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The proverbial expression, “you are what you eat” is one of the wisest and most profound health insights. The food that you eat literally creates the cells in your body, including your blood, your brain, and your skin. And at a time in history when we are surrounded by hyper-palatable ultra-processed foods, going back to the basics of human nutrition is critical for our overall health and longevity. No matter what your diet philosophy is, there are some main tenets you can incorporate to build a stronger body and brain. 

On this episode, you’re going to learn some key insights on how your diet affects a multitude of functions in your body, including your metabolism and weight, cognition and memory, and so much more. You’re going to hear some of the studies that I referenced in my newest book, Eat Smarter, plus applicable takeaways you can use to create a well-rounded, health affirmative diet. This episode is my interview on Empire Podcast with Bedros Keuilian. 

We’re diving into specifics like fine-tuning your hydration levels, the science on omega-3 fatty acids, and why magnesium is essential for human health. I’m also sharing the framework behind Eat Smarter, and why it is intended to serve as a unifier for all. I hope you enjoy my interview from the Empire Podcast!

In this episode you’ll discover:

  • The science behind brain coupling. 
  • Why you should consider the types of people you surround yourself with.
  • How our bodies are literally made from the food we eat. 
  • Why your diet impacts so much more than your weight. 
  • What epigenetic controllers are and why they matter. 
  • The definition of epicaloric control. 
  • How side effects from pharmaceutical drugs can lead to more health problems.
  • Why your microbes can dictate your weight. 
  • How the function of the metabolism can change when we eat processed food.
  • Why the human brain is hardwired to look for problems.  
  • The impacts dehydration can have on your cognition. 
  • A rough estimate of how much water you should be drinking. 
  • The role that electrolytes play in human health. 
  • What the number one mineral deficiency in our country is. 
  • The link between omega 3 consumption and memory. 
  • What neuronutrition is.
  • The effects of DHA and EPA on brain health.
  • Why basic foundational health principles are more important than following a diet. 

themodelhealthshow-foursigmatic

Thank you so much for checking out this episode of The Model Health Show. If you haven’t done so already, please take a minute and leave a quick rating and review of the show on Apple Podcast by clicking on the link below. It will help us to keep delivering life-changing information for you every week!

Transcript:

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. Researchers at Princeton University have uncovered that the human brain literally syncs up with other brains when we're in conversation with other people.

 

The researchers used fMRIs to look at the brain in real time to see what happens when human brains are interacting. The lead scientists in these experiments noted that communication between people is really, "a single act performed by two brains". And he called this phenomenon brain coupling, alright?

 

So, just to set the tone here, when we're interacting with other people... If we have even a basic level of rapport, our brains start to sync up. We don't see it happening, but they start to mirror each other. Not necessarily copying each other, but more so the researchers denoted it as being a dance where they're complementing each other in the way that the brains are moving... The activity of our respective brains. Really, really fascinating stuff.

 

And with that, in other experiments coming out of Princeton University... And this was just published at the end of 2019, they found that specifically when humans are engaged in play, our brains sync up even more notably. The scientists suggests that we might quite literally, "be on the same wavelength with other people when we're engaged in play."

 

And this is a non-verbal syncing up that we're not seeing, right? When we are engaged in communication. So, we've got verbal interactions and non-verbal interactions and seeing human's brain sync up. There's this term... There's this statement that's swirled around in personal development for many years. And it's essentially the tenet that you are the average of the five closest people in your life. You are the average of the five people that you are around most often. Alright, so is this just a personal development tenet... You know, some kind of like, cute quote or is there real substance to this? And you already know the answer.

 

The people that we are around have a huge impact on every single area of our lives. Our health outcomes are going to be dramatically influenced by the people around us. The decisions that we're making or not making for our health is going to be influenced by the people that we're around. Our choices for our vocation and the quality of work that we're doing, or the lack thereof... Obviously, the happiness that we experience in our relationship or the lack thereof. All of these things, and so much more are going to be influenced by the people that we're around.

 

And I'm bringing this up because right now, more than ever, human connection is vital. We've traversed, we've made this transition from being a highly connected society who really developed in tribes and communities of people to being very separate. We might have our little personal home tribe, our little nuclear family, but even that isolation has grown so much because people can still be under the same roof, at the same table and be on four different devices if it's four people and they are leaving reality. They're going into another dimension and traversing the realm of the internet connecting with other people.

 

So, it's this very interesting thing that's taking place. And at the same time, these devices that we have access to, can connect us with others. Absolutely. But that real-world connection is one of the things that simply cannot be replicated. Because specifically of what's happening with entrainment, with this coupling of our brains when we're connecting with other people.

 

And one of the great gifts that I had the chance to engage with over the last two years was having the opportunity with a book coming out... With Eat Smarter coming out, and all of the incredible things that took place with the launch of the book. I got to go and hang out with me and my friends I hadn't seen in a while. And some people that I also regularly talk to, but actually to be there in the studio with them face-to-face and... As you know, last week we had an epic episode that came out featuring the amazing Ed Mylett.

 

Alright. Now, the crazy thing is, there is an individual who linked Ed and I up and also, I've connected Ed with so many people as well. I've connected this individual with so many people as well, and we don't think about it. We're not trying to get something, we're just always looking at how can I serve, how can I connect this good person with another good person. And so, he got Ed and I linked up, and the person I'm talking about is Bedros Keuilian. And he's the CEO of Fit Body Bootcamp, and they've got like... They've got hundreds of gyms across the country. And he's somebody... His story, just a little snapshot.

 

He came here with his family. They came here as immigrants, and they literally had to escape kind of a war time environment in the country that they were coming from. And spent many months and even years being confined kind of in like in one room... Not just a one bedroom, but a one-room space... And him trying to go to school and all the things. And he made... He persevered through that, but then he ended up being homeless and sleeping in his car all the while trying to be a personal trainer and work in the fitness industry.

 

And for that story to evolve to the place where he is a CEO of all of these incredible gyms and companies. And he has his heart that is as big as the room. And he's somebody that whenever I do my gratitude practice, I give thanks for Bedros. And being that he's somebody who elevates me, and whenever I'm with him... I definitely see our brains syncing up and amazing things come from our conversations.

 

I want to give you a special connection today to join us in this really amazing experience where he interviewed me and we dive into subject matter ranging from improving our cognition, to optimizing our metabolism and looking at some of the real hardcore provable metrics when it comes to shifting what's happening with our metabolism. And also digging in on some of the topics from the last two years that have taken place, as far as our health outcomes and association with this virus that kind of swept in and took over the headlines and our lives. This interview took place during a time when we were smack in the middle of a lot of debate and a lot of the unfolding process in regard to our reaction, our societal reaction to COVID-19.

 

And so many things that were said during this interview have rung true. And some of the things that we're seeing played out still even today. So, I'm really, really excited about sharing this. And it's just such a wonderful gift because coming from where I'm from, my opportunity to connect with amazing people, and people who lift me up, people who hold me accountable, people who inspire me to be better is just such a gift. And it's something that we can all tune into. We can flip this switch in our minds and in our hearts and make that the mandate. Growing up, I had essentially... There are four heroes that really jump out in my mind. My first hero was my uncle Leroy. And when I was a kid, he was in the military. He was very stoic. He was very cool. And he was just like the person... He was a hero to me.

 

He was somebody that I aspired to be like. And then from there... Of course, there's the modality through the television and radio and all those things and those exposures, but being that I'm from St. Louis, there was an icon in the city named Ozzie Smith, AKA the Wizard of Oz. Multi, multi, multi gold glove winning shortstop. And he inspired me so much. He was like a hero. And the amazing part about this life is that... Cut to just a few years ago, I'm working out at my gym and there's, you know who... Ozzie Smith. And we created a friendship and a kinship. And I actually had him here on The Model Health Show, one of our classic episodes, which we'll put for you in the show notes.

 

So, for things that come full circle... For my heroes to be a part of my life... And also, just through that entertainment lens, right? Like the Michael Jackson's, the Ralph Tresvant, those kind of vibes... Those were my heroes as well just being a kid who loved music. But also, being in a neighborhood that I was from in the inner city where you've got gangs on different blocks. You've got drug dealers. And being in that environment and seeing when you don't have much... When you don't have next to anything and then you see folks who have a cool car, cool clothes, and shoes, and swag, and just personality and a smile on their face, amidst all of this craziness. You can't help, but to see them as somebody you might want to aspire to be like. It's very difficult to try to ignore that to turn off when you see somebody who is seemingly making a way out of the struggle that we are all experiencing.

 

And so those folks became my heroes. Now, I don't say... I'm not proud of this, but this is reality. And this doesn't take away from the fact that they might even have so much goodness within them, but being a product of our environment, we just continue to pass on the baton of exposure to those around us. And so having that kind of amalgam compilation of experiences and connections and imbuing it all together, one of the things that ultimately changed my life was realizing that I get to choose who I'm being influenced by. I don't have to just be at the mercy of my environment. I get to choose who I'm allowing to influence me. The voices that I'm listening to. The conversations that I'm in. We have so much more power to dictate those things than we realize, and this is why I started this show off at the very top... Talking about how our brains literally sync up with the people that we're connecting with.

 

And that's what it's really all about. So really, really excited to share this with you. And during the episode... Later on in the episode, Bedros shared this with me, and I had no idea... I had no idea... Just because of a conversation we had years ago. He mentioned to me that his mother was experiencing some early onset symptoms of some degenerative brain issues. And I was like, "listen, do this, do this... You should... Here's a couple of studies. Try this out." And one of those things was lion's mane medicinal mushroom because we got research from the University of Malaya... And the researchers were uncovering and really digging in on how lion's mane has been found to help to stimulate neurogenesis, the creation of new brain cells. They're utilizing it in studies for helping to heal damage from traumatic brain injuries, because it's so potent at regenerating brain tissue and stimulating neurogenesis. And also, really remarkable facets with it being a stress modulator, and the list goes on and on and on.

 

But the thing is, we've got centuries of documented use of this incredible medicinal mushroom. And so, I recommended that for him, he implemented it, she got better. She got better. And also seeing that decline that takes place over time, really working to slow that process down and even put the brakes on it in some capacities. And he shared that during the episode, but lion's mane is something I literally had today imbued with organic coffee from Four Sigmatic.

 

When you hear these things, get it from the best place. Four Sigmatic is the originator of these infusions with organic medicinal mushrooms and organic coffee. And they've got the coffee grounds. They've got the whole bean; they've got little travel packets. And so, I had the lion's mane medicinal mushroom infused coffee with chaga this morning. And I made a cut for my wife as well. Highly recommend you check them out. Go to foursigmatic.com/model, that's F-O-U-R-S-I-G-M-A-T-I-C.com/model. You get 10% off all of their incredible medicinal mushrooms, elixirs, coffees, and cocoas and much more. And on that note, let's get to the Apple Podcast review of the week.

 

ITUNES REVIEW: Another five-star review titled "Awesome vibe and great show" by Skivie7 "Happy anniversary. I believe I've listened the entire time. Love your energy and eagerness to share your knowledge of health and wellness. Much love."

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Much love to you as well. Thank you so much for making me a part of your life. And listen, we just crossed the nine-year anniversary of The Model Health Show... Very, very proud of that. And we're just getting started. Just getting warmed up. And now we're going to kick into an incredible experience that I had... An interview with my good friend Bedros Keuilian, interviewing me for his amazing show, which you got to check out, The Empire Podcast.

 

And Bedros is a bestselling author, and again, the CEO of Fit Body Boot Camp. Just a really amazing human being who's done nothing but contributed to my life. He's always finding a way that he could support me, to help me and the same thing. I've done the same for him... Whether it's speaking at one of his events or just being able to contribute and support the work that he's doing, and his bestselling book, Man Up. So again, just incredible vibes, love syncing up, having that brain sinkage take place with amazing human beings. You're going to learn a lot. So, let's dive into this conversation that I had with the amazing Bedros Keuilian on "The Empire Podcast". Check it out.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Hey, my name is Bedros Keuilian and welcome to another Empire Show. And this guy flipping through his own book is Mr. Shawn Stevenson, the author of the new book Eat Smarter. And of course, the New York Times best-selling author of Sleep Smarter. Welcome to the show, bro.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Awesome. Good to be back, man.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Alright, guys and gals this is another inside look, and unlike other inside looks, Shawn is a close friend and... He has actually introduced me to a couple of cool things in St. Louis, which we'll get into in a moment... Where the food is concerned. But this book, "Eat Smarter" for entrepreneurs is something that every single one of you should get. And before you go get it, what I want to do is prove to you why you need to go get it. Just like I did with his first book, "Sleep Smarter". Because I look at us entrepreneurs as athletes, and I believe we have to always stay at our height of our peak performance. And for that to happen, obviously the amount of water, the amount of food, the amount of sleep, our social environment, all those things matter... And us making money, and impact and meaning, and significance. So, with that said... Dude you went from writing a book about sleeping to writing a book about eating.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: That's right, yeah.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Why?

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: So, I'm a nutritionist, first of all... The sleep expertise came out of necessity, really. I had folks coming into my clinical practice all the time, day after day after day... And we might get the very best nutrition protocol done, the very best exercise protocol, but I found that if folks weren't sleeping adequately, they weren't getting the results everybody else was getting. So, it was just a big gap in the market. And now it's just exploded. So that was back in 2013. Now there has been all of these waves of books... I just did a talk for Tom Brady's company, and they've got sleep wellness coaches now. And they're using my language that I've embedded in the culture, and they don't even know me. They've never heard of me, some of them.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: First of all, is that a weird feeling?

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: It's super weird. It is super weird. But that's the nature of any great idea, it's going to spread.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: It gains traction.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: It's viral... It's a meme. It has this viral capacity. But this is really my... I feel like I was born to write this book because, as I'm looking at you, I'm seeing the food that you've eaten. It's that powerful. It makes everything about us, from our eyes to the brain cells... The dendrites, our axon terminals that allow us to have thoughts and feelings and emotions. It's all made from food. Our heart, it’s made from food.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: I like your examples.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: The tiny... People hearing... The tiny bones in our ears that are vibrating and sending those electrical signals, it's made from food. Everything is made from food. And so, this is one of the most powerful dynamic entities in our universe. And we get to choose what we make ourselves out of. And now what I really want to bring forth in Eat Smarter... Because in our culture, and you know this most folks when they think about diet and nutrition, automatically folks relate it to weight, in our culture. But food is so much more than that. I already just mentioned the impact that it can have on your cognitive performance. Food literally determines how your memory functions, period. And we'll talk about that today.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Which actually when... This was two and a half years ago; my mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease... I reached out to you, and you were like, "Dude, get her off of gluten." We got her on the Four Sigmatic mushrooms.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah, Lion's Mane, yeah.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Mm-hmm... The Lion's Mane. And anyway, so much of it has helped... And it's food that controls every element. A combination of, between food and sleep and hydration... I believe like 98% of your ailments could be solved, as someone who's experienced it myself.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: That's it. These are called epigenetic controllers. So, these are above genetic control. These are things that are determining what your genes are actually doing. They're kind of copies that are getting printed out of you are determined by your environment and also the environment you create in yourself. And also, even your thoughts have a big influence on your genetic out picturing. Because... And that might sound a little bit "woo-woo", but every thought you have has correlating chemistry. By the way, all of it's made from food. But you can have a stressful angry thought and it's going to create chemistry in your body that makes that everything kind of correspond.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Sure.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And we don't realize in our culture oftentimes that we have the ability to choose how we want to think. Most of the time, our thoughts are fed to us, and a big part of this is also being able to take your power back because the ability to manage that indoctrination is to feel good, it's so much easier to choose how you want to think. To choose what you want to do in your life when you feel good, not that you can't, when you feel like sh*t just harder and the same thing and some of the data in "Eat Smarter", and my favorite sect... Well, it's hard to say my favorite section, but talking about how food affects our ability to connect with other people, and the data is just going to knock people's socks off. Even our proclivity towards violence is heavily influenced by our nutritional status. If we're deficient in certain things, our brain just doesn't work right, and we're going to have a bigger issue and being able to perspective take, to have patients to have empathy.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Oh, dude. We needed all of those things, patients, empathy and perspective, in this previous year, so here we are in 2021, we're January of 2021, ladies and gentlemen, and...

 

We saw what a sh*tshow of a year 2020 was, and we lacked compassion. We lacked empathy. We lacked understanding. We lacked kindness. We lacked perspective. And you're absolutely right. I mean, this is... Couldn't be more timely, but... Dude, being the smarty-pants that you are, I'm going to reel you back for a moment. I'm going to reel you back. And you said "epigenetics", meaning these are the way you eat, the thoughts that we have that we can control are beyond our genetics, right? Like someone might say, for example, "Hey, heart disease runs in my family, where's the genetic component?" These are beyond... Is that what epigenetics mean?

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Absolutely, and so, even in this, in the creation of this book, I consult with the very best people in the field. So, the person who pressed epigenetics, that term into culture is Dr. Bruce Lipton. And so, I just had a conversation with him the other day. This is the top science; everything else is below that. And a lot of our medical system is still largely based on Newtonian science, which is just these kind of "This thing causes this thing, and we're basically a victim to the cards that we're dealt." But the truth is, less than 1% of our diseases actually come from a true genetic defect.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: That's what I was going to ask you is "what percentage?", so less than 1%.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Less than 1%, yeah.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Yet what do we do as humans is we go "Oh my God, I guess I'm predisposed to being fat, unhealthy, negative, victim-minded." Really, we succumb to the idea that almost 99% of it is just a by-product of genetics or outside influence, and I don't have much control.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: We could talk about that specific gene; I've talked about it a little bit in the book, the FTO gene, which is an obesity-related gene. And the large number of people who never actually become obese, but yet have that gene; it's just not getting activated, in a sense. But one of the other big issues, and this goes hand-in-hand with epigenetics, and I think everybody should know this, is this new term I'm impressing upon culture called epicaloric control, alright? Epicaloric.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Explain that.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: So, when I was in college, in my nutritional science class, I was taught the very first day that if you can manage calories, you can manage your body composition. If you can manage calories, you can manage your health.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Which they say, "calories in, calories out".

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And so, my teacher was borderline obese, alright? He's a smart guy! But he was doing the thing he was teaching. He wasn't just like running out and, you know, just beer bonging, I don't know...

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Sure.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Freaking Skittles...

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Milkshakes, yeah.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: That was a food pyramid time. He was just like, "I just need more fiber. I need more brown stuff," you know? And he was doing the thing to his detriment. And this is one of the big issues with... There are so many wonderful diet frameworks, and I know all the guides; we know all the guides. But each of them can be limiting, because they might eliminate a food that your ancestors have been eating for centuries that might be feeding a specific strain of bacteria that's protecting you from autoimmunity, alright? Or it's adding in something that's not right for you. And you're supposed to eat, you know, five avocados a day, but it's giving you hemorrhoids or something. You know what I mean? So, what it really boils down to is our metabolic uniqueness, and so epicaloric control, there are seven factors; I'll share two with you really quickly. One of them, and this is one of the most interesting things in Eat Smarter is, this is published in the journal Cell. They found a specific strain of bacteria that actually block your intestines from absorbing as many calories from your food, alright? Now here's the thing. When allopathic medicine hears that, it's just like "We need to bottle up whatever bacteria that is and sell it... "

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Sell it.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: So, people can continue eating and it'll stop them from absorbing as many calories.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: So, explain this for dumb people like me. Allopathic medicine is what, like the pharmaceutical companies?

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah, yeah, like conventional medicine...

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Got it.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Our conventional system of medicine.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Got it.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Which is like a drug... You know, pharmaceutical model, right?

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Yes.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: "We find this thing, let's make a drug out of it." And the problem with the system is that it sees humans in parts. This is why we have side effects, but they're really direct effects. We're trying to treat something for, you know... We give you a statin, trying to manipulate cholesterol in your body. Now we find out 30% increased incidents of diabetes when you get on a statin, alright? Because the human body doesn't operate in a vacuum, right? And so, when they come out and they get a... They give you the bacteria strain that blocks your intestines from absorbing as many calories, that might also block your microbes from being able to produce B-12 for you.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Sure.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Or to protect your gastrointestinal tract because they're making these little SCFAs, these short-chain fatty acids to protect your gut. So, here's the other side of this. So, they find these bacteria. And in my clinical practice, I could literally send out and have somebody get a stool sample done, and I'll never even see the person. They could send the report back, and I can tell, based on the make-up of their microbes, whether or not they're obese, with about 80% to 90% accuracy.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: That's scary, dude.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: So now, what we know today, and this is, again, above caloric control, there's a certain microbe-makeup in our gut that's associated with insulin resistance, obesity... And here's what was cool; so, they took... They found the strain in mice, right? But you know, we're human, so, what they did was, they took fecal samples from humans who had this microbe makeup associated with obesity, and they implanted it into mice, lean mice. And then they took a healthy human microbiome sample and implanted it into lean mice. Those lean mice stayed lean. The mice who received the fecal sample from humans who have the gut microbiome associated with obesity, these mice became insulin resistant. They gained weight and gained body fat simply by changing their microbes. So, this isn't talked about when people... You know, well-meaning doctors are saying "Just cut your calories." This is not addressing the real issue. Your microbes are determining whether or not you're absorbing calories and your rate of expenditure. And that's the second part, so I'll share this with you. This one's going to be pretty simple for folks to understand. So, this was published in the Journal of Food and Nutrition Research. And...

 

And this is something we've been talking about for many years but now we've got the data. They want to find out what would happen for your rate of calorie burn when you eat a meal of processed foods versus a meal of whole Foods, even if the meals are the same amount of calories. And so, they had some folks to eat a whole foods sandwich. They deemed this to be whole foods, it was whole grain bread and cheddar cheese. That was one group of test subjects. They had another group to consume a meal of processed foods, processed food sandwich. This was white bread and cheese product. And if you like, this cheese product, that's Kraft. They can't legally call it cheese because there's not enough cheese in the cheese, it's Krafts in it. They have folks consume... They're the same amount of calories, the same amount of fats, proteins and carbohydrates. But here's what happened, the folks who ate the processed foods sandwich had a 50% reduction in calorie burn after eating that sandwich versus the folks with the whole food sandwich.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Holy smokes.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: What this processed food did was create what I call these hormonal clogs. It changed the way the metabolism was working, making their body more stingy and retaining that energy and holding on to it. It was gumming up the system, it was creating some kind of a hormonal clog, as I mentioned, but some kind of chaos, hormonal chaos.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: And is that a reaction to the fillers and the processing chemicals they put in, I guess, fake food? Processed food?

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: That's the key. It's fake, it's not even real food.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: But is the body reacting to it? Why by 50%, there's a reduction of 50% calories burned?

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: This goes back to this epigenetic term; our genes expect us to do certain things, we've evolved hundreds of thousands of years in this current state, to eat real foods, to eat things that come somewhat close to nature. We can cook, and cooking has created a massive... A quantum leap in the development of the human brain. But when we start to get away from that, this is why even all that's happening in the world today, as soon as any mandate start happening that change what our genes expect us to do, I get a red flag that goes up. I know I have a cognitive bias; I have a bias towards what does our DNA expect from us? What are the things that we know to be true that humans need? We need sunlight, we need fresh air, we need community, we need real food. All of these things create our overall picture of health, potential health with our genes. When we take away community, when we take away exposure to sunlight, when we take away the ability to have movement practices, all of these things start to degrade our health rapidly. And one of the things that's not been talked about, and this is in New York City, this is ground zero for so much trauma that's taken place. There's about a 300% increase in deaths from diabetes and heart disease that nobody's talking about. Nobody said a thing about it. And we now, since the beginning of this thing as a culture, we are far sicker, far more susceptible.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: When you say, "This thing," are you talking about this COVID virus?

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: March of 2020, am I hearing you say that there was a 300% increase just in New York City?

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. In the proceeding months, right after that, deaths related to diabetes and heart disease, specifically.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Yet no one is talking about it. The facts are out there, 'cause the numbers are out there, but no one's talking about it.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah, and so, again, why would we see such big spikes in these other conditions? It's because we're moving away from the things that make us human, and also one of the things that I specifically talked about with Dr. Lipton, again, renowned cell biologist, epigenetics is in our lexicon because of him. He shared with me the biology of fear, and I mentioned how every thought has correlating chemistry. We're just 24/7 fear, we're just tapped into it. And one of the studies I actually just shared with the group today, and how we get addicted to fear, and addicted to stress, and we go looking for it, we go on to the social media, looking for the thing that makes us feel something, feel fear, feel like we've got a common enemy. And so, we really have to... Again, to take back control of our minds, we have to get our citizens healthier. Again, it's not that it's impossible, it's just harder. If you don't feel well to control your own mind.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Right, and I know this isn't nutrition-related, but I respect you so much and having known you for so many years now, I'm asking for your opinion. I've realized this isn't science. Why do you think it is that people have gotten so addicted to fear in this time, because I know I can put myself in check? Like everyone else, I'm a human, I run a big fitness franchise, and all of a sudden, my gyms across the world are being asked to shut down or have, depending on the state they're in, have limited capacity or zero capacity. Open, okay, now you're closed. And so, I definitely get caught up in the fear cycle, but I also have almost a self-check mechanism where I go, "Hey, dude, alright, now you're venturing in this place where you're going down the rabbit hole, and this seems like it's going to be bad for me and I know how to back off." What is missing? What is going on with the people who don't have that? Did they go down that rabbit hole and they go into this darkness of depression, and they stay inside and the fearmongering, etcetera...

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. That's such a great question. First and foremost, you have to understand our... The evolution of the human brain itself. We are a little bit hard-wired, not a little bit, quite a bit hard-wired to look for problems. We have to stay on guard for things that threaten our life.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: That's a survival mechanism.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah, sure, but we've evolved this highly complex prefrontal cortex that enables us to have executive decision-making, to distinguish between right and wrong, for social control, things that we can deceive like, "Okay, is this threat a real threat, is this actually going to hurt me?" And 9 times out of 10 in our culture, it's framing. It's not actually a threat, there is something that's going to hurt you.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Framing, explain that. That's beautiful, beautiful. I love your mind. Framing.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And I just shared this with a group today as well. Our system of media, it's got decades of data to find out what is the thing that's going to keep you glued to the station the longest, what can we do. And the number one driver that they use as psychological trigger is fear that's the thing that really connects you to the newscast, something that makes you feel like your safety is being threatened, and also to have an enemy that you need to be on guard for, and if you watch a newscast, you will repeatedly see them framing things, there's something you need to... Your safety is threatened, and there's an enemy, all right.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: That you need to watch out for.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Then they just do that over and over and over again. And so, it's the framing, even if the threat isn't imminent, it's still going to be something that's... Because it keeps you tapped in, they're not going to give you the good news report. My wife's just driving over, I was like, "Babe can you check the numbers, what is it?" 90 million confirmed cases.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: 90 million confirmed cases of COVID.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: 90 million confirmed cases of COVID. If you get any epidemiologist... And again, I'll just bring on a top epidemiologist, just to have a conversation, any epidemiologist worth their salt, will tell you when we have a confirmed amount of cases, at minimum, there's 10 to 15 times more of those cases in the population, so that takes us up over a billion. Over a billion, this is no longer a pandemic, this is endemic, this is something that's just built into our culture, but you don't hear about the 99.9% of people, 'cause once we do that, these are simple math that you do, who are okay, all you hear about is the threat. Not to say that the threat isn't real, not to say that, but what about the people who are okay, how did they survive.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Sure.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: How did 900 million people, would you say at the low end.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Well, what do we have, 7billion people on this planet.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yes sir.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Right, and so that's like one out of seven.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Will have it.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: It's crazy.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Yeah. And most 99.6 or 99.9% will be just fine, their own immune system that's designed to build anti-bodies and cure them, what...

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: We're not talking about it at all. And again, this is not to say that there isn't a threat.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: 'Cause that doesn't trigger fear.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yes, we don't have the good news report, "Hey, we have all of these cases, these cases without context."

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Yeah.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: All you seeing is cases go up, but as the cases go up, that just pushes mortality rate down lower and lower, but it doesn't matter because the framing of fear is already there. So, again, if we can put it in context, what is the most important thing for us to do, what is the number one susceptibility to this virus and all viruses? Being healthy.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Healthy.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Being a healthy, resilient human being, but the media will frame it up "Perfectly healthy people are dying too" I said this in the very beginning, 'cause I went and looked at the data in Italy, and I was like, "Oh, we're in trouble" Because they saw the rate of chronic diseases and how that skyrockets your susceptibility. Sure enough, I'm not saying I'm master Davis, but the data was right there, the CDC published their study in September, and anybody can go and look this up, compile all the data and look at all the deaths here in the United States. 94% of the folks, the souls that we lost in relationship to COVID whether you agree with the tracking of the deaths, 94% of them had an average of 2.6 pre-existing chronic diseases, 94% of them.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: So am I hearing you say that even when they say even healthy people are dying, you may look healthy.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: That's the 6% of the 94%.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Gotcha.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And they're just like f*ck those 94%, the media is going to frame the college student who is 19.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Yeah.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Who's pro... Again.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Yeah.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: The... You and I, we could be as healthy as we want to be, but if we get stressed, we start... We're taking a bunch of flights we're not sleeping well, we're not getting the nutrition, maybe we're just eating the airplane food all the time, whatever, I've got data and we can talk about some of the things, your immune system will be suppressed. We carry around with us. We have trillions... Both of us, everybody here in this room, we have over 400 trillion viruses in and on our bodies right now, this is normal all the time, many of them are opportunistic or pathogenic, they can make us sick or kill us. And it happens when our immune system is suppressed. Very simple.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: I'm going to make an observation. One, I understand why you're so frustrated, like you understand so much and I don't know if you remember this, you stood right there a few years ago, and I was... We were talking, idea on the show for Sleep Smarter, and I was like, "Oh, well f*ck it I've got you here, I'm wondering like how can I optimize my health? 'cause if it's going to help me with my health, it's going to help my audience, right?" And one of the key things you said... I was like, "Dude how much water do I need to drink?" And you were like "30 ounces of water first thing in the morning" I think I was drinking like 15 at the time, whatever this is 16.9 this arrowhead. Dude no joke, every single day, even when I'm traveling in hotels, I just have 30 ounces of water, that I just chug up and drink because I'm like, "Well, Shawn is so neurotic about getting the facts and the information, and not just kind of social media knowledge, but actual scientific knowledge"

 

And so, I imagine, knowing what you know not just a headline that the rest of us see on news media or social media.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Your frustration level is high.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah, yeah.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: And I see that passion come out like when you made the face mask, I guess it was a...

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Documentary.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: A documentary is what it was, it was like a 40 somewhat minute.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah, yeah.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Or it seemed like, documentary. What is your take? What is... And I'm not asking you to be political or you can be political, but I'm not like... Why is this happening? Why didn't they use a virus two years ago, three years ago, four years ago? Why this, why right now? What have you heard from the people that you're connected to?

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Okay. First thing, you brought up the mass documentary, just in case anybody's curious, I went in and looked at the data early on, but I'm looking at randomized controlled trials, so real world. Like what happens in the real world, many of the statistics people see, they see the cool photography, but what they're missing out on, these are projective models, those are theoretical models of how viruses might operate. What happens in the real world? So I went and looked at the randomized controlled trials and every one of them, every single one, people can go look one up from the BMJ, and it concluded, masks are not effective, cloth masks specifically, with 13 time... Folks who were cloth masked versus surgical mass had 13 times higher rate of infection, just right there, we should at least be like, "Well, maybe we don't want to wear a cloth mask." But that's missed on people because it doesn't fit with the narrative.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: I'm curious to know why people who wear cloth mask are tired.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: So, what the researchers found... And then again anybody can go look this up or they can go to the modelhealthshow.com/maskfacts, and I've got all the studies there for you, you could just geek out, but I also framed them so you can understand them a little bit better. And so, what the researchers concluded in the study was that the... It creates basically, especially with the cloth masks, a wet micro-climate. As time goes on, the more this is happening, just even within a few minutes, but especially folks that are wearing it for hours a day, is creating a vector of just nastiness. It's like a climate inside of your mask. And so, it creates a lower resistance for virus particles to travel in and out of the mask, is what the researchers concluded. And so, they advised against wearing cloth mask specifically, but even still... And by the way, so in the study they found that there was a 97% penetration by virus particles through cloth mask, and it was 44% for surgical mask, which is not good...

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Yeah, that's totally not good. Yeah.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: If you're 44% penetrated, it still counts, Bedros. You know what I mean?

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Yeah, yeah. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to know that, yeah.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And then what these pictures negate when you see the cool photography, was clearly the mask stops the... If you could actually see the amount of viruses in a room, you couldn't see anything else but that. We're in it, we're absolutely immersed and inundated with viruses. And so, what I was pointing to was not to say... I wanted them to be effective, I've looked at the data trying to find what is the best method to go about. That's why I was looking into it.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Yeah.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: I want to make sure we do this in a way that's advantageous and not venture into the ridiculous. Because I saw my neighbor, late 20s, early 30s, because of he's tuning into the... This was a 108-day, 108-degree day, he came outside, full on gas mask, arms covered, long sleeve shirt, long pants, gloves on, just to walk from his door to his car. So, I want to make sure we don't venture to the ridiculous, but still find a way that it's effective now. Here's where we're at today, and again, people can go and look this up. But most folks will miss this because it's not front-page news.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Sure.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: The CDC did a randomized controlled study to find out, and this was just a couple of months ago, the effectiveness of masks in the real world. How did it actually pan out? With COVID cases, so even when, as I mention the BMJ, that was with different viruses. So, then people were like, "Well, COVID's different." Now we got data. So, they compiled factual, proven cases of COVID, they just took a random group of people who had confirmed cases of COVID. And what they discovered, and there's a chart that has all these numbers, and I was just like... I couldn't believe how obvious it was. But what they found was that when you would see this and with the media frame... Let me preface this before I share the result...

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Sure.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: The media frames it like all of these cases are being driven by folks who are just out here, raw dogging the air and super spreader events and all these things...

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Right, right.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: If everybody would just where a mask this would go away. In reality, once they compiled the data, they took a random... Just a random selection of a few hundred folks with confirmed cases of COVID, and they found that 70% of them were people who always wore their mask. They always wore their mask and yet they still contracted COVID. And then people... The thing might come up, where it's not about you, it's about protecting other people.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Yes. That was a great propaganda, by the way, because then you feel like an *sshole, and you're made to feel like an *sshole by society.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And that's the same concept of, again, I'm wearing this perforated holy condom that is definitely going to protect you, but it doesn't protect me. You're safe. And it's just not based on reality, but okay, to continue on this...

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: But there's no greater level of safe-ness or safety for them, right?

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: These folks were around... Okay, 70% of them always wore their mask, another 15% often to always wore their mask, and that was 85% of people tested. The folks who never wore mask, 3% of the people who had a confirmed case of COVID. Now, here's the biggest... This is what's different from somebody like me that has 20 years of experience and looking at this stuff and just looking for, what are the real-world applications? The randomized controlled trial, it wasn't people who got COVID and people who didn't, this was people who got COVID, and people who got other... The researchers came into it with their own cognitive bias, they were trying to find out why people wearing a mask still were getting COVID infections, that was their mission because they believe it works. So, they're trying to mansplain a way that it works. And so, what they found was that folks who contracted COVID were more likely to go out to eat, so they took their mask off to eat, and that's when COVID is going to manipulate you. So that's when...

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Jumps right in when you take that mask off.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: But here in the other group, who had confirmed viral... Some type of viral or bacterial infection, they were symptomatic carriers or something. They just didn't test positive for COVID, 74% of them always wore their mask, and they didn't go out to eat as often. This was totally negated in the study. 74% of them always wore their mask, and then coupled with folks who often always... Same thing, almost 90%. And just 2-3% percent of folks never wore masks, contracted these viruses. We should just talk about this stuff 'cause the data exist, I'm not trying... I don't want to be controversial; I just want to get everybody healthy.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Yeah.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: You know what I mean? But if the thing doesn't work... This is what the media has framed it, our health policies, our... The task force has framed it as just this preventative metric. If you use this piece of fabric, it's going to stop the spread. The thing that will stop the spread or stop sickness from it is getting our citizens healthier. But not once have you seen a major media, not once have you seen a task force member talk about the number one susceptibility, 94% of the people who died, 2.6 pre-existing chronic diseases. In the beginning, Bedros, when I would share this data, there were a couple of ssholes, they're just like, "So you're right, Shawn, but unfortunately, we can't get people healthy overnight." It's been almost a…

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Yeah.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Not one person has said anything about it, because they never say anything about it. They never cared about it. That's not how the system is made. It's based on a pharmaceutical model, that we're going to try drug our way out of something, but it never works. Right now, here in America, every year, Bedros, every disease gets worse and worse. Heart disease keeps going up, diabetes, obesity, Alzheimer's, here in the United States, 200 million people are overweight obese. Right now.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: It's a business, right? I mean, it's a business. Let's just... The reality is, it's a business. And at some point, you can justify your way out of it by saying, "Well look, people have a choice to get fat, they can choose to be lean, they just need to do the research." But the average person doesn't go out there and do the research. Then if you are... In the news media, there used to be a time the news media would share facts and not opinions and not misinformation, but at some point, if the lobbyists control the politicians and the politicians are putting out information that is designed to stimulate fear to sell more of the stuff that the lobbyist sell, it might be the pharmaceutical company, it might be the mask companies, it might be whoever, and of course, the mouth piece of all of that is the mainstream news media, like in that way, the business makes sense, 'cause I'm a marketer, I understand like...

 

First, I'm going to drive leads and I'm going to put you on a funnel that indoctrinates you and gets you to feel a certain way that you're not making enough money and that your profit margins aren't high enough, and then I'm going to get you to know like and trust me, and it's easy to do that when you're seeing someone in your house on a screen of some sort, television does that, it's like, "Oh wow, Walter Cronkite came into my house via this thing," but at some point, Walter Cronkite back in the day was not controlled by big pharmaceutical lobbyists or any other kind of lobbyists there.

 

So I share all of this because I see as a marketer like, oh, they drive leads in the audience, they indoctrinate them through fear and watch out, there's a common enemy and they go, but here's what you ought to do, and what they do is, once we begin to choose to lean into fear instead of taking control of our lives, then we go, "Just tell me what to do. I don't know what to do anymore." And I remember, Shawn, I took my son, Andrew, to the Chino Airshow when he was four years old. And he likes stuffed lions that have like the little wispy mane hair, and he had this one particular one that he liked to carry around with him, and I happened to be holding it, and he's looking at the fighter jets going by, and when a fighter jet is going by, and it's got his after burners on, literally the jet goes by in silence, and then like one second, two seconds, three seconds later you'd hear the crash.

 

Sound travels a lot slower than the speed of that jet, and so when the crash happened, Andrew panicked, and he was just standing there just looking, and then he'd hear the crash of that... The sonic boom, and he runs between my legs and goes into a panic, and I'd just give him his little lion and he holds on to it and he gets calm again, and I see what's happened now is these masks have become the little fuzzy lions, the little security blankets that society can hold on. If I put on my mask, then I have this false sense of, "Andrew wasn't any safer," if that jet had munitions, it could have killed us. Even if he's between daddy's legs, I can't stop a missile, but he believes it, "If I'm between daddy's legs and I'm holding my lion, I'm safe," and he calmed down and he relaxed and he was just hanging out watching the jets go by, and I thought of that now in this era.

 

I'm like, "Holy crap." We create all this fear and then go, but if you just wear this piece of whatever, it doesn't even matter anymore across your mouth, you're going to have some false sense of security about something that you can't control when all the different elements, you can control, your sleep, your thoughts, the people you surround yourself with, your attitude, your mindset, your emotional discipline, your food.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Your food, yeah.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Your hydration.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: None of it matters.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: That. I don't know about that.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah, yeah, thank you for that. Man, that's such a great analogy. And by the way, again, just for everybody listening, this is not to be controversial, the data exists, I want everybody to be able to suspend their disbelief and just look at the data because there's going to be conflicting stuff everywhere, and not to say that they can't be effective in some metric, but at the end of the day, what's the most important thing and why is it not being talked about because again, our system has never really talked about it, and this is why a book like this... It came out, the first week it came out, it came to be number one new release in America, which is crazy.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Which by the way, you were just telling me right before the camera started rolling, the book was up there with Obama.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Obama, Matthew McConaughey, but this isn't about celebrity, it's not about fan fair, it's not about politics, it's about health. People do care about this, but we have to... Sometimes we don't realize, we're not... Part of that frustration that you mentioned earlier, I definitely... Because I thought we were better than this. In the beginning, I really did, I thought we were better than this, but we are... We just don't know it. And we really reverted back, even people that we know, colleagues reverted back to that primitive, everything is scary and not really understanding how powerful we are, and all of a sudden, they're listening to... Just "follow the science".

 

Listen to the scientists. I'm a scientist, 20 years. I'm telling you there's another side of the story, and that side is being censored. Now, we can actually take all the data and just have a rational conversation. When they make mandates about shutting down businesses, let's talk about the downstream effects of that. When we make mandates about shutting down our schools, let's have a conversation, let's bring in some experts and talk about what are the downstream effects of that, what is the psychological impact that's going to have on our children who need social interaction for the development of their brain.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Thank you.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Are they going to be permanently scarred? Are we raising a generation of Dexters because they don't know how to relate and socialize with other human beings and understand the parents aren't there 90% of the time, they can't turn their world upside down to now be a homeschooling teacher, so nobody in this chaos is being served and talking with the top psychologists, psychiatrists, epidemiologists, everybody can agree, the top folks, the treatment for this issue is far likely going to be far worse than the issue itself.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Yeah, 1000%.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: But here's the great thing, after all this, out of the doom and gloom, I love it, I love it that this happened now, because again, I thought we were better than this, but I knew we weren't. I knew we weren't. But I was lying to myself because we get into our bubbles where we're around healthy people, we see this certain type of message, the great news is this, these systems that we've upheld as being of integrity are not. Our medical system that's being real, it's fluxed up right now. There's a lot of turbulence happening with it, our medical system, again, anybody can go look this... If anything, that I said today, go look this up, and then go look at everything else, take this study I'm about to share with you as the number one thing to start to have more trust in what I'm saying. Go to Dr. Google, look up Johns Hopkins, third leading cause of death, medical error. Look that up. The third leading cause of death in the United States every f*cking year, number one is heart disease, number two is cancer, number three is death by doctor, death from the healthcare system every year. It's as if it doesn't exist.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: That's scary, bro.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: It's as if... And my argument is that it's really number one because of how poorly it treats number one and two.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Right. Right, right, right, exactly.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: So, we have to understand that as a template. Now, here's the good news again, that system is being shaken up now. It might not be the way that we want it to look right now as far as being shaken up, but there's so many problems with it. When something becomes more malleable, it's easier to change. Before it was very rigid, kind of firmly in place. We've had more integrated physicians coming in, functional medicine. But it's taken so long, people keep dying.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: We needed the shaking of the snow globe to happen, and as you're saying, I'm glad it happened over a long period of time. Because like you, I was like, "I thought we're better than this." And again, it's because, one, I lean into optimism, we lean into optimism. So, it's like, I think humanity's better than this. And then two, you're right, we hang out in a bubble where people are healthy and optimistic and caught up on real facts and science and not necessarily fear. And so, I was like, "Oh, sh*t, maybe we're not better than this." But enough time has gone by where people realize, "Wait a minute, they tell me mask, no mask. Six feet, no feet." They tell me, "Go back to school, don't go to school," etcetera. Bro, I'm not a scientist. I just saw that the first time I put the mask on to go hit a grocery store, maybe I'm a mouth breather, I don't know. But Shawn, by the time I got out of the grocery store with my wife, man, we spent maybe 15 minutes in there. But it was all like humid in here, right?

 

I'm like, "Alright, something tells me it was humid, stick. Who knows what kind of bacteria and germs and this sh*t is sticking? I'm not going to do this." And so immediately, the wife and I decided, if our kids are going to have to go to school, 'cause school was like, "Hey, they can come to school, but they're going to have their mask on all day long?" I'm like, "No, in 15 minutes, I had a God damn Turkish bath going on right here." There's no way, bro, there's no way my daughter or son are going to wear a mask for eight hours. So, I was like, "Alright, they're going to do the homeschool version of it, and that's that." And that's... But so many people are like, "Well, that's okay." And the reality is, look, we have someone at home that could watch, that could be there with our kids. We've got a full-time housekeeper and Marla's a bad ass, and she's there and adults are there. Most people don't have that, so they're like, "Well, I'm going to have to mask up my kid."

 

And then when I hear stats like you're sharing... And never mind what it's taken away from their immune system, that mask, what it's doing to their self-confidence. Bro, I'm a grown man, and I can't tell when someone's got a mask on, "Are they smiling at me? Do they understand what I just said?" What is it doing to our communication? But anyway, all that said, this goes back to what we can control, which is what we're eating, our food.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Got a quick break coming up, we'll be right back. Researchers at Yale University School of Medicine, the research found that one of the biggest culprits behind our obesity epidemic is neuroinflammation. Brain inflammation increases the propensity of obesity, and obesity increases the propensity, the likelihood of neuroinflammation. They go hand in hand. So, we've got to address this. One of the things that's been proven to help to reduce neuroinflammation is cited in a study published in PLoS ONE, the Public Library of Science One, revealed that the super green algae, spirulina, has a potential to, one, improve neurogenesis in the brain. So, the creation of new brain cells, specifically the hippocampus, is where we get a lot. And the hippocampus is the memory center of the brain. This is kind of important.

 

And two, the study revealed that spirulina is able to directly reduce neuroinflammation. It's incredible. It's helping the structural integrity of this master gland, this master organ controlling everything about us. The most complicated object in the known universe is also one of the most fragile, we've got to protect it. This is why, for myself and my family, Spirulina, Chlorella, Ashwagandha, all of these powerful foods are put together in the incredible blend at Organifi. And this is a regular staple here in my family for good reason. Spirulina, being one of the highlighted ingredients, not only does it have this benefit for neurogenesis and neuroinflammation, but also has rare nutrients like phycocyanin.

 

The same thing with Chlorella as well. That phycocyanin is one of the few things that can trigger stem cell genesis, alright? The creation of new stem cells. Very few things have been found to do that. And then Chlorella's in the formula as well. And that growth factor, the Chlorella growth factor, is just remarkable, and also its benefits in helping your body to metabolize and eliminate heavy metals, and the list goes on and on. It's incredible. But the bottom line is this, it tastes good. It tastes good. I've experimented for at least about 15 years of all these different green formulas, different green superfood blends. Many of them is not very good, okay? Many of them. They shall remain nameless, but I've tried them back in the day before tasting good was an option. Just like, "Just get it in by any means necessary. If you got to do the whole pinch-the-nose and get it done, whatever." But now, pleasure leads to longevity. Pleasure leads to taking a practice on it and embodying it and making it part of your routine, your habits, your daily life. So, this is why I appreciate the fact they've created a formula that actually tastes good, all organic, cold process so you actually retain and get the nutrients that we're looking for in Organifi.

 

So, pop over there, check it out. It's organifi.com/model. That's O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I.com/model. And you get 20% off. 20% off their green juice formula, their red juice formula, and also their gold as well. So, they've got some incredible blends all done the right way, with integrity, again, organic, low temperature processed, and yummy, alright? Organifi, you got that yummy, yummy. Organifi.com/model. And now, back to the show.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: One of the sections that I really love most is section two, and I think that's selfishly because I want to know how I can optimize myself and my audience, how can they think better? How can they feel better? How can they control their mood, their energy, their metabolism so that they can operate better? Because our audience in the Empire show here knows one thing, that money is a vehicle to meaning. And I want to help them create more money so they can have meaning, donate to the churches, the causes, the charities you want to donate to. I want them to buy back their time and freedom, and I want them to have an awesome experience with their family, and money does buy us those things. And so how do we operate better from section two? Like, how do we eat? What time should we eat? What do we eat? What are the things that we can do to optimize ourself where eating is concerned?

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Perfect, perfect. So, the most important thing, and for me, this is a habitual question I ask when I'm trying to identify a root issue or a root solution, like, at its core, what is the thing? I ask, "What is it made of? Where did it come from?" Alright? And talking about cognitive performance, this has to do with our brains. And a theoretical physicist, Michio Kaku, said that the human brain is the most powerful entity in the known universe, alright? It is powerful beyond measure. It created everything that we see here in this room. It's so remarkable. But we don't get an owner's manual. Largely, we don't know anything about it. And there's this thing in... It's really out of the world of personal development. We only use like 5% of our brain, 10%. It's not like there's parts of your brain that are just sitting on time out and they're just like, "I'm not playing with you guys." Our whole brain works all the time. We just don't use it very well. There's so much more potential for our brains. And so, to be able to be more productive, to have a better memory, to be able to focus during... Especially when you're under stress and distraction at this time in human history, we've got data on how we could do that. So, the first question is, what is your brain made of? Number one answer is, made of water. So, when you mentioned your water routine, your inner bath you take every day...

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Your inner bath. I love that.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. The first thing... And just to give a little metabolic side for folks, and this is one of the great studies that's in Eat Smarter. There's something called water-induced thermogenesis. So, what the researchers did was have folks who just consumed 17 ounces of water in just a couple of minutes, and it led to a dramatic increase in their metabolism. And we might try to mansplain it, "Well, it's the body's heating the water up," but no, it just makes everything work better. It doesn't matter the temperature of the water. And what they found was that the folks, their metabolic rate went up to the degree that they burned about 25 to 50 more calories simply from drinking water. So, you're drinking something with no calories and it makes you burn calories. And now, in our culture, some is good, more is better, so this is like, "Well, I should just drink three gallons."

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: You're right. You're right.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: There are diminishing returns, right? Because there's a level, there's your extra cellular fluid and the cells themselves. And I talk about hydration a lot in the book, but here's why these matters for the brain. One of the studies found that just a 2% drop in the test subject's optimal baseline hydration level led to decreased reaction time, decreased ability to focus, decreased spatial recognition, so like being able to manage yourself in space, like map recognition. So basically, you become dumber, alright? You become more of like the Lloyd Christmas version of you.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: And that's just 2... And that's just 2% decrease?

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: That's it. That's it. It doesn't take much, you know?

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: That's a small amount.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: That's some pretty small amount, but most folks are walking around, and their baseline is right under-dehydrated. And so simply by getting... And they reverse the issue by getting them hydrated. So, what does that look like? I go through and give a big kind of dissertation on water in a way that's fun, in a way that makes sense. There's so many different little nuances with it, but... And I don't really like to give specifics at all. That's not what you're going to find in the book, "Eat this thing. Don't eat that." I'm going to tell you what the data shows, but everybody is unique. You need a different amount of water than Shaq. You know what I mean? You need a different amount of water than Simone Biles. This cookie-cutter sh*t of like, "Drink eight ounces, eight glasses of eight ounces a day or whatever," but I do give a baseline of like, "Take your body weight, divide it in half. That number you come up with, target that amount of ounces." But even that, I don't like to do, because the number one metric on how much water you should drink is your brain and your body telling you. But we're so externally focused. We're not getting that data, and that has to do with your hypothalamus, and we maybe could circle back to this, but...

 

So, number one is water. But number two, and this goes hand-in-hand with the water. This is very important what I'm about to say. Electrolytes, alright? Listen, dude, one of the craziest studies was on the impact of sodium in the brain. So, electrolytes literally are needed to make the electrical impulses in the brain for your brain cells to talk. It matters. We know about electrolytes from Gatorade. You know what I mean?

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Right, right, right.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: This is literally talking about your brain being able to talk. Two, it's your brain cells being able to talk to themselves. So, they found that a deficiency in sodium led to decreased cognitive performance, so getting adequate amounts of sodium, but the real game-changer was magnesium, which is another electrolyte. And so, one of the studies found that folks with already documented cognitive decline, alright? So, they're in their 50s to, I believe, 50s or 70s, they already have cognitive decline taking place. By increasing their intake of magnesium after the study was complete, they found that the folks who have got their magnesium levels optimized had brains that were operating as if they were nine years younger.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Holy crap. A decade of youth.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Dude, when we talk about issues like dementia, Alzheimer's, in conventional medicine today, all you can do is try to slow it down. There's nothing about making it better. The data exists. Magnesium is responsible for over 625 biochemical processes in your body. That means there's 625 things your body can't do if you're deficient in it.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Hmm. Alright, selfish question. "I take magnesium at night, 400, I think it's milligrams, just to help with going to the deeper sleep. Do I need to spread my magnesium out throughout the day in addition to what I take at night, or does my body know, "Alright, I got that? I'm going to spread it out?"

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: It's a great question. So, this is...

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: This is why I love having you here. I love having smart people on the show, because I could just selfishly ask all the right questions and help everybody.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: This is what Eat Smarter is all about, man, is looking at the bigger picture, there's... So, when I was in my nutritional science class in college, we were taught, "Make sure you get your essential vitamins and minerals, amino acids." But you can just get a multi-vitamin. There's so many different types of magnesium. There's not just one. The multi-vitamin has f*ck*ng one. Is that the one that you need? There's different types of vitamin C. There's different types of Omega-3s. There's different types of B12. There's different types of everything. Food has it all. That's what makes food so remarkable and has bio-potentiators and cofactors that come along with it that make your body be able to use it better.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Circles right back to whole food.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: So that's the number one tenant, is when we're talking about magnesium, we want to make sure we're getting in a variety of high-quality food sources. But what I want folks to realize is that because it's responsible for so much, it's really has a lot to do with modulating stress in the body, modulating your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system and modulating muscle contractions. And so, with all that said, modulating your nervous system, what's our life like today? How is our nervous system doing? We're stressed the f*ck out, so it's getting just burned through. Your body is using so much of it. This is why it is the number one mineral deficiency in our country. Documented in the book, about 60% of people are chronically deficient in magnesium, based off of the best studies that we have, so this is not something to take lightly or to joke about. This kind of impact on a cognitive performance, folks are walking around, and their brains are not working right. Wondering why we're so pissed off? Wondering why we're so irritated? We're just having a conversation about masks. Let's talk about it, "I can't."

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Can't.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: You know? So, number one, food first, what are some good food sources? Anything that's green... This is another thing we talk about in the book as well, these powerful clues that is just provided in nature, and there's a science... We also go to the science of flavor, right? So, I'll circle back to that in one second. It's really cool. But this green pigment is indicator that it's high magnesium food. And coincidentally, a study from Rush University Medical Center found that the test subjects who consumed at least two servings of green leafy vegetables each day had on average brains that were 11 years younger compared to folks who got less than two servings a day.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Whoa.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: So that goes hand in hand, alright? So, we got anything green. Chocolate is actually a great source of magnesium, very high in magnesium, but you don't want the sh*tty...

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Right, the sugar. Yeah.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: You know, the Hershey's, whatever.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Right.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Kiss my, you know, whatever.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Yeah.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And not to say that you can't have it. That's the thing too. Everything has its place, but that's not going to... If you want to get magnesium from chocolate or that experience, let's upgrade it. Let's get something higher quality. Different nuts and seeds. Hemp seeds are great sources of magnesium. There's a whole different list. There's many different... It's kind of hard... It's so needed. Nature has made it very available, but one of the biggest... Like, you get stacked when you get those green leafy vegetables.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: And that's what you're after?

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: So, let me, first of all, say something to you, and this isn't just blowing smoke up your ass. You did this with Sleep Smarter and you've done it with Eat Smarter. You have a gift, my friend, of taking complex science and making it simple, understandable, and I'm even going to use the words fun. And you do that with The Model Health Show when you do your documentaries or when you going to rant on a podcast. You do that here in your book too, and so I want to encourage all of you watching this right now, I want you to buy two copies, one copy for yourself, one copy to give to a friend, because no media, no government official, no food organization/corporation is going to tell you the facts that are in here in a simple, easy-to-understand way, because everyone wants to kind of sell its own idea that, "Look, nutrition is complex, so just take a multi-vitamin and eat the stuff that says high in fiber, and you'll be good", but that fiber doesn't even get used in your body. And so, if you really want to understand science and have it broken down to you in an easy-to-understand and a fun way, the dude's done it right here, so get two copies.

 

But with that said, going back to cognitive function, like high level of mental performance. As an entrepreneur, I see myself as an athlete, like, my sleep is scheduled, I sleep at the same time, wake up at the same time seven days a week. My water, the thoughts that occupy my mind, the people I surround myself with, the food. What other, I don't know, I'm going to use the word hacks.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah, tips.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Tips that we need to know?

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: This is the big one, right here what I'm going to share, because like I said, it's still... If you're eating real food, you're going to be... You're going to get your magnesium, alright? This one right here is a game-changer. And it's stacked in so many different levels. The first part of the book is dedicated to metabolism and teaching everybody the science around that; How your metabolism actually works, nutrients that create the hormones that make the magic happen. But it's also a big player in your cognitive performance. Now, you've heard this before, but we're going to take it to another level, alright? So, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, they were testing folks on cognitive performance and found that simply by increasing their intake of omega-3 DHA, specifically, DHA and EPA. I'm going to talk about the difference, DHA and EPAs, getting those and specifically led to improved memory just within a matter of f*ck*ng days, improved memory, improved ability to focus under stress. So that's one side. That sounds cool. Okay, cool. Here's the other side. Here's what happens when you don't get enough. And so, these researchers took and they did MRIs. They actually went and actually looked at the brain and found that the folks who had the lowest intake of DHA and EPA, specifically, have the highest rate of brain shrinkage.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Oh.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Alright? And this isn't like, it's cold outside, maybe like doing a cold plunge shrinkage, this is like permanently can mess you up shrinkage, and so... But here's the thing, it was just... The bar was 1.2 teaspoons a day, 1.2 teaspoon, under that, brain shrinkage. Just 1.2 teaspoons can protect your brain from atrophying, alright? So how do we do this? DHA and EPA. Now, here's the bigger arching thing because there's different types of Omega-3s.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Sure.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: As I mentioned, when I was in my clinical practice, when I first started, I was just telling people to get there Omega-3s in. ALA is the plant form. And it does some cool stuff, but it's not what the brain uses.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: So as a platform, am I thinking flax seed?

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Flax seeds, chia seeds, hemp seeds. These are all great.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Gotcha.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And they're cool, but... And the body is so hungry for DHA. It can actually convert some ALA into DHA, but you can lose upwards of 90% in the conversion process. So, for you to get the amount of DHA you need, you're going to need to literally consume clinically speaking, ass loads of chia seeds every day.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Hmm. That's a clinical term. I like that.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Yeah, I like that.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: This is how we do it.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Ass load. Write that down.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: So, it's just not viable. And also, you just need to... You might as well just put your office into a porta potty as well. You know what I mean?

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Sure. Right. 'cause you're just sh*tt*ng all day.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: 'Cause it gets that gel, you know? But it's not that those foods are not wonderful, but here's the difference with DHA and EPA. We have something... We have... The brain being the most powerful entity in the known universe that we know about, it doesn't come to the party without protection because it is incredibly delicate as well. Your brain is about the consistency of soft butter.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Hmm.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: It's very delicate. And to be the most powerful thing, but super delicate, it's kind of like Krang in the Ninja Turtles.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Yes, yes.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: He's got... He's very brave. He's got this... He needs his metal body protect him. He's like super gushy.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's actually a really good metaphor there. That was really good.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: It's the first time I thought about it.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Yeah. There's a whole generation that has no idea what the f*ck we're talking about 'cause that was kind of more our era. But anyway.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: So, we have... It's the only organ that is fully encased in hard bone, right? We've got a built-in helmet, the cranium. But your brain is so sensitive and it's so important. You also have an internal security system as well. It's called the blood brain barrier. And I picture it like it's a tollbooth on what's allowed to get into the brain. Only a... Literally, a couple dozen nutrients are actually allowed to get into your brain. You might eat all this stuff, but your brain has its own diet. We call it neuro-nutrition, alright?

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Hmm.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And I picture it is that this tollbooth is Dwayne The Rock Johnson, clones of him sitting at all the different tollbooths, kicking unwanted nutrition, nutrients asses, and then toxins asses and taking names later kind of thing. But there's an express pass for DHA and EPA. Like they can just shuttle in.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Keep it coming.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Because of this, the fats on our bodies, the fat that we're "trying to burn," those are storage fats. Your brain doesn't have storage fats. Those are called structural fats. If your brain was made of storage fats and during times of famine, effectively, your brain would eat itself, alright? It's like homemade zombie food.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Sure. Right.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: So, our brain is made of structural fats. DHA and EPA are used to literally create the physical structure of your brain cells. The plasticity and something called transduction. So, this makes them able to talk to each other. This is how important DHA and EPA are, okay? So, when I'm saying we need to absolutely get this in our diet, I'm not just saying this. I didn't know it was this important when I went into this project. I knew it was important, but not this important. And so how do we do this? Plant sources, that's cool, but not for your brain. If you're taking a vegan or vegetarian approach, we have to address this. We evolved having food sources, animal sources of Omega-3s, of DHA and EPA.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Sure.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Now we can take based on... We can be successful on many different diet frameworks, but we don't want to do something that hurts us to our detriment. So, number one, most of the studies, 99.5% of the studies on DHA and EPA are done on fish oil. It just... It works. And the data, it works. And I've got some really mind-blowing studies on fish oil effects. Food first though. Where does the fish come from? The Journal of Neurology... This journal, one of the most prestigious, focused on cognitive health. The Journal of Neurology found that folks who eat just one seafood meal a week, do in fact perform significantly better on cognitive skills tests than folks who get less. Just one a week.

 

But if you're not doing the sea food thing, or if you just like don't like fish at all, like you can't even f*ck*ng watch Aquaman. You know what I mean? If you're like that with fish, there's also eggs. There's also grass-fed beef. There's other sources but now we move down rung from fish oil to krill oil. Krill, microscopic shrimp. But when I say shrimp, that might put off if somebody's doing a vegan or vegetarian approach. It's microscopic shrimp. You'll probably kill more sentient organisms like licking the air. You know what I mean?

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Sure.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Like a few times a day. But even still just to respect our own ethics if that doesn't fit into your... But by the way, that other 1% of studies on... Those include krill oil. It's shocking how effective krill oil is because it's red. It's rich in Astaxanthin. And it makes the Omega-3s work even better. So, krill oil. Next level, full plant source. If you're taking a vegan protocol and your ethics don't allow for you to get more of a food source, I want you no matter what, get yourself an algae oil.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Algae oil.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Algae oil. Now, here's the issue. And this is the thing that's different for me. I'm not just going to blow smoke up your ass. We don't have much clinical evidence of its effectiveness in placebo-controlled trials, but we do know that the DHA and EPA are there. So, chances are they're probably going to work well.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: At what point on the rung or on the ladder does Omega-3... The capsules come in or the... So, are we suggesting like eat krill? Like take krill oil by way of those capsules?

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. So, food first...

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Yeah.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: So, fish. Fatty fish, specifically. Fatty fish, cold water fish. Then we get into fish oil capsules. But that's a whole food extraction.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Sure.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Krill oil is another whole food concentration. So, you're not going to go into just start opening your gullet like a whale and scooping in krill.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: You're going to have to take the pills.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And you want to just, of course, when it comes to these things, make sure you're sourcing good, from folks who are trying to do things sustainably.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Bro, I'm going to ask you a question, and to your beautiful brain, Shawn, it's going to be like, this question it might sound like I'm a neophyte. But I remember hearing, when the whole farm-raised fish came about, that like, "Man, you don't want to do that 'cause they're feeding those fish, they're in tight quarters and so they're feeding them antibiotics, and so you don't want to go down that route." Now, I'm out at high-end restaurants, and it's almost like they're touting the fact, and it's like, "Farm-raised." I'm like, "What the f*ck just happened? I thought that was bad. I don't want farm-raised, I want like fresh-caught."

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Did they change something in farm-raised where it's okay now, or is that just... Am I being marketed to?

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah, yeah, because it could be fed organic food.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: I didn't know that.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: The fish can be fed... But that doesn't mean that it's okay, either, because fish should be eating things fish catch naturally. Any time you feed an animal, including us, sh*t that it's not designed to eat, they get sick.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Sure.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And so, a lot of these farmers fish, of course, they're fed like GMO soya, all this, whatever. But then some people have better, higher standards; they'll feed them organic fish food. But the real fish food is a fish being out in the ocean actually doing its thing and being healthy.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Right.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: You know what I mean?

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Doing what fish do. Sure.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: But now, then we get into issues with sustainability, and there's so many... This is a nuanced thing. There's so much to consider, but what's best for us is wild food. For sure. We might have to make some concessions. And this is a thing too, we don't have to be perfect. If you're eating some farm-raised salmon and you're getting in... Maybe taking some krill oil, you're drinking... Getting your hydration. You're making sure you're getting plenty of magnesium through your leafy greens. You start stacking conditions where it's okay. We don't have to be neurotic. Even the water we're drinking out of in the plastic bottle, there was a time I would have told myself like, "I'd probably drink my pee before I drink out of a plastic bottle," because of the BPA. And one of the studies I share in Eat Smarter really looked at the impact and the data exists, and it's crazy, that BPA has on fertility, for both men and women. It's going to shock you. But the thing is, your body is always constantly choosing better than. Once you get a better source of something, whether that hydration is coming from your food, whether it's coming from another source of water, it's going to out-place the other stuff.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Sure. Got it.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: But the number one thing is getting hydrated, rather than having this huge... Because I'm the guy, I had huge conversations about the best types of water.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: But in reality, in our world today, man, there's so much to talk about, so much to debate about, we just need to do the overarching important things first. Most, 90% of people here in the United States don't have those things remotely dialed in. So, we're preaching to the choir debating about minutiae. We got a paleo versus a vegetarian protocol. We got a keto protocol versus a carnivore protocol. We need to get our citizens eating real food. First and foremost.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Yeah, let's just start there. Amen.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: So, what I did was I wanted to create... And these are all my friends. I love these guys. From the person who made lectins, the big thing, of The Plant Paradox, Dr. Gundry, I was just with him the other day. I love these guys. My mission was to create something that is a unifier, that takes the best. Because I can see it, I can see it, because they'll get tunnel vision with their own framework; it's a natural human tendency. I did this in my practice, I'm grateful I did it, if I was doing something, my clients were going to do it. But it got to a point where I realized, it was like a revelation, I have to do what's best for this person, and this person, their ancestry might be from... They might be Greek. So, let's take a look at what are some of the food sources, what happened when you got... When did you...? I start digging, and we find out what's best for you right now. And even that can change. That's what I want to get people the tools to do, is to be able to adapt and change as they adapt and change.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Sure.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Because nobody in the history of humanity has a metabolism exactly like Bedros. Never. And will never in the future. Nobody. But the point is, you, next week, your metabolism will not be the same as today.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Sure, it's different, it evolves.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: So, health is fluid, it's dynamic, we need the tools to learn how to take care of ourselves. Diet frameworks are wonderful, but what I do is I give an overarching understanding of, "Here's the things that make every one of these diets successful. Let's do these things. Here are the things that can hurt you no matter what diet you're doing." Let's really nail these things down and get our citizens healthier.

 

BEDROS KEUILIAN: Brilliant. So, again, you cover it all in here, and what I love about you is you seek out knowledge and then your acid test the knowledge and then you feed it to us in a way that's understandable. You take the complex, like I said earlier, and you make it understandable, easy, and, I dare say, fun. Eat Smarter, guys and gals. Eat Smarter. Get two copies, one for you, one for a friend you love, and you want to see live longer and to live happier.

 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Thank you so much for tuning into the show today. I really hope you got a lot of value out of this very, very special connection and conversation, and I just want to implore you again to understand your power to choose who's influencing you. Through the podcast medium, through social media, through our day-to-day conversations, who are you proactively deciding to get yourself around? Who do you see yourself being as a result of the people that you're around? Because, again, leading into that statement, that you are the average of the five people that you hang around most often, who are you hanging around? And can you make a decision to up-level your communications and your connections? And also, to bring more light and love and positivity and affirmation to the five in your circle right now.

 

Because this doesn't mean that we abandon our five. We drop somebody out, replace, it's not that. This is about being intentional in our relationships, and also being able to distance ourselves from the relationships that we feel, "These relationships are putting me in conditions and situations that are constantly pulling me down and breaking me down and bringing toxicity and things for me to... " Because here's the thing, it's not that all relationships are easy, it's not about that, because our relationships, truly, these are one of our greatest gifts to help to inspire growth and development. So, it doesn't necessarily mean that our relationships are going to be easy all the time, and also the accountability factor, but we know when a relationship is creating vitriol and even danger, and so it's being able to intentionally distance ourselves from that.

 

But also, most importantly, when you get yourself around relationships and people and communities and ideas that lift you up, it starts to crowd out the negative, in and of itself. So, again, I appreciate you so much for tuning into the show today and, listen, we are just getting warmed up. We've got some incredible... I'm talking about incredible episodes coming up. Amazing guests and powerful masterclasses, so make sure to stay tuned. Take care. Have an amazing day. And talk with you soon.

 

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

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