SHAWN STEVENSON: When most people hear the word stress, we generally associate it with something negative, and we want to do whatever we can do to get away from that stress. But on today's episode, we have the country's foremost expert in the science of stress, and her research is indicating that we actually need stress in order to truly thrive. To extend our lifespan, to express healthy metabolic features, including our body composition, we need stress in order to be our best selves. And so, I'm telling you right now, this is one of those things where I had to suspend my disbelief because we have so much negative connotation around stress.

But of course there is a formula here and she's going to talk about the different types of stress and how all of this stuff works together. One of my favorite aspects is how stressing ourselves or exposing ourselves to certain types of stress actually makes us more resilient to what we deem to be the negative stress that we're trying to get away from. And so we're going to paint an incredible picture today and learn so much because there is no running from stress. All right, it is a big part of our daily lives today in our modern society. So what we want to do is proactively build up that resilience. And we're going to learn how to do this through certain foods that even that when she talked about these key aspects about certain foods.

It's one of those things that we got to open our minds up because we've been told one thing about certain compounds in foods, but it's really turned out to be something completely different. Something that we need, again, in order to extend our lifespan and to protect our health overall. So truly, this is super exciting stuff. I had the best time hanging out with our special guest. And to be able to sit and to learn from the foremost expert on the science of stress is invaluable. So I'm very grateful to be able to share this with you today. And speaking about stress, one of the things that so many people have been put on to recently that I've been talking about for almost 20 years, this category of nutrients and foods that we refer to as adaptogens. 

And the adaptogen that is getting the most shine right now, it's the lead singer in the adaptogen group. Just right now. Of course it could change. Bobby Brown could get cycled out. Johnny Gil, Ralph Tresbin. All right. It gets cycled out. The one that's really leading the charge right now is Ashwagandha. A double blind randomized placebo controlled study published in the Journal of Psychological Medicine had test subjects with a history of chronic stress to consume ashwagandha or a placebo. Over the course of the month and a half long study period, the group that received ashwagandha exhibited a significant reduction in scores on all the stress assessment scales compared to the placebo group and the serum cortisol levels were substantially reduced in the ashwagandha group relative to the placebo group.

So we're seeing objective measurements and subjective measurements that ashwagandha truly does help our bodies to adapt to stress. And ashwagandha is just one of the ingredients in my favorite daily green juice blend from the incredible team at Organifi. The Organifi green juice formula has chlorella, moringa, ashwagandha, coconut water, organic mint for this refreshing feel and taste. So it actually tastes pleasant. I've experimented with, I can't even tell you, dozens of green juice blends over the years. And Organifi really has nailed having the nutrients that we're looking for, but also a really good refreshing taste. And right now you're going to get 20 percent off when you go to Organifi.com/model. That's O R G A N I F .com/model. 20 percent off storewide. Plus they have a 60 day money back guarantee. So you have no risk, try it out, see how it makes you feel again. One of my favorite things about it is that it helps our body to adapt to stress. Head over to Organifi.com/model and now let's get to the Apple podcast review of the week. 

ITUNES REVIEW: Another five-star review titled "So Much Value Added to My Life" by ModelFan1970. This podcast has added so much value to my life. Since I began listening to this podcast a year ago, I've seen a transformation in how I look, feel, and think. I'm eating healthier, getting stronger, and adding years to my health span. Shawn has become a trusted voice to me, and his guests provide me with the knowledge I need to live my best life in so many different ways. Every time I listen, I cannot wait for the next episode, because I know it will provide me with the information I need to keep improving. Shawn presents the information in such a fun and entertaining way that it's a joy to listen to. Plus, our family has enjoyed making the recipes in the Eat Smarter Family Cookbook. I am so grateful I found this podcast. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: This does my heart so much good. Thank you so much for sharing that over on Apple Podcast. That's why I do this. Oh, wow. Thank you so much. Again, I truly do appreciate that. And if you have to do so, please pop over to Apple Podcast and leave a review for the Model Health Show. And without further ado, let's get to our special guest and topic of the day. 

Dr. Sharon Bergquist is an award-winning physician who's helped to usher in a science-based approach to applying lifestyle as medicine. Dr. Bergquist received her bachelor's degree in molecular biophysics and biochemistry from Yale college and her medical degree from Harvard medical school. She's widely published in peer-reviewed journals and has contributed to over 200 news segments, including good morning America. CNN, ABC News, the Wall Street Journal, and many other media outlets. And her popular TED Ed video on how stress affects the body has been viewed nearly 10 million times. Now she's here to share her powerful insights about the critical benefits of stress. Let's dive into this conversation with the one and only Dr. Sharon Bergquist. 

Alright, I can't tell you how excited I am to talk with you. You know, a lot of people in our culture, we hear the word stress, and it brings up a lot of negative emotions, negative connotations. But your research has really affirmed that stress is something that not only do we need stress, but we need it to thrive, to get better. So let's talk about the benefits of stress and why getting educated about the stress paradox is so important.

DR. SHARON BERGQUIST: Shawn, it's an absolute pleasure being here and I've mad respect for the work that you do and the message you put out. And I love this opportunity to talk about stress because what we associate with stress is what we associate with the chronic forms, the continuous stress, that's the predominant type in our life and there's no question our bodies aren't made for chronic stress, the financial hardship, traffic, bad relationships, difficult work situations, we just weren't made for that.

And for sure it harms and truthfully I spent the first half of my career talking about the harms of stress. And it really was about a decade ago, a lot of the literature that had started to come out about how stress can benefit us is what I started reading, and there is a type of stress called hormesis, it's the science of good stress, and it's a different type in that it is brief and it's controlled. This type of stress can enrich us and help us grow. And the counterintuitive part is that we actually need these brief controlled stressors to build resilience against the chronic stressors that we can't control. So we're really entering this era of stress 2. 0. It's a new stress management where the goal isn't to get rid of stress in our lives. We need to optimize stress.

SHAWN STEVENSON: That's so powerful because I think our instinct today in our modern culture, and maybe not instinct programming, is to run from stress. 

DR. SHARON BERGQUIST: Yes. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And we've created a culture that has taken a lot of our natural stressors that we evolve with out of the equation. 

DR. SHARON BERGQUIST: A hundred percent. And that has a cost. So as you said, too much stress is harmful, but not enough stress, which is termed sustress, is just as harmful as too much. And even though I believe a lot of the work around curbing stress is very well intentioned. What we're not really realizing is that when we swing that pendulum too far towards stress or inadequate stress, we are handicapping our innate ability to be our strongest self and to really serve with our highest potential.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Okay. Let's help to define these different types of stress. All right. Because let's stop putting stress all into one bucket. 

DR. SHARON BERGQUIST: Yes. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: All right. So, You mentioned sustress. 

DR. SHARON BERGQUIST: Yes. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: So what would we call good stress and what would we call, what we refer to as bad stress? 

DR. SHARON BERGQUIST: Yeah, so you can think of stress as being defined as by three variables. Okay, the design of the stress, the dose, and the duration. By design, I mean the kind of stress. Is it unpredictable, uncontrollable, or is it generative, motivating, is it aligned with your personal beliefs? The dose, meaning intensity, the types that help us thrive, are mild to moderate, versus the types that harm us, which are severe, and the duration. The stressors that we are made for are short, brief. The stressors that we are not made for are chronic and continuous. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Got it. And so we might not get an adequate dose of something, or we might have too little or too much. And also the amount of time that we spend in the stress can affect us. So we've got sustress then is it Eustress? 

DR. SHARON BERGQUIST: Eustress and distress. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And distress. 

DR. SHARON BERGQUIST: Yes. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Okay. So eustress is the what we refer to as "good stress". 

DR. SHARON BERGQUIST: Yes.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Okay. 

DR. SHARON BERGQUIST: Yes. And the nuance, Shawn, is that the relationship between stress and response is not linear, right? We are made to think that if we get too much stress at home, so our goal then must be to bring stress down to a level where it just doesn't harm us, right? But what we don't always see and what we don't know is that the relationship is curvilinear. So, if you think of the St. Louis Arch, right? It's like an upside down U, and that's the relationship with stress. When we are in this middle range, which is like a Goldilocks sweet spot range, we not only not get harmed from stress, but we take off, we grow.

That mid range is called a hormetic zone, okay, from hormesis. Hormesis is from the Greek word to excite. When we are in this Goldilocks zone, we take off, we benefit, which is very different than not getting harm from stress, right? And this is the relationship that has gotten lost. in really decades of the history of stress being understood as a medical concept.

SHAWN STEVENSON: All right. Now, now we get to get into why I'm so excited to have you here. Because I know we have these terms in culture of bouncing back from stress, right? And your data indicates that we don't just bounce back when this is done, right? We don't just bounce back. We come back better, right? We build, we build resilience. And so now I get to ask you about how it happens. Like what's happening beneath the surface? Is this impacting our genes? Are there cellular changes? How does stress make us more resilient? 

DR. SHARON BERGQUIST: Yeah, so there are two parts to this. And as you just said, Shawn, this is such a key insight in stress biology. When we endure stress, we don't ever go, "back to normal". We are somehow changed from every exposure. When the stress is harmful, we net at a set point that makes us weaker, right? That's the depleting, exhausting, burnout type of stress. When we have a stressor that's a good stress, we net resilience, we emerge at a higher set point. And what's really happening is that any stressor is a challenge to us, whether it's physical or mental, and it disrupts a certain balance in our body that we call homeostasis.

Our body has a wisdom that it tries to maintain health, and it's trying so hard to reestablish that homeostasis, but when it does, It resets at a different set point. And when we are exposed to a good stress, you know, we think of the stress response as being the simple fight or flight, right? Everyone is running from a saber tooth tiger, right? That's like all we think about when we think of stress. And that's a very immediate alarm system type of response, but our stress response is so much more. complicated than that. What's happening down at the level of ourselves is really the story that hasn't been told. Okay, we have cellular stress responses.

The goal of our stress response is not to harm us. It's to benefit us. It's to help us adapt. So we emerge more resilient and able to handle future stressors. At the level of our cells we have seven cellular stress responses and what they do is what I call the four R's. Okay, they resist damage, they repair existing damage, they recycle our cells, and they recharge the energy within our cells. And that is happening on a time scale that's very different than the alarm system fight or flight. Hours to days, even a lifetime after the stress exposure, we are becoming stronger. We are reconfiguring our body to this more resilient state when we expose ourselves to these hormetic or the stressors that we're designed for.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Let's dig in on these cellular stress responses. And can we start with the DNA damage response? 

DR. SHARON BERGQUIST: Yes. Yeah. So, what we do when we get exposed to these stressors is that we activate, for example, like you just said, DNA damage response. That's part of the repair of the four R's. Every single day, our DNA gets 10, 000 points of injury. That is seven times a minute. Our body has a remarkable capacity, and it's doing this without us ever seeing or feeling it, right? It is repairing DNA. What we aren't seeing is that our bodies are made to be in a certain balance, right? We get some damage from the environment, from the foods we eat, you name it, but throughout human history, there's always been a reason for us to get damaged.

And we have this innate ability to repair that damage. What is happening in our modern world is we are out of balance. We are incurring the damage, but we are not activating our body's innate natural ability to repair that damage. And the reason that matters is because so many of the symptoms, the diseases, the premature aging, one of the root causes is damage to the DNA. It's one of many causes of cellular dysfunction. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: My son, my, my youngest son, he's in seventh grade, and it's a little bit of an advanced science class, and he's, they're learning about DNA right now. And, you know, I was just talking with him, little conversation about it, and just like, It's printing out these copies of you essentially. And with certain changes in how your DNA is being read, your genes are being read, or expressed, can print out alternate copies of you. Some things you might not like, some things you might like, and it's going to depend on these epigenetic influences. And so we're going to circle back and talk more about that for sure, but just opening up this conversation. Our DNA is getting damaged and this is determining how basically we're getting printed out, you know. 

DR. SHARON BERGQUIST: No question. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And with that being said if we move on and I want to I'm gonna skip around a little bit. I want to ask you about the sirtuin response.

DR. SHARON BERGQUIST: Yes so sir to in response is one of the seven cellular stress responses and it is a really critical one. So sirtuins are essentially energy sensors or energy and nutrient sensors in our body. And they're trying to match the energy, the incoming energy with our body's, um, ability to produce energy. And when we are exposed to stress and we activate our sirtuins, that triggers a process called mitochondrial biogenesis, okay, where we are making new mitochondria. It's increasing our body's ability to generate energy. And it's even more fascinating because we're also stimulating mitophagy, which is a selective form of autophagy. 

Where any mitochondria that's damaged, that's essentially producing energy, but in a polluted way where it's releasing more free radicals that are creating all this pollution inside our body of harm. It's taking out those mitochondria and replacing them with healthier ones through a process called fusion and fission. So there's a lot of complexity behind how this all happens. But sirtuins are a real key part in that pathway that helps us generate cleaner and better energy throughout our body.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Powerful. So the sirtuins this is going to be something new for a lot of people and you mentioned autophagy. 

DR. SHARON BERGQUIST: Yes. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: When describing that. That's another one of these responses. So let's talk a little bit more about that one. 

DR. SHARON BERGQUIST: Yeah. Autophagy is really remarkable because our bodies have the ability to do housekeeping, right? We have a part in ourselves a lysosome where we can take damaged components, we can take old cells, and we can recycle them, right? So it's like going to a junkyard, taking, you know, the car, the body knows how to take the scraps that we can, you know, use for a different car. What it can't, it breaks down to energy so our body can use the energy in other ways. And it's really remarkable that our bodies have this incredible ability to do this type of recycling. And again, all we have to do to activate these gifts that we have inside us is to endure brief controlled stressors followed by recovery. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Awesome. And by the way, we're going to get into the stress inputs that she's talking about here, but I want to keep going in the stress responses and autophagy. When you gave that analogy in the book as well, and just thinking about that junkyard analogy, like, you can put together a really nice car, you know, with the parts. But also, wouldn't it be nice for ourselves to if something does break down say that a cellular tire explodes like that. We have a spare that the body is able to do itself.

You're like we don't have to you know just hope that we could find a tire somewhere like your body can literally use autophagy and use recycled parts and put stuff together and also get rid of stuff that shouldn't be there that's gumming up the system So let's talk a little bit about the antioxidant response because this one is it's a bigger Antioxidants, this conversation. If you could get in a little bit more about what we used to believe about antioxidants and how we're getting them from our food versus what we know today.

DR. SHARON BERGQUIST: Yeah, and Shawn, this is really a radical rethinking of our relationship with food. So, one of the seven cellular stress responses is this antioxidant response. And when we, I'll elicit this response and I'll get back to the foods that do it in just a second. We are ramping up our body's natural antioxidant ability. So we are increasing our antioxidant capacity within our body and we are ramping up our detoxification enzymes. Historically, for about 50 years of nutrition research, the predominant thinking has been that when we eat the colors of the rainbow, that we are eating the antioxidants because antioxidants give the fruits and vegetables their colors, right?

So the more variety we eat and the more of them we eat, the more antioxidants we're getting. But the kind of question mark or the unquestionable part of that. theory for a while has been that if you measured the amount of antioxidants that are in our blood from these kind of plants, they are measuring on the order of nanomolar amounts. The amount that we need to neutralize the free radicals that are causing damage. are in the order of micromolar amounts, right? So it's just not adding up. And the missing piece there has really been hormesis, right? This whole science of good stress. When we eat plant food, okay, they have phytochemicals, which our body recognizes as a toxin, and we can get back to why. 

What that does is it activates a stress response, a big part of that is our antioxidant defenses. So essentially the food is giving us really what our body needs to activate our own ability to have the antioxidant capacity to deal with an onslaught of environmental exposures, right? And to detoxify an onslaught of everyday things that are in our environment. So, this is a complete rethinking, right, of our relationship with food because it goes so far deeper than, Okay, I need some antioxidants, I need some anti inflammatories, I need, you know, whatever, protein, etc. But it's really saying, how does food give me what I need to activate my own innate intrinsic ability to be my strongest self, to turn on my natural disease defenses?

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. So this is so huge because again, you know, when I was in college and being told about, you know, a nutritional science class, eating antioxidants, like that conversion of what we're getting from the plant and what we actually need, it just, like you said, it's so, it's so much less than what we would think we need. But how is the body doing it? And it's our body's response to those things. And our body's antioxidant systems that are built into us are turning up and ramping up with those exposures. And so, with that being said, there are certain things Now, now we also have this dichotomy in nutrition today and in health where it's just like, you should avoid these plant toxins. The plants are trying to kill you. 

DR. SHARON BERGQUIST: Yes. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: At all costs, don't eat these things. These are shortening your life. For example, like, somebody might go on a rant about how green tea has all of these, you know, saponins and tannins and all these things that you should avoid it. But then all these studies show people who drink green tea live longer and healthier than everybody. You know, dramatically cuts the risk of all these types of cancer, supports metabolism, the list goes on and on, cognitive function. So what's going on here? And it, I think it's the delivery, it's this all or nothing mentality because these plant defense chemicals actually turn on certain responses in our body that make us better.

DR. SHARON BERGQUIST: Right. And so, so they're toxins, but they're not toxic and that's what's getting lost in the conversation. So what I think is happening is that when you take different ways that we interact with plants, but you only look at one pathway, one mechanistic process without looking at the totality of the complexity of the response that we have to plants, you can take it in any direction you want. But you are not honoring the totality of our relationship with food, but also all the science that's out there, right? There are also a lot of benefits that are happening from our exposure to these toxins. So, you know, there's a lot out there about anti-nutrients and, you know, a long list of why we should not be eating fruits and vegetables, but at the end of the day, you've got to look at food in the matrix of the food.

You've got to look at food in the way it interacts with our biology and not just saying, hey, in a lab or in an animal, this is one property of the food because that is just not the net effect it has on our bodies, right? So this is key. And part of this is our relationship with these plants have evolved over 2 million years. Okay. And plants make the phytochemicals because that is how they protect themselves against all the stress in their environment, right? So plants are exposed to drought, to sunlight, they're exposed to people like us chomping on them, right? Plants can't run away. Their only defense is to make natural pesticides.

So the phytochemicals make the plant stress resistant. When we as humans eat that plant, we become more stress resilient. It activates our cellular stress responses, so we are better able to defend ourselves against the environment. Right? And you can take this one more layer. It's the microbiome. in the plant that is synthesizing the phytochemical, right? So there's this delicate ecosystem that has evolved where there's such connectivity between us, the soil, the microbiome of the plant, and us with that plant. When you disrupt that This ecosystem, this natural symbiotic relationship, we cannot think that we are going to be in our best and healthiest selves.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. The hallmark of, and I'm so grateful, obviously, that the microbiome is having this huge moment in the spotlight. But, you know, if we really look at this, we know that diversity is the hallmark of a great microbiome that's associated with longevity, you know, great metabolic health, the list goes on and on. But what I've been trying to impress upon culture for years now, which is, oh, I'm so excited to talk to you, is that when we eat a food, we're not just eating that food, we're eating that food's microbiome as well. And so when we're talking about diversity, that's really what it's about at its, at its core.

Like if we really keep zooming in and zooming in, you know, so we're eating that blueberry's microbiome, we're taking on data from that, we're eating the avocado's microbiome, the list goes on and on. And getting all these different data inputs, one of the things that stood out to me in your book was and I haven't thought about this or talked about it in years and I was just like Oh my goodness is so powerful. We need to know this is the fact that we have about 30, 000 plants that have been cultivated by humans over time that we know are edible and have benefits but We only in our modern society. We only utilize about 150 of them, right? 

DR. SHARON BERGQUIST: Yes. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And the average person in our modern society, point this out, only interacts with about 30 of them in a given year. All right. So what happens when we only are eating a lot of a small amount of these foods, right? 

DR. SHARON BERGQUIST: Yes. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Could this create, again, it's going from being a toxin to being toxic. Maybe this is why these plant defense chemicals can mess some people up. And also, what are we missing when we're not getting that vast diversity of inputs that our ancestors evolved with. 

DR. SHARON BERGQUIST: Yeah, that is such a key, huge point, Shawn. So when our bodies are made to get this diversity of plant toxin exposure, because that is how we set off our stress responses like fireworks. When we get that synergy where we're getting a different phytochemical from the blueberry, a different one from the apple, a different one from the lettuce, the more variety, the more we activate our intrinsic stress resistance, right? When we are down to, like you said, the 30 foods that make our plate of the 3, 000 of the 30, 000, I'm sorry, edible foods, we are reducing our body's natural ability to be strong. We are reducing our human capability to resist disease and slow aging. And right now, 50 percent of our calories are just coming from three foods, right?

 Wheat and corn and rice, those are the three, like 50 percent are coming just from those, right? And this is a different thing than diversity from fiber for the microbiome, right? We're talking about diversity of phytochemicals for our human stress response. It is yet a different reason we need that diversity. And if you think about it, Shawn, so our human history, is a story of encountering stress, right? That is the story of our ancestors. They lived in a harsh and unpredictable world. They had to learn how to survive, eating whatever edible foods they could eat. The more variety of edible foods they could eat, the greater their likelihood of survival.

So, some plants could be poisonous, right? Their bodies evolved a way to rapidly detoxify and eliminate a lot of these plant toxins so that they could eat more calories and subsist. And lucky for us, their bodies adapted to ramping up their stress resistance. so that they could eat a broader variety of foods. So the Homo sapiens diet of our ancestors had 3, 000 different plant species, right? Our genome has adapted to needing that type of variety for us to activate these intrinsic parts of our biology that make us so stress-resilient. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: That's easily a hundred times less diversity. That is insane. So that the ingredients that we're making ourselves out of and the inputs that diversity that again. We need to not just survive but to thrive to be better we're missing out on and so you're helping us to intentionally add these things back in. And you've given us a plethora of the different ones for us to target and some reasons why. And so let's talk about some of those compounds for us to seek out. Let's talk about sulforaphane. 

DR. SHARON BERGQUIST: Yeah, so several of these phytochemicals have been very well studied for their hormetic potential of how they work at a cellular level of them there are at least 10, sulforaphane is one of those 10. Sulforaphane is a phytochemical that is in cruciferous vegetables, so we're talking broccoli, cabbage, arugula. And what it does is it ramps up our antioxidant defenses. And the reason this is so important is in our environment, there's no question that there are infinite exposures and toxins, probably many we don't even know about, right? We've identified a handful and the latest concern, of course, is microplastics.

And one approach to this is to try and get rid of these environmental exposures, and there's effort being made towards that. But at the end of the day, there are infinite, and like I said, there's some we don't even know exist. So the other part of the equation is, what can we do to build our natural ability to detoxify? and have the antioxidant capacity to counter these in a way where we can mitigate some of this harm, right? So we're really needing to look at both sides of the equation. So much of health focus is on this part of what can I remove? 

What should I restrict? What should I not do, right? It's creating a fear restriction mindset. We are now on this other side of it. That's what we're talking about. It's what can we add, what can we control, right? This is the empowering part. This is what is so easy and accessible to every single person, right? The limiting factor is knowing that you can do it and doing it, right? Those are the two limits.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah, there's of course a lot of people are they're just like I'm sick of it. I can't do anything. I can't have anything today and What we're doing here is we can package along a solution It's not complete avoidance and to become you know, the boy in the plastic bubble shout out to John Travolta. Was John Travolta in that movie? But we can add in things like cruciferous family that can help us help our bodies to metabolize and get rid of some of this microplastic load that we're taking on today. So is that what I'm hearing? 

DR. SHARON BERGQUIST: That's a hundred percent it. And we have some early studies showing it can do that. And again, the point is not giving free reign to pumping all this stuff in our environment that's hurt, you know, that's hurting us. Of course, we should be controlling what we can, right? But instead of living in fear, what can you do today that can make you stronger? That's what really matters, right? And to put this in context, Shawn, we're talking at a micro level of what's happening in our body, but if you take it back to the macro level, there's a, a large study called the Global Burden of Disease Study, that was done in 195 countries over 27 years, looking at essentially food and mortality.

And the leading cause of death worldwide is food. It's what we eat, right? But the true headline from that study really should be, I mean, that study found one out of five causes of death are attributed to food. But the true headline is that there were more deaths attributed to what we were not getting enough of than what we were getting too much of. Okay? If we break that down, if you compare the mortality from eating too much sugar or processed meat, they even included red meat, which I know can be a controversial issue. But if you removed those from the diet and looked at lives saved. It is on the order of 30 fold less than the lives you save by adding fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, right?

It is profound that the bigger kind of win for us is adding. And this is not saying you have to just eat plants or be vegan, etc. We are just saying that all you have to do, no matter what your baseline diet is, what your preferences, what your culture dictates, just add the plant food. Whichever type you like, because you are going to make far greater gains in your survival, in your quality of life, than focusing on what you should be restricting and removing.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. Yeah. And you can do both together. That's the cool thing. 

DR. SHARON BERGQUIST: What a concept. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Because, you know, even with that, like we, we know that we're over consuming certain things, right? 

DR. SHARON BERGQUIST: Yes. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: But the, the ironic part is. We are over-consuming this caloric energy and in very specific forms you just mentioned, you know, soy, corn, wheat being the predominant things making up our diet today, but we're starving for nutrition. 

We're overconsuming this overall blanket like macronutrient, you know, and we're getting stuff in, right? We're getting, we're feeding people. But we're starving for nutrition and that brings to mind, you know and you made the trip out here to come and hang out with me and I'm so grateful for that. And here in L.A. we are well noted for an issue a huge issue with with folks who don't have a place to live, you know, the homeless population is Wow, I mean, it's such a huge issue. But what people don't realize, and I thought it was shocking and I've been, you know, whenever I can find an opportunity to talk about this, I do. 

That the homeless population, the rate of obesity in the homeless population is almost the same as a general population, right? It's right there around like 30 ish percent as well. And so it's this phenomenon where you don't even have to have a lot of money or resources in order to be obese, you know, here in our country today. But again, it's not just what we're taking in too much of, it's what we're not getting when we're consuming these foods that are devoid of diversity, of these hormetic stressors that come along with eating real foods, and the list goes on and on. Can you share a couple more of these? Yeah. So, sulforaphane is one. What are a couple of others? 

DR. SHARON BERGQUIST: Yeah. So, resveratrol, which you can get from grapes, pistachios, dark chocolate, my favorite. Allicin, which is in garlic and leeks. Quercetin, you can get that from apples. Genistein from soy. Luteolin, which is in most fruits and vegetables, ferulic acid, which is in coffee and apples. You can get curcumin, and turmeric. That's another one. As you can see, there is so much you can choose from, right? We are not just cherry picking, you know, what's now kind of, I guess superfoods. That's kind of the mentality that people get into. We, I don't want to encourage that because it's the diversity, right? It is getting the abundance so that we can get these phytochemicals and they are in so many foods that there's certain to be some that every person would enjoy.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. Thank you for sharing that and again I hope everybody's taking notes and Targeting more diversity now and again, I just want to give that example of when we see someone for example in our society today Who you know? Is experiencing a state of being overweight or obese, it'll be very difficult for us to rationalize that this person is starving for nutrition. And it's a paradigm shift. So we want to make sure that we're adding in, getting these inputs in. It's not just enough for us to seek out calories. It's for us to seek out these important stressors really, right? These, these micro stressors for our cells in the form of all these diverse plant nutrients. And so we covered DNA damage response, antioxidant response, autophagy response, sirtuin response. And again, all these are outlined in the book beautifully. Let's talk about another one of these cellular responses, systems. The heat shock protein response. 

DR. SHARON BERGQUIST: Yeah, so our body, again, it's all about repair, right? And we can repair our proteins. And this becomes critical because when you look at what is happening inside our cells that is leading to chronic disease and symptoms. Our proteins not being formed and functioning properly is huge. Proteins are the workhorse in our cells. We have 20, 000 to 100, 000 types of proteins. And if they are not functioning or they're clumping together, that is one of the early processes leading to neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's. Heat shock proteins are like molecular chaperones, right? Proteins are that important that when they are damaged, we literally have a mechanism where they can be chaperoned outside our body or outside our cells and essentially either destroyed or recycled, right?

So heat shock proteins help us repair the proteins we have. And they work together with another protein response, which is one of the seven cellular stress responses called the unfolded protein response. So proteins also have to be formed in a certain shape to work properly. So if you, if you remember when you're in grade school and you make those fortune tellers And if they aren't folded just right, you, you can't open them to read the fortune. Well, that's how proteins work. If they're not formed just right, they can't function. So we have this unfolded protein response that helps you get the right balance of the folded proteins and helps you get them in the right proportion. And again, it speaks to how important these proteins are. All of these parts of our cells are so critical because it is cellular dysfunction that is at the very root of everything that you are seeing in modern day in medicine.

You know, I believe so strongly that we need to be going to the root cause, and I've spent now three decades really understanding the pathways of what that truly means, but the furthest upstream you can go is the level of our cells. That is the most basic building block in our body. We have 30 trillion cells. Our cells make up our tissues and our body systems. When we make our cells healthy, when the cellular components are healthy, the symptoms that we're experiencing, the brain fog, the digestive issues, the exhaustion, the diseases, all these chronic diseases, the accelerated aging, they all come back to the cell. And when we are making ourselves healthy by activating the cellular stress responses, this is a systems biology, whole level, holistic way of helping not just one disease, but all of the diseases. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: So why Is this specifically when I hear heat shock proteins, does that mean that I need to get hot in order to get them?

DR. SHARON BERGQUIST: Well, you can get hot, you know, when you're exposed to heat like sauna or even a hot bath. And, I say that because people sometimes associate some of the mechanisms for being something that only wealthy people have access to. But there are so many DIY ways where everything that I'm encouraging is affordable and accessible. But heat can raise heat shock proteins by about 50%, right? And you know, it's again, brief exposure. So within 50 percent elevation, two hours later, it goes back down. But, cold can do it, exercise can do it, eating these plant phytochemicals can do it. This is the beauty of how these cellular stress responses work, right?

There's such synergy in the pathways that are activated. You can start with any. And I know we were starting to talk about some and we can round out and mention all the others as well. But the synergy is what makes them incredible because our body works through this process called cross adaptation, which is fascinating, where you can take any one of these stressors that, for example, target like psychological stress for brain health. But what it's really doing is it helps you physically and you can take any physical stressor and it helps you mentally, right? At the end of the day, our spiritual self, our emotional self, and the actions, our physical health converge at the level of ourselves, and it's through. Any one of these stressors that you can activate all these stress responses. So, of course, with a heat shock protein, it is heat, but all of these others are doing the same.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah, thank you, because we tend to look at it in a very vanilla way. You know, heat, we need to get heat, but there are all these other ways that our body expresses this. And I love the pretty much anybody can do hot bath. Yeah, you know like we think about that when it comes our kids, right? Part of the evening routine help the kid to sleep better all the things what about us? We're big babies. You know in many ways and a magnesium bath, you know some epsom salt, oh my goodness, can dramatically improve your sleep. But just it's activating and helping so many other factors that we are not consciously aware of until we get connected to somebody like yourself like there are layers to this and why this is so helpful.

DR. SHARON BERGQUIST: Yeah, Shawn. And, you know, some of this is out there as health trends and I think the message for everybody is this is a returning home to our bodies being back in the natural rhythm they were meant to be. This is how we align our body with what it needs to function properly. This is how we restore that natural rhythm. So this is not biohacking, this is normal living. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: I almost stood up and started clapping. Yes, exactly. I love this so much. All right. So engaging proactively again, doing certain things, certain lifestyle factors for these heat shock protein inputs. And we've got one more, you mentioned the enfolded protein response, which I love that analogy of the fortune teller little thing. I just saw one within the last week. 

DR. SHARON BERGQUIST: Is that right? 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah, my son had one, you know, I guess somebody made it, but it was sitting on my kitchen table. What are the odds of that? But I tend to think of these protein structures in the Lego block terms and the confirmation and just being able to have the right instructions to build things, the receptor sites, making sure everything fits together. But we've got to provide our body with the input so it can do all the cool stuff. The final one of these cellular stress responses is the inflammatory response. Again, this is another one of those trigger words. When we hear inflammation, we tend to think bad. We want to be anti-inflammatory. We don't want inflammation. Why is this one of our cellular responses? 

DR. SHARON BERGQUIST: Yeah, so, inflammation has probably gotten the most attention as one of the pathways that can lead to disease. And, you know, inflammation, you know, people talk about, you know, boosting immunity, or tamping down inflammation, and it's really a complicated blend, right? You want to improve your immune system, but you want to decrease inflammation. So you're not just boosting the immune system because, or your immune responses, because you want too much of, or a lot of one thing, which is the immunity, but not too much inflammation. So we have to be very careful with that terminology when we just throw these terms out there.

But again, we focus so much on what causes inflammation. Certain foods are being sedentary. We are not talking enough about how can we ramp up our body's natural ability to regulate inflammation. And with all of these cellular stress responses. When our body gets the signal of stress, that signal gets communicated through the cell signal pathways and to receptors on our cells. It communicates inside our cells to change the gene program within the cell. The cell literally expresses different genes that become stress-resistance genes, right? So, when we get exposed to the stressor, and our body ramps up this anti-inflammatory response, our stress, our cells are getting the signal that there's a stressor hunkered down.

In that hunkered down mode, we change the genome expression towards building stress resistance, right? Tamping down or regulating inflammation, improving the efficiency of our cells as we've talked about with the sirtuins, doing all these repair mechanisms so that we emerge from the stress in that recovery period where we can literally reconfigure and rewire our bodies in a way that we are rejuvenated, where we are stronger so we are able to handle that stressor better in the future.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Awesome. So, I'm hearing also that the inflammatory response is a part of the process of getting better. Right, but it needs to be regulated properly and our bodies have the ability to do it if we're, again, building this cellular resilience. So now, and again, there's so much more in the book, but let's dig in on some of the things that your research has shown that we can do to start building this cellular resilience. All right. So we already talked about these nutrition inputs. We talked a little bit about some of the exposures with heat, for example. What is it about that in particular when it comes to like different environmental exposures with temperature? Is it something that we are supposed to have but we're just not getting anymore?

DR. SHARON BERGQUIST: Yeah, so there are five key hormetic stressors. So plant toxins, exercise particularly reaching high intensity or vigorous exercise. heat and cold, eating in a time-restricted fashion that aligns with our circadian biology, and stimulating mental and emotional stressors. The commonality, the common thread here, is that they all activate a gene program called vitagenes. This is a highly conserved gene sequence that has been handed down generation after generation because it is so critical to our survival. Nature essentially keeps things that are that critical, and that is the commonality. These are not randomly selected as stressors. These were the stressors our ancestors were exposed to until about 200 years ago really with the industrial revolution.

I think what we lose sight of is that our lives today are what is radical, right? And we've come so far that now this notion of adding stress seems radical and nonsensical, right? But the reality is that what we are doing every day is at such a level of mismatch from our biology. And the mismatch theory has long been around, right? It's essentially saying that with the rapid advance with industrialization. The introduction of food processing technology with indoor heating, with indoor air refrigeration, that we are creating a mismatch between what our genes want and what we've introduced. What I want to press upon is that we've created an entirely different mismatch that has gotten lost in the conversation. 

It's the mismatch of what have we taken out of our lives and our culture in this rapid evolution since the mid 1800s really. And this is what the stress paradox is, right? We have taken out all these essential stressors in the process of introducing comfort, in the process of making our lives better and easier, we have introduced lack of good stress and that is now one of the leading risk factors for the epidemic of chronic disease and accelerated aging. And it's so easy to pin down what we've introduced because you can, you know, link, say, processed food with an outcome. It is much easier to discount the loss from what we have taken out, right? If we don't see it, we discount it, right? But this is such a huge missing piece of the health story right now.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah, this is a revelation for all of us. Like, I really hope that everybody was open and that hit your heart because they hit mine for sure and I'd love to dig a little bit deeper into that specific point, which is we evolved our bodies, have this capacity to adjust according to the environment and the temperature in particular. And now we live in these perfectly climatized habitats that we've designed so we never get too hot or too cold and if we do we're mad upset, you know we're uncomfortable we don't like it. But, most of our time is spent without adaptation, and we're missing certain things, the cellular stress response, because we're not getting these exposures.

DR. SHARON BERGQUIST: That's 100 percent it, Shawn. You know, the body works through this process of bioplasticity, which is essentially saying use it or lose it. Okay. If we want our brain to be stronger, we have to challenge our brain. If we want our heart to be stronger, we have to challenge our heart and blood vessels and they grow stronger. It happens at every level. And when we're not challenging ourselves with the heat and cold, we are essentially doing the opposite. The lack of exposure to the challenge does the opposite, right? So we have to continually push ourselves past this comfort zone. But not to the point of overwhelm. I want to be clear about that. And then recover. And it's this process of stress, recover, repeat. Stress, recover, repeat. This is the blueprint that unlocks our incredible innate capacity to fight all these diseases, feel better, live longer. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Do you have some recommendations on the dose for heat exposure? 

DR. SHARON BERGQUIST: Yeah. The key thing I want everyone to take away is that first of all, there's no perfect ideal temperature for everybody. Okay. The goal of every hormetic exposure for every person to get to this Goldilocks hormetic zone is simply feeling discomfort. And staying there for just a little bit, but for a short duration. You can take any good stressor, and if you do it too much or too often, you're turning it into a chronic stress. Okay, so with heat, most of the clinical studies, if you're using hot water or a hot bath, or between 102 to 104 degrees, If you have access to a sauna, an easy way to remember the temperature plus humidity balance that you want is the rule of 200. Essentially, you want the temperature in Fahrenheit plus the humidity to add up to 200.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Got it. Got it. And of course, you've got details on all this stuff. 

DR. SHARON BERGQUIST: Yes. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: In the book. Now, what about exercise? How does that come into the fold? Obviously, we are existing in the most sedentary society in human history, but we, and we know these inputs are important, but we tend to think about it in terms of looking a certain way, right? But the exercise input is far more valuable in different ways. So what are the recommendations around that? 

DR. SHARON BERGQUIST: Yeah, and Exercise is probably, I think, the most potent of all these hormones, because so much of our physiology is tied to exercise and energy expenditure. When we exercise, that is the most potent way to up regulate our cellular engines, our mitochondria. And our mitochondria and our energy play this outsized role in this bigger process of creating cellular health. When we exercise, we rapidly deplete energy. And that sends an alarm signal, we have sensors, we mentioned the sirtuins. We have another energy sensor called AMPK, the AMP kinase. And these energy sensors send the signal to our brain that there's a stressor. Our bodies respond by increasing the number of mitochondria that we have.

So back in biology class the way I was taught, probably maybe the way you were even taught, but I'm older is that every cell has one mitochondria. But the reality is that we can have thousands of mitochondria and we can ramp up that capacity. Mitochondria and our cellular energy base ultimately controls how much energy our body is capable of making, right? So our mitochondria have this vital role where they take chemical energy from food. And they convert it to cellular energy in the form of ATP. And if our mitochondria are impaired, our cells cannot make the energy we need for basic functions within the cell. All the repair that we're talking about requires energy.

We don't have the energy to think clearly, to digest properly, right, and over time that leads to disease. So mitochondrial impairment is probably one of the most under talked about components of health in modern medicine right now. And exercise is the most potent way to increase the volume because every time we stress our energy system, our body responds by making more mitochondria and by starting that process of mitophagy that we talked about, of making healthier mitochondria. And the fascinating part is that when we do high intensity, we send the body this stronger signal of rapid energy depletion, and that signals a stronger adaptation, right?

So, when you look at clinical studies, about 40 percent of people do not significantly improve their cardiorespiratory fitness measured by VO2max, which is really a very indirect way of measuring mitochondrial health. But 40 percent don't achieve improvement with moderate intensity, right? And we have this need for the vigorous to really push the needle on our cardiorespiratory fitness and mitochondrial health. And the reason that matters so much is that is the single. The biggest predictor of mortality and disease, right, are cardiorespiratory fitness. Whether you're a man, a woman, a child, an older adult, cardiorespiratory fitness is the strongest predictor, right? And we need healthy mitochondria. We also need a strong heart.

We need strong lungs to have good cardiorespiratory fitness. But exercising with those bursts of intensity is really the pathway to improving our longevity at the greatest potential we can. So what that looks like in a week is roughly an 80 20 blend of some moderate intensity with about 20 percent of high intensity. A little bit more would probably be better, like maybe a 70 30 mix with high intensity. For people who are more casual athletes, for really elite athletes, I think 80 20 gives you enough of the high intensity. So, try and get one workout a week, maybe of a high interval intensity workout. And again, I don't want the term to be daunting to people.

It's what's intense to you. Okay. If you are a sedentary person, what may be intense to you, what gets you out of that comfort zone may be just walking fast to the mailbox, right? But for an elite athlete, obviously it's going to be hitting very high ability to generate power, right? So focus on these nudges of what's intense to you, recover. You expand capacity. It's a process of continual stress recovery until you build that resilience. So don't let this sound daunting. We have this as a gift in our DNA. Every one of us has the human capability to be doing this. This is the gift that has been handed down over 2 million years. Our body is made to do hard things.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. Ah, this is so powerful. Something you said earlier and I hope this sticks with everybody is that physical stressors can make us more mentally resilient and mental stressors can make us more physically resilient because it's all happening in the same person. You know, it's all one entity. And myself included we go through phases of being very mentally, psychologically stressed. And there's a difference right you talked about the 3ds and the duration and the dose and all these things. But if I could ask you How on earth can psychological or mental stressors make us more resilient?

DR. SHARON BERGQUIST: Yeah, and this is probably the most counterintuitive part for a lot of people. When our body experiences good stress, which in terms of kind of stress, we're talking about things that align with your belief system. Stressors that are generative or part of something bigger than you. These types of stressors in a mild to moderate amount build the neural networks in our body. They build the synaptic connections and our neurons ability to communicate. And the amazing part is the biochemistry of the stress response when it aligns with our beliefs, when it is rewarding to us, sends off far more than just cortisol norepinephrine. You're releasing dopamine, right? The reward hormone, serotonin, the happy hormone, you're releasing oxytocin, the cuddle hormone.

These hormones counteract cortisol. You do not just have to focus on how do I curb the chronic stress to control my cortisol. But again, it's not just what do I need to remove, which is incredibly hard to do sometimes. It is what can you add. And by adding these good stressors, you start a cascade of different biochemicals. What is happening in your body's internal environment is so radically different when you expose yourself to good stress that you slowly shape shift yourself to a less stressed level. The stress, ironically, is the gateway to a lower baseline level of stress. And that's what you want. You know, so many people get hung up on the brief spikes of cortisol.

We're in this for the long game, right? If you really want to play your health on the offense instead of on the defense, what you want to do is invest in the long term. In any case, Really bringing that basal or baseline level of cortisol down and the path to get there will have these spikes. But again, trust that this is what your body is made for and ask yourself, what aligns with my beliefs? What is truly meaningful? What is generative and how you can contribute to something bigger than you. When you pursue these types of stress, you become your healthiest self. In the flip side, do not ever avoid stressors like that because you are made for them. Do not sell yourself short or any part of what your potential is capable of doing out of fear that this type of stress is something that you cannot do because you are currently overwhelmed. That is such an important message I hope everyone takes away because it's so fundamental to nourishing our soul and our emotional energy.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Amazing. Amazing. You know, this is such a big conversation, and this is just a fraction of what people are going to find in the stress paradox. And I love this so much because before we even got started, you emphasized something that I felt, there were times when I felt a little alone, you know, and just feeling like we should be designing things based on the person.

DR. SHARON BERGQUIST: Yeah. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: I can't come to the table with a thing that I think works best and just have everybody do it, which I did for a time, which most practitioners do, but it's personalized. And so you sharing that even now, like, this is based on you, right? So I'm giving you this data and I'm giving you some guidelines. But just a brisk walk might be the level that you're at. Do that though. Do that. Give yourself that gift that your cells are screaming out for to make you better. And for the majority of people listening to this, they're already involved in some kind of physical activity. And so having guidelines for that as well. And there are literally, as I'm talking with you, hundreds of different ways to get this input of high intensity, high intensity interval training. It's been talked about a long time, but it doesn't just mean like sprint and then relax or doing it on an elliptical or a stationary bike Stairmaster. You could do this in a swimming pool, you know, I can go on and on. There's so many different ways to get that high intensity input find a way that feels good that you like. 

DR. SHARON BERGQUIST: Yes.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Right, that you're attracted to. Right now I've got this like desire to dance with the battle ropes, right? So I've just been kind of drawn to that recently and so I've been, you know, maybe it's, I don't know, if I want to be a drummer someday. I don't know what it is, but I'm just drawn to it to use as my high-intensity interval training for the past couple of weeks. 

DR. SHARON BERGQUIST: That's right. Exactly. It's, Shawn, you can take anything and do it in intervals. If you like walking, well, walk three minutes really fast, then back off, catch your breath. Slow down your heart rate, another three minutes of fast. There've been clinical studies in older adults doing that, right? Back to anybody can do this and how much you nudge cardiorespiratory fitness by walking in intervals versus a group that does it continuously is already over 20 percent greater. And so, yes, you can customize this. any way that speaks to you. 

And, and I really thought hard when I came up with how to help people with this information when I wrote the book, because I've been in clinical practice for 25 years and so much of the work that I do one on one with my patients is finding how to give some tips or ideas that are appropriate for that individual. And when you put that in the format of the book, you think how can I capture that? And what I landed on are five protocols on how to take any of these good stressors, customize them in the dose, the design, and the duration where it works for you, right? And it will not only be different person to person, it will be different for any person on a given day, depending on the recovery. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. I could talk to you all day, of course. And what I want to do is extend this conversation to everybody, keep the conversation going. Pick up a copy of The Stress Paradox today, as of the release of this episode. You can pick it up anywhere that books are sold. Is there somewhere in particular you want people to pick up a copy or to, of course, follow you as well and get more information? 

DR. SHARON BERGQUIST: Yeah. So you can follow me and get more information about the book from my website, DrSharonBergquist.com. And if you want to support local bookstores, bookshop.org is one of the locations that it's linked on my website where you can support it. And you can find me on Instagram, The Good Stress Doctor, or on LinkedIn, Dr. Sharon Harash Bergquist. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: That's the best handle ever. The Good Stress Doctor. That's amazing. And also, I don't know if you saw this, but bookstores are making a comeback, like they're rebounding. I just saw, you know, of course a chain bookstore like Barnes & Noble, but they're opening more locations. You know, right now, and again, we don't know how this is going to evolve, but, you know, I was thinking it's going to be like blockbuster video there for a while that they were going to become extinct. And there's something about it. You know, I love I don't know about you. But I love going to the bookstores and just hanging out .It's something I actually used to, you know, my wife go on dates at like borders and you know bookstores and things like that hang out. So I'm glad that bookstores are making a comeback. 

DR. SHARON BERGQUIST: I am too, and you know, Shawn. There's something about holding a book in your hand and just thumbing through the pages and when I read on paper, for me, it sinks in a different way than when I read electronically. And I think a lot of people are that way. So I'm very happy to hear that. I did not know that. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. And also I was fortunate enough to get an early copy of The Stress Paradox, which I have all marked up right here. And you know, I love, again, that feel, just like you, the feel of having this book in my hand. And, you know, also people get to see it. You know, my kids see it. They're, they're taking mental snapshots of like, what is dad studying right now? And you know, it's so funny how we end up sharing books over time as well. Like my sons are all, you know, my family is like reading the same book right now. And it's, it's a book that I had read previously, but they saw me reading it. And so it's pretty cool. We're very influential to the people around us. And I want to encourage you to pick up a copy of The Stress Paradox. Get a copy for a friend as well. All right. This is one to read together and to share insights with. And again, thank you so much for coming to hang out with us. I really do appreciate it.

DR. SHARON BERGQUIST: Oh, thank you so much, Shawn. It's an absolute pleasure. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Dr. Sharon Bergquist, everybody. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode today. I hope that you got a lot of value out of this. This is one to Share. All right, nobody is escaping stress today. It's a big part of all of our lives, but again, getting that reframe to where stress inputs can make us more resilient and it translates over, transfers itself over into other areas of our lives. And so we need to proactively, regardless of the stress that we're going through right now, proactively build up our stress resilience and also start to create some more intentional boundaries when it comes to stress and how things are affecting us. But one of the biggest takeaways truly is reframing and understanding that we are built for this.

We are strong enough to endure. That's why we are the people that we are. That's why we're here right now. We have what it takes to not just survive, but to thrive. And so this message is incredibly important. One that I encourage you to share out. Share this with the people that you care about. Send this from the podcast app that you're listening on. Write to somebody via text message or take a screenshot, or do both. Take a screenshot of the episode and share it over on Instagram. Tag me, I'm at Shawn Model, and also tag Dr. Bergquist. She shared her Instagram handle. Listen, she would love, it would absolutely make her whole month to be able to see the love because she's put so much into this work and she shared that with me as well. 

And so I'm so grateful to be able to share her mission and our message with you today. We've got some amazing masterclasses and world class guests coming your way very, very soon. So make sure to stay tuned. Take care. Have an amazing day and I'll talk with you soon. And for more after the show, make sure to head over to 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.