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. Right now we are in the heart of summer and on this episode is a very special episode is dedicated to summer wellness. Now there are some things lurking, in the summer, that are causing some health issues that a lot of people, myself included, simply don't know about. So in this episode, there's going to be an expose as to some of those summer hazards and things to avoid, but they're very practical things that we can do to nullify some of these things. And by the way, just to give you a little hint, Some of these things that we're literally exposed to, many of us, every single day during the summer are carcinogenic, obesogenic, causing all manner of hormone dysfunction.

And so we definitely need to know about this stuff. And also, this isn't just about what to avoid during the summer, but also what to do during the summer to really reap the benefits. And truly, this stuff is year round, but right now, this is more viable than ever. Especially for folks here in the United states in this region when the summer hits we have an opportunity to do some of these really exceptional things. And by the way, we can also start to build up and to pour into our bank account during the summer months. For example, building up our vitamin D reserves. The human body has the capacity to store certain nutrients that we pull in. And this is just through our evolution that we pull in during certain times of year. And so this is a great opportunity to do that. But there's a certain way to go about it that our special guest is going to enlighten us to as well.

Now, it's during the summer months, if you grew up like I did, that we're really leaning into those classic summer beverages. All right, one of the hood classes was grape vest soda. That was heavy on the streets. All right, we're drinking fruit punch. We're drinking Kool Aid. We're drinking Flavor Aid. If you didn't have the extra five cents, you get the Flavor Aid. You get the off brand Kool Aid. All right, these were all things that are a big part of our culture and the crazy thing is these are still a big part of our culture today. Even with all the science around all of the artificial ingredients, all of these ultra processed sweeteners and these different chemicals that are used to make these products.

It's crazy. Now, here's the thing. What I wanted to do was to share with you a great summer beverage, especially. For our kids that have a bona fide spectrum of health affirming health beneficial ingredients based on real superfoods, real superfood concentrates, but they also have another little special benefit during the summer months.

In particular, super fruits like pomegranates and acai contain phytonutrients that actually provide SPF sun protection for our skin. A study published in the international journal of Cosmetic Science found that there's a vast array of phytonutrients, particularly found in acai, that can provide the skin with a small but significant SPF protection. And absolutely, we can make sure that we're looking out for those reddish and bluish hue superfoods and superfruits during the summer months. But a study that was published in 2021 using powdered concentrations of these sun protective ingredients. Superfruits noted that just two tablespoons of these superfruit powders provided the benefit of about one cup of the fruit itself, but with notably less sugar.

And that's what you get with the Organifi Red Juice Blend. And right now you're going to get 20 percent off. It's all organic, kid tested, parent approved, Red Juice Superfood Blend from Organifi. When you go to Organifi.com/model. That's O R G a N I F I.com/model. For 20 percent off hook yourself up hook your family up your kids your friends When you're passing out beverages for your guests as well when you have folks over Give them some organifi red juice. All right, boost their health. Boost their wellness and provide them with a science backed superfood blend that truly does deliver on its promises Again, go to Organifi.com/model. And now let's get to the Apple podcast review of the week.

ITUNES REVIEW: Another five star review titled "love it" by Thomas Perez, 1986. Shawn brings valuable insights and information. And I absolutely love this podcast. The products mentioned are just as good. I've bought and use them. Please keep giving us this content.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Awesome. Thank you so much for leaving that review over on Apple podcasts. That's amazing. 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. It really does mean a lot. And now without further ado, let's get to our special guest and topic of the day. Kashif Khan is an author, speaker, and founder of the DNA Company, where personalized medicine is being pioneered through unique insights into the human genome. He's truly an expert researcher and teacher. And now he's here on this episode of the Model Health Show to share his most important insights for us for the summer and just overall throughout the year. There's so many valuable insights here. Let's dive into this conversation with the amazing Kashif Khan.

My guy, so good to see you and stop by your short trip here and you know, we're smack dab in the middle of summer right now. And you know just certain things we just especially in our culture, we are inundated with that are harming our health and we're completely unaware of it. And so I wanted to create an episode that was dedicated to some of these summer fun/ dangerous things that we might be exposed to and how we can upgrade things and enjoy this weather and you know, have fun with our families, but also keep everybody safe. 

And I want to start off by talking about something we've all experienced before, getting into a hot ass car, you know, that's sitting out in the sun and why that might be exposing us to some very dangerous chemicals.

KASHIF KHAN: Yeah. So nature of research, it's typically not so functional, meaning it's not applied in a practical context, like you driving in your car in the summer. It's a chemical studied on paper, not in the context, right? And when you get in your car in the summer, the same chemicals that in a lab or in a facility are deemed as safe, in that boiling heat, all of a sudden aren't, and so there's a, some data that just came out, they took a hundred and one vehicles and it was, the key thing is these were new vehicles, 2015 plus, because every year we have more regulation around more chemicals and more things that are needed.

So you're not seeing this in the older vehicles. Newer vehicles, over a hundred of them, 100 percent of them had carcinogenic chemicals in them. So TCPIP, this, it's a fire retardant that's used in the foam in the seat. So it's meant to be protective, right? The question is, you know, how many cars get in a catastrophic, I'm on fire situation versus every single person is going to be breathing that stuff in.

So you're weighing, you know, the good and the bad. Yeah, so the straight out carcinogen. And when you put the heat into the context, the summer heat, you have a minimum double exposure, but on average, it's five times, so you have five times more likelihood of breathing this stuff that most people can't detoxify.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Oh, man, that's crazy. And you know, just like you said, being able to look at the, just the pros and cons of this and the chemicals that are being used, like how many people have seats that are catching on fire? Actually, a fun story. But also, you know, there are things that can negate things like this, but it was a mistake that I made being a young, foolish kid. And my mom had an Audi station wagon that was super old. But this was, we'll just say this was 19 98 and the car was from like 1980 something. And so the battery was under the backseat. . Alright. First, this is already sounding not like a good idea. All the battery's under the backseat, the battery died and so I took a battery out of another car and put it in there just to get to school, right?

I was in college and the battery was too tall and so it was actually, bumping up against some of the metal under the seat caught on fire in the middle of the street. All right, so I'm driving around like that for a couple of days, then now it decides to catch on fire in the middle of the street.

I'm just a block from our University And so I jump out the car in the middle of the street toss the back seat out into the you know into the street. But yeah, this is something this was a one in a billion chance that I'm gonna have a fire in my car. And that reminds me of just that I didn't have an air conditioner in that car. And so just de facto I had the windows rolled down and so I would imagine just knowing that obviously, the sun is going to be baking some of these chemicals and pulling them out. And we can even smell a lot of this stuff, to be honest. Would just simply rolling the window down or keeping the window cracked during the summer be a good idea while we're driving?

KASHIF KHAN: Just that one thing makes a huge difference and we don't because we're trying to keep the AC in. So even the first couple minutes you're in there to ventilate, because it's sitting there in the heat and all those volatile carbonic compounds are coming out. You want to clear them out. Then you turn the AC on, then you got to go on. You know, and people, I actually posted about this online and somebody commented that, but you got to block the pollution out. So our vehicles have the HEPA filters. They do the job, but you have no idea if you're concerned about pollution, what's happening with indoor air quality.

You know, there's a study that just came out from some university in Holland that North American, Western, European, and Industrial nation air quality is four to five times worse outdoor now. So we used to escape that pollution by coming inside. So the same thing is true in your home, because you have a drywall box that doesn't breathe, we don't open the windows, and you're full of fragrances, chemicals, etc. that as they heat up, also the same effect. They become much more potent, much more available, and much more toxic.

SHAWN STEVENSON: So you mentioned having a filter, a HEPA filter in the car. Is that something else that we can, and I never thought about this before, maybe we can get a portable, smaller version for the car?

KASHIF KHAN: Oh yeah, easy to find. They're very easy to find. So small, easy thing to do that will really clear a lot of nonsense out.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Okay, got it. Practical applications here. If you can, and you don't gotta do this too every single minute that you're in the car, but at least sometime crack that window open because I see this, you know being in LA I see people, you know, obviously like on the highway. All the windows are up and you know We are dealing with a lot of exhausts and whatnot all these different chemicals on the highway. But I very rarely ever see even if it's not a backed up highway situation with people with their windows down here Yeah, you know and it's just like keeping this in mind, crack your window, let some fresh air in and let some of this toxicity out. And also possibly look at maybe getting a small filter for your car. Is there anything else that we can do?

KASHIF KHAN: You know, the other consideration is, you know, newer cars, right? We love the new car smell. It's exciting. It's my ROI on the money. I just spent, right? This that smell anytime you smell it wherever it is. That's the sign that you need to air it out So just being aware right knowing that you're not supposed to smell anything that thing you're smelling is what's hurting you slowly. So if you can still smell it, you haven't done the job yet of airing it out. So knowing that first.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Wow. Yeah, that makes me think about when you might go get your car washed or something they ask. Do you want the new car smell? Exactly, you know the little tree on the you know on the rear view mirror Yeah I would I would imagine that those things are probably not good for our health.

KASHIF KHAN: Full of hormone disrupting chemicals Inflammatory in nature forever chemicals that we can't get out of our body, you know. So all of that stuff if you can smell it, it's probably causing harm.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Wow. And a little weird fact, if you're smelling it, it's in your body, like it's literally in your body. It's in your brain because your brain is what's giving you that data and it's just being more mindful and thankfully. Information like this is getting out about other things. I was so happy to talk to you about this because I never really thought about it for my car. It's just something I automatically do. My family knows this even in an uber, you know I'm saying usually they keep the window.

I crack the window. I always look at the uber driver because it's like most people don't open the window. But I get in there and crack that window immediately. All right. So that's one aspect of this summer fun. Just be more mindful, crack your window, get some fresh air in, let some of that, which is just, it is what it is. We're going to have off gassing happening inside of our vehicles. Something else that you were talking about, and this is, it's not exclusively to summertime, but it definitely ramps up in the summer months and that's wearing sunglasses. Why do we need to be a little bit more mindful about that?

KASHIF KHAN: So for me, it stands out because I'm from Toronto, so we have seasons and there's no sunglasses in the winter And then all of a sudden they all pop up and I start thinking, oh man, I gotta talk and tell people what's going on here. Your eyes, we think of it as just a source of vision and what we see, which is true. Your eyes are an extension of your brain. It's not a separate organ, right? And it's a signaling tool to tell your brain that's surveying the environment constantly what's going on. And one of those signals is light, is the clock, the circadian rhythm.

What time of day is it, right? That's why you see the Sun, when you wake up, you have a sense of what time it is based on the amount of light, the ray of light, the spectrum of light. Those are all signals. And one of the major signals is when you, when the Sun hits the retina, That's the signal to tell your body to make melanin. The exact thing you need to protect yourself from a burn. And when you're not wearing, or when, sorry, when you are wearing the sunglasses and you're blocking that light, you're not getting the signal. And all of a sudden you wonder why you burn, and then you need sunscreen, which is a whole other thing we can go down a rabbit hole on.

And there's this consideration around, whenever I talk about this, I'll always have ophthalmologists and doctors commenting like, No, I see people with cataracts, I see people with issues coming to the office, it's because they don't wear sunglasses. Where is the line? How do you know what's right, what's wrong? Again, a context question, because those same people, we know, if you study eye health, macular degeneration, for example. We know, academics know, science knows that it's rooted in oxidative stress. So we already know the foundation, poor mitochondrial health, overloading oxidation, whether that's poor exercise or too much or too little, too much or too little food, too much or too little sleep imbalance, right?

So we know what causes it, and most of it has to do with food. So if you're not supporting your mitochondria, And if you're not out exercising your eyes by getting the sunlight regularly, then you're like anyone else that goes to the gym trying to deadlift 400 pounds on day one. It's not going to work, right? You need to build your way up to that. And which means both mitochondrial function, which is a route for all cellular energy, including your eyes, of all the organs in your body has the third highest density of mitochondria. So heart, brain, then eyes. So that's why they're the first to fail when you don't take care of mitochondrial health and function. And so that context is where you'll hear the doctor saying someone gets a cataract, someone gets this, someone gets that, if they don't wear sunglasses. Which means there's work to do to get healthy first, to be able to utilize the God given tool you have of being able to make melanin just by looking at the sun.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. And it's one of those things, again, if you look at the data and seeing increased incidence of things like cataracts happening now that didn't used to happen in past generations. And it has a lot to do with our lifestyle. It's not suddenly, you know, sunglasses are the thing that you were just deficient in sunglasses.

That's what the issue was. And you're also not saying that there isn't a context where sunglasses can be helpful. What are some of those situations?

KASHIF KHAN: Driving, glare, skiing, for example, difficult to do, right? And if you are out all day that peaks on, you know, noon to 2 p. m type of thing. Yeah, maybe you might need help and support but the constant use and the I leave the house and I put them on and I can't without squinting be outside. There's work to do to be able to do that.

You shouldn't have to look. Go into countries where go deep into africa. Look at the certain tribes that are walking around. Where's their sunglasses, right? Yeah, why is why there's no Ray Bans, right? They don't need them because they're out and they've exercised and their food, their environment, their lifestyle supports their mitochondria Which allows the eye tissue to be young and healthy and thriving. Yeah, no problem.

SHAWN STEVENSON: I really want to hammer home this point. You mentioned how that data coming in through our eyes is one of the primary signaling systems for our bodies' protection mechanisms. So adapting, producing more melon melanin, and also those circadian cues of producing more melatonin in the evening. It's helping to, you know, Set that circadian rhythm and if we are constantly shading out the Sun, we're not going to get that critical data.

KASHIF KHAN: Yeah, so we how many people can't sleep because they're wearing sunglasses all day, you know in the evening. So in the morning and in the evening, the Sun is very healing. So prior to 10 a. m On the average day, it's there's a much richer red light spectrum so you can be out there for a long time. You're not gonna burn. In fact, you're gonna heal After 4 p. m. It's the same thing. There's a lot of red light and a lot of the white and yellow light is gone. In the evening, you start to get these amber types of hues and hues, right?

Our ancestors, keep in mind that our genetics hasn't changed. We are cave people. Our body doesn't know that we're sitting here in a studio and it thinks we're walking out of cave every morning. So the cue for sleep, that melatonin you talked about, we're meant to see the amber glow of fire in the dark every night. That's what cave people saw for tens of thousands of years. We still are waiting for that signal to bind melatonin. You can make it all day long, we make it, but if you don't bind it and utilize it, you're not going to fall asleep properly, which is why blue light, the opposite, is so disruptive because it signals to the circadian rhythm.

You're, you need to be awake. It's noon when it's actually 9 PM, right? So knowing that even daytime glasses blocking, what you need to see in evening time, adding things you don't need to see. And then what you would, what would need it was actually that deep amber glow of fire. So candlelight, why does it relax you so much?

Because you start to bind melatonin. Think about your eyes as a tool beyond just here's what I can see. And you'll understand that biochemistry and biology is so much more complex, but also so easy once you understand what to do.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah, you know, you know, it's fascinating hearing this research from you. I started to see several reports of people saying, you know, after I minimized wearing sunglasses where I was dependent on them at some point I started to sunburn less. And I was like man, that is so fascinating. Like it really does have this connection, right? And it just makes sense because all these different inputs like, we are part of nature and we have all these adaptive mechanisms. But we're very good at putting a clog or putting a cork in things and blocking the flow of our natural processes.

KASHIF KHAN: And we very easily atrophy those unique skills and abilities we have. When you don't use them, you lose them. So we are designed for all that. We're designed to be outdoors. We're designed to live like that caveman that was outdoors all day. You don't use a tool, it falls apart, right. But you can build it back up.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. Yeah. You know, I've got images now, you know, especially you've, you're doing some work with the people in the, you know, making movies and stuff like that, but it's just that template, you know, of being cool and fashionable and, even people, you know, I wear my sunglasses at night. Just having this like part being part of the ensemble, and sometimes really, and I think about my mom, for example. She would leave the house and just put sunglasses on like she would just. It was just a part of what she did You know, especially during the summer months and it wasn't like she was trying to be cool But she just I guess it just felt right like the right thing to do at the time. And so We're not here to villainize Sunglasses, they're a thing they're cool.

They can be helpful in certain instances But we want to be aware of not wearing them too often and blocking out this critical data to really protect our health. All right. I heard you in this dictation, you mentioned the S word, right? Mentioned sunscreen. All right. Now, again, our bodies produce a natural sunscreen, natural sun protection, but we do have this multi billion dollar market of all these different skin care products and you know SPF protection and again These things have their place But there are some serious concerns that are now coming to light. Pun intended about these Chemical laden sunscreens. So let's talk a little bit about that

KASHIF KHAN: So the chemical side is now widely spoken of people know. The functional side and what is the threat and how is sunscreen supposed to protect you, and is it actually protecting you?

That doesn't get spoken of much. And when you hear it, it blows your mind in terms of what have I been doing all this time? Why have I been doing this? You know, and so the belief is that I applied this sunscreen. There's a sun, that SPF, sun protection factor. There's some number of, say, 30 SPF, which means it takes about 20 minutes to get the vitamin D you need. So you're supposed to be in the sun for 20 minutes. After that, your skin starts to burn, which is the signal that you're done. That's why it actually is telling you, you have enough vitamin D. Why? Because if you have too much, it's actually toxic in nature. You can't overdose on vitamin D. You'll get calcification, plaque, and amongst other things.

So we need the right amount of vitamin D. This is why you burn. We now apply sunscreen, so we can stay out in the sun longer. And we don't burn. What causes the burn is a UVB ray, right? So it actually literally causes their redness. And most sunscreens are rated with SPF sun protection factor of, if you have a 30, that means 30 times the 20 minutes. So 600 minutes of being able to be out in the sun, right? Which is what it actually means, which typically doesn't really last so long, but that's what it means. Which means you're going to stay out in the sun longer. With this false sense of security that I'm not burning, things must be okay. There's no requirement for sunscreen to also block UVA rays.

Only UVB. That's the SPF factor is only rated for UVB. UVB is surface level, which is why it burns you. UVA goes deep subcutaneous into the tissue and can cause cellular damage, cellular degradation, DNA damage, which are all precursors to things like cancer. major chronic diseases. So you put this thing on so you don't burn, so you don't feel bad.You go out in the sun, you're still getting UVA because you're gonna now be in the sun longer because you feel protected and you're completely destroying cellular structure subcutaneous deep into tissue that doesn't burn. But it gets damaged and destroyed and damage your DNA and degrade cellular structure at that level that is literally precursor to cancer.

And you wonder why guys like surfers and Sun type athletes, volleyball players that got their sunscreen still get skin cancer, right? It's a complete mis. Now, there are sunscreens that do it, like there's full spectrum or full protection, I believe they're called. Now, the Here's another big challenge. The sunscreens that do block UVA, typically use something called Avobenzone, right? Which is deemed safe. Remember I was saying earlier that when we study chemicals, we're not studying it in the context it's used, it's studied in a lab and it's studied on paper, and when you practically apply it, things change. And this is why I constantly have sort of arguments with clinicians, scientists, doctors, because they're looking at the paperwork, they're not looking at the patient in their real life and how the thing applies. And I see the people, they need the help, right? So I see the context. Avobenzone, when you take it and put it in the light, shreds it apart.

That's the reaction. And it turns into benzene, which we know is a potent carcinogenic cancer causing chemical. It's not in the research anywhere. Avobenzone is safe, and this is the stuff that's supposed to block the UVA, which is beneficial. It's also usually in a water based type formula, which also evaporates and doesn't last anywhere near the SPF rating of, you know, 30, 40, 50 times the 20 minutes you actually need.

It's gone within minutes because it literally evaporates. You know, I sat down with this brilliant guy. His name's Gary Groon. He's from Duke university and he's a chemical engineer. And so he's been studying this stuff forever. And he said, there's simple things you can do. Like just use a glycerin based that doesn't evaporate, you know, use a mineral base that is not avobenzone, that does not convert to benzene, that won't give you cancer, right? The phthalates, forever chemicals that are in these things that are causing hormone disruption. How many women are lathering themselves up and not knowing that the chemical the forever, the phthalates, for example, will enter your body. Your body doesn't recognize it. It thinks it's estrogen, allows it to use an estrogen docking station.

And now you're not using your estrogens would then become inflammatory in nature because they don't know where to go. So they end up in your tissue where they're not supposed to be. So there's a whole cascade of problems. I can go on and on, speak one hour just about sunscreen, you know, but okay. If you do things right one last thing I'll say about this so that because I know what people think. What do I do? I'm gonna burn right? Like I burn I need sunscreen There was a study out of Baylor College, Texas. Where they took a bunch of animals Gave half of them what they call an American diet, which meant high in high fructose corn syrup starch Seed oils, things of that nature and the other half were fed carnivore Straight carnivore.

The animals that ate the American diet, 25 percent got skin cancer. The animals that ate the carnivore, 0. So why do I say this? Because the reason you burn is because your skin is already inflamed. You're already doing things to your body to be in an inflamed state where you can't handle what you were meant to be able to handle. You also go outside once for an hour on the weekend. As opposed to our ancestors who were outside all the time. 95 percent of your time is indoors, right? So that resilience isn't there. Yes, protect yourself. Yes, don't make yourself sick. There's other ways to do it with minerals, zinc, things of that nature. Glycerin based products. And just know that if you do burn, you're not supposed to. It probably has to do with the food you're eating and the state that you're in as opposed to the Sun which is meant to Be healing hitting your skin, right?

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah, just like in anything we have to qualify ourselves to do a certain thing, right? 

So you just mentioned like what we usually do is work, you know these long hours throughout the year and maybe get five ten minutes at the most of some kind of You Abstract sun exposure just to take a vacation to suddenly put ourselves in the sun for several hours, right? Yeah, so it's like zero to a hundred. It's ten minutes of sun exposure to suddenly two hours. Yeah, and we have not qualified ourselves. You know, we've not qualified our Antioxidant systems for our skin health and even you know Our vision all these different things to be able to properly adapt. And that's part of the issue is, just the way that our society is structured is contributing to this problem.

But then what we do is we look for a crutch. So I mentioned earlier the crutch was a sun sunglasses. Now the crutch is the sunscreen so we can try to hack this system and appear to be safe, right? The sun can't see me. I'm a day walker, you know, I got this cream all over my body. Whoa, pause. I'm thinking, okay. So I'm thinking about the movie Blade. All right. So there was a scene because Blade is a day walker. Yeah. And, but also, you know, just so happens to be dark skin. But then the other vampires. This is blade one. So this is the OG blade. He sees him outside. They got all this sunscreen on right?

He's just like how you all here? You know, they got slathered up. Of course they got, you know, some jackets So that's another thing, you know, just wearing a hat wearing something to you know, provide a little bit of shade for your skin But most importantly, what I'm hearing is to be sensible, right? Common sense is very uncommon. Build up your natural resilience. Build up your melanin and everybody makes melanin to some degree, right? There's different. Degrees of this, but we all can build up a tolerance to being in the sun and also paying attention to that feedback of like when you're in the sun too long. And I want to share this too. And we'll put this study up for people to see if you're watching the video of this episode. There's this amazing analysis that was published in the Lancet. All right. And the title of this study. Is the questionable effects of sunscreen. All right. And the researchers state.

In regards to the dramatic increase in the purchase of sunscreen and utilization of sunscreen, there has been an increase, paradoxically, in cancer. In what is supposed to be protecting skin cancer. And so the researcher stated, "this increase is the reverse of what is expected given the continued increased purchase of sunscreen per head in the U.S. and U. K. since the 1990s." They go on to state, "the contradiction suggests that increased population exposure to sunscreen does not translate into a reduced risk of skin cancer. This finding is particularly important for public health measures to prevent. Non melanoma skin cancer and melanoma. It could be that sunscreens are being improperly used. Or they are. are ineffective in the prevention of skin cancer, or that other factors not relating to UV light are leading to an increased risk of non melanoma skin cancer and melanoma".

KASHIF KHAN: Yeah. It's not just not effective, it's a cause. Because you're putting yourself out into the thing that you can't handle. You know, they're talking about cancer. How many more. The another reason why there's so many more sunscreen products is because the cosmetic companies now make them as wrinkle proof type products, right? The sun's gonna give you wrinkles. The wrinkles don't come from the UV. They come from the UVA, which you're not blocking, and it once again, same story as the cancer.You're putting something on with the cell. False sense of security only blocking the U-E-B. U-V-A is still deeply penetrating your skin tissue sub-continus beyond the fat causing wrinkles. The exact opposite of why you bought the product. And the formulators themselves don't understand what they're building. They haven't looked at the science of what's actually going on.

SHAWN STEVENSON: You know, something you said earlier really jumped out and understanding how important, there's this paradox again. We're trying to block out the sun to prevent cancer, but one of the most powerful anti-cancer compounds that we produce is vitamin D. And the researchers mentioned that too in that same study. They said sunscreen has the potential to have negative effects since synthesis of vitamin D relies on UVB radiation. And since vitamin D deficiency has been linked to the pathogenesis of many diseases, it is crucial that the effectiveness of sunscreens and their use are thoroughly investigated. So they're just like, people could be just putting it on wrong. We should investigate this more, but something's not working out here. Something's not adding up.

KASHIF KHAN: You know, 25, 000 genes in the human genome, 2, 500, 10% require adequate vitamin D levels to do their jobs. So every single biological instruction that your cells receive, that's what a gene is an instruction. Some of them just don't work if there's not enough vitamin D to bind and activate and from hormones to hair, to skin, to mood. This is why you have seasonal mood disorder in the winter. So now you're going to have it in the summer because people are blocking vitamin D. Yeah. So it's the single most important nutrient and we're cutting it out by lathering ourselves up.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Oh man, what are we doing? We're so silly. With this being said, a couple of practical things I'm hearing to really be mindful and looking into the ingredients of any potential sunscreen that you might be buying. Thankfully, again, having these conversations, there are companies that are producing cleaner versions of these things and there's degrees of all this stuff. But also, and what I'm hearing most importantly, foundationally, Understanding that what you're eating is creating your skin.

KASHIF KHAN: Yeah.

SHAWN STEVENSON: And your skin's ability to interact with the Sun intelligently, and so if you're making yourself out of You know all these different ultra processed vegetable oils, for example, and that oils Are helping to create the cell membranes of your skin cells, for example. You're just basically turning into a McDonald's french fry On the beach, you know, I'm saying like the Sun is cooking you. Yeah, so it's a different phenomena So making your body out of more resilient high quality nutrients Ensuring that you are getting that vitamin D input, but also being intelligent this is not saying don't use a sunscreen, but be very mindful about the sunscreen that you're using And for many of us, you know, if we're just building up our natural sun protection, we won't have to worry about this stuff much at all. Because again, there are so many cultures all over the world that aren't using sunscreen and they don't have these issues.

KASHIF KHAN: Yep. And they're out in the sun a lot longer than us.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Got a quick break coming up. We'll be right back. If you're going to improve your metabolic health, you've got to switch up your sweetener. Highly refined sugars are causing massive dysfunction to our cells, our mitochondria and our health overall. And there's only one natural sweetener that's been found to actually improve our metabolic health. A recent study published in the peer review journal nutrients detailed how raw honey, can actually improve fasting blood sugar levels, improve fat metabolism, and reduce the risk of heart disease.

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SHAWN STEVENSON: Now I want to circle back to our vision because there is this strange phenomenon that is skyrocketing in our society, in particular with our kids. And I'm bringing this up because it's the summertime for us. I know I have this very nostalgic drive. It just reminds me of going outside and playing with my friends literally like from sunup to sundown. And you know going and playing basketball all day playing football. We might go in and play video games a little bit, but we just want to go outside. Go ride our bikes, right? It's just this endless possibilities of fun. And today, less and less kids are spending time outside and playing, and they're spending more time on their devices, in particular, you know, smartphones and iPads and things like that, that have this very close proximity to our bodies. And this is leading to some issues with our kids' vision. So let's talk about that.

KASHIF KHAN: In a big way. We'll talk about the vision. It's not only vision. You have, I think it was the 1960s, six percent of youth had a chronic disease. It's now 60. How did that happen? Remember when you were in school, it would be very unusual for someone to need medication. Now it's the majority. That's the truth. 60%. So in terms of vision, I actually learned this through my niece, unfortunately. I took her to get new glasses, and I was told she has a hole in her eye. It's like, how does this even happen? What does that mean? And they said, yeah, it's pretty typical. I said, how typical? I've never heard this before. How can it be typical? And what I realized, it was typical for the current young ophthalmologist I was dealing with who's now dealing with the current reality of Gen Z and beyond. And if you talk to someone who's a more mature ophthalmologist who's been doing it for a while, it's not normal for them.

They didn't see it. So it's become the norm. This, I sit on my phone or I'm on my laptop and the structure of the eye literally forming and changing and being stretched into a myopic form is literally leading to these tears in the fiber and tissue which leads the whole, and really what I was told was let's monitor this and see if she needs medication or surgery. Like, how is that the answer? And what caused this? And I started to look into the health of the eye. After speaking to ophthalmologists and optometrists in whether it was in Toronto, I talked to some in New York, California, all over the place. And they're like, yeah, this is pretty common now.

That was the answer. And so it's device driven, right? It's this nearsighted you're not supposed to be doing this. We weren't designed for it. And what did I do with my niece? I literally took her outside and got her to do some distance gazing. Go look at a tree. Let's play a sport like baseball where you have to be out in the field and focus on the batsman or whatever you're doing, right? And that was it. That's what healed her. It took some number of months, next appointment didn't have the problem anymore. So this challenge over our culture, like you said, is no longer go outside and play. It's now Helicopter mom, don't go outside. I need to be seeing where you are all the time. Which does things, we can go deep into what that does to the mind.

But in terms of what it's doing to the body, it's no movement, and it's this literal structural change of the eye that's leading to vision damage and often loss. Blindness in young people is now a known thing that is just accepted. But the source hasn't been spoken of. Get them off the devices, right? And get them to go outside and look. Go focus on a leaf that's like rustling in the wind. That's what they need to be doing, because that's what the eyes were designed to do. Yeah. Wow.

SHAWN STEVENSON: So something practical here that I'm hearing is simply, even for us, of course, as adults you know, we spend a lot of time on our computers. Thankfully, and I intentionally set things up Where my computer is by a window, right? So the window is right behind it and I'll occasionally just literally look out into the far furthest distance that I can like a treetop Because it's as we're staring at this fixed Distance We're like putting our vision into a cast, right? So these are different, you know cones and rods and the retina and all the different Aspects of the eye that need to be Zoom in and change focus and be able to do all these dynamic things. They get set in place. Now they're doing something dynamic some dynamic dancing around because the change is on the screen, but it's at a fixed distance

KASHIF KHAN: Yes.

SHAWN STEVENSON: And so it's like handicapping our vision and so we're basically forcing our eyes to be very good at seeing at a fixed position And starting to struggle seeing things that are further off in the distance. So that's what nearsightedness is.

KASHIF KHAN: In order to do that, your literal eye structure has to change to accommodate what it was never meant to do.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah.

KASHIF KHAN: That's what's causing the damage.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Holy moly. All right. So it's summertime. Let's get the kids outside. And you mentioned, the hyper protective parenting and, it's just it's one of the things of our generation because, you know, some of us are like looking to really be protective of the trauma that we might've gone through, or especially, you know, growing up in the eighties, you know, there, you know, You know, you got the crime stories, you know, you got the big headlines with, you know, kidnapping and things like that. But it's this was a very fractional issue. But it's one of those things that of course it grabs us as parents and wanting to be protective and if we went through anything, you know anything any trauma or abuse happened to us as kids. We want to protect our kids at all costs from that, absolutely. And we don't want to do that at the detriment of allowing our kids to explore and to grow and to be able to self manage and to make decisions, right? So I'm a big fan of creating safe stressors in a safe space for my kids to explore and to do things. Also, it's that process of letting go over, over time as well.

And I remember when my, you know, my oldest son, you know, he got on his bike and it just be gone all day, you know, and, but it's just like getting him to the place where he would make smarter decisions and trusting and also understanding that I can't be there all the time. And it's gotta be some kind of grace and letting him to get out and explore. And now with that being said. You know, we do want to be mindful about the situations that we're putting our kids in or allowing. Yes. And also, you know, and what I'm thinking about is like Stranger Things, right? And these kids getting out on these adventures, you know, jumping on the bicycle, going to their friends. Now our kids are not probably going to run up against a Demogorgon, right? But you know what this is invoking, and I'll just give a good example actually. So yesterday My youngest son and he had a basketball tournament this past weekend. There's a lot of games, you know. He's banged up, you know, and then he had practice the next day on a Monday.

And so he, of course, just wants to lounge and relax and recover and play video games. And he did he's playing video games for a couple of hours, but he knows our culture. And so I'm up in my office working and I hear outside the basketball dribbling. He's just out. He knows to get outside. I've been sitting around all day. Let me go outside, get some movement in, you know, shoot around, you know, get some fresh air, get some sunlight. Yeah, and just little things like that. It doesn't have to be all or nothing.

KASHIF KHAN: Yeah, and there's an element when you don't do that, you remove a very important part of development for the brain also. What we call dangerous play. The kids need to actually take risks and hurt themselves. And there's a lot of research, whether you go to Harvard, there's some universities in Europe that study places like Finland, where the education system is completely different, right? And they see that the children that thrive, that become leaders. When you study them in their state, we study a leader today, we don't study where they came from. So there's research studying how do they start, what do they do to develop the habits to get here, and a lot of it is centered around dangerous play. And the opposite is also true, that the kids that didn't thrive, that didn't get into leadership roles, that were pigeonholed into something that was lesser than their potential, were helicoptered.

They were never the box was always closed and they couldn't go out and think and develop those parts of their brain that allowed them to take the risk and do more, right? Letting a kid go on the monkey bars that feels dangerous and fall and hurt something is actually a very good thing for them, right? Especially, by the way, for boys, it actually means more for mental development for boys than it does for girls.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. Man, when I think about the things I was doing, you know, at my son's age, climbing up on people's roofs and, you know, jumping off and stuff just to see how far down you could jump. It's the highest distance we could jump off.

KASHIF KHAN: You push the limit. And the thing about pushing the limit is the more you push it, the greater the limit becomes. There's this lady that teaches all these Silicon Valley companies about how to get the most productivity. And she has this example of, we're both holding an elastic band. You hold one end, I hold one end. And I pull it until it's tense. And then you have to pull towards me and then I pulled it again. And you have to step towards me and I pull it again. And you just slowly micro keep improving somebody's maximum potential or threshold for what they think is possible. And it just keeps growing. Yeah.

SHAWN STEVENSON: One of the other things that I think about in regards to summer that can provide us a lot of benefit was I had a very unique experience of my grandmother moving to what we call the country and, you know, she basically had a cabin in the woods kind of ordeals, a dirt road to get to her house. And so we spent a lot of time, you know, being in the woods. And now there's a lot of data on how nurturing and healing and health supporting. Just getting out in nature, but in particular this practice of forest bathing. Yeah, let's talk about that

KASHIF KHAN: So I had this experience when I was young where I had a one of my best friends never got sick and I was always sick So I now know a lot of it was related to my gut But why did he not get sick in the school with all the other kids didn't have an issue He did live out in the woods There's an oil in most trees called phytoncide, right? When you're out amongst the trees, you're actually breathing it in and inhaling it. And it's anti microbial, anti fungal, anti parasitics, anti everything. Which was what, how the trees protect themselves. And you are meant to benefit from this. So remember, Our body thinks we live like our ancestors. So it thinks it can depend on those habits. It thinks that we're getting those exposures that our ancestors got, including breathing in fight and side from the trees, which is one of the ways we build our immunity. And if you don't have it, the body doesn't know how to compensate, because it doesn't have its own pharmacy to make things, right?

There's, so that's one major thing you'll see in young kids that are out in the dirt playing Breathing it in. There's microbial activity. It populates their gut microbiome, populates their skin microbiome, builds their immune system, so that they're more resilient. But beyond that, this, just being in the woods, being in the trees, we now know a lot more about quantum science and quantum physics, and that everything is frequency, everything is particles. And, you know, the frequency, when you put something into your body, ultimately, how does it communicate to a cell? It's through some level of frequency, right? When you're out in the woods the leaves, the crackling, all those things that we take for granted as just peaceful are actually communicating to ourselves and our biology to activate certain processes. Turning things on and turning things off. This is why if you go for a hike, your anxiety goes away.

You calm down. Your body knows, I'm not in a fight or flight right now. When you're in the drywall box, and you're in front of your screen, and you get in the blue light, your fight or flight turns on, the warrior state turns on. Time for battle. Which was not meant to happen to the degree and chronic nature that it happens now today. We are meant to be more in that regenerative state. State then we are meant to be in the fight or flight, but it's literally the opposite. So that bathing is literally rinsing the inflammation and of stress and cortisol off of your cells and there's very few ways to do that. We know how to detoxify heavy metals through chelation. We know how to detoxify plastics and things of that nature.

We don't think about how to detoxify the inflammation of cortisol of stress. Meditation is a great tool. Force bathing is another one. When cortisol comes down, and that stress response is reduced, your immune system also becomes more robust. Your vagus nerve becomes more resilient. The vagus nerve, which is communicating to your entire body, what state to be in. Are you actually, when you're popping all your supplements and doing your red light, etc., are you getting ROI because you're actually in a regenerative state? Or are you walking into that in a fight or flight where the body doesn't want to heal anyway? It's not going to fix anything, it doesn't matter what you do. All right, so this what seems like a simple thing, a weekend hike can literally completely change your immune system. It can change stress state anxiety You're going to get from the plants both frequency and certain compounds that are going to heal your body.

SHAWN STEVENSON: I got to be honest with you when I first heard the term forest bathing I thought I was like going butt naked in the forest and like getting into a hot springs, you know, something like that. But it's literally just bathing in that environment.

KASHIF KHAN: In the environment. Yeah, getting all what it's supposed to give you.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. Wow. It's amazing. Again, it just makes perfect sense. And we've got some really fascinating data now on studying green spaces and blue spaces. So being near bodies of water and also being in the forest and all these different things that it does, like literally. Strapping people up to all these different, you know, EKGs and measuring what's happening with the brain and the nervous system and you know, tracking what's happening with neurotransmitters and hormone production. There is a significant changeover from this sympathetic fight or flight to a more parasympathetic, regenerative, healing state in your body by being in nature.And it's just akin this is where we come from. You know, it's just like returning back to our source and getting closer to it. It's really fascinating. So what would you recommend, you know, as far as not everybody just on the surface has access to, you know, going to a forest what can we do?

KASHIF KHAN: Nature in general, even we know that you're hearing it everywhere, grounding, being outside, just even on your lawn, right? Just stepping out, how, when was the last time you literally went barefoot out onto your lawn and felt what a blade of grass feels like, right? Going to a park, a forest is an extreme. And like you said, not everyone has access of that nature. But where are you? What's the closest natural thing you have access to? It may be the beach, right? The beach has a very similar outcome. When you're standing there, you're getting the negative ions that are literally detoxifying you at an electric level. So now you have this circuit that's closing. We are electric beings as we know. Wherever you are, there's going to be something that is natural that was a God given gift to the planet. You go there and you bathe in it whether it's even in your backyard whether you're going to a nursery with plants, you'll feel it there whether it's an animal and you're hugging an animal and getting the oxytocin and you're getting that hormone that builds all other hormones.

So just stepping away from our digital box and going back to things that are real.

SHAWN STEVENSON: I love it. Now you mentioned going outside, simply just going outside, having your shoes off and getting grounded. Yeah. Curveball, what if you're stepping into your lawn that's showered with Roundup, what about that?

KASHIF KHAN: Problem for sure. Problem. So it's step one is you're not using this stuff, right? So there's lots of videos online of people that are now using things like Vinegars and certain oils and things to kill. My neighbor brings out a blowtorch and burns all his weeds on his driveway.

SHAWN STEVENSON: First of all, your neighbor has a blowtorch.

KASHIF KHAN: He literally has a blowtorch So he burns his weeds off with on the driveway and on the lawn. But there are a lot of, first of all, don't use Roundup, you know, this year alone, we've seen more class action payouts than ever before, at least every month, there's a multi hundred million dollar level payout, right? And all around cancer, lymphomas, things of that nature, California, by the way, big here, there's been a lot of payouts recently. And so how much more do we need to be told that this is happening? How much more does this need to be true? We're literally, I think last year north of two billion dollars was paid out to different people for different lawsuits for this one thing that we still spray on our lawn and then your kids play on, you know, so get it out, get rid of it.

SHAWN STEVENSON: All right, so let me get this straight. So in Canada, you can have a blowtorch, but you can't buy or create supplements.

KASHIF KHAN: This is true. So I still can today, but if you go to a large supplement store today, you'll see right there on their cashier desk petition. Please make sure we're still open next year. Because laws have been passed to make sure that you can't buy natural health products.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah, so obviously, you know, it's a little tongue in cheek because it's not official there right now but it is in process to eliminate a lot of "natural health access", which is silly, even we got to make this distinction. But, you know, being able to buy supplements and things like that and just really pressing this pharmacology as really the only route to go to, and, you know, these are opportunities for us to do something about it. You know, we've got amazing people that are listening in Canada right now. Who have the ability to, you know, step up, say something, do something. And you know, our decisions right now are going to impact future generations, you know, our kids, their kids and the like. And so a lot of silliness and a lot of this is happening like under the radar right? And they're sliding things into different bills so that it might be a bill to like You know, do some construction in your area to get the roads fixed. But then they slide in a thing like, you know, you can't buy vitamin C or you're gonna die. You're gonna put you in jail.

KASHIF KHAN: I'll tell you a behind the scenes story of how ridiculous it is and Why is this happening? Canada's unique where unlike where we are now, there's insurance companies. There's private medicine. There's hospitals. They're all corporate right? You have a single payer the government. So very easy to lobby and control. So Ontario where I live has a 68 billion dollar budget for health care, and there's one entity paying the checks, paying everybody. And so I've sat with our finance ministers and health ministers in organizations where it's me and a bunch of pharma CEOs. Literally, I can tell you about a scenario where it's me and a table full of pharma CEOs trying to plan the future of health care of Ontario, right?

There was a person that was asked to steward this meeting and hands were going up with ideas. And I said, right now we have a crisis where people, autistic children, for example, are in a waiting list for five years to get things that are actually available in a store. But meanwhile, you know, there's certain surgeries people that they elect for that they can get tomorrow. That are not even necessary. So why is this happening? And I said, I think I have a solution. Most of those kids didn't need to be autistic. There was an exposure to a certain chemical, etc. So if we can be proactive about it, then we can slice his budget. And then nobody has to worry. Another guy raises his hand, the pharma CEO. I have an idea. If we have a button that somebody in a hospital bed can push, and a robot can deliver the medication, then we don't need to wait for the nurse. That's going to save us money. That's the solution they went for. So this was literally a meeting with all these people where we're planning the future of healthcare.

And so when you have it. When you have the three letter agencies that don't display any behavior that showcase that they're working for you, the citizens, and citizens, right? When all of their behavior shows that they're very obviously working for someone else. That is a battle that's hard to deal with and that's why you have what we have. In Canada I'm not gonna be able to buy up supplements next year truly, right? I'll have to smuggle them in or just get my vitamin C when I fly down to see you, right? Like truly that's what's gonna happen. So it's happening here. Why is it that Roundup and what we just talked about is still available when billions of dollars have been paid out. Who are the agencies working for?

Who are they working? If that's the case when it's so obvious in your face that a clinician says that this caused it a judge Says yes, I agree now to pay this person a hundred million dollars. And you can still buy it on a shelf.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Man, this is bringing up for me, you know, just this conversation about Summer and wellness and You know, we've covered a lot of ground. We've talked about so many interesting topics. And I was thinking about My mom was leaving the house and throwing on her sunglasses And grabbing her cigarette case, right? So she had a cigarette case. She kept her money in there little, you know, whatever food stamps and the cigarette case. There was a time when actually as a child, you know, I was in elementary school I could buy her cigarettes for her. She sent me to 7 eleven every day and buy some, you know, Benson Hedges menthol. I remember the damn name. But today a lot of folks are trying to sidestep, in a way their interaction with conventional cigarettes and looking at vaping as a better option, you know. When you're thinking about going outside and getting some grounding in, you might want to bring your vape pen with you, but Kashif's got some information about this.

KASHIF KHAN: So it's the same false sense of security when you have data that is not contextual that is not practical in terms of what's actually going on. When it's extracted elements of what's in this vape each independently studied not compounded put together into what's actually happening in the human body, right? So there finally has now been research and the sad thing is the research exists because people have been doing it for a while. So now we're seeing the outcome. Before it was like study these ingredients in a lab and make sure that it passes because we want to sell this stuff. Now it's like people are sick.

How did they get sick? One, just one study alone found a 19 percent increase in heart failure, random heart failure, kids collapsing, right? 35 percent increase in heart attacks. Out of the blue, with vape users, and again, they compared vape users to not, and after having progressed into many years of this, what's going on with their health? And these are young people, by the way, 25 percent increase in coronary artery disease, so they're having this plaque build up, and they're getting set up for the heart attack. There's also lung disorders to the point of hospitalization and death. There's something called Evali, which affects the lungs.

So we finally have data that's showing us that this thing that was again, siloed and independent, look at each ingredient in the lab, claim to safe when you actually practically apply it is not. And so when you give somebody this false sense of security, it's not only the thing is dangerous, but there's no fear of overdoing it. And when you see someone with a vape, It's not like a cigarette where they smoke, go for their break, and come back. It's constant. It's all the time, because this is safe, and it's so easy to do. And that's another layer to why it's making people so sick, because when you study it, you study in the context of, you're supposed to puff it once every three hours, something along those lines, as opposed to a kid is just on this thing all the time.

All the time. Overdosing to the point where we now have data showing it's leading to the same thing cigarettes lead to, heart disease and lung disease.

SHAWN STEVENSON: You know, just from the surface level, if you look at the act of smoking and it being like the smoke itself is the issue, like why is vaping causing these health concerns?

KASHIF KHAN: So what in the vape? Yeah. So the compounds that are the bait that are considered. So the glycerin sometimes is often used and the other compounds like the flavors, the binders, all of what makes it stable, for example. So when you study the, just like when you study a vaccination and you look at the actual active molecule. That is the drug is considered safe, but then the heavy metals and aluminums and mercury and lead and everything that it takes to make the actual formula and deliver it. It's not safe, but that's not studied, right? So when you add the artificial flavors and you add the compounds that make it deliverable Those are the things that add up and over time Create plaque create heart disease create lung disease. So and they don't get studied that the ingredient, whatever the thing that is meant to replace a cigarette is what's actually studied.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Fascinating and just understanding again how this is affecting kids so much right now. Of course like my mom for example she shared that she started smoking when she was like 12, right? Of course, sneaking around, doing this with her friends, that kind of thing. So kids have been smoking for some time, but with vaping, it's so clearly marketed to kids and having these different flavors and, you know, it's just it's so obvious. And there's been some litigation to try to remove some of these kind of kid friendly flavors of these vapes.

You know, it's so crazy. Like again, these same industries that seduced healthcare and had doctors promoting smoking as totally save something to relax and, you know, help with this. You know, pain relief, whatever the case might be. And then coming out later, actually, this was just completely made up. And we've seen this change happen with things like sugar as well. And now, again, seeing this invasion of vaping that's happening and wondering why so many kids are being seduced by it. It's marketed to children.

KASHIF KHAN: Where I live in Toronto, the guy that brought vaping to Toronto, one of the first pioneers, was Toronto's leading cardiologist. As a safe alternative, this is the future of smoking, man. And he brought it in and he said, everybody should be doing this. And that when you have that face promoting it, the false sense of security once again, and that happened in a lot of places.

SHAWN STEVENSON: All right. I want to close out on a happy note, you know, being that it is summertime. And this is also an opportunity, you know, some of the other things that really come up for me thinking about summer is delicious food. Yeah, delicious food experiences. You know, you just shared that you had an Orange watermelon.

KASHIF KHAN: It was mind blowing man. I didn't know what I was eating, but it was incredible. Yeah.

SHAWN STEVENSON: There's so many different varieties of foods that when we go to a conventional grocery store, we see these very cookie cutter, consistent things, but there's so much to explore. So what are some foods from your perspective that we can look out for or enjoy during the summer months to improve our health?

KASHIF KHAN: So when you really eat real stuff, it is so nutrient dense and powerful and healing, you don't need medication, right? If you're eating clean and you know so much about this, everything's prevented. That's one of our major causes other than EMF with so many other things we could talk about, but food is a big one. So for example, blueberries. The study on anthocyanin, very potent antioxidant that you find in blueberries. In old UK, you know, prior to modern industrialization, eating blueberries until you turn blue used to be the cure for breast cancer. Because of the anthocyanin delivery that killed cancer cells, right? When you're making your smoothie, you know, your summer drinks, your shakes, right? You can add something called spirulina. And if you specifically add blue spirulina, the actual pigment that makes it blue is called phycocyanin and it's used to make chemotherapy.

Literally, because if you take phycocyanin and throw in a petri dish with cancer cells, you die. So that's got synthesized into chemo now. You can literally just add blue spirulina, which is also very neural stimulatory. It's great for your brain. You're going to have crazy vivid dreams at night and you're going to have better neural activity, but it's going to go in your body and look for cancer and kill it. You also, one thing we miss from our food supply is when you think about the ancestral relationship with plants, we had a farm, you would used to harvest the yield, and it was too much for that time. You had to store it somehow, right? Not like we have our industrial farming that's constantly replacing. And so the habit was, ferment it, you know, put it into a pickle, or put some lime on it, rot it, and literally ferment it until it's rotten. And that's what would make it last. So our body still expects that we eat fermented food regularly to populate our gut microbiome. And we don't. So add that simple kimchi, sauerkraut, some kombucha, something fermented, make it a daily habit.

Have your, switch out your alcoholic drink for a bottle of kombucha or kefir, right? Something that was going to give it to you because your gut needs a constant maintenance of its gut microbiome. Beyond that I just was speaking recently about carrots and how they themselves used to be used as cancer treatment, right? The beta carotene, simple things like we, we call them vitamins, vitamin A. They do so much more than the names have been given. So retinol or beta carotene and the work that they do in the body to build linings of your body to support immune function. So even just loading up on grilling a little bit of vegetables with the meat, right?

A carrot, for example. I could go on and on, but if you look at the habits of people that actually get to longevity with good health, it's usually a few things. They're eating foods that provide a lot of minerals. So you're going to find, for example, the Okinawa Japanese, they eat seaweed, which is in the water, drawing all the minerals from the sea and giving it to them. So find a source for minerals. Find whether it's a sea moss, or supplementing with minerals or the spirulina I mentioned earlier combine that with a chlorella you're going to get a great mineral spectrum. If you take all the minerals out of your body there's a puddle of water that's what's left. Every structural component, your bone is not just calcium, it needs 61 minerals to develop.

So you constantly have this need, right? That's one thing you'll find in these populations. The second thing you'll find is the fermented food. Supports their gut, they don't get chronic disease because most chronic disease is tied to poor gut health, right? You'll also find protein. And you'll find protein that's rich in things like omega, like seafood, for example, right? You're also going to find the antioxidants. I mentioned anthocyanin earlier in the blueberries. The Japanese get it from purple sweet potato. That's where they get their anthocyanin from, right? And then you're going to find stuff that if you want to live long and healthy, the thing that fails first is typically the brain.

So you want to fuel and feed the brain, right? You want to give it structural, simple thing. the one compound your brain needs to connect new neural pathways. So every time you're learning a new skill, considering a new concept, you actually need new physical hardware in your brain to actually process and do that. And the thing that connects these neurons is called choline, right? One of the best sources we have for choline is egg yolk. And we throw the yolk in the garbage and eat the white because we're trying to be healthy, right? And if you have industrial egg, I understand, Pasteurized, organic, clean, proper stuff. That egg yolk is so dense in nutrition, you don't need much more food in that day. A couple eggs per day. Again, I can keep going, but those are some big things that people can do.

SHAWN STEVENSON: I love it, man. You just checked off a lot of boxes for us, man. This has been an adventure and so insightful. Where can people follow you to get more information?

KASHIF KHAN: Yeah, instagram is the best way. I have a daily rant where I got to complain about something, you know.

SHAWN STEVENSON: It's so good, too

KASHIF KHAN: So there's also tips and things, you know, food. I just thought remember another one, but yeah, so @Kashkhanofficial so join me there and it's purely education. I just, all of what I learned in our clinical practice, I like to share and show people what's actually making us sick and what's actually making us healthy.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Awesome. And that's with the K.

KASHIF KHAN: With the K, yeah.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Kash with the K. Man, I appreciate you so much again. Thank you for coming to hang out with us.

KASHIF KHAN: Pleasure, man.

SHAWN STEVENSON: I know you're on a really cool trip. You're making some incredible things happen in the world that of course we'll talk about more in the future.

KASHIF KHAN: Sure.

SHAWN STEVENSON: But, you know, this has been fun, man. Thank you.

KASHIF KHAN: Pleasure, man. Great to be here.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Kashif Khan, everybody. Thank you for tuning into this episode today. I hope that you got a lot of value out of this. You already know, share it out with the people that you care about. Sharing is caring. Of course, you can share this on social media. Kashif is doing his thing on Instagram, so definitely tag him. And tag me as well. Take a screenshot of the episode. I'm @ShawnModel on Instagram. Share the love. We'd love love. And I know he would for sure love to see that you're sharing and that you enjoyed this episode. And listen, we've got so much more in store for you.

Some incredible masterclasses. Some amazing guests. So make sure to stay tuned, take care, have an amazing day. And I'll talk with you soon. 

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