SHAWN STEVENSON: Welcome to the Model Health Show. This is fitness and nutrition expert Sean Stevenson, and I'm so grateful for you tuning in with me today. This is a very, very special episode. We're celebrating episode 800 of the Model Health Show. This is crazy. This is crazy. I'm so grateful for this experience. Doing this show has required me to continue to grow, to continue to get better each and every week. It's just been that thing that's impending. That's out in front of me. That has kept me researching and reading and learning and teaching and connecting and bringing on some of the world's greatest minds and I'm so grateful. That's the thing about doing this show. That was the greatest gift to me that I didn't even know. I didn't even sign up for that consciously. It's the relationships that have been built over all these years of doing this show and I'm so grateful for you being on this journey with me.

We've created some massive change in the world, thanks to the show. I cannot tell you how many times incredible scientists and professors and researchers at major institutions like Harvard, like Stanford, and the list goes on and on. And major corporations like Google, like ESPN have connected with me and shared how impactful this show has been in their lives and in how they're teaching and how they're communicating with their teams.

And I could tell you also, it is the craziest thing. People come up to me on the streets all the time. All the time. You know, I might be out just, you know, hanging out with my family, sitting outside at a restaurant, but.. This has happened again and again that people have come up to me and shared how the model health show has reached them and impacted their lives.

And, it's just, it blows my mind. Like I'm never going to get used to that because for me, I'm just in here in the studio with my squad, you know? And so you don't often know the impact, you know, directly until you have those moments of connection. And I'm so grateful for that. You know, we are marching our way to about a hundred million downloads of the model health show.

We've been downloaded in every country that tracks Podcast downloads in every country at least one person has clicked play on the model health show. So shout out to you whatever country you call home. And I appreciate you again for being on this journey with me and today I wanted to do something special And to share something special to me. And I wanted to share, you know, this is very hard to do by the way. But just over the past few hundred episodes, you know, we did a big celebration for episode 500 for example, but you know, we've had hundreds of incredible episodes since then. And I wanted to share my favorite, being that this is episode 800. My favorite eight my top eight guest interview experiences over the past few hundred episodes.

All right, so these are going to be powerful inspirational moments that my team and I are putting together for you to enjoy from these very very special interviews. And we're going to kick things off with this is one of my all time favorite interviews period. All time favorite episodes of the model health show period. Because the impact that she's had on my life, long before I met her and my research. And also books that I've published, citing her work and the work of her students. And she is really known as The mother of mindfulness and she's done so many experiments. Dating back to the 1970s She's the first woman to receive tenure at Harvard University in their psychology department and she has done so many different experiments and published so many studies. Affirming how powerful the human mind is in our health outcomes. How our thoughts deeply impact things like our blood sugar, our metabolic health and our weight loss, our satiety hormones. How quickly we heal, how we age and how we age in reverse.

The list goes on and on thanks to the work of Dr. Ellen Langer. And so to have her here was a very special moment. And so check out this incredible piece from the conversation that I had with Dr. Ellen Langer.

DR. ELLEN LANGER: What you're taught in schools and by your parents are facts. And facts are context dependent. They're not true all the time, but people don't realize that. So, an example, how much is one plus one?

SHAWN STEVENSON: Obviously people would say two.

DR. ELLEN LANGER: Two, right. And I just gave another podcast, right? I don't want to keep saying this because soon everyone will know the answer, which is good but they need to understand what's behind the answer.

What's behind the answer is that sometimes okay, whatever we're taking as absolutely true, is sometimes true, not all the time. So one plus one equals one. If you're adding one pile of laundry plus one pile of laundry. If you add one cloud plus one cloud one one plus one is one and so on. In the real world It probably doesn't equal to as a more often as it does and the reason it's a good example is because this is the one fact everybody knows but it's wrong. Alright, and you know, so if we didn't learn things in this absolute way, everything would be more interesting. So for example, we've done a lot of work on fatigue. And most people think the body is such that after a certain amount you're just going to get tired.

That's all there is to it. But fatigue turns out to be mostly a psychological construct. Fatigue is context dependent. So, the first test we did of this was so simple. We asked people first to do 100 jumping jacks and tell me when you're tired. They get tired at around 70. Then we asked another group of people, do 200 jumping jacks.

Tell me when you get tired. That's it. They get tired at 140, alright? And, and so on. So as soon as you change the context, our energy comes back. Alright? And, you know, so imagine, and a picture that comes to my mind frequently is somebody who's word processing all day. Back starts to hurt. And then they go home and they play the piano. Alright? It's the same thing, but it's completely different.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Different keyboards.

DR. ELLEN LANGER: Because of the, yeah. And so if we change the context, often enough, fatigue will be a thing of the past. Our perceptions drive the whole ballgame. And we have very rigid ideas because we all grew up, like many years before you. In a world where we had mind and body and they were separate things.

And, so then the assumption was we have to keep the body healthy, not realizing that how important it was to keep the mind healthy. And all of the work that we've done, a much of, well, many experiments described in The Mindful Body, which goes beyond this idea, but the idea is to put the mind and body back together.

These are just words. When we put them back together, it's one thing. Anything that's happening on any level. Your thoughts, your body is happening basically all at the same time. So if you imagine that your mind and body are one thing, then wherever you put your mind, you're putting your body. You know, there's a study I want to tell you about, and it's about the cold.

So we take people, I'm going to give you a rough outline of it, the details are in the book, and people are in the lab and they see a big video of people coughing and sneezing, the room is set up with things like tissues and chicken soup, everything to prime a cold. Okay, without introducing an antigen, people get sick.

Okay, how it happens? Well, one possibility is that when you have a cold, It never fully goes away, so it becomes dormant, and these primes awaken it, or something even more mysterious. But, you know, you can think yourself into it, and I assume we can think ourselves out of it. It's very hard to do a study showing that we can talk ourselves out of the cold, because when people have colds, they're cold.

I mean, the scientific community is not eager to have them all come together and spread the cold to other people. And also that, you know, you just want to stay in bed and watch TV and eat what you're not supposed to eat as you baby yourself to get over the cold.

SHAWN STEVENSON: There's even studies where they're exposing people to what they believe to be, you know, whether it's like some from somebody else's mucus that has a pathogen in it. And folks aren't getting sick when exposed to the thing them. What's going on behind the scenes. I would imagine it's there's context involved and also probably It has to do with our level of health, our level of stress and things like that.

DR. ELLEN LANGER: From my perspective, the major killer Is stress. Now, the medical model, way back when, decades ago, thought that psychology and things like stress were irrelevant.

All that mattered was whether you introduced bacteria, pathogen, whatever, to get sick. And, now they've come closer to appreciating the importance of psychology, but I'm still trying to get people, come, come the whole way. We don't have to wait so long until we realize that our psychology is probably the driving force for all of it.

SHAWN STEVENSON: All right, I hope that you enjoyed that first piece from the amazing Dr. Ellen Langer that we put together for you. Again, we've got eight of my favorite guest interviews, just moments from those interviews, to celebrate episode 800 of the model health show. I don't even think that I can get used to even saying that 800 episodes, that is bananas and pajamas, is crazy. But truly I cannot put into words how grateful I am for this experience.

And again, just what is helped to bring out of me and to qualify within my own life and the character development and the development as a teacher and the development as a student and the ability to communicate and also just the lives that have been impacted. It's just, it's beyond anything I could have ever imagined.

And by the way, with it being episode 800, a great celebration gift would be to pop over to Apple podcast and leave a review for the show. Please do that for me today. If you've yet to do so, if it's just been like, I want to leave an episode review and just like you end up listening or watching the interview and you're just like, I'll get to it.

And you just never do. This is the day to do it. All right. 800. 800 episodes, that would be an awesome anniversary gift to leave a review over on Apple podcast and let more people know about the model health show. And now moving on next up, we've got multi time. I think he's got 12. And it's maybe 13 though at this point because he's got a new project coming out, but 12 new york times best selling books.

He just he writes New York Times bestsellers in his sleep. And he is the world's foremost expert on brain imaging. He has hundreds of thousands of spec imaging scans looking at the human brain to really determine. Looking at the organ that is largely responsible for our mental health. Instead of just, as he states, drawing drug tipped toxic darts at the human brain in the dark, trying to guess what's wrong with people during our multiple epidemics of mental health challenges. He is standing up and saying, no, there's a better way we can do better. And I'm talking about double board certified psychiatrist, Dr. Daniel Amen.

He's been an incredible mentor and friend for many years. And. I can't tell you just even being able to have so much experience and spending time with him and having conversations with him and being able to share many of these conversations with you over the years. But this one was extra special because he was here at my studio sharing his insights and filling this space with an impression of even more wisdom. And it was such a great time. And so we put together this next piece for you. From my conversation, one of my top eight favorite eight guest moments with Dr. Daniel Amen.

DR. DANIEL AMEN: Brain reserve is the extra tissue and function. You have brain tissue, brain function to deal with whatever stress comes your way. I was an army psychiatrist for seven years and I realized, put two soldiers in a tank, expose them to the same blast, the same force, the same angles. One of them walks away unharmed. Another person is permanently disabled. Why? It depended on the brain reserve or the brain health they brought into the accident. And brain reserve is happening throughout our whole life. And even before we're born, it's the health of the mother.

It's the health of the father. So parents who smoked as teenagers, their children have less reserve. Parents who are under great stress when their mothers, when they're pregnant with a child, that child is born with less reserve. Parents who smoke and pod, you know, in Durango, Colorado, the incidence of babies born with marijuana is up 1700%.

It's horrifying. That baby is going to have less reserved. And then it depends on what happens throughout your life. Those of us that played football, we're stealing our reserve. I had no clue, but stealing our reserve. Those of us that grew up on fast food, less reserved. Those of us that grew up in houses of high adverse childhood experiences, stealing.

Our reserve, those of us that grew up with parents who cared, parents who paid attention, parents who read with us every night, more reserve. And so every day, and it happens throughout your whole life. Every day you're building reserve. Money in the bank for brain health or you're stealing reserve. And if you go to bed a half an hour early you're building reserve.

If you decide to stay up and well, I'm just going to finish this series on Netflix and you go to bed at one o'clock and you have to be up at five, you just stole a whole bunch of reserve because you know this. When you don't sleep properly, it turns off 700 health promoting genes, which means trash begins to build up in your brain and it steals reserve.

One of my first books in 1986, it's called the sabotage factor, all the ways we mess ourselves up from getting what we want. And as a young psychiatrist, I knew if you blamed other people for how your life was turning out, you weren't getting better because you're a victim and victims are powerless. But if you just think of responsibility, how much do I want for my ability to respond? So we're sort of living in a blame, shame, filled society, which is so toxic. But if I'm having trouble, it's like, okay, what is it that I can do today that makes this better? So whatever hand I was dealt, well, what is it that I can do today to make it better?

And one of the exercises in the book, one of my favorite exercises is the one page miracle on one piece of paper, write down what you want. Relationships, work, money, physical, emotional, spiritual health. Write it down. It's got to fit on one piece of paper and then ask yourself, this is the exercise. Write it down. Does it fit? Does my behavior fit the goals I have for my life? And blame isn't on that list at all. So this isn't about what I should want, what somebody else wants for me. What do I want? You have to tell your brain what you want, because your brain makes it happen. What it sees. And if you see disaster, you're going to feel awful. If you see hope, you're going to feel hopeful.

SHAWN STEVENSON: I hope that you enjoyed that piece from Dr. Daniel Amen. We've got so much more in store for you. Now, I actually just received a gift that happened to coincide with this 800 episode milestone. And it was from the folks at the number one science based electrolyte company.

And they sent me some cases of their brand new sparkling electrolyte water. And it was some of my favorite flavors, things like grapefruit and watermelon, citrus. But also they sent me a new flavor that's exclusive to the new sparkling drink, which was Black Cherry Lime. Now, I got to receive these in advance of the release to everyone nationwide, but right now, as of the release of this recording, it's available for everyone to enjoy.

When you go to drink, L M N T. com forward slash model as drink LMNT.com/model. Not only do you get to try their amazing new ready to drink electrolyte, sparkling water. With every purchase of their classic electrolyte drink mix you'll get a free sample pack to try out their other drink flavors. Now to take advantage of their amazing new sparkling electrolyte water. You've got to grab a couple of cases. I recommend getting all the different flavors to see which ones you enjoy the most an LMNT as always has a no questions asked money back guarantee. So you have nothing to lose and only better hydration and performance to gain. This is not a mere sparkling water.

This is a performance drink, and you can get yours right now when you go to drink lmnt.com/model. And now moving on to our next guest in this episode, 800 celebration. Again, this is. My top eight, and this was hard. All right. I got to tell you, there were people that put in and out of this, like it was very difficult to really drill down this list, but I'm thinking about the whole moment.

All right. The whole moment, like what that meant to me, the experience, the insights that came from it. The list goes on on there's different aspects, different ingredients that determined who I was in my top eight. All right, but next up i've got one. This is a no brainer All right, this one was a no brainer. This jumped right out when I was like, okay I'm gonna pick these top eight moments. And this was my conversation with the one and only national best selling author Ed Mylett.

Now, if you don't know this already, Ed is one of the premier personal development teachers and speakers on planet earth. And he's the best selling author of multiple books. And I'm telling you, magic was created in the studio. It was long lasting. I remember my oldest son, Jordan, sharing with me. He even went and checked this episode out and he was just reveling in all of the messages and sharing those messages with me.

And that's impactful. Like when these shows and these conversations reach my family members and I get that feedback, I'm like, Oh, this is extra special. And so next up in this episode, 800 celebration, check out this piece from the amazing Ed Mylett.

ED MYLETT: I think there's an issue in the world today. That's just, it's like, it's its own epidemic, which is that people think they're further away from their life. They want than they are. They have this, they don't lack vision. The Bible says where there's no vision, the people perish. But I think if you actually dove into that, it's not that there's no vision. Would you rather be happy or sad, rich or poor, help people or not help people? You got a vision for your life.

The problem is you think it's so far away because you think that's far away. You act in accordance with that belief system and you perpetually keep it there. And so, but the truth is that's a lie. I've proven in my life. So have you. Your truth is you're one relationship. One meeting, one podcast, one book, one new thought, one new emotion away from a completely different life.

It's much closer than you think it is, but because you don't understand that, or you don't understand how to find those relationships, those thoughts, those meanings, that you keep it that far away. One thing I want to tell everybody here is that, you know, when you see a happy or successful family, either or, at some point back in their lineage, they weren't. And then the one shows up. And that one changes freaking everything for that family. And Neo's the one in that movie, I'm the one in my family. I change the way my family thinks, I change the way the world treats us. I changed the way we live. We're never going back again. I've changed it. The world does not have their thumb on my family ever again.

We call the shots now, man, right? And every family, there's the one that eventually shows up and they change the dynamic. They change the emotions. They change the, in your family, you're, you're the one, right? And everyone listened to this. Even the fact that you go, nah, I'm not the one that's probably makes you the one.

But it's not because I wanted to, I fought for it. I fought to be the one in my family. We changed who we are in the world in one generation. My dad made the decision to get sober and then I took it to the next level and we changed it. So I love that part of the matrix the one because I believe in every family the one eventually appears. One of the ways i've been able to change my state and change my emotions is how I move my body the quickest fix for me on changing my emotions is to change my physiology, is to work out, is to walk, is to make love, is to laugh.

These are things that quickly changed my emotions because the same physiology is required in all of them. So I know you're an expert on this as well, but this is why your show matters so much to me because it's very difficult if you're not moving your body and using it in an elegant and beautiful way to the best of your ability, that you can generate the emotions on a regular basis that you want.

Stagnation and a lack of health makes it very difficult to feel bliss and peace when you're not moving your body. So when people ask me, so what's a change agent for you emotionally, move my body. I'll take a walk. I'll take a run. I'll do a workout. I'll do jumping jacks in my office if I have to, but I'm going to change my physiology that often times changes my emotions and my state.

SHAWN STEVENSON: All right. I hope that you're enjoying this episode 800 celebration. And next up we've got Of everybody on this list, this is the closest person to me in my life. I've spent a lot of time. I'm so grateful to say this crazy because I first saw this individual when I was living in Ferguson, Missouri, my mattress was on the floor.

I watched a film that he was in on this two seat, "love seat" that was made out of. Very cheap, seemingly like maybe some carpet material. It was, it was trash. All right. The seat cushion was all crashed in. The wood was broken because I was overweight at one point, but then I was fit now, you know. But I'm like watching him sharing basically how I was unconsciously making these choices in my life that was leading to the fantastic results that I was now seeing.

And I wasn't conscious that I was doing these things, but he detailed the things that I was doing. And I was using certain principles of our reality to change my life and the power of the human mind. And fast forward to years later, I'm speaking at an event that he's speaking at in Portugal, in Portugal, all right, from Ferguson to Portugal, all right. Started from the bottom. Now we are here. All right.

But for real now, you know, shout out to Drake, but like for real. All right. I ain't grow up like that. All right. And so for us, our, our worlds to collide in that, in that moment. And also there was an instant connection between us. I don't, it's just one of those things, you know?

And so I've spent a lot of time with him. He was just at my house a couple of days ago, as of this recording, incredible friend and mentor. I've learned so much from him, continue to learn from him and very grateful to call him a friend. I'm talking about the one and only Dr. Michael Bernard Beckwith.

Now, in this top eight. I couldn't have done this top eight without having him in this and he's been on the show multiple times. I'm grateful to say sharing his insights, but this is his most recent time, you know. In the last couple hundred episodes to have him in here. It was actually my very first guest here at model health show studios, but he came back for another appearance about a year later after that and share some other incredible insights with all of us. And we got to put together this very special piece for you to celebrate episode 800. Check out this next segment from the amazing Dr. Michael Bernard Beckwith.

MICHAEL BECKWITH: You know, there's a difference between real thinking and what is called mentation. Mentation is the daily regurgitation of the thoughts you had yesterday, day before, day before, day before, and some people mistake that for thinking. Real thinking is inspiration. You know, I call it human interruptus, where you interrupt the mentation. You know, if you read a good book on inspiration, you listen to this podcast, you listen to something that's gonna interrupt your mentation, then a new idea can come in. An inspiring thought can come in.

Now that's thinking, but most people don't think. They're just regurgitating. And then what happens is the vanity of the ego. It takes ownership in those thoughts that become opinions, points of view, positionalities. Those are my thoughts. Those are my opinions. And then the vanity of the ego wants to protect that I'm right.

That opinion is wrong. This opinion is right. I tell people don't cherish your opinions. I mean, it's an old Zen statement above all cherish no opinions because they're going to change. The opinions you had when you were 16, you don't have those opinions today, but you probably fought for them when you were 16, you know?

So the idea is to hold all of your opinions lightly, because as you get new information, new insights, new revelations, you will grow. So we move from mentation through mind fasting, interrupting that flow and then become open to inspiration. And then we change that is, you know, That's what we want to do.

We want to, we don't want to be the same person where we are at this moment or who we were five years ago. We want to be always on the edge of discovery of the good and the beautiful and the lovely and the intelligence that's within us. So we're actually living to grow. But when you're unconscious you live to protect who you think you are.

That's the ego's job, to protect this limited identity. But when you're able to mindfast, you're able to meditate, you're able to sincerely study to grow, then, you know, psychologically we would say having a healthy ego. Spiritually we would say you're going to transcend the ego's clutches. But ultimately you're living to discover More and more about yourself.

And again, many people aren't living there. They're living to protect themselves and to protect their identity rather than what within me is trying to emerge that I don't even know about yet. The unknown, you know, like who I am today. My 16 year old was like, would be flabbergasted as to what I get to say and do and who I get to associate with and where I get to travel. It'd be like, no, that's not, no, you know. So we have to always live on the edge of greater discovery.

SHAWN STEVENSON: All right, next up in this episode 800 celebration, we've got another one of those shows that just jump right out that this was, this was a fire moment. The room was filled with electricity and this was one of those moments where we had two guests in the studio at once.

And they collaborated on an amazing project together. And not only were they collaborators, the brothers and sister, right? They grew up in the same household. All right. And they had very unique and uniquely different experiences with conventional medicine and health care. And, that episode was one of the most downloaded episodes of all podcasts in the United States, and their book went on and they shared this with me.

I had them both on the show individually after this and shared how much of a game changer that interview was. In helping their book to become the number one book in the United States and the number one New York Times bestseller, and I'm talking about Dr. Casey Means and Calley Means. And so you're going to hear from both of them in this piece and just hear their passion and their respective insights on our current system and what we need to do to change. Check out this next piece from Dr. Casey Means and Calley Means.

DR. CASEY MEANS:  The more money we spend on healthcare, the sicker we're getting. The more nutrition and fitness Research that we publish the sicker we're getting the more we specialize in health care and literally invent new medical and surgical subspecialties.

The sicker we're getting in America. You got to step back and scratch your head a little bit. If the more we're spending and the more we're investing, the sicker we're getting. Maybe we're focusing on the wrong problem. Maybe we have the wrong approach. And, you know, you look at some of the rhetoric that's coming out of the system, like, trust the science.

And, while I'm on PubMed every single day, and there are literally hundreds if not thousands of scientific references in this book, you have to think about, like, what is the subtext of that statement, trust the science. The subtext is that you should not trust the science. And this is really where the healthcare conversation has gone very, very dark because let's look at the world.

We are the only species with PubMed and experts, and we are the only species with a chronic disease and obesity epidemic. And so we're being told to trust the science and not actually trust our body awareness, our deep internal knowing our hunger cues. And in doing so, we have become the sickest nation in the history of the world.

CALLEY MEANS: All to process food is weaponized. All to process food is a science experiment. All to process food is not the free market at work. It is a rigged system where tens of thousands of scientists, as the cigarette industry declined in the 1980s, went to food companies. And you literally have food companies today as one of the biggest employers of scientists in the world.

They are doing science experiments to make this food addictive and to make it not filling. And that's what we're giving to our kids. That's the problem with ultra processed food. You know, you have a lot of the evidence based bros saying, well, no, no, it's the calories. Calories have gone up in the past 30 years.

Well, why have calories gone up? Because they've gone, because it's gone up with ultra processed food consumption, which is weaponized to make us eat more. The problem is that we know how to regulate our calories. It's like, no, no, no. It's not the problem. It's not ultra processed food. The problem is that it's, they're one in the same.

We're being poisoned and we're being addicted and we have a mass drug addiction crisis here. And we literally have the characteristics of addiction denial from parents who are addicted to these foods and giving them to their kids because they're normalized. The root of the problem is all to process food.

The foundation of public policy should be firing every nutrition researcher in the country. Letting go of all the corrupt USDA advisors. Everyone, one policy, get ultra processed food consumption down because as ultra processed food consumption goes down, scientists and these companies aren't able to weaponize our food.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Again that was Dr. Casey Means and her brother Calley Means. And next up in this episode 800 celebration, these top eight moments, very, very hard to choose top eight guests. And again, I can't really even say these are the top eight. The definite top eight, but these were just special moments for me that were incredibly memorable.

And also, for this next guest, this was a moment that changed the way that I was communicating. This became a top tier communication input for me when I understood just how powerful this subject matter was. And this next guest is the director of the longest running human study on longevity. And he's a professor at Harvard university.

I'm talking about bestselling author, Dr. Robert Waldinger. Now I love Dr. Waldinger's work because he is a skeptic, very similar to myself, you know, optimistic skeptic, you know, continuously questioning things. And when he found out from other directors of this study on human longevity that our relationships. Our relationships are the most impactful thing on how long we're going to live.

He didn't believe it. So it made him even more refined in his search, in his research, and compiling this data, and it's just like, it just continues to stand out as the most impactful thing. Yes, our nutrition matters. Yes, exercise matters. Stress management, all these different things. We know the things that are good for us, but Having healthy relationships is the most impactful thing on our health and how long we're going to live. Check out this next piece from the amazing Dr. Robert Waldinger.

DR. ROBERT WALDINGER: So, when I had the opportunity to take over this study, that had tracked hundreds, now thousands, of lives for so many years. I thought this would be the coolest thing to devote my time to. This is so unusual that a single study of the same people has lasted 85 years.

But the thing that surprised us was that the people who stayed healthy and lived the longest were the people who had the warmest relationships with other people. And when we found that, we didn't believe it at first, so we thought, how could this be? I mean, okay, having good relationships could make you happy, that makes sense, but how could it get into your body and predict that you'd be less likely to get coronary artery disease or that you'd be less likely to get arthritis or that you would live longer?

How could that possibly happen? The best hypothesis with some good data is that it's about stress that good relationships seem to be stress relievers and I'll explain. So, you know, when something happens to us, you have a really upsetting thing happen during your day. You get a ticket or some medical crisis happens.

You can literally feel your body change. Your blood pressure goes up. Your heart rate goes up. It's called fight or flight mode. And we want our bodies to respond that way, but then when the threat is removed, we want our bodies to come back to baseline. And one of the things .. You'll notice that, you know, if you have something upsetting happening in your day and you know, you're thinking about it and you're upset about it.

If you have somebody at the end of the day, you can talk to about that and you, you're able to talk to them. And you can literally feel your body calm down. And go back to that equilibrium. What if you don't have anybody you can talk to like that? And so we think what happens is that people who are more isolated, lonely, less connected, that those people stay in a kind of low level fight or flight mode of chronic stress, higher levels of stress hormones circulating in their bodies, higher levels of inflammation all the time, breaking down body systems slowly but gradually.

And so that's what we think is one of the main drivers of how relationships can either improve our health or the lack of good relationships can break it down.

SHAWN STEVENSON: All right. I hope that you're enjoying this compilation as much as I am. And just hearing from Dr. Robert Waldinger, again, the most impactful thing on our lifespan. And our health span is the quality of our relationships as he calls it healthy social bonds. But this is not to negate all the other things, right? It is our relationships that deeply influence the foods that we eat. The beverages that we drink, the exercise that we do or don't do. Our sleep habits and our relationships deeply impact all of these things.

That's why it's a top tier importance in our reality thing to focus on because our relationships automatically impact other things. And the cool thing about it is that our relationships can be coupled with other things that are very health affirming in particular when it comes to our longevity. There are some bona fide longevity beverages that are backed by science in centuries of use. As a matter of fact this longevity drink is one that people often have with their friends with their family with their co workers. A meta analysis of 40 studies published in the european journal of epidemiology revealed that regularly drinking coffee was associated with a lower risk of death from cardiovascular disease certain types of cancer and all cause mortality.

Now, although this is a notable, this is to be clear, this is not causation. This is a notable association, but the researchers did an incredible job adjusting for a variety of confounding factors like age, like obesity, like alcohol consumption, smoking status, and more, and still found that coffee stood out significantly as a strong element of longevity.

Now, when you hear this, you got to keep in mind. It's high quality coffee. It's not the other stuff that's put into the coffee that degrades the coffee, right? So these artificial sweeteners and high amounts of sugar and these weird vegetable oil based creamers and all this other craziness, high quality coffee and pudding. Of course you can add great ingredients to your coffee to create that coffee experience that you like, but the quality of coffee is of the utmost importance.

And this is why The only coffee that I've been drinking for several years is from the folks at Four Sigmatic. Not only is it organic, not only are they dedicated to sustainability, but it's also infused with some of the most science based medicinal mushrooms like Chaga. That has tons of data affirming its anti cancer benefits, like Reishi that is bona fide supportive for immunomodulation for improving our sleep quality like.

Cordyceps that's well noted to be beneficial for our cardiovascular health, sexual function, and longevity. The list goes on and online's main for our cognitive function and overall brain health. Head over, check them out, go to foursigmatic.com/model, and you're going to get 10 percent off all of their amazing coffee blends.

And Hey, if you're not already subscribed. If you're not interested in coffee, and by the way, they got a deep calf, they got a half calf, but if you're not interested in coffee, they have these incredible medicinal mushrooms, dual extracted. This is what sets them apart. Dual extracted, so you actually get what you're looking for when you hear these different studies.

You can get these different medicinal mushrooms in tea form as well. So head over there, check them out. foursigmatic.com/model for 10 percent off storewide. That's F O U R S I G M A T I C.com/model for 10 percent off. And now moving on in our episode 800 celebration to one of those standout moments.

For me, this might be the most impactful moment, from the past year. And being able to spend time with this individual and also being able to be connected with him, after this interview. And just even what he did in preparation for him coming on the model health show, he studied me. Now, what was so interesting about this, which, okay, that doesn't sound too unusual, but the fact that he's the mentor for Tom Brady. The fact that he's a mentor for Michael Phelps, for Heisman Trophy winners like Desmond Howard and, you know, Super Bowl champions, the list goes on and on. That he studied me and he shared with me multiple times in our conversations after the show how, how much he was impacted by me, was just wow, like incredible and he was very impactful for me and for my life as well.

And even during the time that he was here to have this conversation, it really helped me to process things that I was dealing with as well. And it's just such a incredible moment. And I'm very grateful to share this next piece with you from best selling author. And elite counselor and coach at the University of Michigan. Enjoy this next segment from the one and only Greg Harden.

GREG HARDEN: Imagine trying to explain to a 19 year old Tom Brady, who's really convinced that the coaches don't like him. That they're not giving him the opportunities they're giving the other players and him sharing that with me. And I'm listening carefully because that's what I do. I listened, I listened and he vented and he was, he's emotional. And I share with Tom, I hear you, I feel your pain. Who gives a rat's ass about what the coaches think? What do you think? You want the coaches to believe in you and you don't believe in yourself, son.

So until you believe in you, don't expect me to believe. Now, the good news is I'm crazy enough to believe anyway. And I believe that you're capable and qualified of transforming your mindset, transforming the way that you see this, and take full responsibility for. If you're only getting three, three reps, those gotta be the greatest reps that anybody's ever seen.

And then they'll give you five. And then over time, look out, and that's how you transform. So yes, taking total responsibility. If, for example, if we use that same example, we look at Tom, and Tom wants to be a professional football player, and he's not even in the lineup. I said, you need to train as though you're going to be a professional football player.

In fact, why don't we get football out of, out of the equation? Hmm? I said, why don't you train like an Olympic athlete? That's a different mindset than I want to play football and I want to be in the NFL. Why don't you be one of the best athletes on the team? Why don't you change the way that you're approaching this? And it seems to have worked out a little bit. Right.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Results speak for themselves.

GREG HARDEN: The things that I thought were just overwhelming and horrendous that happened in my life prepared me to work with others. It prepared me to be able to hear somebody going through stuff and not judge them. Somebody is tripping, dipping and slipping and not just say you tripping, dipping and slipping.

This is what's going on. This is what you can get out of it. One of the most important lessons I try to teach is you can either go through life or grow through life. You can go through it or grow through it. And if you choose to grow from the obstacle, grow from the challenge, grow from the difficulty. If your mindset is to like whatever is being delivered, I can go through it.

I'm suggesting to people that they have an attitude where they give 100%, a hundred percent of the time and have that as their default mode.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah.

GREG HARDEN: Well, every now and then somebody would be smart enough and say, a hundred percent, a hundred percent. Nobody can do that. And I said, of course not. But if my mindset. If my primary form of operating in my head is to try to give a hundred percent, I no longer am coming off 30%, 40%, 50%. So let's look at this a hundred percent, a hundred percent of the time. There are things you don't like to do. I need you to give a hundred percent to the things you hate. Now, if you create a habit of giving 100 percent of the stuff you hate, what you're going to do when you get to the stuff you love. You'll have a habit of trying to give a hundred percent of my mindset.

My default mode is a hundred percent, a hundred percent of the time. My worst day is going to be better than the average man's best day. That's a game changer, baby. It changes the game.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Alright, we are at our final segment in this episode 800 celebration. Again, this was so difficult to choose these moments, but another one of these special moments. And again, sometimes it's just about what was happening in the room. Sometimes it's about the information. Sometimes it's about these unique things that stand out and just kind of stick with me. And this conversation really helped to affirm and even change some of the things that I'm doing in my day to day life, like for real, for real.

And also this was the first time that we had two guests on the show here at model health show studio at the same time. All right. We've done Dual guests episode back in the day, you know, different studios, but here at my studio to have.. And I reached out whenever I got something going on, you know, like if a friend of mine, you know, kid gets injured, whatever.

This is the first person I call is Dr. Kelly Starrett, doctor of physical therapy, brilliant thinker, and just one of the best humans that I've ever met. And he had an amazing project that he did with his superstar lawyer and fitness, top tier fitness coach wife, Juliet Starrett. All right. And they did this incredible best selling book together called Built to Move.

And that book sits, this is true story, sits on the arm of my couch. It's always there. Just referring back to it, but also just, just, just to keep it in mind. And so getting these mobility inputs in, I was already doing a lot a lot of the things but they really helped affirm what I was doing and also just reinforced and added in some things that I do to maintain and sustain and up level, you know. My health and my fitness and my performance just by doing simple things even regarding where and the way that I'm sitting even just hanging out with my family and you know watching tv or just hanging out. And this segment makes this top eight list for all of those reasons and so to close things out in this top eight guest experiences from the last few years in a celebrate episode 800, check out this next piece from Dr. Kelly Starrett and Juliet Starrett.

JULIET STARRET: We've never set out to demonize sitting and sitting is awesome and we do plenty of it. But what you do see is people are sitting in a chair and often doing that for five, six, a longer, you know, even longer sometimes without actually moving at all. And you know, Kelly's obsessed with the lymphatic system.

And so one of the things that happens when we sit is that, you know, the way that you clear your lymphatic system, you clear the waste out of your body is through movement. I'm like sitting on a five or six hour flight is like, the perfect example of marathon sitting and one of the downstream negative consequences is that you're not moving and you're not flushing your system.

You're not getting, you know, you're not getting the garbage out of your body. Then you're sitting all the time with all of your joints at 90 degree angles. Um, and you know, we're not meant to be at 90 degree angles with our joints all the time. And so I think a lot of people don't make the connection between low back pain and general stiffness and other issues they have, um, with just, you Bouts of Marathon City.

DR. KELLY STARRETT: There's a whole new field called sedentary biology, where we're starting to understand a little bit about what happens to our physiology, our normal processing of our bodies when we don't move. And maybe we can try to limit that because It really makes it more difficult for us to do the things we want to do.

I want to have a, I want to change my body composition. Well, that's going to make that more difficult. I want to be more awesome at sprinting. Well, that's going to make that more difficult. I want to have healthier tissues. You know, I want to have more clarity in my brain. It makes that more difficult. So, again, that allows us to expand.

And when we empower people with that idea, say, hey, wow, I've really been sitting a long time. Let me see if I can limit that in whatever way I want.

JULIET STARRET: There was a study done some years ago that people who could get up and down off the floor without putting their hands down lived longer, um, and, and, and lived better, which I think is what we're all really looking for.

And so, what we realized is that, People don't sit on the ground enough in our culture. We're always chair bound. We're, you know, driving, commuting, sitting in chairs at our offices. Um, our whole environment is set up to be sitting in chairs all the time. Um, and so we've literally lost the ability to both get up and down off the ground and sit comfortably on the floor.

I mean, it's really interesting when we suggest to people like, Oh, okay, well, you need to start this test by being crisscross applesauce. And a lot of people go crisscross applesauce. What? I can't sit like that. And so it's, it's just an ability that we've really lost. It's so fundamental as humans. And you know, what we've recommended to people is that they just had more sitting on the floor while they're watching Netflix, which is something that we know everybody's doing at least three hours of a day.

And so we just think it's so fundamental as a human to be able to get up and down off the ground. And, and also it makes us more durable. And I think the word we like, and we're fans of all Things Longevity, and obviously this book is connected to that. But I think the word we prefer is durability because really Kelly and I don't care if we live to be a hundred, we want to live as long as we live, but feel good for as long as possible, and then just like fall off a cliff and die.

That's our goal, like we just kind of want to be like this, you know. And then fall off the cliff and die and feel as good as we can and live independently and be able to move with our body and hopefully keep our mental acuity. That's really our goal and to us that's more durability because if that means we live to be 85 or 90, like great, we would rather feel good and then just fall off the cliff. So I think that sitting on the ground thing is so fundamental to this book and seems so straightforward, but It really is strangely revolutionary since we never do it.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Thank you so much for tuning into this very special episode 800 celebration. I hope that you got a lot of value out of this.

We put a lot into this for you and I just want to say thank you so much for making me a part of your world and please again, if you get to do so pop over to Apple podcasts and leave a review for the model health show. That would be a great gift to share and trust and believe we are just getting started.

We've got so much in store for you. More empowerment, more education. We are making a difference. And we are not letting up. This is not a time to ease up on the gas pedal. We are pressing it down to the floor. We're taking things to another level. And I appreciate you so much for being along on this mission with me.

Be ready much, much more to come. We've got some epic masterclasses and world class guests coming your way very, very soon. So make sure to stay tuned, take care, have an amazing day. And I'll talk with you soon. And for more after the show, make sure to head over to the model health show. com. That's where you can find all of the show notes.

You can find transcriptions, videos for each episode. And if you've got a comment, you can leave me a comment there as well. And please make sure to head over to iTunes and leave us a rating to let everybody know that the show is awesome. And I appreciate that so much and take care. I promise to keep giving you more powerful, empowering, great content to help you transform your life.

Thanks for tuning in.