential things that will, that can give you the cognitive decline that is ultimately diagnosed as Alzheimer’s.

Dr Pedram Shojai: You know, it’s funny, a few years back I was looking at some, some work on people going on immunotherapy. It turned out it was a food allergy. And so now you’re sitting here punishing the immune system for trying to do its job instead of taking out the noxious agent that it’s, you know, ringing the, the, the alarm for.

Dr Pedram Shojai: So this is a fundamental shift in thinking. I obviously know why, you know, it’s an too many inconvenient truths. I understand why they didn’t, , fund the grant, right.

Dr Dale Bredesen: Yeah.

Dr Pedram Shojai: But, so if we have to now look at this as kind of a systems ecology approach, um,

Dr Pedram Shojai: let’s start with energy because we, we are already there.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Where do we eke out more energy? Where do we get this ATP to get back up to the brain to at least, you know, turn the lights back on and tell the brain that it’s safe and that we could go back into rest, rest, digest, and peacetime economy.

Dr Dale Bredesen: This is such a great point because yes, you can see what we’re doing. We’re bringing up the energy, we’re bringing down the inflammation. We’re getting rid of the toxicity. You know, these are things that, uh, Jeff Bland and Mark Hyman and the functional Medicine group have been talking about for years. What our research showed is This is the theory behind the neurodegenerative state. You have a supply and demand. They are different for each neural subsystem. Um, if your supply and demand for your motor modulation subsystem is off, you’re gonna get Parkinson’s. If your neuroplasticity system is off, you’re gonna get Alzheimer’s.

Dr Dale Bredesen: If your motor power is off, you’re gonna get a LS. Each one of these has its own P it has its own, uh, Achilles heel and has its own requirements. So the, so the way that we deal with these things and the way that we then change the energy is say, okay, why is this person’s energetics, uh, unsupported or not supported enough? And you may have talked to, uh, professor Rick Johnson who came out with a paper. Actually, David Perlmutter and I are both co-authors on his paper, but it’s really His work over the years on what happens with fructose. Now I’m not talking about eating an apple, I’m talking about large amounts of fructose. And as Rick showed elegantly, um, this actually leads to a pathway where you’re saying, aha. It is fall. Your body is saying winter is coming. I am going to get ready for lesser uh, uh, access to food. And so I’m gonna turn down the a TP by about 10 to 15%. I’m gonna store fat. And Rick did a beautiful job of just listing.

Dr Dale Bredesen: Here are all the physiological changes and imaging changes with fructose, and here are all the changes with Alzheimer’s. They just line up beautifully. So again, it comes back to if you don’t have enough energy, and one way to get that, in our society you eat for high fructose corn syrup, you have too much glucose as he pointed out.

Dr Dale Bredesen: You can also get there through glucose or salt. Hey, you know, where have we heard this before? This sounds like a American life. Um, you get there through insulin resistance. You get there through high carb diets. Um, you get there through processed foods. You get there through sedentary lifestyle through too much stress.

Dr Dale Bredesen: And again, the amygdala plays a big role here. Stress is an issue in these people. As long as you have that, uh, you know, you’re on high alert all the time. Your Innate immune system remains on high alert. You eat a bunch of saturated fat, you are on high alert. Uh, great for if you suddenly get exposed to pneumococcus, uh, you know, pneumococcus. Um, but since we’re u they usually, that’s not the problem anymore. What’s happened is we are killing ourselves slowly over the years by not Taking care of our energetics and not taking care of our inflammation. And those things are over the time, you know, it’s multiple pathways, but they all end in the same thing, which is the plaques and tangles that the neuropathologist says, ah, this person died of Alzheimer’s disease. And I should mention, you know. 45 million Americans are slated to die of Alzheimer’s, of the currently living Americans. So it actually dwarfs the pandemic just in terms of real numbers. It’s just that, of course, it’s slower than, uh, death by Covid. So the great news is. We can do so much about this. I’ve been, you know, arguing to people, Alzheimer’s is now optional. Look, nobody has to get this. Just don’t wait until it’s very late. When you get Alzheimer’s, you go through four phases. You go through an asymptomatic phase where you can already see changes on a PET scan or spinal fluid. And the good news is now there are even some simple blood tests you can do, which is great.

Dr Dale Bredesen: This is brand new. We should all have these blood tests. So that’s an asymptomatic phase. Then you go through SCI, subjective, cognitive impairment, and on average that lasts 10 years. So we have a tremendous opportunity to prevent and reverse this problem. The third of four phases is called MCI, mild cognitive impairment, and they shouldn’t call it mild ’cause as, as one patient said to me there, there’s nothing mild about it. It’s a relative, they should call it relatively late stage Alzheimer’s disease. Um, it’s like telling someone, you know, Pedram, don’t worry. You know, you just have mildly metastatic cancer. Uh, yeah, there’s nothing mild about that. And then the fourth and final phase, uh, is Dementia where you’re now having trouble with your activities of daily living.

Dr Dale Bredesen: So if everybody would get into those first two phases, we recommend everyone. If you’ve turned 40, get a cognoscopy, uh, just like getting a colonoscopy when you turn 50. Great idea. You’ll get some blood tests, a simple online cognitive assessment, and then if you’ve got symptoms, you wanna include an MRI with volumetrics. So the reality is we can do a lot for people and very few people should ever get. Full on Alzheimer related dementia.

Dr Pedram Shojai: What are the new blood tests? Um, and where can you get ’em?

Dr Dale Bredesen: Yeah, great point. Um, so the new blood tests are, and there are several and they each, it’s interesting ’cause each one tells you something different. So really, you know, the era of going in and getting a spinal tap for Alzheimer’s really should be ending. Now it’s kind of barbaric. So number one is P Tau two 17. So it’s a phospho au, specifically at residue 217, and that’s carried out by a kinase called GSK three Beta Kinase. Typically, and again, what happens when you’re signaling in your brain is saying, Hey, things are not good. Pull back. Well, what is tau? Tau sits on the microtubules and sta it’s like bolts. It stabilizes your microtubules. So when you get a signal, pull back, pull back. What happens is your tau gets phosphorylated. That changes its shape, it pops off, and your neurites can collapse more rapidly. So what you’re really measuring is, is your brain’s telling itself. Pullback pullback. It’s synaptoclastic signaling as opposed to going forward.

Dr Dale Bredesen: Synaptostoblastic signaling by analogy with osteoblastic and osteoclastic, and so that’s the first one. P TAU two 17. Second one is P TAU 180 1. It’s same idea. It’s a different site on the tau molecule. It’s not quite as accurate as two 17, but it’s the second best one. So these tell you whether the process of pulling back associated with Alzheimer’s is ongoing. Don’t worry if it’s high, you can bring it down. It takes about six months. You gotta do, you gotta go on the protocol, do the right things. But just like you measure an improvement in your LDL particle number, you can measure an improvement in your P TAU 217 and 181, and then the third one is NFL, which is Neurofilament light. Now, that tells you something different. That tells you whether you have neuronal damage that’s less specific. It’s not just Alzheimer’s. It can be from anything. It can be from frontotemporal Dementia can be from head trauma, it can be from a stroke, anything. Then the next one is GFAP. Which is glial fibrillary acidic protein, and that tells you something different still.

Dr Dale Bredesen: So these are all complimentary. That one tells you if your astrocytes in your brain, the things that support the neurons are activated and they get activated when there are problems. The good news about that one is it’s a relatively early marker and it is associated with some inflammation in the brain.

Dr Dale Bredesen: So again, good thing to know. And then the final one is a beta 42 to 40 ratio. So your ratio, these are two different of the amyloid molecules, one’s 40 amino acids, one’s 42 amino acids. That ratio changes as you’re heading for Alzheimer’s, and it’s a relatively early marker. That’s an, it’s another one. So those are good tests. And um, a group that does the two 17 and, and all of these, uh, is called neuro code. Um, you can also get, uh, the p TAU 180 1 from LabCorp, for example. Um, and then you can get the 42 to 40 ratio you can get from, uh, prosivity and you can get from Quest. So these things have now just become available. I think this is something where, you know, we all just like 60 years ago saying, Hey, you know, we, we need to know our cholesterol. Um, now, you know, we need to know these things because we need to know, are we on the way? And the great news, if everyone finds out, we’ll, you know, you don’t ever have to let yourself keep going, going, going. The old way was people said, well, don’t go in to see a doctor because it’s probably not Alzheimer’s.

Dr Dale Bredesen: And by the way, if it is Alzheimer’s, there’s nothing we can do anyway. Um, that is the, you know, that, that, that’s the outdated view now.

Dr Pedram Shojai: I love that. Um, yeah, I remember in the eighties, uh, the, the way. Way we dealt with the crack epidemic was we, we went to the schools , right? And, and got people to not do it and got way upstream. So, so phase one, phase two, this is, uh, a slam dunk. You, you get the test, you, you start making the lifestyle interventions and you’re in good shape.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Um, if you’re already in MCI, um, at, at that point, is it, is it, um, sixes like, you know, how, how likely is it to turn the tide if someone’s in phase three?

Dr Dale Bredesen: Great point. So you’re in phase three. That was what our trial was about. It’s freely available online. We published it last year in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease. 84% of the people improved. Now, to be fair. Um, that was a trial where we had doctors who were very good at doing this. Um, this is not easy, you know, as you know, functional medicine is not simple prescription pad medicine. Um, these sorts of precision medicine approaches. You wanna get someone who’s been trained, we’ve trained over 2000 physicians from 10 different countries in all over the us. Uh, and so you want to get someone who’s good at it and who’s gotten good results in the past and work with them. And you can get better from MCI. The final stage with dementia, we see people improve. The difference is with SCI and even into MCI, we can see people come all the way back. We have people who go from MOCA scores of 18 out of 30 to perfect thirties out of 30. We’ve never seen anyone go from zero to 30. That’s one of the things we’re working on. When you have an end stage Alzheimer’s patient, what would it take to bring them completely back to normal? They’ve lost a lot of synapses. We have seen them. I. Get much better. They go from zero to nine, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but they talk again. They become continent again. They interact again.

Dr Dale Bredesen: They take care of themselves. So they essentially go from dementia to MCI. They can still take care of themselves. They can still become part of the family, which is wonderful, but it’s hard. We cannot bring them yet all the way back. So again, please come in the first couple of phases. It’s much easier to get full return.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Coming back to the other side of your assets and liabilities, uh, equation you talked about inflammation. Um, so energy up, inflammation down to me. A lot of times those things, um, have the same lifestyle measures that, that counteract each other. Uh, let’s talk about that and then I’m curious about the role of the mitochondria and the signaling, um, from the mitochondria in this whole process.

Dr Dale Bredesen: Yeah, great point. Um, so the, the thing about inflammation is it is in some sense, as you said, uh, intimately related to the energetics because it is putting a drag on the system. It’s a little bit like saying, you know, you don’t have the legs you once did to pedal uphill. Now we’re gonna put a couple of bricks on top of you and see.

Dr Dale Bredesen: Now it’s much harder to pedal uphill. That’s what inflammation is doing. Again, it’s also saying Put your resources into protection and not into growth and maintenance. Now, it’s interesting, people have said over the years, why the heck would the brain, when it does, when it isn’t quite all there, why would it give up memory?

Dr Dale Bredesen: Isn’t that such an important thing? And that’s the the first thing that goes, as you know, in about two thirds of these patients. And I think that the answer is, again, very much about evolutionary balance. What happens is by the time you’ve reached adulthood. You have learned a tremendous amount. You can get along very, very well with what you’ve learned. So when we see people who are having memory problems, they’re still very functional. Uh, they can often do their jobs very well. Um, they can drive, they can interact, they can play sports, they can do because they have had a lifetime of learning. It’s really not such a big problem just to not remember what you had for breakfast. Um, now that’s what signals us. Okay? That’s the canary in the mine. Something’s wrong here. But on the other hand, if I said to you, Pedram, tomorrow morning, you can wake up and you either can’t learn new things and you could just have all the stuff in the past, or you lose the ability to read or to speak, or you know, all these more

Dr Dale Bredesen: Fundamentally important things. The people who come in with executive dysfunction, which is the other third, they have trouble with calculations and planning. So the ones who come in with planning problems are the ones that lose their jobs very early on because they can’t simply have post-its there.

Dr Dale Bredesen: They just can’t organize. They get a new. Phone, they can’t figure out how to make it work. Those are the ones that are really impacted more. So I think that that’s why, you know, evolution has said to us, you know, I gotta take something away. We just don’t have the support and we have too much drag with the inflammation. So I’m gonna take away something where you’ve got a lot of history, you got a lot of knowledge, don’t worry. So as you said, inflammation and my gosh, this has been a tough one because it’s coming from everywhere. The big surprise to me when I, when I was trained in, in medical school. We were taught that uh, there are certain organs that, that are sterile.

Dr Dale Bredesen: Of course, of course the brain should be sterile. You shouldn’t have bugs running around your brain. Well, guess what? Now it turns out you have a gut microbiome. You have an oral microbiome, you have a sinus microbiome, and yes, you have a brain microbiome. And so what do they find in there? And it’s still not clear whether you should have nothing.

Dr Dale Bredesen: And it’s just that patients are getting sick when they have something in their brain or whether in fact, that’s part of normalcy. It’s not yet clear. But what we do know is when you look in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients, what you see is you see oral bacteria like P gingivalis. You see herpes simplex from the lip, for example. You see, HHV six A, which is a herpes that comes probably through the sinuses. You see Borrelia things that are coming from Tick bites and things like that. By the way, you see candida in the brains. So the pathologists have taught us a lot about what is actually in there. And you know what’s fascinating, Pedram, uh, some of these are coming from the gut, and so they’re tending to go up the vagus and you’re ending up in the brainstem. The ones that are coming through the sinuses are going into what’s called the rhin encephalon, the nose brain. And so these are giving you different patterns depending on where these things came from.

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Dr Pedram Shojai: So following the breadcrumbs, if you will. I remember, uh, what Sarkis mes manian back in Caltech, um, a while back, was talking about these, these nodules in the gut microbiome working their way up 15 years

Dr Dale Bredesen: Yeah.

Dr Pedram Shojai: So they’ll hop up the vagus nerve. Get into the brain, but you had, you had alluded to kind of differential neuronal plumbing, if you will, and where, where it hits is where you, uh, where we see it in the patient.

Dr Pedram Shojai: So if it comes from the gut, do we see a particular type of dementia, if it comes from the sinuses, have we, have we been able to differentiate the, the outcome based on the origin yet?

Dr Dale Bredesen: To some extent, there’s a lot more work to be done and even subgroups. So for example, in people with Alzheimer’s, you can present as a PCA posterior cortical atrophy, which is mostly about visual Perception and visual analysis, and that’s five to 10% of the patients you can present with PPA primary progressive aphasia.

Dr Dale Bredesen: As I mentioned earlier, you can present as an amnestic patient or a non amnestic patient, and the non amnestic ones tend to be more about toxicity. So there are these different things, but is a gen. So yes, there’s a lot more to learn there, but as a general rule, things that are coming from the gut, like as with Dr.

Dr Dale Bredesen: Mazmanian work, um, these are things that are going to the Brainstem and you’re getting things like Parkinson’s where you’re getting, you know, Lewy bodies and you’re getting dropout, uh, in the substantial nigra, pars compacta, which is now, , sending its, uh, axons, uh, up to the, uh, uh, putamen and caudate.

Dr Dale Bredesen: This is the nigro stri AAL pathway. On the other hand, when you’re seeing things coming in through, uh, the, the nasal route, for example, you’re getting more of a cortical presentation. So, yes, I, I do think that this does reflect to some extent where the access as, and interestingly in Alzheimer’s, of course, there’s more and more about the gut relation to Alzheimer’s as well as Parkinson’s. And one of the interesting things there is that the first. Thing to go in Alzheimer’s, um, is the locus saurus, which is a brainstem nucleus. In this case, it’s different than the one that goes in Parkinson’s. Of course. It’s a thing that is pre with, is projecting your, uh, norepinephrine, um, up into your forebrain. And so what happens to these people? They, uh, become a little more passive. They’re, they’re, they don’t have that same projection. They’re slowed down. And then of course, you, the second thing that happens is your enteral cortex. So now you’re looking at . Things projecting into the hippocampus. Now it’s all about memory. So you ultimately, you know, you’re getting things that are related to the neuroanatomy of where this is coming from, where it’s projecting to. And then other things like what are your genetics? And then also, which, you know, which neurotransmitters. In Alzheimer’s, it’s more about acetylcholine and it’s about, uh, memory.

Dr Dale Bredesen: Whereas of course in Parkinson’s it’s more about dopamine and it’s about motor modulation.

Dr Pedram Shojai: So we end up back. Kind of at a familiar picnic table all around lifestyle and

Dr Pedram Shojai: bringing up energy, bringing down inflammation, and looking at, you know, the culprits, you know, and the usual suspects there.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Um, you developed a whole protocol around this. If we could go high level, obviously there’s a lot of nuance to this and I highly recommend people read your book.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Um, but if we can go high level and talk about what is in this protocol that is turning . The tide in this disease that we thought was incurable.

Dr Dale Bredesen: Great point. So it, it boils down to two pieces. There are the basics and there are seven basics that you’re aware of. Um, and then there are the specifics. So, so what you wanna start with is diet, exercise, sleep, stress, brain training, detox, and some targeted supplements. Those are the basics. And the diet that has actually worked best for this illness is a plant rich. Mildly ketogenic diet. You can do it as a vegan, you can do it as a flexitarian, uh, but you wanna have a plant rich, lots of phytonutrients, lots of polyphenols, et cetera. And you wanna get into mild ketosis. And you wanna be metabolically flexible. So what happens in the brain? I. As we talked about earlier, you only have two things that you can burn in the brain.

Dr Dale Bredesen: You can burn glucose, you can burn ketones, and unfortunately, these people have lost both. So as you start having problems with your cognition, you’ve lost the ability to. To burn glucose because of insulin resistance, which is so common. There are over a hundred million Americans who have insulin resistance, and in fact, if you look at a PET scan of someone with Alzheimer’s or pre-Alzheimer’s, what you see is exactly that, a reduction in glucose utilization in the temporal. Parietal regions of the brain. So it’s showing you this problem. On the other hand, because your insulin has stayed high, you’ve got this insulin resistance. You prevent yourself from making ketones. So now you’ve lost both. So when I see patients who are having cognitive decline, this is an energetic emergency. I want to get. So typically we start by just giving them some exogenous ketones. Their brain is literally starving. It cannot make these things that it requires. And then we have to look to see do they also have sleep apnea? Are they dropping their oxygenation at night? Do they also have some vascular disease?

Dr Dale Bredesen: So one of the reasons I love EWOT, which is exercise with oxygen therapy, because you get the double Positive. You get both the better blood flow and you get the better oxygenation. So it’s really helping kind of perk that up. So it’s those seven things. And then beyond that, you look at the specifics. The good news, you do the basics.

Dr Dale Bredesen: You buy yourself nine to 12 months. This is something Dr. Christine Burke noticed. And she’s one of the ones who’s during the, the, the trial with us currently. She’s a fantastic, uh, functional physician. And so then During that time, you’ve bought yourself time to now look more deeply. Do you have specifics? So look at your oral DNA. Do you have pathogens that are likely to be in your brain? Do you have tick-borne illness? Um, the, there are things that hide out. You know, it’s been really interesting. We just sent a paper off people who had. Done well for over 10 years, these people improved and they sustained it for over 10 years, which as you know, is unheard of. And what happened to them was interesting. They would go along for several years doing well, and then sometimes they’d take a little bit of a turn for the worst. And then you look and find, ah, here are things that were missed, or here are things that have been, have been new. We had a woman recently, she did six years Perfect Mocha of 30. She did great. She’d already had an amyloid positive scan. She’d failed a drug trial. She did great for six years. Then she started going downhill again and we looked, she had three new things. It turned out she had a new leak in her house and had new mycotoxin exposure. Okay, that’s something we understand.

Dr Dale Bredesen: We can do something about that. Secondly, she had a new sinusitis from Cryptococcus Larycia, which is an uncommon one, but it’s one that can give you a sinusitis. Thirdly, she had undiagnosed severe sleep apnea. I still can’t believe that wasn’t, that was missed earlier, but it, it had been, and you can see she did well for a while. But ultimately it caught up with her. Those three things were treated. She’s back to doing great again. So these are the sorts of things that will impact this, this, this is a net or this disease is a network insufficiency, uh, very different than what people thought. It’s not about free radicals, it’s not about misfolded proteins.

Dr Dale Bredesen: Sure, those are all part of this, but that’s not the upstream cause.

Dr Pedram Shojai: We’ve covered this a lot on the show, but I think it’s worthwhile just for a quick second to talk. Talk about what insulin resistance looks like in its reversal. How long in your, in your experience with people on your protocol do you start to see the glucose numbers stabilize, the insulin numbers stabilize, and then how quickly you see that reflected in the brain, the state of the brain and, and the health of the brain.

Dr Dale Bredesen: Yeah, great point. And so, and this is, you know, you could argue that the, you know, number one problem, Um, is related to glucose fructose. It’s, it’s that insulin resistance problem with the reduction in energy that Rick Johnson has shown so beautifully. Um, and the, you know, this is a very common problem that it takes about Two to four weeks to make a difference. And it depends on how quickly you try to do this. You wanna be a little careful. ’cause there’s a very interesting paradox here. On the one hand, this is a disease of insufficiency, so we don’t want to make people fast for long periods, and especially people who are relatively Frail, which many are at the same time. We want to get them to be insulin sensitive. And how do you get that? Well, partly by fasting. So you, this is where the good doctors are really good about. Okay, we’re gonna balance, this comes back to balance once again. We’re gonna make it so this person. Does become insulin sensitive and that, and you can become more insulin sensitive by having less stress, lowering your cortisol, sleeping better at night, doing some exercise. Eating a a again, a plant rich, mildly ketogenic diet with lots of good fats. Um, some intermediate amounts of good protein, uh, and some modest amounts of, uh, of carbs. Uh, but with, uh, hopefully no simple carbs. These are, this is the way you get back. And so I know, uh, Dr. Anne Hathaway, who worked with us on, on the first trial and as part of the second trial, um, has been able to get people into, into ketosis very quickly, which is great, but be careful if someone is frail. Um, sometimes it’ll happen as someone will have a very low BMI and now they’ll lose weight. Because they’ve started to do the right things. Well, you, you can’t do that because they’ll actually, they can actually get worse. So make sure they have enough energy, but then over time get them and, you know, again, you can do it over a couple of months to become insulin sensitive.

Dr Dale Bredesen: You wanna make it so your Homa ir, which is a good measure of, uh, insulin sensitivity is down around 1.0, not up at 2, 3, 4. We see them, you know, very high. Where you, you’ve got these, you know, high insulins, one of the You should have an insulin of, you know, four insulin of, you know, four or five when you’re fasting. Um, one of the patients came in with an insulin of 32. Um, and just bringing it down, even though it came down to eight, initially, not to, not to four or five, made all the difference for him. He did much better. His MRI showed it. One of the things we’re seeing is MRIs improve on these people, uh, as well as the symptoms, their cognitive scores improve.

Dr Dale Bredesen: You know, it’s really striking.

Dr Pedram Shojai: I wanna revisit this question on the mitochondria, the energy. Sensitivity, um, of the system and you know, the mitochondria or they’re finicky, right? They’re, they’re really, you know, the, the environmental toxins really mess with them. And they also have signaling, they also have signaling with our microbiome or, you know, we’re just starting to unravel this, this really weird ecology that’s happening between like the bacteria and our body.

Dr Pedram Shojai: How much do we know about the mitochondria and their role in this whole energy system pathway that you’re talking about?

Dr Dale Bredesen: This is a, this is a tough one because they’re clearly very important and you know, if you’ve got great blood flow and you’ve got great, uh, ketones and glucose, but your mitochondria simply can’t use this to, to produce energy, you’re in trouble. Um, I do think this is one of the things that’s going to, in the future, uh, tell people when it’s time to have, uh, Stem cells. Um, and ultimately you may end up with, you know, mitochondrial transplants. Uh, years ago, uh, a company called MITO Core, I actually looked at this, looked at this possibility of, can we get people better mitochondria? And I think they were ahead of their time because it really is gonna be important.

Dr Dale Bredesen: Now, the good news is as you do the right things, you have mitophagy. So you get rid of your batteries that are relatively worn out and you make new batteries. But if you, but you’re absolutely right. If you are in a situation where your mitochondria are not functioning well and you’re not able to make new ones that function well, um, then that is really tough.

Dr Dale Bredesen: And, and that’s gonna be the rate limiting step, and that’s one of the points here we wanna understand for each individual. What the rate limiting step is. And for some people it will be their mitochondria. For others it will be their, uh, insulin sensitivity. For others, it will be the fact that they are living in a home full of mycotoxins. Um, you know, for others it’ll be that they were bitten by a tick 10 years ago and they don’t realize that they’ve had air Lithia ever since. Uh, so there are all these different things and you’ve got to look for them to get best outcomes as you pointed out. You know, a lot of people just doing the basics will do very well. But if you then fall through the cracks, and that’s the public health approach for the future, if you’re falling through the cracks, please don’t give up. Get in to see someone who can now look for these things that have been missed.

Dr Pedram Shojai: A bit of a personal story. We lost my paternal grandma to Alzheimer’s. I mean, she, she faded fast, so we got . Ahead of the game for dad, knowing that he had the genes and he had the proclivity and all that, missed something that snuck up and bit us, which was, he went in for his third lumbar spine surgery and they hypoxia during the anesthesia

Dr Dale Bredesen: yeah,

Dr Pedram Shojai: us in the ass.

Dr Pedram Shojai: And we’ve been, you know, chasing this thing ever since. And it’s like, I didn’t . I didn’t know. Right. And you know, I’m, I’m, I’m somewhat in the know, didn’t see it coming. Right. And so these are the things, these are the, the, the hearings. Right. It’s, it’s not if x then y. And that’s the challenge with this thing is, you know, it could be a lot of things.

Dr Dale Bredesen: Yeah, this is such a good point, and we recommend anyone who is getting ready for general anesthesia, please. You know, there’s a whole set. We have it, uh, in the guides and, and, uh, Julie G, who’s an a POE four four herself, uh, who was affected and has done very well now for over 10 years, uh, doing just great.

Dr Dale Bredesen: She’s, she turned 60 not long ago, and she’s done just . Great. And she has written all these guides for practical things. Hey, here’s what you do if you’re gonna go for anesthesia, you know, here’s what you can do. These are all available through Apollo Health, and so you do wanna make sure that your glutathione is, is high enough.

Dr Dale Bredesen: You wanna make sure that you’re doing well with detox, and then you wanna talk to the anesthesiologist. Do not allow hypoxia, do not allow hypotension. One of the common things is they say, Hey, every, everybody’s got some hypertension. Let’s, let’s just let this drift down. No, not during that. Yes, for the long run, you wanna be fine, but it’s common for people, unfortunately, to let people who are under general anesthesia become just a bit hypotensive, and that can cause strokes. That can cause It can, you know, contribute to this reduction in energetics. And then of course you’re giving a big bolus of a toxin. And so you’re saying, okay, body, if you were right on the edge of just being able to get rid of the toxins you’re exposed to on a day-to-day basis, here’s a big influx I.

Dr Dale Bredesen: These things and that’s a problem. So anesthesia is one of the most common things we hear when people have cognitive decline. Yeah. This person had anes general anesthesia, you know, six months ago, had an operation for three or four hours and they’ve never been the same since.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Yeah, yeah. You’re Robin Peter to pay Paul energetically and, you know, uh, deciding which long-term memories to trim . You could keep running your life and you just get punched in the face. Right. And , it’s, it’s, it’s hard to come back. So

Dr Pedram Shojai: you, um, aside from writing books, just ventured into the world that I’ve been swimming in for a decade.

Dr Pedram Shojai: And, uh, you know, I always take my hat off to anyone who dares get into film, um, . But you have a new documentary out on, uh, Amazon Prime, apple tv, Google Play called Memories for Life, reversing Alzheimer’s. Tell us about it.

Dr Dale Bredesen: Yeah. And you know, I, I actually didn’t venture at all, so I, I have no courage whatsoever. Um, I got contacted, uh, several years ago, uh, by a Japanese, um, film director. Uh, and of course in Japan, the government listed the 10 biggest concerns. You know, things, things like, are we gonna run out of fish? Number one was dementia, because it is of course, the longest living culture in the world, uh, the longest living country, uh, in the world on average. And so they’re very concerned about dementia. Uh, and I was over there a few times on their, their version of CNN talking about, you know, here’s a protocol that could actually help to reduce this. So one of the Directors called me up and said that NHK, uh, wanted to do a, a documentary, uh, and actually put together a documentary.

Dr Dale Bredesen: And actually they have Michael Buble as the, as the narrator. And, and Michael talks about the fact that this is something that he witnessed in his own grandmother. Uh, so he was very concerned about it and was was wonderful. To do this, uh, and to, he did such a great job. Uh, nar narrating this thing. So they went around and talked to various patients who’d gotten better, uh, both in Japan and in the us. Uh, and this has just come out as now streaming on Amazon Prime is in, uh, is streaming on, uh, Google Play and on Apple tv, and I think it’s coming out in Voodoo and Tubi pretty soon. So I really appreciate, uh, Yuki Tokagawa as the guy who did this, uh, and Michael Buble for the narration for the great job they did.

Dr Dale Bredesen: And interestingly, one of the patients, uh, who is from a famous family in New York, uh, said that she wanted to support this on her own. She’s done very well herself. She’s actually in the movie, uh, and, uh, she talked about, uh, her own, uh, journey. And so she was the one who actually jumped into this and said, you know, I wanna work with this. She kind of did it, even without mentioning it to me, she contacted, um, the director and, and they actually added additional pieces to it. So I think it helps people to see this is not. The end of the road. You know, this is, this is not something that’s impossible for the first time. There is something we can do, and I actually think we’re entering a golden age. New blood tests, new trials. Um, we published a successful trial. Dr. Heather Sanderson also published a successful trial, uh, using the same approach. Very excited about that. Heather has opened. Which is the first assisted living facility, which uses this protocol. She’s getting fabulous results. It’s down just outside of San Diego, uh, as I I mentioned the, the, the testing, um, better and better ways to look at this. Um, I think we’re gonna be able to combine certain targeted pharmaceuticals with these precision medicine protocols to get even better outcomes. .Now taking this to, um, other degenerative diseases, which is what we’re doing now, uh, over at the Pacific Neuroscience Institute. So very excited about that. A precision medicine program for all neurodegenerative diseases.

Dr Dale Bredesen: So I think we’re really entering, uh, a golden age where for the first time, these diseases will be preventable, reversible, and ultimately optional.

Dr Pedram Shojai: I love that. I love that this isn’t a curse. I love that this isn’t a death sentence, and I love that we’ve really turned the corner on that. Now, if you’re listening to this and you’re like, I don’t have any of this, um, you know, the, the first seven . Areas apply to all of us. We live in a toxic world. We live in a world filled with sugar and carbs and all the stuff.

Dr Pedram Shojai: So I would, I would read the Brets and protocol and, um, work to prevent this. Um, but if someone is thinking uhoh, I’m either phase two, three, or, um, you know, heading in that direction. How do you find a doctor? Do you have a directory? I’m assuming you’re not, you know, you had mentioned you haven’t seen a patient in 20 years.

Dr Pedram Shojai: You’re more of a research guy now. How does someone find help? I.

Dr Dale Bredesen: Yeah, and I work with a number of the physicians and the health coaches. Uh, but yes, you can look up, um, on, , mycognoscopyy.com. I encourage everyone if you’re 40 or over, get a cognoscopy. And by the way, you mentioned a really good point. The 20 somethings and 30 somethings, uh, like our children are not worried about this, and they, they shouldn’t be worried about it because they, they’re the first generation that doesn’t have to fear this illness, but they have to remember that these changes that ultimately become Alzheimer’s. You can see changes in the PET scans in the twenties and thirties, so they do start early. They just get diagnosed way down the road, so it is a good idea to find out Do I have insulin resistance? Do I have systemic inflammation? Uh, do I have methylation defects, high homocysteine, things like that. This is part of better health and better longevity and better performance, better energy for all of us. So I think, again, this is part of life. This is, you know, it’s Alzheimer’s is not really a Separate disease. It’s part of life when you’re not doing the right things. And so it’s good for, you know, for everybody to be aware of this. So you can see it on that. You can see@drbressen.com, apollo HealthCo, uh, dot com, any of those things, um, to see, you know where to go if you’re near one of the six sites for the trial.

Dr Dale Bredesen: We are still enrolling people for the trial. Those are a Hollywood . Florida, uh, uh, Cleveland, Ohio, Nashville, Tennessee, Sacramento, California, and then two in the Bay Area, Marin County, uh, and then over in the East Bay, uh, just outside San Francisco. Uh, so we’re still looking for people. If you’re within 60 to 90 minutes of those locations, uh, please let us know.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Love that. Um, I remember reading Emperor of All Maladies years ago, and one of the, one of the issues around trying to figure out why cancer levels were so high is, you know, everyone was smoking. So, you know, why, why would it not be nylon stockings versus the cigarettes? And if you look at the rise of Alzheimer’s, hopefully were, you know, already kind of cresting and coming down with all these new innovations.

Dr Pedram Shojai: But our great grandparents, . Weren’t getting it. Our great-great-grandparents weren’t getting it as much. And then we got into that better living through chemistry, spam and processed food generation. And they’re just getting decimated by this thing because we didn’t see what all the inputs were doing downstream.

Dr Pedram Shojai: And so now that you, you we know better. It is on us to not eat like our parents did , right?

Dr Pedram Shojai: That generation did flip. And we gotta go back to, you know, the fruits and vegetables and all the things that you had mentioned and bring down our stress, um, and avoid the iceberg. Um, but look, I, I don’t think any of us listening to this have not taken a hit.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Um, we, we have lived in the modern world. And so I think this is, is, you know, upfront and center and personal, right? I can’t, I can’t make good decisions. My life sucks and

Dr Pedram Shojai: I need my brain.

Dr Dale Bredesen: It’s the evolutionary mismatch that is the problem. And you know what’s really interesting, Pedram, when I was training, which is way back in the eighties, uh, the, they, we never saw people in their fifties with Alzheimer’s. This was a disease of your sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties. Now, one of the most common things we see. Is a 52-year-old woman going through menopause, developing Alzheimer’s, and unfortunately it is about two to one women to men. And in fact, the epidemiologists have shown recently that the biggest increase in Alzheimer’s is in the 40 somethings and the 50 somethings. I mean, it’s scary. And so yes, you’re right, something changed.

Dr Dale Bredesen: We’re eating differently. We’re living differently. We’re living in homes that are mold food. Uh, we’re getting exposed to these toxins. It’s better living through chemistry, but it’s not always better living. Uh, and so we really need to go back and look at what, what did we assume when we made these changes where the assumptions were incorrect?

Dr Pedram Shojai: I love that my grandpa grew up eating figs. I grew up eating fig Newtons very different.

Dr Dale Bredesen: quite different.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Very, very different. Uh, doc, I really, um, I’m a fan of your work. I really appreciate the work that you keep doing, right? I, I just love it when, uh, when, when guys don’t quit and keep trying to solve the problems. So I’m glad you’ve moved, uh, to the new digs and Marin and are, and are still going.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Um, and, uh, for my audience, anyone who’s listening, take this seriously, get proactive and if you have someone who is already in this, um, . Ecology, get them the help they need. Look up all the resources Dr. Bredesen had referenced here.

Dr Dale Bredesen: great to talk to you. P Thank you for all the great work you’re doing. Uh, you know, let’s, let’s all reduce the global burden of neurodegenerative diseases.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Love it.

Okay. I hope you enjoyed the show. Um, I really enjoy talking to Dr. Bredesen. Nice man. , accomplished. , scientists just doing the work and helping people. , important stuff. So if you have anyone who is starting to slide, get them, reading this book, get them listening to this podcast, get them doing something every single day.

You wait, makes it a little bit harder. To get the job done. Uh, turn this around the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. Next best time is right now. So help them understand that they can turn the tide in the sooner, the better. Uh, if you’re not subscribed to the show yet, please do so. Um, there is a lot more coming your way.

There’s a new format, um, as well, that’s gonna be part of it. So a lot that. He’s going to shift in 2024. Towards getting you. Better and better quality guests and getting you the information you need to navigate the waters. Um, what waters, the crazy waters of the podcasts out there. Um, A lot of people with voices. A lot of people have never seen a patient before in their lives.

A lot of people that have marketed their way into becoming health celebrities. Um, but they have no training. So I want to make sure I bring you. The most legitimate people out there. And also look, I’ve seen thousands of patients. Um, you know, I did the doctor thing for a very long time. And so, you know, as a doctor, you get to say what you want and get away with it.

As a doctor, you have to understand. That you have, uh, an oath you’ve taken and you can’t say things that may or may not work. You can’t say things that might harm people, right? So, uh, there is, uh, a growing movement out there to say, Hey, wait a minute. We are trying to help these folks, but there are people out there that could care less about helping these folks.

So just trying to help you navigate away from some of the misinformation. And also helping navigate you towards things that are high leverage that will get you feeling better as quickly as possible. So subscribe to the show. I look forward to seeing you in the next one.

The post Beating Alzheimer’s – A Proven Path with Dr Dale Bredesen appeared first on The Urban Monk.

Not resilient emotions, or resilient habits, or resilient relationships — we’re talking about the brain objectively as an organ, not as the physical form of your personality.

The health and strength of the brain is paramount to the rest of our functionality.

Some of the reasons for this are obvious — without a well-oiled command center, what else in our lives could possibly run well?

But others take more digging. My personal favorite reason is that without a healthy, strong, and cared for brain, we are in danger of making terrible decisions. 

It’s the ability to reason, weigh cost versus benefit, and follow choices to their logical conclusions that make introspection a worthy endeavor. If we didn’t know that our lives were a series of incremental moves in various directions, we wouldn’t be able to feel pride or regret or longing. (Valuable feelings, all appropriate in their times and places.)

And the thing is, your brain is busy. Even when it sleeps it’s busy. And since it’s mostly made of fats, we need to make sure what we’re eating is supporting our fatty brains so that it can function autonomically and critically.

The best thing you can do for your brain is feed it well. Every nutrient has benefits — that’s why they’re considered nutrients — but your brain loves some more than others.

If you want to build a resilient and plastic noggin, make sure you’re getting these nutrients in your diet.

Polyphenols

Your brain loves these nutrients because they’re neuroprotectors — as in, they safeguard your neurons.

Without getting too in the weeds, the metabolites in polyphenols activate stress-response pathways in the brain which triggers the upregulation of genes that encode neuroprotection. 

Basically, they tell the brain to get serious about caring for its cells, even going so far as to reduce the expression of certain genes — like ones that cause inflammation, for example.

They can also improve cognitive function (such as learning and memory formation) while at the same time protecting against the natural cognitive decline that tends to accompany aging. 

You can find polyphenols in cloves, dark chocolate, berries, fruits, legumes, soy, and more. 

Omega-3 fatty acids

Remember we said the brain is mostly fat? (Well, and water.) That means fat isn’t the enemy the way we thought it was in the 90s — our brains need it. 

Omega-3 fatty acids are polyunsaturated fats that are responsible for most of the benefits of fish oil. The most important kinds of omega-3s are alpha-linolenic acid (ALA), eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). EPA and DHA are found almost exclusively in fish. ALA is found in plant-based foods and can be converted into EPA and DHA in the body — although it’s less efficient than simply getting your recommended dosage.

They are critical for maintaining high-level brain functions. Omega-3 fatty acids strengthen cell membranes, allow for communication between brain cells, improve brain function in those with intellectual disabilities, and improve memory retention.

You can find them in cold-water fatty fish, nuts and seeds, and plant oils.

Lycopene

All antioxidants help to protect the brain and body against free radicals, or molecules containing oxygen and an uneven number of electrons. That instability allows them to come into contact with other molecules as they attempt to pair with other electrons. 

Antioxidants can donate one of their electrons without destabilizing themselves, which halts the chain reaction free radicals can begin. 

Oxidative stress is what happens when there’s an imbalance between antioxidants and free radicals. 

Because the brain uses so much oxygen, it’s especially vulnerable to free radical attacks. 

Antioxidants, and especially lycopene, are great for brain health. Lycopene, found in the red pigment of foods such as tomatoes, can not only enhance cognition, it can also reduce inflammation caused by oxidative stress.

You can find them in tomatoes,  red oranges, watermelons, grapefruit, and other red-hued food.

Circumin 

Circumin, the compound found in turmeric that makes it yellow, is capable of crossing the blood-brain barrier. What does that mean?

The blood vessels that surround the central nervous system regulate what can cross into the brain from the rest of the body — not everything makes it through. But circumin can!

It also increases BDNF, or brain-derived neurotrophic factors, which are growth hormones in your brain that contribute to neurogenesis. Degenerative disorders and lower cognitive ability is often linked to decreased levels of this hormone.

But consuming circumin (with pepper or fatty meals, to help with absorption) can raise the level of BDNF!

These aren’t the only nutrients you need for high-level brain resilience. Vitamin B, zinc, and water — don’t forget, the brain is 73% and being even 2% dehydrated seriously affects cognition — are also vital.

When you’re eating or taking supplements, do so with your brain health in mind!

The post Let Your Brain Have These Nutrients, as a Treat appeared first on The Urban Monk.

Sort of…

A diet is just the class and kind of food that makes up your daily consumption roster. So even if you eat nothing but cookies and chips, that’s a diet.

And the heart of the word “diet” is the same heart of “intuitive eating.” It’s what you eat, and it’s what your body tells you to eat.

We think about food about 200 times a day. But we make far fewer than 200 decisions about eating. That dissonance may be the crux of the overeating/undereating crisis – the number of times, conscious or unconscious, that we make a choice to eat doesn’t come close to the number of times we think about food. 

Not only that, but studies have shown that relying on external clues (like the sun’s positioning or the time on the clock) can lead you to eat thoughtlessly instead of listening to your own internal clues. 

That’s where intuitive eating comes in – what, when, and how much you eat is dictated by your body’s cravings.

But before we get into details of intuitive eating, let’s examine where it came from.

The Intuitive Eating Movement

Intuitive eating was originally borne out of the need to rehabilitate those suffering from eating disorders.

Because of the pervasive negative thoughts about food – and bad habits drilled into our intuitive centers, like the hippocampus – developing a healthy relationship with food is essential to recovering from an eating disorder.

Intuitive eating returns the control to the eater. Instead of living within the restrictions of a diet, or rules about how much you should eat before you purge, or how many hours you must go without eating and what you’re allowed to eat when you do eat again…

Your body is the boss. It tells you what you want, and you listen to it. 

When you learn the difference between emotional eating (eating in response to sadness, loneliness, rejection, guilt, etc.) and biological eating (eating in response to your tummy rumbling, feeling faint or nauseous, getting irritable when your blood sugar is low, etc.) can change everything.

Now, this is not a weight loss program.

Intuitive eating is about loving yourself enough to give your body what it’s asking for. When you retrace the negative thoughts about rewarding yourself with junk food or punishing yourself for eating too much, your natural cravings more closely align with your body’s actual needs.  

Then, if you’re craving something, there’s a good chance that your body is deficient in it at the moment. 

So how can you start intuitive eating?

Follow the 10 Principles 

1. Reprogram the Diet Mentality: Don’t think about how you eat in terms of how quickly you can lose weight, how much you can lose, and what you aren’t allowed to have. If your body is telling you it would like a cupcake, let it have the cupcake! But take that same principle into account when your body wants a banana instead of a candy bar.
2. Honor your Hunger: Hunger is not the bad guy. And if you treat hunger like it’s the bad guy, you’ll stave it off until you eat ANYTHING. Instead, listen to your cravings. Eat some sweet potato crackers if you’re craving a salty snack. If you want something sweet, grab an apple.
3. Make Peace with Food: You can’t fight food. You need it. Now, yesterday, and tomorrow. And the more you do fight it, the more you’ll want the thing you’re forbidding yourself. Hence the cupcake rule.
4. Say No to the Food Police: A lot of disordered eaters struggle with “good” food and “bad” food. And they translate those thoughts about food to themselves – you’re bad for eating the cupcake. You’re good because you barely ate today. But those things aren’t true. Nothing is good or bad inherently. Being kind to your body is the only rule.
5. Discover the Satisfaction Factor: We’re meant to enjoy food. Yes, its function is to sustain us. Yes, a double bacon cheeseburger with extra cheese sauce is egregious. But part of Western culture is taking pleasure in things that are bad for us… and that’s not the case in lots of other cultures. Enjoy the satisfaction of a fresh strawberry taken in tiny bites, or a beautiful crisp salad, or salmon broiled with dill. 
6. Listen to your Fullness: Food tastes good, and even better when it’s forbidden. Eat slower, with tinier bites, and take longer to finish your meals. That way, you can better hear your body when it says it’s had enough. 
7. Treat Your Emotions Kindly: Restricting food intake often leads to feelings of loss of control. Instead, respond to your feelings of loneliness, frustration, anger… with kindness. Remind yourself that food won’t solve that problem. You won’t be caring for yourself. You’ll be soothing yourself. 
8. Respect your Body: Not everyone is built tiny. And not everyone should be! People throughout history have been all sizes under the sun, and there’s nothing that says your size twelve is unnatural next to someone else’s size six. Negative diet habits will die even harder if you fixate on hating your body.
9. Movement: This is important: You do not have to do CrossFit to take your fitness seriously. You just have to move. Spend more time walking, and notice the difference in your body. Try doing 10 pushups an hour, and pay attention to how much stronger you get.
10. Honor your Health: Make sure that every decision you make is with your health in mind. Worry about falling into a nutrient deficiency, not about how you’ll look tomorrow if you eat a full dinner. Worry about fueling your muscles with protein. Worry about maintaining energy throughout the day. Those are the things that your body cares about. Not your pant size.

Intuitive eating might not be for everyone.

In some cases, it may be more important to try an elimination diet to figure out what food is bothering your system, or maintaining high activity because of what your health goals are.

But especially if you’ve suffered from disordered eating, it’s certainly true that the world could use more gentility and kindness. Start with yourself. 

The post Intuitive Eating… Can it Work for You? appeared first on The Urban Monk.

― Hippocrates, the father of medicine

Ever since human beings evolved beyond simply finding our daily food, to storing it, curing it, and planning it, taking pleasure in our food has become a priority. 

We don’t eat to survive anymore, at least not in the Western world. The amount of food the US wastes every year is proof of that. (If you’re curious, it’s about $161 billion per year, according to the United States Department of Agriculture.)

And since we’re eating-for-pleasure, food preparation, food trends, fast food, and junk food are the law of the land. We aren’t nervous about our next supply of nutrients, so we can expand our gastronomical urges from bare survival to an extravaganza for our taste buds – donut milkshakes, triple cheeseburgers with fondue cheese sauce, deep fried pulled pork burritos, etc.

But here’s the catch…

Those foods aren’t making us “happy” like we think they are. They’re just activating the dopamine reward centers in our brains at a much higher rate than whole, natural, and healthy foods. 

In the long term, poor eating habits don’t make you happy. (And you probably already know that.)

Degrading oral health, loss of energy, dopamine crashes, physical limitations, depleted nutrient reserves…

These don’t make us happy.

Perhaps surprisingly, there are foods that do contribute in a meaningful way to regular and natural happiness. 

This is because they are structured with depression-fighting and joy-boosting elements. 

Those essential building blocks deserve our focus.

Omega-3s

What It Does: These fatty acids are excellent at regulating and boosting mood because they can easily penetrate brain cell membranes to impact the inner-workings of mood-cells. They can also relieve symptoms of depression and flatten the transition in mood-swing disorders. This is because contained within Omega-3s are the fatty acids EPA and DHA, which are often depleted in people suffering from depression. 

Found In: Mackerel, salmon, seabass, oysters, flaxseed, fish oil, sardines, shrimp, trout, seaweed, chia seeds, walnuts, edamame, kidney beans, etc. 

Vitamin B12

What It Does: This essential vitamin can be referred to as the “energy” vitamin, so a lack of vitamin B12 in the body can effectively present as depression. B12 helps to turn our food into glucose, which the body then uses as fuel for energy. Controlled usage has been shown to significantly improve the symptoms of depression. 

Found In: Livers and kidneys of animals, clams, sardines, beef, raisin bran, tuna, trout, salmon, fortified non-dairy milk, cheese, eggs, etc. 

Vitamin D

What It Does: Commonly called the “sunshine” vitamin, it’s also noticeably low or absent in depression patients. This may be because vitamin D receptors live near brain areas linked to depression, or it might be because vitamin D is necessary for seamless brain function, and without it things can get dark and foggy. 

Found In: Fatty fishes (tuna, mackerel, salmon), beef liver, cheese, egg yolks, mushrooms, oranges, etc. 

Flavonoids

What It Does: Flavonoids are phytonutrients — plant chemicals — that populate the cells of fruits and vegetables. In the human body, they serve as anti-inflammatory agents and antioxidants. They also have a strong effect on tackling oxidative stress, which is the imbalance between the production of free radicals and the antioxidant defense response.

You see, studies are finding that since depression affects the hippocampus and frontal cortex, changes in neuronal plasticity and glial cell production in those regions (caused by oxidative stress and free radicals) may be an underlying cause of depression. Flavonoids work to solve that imbalance.

Found In: citrus fruits and vegetables, whole grains, tea, red wine, legumes, berries, etc. 

Selenium

What It Does: Selenium is an essential mineral and antioxidant, the function of which relates primarily to metabolism, thyroid function, and protection against oxidative stress damage. Studies suggest that selenium plays a role in mood-boosting and relaxation, two things decidedly lacking in depression patients, by reducing inflammation in the brain (a marker of anxiety and other mood disorders.) 

Found In: brazil nuts, fish, shellfish, red meat, whole grains, eggs, chicken, liver, ham, garlic, etc. 

Theanine

What It Does: L-theanine, an amino acid, can impact chemical levels in the brain, including those of serotonin, dopamine, and cortisol (the stress hormone.) It does not occur naturally in the body, but sourcing it externally has been shown to improve cognitive function, sleep, and relaxation. 

Found In: mushrooms, green tea, coffee, black tea, etc.

Nothing is a one-stop fix — to alleviate depression, everyone needs to take a well-rounded approach.

But because we have the choice of what and how to eat, in a way that no human beings have throughout all of history…
We should make the decision to eat for long-term pleasure… not momentary gratification.

The post When Food isn’t Making You Happy appeared first on The Urban Monk.

Well… then you’d better catch on to the contribution you’re making to a convergence of global crises brought on by the greed and improvidence of two major industries poisoning the population, advancing climate change, benefiting from systemic poverty, destroying the soil, invading politics, and generally making a muck of what used to be our simplest need: food.

Our issues with the way we eat scale all the way to the top of the food chain… but they start in your refrigerator.

You see, there are a few things you’ve got to understand.

Humans have always died. We know that.

It’s just that they used to die from infections, poor sanitation, and communicable diseases.

Now? 71% of all deaths on the planet are caused by chronic diseases… which are mostly caused by diet.

And it’s not only the death of people that’s concerning… It’s the death of the planet. 

Our food system end-to-end — deforestation, soil destruction, food waste, factory farmed animals and processing, transport, and refrigeration — is more catastrophic for the environment than fossil fuels.

That’s why my good friend, Dr. Mark Hyman, set his nose to the grindstone to find the solution. The result is what he considers “the most important book [he feels he has] ever written. It’s about the single most important and overlooked issue of our time.”

Food Fix identifies food and the way we’ve been using it is the cause of all of our problems…

But it also confirms it as the solution.

The Food Fix Journey 

“Our most powerful tool to reverse the global epidemic of chronic disease, heal the environment, reverse climate change, end poverty and social injustice, reform politics, and revive economies is food,” Hyman explains. 

Climate change, the obesity epidemic, the rising healthcare costs as a result, the unethical treatment of workers and animals…

These problems don’t exist in a vacuum.

And when Hyman started looking into the economic, social, political, and personal impact of our food system, he found more than he bargained for.

For example, the number one factor contributing to the rise in chronic disease is a lack of fruits and vegetables. Yet only 2% of America’s industrial farmland is allotted for the purpose of growing them.

The other 98% is used to grow commodity crops — crops subsidized by the government. The main 3? Corn, soy, and wheat. The exact crops making everyone sick. 

Then he dug a little deeper…

A Most Profitable Web

And he found that obesity rates in children have tripled since the ‘70s — one in three children is overweight or obese. It’s easy to market things to children, it turns out. That’s why Coke and McDonald’s spend $1.8 billion marketing to children as young as 2 years old every year.

But not just any children… 

From 2013 to 2017, food advertising on Black-targeted TV increased by 50%. Black teens viewed 119% more junk food related ads (mostly for soda) than white teens.

And that’s across the board for minorities. Type 2 diabetes rates have tripled in Native American children, doubled in Black children, and increased 50% in Hispanic children. It is a form of apartheid when the poor and minorities live in areas that lack affordable healthy food and have an overabundance of fast food outlets and convenience stores. 

Marketing to children affects our low global standing in academic performance. We are 31st in math, reading, and sciences in the world. 

Well… brain development is the worst in poorer kids, who also have the worst diets and brain sizes 10% lower. 

This documented phenomenon — poor school performance in kids who face health issues, consume poor diets, are obese, and are often diabetic — is called the Achievement Gap. 

And the foods these kids are being fed are generally reconfigured edible arrangements made from corn, soy, and wheat. 

Which raised a lot of questions for Hyman about regenerative farming and avoidance of feedlot animals. The thing is…

Without animals as part of a holistically managed farm system, you can’t build a robust ecosystem without strong soils. We’ve lost a third of our topsoil already…

No soil means no food and that means no humans.

According to the UN, 2 of the 5 million degraded hectares around the world need $300 billion (or 60 days of our global military spend) to support regenerative agriculture — which would stall climate change for another 10-20 years. 

So What Do We Do?

Over the next 35 years, we’ll end up spending $95 trillion on direct and indirect healthcare costs because of our chronic diseases caused by bad food.

So the first step? Pre-order Food Fix.

The second step? Read the book. Educate yourself.

Inside, you’ll find actionable ways that you can lead by example in your community, in your family, and within yourself… 

Like ways to support regenerative agriculture and sustainable food, or how to avoid commodity crops, or how to end personal and community food waste, or how to grow your own food. 

You’ll also find avenues to stop the reach of Big Food and Big Ag. Did you know that SNAP, the food stamp program, is responsible for 20% of one of the biggest global soda company’s annual revenue?

Probably not.

Dr. Mark Hyman has a message: What we do to our bodies, we do to the planet, and what we do to the planet, we do to our bodies.

But it isn’t too late. Take the call to action. Start with a single step — read the book.

The post Food Fix — or Didn’t You Know We Needed One? appeared first on The Urban Monk.

That may be a tough pill to swallow, but only if your listening is defensive. Perhaps you read that sentence and had the thought, “I’m an adult. I’ve modified my behaviors as I’ve grown up! I’m not childlike anymore!”

In reality, we’re all childlike – the idea that adults mature to a magic number and pupate, crawling forth from their cocoons and emerging into perfect and complete adults couldn’t be further from the truth.

Even in the ways we rebel from our childhood selves, we’re basing our current behavior on lived experiences from our childhoods.

Including the way that we eat.

Kids are tricky, and parenting, as anyone who’s been parented or is a parent certainly knows, does not come with a manual. 

So sometimes, we ingrain habits in our children that we don’t mean for them to carry with them forever.

And yet, impressions are a curious thing. Nagging your child for 18 years about the importance of doing the dishes right after dinner might never stick, but that subconscious guilting via “starving kids in China” could stay forever.

Psychologists specializing in childhood analysis will tell you – many of the issues that plague you in adulthood are borne out of experiences you had when you were little.

Often, those experiences and the learned behavior that accompanies them no longer serve you!

And there are three major childhood eating habits that could stand to be unlearned…

Finishing Your Plate

If you can remember one or both parents refusing to let you leave the table before you finished your meal, reminding you to be grateful because a child in a third-world country would be thrilled to have your dinner, or encouraging you to get seconds after you’d finished your first plate, it’s possible you’ve internalized this message.

Sometimes, parents just wanted to make sure you were eating enough calories for your tiny body to grow. Sometimes, they were using a false sense of scarcity to instill gratitude in you for the food you were given.

But as adults, a lot of us tend to pile our plates up high, and then eat way past the point of satiety in order to accomplish an unspoken contract between us and our plates: You must finish your portion.

Here’s the thing…

You don’t have to. And in fact, in the West, our portion sizes are considered huge. You don’t ever have to finish your plate. You can save it for later if you think you’ll eat it, but you can also compost it, throw it away, give it away, or repurpose it into something else.

Picky or Familiar Eating

Here’s a tough one to pinpoint, because every picky eater has had a different journey with food. 

Maybe a microwavable chicken pot pie made you sick once and you never tried it again, or you couldn’t stand eggs because one time your mom left a shell in your scrambled breakfast, or just hated the taste of brussel sprouts from the first time you ever tried one.

Fear of relinquishing control or losing your agency as a child can make you cling to those identifiers long past their usefulness, and hamstring you in certain grown-up endeavors.

For example, the more we understand the implications of our diet on everything from our energy levels to the bacterial colonies in our digestive tract to mental illnesses, the more we try to diversify our diets. 

Self-imposed restrictions you haven’t reconsidered in years may be holding you back – tell your inner child to be brave and try new things. 

Just because you wouldn’t have eaten an acai bowl at 10 years old doesn’t mean you can’t at 40!

Making Meals out of Junk Food

We didn’t always know what we know now, and the internet wasn’t around for a lot of parents to research and outsource other options.

For a long time, a heavy pasta dinner with bread (and a small salad) was a pretty normal meal. As families steadily required dual incomes, cooking a well-rounded dinner every night became less feasible, and so many of us grew up eating microwavable TV dinners, quick-fix quesadillas, and other junk-food disguised as real food.

And now that you have the power of the grocery store, your income, and the internet at your disposal, you can make adult-friendly versions of the treats you loved for dinner as a kid! 

Use real cheese for that quesadilla and stuff it with veggies! Try a pasta replacement, like spaghetti squash or pasta made with ancient grains, plus tomatoes from your garden for that decadent Italian dinner. Make your own chicken pot pie from scratch with bone broth and farm-raised chicken instead of microwaving a frozen one.

There are all sorts of ways to upgrade your eating habits from the ones that kept you alive through your childhood. 

Eat exactly how much you need, always be open to trying new things, and use fresh and healthy ingredients if you’re feeling nostalgic for a childhood favorite. 

But if you need more help and guidance beyond this advice…

You may want to consider signing up to watch Dr. Trevor Cates’ exclusive four-episode series, “Cooking for Vitality.” As a naturopathic doctor and a mom of three kids, she’s made it her business to know what kind of eating and cooking feeds you energy, and what kind doesn’t.
The series doesn’t drop for a few weeks, but if you click here to find out more about it, you’ll be ready when it does!

The post Unlearning 3 Childhood Eating Habits That Don’t Serve You appeared first on The Urban Monk.

The “Customization Decade.”

Your meals can be customized and delivered to your home for you to cook. You can design your own shampoo by answering a few questions about your hair and feeding the answers into an algorithm. You can even customize your entertainment by choosing a number of platforms you utilize the most and only paying for those.

Customizing your health is an emerging field generating confusion and excitement from the masses. 

Flashy advertisements make customized soap, exfoliants, protein shakes, and more seem like they’re the magic bullet you’ve been hoping for.

What about customized vitamins?

A cursory Google search about which vitamins are most vital to your wellbeing yield lists of supplements by the dozens.

Do we really need to take a dozen pills every day to maintain our homeostasis? That can’t be right. 

Of course, they make multivitamins…

But studies have shown that there is no proven effect of taking multivitamins on your overall health. There’s only a calculable difference in taking specific vitamins to target a specific issue.

Let’s examine how customized vitamin companies do what they do, and whether or not they make a discernible difference.

How Do They Do It?

Like most customizable wares, vitamin companies put the onus on the customer to answer questions about themselves — their lifestyles, eating habits, leisure habits, age, gender, geographical location, personal goals, etc. 

Depending on the company, they may just recommend a series of vitamins based on your answers. (Consider: women need more iron, calcium, and folate than men, and at different times in their lives. Multivitamins don’t necessarily account for those differences in sex and stage in life.)

However, some companies go the extra mile and concoct a vitamin built just for you. (They’ll even make the capsules pretty.)

What Could Go Wrong?

Because this is a fairly new service, there haven’t been any reported side effects or lawsuits to speak of.

The truth is, while our bodies are different from one another’s, we’re more alike than we are different. 

So speculatively, taking specific vitamin packs or customized capsules based on your subjective answers and a company’s databases…

Could result in excessive amounts of vitamins which block or unbalance the usefulness of other vitamins.

Also, one of the imbalances this industry seeks to rectify is that your nutrition needs change constantly — as you get older, as your weight fluctuates, your diet changes, your exercise habits wax or wane.

Relying on personalized vitamins is only as effective as the frequency with which you update your questionnaire answers and send out for another pack. Which isn’t something most people are willing to commit to with rigid regularity.

Finally, the point of lots of these quizzes are personal goals, and not what your body needs. 

It’s like eating potato chips when you’re craving something salty instead of finding out why you’re craving salt. Stress? Boredom? Sleep deficiency? PMS? Because you just worked out?

Solving the imbalance that’s causing you to crave salt would have been a healthier alternative to giving into the craving… but humans are fallible, and impulsive, and often just want to be soothed rather than fixed. Basing your vitamin intake on your dreams (luminous skin) instead of your requirements (more vitamin D for more energy) might be ill-advised. 

Is It Worth It?

If you’ve got the time, the money, and the narrow focus, then personalized vitamins could certainly benefit you. And remember, they’re not all customized concoctions. Some are “multivitamins” themselves. 

These companies aren’t irresponsible. In fact, largely, their databases are founded on much more recent research than the government’s Daily Dosage recommendations. 

So their multivitamins may actually be more tailored to you than the kind you buy in the drugstore.

Not only that, but since these companies aren’t part of the $80 billion essentially unregulated vitamin industry, they’re choosing their ingredients more carefully. Most companies are touting bioavailable, sustainable, eco-friendly and non-synthetic ingredients.

Is it a cure-all?

No.

The only thing that can provide you with personalized data about your body’s deficiencies is a micronutrient test. 

Short of that, customized vitamins may help you tailor and support your nutrient needs more closely than Big Pharma can.

The post Uncapping the Mystery of Customized Vitamins appeared first on The Urban Monk.