Shawn Stevenson: Welcome to The Model Health Show. This is fitness nutrition expert, Shawn Stevenson, and I'm so grateful for you tuning in with me today. It is officially summertime here in the USA, but this summer is going to be hitting a little bit differently. I remember summers growing up. It was like... It's the best thing ever. Those summers going down to my grandmother's house in the country and swimming in the river and fishing and learning how to shoot, and all those things with my grandfather and summer times of day camp. Do you remember day camp? So awesome. And spending all day at the pool. But right now, pools are not open. The opening of pools is nowhere in sight. Summertime, just driving around, let the top down, roll the windows down, let a new Jay-Z record play or John Cougar Mellencamp, if you're feeling that.

But now there's an ordinance, even having the windows down, you better have that mask up. It is a very, very strange situation, very strange summer upon us. But the good news is that we have so much opportunity as well, and I think that it really again, starts with education, and it starts with feeling empowered, once again. But seriously, we really need to have a conversation right now, and I just want to ask just to consider this, why is science not popular anymore? Why is science so out of fashion?

I was just watching this show, just a random Netflix show, and it's based in the UK. And one of the main characters, she's the home secretary. She's giving a big presentation, and she's talking about the state of affairs. And this show is from years ago. And there's a crisis going on, and she made a joke saying that during times of crisis, the first right that we lose is the freedom of speech. I was like, "What?" I literally paused it and went back. I was like, "She didn't just say that, did she?" And the crowd kind of laughed uncomfortably because we kind of know it's true. Science starts to get pushed to the side and agendas start to get pushed forward. But the good news is that we live in a different time now where we can literally look into things for ourselves. Nothing is without opportunity to uncover.

And so that's what I really want to talk about today because at this time, when we're talking about a pandemic, when we're talking about civil unrest, it's really important to realize that we should be encouraging science, not belittling it. We should be encouraging intelligence and conversation, not belittling it, and censoring it. And I think a big part of the problem is that we're still pining in the same thread of history that was seen centuries ago, unfortunately. And it's this truth that science and discovery often takes a long time to be accepted as truth.

And this reminds me of the story from one of the real legends in science that many people have never heard of, which is Ignaz Semmelweis. Now, Ignaz Semmelweis, Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis, first of all, his name is Gangster. Second of all, he's the person who really impressed upon the medical establishment that they should be washing their hands before treating patients. And what was being seen at the time was a lot of deaths from childbirth at the time. They were just skyrocketing.

Skyrocketing rates of deaths from childbirth and also infant deaths. And it was common practice there that physicians would be fiddling around with folks who passed away and doing things in the morgue, and then going up and delivering a baby without sanitizing, washing their hands in between. And Semmelweis noticed that the people who were giving births with a midwife, who weren't tinkering around with dead bodies, their rate of death, their mortality rate for the women they were working with while giving birth was so much lower. And just experimenting, trying different things with sanitation, he figured it out that we just need to clean up the area, keep our hands clean before we touch these women and these babies.

And he was ridiculed. He was destroyed by his fellow scientists and physicians. And the story goes that he was so oppressed, and so ridiculed that he actually suffered so much psychological damage that he actually went crazy. And it's unfortunate because his discovery and his science took years for the medical establishment to accept it as truth. And here we are again, even when science pokes its head forward, we still ridicule the individuals and the scientists who are really working to push the culture forward. And I think it's important for us to understand that one of the biggest, most powerful revelations that we can have in our lives, are when we realize how little we know. It's a level of freedom that I can't even explain. I was always striving to know so much and to have things figured out. But when I discovered that there's always more, when I discovered that we only know 1%, if that, of everything that there is to know in chemistry and biochemistry and physiology, we're just scratching the surface.

It can be incredibly exciting, but we have to keep our minds open to new developments and new truths because we know so little. But unfortunately, we act like we know so much. In particular, the talking heads that we see in media, who are often not willing to admit when they're wrong, not willing to admit when they've made a mistake. And we all have these cognitive biases, these inherent psychological biases that we operate with, where we're constantly looking for data to help us to affirm that we are correct. It's called the self-serving bias. We are always scanning our environment and looking for ways to make sure that we prove ourselves to be right.

And it is dangerous, but the great news is that we can become aware of it and we can train ourselves to do otherwise. So what I do when I look into the data, unlike a lot of other people, is that I also look for ways that I could be wrong. I ask questions of myself and I actually look for ways to disprove my belief and it sounds crazy. It sounds crazy because nobody wakes up in the morning like, "You know what, I want to be wrong today. Let me find out how wrong I am." Nobody does that. Our whole lives are really dedicated to upholding our beliefs about reality, our beliefs about what we see as truths, and we look for things to affirm those things. It's a self-serving mechanism that helps to keep us safe in a world that is very uncertain. And so, I just want to start off with that, to direct our attention to those things and to make sure that we, in order to stay on the cutting edge of things, in order to stay on the cutting edge of reality and truth and science, we have to be willing to be wrong. And we have to be willing to look at things from multiple perspectives.

And so, I want to start with that because when we hear the story of Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis, we might think, "Well, that's a long time ago. We've come a long way since then." But that's simply not the case. I've been in this field for over 18 years and over a decade in clinical work, working with patients. And one of the things that we really specialized in was working with chronic illnesses. So we worked with incredible amounts of folks with diabetes and heart disease, and cancers, and obesity and even rare, crazy things like rocky mountain fever and just all kinds of stuff that would come through our door. And we found an incredible level of success over the years, but that level of success really exploded when I stopped basing my practice on a cookie-cutter method and start basing it on the person and treating that individual person and not looking at, "Oh, this is the thing that works for me. This is what's going to work for you." It's never like that. Everybody is so unique and so individual.

And the reason I'm bringing this up is that, even 15 years ago, being in this field, you couldn't talk about without being dragged through the mud, without your credibility coming in question, saying that cancer can be reversed. Even though it's there, thousands upon thousands of cases what referred to as spontaneous remission, which means by conventional medicine that we don't know how it happened, but there are all of these incredible cases and we would see them first hand. And if you're watching this on YouTube or if you're not watching this on YouTube, I highly encourage you to check out the video for this episode because we'll put up some images throughout this show and to demonstrate this. But what comes up for me right now is one of my last patients that I worked with before I closed my practice to focus on teaching and writing and all those things, was a young woman named Kristi, and Kristi was a mother of three.

She was in her 20s, a young woman. She had just had her youngest son, and he was just a few months old. And she came in, she was referred to me, to my office, because she was told that she had very fast progressing cancer and she needed to make arrangements because she's probably not going to make it. And I was just incredibly hurt for her just even coming in, having experienced that, what we know referred to now in medicine as a nocebo effect from the physician saying that there's nothing you can do about this essentially. And so we went to work. We employed a variety of different anti-cancer protocols, in addition to another physician she was working with, who was employing some basic hormone therapy, and along with our protocol, and you can see the images here on the YouTube video. Just within 30 days of her employing our protocol, she had a massive reduction in the size of her breast tumor. And you can also note just kind of around her other organs, you can see the levels of inflammation just dissolving as well. And this was just in 30 days.

And I am proud and I'm able to sit here confidently and share this with you that she is still cancer-free today, all these years later, taking care of her children. That's what's possible, but we have to wake up. We have to really open our minds and understand that things are not always what we see on the surface. We understand that conventional medicine definitely has some holes in it, there are some things that conventional medicine is wonderful at, but it's all undergoing a massive reconstruction right now, as our society is, towards integrative medicine and functional medicine and understanding nutrition, because it's so ironic that when I went to college many, many years ago and looking at a pre-med track, it was not required for me to take nutrition. I just decided to take it one day and I attributed nutrition to fitness.

I wanted to take nutrition because I thought I had something to do with making me more fit. I had no concept that the food that we eat literally creates our cells. Every single cell in your body is made of the food you eat, the water you drink, and the air you breathe. There is nothing more important than those three things. It's what literally makes you up. Why is this not taught in medical school? It's shifting now, absolutely. But for decades, this was laughed at. Nutrition, to help to prevent and reverse disease? It's laughable. That's where we are. And so far, during this pandemic, we're under the assumption, like many of us have woken up to the fact that "Yeah, our current system of health has been kind of messed up, but they got it right here on COVID. We need to listen to them on this." What is wrong with us? Seriously.

You know what's so funny is that... Again, I don't just talk. I don't say stuff because it sounds good. I just look at the data and I communicate it. Even with all of our advancements in conventional medicine, they haven't cured a damn thing. Everything is steadily inclining, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's, obesity. As advanced as we think we are, we suck at fixing these things because we've been barking up the wrong tree. Simple. It's simple. We're not good at it. We're not good at it. But we can be because we have clinically proven evidence on what actually works.

But to look at that again, we have to keep our mind looking towards the cutting edge, looking towards being wrong, looking towards saying, "You know what? We made a mistake on this thing. This is what actually works." And it's very hard to do when you've been conditioned by a system that has inundated you with the idea that this is the way that we do things. "We treat cancer like this, we try to poison your system and see if you can outlive the poison," that's our favorite treatment. Our most effective treatment, which is great, chemotherapy is highly effective, but our best treatment is, "We're going to poison you and see if you can outlive the cancer because we're going to try and kill this cancer."

So, I just want to start off with this just to lay the groundwork, because I think it's important for us to just shift our mindset right now because we're still in the midst of this, and COVID-19 has literally come through and transformed our entire reality, and yet we don't see any end in sight. And my biggest issue is that we are treating symptoms and not addressing the underlying cause, and so we're going to be extremely susceptible when COVID-20 comes and COVID-22, and COVID-25. A lot of people don't realize this, but SARS-CoV-2... This is two, there was the 1. There's many other coronaviruses, even the common cold. There's so many different versions of coronaviruses, but they're not supposed to be able to "species jump" so easily. It's supposed to take hundreds of years, sometimes for them to be able to evolve to be able to affect humans.

So what's going on? Why is this happening now? And why, I think we need to start here today, which is, with all of this and this worldwide experience, why was America hit so hard, in particular, by the coronavirus? And I'll tell you right off the bat. It's because we're arguably the most unhealthy nation on the planet, and I say "arguably" just to be nice. According to a recent CIA report, America has the highest rate of obesity of any nation with more than 40 million people. It's not even close. And what we do know in talking about COVID-19 is that upwards of 94, to upwards of 99% of the folks who've passed away with COVID-19 had other diseases, had other causes of morbidity. So, in conjunction with obesity, diabetes, heart disease, Alzheimer's.

As a matter of fact, a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association analyzed the data of hospitalized COVID-19 patients in New York City and uncovered that the most common of those comorbidities were hypertension, obesity and diabetes. This is the thing that we're not talking about. Why are we not talking about this? Because the common conversation is, "Well, we can't do anything about those things. We can't improve those things overnight." And I've literally done episodes recently where I talked about how you literally can improve or damage your immune system "overnight", within a few hours, within a few days. The science is there. We know this. If we stay up right now for the next 24 hours straight, our immune system is going to get hammered. Period. Very logical, but it's just like, "Oh, well. Yeah, we kind of get that, but that doesn't apply here." And today you're going to understand that this absolutely does apply here.

So, in talking about why America was hit so hard, let me ask you a question. How many people in United States have diabetes or pre-diabetes? How many people? Why were we hit so hard? In the US, almost 125 million citizens have diabetes or pre-diabetes. We are susceptible, we're set up for failure. This makes us far more likely to become sick, to become extremely sick, or even to die when we're exposed to a virus if we're unhealthy now. Let me differentiate. So we're talking about specifically Type 2 diabetes, which now I can say, and I couldn't say this years ago, is completely reversible. It's known as "adult-onset diabetes" because this used to happen for only adults after years of abuse and sugar consumption and things of the like, but now we know that kids... It's absolutely insane how many children have diabetes today.

Type 2 diabetes accounts for about 95% of all the diabetes cases. And Type 1 diabetes, which, we're talking about a genetic condition that folks are born with, a genetic mutation, where the beta cells in the pancreas aren't producing insulin it's a different condition altogether. But folks with Type 1 diabetes can absolutely thrive as well. And there are some folks who are absolutely living amazing lives, but they have to be more careful too. We're talking about the diabetes that is forced upon us by our environmental conditions, the things that we have access to as far as commodities and food and things like that, and the encouragement by our culture to live a sedentary lifestyle. We've recently been told not to go outside, the basic human things. Our sleep patterns as well has just not been widely taught or considered in our culture.

Sometimes, and I know you guys know this, sometimes it's kind of like we're preaching to the choir and we're talking in our own little circles, and we don't realize how sick the rest of society is just because we know about some of this stuff, and we need to open our hearts and open our minds because the change is going to come through you. It's going to come through us together, not just seeing people who are struggling, but we can do something about it, having conversations, offering support. Not everybody, of course, wants to change, and that's... There's that whole thing of like, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink."

Well, we could make the water look way more attractive, you know what I mean? And that's what the art really is, there's a science and art to this, and that's why I created The Model Health Show, is to demonstrate both of those things to make learning fun, to make it attractive, to make it insightful into the degree that you're just like, "Of course, it just... That just makes sense." because it does, oftentimes, science is over-complicated by people who want to make themselves seem incredibly smart, and Einstein said that, "If you can't explain it simply you don't know it well enough." We can cut out all the fancy jibber-jabber and we can get right to the point and help people, so that's what I do when I go and read all... In the past year alone, I've probably read a couple of thousand peer-review journals, and that is not enjoyable reading, I'm just not pumped to go and do that, in essence, but I feel compelled to, because I can go through and look at all of this very analytical and over-complicated text, by people who consider themselves academics and scholars, and just pull out the point, pull out the data and make it make sense for people because often times it's kind of that ivory tower thing where the data is kept from us and we don't really... We don't know when these studies are being done.

But there are so many different things that are in motion right now because scientists are still out there asking questions, but right now, for whatever reason, people feel handcuffed and they haven't been asking questions, and those that have about our response to COVID-19 have been oftentimes censored. In this climate today, and it is absolutely insane to me that we're even saying something like that. So let's keep moving on. And just again, understanding why was America hit so hard? 125 million citizens here in the United States have diabetes or pre-diabetes. Also as I mentioned earlier, the CIA report found that America has the highest rate of obesity of any nation in the entire world with more than 40 million people. And this is again, just limiting out Samoa, where they're just thick there. They're thick and pretty healthy in general, it's just the gene thing, but here in the United States, that's not the case. Shout out to Samoa. But as far as a larger country, 40 million or more people, the United States is the king of the fatness. And in fact, in the United States right now, almost 200 million people are either obese or overweight.

Why were we hit so hard? The comorbidities that were found, and I'll go and look at the same organizations who are telling you to just treat the symptom, social distance, put a mask on, I'll go and look at their data and find like, "Wait a minute, people are not dying from not wearing a mask, they're dying because they're sick." They're dying because they have Type 2 diabetes and they're obese. We have to fix the underlying problem because the next thing is coming, and the way that we've handled this thing, it's just not appropriate, it's not based on science. So seriously, when does science become uncool? I thought we made science cool guys. But we're going to bring it back. Cool and the gang. We're going to make it cool again. So when I say getting our citizens healthier and accordingly, improving our immune system function is the real key to helping us to defend ourselves from this virus and any other virus that we're exposed to. Why I say that is that now we have even more clinically proven evidence, to reiterate this point. A brand new study from Vanderbilt University, scientists looked at the specific cancer treatments and mortality rates for COVID-19.

In an analysis of 400 cancer patients, the researchers concluded that only the patients treated with chemotherapy, that destroys their immune system, either alone or in combination with other therapies, only those patients treated with chemotherapy had a significantly increased risk of dying from the coronavirus compared to patients who didn't receive chemotherapy. The patients receiving chemotherapy had a 64% greater chance of dying than patients receiving other forms of cancer therapies like kinase inhibitor, targeted therapy, immunotherapy, they were not increased, at an increased risk. So this treatment... Our preferred treatment for cancer patients, which is to destroy their immune system. So again, this is like proving in black and white that when your immune system is damaged, you are far more likely to die from a viral infection. Not just this viral infection, any viral infection. As I've been talking about, I've been laying the groundwork here, and I've been being very patient and kind and polite and just continuing to deliver the data, but we don't seem to get this, and I'm about sick of it because we're hurting ourselves by not addressing the underlying cause, and it's just not being talked about.

You don't see anybody on major media, and even some of these... Your favorite podcasters or health experts are not talking about this stuff, because they're scared. Because they don't have the kahunas to say, "You know what, all the things that I talk about with nutrition and with sleep wellness and natural health, I'm not going to talk about it in relationship to this virus because it's too politicized, and I'm just going to, quote, stay in my lane. And what I did from day one, the very first episode that I did, we just dove into virology, we did it a virology 101 episode, master class here on the show. So you understand how viruses function, you understand how your immune system functions in response to viruses to feel empowered. And I received a flood of amazing messages from people saying, "I was scared out of my mind, I got to be honest with you Shawn. Now I just, I feel like I'm so much more empowered and I feel in control. And ultimately that's what it's about. Because the biggest virus, the most dangerous virus is fear. Absolutely. The most dangerous virus right now, we have an epidemic of misinformation, we have an epidemic of ignoring science and focusing on one lane, this one-size-fits-all approach to try and address this situation, and it hasn't...

If we're looking at what continues to happen in our society and again, not understanding that the next thing is coming. The Coronavirus researchers have already noted that it's already mutated multiple times, but we're waiting around on a vaccine to give us the all-clear to be able to go outside again and live our lives "normally", but that's based on this particular strain of the virus, which again is going to mutate. This is why the flu influenza virus... There's flu seasons and new flu shots every year, you got to get your flu shot, it's because the virus influenza mutates and there's different strands of it. So what are we going to do now? We're going to add this to the list of things that we get vaccinated for? Here's the thing I want you to understand, we know about less than 1% of all the viruses that there are in the world. How many vaccines is it going to take before we can hug our grandparents again? How many vaccines is it going to take before our kids can go to school again? How many vaccines is it going to take before we can open our business?

And now we know right now that the ramifications of our treatment of this disease have led and opened the door to what we're calling these debts of despair, and the ramifications are looking far worse than the treatment. And so I'm just hoping that we wake up and we manage this thing better, handwashing; fine, wearing a mask; fine, social distancing; fine in acute situations. But we're developing some tremendously scary phobias because people are disempowered and they're not being taught about what actually works to improve their livelihood to defend not just against chronic illnesses but to defend ourselves against viruses, because the next one is coming, and the next one, and the next one. I shared in a past episode that the human immune system is actually derived from viruses.

The human genome... When they did the Human Genome Project, mapped out the human genome, we are 8% endogenous retroviruses ourselves, we've come to intertwine and become one with viruses. This is how we evolved. We're going to continue to see viruses, and these are the things that are going to help us to adapt, but we're not going to do that if we become this massively fear-based, all viruses are bad, we got to kill the viruses. We already went so far with the anti-bacterial thing, and we know that and in creating these what we call these "superbugs" of these antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria that you get an affection at the hospital, it's curtains for us, because we went really far down that way and understand that even in our bodies right now, guys, you have over 300 trillion viruses in and on your body right now. We cannot put our heads in the sand on this one.

So I just want to share that piece. It's really important to understand that. 64% greater risk of dying was seen in patients who were receiving chemotherapy. Alright, so suppressing our immune system, damaging our immune system is one of the most dangerous things. And this is, it's so funny because in the data you look at, the survival rate of chemotherapy, if you actually really want to go look into it, and you see the survivor rate and the dangers of chemotherapy, it's scary, and we know this, it kills rapidly producing cells, but again, it is very effective at killing cancer because cancers are rapidly reproducing cells. But this is why peoples, you know, their hair falls out, this is why they get so sick and nauseous, your gastrointestinal tract has rapidly producing cells as well, and there's this chemotherapy sickness that you got to fight through and you just got to out last. But they look at things like a 30-day survival rate post-chemotherapy, but if you die on day 31, they don't count it, they don't talk about it.

If you die on day 35 after your chemotherapy treatment, even though you're cleared of cancer, they don't count you, and it's just, there are these loopholes in our system that make our treatments sound like they're the right thing to do. And not to say again that chemotherapy cannot be an effective treatment, but this is like when you are a physician and your one tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And so that's the thing you're trained to do, that's the thing you're going to do, and you become a specialist in that thing, and there's this great statement that a specialist is someone who knows more and more about less and less. Alright, so you become hyper-focused on this one thing and you start to miss out on all of the other things that are possible, treatments that are possible, tools and solutions because you acquire this tunnel vision and that could be great in some instances. Somebody gets tunnel vision about their sport or somebody, but now we know that cross-training is actually seen to be more effective in the data.

For kids, being able to perform at a high level, it's not just one thing. And so moving on, I just want to highlight that and talk about the importance of our immune function and just ask us, honestly, why are you not seeing our politicians, even our MD politicians coming out, the surgeon general, the head of the task force and saying, "Everybody, we want to make sure, because we know that from the data, the most effective thing for us to improve our overall survival rate and even reduce our infection rate, is to make sure that our immune system is healthy and functioning properly, we want to make sure that everybody's eating a healthy diet, that we're getting plenty of rest right now more than ever, and we want to make sure that you're getting some exercise because it's a huge player in the function of your immune system?" Why have you not once, not one time, heard that in major media or even from some of your favorite health professionals, they're not saying anything? I'm not going to do that.

I'm not. I'm not going to sit by and let us be in the dark on this. I'm not afraid. And I'm going to keep on talking about it because I love you and I appreciate you and I respect you, and I know what your goal is, is to be healthy, happy, and to live your life in a way that feels good to you, to be able to give your gifts and your talents and your capacities, and to make meaning in your life, but it's so difficult to do any of those things when we don't feel well. So ultimately, if... I felt it was... I would be out of integrity if I didn't dive into this and bring forth as many solutions as I possibly could, highlight this issue, and again, I think that we can really make a change.

I was sitting with my wife the other day, and we were having this conversation and just wondering, can we really make a difference in this? There's so much immersive and dangerous rhetoric and fear surrounding our situation right now, and for the first time, it really hit me. It just hit me like a ton of bricks. We already literally changed the world. I actually changed the world. Coming from where I come from, growing up in East St. Louis, in Ferguson, Missouri, living next door to a crack house, seeing so much abuse, seeing so much violence, and struggling through all these different areas of discrimination and trials and tribulations, and coming out the other side of that with an impassioned desire to serve and to help other people, that sparked everything.

But eventually I found that specific thing that was needed right now in the human history, and I wrote a book. And that book has been sold, it's hundred... Hundreds of thousands of people have bought the book, thousands of health professionals as well have then taken the book and put that language that I created out there to their fan base, to their followers, and it's created this massive trickle-down effect, to where now it's kind of a common conversation that sleep wellness is something for us to really focus on and it's important. And the tactics, I put together 21 clinically proven strategies it seemed like nobody knew, and I just went and looked at the clinical evidence and I was just blown away, like, "Why is nobody talking about this stuff?" And we changed the world.

Sleep Smarter's translated in, I don't know, somewhere around 20 countries now, and the impact is just, is so overwhelming and difficult for me to wrap my mind around, because I never really accepted it or thought about it. Like what am I doing thinking that can we make a dent in this and really change the conversation, change the narrative? We've done it before. We can change the world. You can change the world. It's not anything... It's not some kind of special quality that I have, because if you look at us on paper, it didn't look like I was going to do much. But some of the things that really changed everything was going through struggle myself, losing my health, hitting a rock bottom, and seeing that place of like, "I've got opportunity right now. I'm either going to take responsibility for my life or I'm going to keep on giving my power away to other people who are saying that they can't help me, or that this is the only thing I can do is just manage the problem." And I just didn't accept it. And I transformed my health and eventually transformed the world. I've left a mark here that's going to be around for a long time, and my great-great-grandchildren are going to know I wrote this international best-selling book, Sleep Smarter. It's crazy like it's in the libraries. I'm in the libraries! It's so amazing. We can change the world.

This is why I'm doing this work right now along with you, because I need you. We need each other if we're going to really work to wake our citizens up, because right now there's so much turbulence, there's so much disarray, there's so much... Things are in such a flux that they are more easily manipulated and changed, and we can elevate and create something better. But we keep on repeating some of the biggest mistakes of humanity over and over and over again, and it's enough. We've seen the uptick in chronic illnesses long enough. We can change this thing, not just for the sake of the chronic illnesses, but the exposure of these other viruses that are going to be politicized and used to hurt us even more. Not saying that politicians are trying to do it, it's just this repeated game of pointing fingers, and it's disgusting, it's disgusting. Nobody's pointing the finger back at themselves and saying, "You know what, I need to take responsibility, and here's what I can do to help in investing our energy in solutions rather than pointing fingers."

So I'm going to share this again, because I've shared this multiple times, but I really want this to stick, because again, this is about solutions. This is about solutions. The conversation, "Well, just hideaway. Don't come outside because it's dangerous. You can't improve somebody's immune system overnight," it's just not true. We're treating a symptom instead of the underlying cause, of like let's get our citizens healthier so their bodies, their immune systems are more healthy and resilient, that they can brush off a viral infection like it's nothing. Alright? We're not talking about the millions of people who've recovered from the virus. Like what? Why don't we have a clearance ticker on the news, like, "Look at all of the people that are recovering"? Why don't we have that as well? Because the news is not to keep you informed, it's to keep you controlled. It's to keep you in fear. We know this.

But all of a sudden, we accept it as, "Well, the news is telling me the truth now. The politicians are telling me the truth now." But as we go on here, let's look at what the data shows. A study conducted at Appalachian State University found that simply going for a walk, simply going for a short walk causes boosts in immune parameters, most notably for neutrophil and natural killer cell blood counts. Why does this matter? And how could this possibly be so easy as far as defending our bodies from COVID-19 and other viral infections? Let me dive in a little bit deeper and explain why. There's a brand new study published in the peer-reviewed journal, Medical Hypothesis, that found that on average, people with low natural killer cell blood counts had much higher rates of severe infections from COVID-19. The folks who had lower levels of natural killer cells had worse infections and higher mortality rates.

We're not a victim here. You can improve the function and production of your NK cells by getting your ass outside and simply going for a walk. But we were told to stay inside, fear going outside, and that really turned around and slapped our society in the face, and nobody apologized for it, because a recent report coming out of New York found that 88%, this is the combination of folks who strictly sheltered in place and people who were forced to shelter in place in nursing homes, 88% of the people who had severe infections from COVID-19 were the people who didn't go outside, who severely implemented shelter-in-place or were forced to shelter in place, ended up in the ICU more often, 88% of the cases. Going outside was not the problem, our overall health is the problem.

So looking at this and understanding about the importance of our natural killer cells, I want to share something with you. My step-father, who is in a group home; as a result of drug abuse, alcoholism, he developed epilepsy, he has to constantly be monitored. He was diagnosed with COVID-19 a couple weeks ago. And I'm just like, "How do you feel?" He's like, "I feel great." And I was like, "Well, let's keep it that way." So I gave him some simple things to do, but he said that they're making him feel like a monster. They put him away from everybody, he was not allowed to leave his tiny little space that they put him in, he had to wear a mask all the time, and I was just like, "You know what, here are some simple things that we can do to help you to manage the situation the best that you can."

And so I gave him some simple things to do, again, clinically proven. They won't even let him go outside. He can't go outside to walk, to get fresh air, he can't go outside, so I was like, "Just in your room, just do some exercises. Do some push-ups, little squats. Just make sure that you're moving, a couple of times a day, 10 minutes here, 10 minutes there, to improve your immune parameters." So he was like, "Oh, yeah, I could do that." He's always been a strong guy, always been a strong guy, definitely my idol as far as lifting. He had one of those, like in the '80s, it's like a spring in the middle... It's like a staff. It's like a staff, there's a spring in the middle with two handles at the end, and you bend it. If you could see me on YouTube, you bend it down, right? It's just like what does that work, by the way? It's kind of like it works your armpits, you know what I mean? But it's just like whatever, just to look fit, to do stuff back then. But I always just really admired... I couldn’t barely get that thing to shake, let alone bend it, and I was just marveled at his strength. And so we had him do that.

And we had such a blessing in that we were able to... Once the shelter-in-place happened and the gyms closed, we've been accumulating pieces of equipment over the years, mostly from Onnit, which they've got things. These incredible kettlebells, steel clubs and maces, battle robes and all these just different things, I've been picking up pieces over the years. They're the company that really pressed those things into popular culture, not the kettlebells, but the Primal Bells. They design really cool looking kettlebells. And they were... Also, they partnered with Marvel, they had an Iron Man kettlebell. They partnered with Star Wars, they had Darth Vader and all that stuff, and stuff that comes and goes in stock. And do you know how difficult it is for a company to get license and a partnership with those organizations, Star Wars, and Marvel? Onnit's about that life. So just so I remember, make sure to go over there and check 'em out, it's onnit.com/model that's O-N-N-I-T.com/model. You get 10% off all of their fitness equipment. Definitely, please, definitely check it out.

And another thing for helping Glen, my step-father, to actually, not just with COVID but just health overall, reduce the incidents of seizures is... And this is in the data, there's so much clinical evidence about this, but a ketogenic diet is one of the most effective things for reducing the rate of seizures. And so one of those really amazing things, there's few things nutritionally that can help your body to create more ketones. It's just like a safer brain fuel... Not just safer, it's a kind of a cleaner-burning fuel in some aspects than sugar can be for the brain. But part of the brain of course does need glucose. We need glucose absolutely for the brain, but ketones are a really amazing alternative fuel, especially when we're talking about epilepsy, but one of those nutritive components is MCT oil. MCT oil, whether you're doing intermittent fasting or you're on a ketogenic or not, triggers your body to produce ketone bodies. And so it's this alternative fuel source, and so that's one of those things to see employed in somebody's nutrition protocol that has conditions like epilepsy and seizures. So I just wanted to put that out there. But just for us overall, now we've got data showing that MCT oil helps to also improve the balance, the ratio in your bacteria cascade helping to reduce pathogenic bacteria and increase friendly flora, how cool is that?

But it's not... Again, there's MCT oils out there. I don't want you to hear this and go get company X MCT oil. Onnit does stuff the right way, they're sourcing it correctly. And also, they have emulsified MCT oils. They're kind of like coffee creamers so it's super easy to use, to mix into things. You can add 'em to your hot teas and coffees and things like that, smoothies. So I love 'em. I literally have MCT oil from Onnit, their emulsified MCT oil every day, I even travel with it, I love it. So again, onnit.com/model, you get 10% off everything they carry. And these were just a couple of things for us to employ his movement, making sure that he was getting adequate sleep, just trying to work and reduce his stress. He's very much dedicated to his spiritual practice, so he was taking time for that. He's really kind of turned his life and focus in that direction. So I was just like, make sure that you tune into that, so you stay out of fear.

Vitamin D supplementation, we've got some pretty interesting evidence now showing that vitamin D deficiency is directly correlated with higher rates of severe infections with COVID-19. So we got him on that and he called me yesterday, he's cleared. Infection is gone. So I'm just grateful for that. These are the things that we see. And he is actually in a position where he has a chronic illness, he has that comorbidity, but he was able to transition through the infection with... For him, he was just largely without any symptoms. But not to say that other people were not more susceptible. Even if we don't have a chronic illness, if we're sleep-deprived, if we're not getting our movement practices, if we haven't been diagnosed yet with a chronic illness, if we're under a tremendous amount of stress, all of these things suppress our immune system. And now we know how quickly that can turn bad for us and we could get end up getting an infection, a virus to get on top of ourselves and actually cause us to have a severe infection.

So when you hear these reports of even healthy people are getting COVID and passing away, we're really, really talking about this very, extremely small exception and not the rule, which over 99.9% of the time, these are folks who have a chronic illness or they've had extreme immune system suppression due to chronic stress, sleep deprivation and the like. So this is how stuff works. This isn't hearsay, this isn't... Because it sounds nice, this is what the data shows. And on that note, let's go ahead and move on a little bit because we already talked about walking in relationship to our NK cells, but also just movement period helps to create these short-term boost in those parameters. Let's talk about some other things. And also, we're going to get to a really powerful point on why NK cells are so remarkable. But you know what else improves NK cell production and activity? Good sleep does. Surprise. The things that help us to be healthier in everything make us healthier in this too.

Data published in the journal, Psychoneuroendocrinology, found that sleep deprivation directly reduces the production and performance of your natural killer cells. Again, a peer-reviewed journal that I mentioned earlier, found that people with low natural killer cell counts had a much higher rate of severe infections and mortality from COVID-19. Getting adequate sleep. Your immune system literally retools and reloads itself when you go to sleep. Why are we not talking about this? Why are we allowing people to be in our faces, not literally because we can't be in people's faces right now, but on the television, on our social media feeds, and telling us everything but this. That we know in our hearts, we know in our core that these are the most important things, not just for viral infections, but for everything, everything.

Alright, so again, this is actually serious stuff, this is serious stuff. I know I'm smiling right now, it's because I said "tings", alright? But this is serious stuff because when we're talking about natural killer cells, many of these pharmaceutical companies that are trying to create vaccines so that we can finally “get back to normal” with COVID-19 out there, they're creating vaccines that specifically manipulate your natural killer cells. What? Yeah. Because it matters. But you can do... It's already in you. The ability to improve the production and performance of your natural killer cells is already within you, it's already within you. The FDA has already cleared an experimental new drug for NK cell-based COVID-19 therapy. Man. I've been talking about this for a couple of months now. I started off right out the gate talking about natural killer cells performance, what damages them, what helps their performance, because I saw some early data showing that, "Oh, this natural killer cells are very effective at killing coronavirus-infected cells."

But what do we do? We turn on the news, we turn on the OLTs, and we feel disempowered. We're running high, we put our heads in the sand, we say we don't have any power in this, we don't have any say in this. The experts say that this is the thing to do. The experts aren't telling you the truth. The experts aren't telling you what you can actually do to get yourself healthy, your family healthy, and to feel empowered in an increasingly complex and sick world. COVID-20 is coming. COVID-21, 22, it's not stopping. We don't know a damn thing about viruses for real. Your favorite virologist, we know less than 1% of the viruses that there are. And of the viruses we know about, we barely know anything about them. We do know a sufficient level of information about how our immune system functions in relationship to viruses, that's where our data is, that's where our true expertise is.

So we got to keep all of this stuff in context here, right? So, what else influences NK cell performance? Stress and anxiety. Research published in the peer review journal, stress and health found a significant correlation between the capacity of individuals to cope with daily life stress and their NK cell activity. Folks who don't cope well with stress have significantly lower natural killer cell activity. Just last week, we put out an episode dedicated to managing stress during this COVID-19 pandemic, and it's because it matters. It matters. I know you feel it. I've definitely felt it. Stresses... It's a whole different... It's a different kind of stress. This stress has like a Shenene kind of vibe to it, like ah, like, it just don't care. Alright, it's got a attitude problem. Alright? It's a different kinda stress that we're all experiencing.

Civil unrest. Fear, like we've never seen before in our society, and we've talked about this on many levels on this experience with COVID-19. I've had on a respected epidemiologist to break down the data for us. I've discussed many of the different aspects of it, but I really want this to cut through and it's up to us to really change the conversation. I don't need the credit, I just need to see the conversation change, and it's up to us to speak on it, to have conversations with our loved ones to share this information because it matters. It really does matter. And we are powerful. One of the things that I keep bringing forward because I really hope that we get this. We'll put it up on the screen, actually, if you're watching this on YouTube. Information has been censored in regards to the recommendations of the World Health Organization. The WHO is where many different platforms where freedom of speech has been censored, directing people to the WHO. If it didn't go in accordance with the WHO, we're going to silence that, we're going to suppress that data, we're going to make sure that's not making the rounds.

So what I do, I will go and look at the WHO, I will look at their data. I'll look at the exact words that they're using. I'll look at the things that they're putting out. Because oftentimes it's so funny, if we have the audacity to go and look at the data that an organization is even putting out, it's very difficult to manipulate or hide the truth. So on the World Health Organization's own website, Dave shared very clearly, very succinctly that the Influenza virus that we don't really even think about, that we would never consider shutting down our society for, we would never consider social distancing and wearing mask for, Influenza kills upwards of 650,000 people a year. Not just in a season, each year. And I want to implore you to consider, why have we not been upset about this before? Because same case here, upwards of 99% of the folks that pass away from Influenza have some kind of a health issue, have other comorbidities. Why have we not focused on getting our citizens healthier so that we can defend ourselves from the viral exposure?

And the point being with the World Health Organization, upwards of 650,000 people die each year from Influenza. That's a bad flu season. That's specifically just from the respiratory component of Influenza. We're not even talking about other stuff. So you can add thousands more on there. COVID-19 right now, the COVID-19 deaths aren't even on pace to beat a bad flu season. At first, people were all upset, you know, don't compare the COVID to the flu, it's different. Just look at the numbers. We didn't shut our society down and make people shelter in place and become less healthy... I did entire episode dedicated to how the quarantine has made us far less healthy, and I've got the stats. I've got the processed food sales numbers in that episode. We'll put in the show notes, make sure you check it out. But we've become more... Have people exercised more or less during the quarantine? You know, L, L for less. Have they slept more or less? Most people, it just depends, it just depends on that one, but it's been sporadic and erratic, and that's one of the problems with our sleep quality before, a lot of people, less.

More Netflix, less sleep. Are people eating better or worse? Far worse, which is the stats that we have. More stress or less stress? More stress. Better relationships, closer relationships, because our relationships... And I've said this multiple times on the show, number one most influential factor on our health and wellness is our relationships, 'cause that is the container in which we take all the other actions is based on the relationships we have around us. Have our relationships strengthened or torn apart? Torn apart for the most part. I'm going to talk more about that as well, and some of the things that we can do, because again, we can turn this around, we're powerful, remarkable human beings, but we got to really get to the heart of the situation, okay? We've done the opposite of the thing that we need to do to turn this thing around. And I'm excited, I'm excited at the prospect of us actually taking action to change the conversation really, because it's time. It's time.

Now, one of the other things that I talked about on a previous episode, and I want to share here because it's fascinating, there are so many little cool things in nutrition that we can do to fortify our immune system, which is, this is one of the other things that have been suppressed and censored, you can't talk about nutrition, you can't talk about supplementation. I'm a big fan, of course, of whole food-based supplementation. So things that come from earth-grown nutrients and real food, and things that also, of course, have clinical evidence to affirm their effectiveness. Why do it if it doesn't work? But our ancestors have figured so many things out, and now we just have clinical trials and experiments where we can see, oh, this thing actually does work. And one of the cool things and this is something I had today that I do daily, I also have, there's a little kids version of this, and my son has each day as well, and this is on top of, of course, the basis of our health and our nutrition should be whole real foods. Real food. We're going to come back and talk about this in a moment and where things got skewed, but listen to this, this is one of the things we've implemented more recently when COVID showed up on the scene.

A meta-analysis published in Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine found that Propolis has anti-viral, anti-bacterial, anti-fungal and anti-tumor properties. It's a well-noted immunomodulator. So that means if the immune system... They talk about these cytokine storms. When I put out the information, I put out a small video on Instagram talking about how quickly you can improve your immune system, there's always somebody, somebody's like, because the point is improving our immune system, that's the big talk people saying it's not possible. You can't do that overnight. You can't do that quickly. But then when I proved that you can, somebody still was like, "Well, it unfortunate that some people's immune system works too good." Come on. That's not the wide issue, that's not the wide issue, but when we're talking about these cytokine storms, to be able to bring the immune system back down if it's overactive and also to elevate it if it's underactive. So they found that it had... It's a well-noted immunomodulator, that increases the body's resistance to infection. And Propolis treated patients showed a reduced incidence and reduce severity of specific, this is important, lung and breathing-related inflammatory symptoms, what is COVID so noted to be attacking in the human body.

Another study published in the peer-review journal, Antiviral Chemistry & Chemotherapy revealed that Propolis has significant antiviral effects, specifically in reducing viral lung infections. Why? There are over 300 active compounds in Propolis, the majority of these compounds are forms of antioxidants, specifically Polyphenols that are well-documented to reduce information and fight disease. And even more specifically, Polyphenols have been proven to inhibit the activity of Coronavirus according to recent data published in the peer review journal, Archives of Virology. Wow. Man. There's so many cool things out there that we can add into our repertoire, that we can add to our superhero utility belt. And for us, it's a really cool, simple, easy-to-use, because you want to get it sourced from the right place. It's a Propolis throat spray, super easy to use, and like I said, my family has it every day. And the company that we get it from they test for a wide spectrum of toxins that are in most bee products, including things like heavy metals like arsenic, lead and mercury and bacteria like E. Coli, salmonella, yeast, molds, things that you definitely do not want in your medicine cabinet.

So definitely pop over there and check 'em out right now, it's Beekeeper's Naturals that's my favorite company. For Propolis, their incredible superfood honey is one of my favorite things in the universe, and they've got so many other cool things. They've got a nootropic supplement that is just out of this world based on royal jelly. It's called the B.LXR. But the Propolis spray definitely, definitely on point. And you get 15% off over there at beekeepersnaturals.com/model. So that's B-E-E-K-E-E-P-E-R-S naturals.com/model for 15% off. And again, this is just one of the cool things back to back clinical evidence that we can add into our repertoire. With the basis of real food, movement, good sleep, stress management, healthy relationships, all the things that really matter that is not being talked about, but we're going to shift that conversation. And then adding in cool things like this that have thousands of years of documented use. It's just like these things have been around for so long, and now we have, again, scientific method to prove their efficacy, and this is just one of those things. So again, pop over there, check 'em out, and I wanted to share this with you because I think it's a very important conversation to have.

When we're talking about dealing with this pandemic in a way that's backed by real science, again, I feel like the biggest epidemic... We have an epidemic of fear, and we also have a major epidemic of missing the point. That's one of the biggest epidemics that we're seeing right now, you can have the data, you can have the experience thing right there, but then it's just like, people try to nitpick and find that small thing and not look at the overarching picture of truth that is there and so prevalent within things. And it just reminds me that even when we have this kind of data, people unfortunately, will kind of brush it off or try to explain that it's not accurate. Over the years that I've been doing this, I really haven't had people coming at me crazy, but when I started speaking about this and sharing the science and really staying ahead of these things, the first episode, I made reference to Dr. Michael Levitt who is a biophysicist who won the Nobel Prize and some of his models that have really to come to play out in what we're seeing happening right now, and somebody messages just trying to mansplain why this Nobel prize-winning biophysicist is wrong.

They're trying to explain... This person works in the entertainment industry and they're trying to tell me that the Nobel Prize winner is wrong because they said something about, well, he's trying to get tenure or whatever. Why are you missing the point? We don't have time for that. Like seriously, but it reminds me of this really interesting phenomena that we see in Westworld, the television show Westworld. And these Androids, these humanesque androids are programmed to live within this certain societal construct, and whenever they find something that doesn't match with their world, they're construct with their program to see, like there's this photograph that was found, and one of the characters asked the other Android, "What do you see?" Gave him this photograph that it was like a "normal civilization" and not this wild west environment they live in and they showed it to the character. And she said, "That doesn't look like anything to me." She can't even see it, she couldn't even see the thing right in front of her face because she's been programmed not to. Where have we allowed ourselves to be programmed not to see what's right in front of us? We have to really examine our minds and find those spots because they're there, it happens to all of us.

But right now, there's an epidemic of not seeing what's in front of us, there's an epidemic of fear, there's an epidemic of missing the damn point. And this is why it's so important for us today to let this information really make its way into our hearts and minds, and help to make some sense of this because, in truth, many people have been on board in understanding, "Wait a minute, the government recommended instructions for health and wellness have not added up to us actually being a well and healthy society, there's something askew here. There's something that doesn't make sense." Our government has actually allowed for food and drug companies to intentionally put things into our food supply and into our medicine cabinets that have massive destructive, deadly side effects, and now all of a sudden it's like, "Oh, my government knows what to do. It's got our back." We got to use some common sense, not to say that there aren't wonderful people within our government and on task force and things like that who are really trying to do what's best for our society, but oftentimes, again, if you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

And if you're not trained on these other pieces and you become a "specialist" who knows more and more about less and less, you miss out on all of this incredible data. You begin to have this epidemic of missing the point, and that West world situation where it doesn't look like anything to me and we ignore it. And you know the ones who are most susceptible to the coronavirus? The same people who've been hurt most by poisonous food and drugs and alcohol, that is not just allowed in our society, but it's actually impressed upon us in our society. But one of the things is, within this conversation, I want you to know this as well, about 647,000 people die every year in the United States from heart disease. 647,000 people, not just this year, not in a season, but every year. This virus will come and go. Every year this happens. 647,000 people, why are we not pissed off about that? But then the argument comes about, "Well, that's not a communicable infectious disease. We can do something to stop the infectious disease." Can you? You suck at it. But the point is, we can do something about this chronic illness. We know we can. We know largely, many of the facets that cause heart disease and hypertension and high blood pressure, we know, but where's the communication and intentions of the structures that control those decisions to make us healthier?

We can stop the spread of infectious diseases, we can stop the spread of chronic diseases even more, and those chronic diseases are what actually make us susceptible to the infectious diseases, we got to stop missing the point, we cannot allow it to take place any more. Top three causes of death right now in our country, number one, heart disease, 647,000 people every year, die from heart disease, every freaking year. And the people with heart disease are exponentially more likely to die from a viral infection if they're exposed to a virus. We have to do something to change it. 606,000 people approximately die each year from cancer. I started this episode of sharing, and I hope that you watched on YouTube so you can see Christie's before and after, this was just one of the last patients that I worked with. We had so many incredible stories over the years, over 10 years in my clinical practice of seeing situations like that, but what does our treatments look like? Where is our attention?

We are constantly and legally exposed to carcinogens in our air, our water and our food supply, thanks to the leniency of our government when it comes to major corporations, where is the interest at? Where's the... Let's talk facts, where is the real vested interest, where is the attention going, who are the people putting policies together, who are they really looking out for? And I'm not just saying this, at least 70... Why are we even still talking about big tobacco? Why are we still talking about them? This shouldn't even be a thing, they put the cancer warning on the pack, but it's so addictive. We'll raise the price a little bit. Do you know how much kids are smoking right now? They're not just smoking cigarettes, they're vaping, all these things, but there's loopholes, lobbyists to allow them to continue doing what they're doing and making things available. Making fruit flavor vapes for kids to smoke, what the... Come on, don't get me started. Listen, there's at least 70 chemicals in tobacco that are known to cause cancer by damaging your DNA.

What? Why are we not talking about this? Why didn't they quarantine cigarettes? Why didn't they socially distance us from cigarettes? It's killing way more people. And it makes us far more susceptible to the viral infections that we're trying to avoid in having cancer. But smoking cigarette is one of those major, major issues. By the way, a meta-analysis of studies that included nearly 12,000 COVID-19 patients, researchers found that among people with the virus, the risk of disease progression in those who currently smoke or previously smoked was nearly double that of non-smokers. You're far more likely to have a serious infection or to die double the incidents if you smoke or you previously smoked and you didn't do things to really improve your overall health afterward. This is not a joke, this is the real stuff we need to be focused on and talking about. We've gone down the other side long enough. Truly. If they're really looking out for us, they quarantine cigarettes. Serious. I grew up in a household where the adult smoked around... My brother had chronic debilitating asthma.

I was in and out of the hospital, every year, at least I'm going to be in a hospital for a few days for asthma. How is this even a thing? But it is. But we're going to blame, not social distancing and not blame these activities instead. Because the non-smoker exposed to the virus is not going to be sick or not going to be severely sick as likely as somebody who does smoke. That's what the data shows. And talking about cancer again, which is the second leading cause of death that we're not suddenly talking about, and by the way, they were pushing away cancer patients to not have them take up placement in hospitals because of the fear of COVID. So stop paying attention to them, put them on the back burner because COVID is so important. Also eating processed meat every day, like the baloney and hotdogs I grew up with. I'm from the hood, we fried baloney. We fried the hot dog too. Cut it down the middle, put it on the pan, we fry that bad boy. Okay.

And we didn't have buns. We didn't have buns. I think the bread was called Country something, I don't even remember. But man, or we'd just eat the fried hotdog. But that baloney sandwich, that hood baloney sandwich, oh my goodness. Let me tell you what I would do. We take the white bread, you take the baloney, you put mustard. So this might be part of my little county experience as well, because the mustard, I don't know if a lot of other people from the hood do this. I put the mustard, but then we put the Red Hot Riplets on there. Hood classic, Red Hot Riplets, put the other slice of white bread, you press it down a little bit, make it crunch a little bit. Oh my... I'm getting a little tingle, inappropriate tingle on that one. But these are things... This should not be a thing. Alright, because eating processed meats every day like the baloney and hotdogs that I grew up on, increases the risk of colorectal cancer by 18%. Cancer makes us susceptible to COVID-19.

Let's do something about the damn cancer. This isn't rocket science. Another study published in the prestigious journal of science revealed that high fructose corn syrup rapidly enhances colorectal cancer in mice though. It's only in mice. Now the problem that I have with this, because, oh, by the way, the researchers in this study noted that there's been a sharp rise in colorectal cancer rates among younger people in recent decades that correlate and go right along with the same time an increased consumption of sugar-sweetened high fructose corn syrup beverages. They see the correlation. They did the study with mice, it's difficult to do with humans. But that doesn't stop us from putting out ridiculous data out there about animal models. Because when I was talking about some of the science behind wearing the mask and the effectiveness, and just literally just what the actual science shows, and not saying again, in acute situations, but the chronic wearing of the mask, I want it to be effective, I want it to be effective.

So I'm looking in the data to try... I just want to make sure that this is doing more good than it is doing harm and that's not what the data was really panning out to show. As a matter of fact, let me share one little piece with you, and we'll talk about more on this later, but a study conducted by the CDC, by the CDC, published in Annals of Work Exposures and Health found that wearing a protective mask, the highly thermal sensitive nature of the human face and breathing pathways are directly inhibited leading to increased anxiety, elevated stress hormones, false suffocation response in the central nervous system, and more. Another peer-reviewed study, published in the journal, Ergonomics, stated that carbon dioxide re-breathing from wearing a mask can have easily notable side effects such as fatigue, dizziness, headaches, and muscular weakness.

I was seeing out there because the stuff is censored when you say something against it, but I was seeing out there that there's a myth-buster, there's... On these different websites, you're not re-breathing the CO2, there's no studies that find that it wasn't even that hard for me to find the study. It wasn't even hard for me to find the study that shows... This is common sense, if your face is covered, if it's restricted, of course, you're going to be re-breathing the CO2, duh. But to what degree does that hurt us? Well, according to this prestigious journal, it's saying that it causes a discomfort, fatigues, headaches. My son, my oldest son, Jorden, he works at Foot Locker, 19 years old football player, summer job. They opened back up about two weeks ago, and he's been working eight-hour days there, but they have to wear a mask for his eight-hour shift and he's only got... Maybe it's like 30 minutes break. So he's wearing a mask for about eight hours a day.

After about the fourth day, he started having debilitating headaches. This kid is never sick, he never has these kinds of feelings. And we didn't put the pieces together, I didn't really even share this data with him. And because I don't want him to be coming into this with a nocebo effect and being afraid, because I understand he wants to do that thing, he wants to have this job. And it's so insane the way they're doing this. When people come in the store, they can't... If somebody likes a shoe, they can't hand them the shoe, they got to put the shoe down, then walk away from the shoe, then the employee comes and he picks the shoe up, then he goes and gets the shoe for them. That's how it works.

We can't even hand each other the shoe? Why are we there? Just don't... Just don't go. If it's that serious and weird and it's just like, it's so inhumane. Everybody's got a mask on, you can't hand each other products. How do you... What do you do? I got to ask him, what do you do with the receipt and the bag? Do you throw them the box? Do you throw them the box when they leave the store? Do you fold receipt up into like a paper airplane and throw that to... I don't know. It's ridiculous. This was my concern, was us not taking this to a level of ridiculousness. Even today, because he's worked like eight days. He's been doing stuff he never does. He woke up in the middle of the night because his face was hurting. Oh my goodness, son. I don't want him to have to deal with this, but again, it's like personal choice, he is doing some stuff for entrepreneurship and building his fitness stuff as well, so keep an eye out for Jorden Stevenson, but it's just... We see it first hand, and now I'm really taking this personally because it's hurting my son. And there's mandates being sent out that my eight-year son, in order for them to return to school in the fall, all the children are going to have to wear masks at school all day.

What are we coming to? The data shows that this is hurting us, the susceptibility of children, it's not absolute zero, but it's very close to zero as far as them having this viral infection actually hurting them, but people that chronically miss the point will say, well, all what this is actually this, there's this one kid... Come on, we're hurting our babies, and allowing this stuff to take place. So I didn't want to spend this episode just getting too deep into this because we'll talk more about this particular issue as far as what we've been told to do and how far we've taken this to this level of just ridiculousness, honestly. But I want to share that with you. We do have clinical evidence that... Because again, I'm looking at... I want it to be right. I want to find out that the mask is that super protective thing that's going to help to stamp out and protect us from COVID-19, but the data simply doesn't show that. And so going back to that mouse study that I mentioned as far as colorectal cancer and eating baloney and things like that, but the high fructose corn syrup study that was published in the prestigious Journal of Science found that high fructose corn syrup rapidly enhances colorectal cancer in mice. Even though we do have the direct correlation with younger people having colorectal cancer since high fructose corn syrups hit the scene.

We hear a study like that, and we'll be like well, that's on mice. But guess what happened and why I brought up the face mask thing? When I put the data out there about my concern about face masks and creating this false sense of security, and we're missing the point of what actually works and what's most important, which is getting our citizens healthier, people decided to send me a link to a study that found, here's the headline, listen to this, listen to this. This is so good. A brand new preliminary study demonstrated that surgical mask can reduce the spread of COVID-19 virus by up to 75%. And then I go and look at the study and the courageous study participants were hamsters. Hamsters. What the scientists did in the study was it took 52 hamsters who were used in the test, and they carried out different scenarios that were designed to replicate real-life situations. How can you replicate real-life situations for a human with a hamster? What they did was they put surgical mask material between the cages of hamsters, and this is how they come up with the data.

Is that what we got? Is that all you got, missing the point? I'm telling you, it's like people are instead of becoming an expert on health and wellness, people are working on becoming experts on missing the point. The science shows that we've placed way too much value in masks, not to say, we got my mother-in-law N95 masks when this thing started because people were just leaving their patients, doing home health, abandoning them. But she was going and seeing her patients. Sometimes they have the infection. It's appropriate in acute situations, but you know what else my mother-in-law did? My amazing beautiful mother-in-law also made sure she was taking care of her sleep, she was exercising, she was on point with her nutrition, doing her practice and meditation, managing her stress. These are the things... These are the things that we need, that are human, that are proven by science. When did science not become cool anymore?

We're going to make it cool. We're going to make it cool. We're going to make it cool again and here to stay. So in this conversation, looking at cancer and high fructose corn syrup, what our government allowed to happen was literally, they're putting on television, high fructose corn syrup specific commercials just for high fructose corn syrup saying, "What's bad about high fructose corn syrup?" One actor would say to the other, and the other person just looks dumbfounded. "I don't know." Come on guys, this is who we're putting our trust in. Also, in talking about what our government that is... We're listening to, that they have all the answers. People again have... I've never had people come at me, it's because I... Probably why people follow me and listen to the show is it's evidence-based. And of course, we have a good time, but now all of a sudden, "Oh, the government says, Shawn's going against what the government says." What? I'm just using my common sense and my intelligence. I would love for the government to be right.

But I'm coming into this, thinking like a scientist, and also looking at history and looking at the... Not just encouragement of unhealthy practices in our society, but the actual results. I don't have to make it up in how sick our society has become because of it. Another thing that... If we're talking about cancer, again, increases our risk of death from COVID or serious infections, but also something we can deal with a little bit better. Alcohol. Alcohol is classified as a Group 1 carcinogen. That's the top, top level of carcinogens, cancer-causing agents. And we're not talking about this. Alcohol consumption has skyrocketed during the quarantine. Now, not to say you can't have a little sippy-sip. I'm not saying that, no, no. But alcohol consumption, if they're really concerned about protecting citizens from COVID-19, protecting citizens from cancer, there are massive studies showing how alcohol causes various types of cancer. It is Group 1 carcinogen.

So if you push over into inappropriate use with alcohol... So again, their modus operandi is, let's experiment with the social distancing. We don't have any evidence of its effectiveness. Make sure it's 6 feet, this arbitrary number, all these things, we become the hamsters. We become the mice in the experiments without any real evidence to prove its effectiveness and not understanding just how basic science works. Everybody starts talking about aerosols and droplets and just... If you've got a mask on and you cough or sneeze or talk, do you think that the viruses that are coming out of your mouth even when you're "healthy", we have, again, millions of viruses that come out when we talk. Do you think that when you're breathing into a mask, it's going into a black hole? Is that what we think? They're just going into another alternate universe and disappear? No. They go through the mask, they go above the mask, they go below the mask, they go on the side of the mask, they're going everywhere.

And just because you're 6 feet away from somebody in a store, you're going to walk into their mist. Be afraid of the mist, gorillas in the mist. In reality, that's not how science works. If you're in a building like these things, we call these essential businesses, if you're in Target and there are people in there, everybody's sharing the same stuff, no matter what. That's how science works. And if we're going to be that afraid, just end all of it. Do not come outside or impress upon our entire society to be so afraid of each other that we can't even walk down the street. I just went for a walk yesterday, and people literally, they walk by me. If they happen to not have their mask on, they pull it up once they get close to me and walk away, try to move as far away from me as they can. Not to say that they don't work in acute rational situations, but listen to this, it's peer review study, published in the BMJ, the British Medical Journal, demonstrated that closed indoor environments, facilitate secondary transmission of COVID-19.

And transmission of COVID-19 in an indoor environment was 18.7 times greater compared to an open environment outside. The scientists at the International Laboratory for Air Quality and Health at Queensland University of Technology stated that "Outdoors is safe, and there is certainly no cloud of virus-laden droplets hanging around." Firstly, any infectious droplets exhaled outside would be quickly diluted in outdoor air. So their concentrations would quickly become insignificant. In addition, the stability of the virus outside is significantly shorter than inside. So outside is not a problem. It's safe to go for a walk and jog and not worry about the virus in the air, but people are afraid. They're very, very, very much afraid. So much so, that they're wearing a mask in their car by themselves, so much so that even outside in the open air, when there is rarely a person around, they're wearing a mask.

What we've created, what we allowed ourselves to create is agoraphobia, and being afraid to a degree that it debilitates us. We can be smart about these things. Medical professionals, if you are in a situation or scenario where you're in an indoor environment and you are afraid of the infection, particularly those who might be susceptible, because again, the big marketing thing is, "This is not about you. It's selfish if you don't wear a mask, not about you." And I'll share this. I was the first person I realized to actually share that because I went and looked at the data that this is about protecting other people from you. But again, people are really listening, but I gave them bigger part... A full story because there's more context involved, there's more nuance. But we've gotten to a place where, again, if that is the situation, then a properly fitted N95 mask is what's effective. These other things, they're just... It's just smoke and mirrors.

It's just like for many of us just like, "Well, just wear the mask. It does something, at least it does something." Getting good sleep does way more, getting good nutrition does way more, reducing our stress does way more. It's not even... It's astronomical how much more it does than wearing a mask and I'm sick of it. I'm sick of us treating the symptom, and I'm sick of us allowing ourselves to be manipulated and focusing on the wrong thing. And picking back up with alcohol being classified as a Group 1 carcinogen, one of the things that makes us susceptible to COVID-19. Are we going to start up prohibition again? Their thing was like, "Let's shelter in place. Are you going to keep the alcohol away from us?" The difference with these things with the shelter in place versus alcohol is that alcohol kills hundreds of thousands of people, not just this season of this virus, every freaking year, hundreds of thousands of people. And the difference is, we still get to choose. We get to choose whether or not we drink alcohol. We don't get to choose whether or not we can go outside.

It's funny how that works because there's constant pressure and exposure because of our lenient government that turns a blind eye to these multi-billion dollar entities of food, of drugs, of alcohol, but when it comes to the coronavirus, even though they're turning a blind eye to the thing that makes us far more susceptible to the virus and just dying from all causes, period. When it comes to coronavirus, all of a sudden, they're like, "We got you on this one. We got you. Don't worry about it. Shelter in place, we got you." I'm done. I'm done. So done. And I hope you're done, too. Because we've got to change the narrative. We have an opportunity to truly, truly make an impact, from 1995 to 2010 alone, the United States government handed out almost $200 billion in agricultural subsidies to support the production of major commodity crops that are proven to be the things that make us the most sick and obese, like corn, which is used for high fructose corn syrup, wheat and soy, that largely show up in the drive-through window. Again, US government handed out almost 200 billy. But does it actually show up? That doesn't prove anything. I got you.

A recent study published in the peer-review journal, JAMA, so this is the Journal of the American Medical Association, internal medicine, set out to find if higher consumption of these foods derived from the government-subsidized food commodities that they're giving out all these money for, are actually associated with adverse health risk to US citizens. After adjusting for age, sex, socioeconomic factors, and other variables, the researchers found that those who had the highest consumption of these government-subsidized foods had almost a 40% greater risk of being obese. That's our government is allowing this to happen, not just allowing but supporting it, not to say there aren't good people in our government. This is the time for us to change it, we bring up these questions, we bring up these concerns to our local and state representatives. They should not get our vote unless they address these things, because this is the real problem. This is what makes us susceptible to dying from all causes.

The next virus is coming, we have the opportunity to turn our society's health around. And it starts with us. And I appreciate you so much for tuning in to this episode today. I know that it's important, it's a lot to digest, but I think that we are truly in a place where we can mold and create something better, we can create something special, we can learn from our past mistakes. And it just takes us to have an open heart and open mind, and just pay attention to the science. We're going to make science cool again. And it's up to us to share this information, to walk the talk, and to help to improve the health of our friends, our family, and our communities. Please make sure to share this episode out with all your friends and family. Send this out to them in the podcast app, share this out on social media, and of course, you can tag me. I'm @shawnmodel S-H-A-W-N model on Instagram. I'm @themodelhealthshow on Facebook. And I appreciate you immensely.

We're just scratching the surface on what we're going to accomplish this year, 2020 has been on some stuff. It's been crazy. But again, this is a great opportunity, so much gets brought to the surface. And we are here alive right now because we are the ones endowed with the power to actually do something about it and change this world for the better. I appreciate you so much for tuning in to the show today. Take care, have an amazing day, and I'll talk with you soon. And for more after this show, make sure to head over to themodelhealthshow.com. That's where you could find all of the show notes, you could find transcriptions, videos for each episode. And if you 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 i