SHAWN STEVENSON: Welcome to the Model Health Show. This is fitness and nutrition expert Shawn Stevenson, and I'm so grateful for you tuning in with me today. I have something very special for you today that's going to help to support your health, your fitness, your mindset. And this is something again, it's very special, very unique. I'm going to take you with me to a special event to me speaking on stage and sharing this information with a bunch of world leading experts and savants and people who are really interested in upleveling their health and fitness. But specifically, they were focused in the domain of longevity and they brought me in to be somebody who's providing a grounded perspective. Somebody who's worked with real people in the real world, achieved real world results myself, and not getting into the weeds and the weird. Alright, because there's some weird stuff out there. You know, there's a little vampire activity. If you're going to live forever, you need some weird access to some blood. There's all kinds of modalities, you know, with extravagant supplement routines, and you know, there's a lot of stuff out there and just to be somebody who provided some realness. And I'm grateful, of course, it was a great experience. But I wanted to share this with you because this was something that I did a while back when I was actually working on one of my more recent books and I took some time off. 

I took a long time off and only spoke at a few select events and stepped away from something that I absolutely love to do. I love to do. It's one of my gifts and I pulled away from it to be able to focus on writing these books and these projects, Eat Smarter and the Eat Smarter Family Cookbook. And yes, they've become massive, which is crazy to say this, you know, national bestsellers, multiple translations and all these cool things. But this experience of being with people in the same space, there's nothing quite like it. And I'm so excited to be back to doing this and doing this more often. And specifically in this very special talk, this very special event. You're going to hear how I was able to heal my own health coming back from the brink of what was considered to be an incurable condition.

And even if you know my story, you might learn something that you probably didn't know is pretty crazy, pretty crazy. And I don't talk about it often. And so you're going to hear all about that. But more importantly, you're going to hear about the specific. Things that I did to transform my health and also to transform the health of countless people. You know, I've been in this field now for 22 years, which is bananas and pajamas. But specifically in terms of exercise. What exercise strategies did I deploy? and in particular what's the science behind them? What is affirming that these things actually work and not just work but work better than anything else. So you're going to learn about that. You're also going to learn about recovery specifically through the modality of improving sleep quality. And there are very specific reasons why this matters so much and not just related to the healing of our bodies, but also the healing of our brains and our cognitive function.

So you're going to learn all about that. And also, and this might be the most important aspect of this whole thing is the mindset required and simple science backed things that we can do to really make a shift in our identity because your identity is going to be the driver of your thoughts, of your actions, of your decisions. It's the come from. It's very difficult to utilize any of these things we might learn to improve our health and fitness if we don't believe that we are worthy. If we don't realize our capacity for change, if our identity doesn't match with the activity, it's very likely going to be short lived. And so how do we make that shift in our mindset, to get the results that we want. 

Now, as of the release of this episode, by the way, there's something else very special going on. There's a lot of holiday specials and black Friday, cyber Monday giveaways and things like that going on. So one of my favorite companies, something I utilize pretty much every single day that I give to my family, especially my son, my youngest son, who's now in middle school, but just that extra support for the immune system is coming from my friends at Beekeepers Naturals. And the thing that we utilize on a daily basis is the propolis immune spray. A study that was published in the peer reviewed journal Antiviral Chemistry and Chemotherapy revealed that propolis has significant antiviral effects, specifically in reducing viral lung infections. Another study published in Phytotherapy Research found that even used topically, this has been utilized for thousands of years, accelerated the healing of viruses associated with cold sores faster than not having this treatment. And the researchers found that topical propolis not only reduced the amount of the virus present in a person's body but also protected the body against future outbreaks. And a meta-analysis published in evidence-based complementary and alternative medicine found that propolis has antiviral, antibacterial, antifungal, and antitumor properties.

All right, super easy. It's this incredible little spray. But the thing about beekeeper's naturals is that they are third party testing for dozens and dozens of contaminants that are common in bee products. And people simply don't know about that. They're seeking something beneficial for their health, but they're getting slighted and they are utilizing the very best beekeeping regenerative practices on the planet. They have integrity and transparency through and through. And right now they're providing for a limited time. 30 percent off store wide. All right. Go to beekeepersnaturals.com/model and take advantage of this for a limited time as of the release of this episode, you've still got a few days to take advantage of this. So head over to beekeepersnaturals.com/model. That's B E E. K E E P E R Snaturals.com/model 30 percent off storewide for a limited time. Plus other cool goodies. They've got some great bundles that they're offering right now. You can get access to some free shipping bonuses as well. All kinds of cool stuff. But again, typically, even if you happen to miss this. They are providing us with 20 percent off with that special link. But right now it's 30 percent off. So definitely take advantage. I want to let you know, go to beekeepersnaturals.com/model. And now let's get to the Apple podcast review of the week.

ITUNES REVIEW: Another five star review titled "very informative" by Budwill. Very informative and entertaining to listen to Shawn. I love that you can get high quality and real information about all things health. Plus, a lot of laughs, very refreshing. Thanks, Shawn. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Thank you for leaving that review over on Apple Podcasts. I truly do appreciate that. And if you have to do so, pop over to Apple Podcasts and leave a review for the Model Health Show. And now let's get into this very, very special episode. You're going to hear the live event, the live keynote that I did at the biohacking conference. So please enjoy. 

MICHELLE SORRO: All right, our next speaker, I just got a chance to meet this man backstage. I know many of you have flown around the world to be here for this dude, Shawn Stevenson. You guys ready to rock and roll with one of the most premier speakers on the planet? Yes? Woo! The author of the international best selling book, Sleep Smarter, and creator of the Model Health Show. His work has been featured on Forbes, Fast Company. Dr. Oz, ESPN, and countless other media outlets. I love this fun fact about him. Since one of his heroes, Stan Lee, who recently passed, Shawn and his family have watched every single Marvel Studios movie in order. Leading up to now, which means 20 movies in total. I love the fact that he wanted to share that with us, right? How sweet. Let's give it up for Shawn Stevenson. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: All right, so my story starts off like many of us as a baby. Who here start off as a baby? Well, I'm going to share a story that I have not shared before publicly, but I was born with essentially two broken feet. From my arch to my toes. My feet were slanted in significantly to the degree that my physicians had to forcefully adjust my feet and put them back in place and put me into some tiny little baby casts. And from there, a couple of months later, I was put into special shoes and I had to braces. And the physicians gave this similar story. You know, we don't know if the kid will ever be able to run properly. But as the story goes, my mother was getting me changed one day and she had turned around because she's going to put my braces on and she turned around and I had taken off running out the door after my uncle.

And so I didn't take the first steps. I took a first run and I've been running ever since. Now I know what you might be thinking, this story sounds very familiar and similar to Forrest Gump. All right. True enough, but for me, I always wanted to fly. I just had this desire within me to want to compete and to run and to play that was ignited in that moment. And around my neighborhood, I became a little bit of a local legend. You know, just in the neighborhood, playground sports and basketball and football and just racing could be anybody in a foot race. And when I got to high school, everybody kind of just thought Shawn was gonna do something special. I was gonna play at the next level is gonna be amazing.

And when I got to high school, everything was looking pretty good. I ran a 45 40 yard dash when I was 15, which, if anybody pays attention to the NFL combine, that kind of thing, it's pretty fast. And college is looking at me. But something happened. And this was actually during track practice, I was doing a 200 meter time trial. So this is where you do half of a lap. And it was just me and my coach at the other end. And I took off. And I was coming around the curve into the straightaway, and my hip broke. And there was no trauma. I didn't fall. It just broke. The iliac crest just broke off. And I didn't know this at the time. I thought maybe I pulled a muscle.

But I was, I came up limping. And being a hard headed young guy came to practice a couple of days before I went and got checked out. And when I did, there was just floating off in space. Now, when you're that age, you have the hormones of like a Greek guy. So you get better pretty quickly. And I got better, but nobody stopped to ask, how did a 15 year old kid break his hips from running? And the story I shared at the beginning was kind of a little bit of a prelude that there's something going on with my bones. And it wasn't actually until, and by the way, that was the first of about a dozen injuries that took place from my sophomore year to my senior year. And my vision of playing at the next level was squinched.

It wasn't until I was 20 years old, an MRI revealed that when I went in there initially to see my physician, I was having pain in my leg and he took me in to get an MRI of my spine. And I was just like, why the hell are we taking pictures of my back when my leg hurts? And my legs are hanging out of this thing. And he put the MRI out for me to see and he told me that I had something called degenerative disc disease and degenerative bone disease. And I was just 20 years old. And he told me that he's never seen a case this bad. He told me that I had the spine of an 80 year old man when I was just 20. And not a healthy 80 year old.

There's some healthy ass 80 year olds hanging around here. But for me, that was devastating. Absolutely devastating. Because I was dealing with this nuisance of a pain and I just wanted it to go away so I could live my life and be free. Because that's how I started off. I just wanted to be free. I wanted to play. I wanted to have fun. And I asked him, okay, so what do we do to fix this? And he put his hand on my shoulder and he said, I'm sorry son, there's nothing you can do about this. This is incurable. And I didn't, it just didn't register. And so I literally asked him this question, which I had no grounds to ask him this question.

To this day, I think it was like my future self, me, jumped back in my body bin, and I asked him, Does this have something to do with what I'm eating? Should I change the way I'm exercising? And he looked at me like I was from another planet, and he said, This has nothing to do with what you're eating, but this is something that we're gonna help you to manage. We're gonna get you some medication, we're gonna get you fitted for a back brace, eventually, and sent me on my way. So, having a story like this, at just 20 years of age, that you have an incurable illness and your body is just breaking down on the inside can be very disheartening, obviously. And for me, and it's so amazing that the gentleman that just spoke before me, there's something called, obviously you guys know the placebo effect.

And I don't know if you guys know this, but in clinical trials, they have to account for the placebo because it's so effective. On average, placebos are about 33 percent effective for treating everything from depression to high blood pressure to even cancer. 33 percent effective on average. But my physician exposed me to something called a nocebo effect. Alright? That's the opposite of a placebo. This is a real thing. And it's giving someone a negative injunction. Right? With a placebo, you hear, Okay, this is going to kill your cancer cells, or this is going to help to lower your blood pressure. A nocebo is something bad is going to happen. You'll never walk again.

You got six weeks to live those kind of things. And so every cell in your body, especially if it's coming from an authority figure believes it. And I went from a kind of nuisance of a pain to chronic debilitating pain that lasted for two years. Every day of my life, every minute of my life, I was just terrified to stand up because I get this electric shock going down the back of my leg. And so, being that I was given permission by my physicians not to do anything because I couldn't do anything, I did nothing. And I sat on my college loveseat and played a lot of video games and ate what I lovingly called the tough diet, T U F, typical university food. All right. I was in college at the time.

All right. And I sat on that couch so much that my big ass broke through the couch. And when I met my wife, who was my girlfriend at the time, she came over to my apartment. And there was like, I put pillows under the seat cushion and I thank you for staying with me, babe. I appreciate it. It was just terrible. And so here's the kind of light at the end of the tunnel. It took two years and I gained about 40 pounds over these two years. And I was just incredibly docile. And when I want to express number one, because everybody in here, we're going to go through something, but the worst thing that you can do is to do nothing.

Your body literally requires movement in order to heal itself. So it wasn't just my back that was beginning to atrophy. Everything was atrophying and there was no possibility of me getting well until I did something about it. And so two years into it, I'm on a slew of medications over the counter and prescription. And I was sitting on the edge of my bed holding my pill bottle in my hand and I was literally just staring at the pill bottle and I realized that for the last two years I had been giving my power away. I've been sitting there saying that nobody's going to help me pointing the finger. Why won't they do this?

Why did this happen to me? Why me? Why me? And I really realized that I was giving my power away to people who meant well, but they don't walk in my shoes. He's not eating the food for me. He's not getting up and potentially doing things to get me better. It was my responsibility. And so in that moment, I decided to get well. You're going to miss this. I really want you to understand this. Most of the time we don't actually decide. It's more like wishful thinking, right? It's like, I'll give this a shot. I'll try. I hope this works. But I actually decided no matter what, come what may, I'm going to get better. And so, and I'm a very analytical person, which you're going to see today.

It wasn't as if like, ah, you know, the clouds parted and a rainbow hit my ass. None of that. It was very like, okay, let's put a plan together. And that plan entailed three specific things. Number one, I changed the way I was eating. The number one thing that he told me didn't matter. It was just asking logical questions because questions are really the answer. The human brain is driven by questions, but I was asking disempowering questions this whole time. Why me? Why has this happened to me? Why won't somebody help me? Pointing the finger, instead of, okay, what is it that I need to do to get better? What is it that I need to do to change? What is this trying to teach me?

And I asked a really simple question when it comes to our health and wellness, which is, okay, my disc in between the vertebrae in my spine are deteriorating. What are my discs made of? Simple question. My bones are degenerated. What are my bones made of? When you think about bone nutrients, what do you think of? Calcium. That's marketing. That's one thing. There's ten things I found out are more important than calcium. Magnesium, vitamin K2, sulfur bearing amino acids, all this stuff I'd never even heard of. Just by asking the question and looking into it. And so, I was not getting any of that stuff in my body on my ravioli and sunny delight diet.

All right. Toasted ravioli, St. Louis. I don't know if anybody's had it. It's amazing. Okay. Just saying. And so I really set out to like, let me get these foods into my body because how in the world can your body create these tissues? If you're not giving your body the raw materials to make it really simple, logical stuff. So that was number one. Number two, I began a movement practice, which that was the low hanging fruit for because I've been an athlete, all those years. And so I just started off doing what I could do, which at the time was simply working out on a stationary bike and from there I progressed to walking a little bit more and then to jogging and to picking up the weights again and I came across a study on racehorses and What they did was they took the racehorses because this is a who watches like the racehorse stuff. You're in safe space.

It's okay. Okay, and It's a, like, hundred millions of dollars industry, and if you lose a horse to a broken bone, this could cost you millions of dollars. And so they wanted to find out how to increase the horse's bone density. And so they had one group, who was just a test group, that did nothing, then they had another group that gave them supplements, and it did increase the horse's bone density. But another group that gave them supplements and walked the horses had a radical increase in their bone density. That's what exercise is really about. It's assimilation. And so even though I'm bringing this good food in these good nutrients, I need to move for myself to really bring it in. And so I began a movement practice again.

And the third thing was, and you know, I see my book here on the table is your sleep because if you're not sleeping, you're not healing. My biggest struggle every night was trying to sleep with that chronic pain. If I changed positions, it'd wake me up at night. So it was just terrible for two years and things I began doing during the day, it turned out better for me when I laid my head down at night. And I got better incredibly fast and I went from this guy, this is, this is about 20 years ago at my daughter's birthday party and this is me today. But over the course of six weeks, just six weeks from that moment of decision, I lost 20 pounds and the pain I've been experiencing every day for two years that had me terrified to stand up was gone. After nine months, I went and got a scan done of my spine and my disc. I had two herniated discs, it had retracted on their own and I regenerated that tissue.

You know, they said that it was impossible to increase your bone density and I did it and I just got a scan done about 10 months ago. My discs are supple and thick, juicy, beautiful discs. But that really set me on fire, that experience. And I just want to tell the world about it. And I want to help other people who've been given that same bill of goods that there's nothing you can do to get better, to transform their health. And so low hanging fruit for me, again, I was in my university at the time.

I became a personal trainer and a strength and conditioning coach and began working with, you know, everyday folks and athletes. And I work with literally thousands of people in a one on one context in that. And eventually when I graduated, I became a nutritionist and opened my private practice. And I had this incredible testing ground for so many things that I was learning. And from there I wanted to expand the message and reach more people's thus the books, my podcast, the model health show, and just really wanting to help everybody to have those tools because it shouldn't be relegated to just people who have, right?

There are so many people who are suffering that just simply need a little bit of insight. And so these are my, some of my connections. And the reason I'm showing this is that, I'm a self confessed lone wolf, or I suffered from lone wolf syndrome. We put it like that. I just felt like I'm going to change the world. And it's just stupid. If you're really going to change the world, it's going to be with and through the help of other good people. And that's who you have here in this room. We're all together going to transform this room. And so today, what I want to share with you guys is some very practical, tangible things to not just help you with sparking your transformation, but helping you to sustain it.

All right. Because like I said, that was 20 years ago and I'm just getting warmed up. All right. And so I've come across a couple of things that I think are going to be incredibly valuable for you. And so we're going to go through our three keys to spark and sustain your transformation. Number one, become more physically literate, become more physically literate. So what do I mean by this? Once I started to implement things that I saw a great result with my fitness, which for me was strength training, we can have a tendency to get really latched onto that one thing. And your body requires a diversity of physical inputs to express the very best of your genes capacity, if that makes sense.

And so, there's only so many ways you could do a bench press, alright? We get stuck very linear in any certain patterns. And so what we need to do, and as I'm going to share with you today, is to have a diversity in those things. Number one, we'll start with strength training. Okay. Who here has a regular strength training program? Let me see your hand nice and high. Okay. That's solid. We're at the biohacking conference. We're going to have more people, all right, that do the strength training. So a couple of reasons that this is an essential input. Number one is anabolic hormone production. Outside of sleep. This is the major thing.

What does anabolic mean? It means the building up of, it means growth. The opposite is catabolic. My body was in a very catabolic state to the degree I was a very old man inside. So anabolic hormones are the juice of life and you get this probably more than anything else by implementing some strength training. Now muscle itself is a reservoir for anti-aging hormones. It's like a container that holds on to that stuff. And one of the greatest benefits is that this is the, one of the biggest things that really helps to change that body composition, increasing your lean muscle tissue to fat mass and increases your RMR.

Your mess, resting metabolic rate. And so if it was me now sitting with Shawn from 20 years ago on that couch watching my favorite show at the time, which was, I don't know, Alf or something. I don't know. I'm going to be burning more fat just sitting there than that person because I have more muscle in my frame. It's such a valuable thing. Why would we not take advantage of this? And also what I want you guys to know is the brain benefits. And this was a study conducted at Georgia Tech revealed that strength training for as little as 20 minutes can improve your long term memory. Just 20 minutes. So the test, the researchers took test subjects, they had some folks come in, they had them to either train legs for 20 minutes or to do nothing.

They sent them home for two days, had them come back and retest on their memory test, and folks who did the strength training increased their results by 10%, which is huge, 10 percent better with their memory simply by training legs. All right, so what is the message there? Never skip leg day, all right? I know some people like, well, I skip every day, so it doesn't matter, but incredibly powerful. So it's not just the physical, it's also your brain. And so I put a little plus symbol here because the hallmark item when it comes to strength training is body weight training. All right, who here does some body weight training?

Love it. Love it. Ah, so beautiful. So when I'm talking about. becoming physically literate. That's really the hallmark thing is learning how to use your own body. It's amazing body. All right. And so what are some body weight exercises? Let's just shout a few out. Sit ups. Push ups. Pull ups. Dips, dips, baby. Yes. Squats. Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. So we've got these basic inputs and then we can get into more advanced stuff. You know, the muscle ups and pistol squats and all these things. The reason that I want to really highlight this and to encourage everybody to make sure they're giving their body this genetic food of mastering some physical body weight movements is because this eliminates excuses.

All right. Because that's the number one reason people give for not working out is I don't have time. I can't get to the upgrade laughs. If you have a body, you have a workout. All right. As simple as that, there is no excuse and you can literally transform everything about you, your physical body by incorporating some body weight movements. Alright, so that's number one when talking about physical literacy. Number two, high intensity interval training. Who here is taking advantage of this? Hands nice and high. Okay. Listen. Linda, listen. Okay. Listen. I was just talking with Dr. Martin Gabala, and he's the guy, he's in the lab, taking the muscle biopsies and testing folks who are doing traditional, conventional cardio versus doing high intensity interval training.

All right. And one of his coolest studies, so he had test subjects come in, it was 20 people, split them up into two groups, five men and five women in each group. The first group, he had them do conventional cardio, all right. Five days a week, 45 to 60 minutes a session, 65 percent max effort on the bike. Okay. 45 to 60 minutes, five days a week, track their metrics. The other group, the high intensity interval training group, first of all, he had them train three days instead of five. Three days and they're coming in, they're doing a little bit of a light warmup. And then from there they're doing a 30 second sprint, all out sprint on the bike.

Then they rest for four and a half minutes, just barely even pedaling if they want to. And then they repeat that for four to six rounds. Okay. And you track their metrics. First I want you to realize how little they actually worked out compared to the traditional cardio. This was literally one third, the amount of time in the gym. Okay, first of all, and if we're actually just counting the hard exercise time when they're actually doing the interval, it's just 10 minutes a week compared to four hours and 30 minutes a week. And here's what the results found. Their increase in their aerobic capacity was exactly the same. Their increase in mitochondria in their muscles was exactly the same.

And their fat loss was exactly the same. For 10 minutes a week versus four and a half hours. All right, this is incredibly, this is the form of exercise that gives you the most bang for your buck. Bar none. There's nothing even comparable to this. All right. So if we're not taking advantage of this on a regular basis, we really need to think differently and start to incorporate more of this physical genetic stimulant. Alright? High intensity interval training. Now, this leads me to conventional cardio. Now, I'm putting it here, this is tough for me to talk about, okay? Because when I do conventional cardio, I break out. I'm allergic. I break out in unhappiness. This is not my favorite thing to do. But after I started to learn some of this science, I began to think differently about it and realizing the value of implementing this in my life in a little bit more of a purposeful way.

And this comes directly from a friend of mine, Dr. Wendy Suzuki and her team at NYU. And they found that aerobic exercise contributes to the creation and maintenance of brain cells in the hippocampus. All right. Hippocampus is the part of your brain that is most responsible for our memory. This is really considered the memory center of our brain. Aerobic exercise, conventional long duration cardio, it's in a whole different stratosphere compared to any other type of exercise with increasing these, the production of new brain cells in your hippocampus. There's nothing else even close. As much as I want strength training to be that, it's not.

This is really that juice. So if this is something we're talking about living 150, 180 years, we want to keep our memory. So this is something we might want to start to sprinkle in a little bit more judiciously at least, and get some of these benefits. Plus, this was published in the Journal of Clinical Investigations, and they took folks 60 minutes of cardio exercise, traditional cardio, 60 percent max effort on a stationary bike against strength training folks who are doing five by five, I'm sorry, five by 10. Five sets of 10, five different exercises. Pretty intense workout versus the conventional cardio. Here's what they found. Has anybody here heard of fibro Fibroblast Growth Factor 21? Yes. Yes. You're my best friend. Okay, so Fibroblasts Growth Factor 21.

You guys are gonna be hearing a lot more about this, all right? This appears to, it's a hormone protein. that is involved heavily in the process of fat oxidation and insulin sensitivity. And they found that conventional cardio for 60 minutes versus strength training produced three times more fibroblast growth factor 21. All right. So again, super valuable. But with all of this stuff, I think we need a diversity and not really getting into it. Super caught up in our one desired way of doing things, right? Because some people who do the cardio, who does, who loves long duration cardio? Let me see your hands please. And it's just like your thing.

It's meditative. It's your jam. No disrespect. I love you. Okay. It's not my cup of tea, but what people tend to do is they get caught in that one thing. And I want to encourage everybody to diversify some of this. It's kind of like when we go to your favorite restaurant, right? And it's just like, you know what you're going to get already. That's how we are about our exercise. And we look at the menu, it's like this mandatory time wasting, right? And then, you know, it's like, Oh, this is special. Yeah, that sounds amazing. Doesn't it sound amazing? I'll have the same shit I always get. All right. That's what we do with our exercise. All right.

So again, thinking differently and starting to diversify these things. Number four, sport and recreational activities. This one, man, this one is so important. So important. Who here gets out and plays regularly? Let me see your hands. Very few people comparatively. All right. And there's a statement again, we're talking about extending our lifespan. You know, it's not that we get older and we stop playing. It's that we stop playing and then we get older, right? That's really the causative factor. So it's cool that we're doing all this stuff to have this fitness, but we need to do something with our bodies, right. And the reason I'm putting this here is that in sport and in play, especially competitive play, it gives your brain unpredictable inputs that really develop certain capacities.

One of those things is something called proprioception. And proprioception is awareness of your body in space and it's something that tends to decline as you get older. Thus folks having more falls and breaking bones and that kind of thing. In order for us to keep our proprioception high and even improve it. We need to get out and to play and to compete. All right. It's something that our genes really expect us to do. I truly believe this. All right. So sport and recreation. Now for me, I just to give you guys a heads up, I want you to sprinkle this stuff in. There are ways you can structure this into one workout.

And there are also ways, you know, you can split things up or maybe do something every now and then we'll come back to that. But for me, I usually start my workout and my wife knows this. I'll go and play basketball first, right? And do something competitive. Hopefully there's some people out there that I could, you know, embarrass. I'm just kidding. I'm not that good. I'm not that good. My shoes would tell you I'm good. I'm okay. But so I do that. Then we go and do a strength training. And sometimes I would do conventional cardio after that, right? Get that all in, maybe just, you know, one to two days a week. I'll do something like that.

Alright, next up. And this is really taking over right now. It's mobility training. This changed my life. Alright, because I was having some nagging issues. You know, stuff with my hip. You know, I travel a lot. I'm on a lot of planes. Sitting down, doing all these interviews. My body just would feel just out of sorts. And I started this year, 2019, I made a decision. Every single day I'm going to do a mobility workout. Alright. Maybe just even five minutes and it has kept me so solid like I feel amazing. It's doing a simple mobility training practice. All right, so in big shout out to folks who do yoga. We any yogis in the house. Yes.

Yes. Yes Because yoga has really helped to put this into our cultural lexicon and going through these different flows and different movements. But now it's heavily implemented in even the military. So this was a study, and this was published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning, found that mobility training significantly enhances movement function and overall performance. Alright, so what they did was take these military cadets, and some of them did nothing, so no warm up, some of them did static stretching, some of them did mobility flow exercises before their training, and they significantly outperformed these other folks who did nothing or static stretching. I mean, it wasn't even comparable.

All right. And so this was everything from like a shuttle run to like throwing stuff. Outperform them by simply having a mobility training practice. And so I have everything I really want everybody here, please. You're going to hear more about this. All right. Think about consciously adding this to your repertoire. A lot of us do this before we work out. I make it a workout myself because I need it. It's the input that my body needs the most. All right. Next up. We've got the mother of all exercises, all right? Now, when I first became a strength and conditioning coach, and people come in to see me, you know, they've been struggling, they're trying to get their health together, and they tell me that they're walking to try to lose weight, I would be like, you need to hurry up.

Like, that's not going to get you there, all right? Walking is going to take you a long time. I was really missing the point of everything that we're designed to do as human beings. We can dead, you know, my son, he can deadlift freaking 450, squat almost 400 pounds. He's, he's incredible. But are we designed to do that? We can, and it can give us great benefit. But the number one thing we're designed to do is walk. Your genes expect you to walk. So much so we get some incredible physical and mental benefits. And so we've got a study that was published in the journal Public Library of Science Medicine found that walking for 75 minutes each week is enough to extend your lifespan by two years.

That's 11 minutes a day. I don't know how much you spent on your ticket. I just gave you two free years of life. Thank you. Yes. Come on. Yes. 11 minutes a day. 11 minutes a day. That's all it takes. And this is something that I just totally left off the menu unless I was forced to walk somewhere, but consciously get out and walk 11 minutes a day can truly transform the game for you. All right. And also a study at Stanford university found that walking for just five to 16 minutes increased creative inspiration by 60 percent for test subjects. Specifically, a specific flavor of creative inspiration called divergent thinking was increased. And this is being able to think outside of the box because we, again, tend to think very linear and we miss out on, you know, we try to go hard on this one solution.

There's a solution when there's oftentimes dozens, if not hundreds of solutions for the problem. And so walking can really help with that. All right. So again, I want to share those with you to give you something to think about in adding in some more of this physical literacy to your life. And we're going to move on to number two here in sustaining and sparking and sustaining your transformation. And this is investing in your recovery. All right. Investing in your recovery. Now, obviously nutrition is a huge piece to this. I'm a nutritionist. I just really was like food matters. Food is everything. But there is a part of recovery as taking the world by storm, and it's called sleep, right? It's the number one thing that your body requires in order to recover.

But let's start first with what's happening in your brain. So these are brain imaging scans from UC Berkeley, all right? Over on the, what's going to be your right, we see those blue areas. That is indicating decreased activity in the frontal and insular cortex. This is known as a more executive part of your brain that's responsible for distinguishing between right and wrong, social control, all right? Executive higher order functions. And that part of your brain literally starts to go cold. All right. It starts to go into sleep mode. But what they found, and this is just 20, this is a short sleep debt of just 24 hours, which is not abnormal. This happens in your brain. We also see incredibly increased heightened activity in the amygdala.

And this is the part of your brain that, you know, it's the more primitive part of your brain that's really concerned mainly about survival of self. Right. And those four Fs, we're talking about the four Fs. Was that Naveen? Right. It's like fighting, fleeing, feeding, and fuck. Fornication. Fornication. All right. I hear that clap. Thank you. And all of this from a short sleep debt. Okay. So it's not the best version of yourself who's showing up. All right. And what does this have, what kind of impact does this have on our performance? We've got one study, and this is a new term that's in the kind of common lexicon, is cyberloafing.

And so what they did was they monitored the test subjects and for every hour of interrupted sleep, they literally interrupt their sleep. Every hour of interrupted sleep resulted in 20 percent more cyberloafing. The next day is cyber loafing is when you're supposed to be working on your report, working on your book, writing up client programs, whatever it is you're supposed to be doing for work. But you start doing these just checks, right? I'll just check my phone real quick. I'll just check Instagram real quick. I'll just check Twitter real quick. I'll just check my email. And you get off of your assigned task. So every hour of interrupted sleep, because it's not about sleeping more, it's about sleeping better.

And if your sleep is interrupted and low quality, you're going to have these brain issues and performance issues. Also improve memory, reaction time, and mood. These are the three common things that I would see in my practice and also improve work capacity. All right. There's a difference between doing work and being effective. And so there's a study and this was published in Lancet and it was done on physicians. Okay. And they had them come in and do a series of tests. Then they sleep deprive them for just 24 hours, which is not abnormal in that field. They had them come back and do the same exact tests. And here's what happened.

Number one, they made 20 percent more mistakes doing the same exact thing. And you don't want that to be you. You don't want that to be you are the patient and they make that mistake on you. Number two, it took them 14 percent longer to do the same thing. Okay. So we are trying to burn the midnight oil and, you know, sacrifice sleep. We're sacrificing performance and we got to go back and clean up problems we create. All right. So it's incredibly valuable for recovery on that front. So let's talk a little bit about the body. Now, this was a study conducted by researchers at the university of Chicago and they took test subjects.

And they put them on a calorie restricted diet, which is typical, but you know, as you guys know, it's not, it's not that effective. But they put them on a calorie restricted diet, and they allowed them to get eight and a half hours of sleep in one phase of the study, and tracked all their metrics. Another phase of the study, they took the same people, same exact diet, and they sleep deprived them.

They take away three hours of sleep, so now they're getting five and a half hours of sleep, and they compiled all the data. Okay. They found out after compiling all the data that when the folks were well rested, when they're getting adequate amount of sleep, they lost 55 percent more body fat simply from sleeping. They didn't cut any more calories, they didn't exercise more, just getting more sleep and getting more sleep. You're going to have a tendency to get better sleep. Okay. Just to be clear. All right. 55%. That's insane. 55 percent more body fat loss. And instantly my question is how in the world does that happen?

And it's because sleep is truly the driver of antibiotic hormones, namely human growth hormone. You get the greatest secretion of HGH during that first phase of deep delta wave sleep. All right. About 70 percent of your HGH is produced during sleep. And if we're missing, this is also known as a youth hormone. If we're talking about longevity and staying younger longer, we need that. So that's number one. Number two, melatonin itself. Who here knows that melatonin is more than just a sleep related hormone? Do you know melatonin secrets? Alright, just like Victoria's Secrets, melatonin has secrets. Now, I don't know why I said that.

Sorry. So melatonin, and this was published in the journal Obesity Reviews, they found that melatonin is a very powerful fat burning hormone. Because melatonin increases your body's production and the mobility of something called brown adipose tissue, right? Brown fat. And do, does anybody know why it's brown? Who is that? You're my second best friend. All right. It's because it's more dense in mitochondria. There's been a lot of talk about mitochondria and you know, people here at this event. Sleep. Melatonin. These are key for your body to really do this stuff. All right. So melatonin requires two things. It requires darkness and a regular sleep cycle.

All right. So this is one of the reasons that these folks were losing so much body fat. It's the work of melatonin, HGH, and some other things. And we could do a whole talk on that, but I just want to give you guys those little pieces, little tidbits. Now let's talk about some action steps. What is our greatest obstacle in getting high quality sleep today? All right. Who said these thingies? Did somebody say that? So yeah, it's our electronics. And it's not going to slow down anytime soon. All right. I've been talking about this for over half a decade. And now it's really impressing itself in the public consciousness. But a lot of us really, we're still not doing anything about it.

And a lot of people in this room. All right. Now it's great. Yes. Let's use the blue light blocking glasses. Let's use the blue light blocking apps. But also let's just spend some time off of your phone. Okay, you can clap for that. And so here's the thing. This could be like an AA meeting right here. Like we're all we're addicted, you know, I'm Shawn and I'm addicted to my iPhone. All right. And we can get in and talk about what's going on there in the brain. But the bottom line is this. With a lot of things, you have to replace it with something of greater or equal value. And so what I encourage people to do is just give yourself a screen curfew of just 30 minutes before you go to bed. Because, a lot of us, the last thing we do is turn off a screen before we go to bed .

It's not just the blue light, it's the stimulation that happens from those things and it's going to affect your sleep quality. It's a 100 percent chance that it is. And so what does that look like for, what can we replace it with that's of greater or equal value? A book. A book? There's physical, there's real books still? There's physical books? Bath. Bath? Yeah. So my man's like, bubble bath. Alright. Light candles. Massage. Meditation. Sex. Who said sex? Third best friend. Sex! Hopefully that's more entertaining than Facebook. If it's not, you're doing it wrong. Okay. But there's even a chapter in Sleep Smarter where I talk about the benefits, the relationship between sex and sleep. And so you have to fill it with something of greater equal value, talking to your loved ones. You know, you don't have to stare into a phone to get on a call with somebody or to listen to a podcast or an audio book or to talk with your kids or your significant other or your best friend. All right.

Fill that space with something. Also, this is probably one of the biggest things is you have to fix your gut to fix your sleep. And we've already had so much of a great conversation about what's going on with the microbiome. In your gut, and this is, it blew my mind when I found this out because when I was in college, I was taught melatonin is produced in your pineal gland, end of story. There's 400 times more pine, more melatonin in your gut than in your brain. All right. And it's produced by these, it's known as the enteric nervous system, but we have these enterochromaffin cells that produce things like serotonin, which is a precursor to melatonin. And we know that over 90 percent of our serotonin is in our gut as well, 80 to 90%, all right.

We got to really take care of this. because having an abnormal environment there and also being deficient on key sleep related nutrients could be the thing that's really gumming you up. All right? So just to give you a couple of action steps. Number one, vitamin C and I love botanical food first, but a simple vitamin C deficiency can really mess your sleep up. And this was published by the public library of science and found that a vitamin deep, C deficiency cause folks, the test subjects to have more interrupted sleep and they wake up more often. So if you have trouble staying asleep. You might want to check out what's going on with your vitamin C. What are some good vitamin C foods?

Citrus, spinach, broccoli, green vegetables, bell peppers. Yes. All of these things. And then we have these quote superfoods that are more dense sources like camel, camel, berry, amla, berry, acerola, cherry. Make sure that you're taking care to get your vitamin C. It's not just about your immune system. It's doing other cool stuff in your body. All right. We've got a whole list of those things as well. All right. So, there's a couple of action steps. And since we're here at the biohacking conference, I'm going to share with you guys what I do when I travel. Who here, when you travel, your sleep gets a little questionable, right? Now there's a study that I did put in there as well, because a lot of my colleagues were of the assumption that taking melatonin would suppress your body's ability to produce it itself.

And I'm always like, let me find out if that's actually true. And so I came across a really well put together study and it found that it does not decrease your body's production of melatonin. Good news. Bad news is that taking too high doses of melatonin or taking it too frequently can reduce your cells ability to actually acknowledge and to use melatonin. All right. So that's a bigger problem. So it down regulates the receptor site for using the melatonin you are producing. We don't want that to happen. So we need to be a little bit careful about how much and how frequently we take melatonin when I travel, especially when I take change times. I don't take melatonin throughout the year unless I travel and I'll do that to help get me back on a sleep schedule.

So I did that when I got here and I really like sprayable, you know, take it sublingually cause it can get better absorbed under your tongue. All right. So that's something I do. Just throwing it out there. Melatonin. Little melatonin hack for when you travel. Or Rishi, the Journal of Pharmacology, Biochemistry, and Behavior found that the medicinal mushroom Rishi helped test subjects, number one, and improve over, sleep latency, so they fell asleep faster, improve overall sleep time, and improve overall sleep quality. So this was objective measuring them going through their sleep cycles. So Rishi is pretty awesome. And I know that there's some guys out there that have Rishi. as well. So shout out to them Four Sigmatic. We've got a quick break coming up. We'll be right back. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Are you interested in living a shorter life? Of course not. Everybody would love to extend their lifespan and their health span because it's not just the number of years that we live, it's the quality of those years. And what cutting edge research is now revealing is that there is a specific beverage, tested. Enjoyed by humans for centuries. That has the potential to extend your lifespan and your health span. 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 of mortality.

Now, keep in mind, the researchers did an excellent job adjusting for confounding factors like obesity, alcohol consumption, et cetera, et cetera. But they found that drinking coffee really stood out. But here's the key, it's the quality of that coffee. We're not talking about coffee that's littered with artificial sweeteners and sugar and artificial creamers, like " coffee meat". All right. We're not talking about that. We're talking about high quality coffee itself. And one of the reasons why was affirmed by researchers at Stanford University. And these scientists found that the caffeine found in coffee has a remarkable impact defending the brain against age related inflammation.

In fact, they found that these compounds found in coffee was able to suppress genes related to inflammation. This is truly remarkable, and again, keep in mind that it's the quality of coffee. And there's a U shaped curve of benefits. So it's light to moderate coffee drinkers who are seeing these incredible results. And you combine that organic coffee, that's the key, organic coffee, with time tested medicinal mushrooms like lion's mane and chaga. You've got something really special. Lion's mane in particular was affirmed by researchers at the university of Malaya to protect the brain against degeneration and even help to heal traumatic brain injuries.

Again, there's something really special about lion's mane medicinal mushroom. That's what I actually had today was organic coffee, lion's mane medicinal mushroom, and chaga blended together in the incredible coffee blends from Four Sigmatic. Go to foursigmatic.com/model and you're going to get 10 percent off all of their incredible coffee blends. They're amazing elixirs of dual extracted medicinal mushrooms. Nobody does it better than Four Sigmatic again, that's F O U R S I G M A T I C.com/model for 10 percent off. And now back to the show. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: All right. Now, finally, when we're talking about sparking and sustaining our transformation, obviously the physical inputs are important. Our recovery is important, but this is probably the most important thing. And this is to begin to diversify our thinking. All right. Now we talk about diversification with our finances and investment, even diversification in our nutrients and our food, but this is heavily overlooked and it can have a profound impact on your life. If you start to do this. And it starts with this study from Princeton University. And what they did was they took test subjects and they put them together. People who didn't know each other, and they were able to develop just within a couple of minutes, some mild rapport. And what they found was something really shocking.

They found that their brain waves started to sync up and mirror each other. Now this is happening all the time. When we're talking with people, friends and family, even people we just met. We have this really interesting connection that's not talked about enough and the human brains literally start to sync up. And it's a subtle, invisible communication that starts to take place. So the first thing, when I heard this, I immediately like, I need to be careful what I'm talking to. All right. And I need to be more mindful of that. And it is important. Of course, you want to get yourself around positive, inspiring, uplifting people who are, you know, on the same path as you, all that good stuff, but you don't want to stop there.

That was the problem. That's where I had my issue at. You don't want to stop there because you're going to be missing out on something really valuable. All right. Because, when the brain starts to sync up, again, we can still get caught in these linear patterns, these stagnant ways of thinking, if we're constantly talking to the same people that are into the same stuff that we're into, right? Your brain will just naturally start to miss out on, it will start to have all of these blind spots, okay? And I'm really a big proponent of whole brain learning and really tapping into our brain's capacity. All right. There's statements about, you know, we only use 5 percent of our brain, 10%. That's not true.

We do use all of our brain. We just use it in a pretty crappy way. And one of the reasons is we're not diversifying our mental inputs due to our conversations and things that we're around to get our brains to be flexible and to be able to think differently. So here's some action steps to diversify your thinking. Number one is to diversify your experiences. Starting today. Every single month, I want you to go and do something, to try something, to experience something that people who know you socially would be surprised to hear that you did. Like, some of you jumped off a building. Clap it up if you jumped, for the people who jumped off the building, please.

Okay? All right. All right. That was crazy. My wife was on a call then, recording a call for her friend. And she just kept hearing, ahhh! ahhhh!. She's like, who is that? What's going on there? So, diversify your experiences, alright? You don't have to jump off a building, but a good example is my mother in law, we just went to, I spoke at an event in Jamaica, and I brought my whole family with me, and we went to climb a waterfall, right? Now, I didn't have a concept of what that looked like. We got there, basically it's a waterfall with these different levels of these rocks that you can climb. And so she's in her sixties, but she's incredibly vibrant and beautiful and powerful. But that was not in her paradigm. All right. Because the group leader grabbed her hand and said, you're going to be, you're going to lead us up.

And in her mind, she's like, no, I'm not. You picked the wrong person. This is not happening today. But she did it and it's become a new mental input and a story and something that has expanded her worldview and expanded her mental inputs and her brain's evolution. So diversify your experiences. Take action proactively to do something that you normally wouldn't do. A really great, great way to also do this is diversifying your media and even diversifying books, the types of books that you're reading. For a long time, for many years, I felt like reading fiction was not productive. Has anybody ever felt like that? Like you just want to read nonfiction. I want to learn about my craft.

I want to learn everything about nutrition and health, or if you're in finances, marketing, whatever it is. I felt it was not productive and I was missing out on a powerful mental input. All right. So once I start to integrate and start to read more fiction again, number one, and so we've got studies to affirm this stuff. It increases your communication skills, specifically being able to better perspective take because you're doing it when you're reading fiction, you're putting yourself in the shoes of the characters. So it becomes very, very powerful. And so doing that and having that skill, of just opening up a fiction book and help to diversify your experiences.

And also, it's been found to help So, not just your communication skills, but also your creativity as well, all right? So, super powerful stuff. Diversify your media. Okay? So that's one thing is diversifying your book. So if you're somebody, if you're already reading fiction, but you're like more into like the Jack Reacher stuff, just try it. Fifty Shades of Grey. All right? Just try it. You know, give it a look. But just diversifying those inputs. Same thing with music. Right? We tend up getting the same pattern. Music is very powerful, right? Same patterns with music. So if you are, I mean, you see me, right? Somebody sees me, they, they're probably like Shawn, definitely listen to like some smooth r&b.

He's like sensual as fuck. He's so sensual, right? I listen to country music like I grew up on country music. Conway Twitty. Randy Travis and the Judds, all this stuff. You'd be surprised to know that. So I have all these different inputs, right? Classical music I listen to as well. When I'm working, I listen to instrumentals from Lord of the Rings. Who knew, right? So diversify your media, your inputs, all right? Same thing with your movies. And finally, diversify your contacts. Again, be very proactive about talking with people of different cultures. Talking with people who have different experiences who you normally wouldn't associate with. All right.

It's very powerful with training your mind to be flexible and to be adaptable and to create some longevity. So you don't get stuck. We're talking about not just sparking your transformation, but being able to sustain it. And finally, with that said, and diversifying your thinking, I want you to begin to think bigger than you ever have before. I recently personally had a huge revelation and transformation because of all of my goals, the things that I had set forth for myself and the reach and the impact and the books and all of these incredible things. I cannot say that I did not envision them happening. I absolutely did. But when I reached that vision, I became complacent.

It's not that I wasn't growing. I was taking action steps every day, but there was something missing and it's because I had not expanded my vision to be even bigger than that. And where are you doing that in your life? Where are you doing that? Because the reality is this. The human psyche, the way that we're wired up, your psyche, the human psyche, is hardwired for this one thing. The number one driving force of your psyche is to make you stay congruent with the ideas that you carry about yourself. Everything in your life is built on your beliefs about I'm the type of person that. Everything. And so when you try to get outside of that, it's very difficult. You get resistance and you tend to come back.

And so the real big key here is to start to expand your beliefs because you will never, you will never grow or outgrow your expectations of who you are and what you're capable of. And so I want you to five extra vision. Whatever that's making you uncomfortable right now, whether it's in health and wellness, whether it's in real estate, whether it's in television. You've gotta make your vision bigger. Because that's really going to pull you towards something extraordinary. And everybody in here, you have certain gifts, talents, capacities that no one else has and the world really does need you to step up and make it happen. All right, so thank you so much

Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of the model health show. I hope that you enjoyed this to the fullest. If you did, please share this out with somebody that you care about. You can send this directly from the podcast app that you're listening on. And if you like this type of episode, this kind of special insider look at, you know, a special event, please let me know. Take a screenshot of the episode and share it on social media. You can share it on your IG story. Tag me, I'm @Shawnmodel. And listen, we've got some amazing, amazing masterclasses coming your way and some of the most incredible guests. Just be prepared to have your mind blown. All right. All that is coming your way and much more.

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 themodelhealthshow.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.