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. Healthcare is undergoing a dramatic change right now. Contrary to popular belief, there are actually really amazing things that are taking place. Traditionally, we've been experiencing what's known as the standard of care, and I'm a big fan of results, if you know anything about me and looking at where are we actually at right now with healthcare? Well, currently, the United States is now the leader in the world, not just in the world, but in human history, in epidemics of chronic disease. We have the highest rate of obesity ever recorded in human history. Right now, we're knocking on the door of 250 millions of our citizens being overweight or obese.

We're almost at the point where 50% of our citizens are clinically obese. We're knocking on that door, and I believe, and I know that you share this with me, that we can turn this ship around. But first of all, we've got to acknowledge what got us in this place to begin with. 60% of our citizens have some degree of heart disease right now. It is the number one killer every single year. And one of the other things that's running parallel with heart disease and obesity is diabetes. And right now, 130 millions of our citizens are now type 2 diabetic or pre-diabetic. Now, this is one of those conditions where we're looking at a standard of care, right? So, we have this degree of insulin resistance taking place in the body. What is insulin-resistant? It's where the body is producing vast amounts of insulin still, but the signaling is off. The sensitivity of the cells to actually acknowledge insulin's presence is getting turned down, alright? So, there's a down regulation of the receptor sites for insulin.

It's basically like getting a bunch of spam, and now it's getting sent to the junk box. It's like, I don't even acknowledge you, why are you coming around here spamming me with this insulin? And so, what we want to do is, get insulin whitelisted again. But part of the issue has been our standard of care. We see the insulin resistance taking place and then to potentially save someone's life, put them on metformin. We put them on synthetic insulin and say, if... Since insulin sensitivity, since your body is not acknowledging it, we're just going to pump more in there and get it to acknowledge whatever it can. And this is treating symptoms rather than underlying causes. And part of the issue, and this is at the heart of today's episode, is that it's putting you in the box of every single person who's ever had this condition. You are from the same deal, you're the exact same person.

Now, I might be over-exaggerating just a little bit, but in truth, the way that we're treated in conventional medicine, it's as if we are the same person. Your diabetes is the exact same as someone else's diabetes. Your heart disease is the exact same as someone else's heart disease, and this is how people are treated. Now, the reality is very, very different from that, because the truth is, no two people on planet Earth that's ever been or ever will be, has the exact same diabetes. Their cells, the cellular function, down to their DNA, down to their genes, is dramatically different from every other person. But we have this symptom, that's similar to others, so we put them in this classification of, you have diabetes. Now here's the standard of care, and today we're breaking that whole thing apart, because the standard of care is what has allowed us to get in this position in the first place, where we're treating symptoms, where we're treating, where we're medicalizing human health and not acknowledging the role that even a disease manifestation, a symptom manifestation is playing in potential healing.

Because here's a little secret, a disease is actually a miraculous expression of the human body. Now, you might be like, what do you mean? How is a disease a miraculous expression of the human body? What on earth... That sounds like crazy pants. Here's what I mean, when the body is expressing insulin resistance, for example, just staying on this example with type 2 diabetes, when the insulin resistance is taking place, it's the body making an intelligent decision to shift the operation systems to keep the person alive and functioning to the best of the ability, with the environmental inputs that have caused the symptom. It is the body transforming itself to keep the person alive. This is the intelligence of the human body, and we all have one. This is the good news, you all, everybody listening has an amazing hyper-intelligent human body that we've relegated and broken down into parts and sections, and outsourcing, medicalizing our bodies, when in truth, we know very little about what is governing all of this stuff, up until this point.

Our knowledge of the human body is expanding rapidly, but as you'll learn today, we're still operating in some very archaic positions about human health that have put us in this position, while simultaneously there are these revolutions taking place. And today's special guest knows a thing or 20 about these revolutions. He is somebody, his superpower, as he'll share with you is access, access to the very best people in their respective fields on planet earth, whether it's in sports performance or whether it's in brain surgery. And compiling all their information together in resource and to be able to share with us, that's why he's had such a big impact in my life, personally. Everywhere from my health to The Model Health Show, you know, being something that is this striving platform and impacting lives of so many, he's had a role to play in this, and me being here today. My relationship... Before we even got started, I showed him a video of my son Braden, when he was just a wee tyke, he was like two, three years old, and he was repeating the audiobook segment that he was listening to from our special guest.

Tony Robbins: That's awesome.

Shawn Stevenson: So, you've had a big impact in our lives. He's saying, "All I need is within me now. All I need is within me now." It's positive affirmations, and he's been such a linchpin in our lives, very, very special human being. And I'm grateful to have him on today to help us to really understand that despite the appearances, and all the negativity going on in the world, there's so much beauty happening. And we have the potential to be so much more, than what we've been displaying. But sometimes it's got to get bad enough for us to say enough is enough.

Now it's time to shift our focus and to really step into our greatness. The future of medicine is precision medicine. It's personalized nutrition, it's personalized exercise, and catering things for our unique metabolic fingerprint, that again, is unlike any person who's ever existed in human history, who's around right now, or who will ever come in the future. You are unique. And the same thing holds true with our microbiome. We have a unique microbial fingerprint as well. And the microbiome is one of those leading kind of final frontiers that we're looking at now. And seeing how much this incredible, basically rainforest of microbes, the trillions of microbes that are living in and on our bodies, and all the dynamic ways that they influence our health. From our body fat composition to our cognitive function, to our levels of inflammation. The list goes on and on and on. And one of the things that I like to point people to is, even though we've got this wonderful technology that's unfolding right now, so much is pointing back to what our ancestors were teaching us from the very beginning. Which is to support our microbiome through our nutrition. Now, one of the simple things that we can do to support our microbial health, that's been done for literally thousands of years, is to sip on some tea.

Yes, that simple. Now, you're probably like what kind of tea? Is this any kind of...? Is this Lipton Brisk? That's what I grew up drinking, the sweet tea. I'm not talking about the sweet tea, that'll give you the sugar, the diabetes. I'm talking about real high quality, proven, storied and also clinically proven today through multiple peer review trials, the efficacy of teas, like the one that highlights this really interesting compound called theabrownin. A preview study published in the journal of Nature Communications uncovered that a compound called theabrownin in the traditional fermented tea called Pu-erh, has some remarkable benefits for our microbiome. The research has found that theabrownin positively alters our gut microbiota, that directly reduces something called lipogenesis in the liver, that is the creation of new fat in the liver. Alright, it's pretty remarkable. Another study, this was published in the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry, found that Pu-erh may be able to reverse gut dysbiosis by dramatically reducing ratios of potentially harmful bacteria, and increasing ratios of beneficial bacteria. Now, this tea is obviously incredible, but the sourcing matters today more than ever. Because there are a lot of companies that simply are not doing stuff right, they're not testing for all of the possible toxicants, not just pesticides and herbicides to get the organic label, but toxic molds.

Microplastics, all kinds of stuff that is ending up in people's tea. The only Pu-erh that I recommend is wild harvested, it's using a patented cold extraction technology to actually retain the nutrients we're looking for. Super easy to use, triple toxin screened for one of the highest levels of purity. And I'm talking about Pique Tea. Go to piquetea.com/model and you get an exclusive 10% off discount. Just use the code "model" at checkout, that's P-I-Q-U-E-T-E-A.com/model for an exclusive 10% off discount. They have over 20 delicious award-winning flavors, you're definitely going to find something that you love. Again, I'm a big fan of the Pu-erh, I love their ginger tea, hibiscus, if you're looking for something pink. Wonderful benefits there as well. So many great teas to choose from. Pop over there, check 'em out, piquetea.com/model. Now let's get to the Apple Podcast review of the week.

ITUNES REVIEW: Another five-star review titled "Authentic, Meaningful and Delivered With Love and Respect" by Epiphinemium. "I'm a retired educator, principal of 38 years. And I recognize a gifted teacher when I hear one. My husband and I learned about Shawn when we heard him interviewed on Dr. Mark Hyman's podcast. We immediately looked him up and immersed ourselves in his videos and podcasts. I've gone all the way back to the first one because I don't wanna miss a thing. Our lives have been positively and profoundly impacted by the information he shares. I'm also grateful that he delivers his content with respect and love in these challenging times. It's fresh air and sunlight."

SHAWN STEVENSON: Alright, that is absolutely amazing. Thank you so much for the acknowledgement. And listen, if you have to do so, please pop over to Apple Podcasts and leave a review for The Model Health Show, it means so much. And listen, stick around, because this episode is powerful, number one. And number two, we've got some additional insights after the interview is complete. So, buckle up, and let's jump into our special guest and topic of the day.

Our guest today is number one New York Times best-selling author, Tony Robbins. Tony is well noted to be the number one life and business strategist in the world today. With more than four decades of work, he's empowered more than 50 million people worldwide through his business and personal development coaching programs and events. He's consulted with and/or coached some of the world's greatest athletes, entertainers, Fortune 500 CEOs, and 4 US presidents as well. And through his philanthropy and partnership with Feeding America, he's provided more than 800 million meals to people in need and is on track to provide one billion meals by 2025. Now he's here to talk about the health and wellness of our citizens.

Let's jump into this conversation with the one and only Tony Robbins. Alright. It's not often that we get to talk to a living legend, but today we have on the remarkable Tony Robbins. How are you today, Tony?

TONY ROBBINS: I'm doing great, Shawn. Thank you very much for the introduction.

Shawn Stevenson: Hey, you've had a big impact on countless lives, and it... Truly, there isn't a person who walks this planet very often that has such the impact that you've had. And I just want to thank you and acknowledge you for that.

Tony Robbins: Thank you.

Shawn Stevenson: And to kick things off, listen, to write a book like this on health and wellness at this specific time in our evolution as a species and as a community, what was it that inspired you to write this book at this time?

Tony Robbins: Well, I've always been obsessed with what makes the difference in the quality of people's lives. And most people kind of, major and minor things. They don't focus on things that really matter. And of course, you know, 'cause you do it so well, it's the body first, 'cause without that, there's nothing else. Energy and vitality and strength, 'cause that affects the next one what's most important, which is your emotions, whether you feel joy or happiness or frustration or overwhelm, so much of that is related to the body, but also related to the mind. And then there's relationships. The quality of your life, I think, is the quality of your relationships. And then there's your career and, or your business, or hopefully you got a mission of some sort. And then there's money. And then, of course, there is the spiritual side of life.

So, I've always tried to focus in all those areas. And when 2008 came along, I was doing all the things that I was doing, but I really got obsessed with helping people financially, because so much was being abused throughout the system. And I thought, I don't have every talent on Earth, but I have one great talent, which is access. And I coached Paul Tudor Jones for two decades, I know more about finance than most people would ever know. But I wanted it to go beyond that, so I used that as a model. I said, I'm going to go to 50 of the smartest financial people in the world, figure out what they do, simplify it, and bring it to the general population. So, I wrote two books, number one New York Times best-sellers, was proud of them. But while I'm around these guys, I noticed two things. One, not many were really happy, and worse, not many were really healthy. And some were, of course. But there's old phrase that says, Person with health has a million dreams, a person without health has one dream. And I thought, I really want to put focus. And then that was compounded by an injury that was supposed to end my career, and fortunately didn't.

I always had concerns... I'll take it two seconds back to... Hopefully, it's relatable to people. When I was a young kid and I figured out how to help people, and I had the privilege of starting work with great athletes and getting great results. And I worked 18, 20-hour days, without exaggeration. Just pushed like crazy, 'cause of my mission. And I started to be really successful. Well then, the old brain, I didn't know how to run this thing back then, survival brain started kicking in, and I started getting this obsession like, maybe I'm succeeding at this young age, 'cause I'm going to die young. And I literally... I started having nightmares about it, which was not slowly or fast hit by a truck, but slowly dying of cancer. And of course, you know if you focus on something enough, it enters your life in some way. The first time it entered in my life, though, wasn't me? It was... My girlfriend came home one night, I was 19, I think, at the time, or maybe just about to be 20, and she said... She is crying hysterically; I couldn't get a word... "What is it?" "My mom, my mom." "What?" "My mom has cancer. My mom's... They told her she has nine weeks to live."

And if it would've been me, I think I may not have kicked in the gear, but Shawn, you're a father, I'm a father and a grandfather, we'll do more for the people we love than we'll ever do for ourselves. So, in me, it's like my whole thing is there's always an answer. I said, "Stop this." I said, "There are people who've had stage four cancer, and they've turned it around. There are models to this. I'm going to go find 'em. I'll read every book." And so, I got obsessed. And then I found this book called, One Answer To Cancer. Wouldn't be the book I'd recommend today, 'cause there are better answers, but it was this dentist who was... Had pancreatic cancer, which usually they send you home to die as they did with him, and 15 years later, he was healthy. And he had this regimen of detoxifying the body, using pancreatic enzymes, and he was alive.

So, I said, "Listen, they say you're going to die. You don't want to die. Why not try this?" And then I gave her Azemine a think of you got to help her mind. And long story short, supposed to die in nine weeks. Within a few... Maybe two weeks, she started feeling much better. She had this big tumor on her shoulder that you could see protruding out of her body. And then she had some in her feminine organs. And at about nine or 10 weeks when she's supposed to die, you couldn't see anything protruding, you couldn't feel anything. And so, her doctor is so fascinated. He said, "Well, let's do exploratory surgery." And they went in, and they found a piece of a tumor that her entire body could find, which was the size of my pinky's fingernail. And the doctor said, "This is a miracle." And she said, "It is a miracle. But let me tell you what I did." And he's like, "No, no, no. This is spontaneous remission. This is a miracle." She was in her 40s. She's now in her 80s and still alive.

So, my origin in health started with, there is an answer, and I'm not going to be a victim, and no one I love is going to be a victim. And so, then I became obsessed. Then I became a biohacker, 'cause... I think you know, my events are 12,000-15,000 people, and I go 12 hours a day. There are people that wouldn't sit for a three-hour movie, got to keep 'em fully engaged. So, I burn 11,300 calories. I got the people that work with Tom Brady and Olympic athletes, they've measured everything in my body over three years. It's like two and a half marathons, to give you an idea. I jump a thousand times. And every time I come down, it's four times my body weight, so it's a thousand pounds times a thousand jumps, a million pound of pressure. So as a result, I learned a lot about how to make my body be a peak performance machine. But then tumor enters my life.

I'm 32 years old and I go... I'm a helicopter pilot as well, just for fun. And you got to renew your license every two years, you got to get a physical. So, I got to this doctor, and long story short, I keep getting messages, I told my assistants, "Send the medical. I need to talk to 'em." I get home one night, there's a note stapled to my front door, saying, It's an emergency. The doctor says he must speak to you. Of course, I called, couldn't reach him, it's 12:30 at night. So, I have this... I've heard the old philosophy, and I really try to practice it, that.

So, a courageous man dies once, a coward dies a thousand times. So, it's like, "Let me just deal with it in the morning". I get up in the morning, and I'm starting to feel the old feelings again, those fears. And I thought, "You know, I take care of myself. I do fly all the time, radiation, do I have cancer"? And the doc says, "You have a tumor in your brain." I said, "In my brain"? He goes, "At the base of your brain, your pituitary glands". I said, "How could you possibly know that?" He goes, "Well, I suspected, so I did another blood test that you have a lot of growth hormone". I said, "Well, I was 5'1, I'm 6'7. In one year, I moved 10 inches. I've got hands bigger than a basketball. I wear a size 16 shoe. How'd you figure that out, genius"? I said, "What has that got to do with the tumor"? And he said, "I did these tests. You have, I guarantee, a tumor. We must operate immediately". And I was like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa," because of Jenny, this woman I told you about. You know, I'd done all the studies, and you know now there's more studies.

The Mayo Clinic always says, "No matter who it is, get a second opinion." Because they did a study in 2017, 286 patients, the second opinion was the same as the first opinion, only 12% of the time. 88% percent of the time, it was different. And by getting multiple opinions, it refined the diagnosis. So, they told everybody to do it. So, I already had that in my nervous system. I said, "Doc, with all due respect, I'd like to get a second opinion. Who do you recommend"? And he had a real interesting bedside manner, wouldn't be the guy I'd recommend. And he got really angry, and so I figured, "Okay, he's a surgeon, he wants to cut me. Let me look at the other side. Let me look at the biochemical side." So, I went to this man in Boston, who's just genius. He's in his 70s, about to retire. Completely different bedside manner.

Super sweet, loving man. And in the end, he goes, "Well, you do have a tumor, but you're right. You should never do the surgery. You can die, but most importantly, your endocrine system will never be the same. You'll have no energy". I said, "That's not acceptable", and he goes, "I think you should go to Switzerland, where they have this new, twice a year, every six months you take it, injection, and it'll keep your heart valves from getting too big, which is what happens in Gigantism", which is what I have. And I said, "Doc, but my heart valves are perfect. You told me yourself. There's nothing wrong with me. I just still have this tumor in there". And it actually infarct, you know, it swallowed part of itself up, but I still got a lot of growth hormone. I said, "What if I just measured it, and did nothing unless I saw there's a problem?" He goes, "I'd be more certain, and I think you'd be more certain if you did the drug". I said, "Well, I don't know that I'd be more certain. There could be side effects from the drug". And sure enough, six months later, that drug in America was not allowed, because they found it caused cancer. So, I missed the bullet.

Shawn Stevenson: Umm.

Tony Robbins: He was a beautiful man, by the way.

Shawn Stevenson: Yeah.

Tony Robbins: And in the end he goes, "You know, the baker wants to bake, the surgeon wants to cut, I want to drug you, you should do what you want". So, I went to six other docs, I ended up with a doc who finally said to me, "Tony, you have a huge amount of growth hormone," but he goes, "I don't know anybody who can recover from two and a half marathons a day for three days in a row, two days later and be strong. He goes, "That growth hormone is causing you to recover." And he goes, "I know body builders who spend $1200 bucks a month to try and get what you're getting for free". And so, he said, "Monitor". So, I was 32, I'm now 62, and I've had no side effects from it whatsoever. So that's the background. Then, what made me go over the edge for this book at this time specifically was, four years ago, I'm chasing a 22-year-old professional snowboarder, competitive at the Olympics, down the mountain, and I don't snowboard that often. It didn't matter what my age was, I couldn't make those moves. And I had a wreck, I thought I broke my neck. And I tore my rotator cuffs severely, and I've lived with pain, but it was nine-nine pain. Like I slept an hour one night, an hour and 15 the next.

So, I went to doctor after doctor. Surgery, surgery, surgery, and then, what's the prognosis? "Well, you may not be able to lift your shoulder all the way up. Four to six months of rehab". I can't do a seminar with one arm for four to six months. So, I heard about stem cells, I knew about them. We all do. But I've heard a mixture, "They're terrible, they don't work, it's all BS, it's fluff". Somebody else saying, "It's great". So, I went to  Peter Diamandis who's an M.D and a rocket scientist, but an M.D from Harvard, a good friend of mine. And I said, "Who's the best expert on this"? And he said, "Go see Doctor Bob Harari", and I know Bob. He's one of the best neurosurgeons in the world. He goes, "No," but he's one of the fathers of stem cells. 38 years ago, he gave old rats young blood. We've all heard about the study, they got younger, and the old rat's blood went to the younger rats, and they got older. That's how stem cells were found. So I went to Bob, and he said, "Look, you're not going to get what you need here, and you don't want to use your own stem cells. They drop off the cliff at about 40, 45".

He said, "You need four-day-old stem cells". I said, "I'm not into fetal tissue". He goes, "No, no, no, no. I'm talking about chords stem cells, or the placenta". He told me where to go. I did three days of treatment of just an IV once a day, and an injection. First day, I felt tired. Second day, I woke up and... Oh, I left out the most important part. One of the docs pulled me aside, showed me my spine and said, "Life as you know it is over. Let me show you your spine. You have spinal stenosis, severe, one good hit... " and I've been in pain for 14 years. He goes, "One good hit, and you're not going to be able to walk". So, I wake up on day two, there's no pain in my shoulder, no pain in my spine for the first time in 14 years. I did an MRI three weeks later, my shoulder's perfect. I'm standing without pain. So, it made me obsessed. I want to know everything about stem cells, different types of stem cells, where to go. And then that led to me discovering the things I know, you know about too, Shawn, which is this revolution that's happening in regenerative medicine and precision medicine. And then I got invited to the Vatican, and I was asked to be the cleanup speaker.

Believe it or not, the Pope, every two years, brings the best doctors on earth, 'cause he sees regenerative medicine and stem cells as this breakthrough. I attended every class, met the most amazing doctors from all over the earth. Met an eleven-year-old kid that at four years old was told he had 6% chance of living. He got stem cells from his sister. He's fully alive today. People sent home to die, then they went and got CAR T cells instead, and they're alive five years later and healthy. And I was like, "I got to write a book for all these breakthroughs that are happening," 'cause what's happening for your audience to know, is I'm old enough to remember having a cell phone that cost $4,000, it would be 10 grand in today's dollars. It was a foot long, it weighed 2 pounds. It was called a Motorola. Should have used it as a weight. It took six hours to charge, so you can get 30 minutes of talk time. And now, your iPhone has a hundred times the power of what brought us to the moon and back on the lunar landing, and you get it for free. On your computer, most people know that microchips are the brain of the computer. The first ones had 4,000 chips, and they were literally a buck a chip. Today, the top ones have six trillion in one microchip, and they cost an infinitesimal point of a penny.

So, they're 6,500 times more powerful and 4.2 million times cheaper. That's happening to health, because we're all code. And you have all these billionaires now that want to live forever, and more money, and more tech is going in. And because of CRISPR and gene editing, now we've got diseases that we're ending. I mean, even kids that now can see, that were blind. I mean, stuff that you would think was going to happen 20 years from now, is happening right now. So, I want to write a book that would show you what to do to maximize your strength, your energy, your vitality, your power if you're an athlete. Or if you just want to be healthy, here's what to do. Or if you've got a major disease, here is not just the standard of care, here are the heroes that are creating breakthroughs. And almost every one of them, Shawn, lost a family member, lost a mother, or a brother, or a sister to a disease, and it made their brain go, "No more". And they'd spend decades to get where we are today, where they found these breakthroughs that literally can save your life.

So, I wrote the book for people, to change a life, or to save a life. And I get a call, I'm sure you do too, but in my stage of life, about every 10 days to two weeks, somebody's got cancer, heart disease. Somebody in the family's got Alzheimer's. What do you do? So now I have the answers at the very best that I give them, and then I'm donating the book, all the profits, same as I did with my last three books. Feeding America, we're feeding 20 million people. So, while you're changing your own life reading this book, other people are being helped, and the balance of the profits go to Alzheimer's research. Some of the top people, cancer, and heart disease. So, we're excited about the impact this book can have.

Shawn Stevenson: That's the thing, Tony. You just mentioned it, we have this connective tissue. Usually, when you hear these stories of folks who are making big impacts in health... And I just got to go back to this point. You mentioned that 2017 study. Folks going in and getting an initial diagnosis, and just going and getting a "second opinion." It's only the same about 12% of the time, number one. Number two, you mention in the book that the diagnosis were distinctly different 21% of the time. And again, we go in and it's all hands-on deck. It's an emergency situation. It's doomsday. Just a little short stent because you mentioned dodging a bullet as well with the medication.

Tony Robbins: Yes.

Shawn Stevenson: At the age of 20, I was diagnosed with a so-called incurable spinal condition as well, where I was never supposed to be able to walk normally again, I'd be in pain for the rest of my life. He wrote me a prescription, it could... There was two drugs that were really popular at the time, Celebrex and Vioxx.

Tony Robbins: Yeah, I remember Celebrex. What a disaster that was.

Shawn Stevenson: He wrote me a prescription for Celebrex, which I had side effects from, but Vioxx ended up killing about upwards to 60,000 Americans. So, either way, it's just like... And here's the thing too, I asked him at the time, I had no concept of human health really at the time. But I asked him, "Does this have anything to do with what I'm eating, or how I'm training?" He looked me dead in my eyes, he said, "This has nothing to do with what you're eating", but then you wrote me a prescription to eat some pills.

And that's the kind of paradigm that we're dealing with. And here's also what I want to encourage folks to do. Please, if you ever get a bad note, or bad bill of goods on a diagnosis, get a second opinion. But not just that, from somebody who's in a different paradigm, or a different perspective of the issue, and hopefully somebody that has the same goal as you. So, if you're getting diagnosed with diabetes, and you don't want to have said diabetes, get a second opinion from somebody who believes, as you do, that you don't have to have this condition. So, this turns into my next question, which is, so you already had this book in the works for quite some time. It just happened to come out...

Tony Robbins: I worked on it for 3 years, yeah.

Shawn Stevenson: During this, probably the health crisis of our time, and we were just talking before we got started about one of the pieces of data that you actually took that I shared, and I am so grateful for that, looking at the CDC's report. We had this big database of people, 800 US hospitals, over 540,000 COVID-19 patients, obesity is a number one risk factor for death.

Tony Robbins: That's right, 80%.

Shawn Stevenson: Which we know, we're not doing sh*t about it, but we know it. The second leading risk factor for death was anxiety and fear-related disorders. The second leading risk factor for death from this condition.

Tony Robbins: That's right.

Shawn Stevenson: And so, you even addressed that too, because our mindset, our mind plays such a huge role in our outcomes for our health.

Tony Robbins: Everybody knows about... I want to share two things though, in defense of doctors. I'm not against doctors at all. This book has some of the best on earth. But like you said, in any profession, there's a variety of skills and abilities and perceptions of how to look at things, and doctors are not infallible. But the half-life of a medical education, according to Harvard, from a 2017 study, Harvard said it's 16 to 24 months, and they said by 2022, which is now, it would be 73 days. That means half of what they learn is out of date, in a minimum, within a year and a half. And who teaches them, is the pharmaceutical salesman. So, you look at the opioid crisis, these doctors... Can you imagine being a doctor, you think you're helping your patient, because they're telling you that there's no side effects, they knew better, and all these people are dying from opiates. And it's kind of like, I think doctors... A better way of looking at doctors is they're a good coach, but they're not a commander.

You need their insight, but you got to still make decisions. When it comes to your health or your relationships, or your spirituality, or how to raise your children, you need people to coach you, but you need to decide what's right, because you got to live with it. And these docs, so many of them are such dedicated people, they're devoted. They're walking down the street, and they're beside a river, and they hear somebody drowning, they'll jump in and save them. Mouth to mouth, save them. But then the minute they save them, they hear two more cries. They save the one, they save the other... Then they hear four more cries. They don't have time to go upstream to see who's throwing them in. And you and I have that privilege.

So, I want to be fair, but there are docs that this is their specialty. But what you said, you sent to my son... You sent one of your podcasts, and I obviously knew about 80% related to this, and I've obviously studied Psychoneuroimmunology, so I knew what fear does. But to have the CDC... I haven't seen the study, so I thanked you for that before we began the show. I thank you again because I put it in my book. To show them show that that is the second leading cause of death from COVID was amazing. But let's just talk for a second about the mind. Everybody knows about placebos, but they may not know that placebos only came about since World War II, that we're aware of consciously. It happened because a surgeon there was working on guys, and if you don't give them morphine, they're going to go into shock, and they're going to die, not to mention the pain. And they ran out of morphine, so a nurse, actually, in desperation, took a saline solution and said, "I got the morphine for you," and injected it into these people. And none of them went into shock, and most of them got out of pain. So, he was so blown away by this.

After the war, he went back to Harvard, and he created the initial studies that now are used when you're doing double-blind. You compare it to a placebo. But most people are unaware of the fact that placebos sometimes work better than the drugs themselves, 'cause there's no money in telling people that, right? You don't make a lot of billions of dollars of profit in that situation. So, what's interesting is, the greater the intervention, the more convinced the mind is, the greater result in your body. So, a small pill versus a big pill, then you see a big difference. An injection versus a pill, the injection gets a better result. The VA did a study on arthroscopic knee surgery, and they decided to do fake surgeries on the third of the people. So, they cut them open, and did nothing. Sewed them back up. And the nurses didn't even know the difference between the people. And two years later, the people that had been through the fake surgery, meaning no surgery whatever, were doing sizably better.

So, the VA doesn't even cover it anymore. I mean, literally. And then you can give somebody a barbiturate, which they do at Harvard, they've done this. Say, "This pill is an amphetamine. It's going to speed you up". So, you're not given a placebo, you're given a real drug that will make your biochemistry slow down, and your body speed up. So, placebos should give us some sense of the power of what the mind and the body can do together when they're really managed, and when they're not. When we let our minds run wild, and we don't learn to run our minds, the last two chapters of the book are all about this, as you know. Then you find yourself in a place where you're at the mercy of whatever comes to your phone, or on your television, or CNN. And again, these are good people. They're not bad people, but they're doing their job. Their job is to make money for shareholders. That means they need more attention, and what gets your attention better than anything else, unfortunately, is fear. And so today, the news is not designed to inform you, it's designed to startle you, right? "Your child could die from drinking water. Film at 11." I mean, it's anything to get you to watch. So, they're not bad people, but if you don't take control of your own mind, you can do all these other good things for yourself physiologically, and this can change it all, like that.

Shawn Stevenson: Facts, facts. So, in the book, one of the things that you're really doing, is advocating for folks to become the CEO of their own health. You know and looking to our wonderful healthcare professionals as supporting that, and looking at it from the paradigm of coaching, versus this kind of parental relationship. And so, it's a shift in our healthcare system. And also understanding something really important, I've been talking about this, I've been in this field for 20 years, and I've been talking about this very early on, is understanding that our education... I graduated from a traditional university. Our education is obsolete so quickly, it's unbelievable. So, back at that time, so maybe 15 years ago, when I really got a hold of epigenetics, this is something that's just now being talked about in the highest university settings. Just now. And this science has been around for decades. One of the kinds of founding fathers, and the person who really helped get it out in a massive way is Dr. Bruce Lipton, cell biologist.

Tony Robbins: Yes. Bruce is awesome.

Shawn Stevenson: Yeah, he's one of my favorite human beings, as are you. And just having that relationship, and learning from him directly, and seeing how everything is playing out right now. We already know what's coming. And so, you sharing this insight on stem cells, and of course, I remember doing a university lecture about 10 years ago, and talking about totipotent stem cells and multipotent stem cells, and pluripotent stem cells, adult stem cells, and talking about, "Guys, this is what's coming. This is... " So you're making that distinction as well, that this... We've got the umbilical cord, the placental matrix. There's so many different things happening, but you really break it down in the book in such a great way. And the thing I want to ask you about is, specifically in this domain of pain, you know a lot of folks today, a part of this opioid crisis is people are hurting, physically and mentally. And just in all, recently, this was just a couple of weeks ago, this synthetic opioid is now the number one killer of people between the age of 18 and 45, which is unheard of. And so, we've got some real solutions for this. And so, you diving in and talking about how can we address pain in a major way, and be the CEO of our health?

Tony Robbins: First of all, you hit the nail on the head that there's both the emotional and physical, right? So, Jack Nicklaus did one of the endorsements for the book, and he was there at the Vatican, that's how we met, and we both had stem cell things. He was told that he had to do a spinal fusion, which you probably... You were going down that direction yourself. And what most people don't realize, it doesn't work 50% of the time, but then you can't function the way you did, and less than 26% of the people can ever make it back to work. And the people who do nothing, about 76% make it back to work. But instead of that, he did stem cells, and he couldn't stand for more than 10 minutes, he was in so much pain, and now he's 82 and he plays golf and tennis again, right? Making changes in days instead of months or years. Cristiano Ronaldo also endorsed my book, 'cause he had the same problem. He was trying to do traditional caretaking forever. Pull a hamstring, that's... A light one, no big deal. But one like he did? That could be two, three months. He was back on the field full force in two and a half weeks. So, these tools are just priceless in that area.

But then there's also tools like pulsed electromagnetic frequency. It's a mouthful, PEMF. When I tore my rotator cuffs, I met this person who said... She's a surgeon, but she said, "Don't do the surgery. It doesn't work". It was amazing to have that kind of honesty. She ran a whole hospital wing. And she said, "Go get one of these. I think we can reduce the pain enough to create some healing, and maybe even get you to sleep". And they came and worked on me, and that's how I got to sleep initially, 'cause it took my nine-nine pain down to five. I have one today. I use it every day. It's like a charger, a bio-charger for your body. It's pretty amazing. There's 3000 plus studies on it to give you an idea. You know, when it comes to pain, I was hit at 65 miles an hour sitting at a stop light at nighttime. I was talking to somebody on the phone waiting for the light to change, and then all of a sudden, light's coming on, I was like, "That guy better slow down." Boom! And I remember everything in slow motion. They pulled me out of the car, my car saved my life, but I mean literally, everything crunched through. And they wanted to take me to the hospital, I was like, "No, I'll see my chiropractor", but the next day, I couldn't move. And I...

For a year I went through all kinds of physical therapy and then I'd think I was doing better, and I'd go to run on stage, and I hit like second or third step, and boom! Snap. My hips snap under me and pain. Being, sitting in a chair at 26 years old, not able to move and I'm the one who takes over the room, right? So, I met Pete Egoscue and he's got books on pain free, and I show him a book also because I give you dozens of scientific approaches. But he has a beautiful approach, and he understands, he was a Purple Heart vet from Vietnam, told he'll never be able to walk again, never be out of pain, he just, like you and I, he wouldn't accept that. And he kept looking and studying human physiology, and so he gives you these exercises customized for your body to put your body back in alignment without anybody else doing anything to you. So, there is physical things you can do with technology, there's stem cells that you can make this process happen, there's structural things that you can do.

But just accepting pain, like so many people are just living off of painkillers and they think they have no other option, and sometimes there are some things that could be that far gone, but most of them are not, you just need a different technique, you need something scientifically proven, and the book is... You have an entire chapter just on pain. Look, I want to touch on one other thing though, kind of you alluded to too, which is, I'm in a performance and maximizing in energy and all those things, I know you are too, but you also, you got to realize that today there are so many things that can affect your health, and as you get older, the body accumulates breakdown in the DNA as you know. And so, if you really want to make a shift, and I know you're familiar with this, Shawn, but maybe your whole audience isn't. I'm not going to try and be technical for them, but most people know at this point, your genome, your DNA is not your destiny, it's a plan. Which of these parts of the DNA, which of these enzymes get turned on or off? Which of these genes get turned on or off is what determines how you're going to live?

And as you get older, the wrong genes get turned on at the wrong timing and vice versa. And so, what controls that is your epigenome, as you know, which "epi" means "above." So think of like your genome, the plan is the piano, but the piano player is the epigenome, and that's affected by diet, by exercise, by being overweight, by smoking, by radiation, etcetera. But your epigenome is still driven by sirtuins. Think of it as just seven genes, seven master genes that do two radically different things. Number one, they turn on and turn off. What's happening? Your epigenome triggering genes. So, the right ones or the wrong ones or not, when your sirtuins are strong, everything runs great and you can plan. They also formulate the impact on your mitochondria, they help you convert food into energy and the ATP, which is the basis of life. If you get cyanide, you die in 30 seconds. Why? 'Cause it cuts off the oxygen to the ATP and you can't make any and literally there's no energy in the body and you die, it's that fast. That's how powerful it is.

So sirtuins keep those furnaces blasting, sirtuins turn on and off the genes, and sirtuins, these seven master genes, they also reduce your inflammation, which is the basis of disease. But then they have a separate competing job. Your DNA gets corrupted by environmental factors, radiation, bad diet, chemicals in the environment, and if you're 60 versus 20, you've tripled it, you've accumulated that. So, the sirtuins go in and clean up the DNA, but at age 50, sirtuins are driven by NAD+, which is something most of your audience probably knows about or has heard about. NAD+ is wonderful, your sirtuins don't function without it, they're the fuel. But it drops by 50% when you turn about 50, right when you need it most. Imagine you got this mansion, and you have this beautiful staff and they're young and vibrant, something breaks, they fix it like crazy, everything always looks perfect. But then they get older and older and older, and less energy, and then you have less resources and things don't get fixed, the whole thing starts breaking down, that's basically aging.

So, the sirtuins need the NAD to do their job, and for NAD to go into the cell you need the precursor called NMN, Never Mother Never. And most people, they maybe have heard of it. But if you go on the market, like our firm went out and tested six different products, there was no NMN in any one of the products, and they charge between 35 and 150 bucks, most of it comes from China. I don't know if they're lying, but I do know one thing, NMN breaks down within 30 to 40 days. So, by the time you get it, there may not be any in it. And so, what's the solution? And this is the part that's so exciting. You can give NMN to an old mouse, an old mouse, like a 70-year-old mouse is like 20, 24 months. You give it to an old mouse... First of all, an old mouse can, at best, run a quarter of a kilometer. A strong young mouse can run a full kilometer, full tilt, no problem, but then they max out at a kilometer. You give the old mouse NMN, that's actually active in their body for 14 days, and they run two to three kilometers, 200% to 300% more than the younger strongest mouse they're competing with, and they're in their 70s.

So, you go, "Well, Tony, does it really transfer?" A lot of mice studies don't transfer to humans, so this what's cool. There's a company called MetroBiotech out of Boston, amazing. If you saw the people on their board, it'd blow your mind. I interviewed 150 people for this book, 100 of them are connected to this company directly, it just blew my mind. After I wrote the wrote book, I found all of them in one place. And they're all working on a series of products, but the most powerful one is a crystallized form of NMN, so it doesn't break down. It's its own molecule, it's called MIB-626. It's been top secret because they've been using it with the military for the last two years, testing it out on Special Forces. And in Boston, the commander there, though it's top secret, got so excited about the results, he spilled the beans to the media. And then two weeks ago or a week ago it was on the Daily Mail as well, and they don't have all the facts 'cause it's still top secret.

But the part I can tell you that's not top secret is simple, these are the greatest physical specimens in the world, Special Forces. Their endurance has exploded, I can't tell you the percentage 'cause they haven't published it yet, but I got to see it, like the mice. But also, their muscle development from the same exercise is completely transformed because this NMN is going into the furnace of the energy base of the body, they even have the blood out of the muscles now to see what it does in the muscles, which they never had before. And the cognitive ability goes crazy, and that's what the army is... Military is so excited about because when you're exhausted and you're in Special Forces, your ability to use these matters. So, I got a chance to visit with this guy, his best friend is 72... He had beginning Alzheimer's, he was a world-class chess player, stopped playing when he was 60, he couldn't do it. He's now playing professional chess at 72 years old because of this. This is not a nutraceutical, this is being taken through the FDA, they believe they'll have this out in 18 to 24 months, it'll be available to anybody.

So, imagine something that could fire the energy in your body, increase your endurance, increase your muscle strength, and clean up your DNA, all at the base of your body. It was just one kind of breakthrough that's coming out. So, I tell people what they can do right now, and then what they can also do within 12 to 24 to 36 months at the outside, so you can take full advantage when it happens. But we're living in a time that most people's life, you read in the book, there's a group right now, they're in stage three of the FDA. So, stage one is safety, you know that, but maybe your audience doesn't. Stage two is efficacy. Stage three is efficacy at scale, and then if you succeed, you get approved. So, the final stage, they believe they'll get approval by the fall or by early next year. Single injection fires off what's called the Wnt pathway, your own stem cells actually create a new communication, you have osteoarthritis, it re-grows all your tendons in about 11 months, and it goes from the clean epigenome like Dolly the sheep came from an old sheep, but the young sheep's perfect.

Well, they have a copy of your original uncorrupted component, so you've got like 16-year-old tendons, and you have no more arthritis. These are the kinds of things that are coming on top of the things that are here right now. It's hard to sleep at night once you read this book, 'cause you see both what you can do right now, what you can do in the near future, and also if you've got challenges, what are the alternatives that really are now proven to make a difference? Like CAR T-cells, I don't know if you saw this week, Dr. June who created CAR T-cells, it's an immunotherapy, people going through all the radiation, chemotherapy and they're dying. Immunotherapy has been around, it was around before chemotherapy, but it died. Some people died; they didn't know what to do. And this guy Dr. June, courageous man, took on these patients that were supposed to die, did this therapy, it's a little drip therapy, immunotherapy, no radiation... Melted down six pounds of tumors in this man in less than two weeks, completely gone.

And he's done it multiple times, but the article that just came out last week, or two days ago, three days ago, said they're calling it a cure now. 'Cause 10 years later, these CAR T-cells are still in people's bodies destroying cancer, they never dreamed it would last that long. And they don't use the word "cure" in the cancer environment. So, it's like, you couldn't be alive at a better time, and we're at the beginning of the beginning. The changes, again, in the next five to 10 years, will be more powerful than anything you've seen in 200 years combined. That's what's happening to our lives right now. But if you're in the normal public, you just see standard of care, and especially with COVID, looks like the whole world's coming apart when actually we're having a renaissance greater than ever. But you got to know, if you don't know, you don't want to, and you're going to find yourself where ignorance is not bliss, ignorance is disease, ignorance is pain, ignorance is low energy, ignorance can mean death.

Shawn Stevenson: Absolutely, I've got the book right here. Want everybody grab a copy ASAP, because the references, in and of itself, Tony has the receipts on everything that he's talking about, he's absolutely amazing. There's one other thing I want to ask you about before I let you go, and this has been phenomenal, because these are the things that, especially in this community, we want to talk about how we can be the best we possibly can be.

Tony Robbins: Yes.

Shawn Stevenson: What's the next level of humanity? And so, this is very exciting, and we have access to so much, and also you're working to make these things more accessible, which is wonderful. Now, at simultaneously, as you mentioned, there's a paradox taking place. And I believe that this is happening right now, when things are very consistent in just day-to-day, with business as usual, and they're solid, it's much more difficult to change them. But when...

Tony Robbins: That's right.

Shawn Stevenson: Turbulence is happening, and things are getting shaken up, it creates an opportunity, it's more malleable to change. And right now, and I would love for you to speak to this, we've been chugging along here for decades, allowing our society's health to basically become a dumpster fire, to put it in a scientific term. And the reality is this, we have multi-epidemics of obesity, Alzheimer's, heart disease, cancer, the list goes on and on, just continue to increase in recent years. But we can do something about this. It's all been highlighted right now by COVID, but what I want to ask you about is the state of our society overall. And my big thing and what I want you to talk about is, let's focus on becoming more resilient, let's create more robust, healthy human beings, instead of buying into this inherent weakness that has been programmed essentially in our psyche.

Tony Robbins: Here's my core belief and it might sound like positive thinking, and I don't believe in positive thinking, I believe in intelligence. Intelligence is when you study patterns, and you see the patterns, you learn from them, and you use them. Crisis creates breakthrough. We're in a crisis level. 75% of America is either overweight or obese. We're the fattest country in the world, and it's not about how you look, it's about health, it's about vitality, its why people are breaking down. It's the number one factor of the majors we just described of dying of COVID. So, I think we've hit a crisis, and I think there are people now so tired of the fear that they're starting to break out and they're looking for new solutions. On the scientific front, more money went in during the middle of COVID here for tools to do anti-aging and to shift what's happening in the body of any time in history, $80 billion, I think, is the number I saw just last year alone. So, resources are driving, people are fed up, people are wanting to take control of their life.

But it's like anything else. If you saw the... What's it called? The Milgram study where the authority figure told somebody to zap somebody, and they kept turning up higher and higher, we've all seen this study. And 67% of the people took it to the point where it could kill somebody because an authority figure told them to do it. But what most people don't notice in that study is when one person objected, it was all acting, nobody knew, right? But when one person objected to the authority, only 10% of the people went to that level. I think what's happening right now is this beautiful dovetail of the crisis is making people re-evaluate, it's opening the door for new forms of therapy, there's new economic drives making all that happen. I think all this happening at once... And here's history in two seconds. Think of it this way. Good times create weak people. Weak people create lousy times. Lousy times create strong people. Strong people create great times. I could take you... I'm a historian and I study history intensely, but I'll just give you one lesson and it gives us hope.

If you think about the Americans' greatest generation, it's a generation we call the Great Generation, went to World War II. They were born in 1910, for example. So, they came of age when we won World War I, and then the Roaring Twenties came on, and we all have that stage of life, when you get 19, 20, 21, that's the beginning of you having your own life, you testing what's true, you going out there. It's freedom, it's the new direction. So, these kids grew up in this environment of abundance and new technology and cars and, "I'm going to have a car, I'm going to have a wife, and I'm going to go to parties," and then when they turned 19, 1929, the world looked like it was ending. People were jumping out of buildings. The Dust Bowl in the middle of the US. Everything was horrific, not for a little time, for a long time. Now they make it to 29. What happens in 1939 when they're 29? World War II breaks out. Anybody alive then will tell you, it looked like we're going to lose, Hitler was blitzkrieging everybody, bombing England. But those same people that were called flappers and weak, kind of like what people talk about snowflakes with the millenniums or Z Generation arguing what millenniums about, now they're old and they're parting their hair in the wrong location.

All of this stuff is going to change, because when we face enough challenge, we grow. And these millennials who are brilliant, they know how to use technology, and these Zs that are growing up with it, the next chapter of our history, they are the ones who are going to help to face that, and help us to conquer that, they're going to grow. And by the way, they came back heroes. And think about the difference between the late '40s and '50s after World War I, up to '60s, then there's a new generation, where it's a summertime and there's internal conflict in the '60s and '70s. And there is the '80s, '90s, 2000s. Now we're in winter again, this is winter, it's not over. It's not going to be over when COVID disappears. We're going to deal with China. There is going to be real test to what we think society looks like. But as long as we grow, there's going to be opportunity and we will. So, I look at this as like, this is a time of transformation, and most people don't transform till they have to. And I think the times are coming where people are noticing they have to and they're taking back their life.

Shawn Stevenson: Let's go. Part of that transformation is increasing our life force, book by the same name, the living legend, Tony Robbins, I appreciate you so much. Thank you so much for hanging out with us.

Tony Robbins: Thank you, Shawn. Thanks for all you give and all you do, brother.

Shawn Stevenson: It's my pleasure, my honor. Take care.

Tony Robbins: God bless. Thank you.

Shawn Stevenson: As we covered in this episode, there's a new revolution taking place in pain management. Pain has become an epidemic, from chronic disease, from trauma, and also from mental and emotional health issues as well. Folks today in our society are experiencing a tremendous amount of pain, and Tony shared a story about being in such pain that he could barely even sleep at night. And this is a level of pain that a lot of folks never experience, but once we get to that place, we'll do anything, just about anything to get out of pain. Being able to have the wherewithal that things can be addressed in an efficacious way, that's what the target really is. And so just to give a little bit more on the benefit of these various types of stem cells. Been lecturing on this for quite some time, and I did a couple of university lectures about 10 years ago around this subject, when I saw where science was headed, and looking at number one, totipotent stem cells.

If you're like, "What in the world is that totipotent stem cells?" Essentially, this is as soon as the egg is fertilized, cells start to divide rapidly, and if these cells are extracted, you could potentially grow a whole person. It is that robust in life-generating energy. And so that's kind of the strange area that science was in, looking at how can we utilize some of these stem cell activities from developing babies, embryonic stem cells. And that was getting into a place where ethics were highly involved and as they should be in the conversation. But now, we're pointing towards, what about the placenta and the umbilical cord that are largely these throw-away items that for years, if we were looking at even the way that our ancestors were engaging with these aspects of human development, it was more of a ritual involved, it was more of, there's some very big value here that today we're just starting to understand because a placenta is essentially the lifeline for that child.

And the placenta develops a lot faster than the child does actually, and just being like, what is going on with this placenta being able to do all that it does? And it's just teeming with stem cells. So, the stem cells that we're looking at here also involved inside the blastocyst as well. But in the umbilical cord and also in the placenta, we have pluripotent stem cells, which have the elasticity and the intelligence to essentially become any part of the human body at all: Tissue for the eyes, tissue for the meniscus, tissue for the disc in between the vertebrae of the spine, the list goes on and on. Pluripotent stem cells can become anything that the human body needs. And we have a virtual fountain of youth within our bodies when we're developing to create all this stuff, but this is also being found in these new stem cell treatments.

Then we have multi-potent stem cells. And multi-potent stem cells, these are a little bit more specified. Generally, multi-potent stem cells are residing in a specific tissue of the body. So, what that means is multi-potent stem cells that are located in muscle tissue are only going to be doing stuff related to muscle tissue, it might be creating new cells related to different types of muscle tissues. For example, we have fast-twitch, we have intermediate fibers, we have different types of muscle fibers, for example, so maybe can create a little bit of variation, but still within the same kind of tissue matrix, if that makes sense. Then we have the adult stem cells which this is... These are types of multi-potent stem cells, but these are more specific located in specific localized areas of the body.

Now, again, when we think of stem cell treatments, usually it's an extraction from one's own bone marrow, for example. Then, centrifuge and all this process, and generally it's pretty painful and all these things, but there are these new leading-edge technologies taking place that are, again, utilizing the intelligence of the human body versus the apparent or supposed intelligence of synthetic treatments that are, again, we're treating symptoms through our standard of care. But today, we're understanding that a disease manifestation is actually an intelligence of the body to adjust its performance, to adjust the way that it's replicating activity to keep the person alive. So, with the example of diabetes, type II diabetes, when the human body starts to manifest insulin resistance, it's doing that to change its operating system to keep the person alive in excess of all of that insulin being produced in the body, reducing the activity, the receptor site activity, and creating an operation system where the person can potentially heal, like just creating new conditions where hopefully, what is causing the issue is resolved.

But a disease manifestation, even if we think about cancer, cancer isn't just this one thing where it's just this foreign intruder, cancer is something that the human body makes. But the human body does a tremendous effort in adapting its performance to actually encase and try to isolate a cancer tumor or finding ways to operate around that tumor. Even if, for example, we have all these stories of damage being done to someone's spinal cord and their body essentially finding a new way where someone would, on paper, believe to be paralyzed, but their brain and their nervous system finds another way to operate, creating new pathways so the person is still able to have function, right? There are many, many documented stories like this, but what makes the difference?

And so, understanding that disease manifestation is the body giving the symptom that, "Something is off, I'm going to adjust the way that I'm operating to resolve this underlying thing," or what we do in our conventional medicine is we treat the symptom. When the body's expressing this alarm like, "Hey, we've got a problem over here," we silence the alarm, ignore the alarm until another alarm goes off over here, right? I start to think about the cartoon back in the day. You know, maybe it's Donald Duck and he's like out on his boat. You know, he's doing his thing. He's already... He's pre-pissed off because that's how Donald rolled. And he gets a hole in his canoe and he's plugging it up one place and then another hole pops up, right? And he's plugging that with his little bill, you know, his duck bill that he's... Another hole pops up and he's just trying to plug up all these holes, all the while he's just like, "What is putting the holes in the boat in the first place?" You know who it is, it's Ch... Ch... Ch... Chip and Dale, right? It's the little squirrels up to trouble putting holes in the ship.

So, instead of eliminating the root cause, I'm not saying you should eliminate Chip and Dale, it's a great series. But what we're doing is trying to plug up the ship when the real issue is these squirrels, right? So, we're getting a little squirrely in our healthcare system and now it's forcing us to really analyze it like, "Hey, let's get honest, is this working? Has what's transpired in recent years, is it working?" Well, here's the result, we are now the most chronically diseased society in the history of humanity. Like as evolved as we're supposed to be as a species, we're the sickest nation in the history of recorded human society, ever. Highest rates of obesity, heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer's, liver disease, kidney disease. The list goes on and on, not to mention our epidemics of mental health issues. And now, again, this is not an accident. We're treating the symptoms, everything has become medicalized, even our emotions. Even our emotions have become medicalized, the most natural things about us. Human birth has become medicalized, has become an emergency. This is something... We've evolved doing these things and having these things forever as a species, and now there's this farming of situations with natural human function, and also, farming of sick people. That's where we are.

Treating symptoms is not just, not getting people better, it's killing people by default because we're not addressing the thing that can actually get people healthier. You know, it's very superficial. Even if our conventional, wonderful healthcare professionals who are going into the field to help and serve people, if they're not educated on, "What can we actually do to help this person to get better?" So, for example, many of my friends and colleagues who are physicians, they are put into a situation where they have to work in volume. They have to have a patient, they've got about 7-10 minutes with them tops in order just to keep the lights on, they've got to have this revolving door. They've got the patient intake, they try to do their best, they try to do their homework, but they get caught up in the day-to-day and before you know it, they can't stay up on top of the peer reviewed data, that's just out the window already.

They're getting educated by salesmen for pharmaceutical companies who are coming in with a very curated, new study that... We've talked about this on many episodes of the show, the power that pharmaceutical companies have and the multiple scenarios where they've gotten caught basically hiding or manipulating clinical trial data to frame their drug in this positive light. And eventually, that drug ends up getting pulled off the market for harming and/or killing a lot of citizens, like Vioxx is one of the most severe examples where the company, Merck, got caught manipulating their clinical trial data to create a favorable outcome in one of the most prestigious peer review journals, the New England Journal of Medicine, highlighting that this non-steroidal, anti-inflammatory drug is the wave of the future.

Number one, it was found to not even be better than over-the-counter ibuprofen. Number two, the risk, because that was the big thing, was, "Well, is this going to help to reduce the incidence of gastrointestinal issues?" Didn't even do that. But the thing that was hidden in the trial was the dramatic increase in cardiovascular incidents. They just pushed that data to the side. They published essentially what they wanted, the outcome data that they wanted, because a lot of folks don't realize the peer reviewers and folks who are working at some of our most prestigious peer review journals, they never actually see the real clinical trial data, they see summaries that the pharmaceutical company gives them. It's basically grading their own homework, and "Here you go, I'm turning it in. This is what we got." The same thing happens with the FDA.

Again, and again and again, we believe, oh, the FDA are... They must be double-checking and running the trial themselves with this drug. No, no, no, no, they don't do that. The pharmaceutical company does their own testing, and then they tell the FDA what the results were. That's how it works. This is why according to the EJS Center for Ethics at Harvard University, about 200,000 people die every single year from prescription medication. A huge portion of that is from properly prescribed prescription medication. People need to know this. It's not okay, we're talking about hundreds of thousands of our citizens, our family members, our community members every year. And we just think this sh*t is normal. It's not normal, it's not okay. And this is something we can do something about, but we've got to acknowledge that it's happening. Now, what happens is we get tunnel vision, we need our drugs, now we have to still keep the open possibility that pharmaceutical companies are operating in integrity and their multi-billion-dollar entities are doing this for the good of humanity. We got to keep that possibility open, but even saying that you might know... A red flag might come up, like, "Ah, you know that's probably not the case."

But we got to keep that door open because some medicines obviously can be lifesaving and life-transforming for folks, but more often than not, we've become a culture that is treating the symptoms of disease with things that are largely ineffective and dramatically suppressing our health span, not just our lifespan, but our health span. We are breaking down and decaying so much earlier. Listen, it used to be called adult-onset diabetes, they had to change the name because kids started getting it. It just got younger and younger and younger. When this was relegated to folks... heart disease, for example, 60s, 70s, that's when you see that phenomenon. Now, it's people in their 50s, in their 40s, in their 30s, having heart attacks and strokes.

Something is severely wrong here, of course, you know at the root, it's a misalignment with what our genes expect from us. We talked a little bit about epigenetics with Tony today, epigenetics is really the umbrella under which all other sciences are existing. We might not have known that epigenetics was even a thing, which we didn't, just a few decades ago, but for decades now, we know this to be the case. So, the environmental inputs that determine which and how your genes are getting expressed. We all collectively as a society, as a human species, we're sharing collectively about the same 20,000-ish genes that have been discovered through the Human Genome Project and then mapped out later as time has gone on. But collectively about 20,000 different genes as a species. Corn has more genetic variety than humans do. I know it sounds corny. I know the joke was a little corny, but it's true. So, we were expecting humans to have a million different genes or whatever the case might be, but here's what's really special about us, it's the variation, the potential of epigenetics and how our collective 20-ish thousand genes can be read and expressed so differently...

That's what creates such a variety in our species from the way that we look, the way that we think, the way that we move, our functionality, our brain, our cognitive ability, the list goes on and on, there's so much variety as to what we can be and what we can express as humans, and it's because of epigenetics.

A set of genes, maybe a couple of genes could have literally thousands of different variations in how they're getting expressed that relate to what we deem to be good health or what we deem to be a disease, because even that disease, it's not a gene for disease, it's a gene for different operation, it's a gene for a different activity of the human body, that's where we got to really make a break in the understanding, 'cause there aren't genes for disease, that's a misnomer, it's really a different expression or an alteration in what we consider to be normal function.

It is normal function under the set of environmental inputs, that's what type 2 diabetes is, is creating a normalcy, an adaptation for the human body to survive, carry on our species. It's amazing. Now, we don't want to live in that per se, because we know the outcomes, if we are experiencing this insulin resistance, we're probably going to be leaning into more often than not, carrying around excessive weight which is going to trigger systemic inflammation and just a dramatic increase in our aging process and the breakdown of our bodies, and the list goes on and on.

So, we want to be in an optimal state, healthy expression of our highest and best genetic expression possible, and that comes from engaging our epigenome, and the power is truly within our hands. We know that there's an entire field of Nutrigenomics and Nutrigenetics. These are looking at how each and every bite of food that we ever consume is instantaneously influencing thousands of our genes. Instantaneously, that's so powerful. And one of those domains of science is looking at, "Hey, my genetic makeup actually has a much healthier resonance with these certain types of foods." Now we're getting more into, again, personalized nutrition, and even if we're talking about healing, we're looking at precision medicine, not the systemic throwing a bomb into your body in the form of...

A full-spectrum antibiotic, that's just killing off everything, looking at, what can we specifically target to get this individual healthy? This individual who's different from everybody else who's ever existed. Very, very powerful stuff. Now, the last thing to close out this episode is if we never have an interaction with stem cell therapy in our lives, it's okay, because at its core, this is a resource that we have within our bodies right now as well, that we can use to the fullest potential for us as individuals. Now having these wonderful therapies is a great, great opportunity, but we have something called Stem Cell Genesis that can take place in the human body where we're producing new stem cells from our own internal resources, so we want to stack conditions in our favor. Not saying that these alone can help us to heal from a traumatic brain injury, or in Tony's case, a shoulder injury that threatened his life, his way of life, so we want to have all of these resources to expand our tool belt to have a Batman-level utility belt of tools to use versus just a hammer and a wrench, which is kind of what everything is looking like in modern medicine today. If you've got a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail, looks very nail-licious.

So, it's expanding our tool belt, our toolkit, and our utility belt. And what does that mean for us to continue to have a virtual fountain of youth within our bodies, is to stack conditions in our favor. When it comes to our nutrition, needing real food, our movement practices, our sleep wellness, our relationships have such a huge role to play in our overall health and vitality as well, and the things that give us joy and giving ourselves permission in this time when there's so much distraction, there's so many things telling you that you're not enough, to allow yourself to engage in things that give you true boundless joy, and being able to out-picture that joy to others. So that's what we're about is stacking conditions in our favor, and I appreciate you so much for being a part of this mission, and listen, this is just scratching the surface on what we're here to accomplish as a community. And coming up, we've got some epic master classes and special guests to keep adding to this conversation, to keep pushing this forward and to create a true health revolution within our society and make health the norm.

I know that this is possible in our lifetime, but we've got to do it together. I appreciate you so much for tuning into the show, 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 could find transcriptions, videos for each episode, and if you got a comment, you can leave me a comment there as well. And please make sure to head over to iTunes and leave us a rating to let everybody know that the show is awesome, and I appreciate that so much. And take care, I promise to keep giving you more powerful, empowering, great content to help you transform your life. Thanks for tuning in.