 Most people have heard a bulletproof coffee, I hope, and you hope So, but I don't think a lot of people certainly my listeners may not know your backstory How did all this come about? How did you go from a 300 pound college student? To the world's most famous biohacker Well, I spent a million dollars and 20 years hacking my biology and I started out Not just 300 pounds. I was diagnosed from blood tests as being at high risk for stroke and heart attack before I was 30 I had arthritis my knee since I was 14. I've been diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, a toxic mold exposure Lyme disease and pretty much you name it It seemed like it was all going wrong But the thing that scared me and really motivated me was two things one after my second knee surgery before I was 23 I said never again. I'm gonna lose this weight Even if it kills me I worked out an hour and a half a day six days a week went on a low fat Low calorie diet and at the end of that time I could max out all the machines in the gym And I still weigh 300 pounds and I thought ah, it's because I'm eating too much lettuce. Yeah, it must it must be that And I realized since then that 90% of how you look is what you put in your mouth and what you put in the world around you exercises the other 10% I think that's a really good point and You and I actually agree on a lot of things and that's certainly one of them that Exercise absolutely has a place But I think we put far too much emphasis on that part and not enough Emphasis on what goes in our mouth what goes on us and what goes in the mouths of things we might be eating Well, I think you and I actually share an unusual distinction and that we might be at the very Edge of people saying actually it's what you don't put in your mouth Matters more than what you do put in your mouth although they're both important and and that's Certainly in the whole bulletproof lifestyle from the very first day It's like could you stop doing the stuff that makes you weak because it's easier to do that than it is to do More lifting heavy things or whatever the heck so I kudos to you for helping that message get out there because You know eating bad stuff is worse than not eating good stuff. You're right rule number one of the plant paradox It's it's not what I tell you to eat that's important is what I tell you not to eat that's gonna make the big difference Okay, what the heck are smart drugs? Sure In game changers, I interviewed almost 500 people have done big things including you think things that are world-changing leading in their categories And said what are the commonalities? What did people agree on and the three big buckets? Where people who do big things generally do things to become smarter to become faster and to become happier like that They do big things because they're happier. They're not happy because they did big things and It turns out that one of the ways that people do Perform better is using either pharmaceuticals or plant-based compounds to improve their cognitive function We've known about some of these for 50 plus years. They are well studied Some of them have famous movies like limitless roughly based on them and I've been using them for 20 years The idea that that they can't work therefore They don't is well entrenched in Western medicine But when you look at the studies particularly around modapinil one of the smart drugs that I write about in game changers The studies are pretty convincing that it actually does increase cognitive performance in some domains in my case I had this brain fog that was really a problem and it's gone now when I eat the right stuff I perform at a very high level even for what I would have done when I was in my 20s and I'm in my 40s But for eight years I took modapinil it improved my meditation practice quantitatively with EEG improve my relationships I got my MBA at Wharton while working full-time at a startup and it basically made me better at almost everything I did I don't I don't actually benefit much from taking it now I feel a tiny bump, but it's barely noticeable compared to before it was like someone turned the lights on so all of us can benefit and some of these compounds Actually reduce aging of the brain and of other tissues in the body They improve performance of mitochondria the power plants and the cells that your your viewers are no doubt familiar with and so Why aren't we all using these is my big question, you know, you're gonna live to be a hunter-nady At least I don't want to put a cap on it Okay, let's not put a cap on it. I know we can do 120 because you and I've seen it in a few cases So it is not impossible. It is a proven thing and those people didn't know when they were born But I think we had the wheel back then and maybe fire. We certainly didn't have antibiotics We didn't have public sanitation. We didn't understand mitochondria. We hadn't done the human genome project You couldn't get a lot of the foods you can get now supplements weren't available and all of the medical procedures That are available now including heart surgery. We're totally not available back then So if they can do it under those conditions I'm pretty sure with conscious choice and intention and just making better decisions not even perfect ones 120 is eminently achievable with what we have today assuming a truck doesn't hit me. Okay, so then I Also am friends with the people who are leading the anti-aging research groups. I've been involved in that for 20 years I know what's happening. I know what's coming. I have compounds that are under NDA that are not Not for human consumption that increase lifespan of rats by 95% Am I taking those? Yeah Might they do something that we don't know about? Yeah, if I can double my lifespan. Is it a good risk? I think so so, you know, those are the types of things that are coming and You look at all of the machine learning all the artificial intelligence The fact your human genome is now free if you're willing to show your data with drug companies are a few hundred dollars If not, you know what? I'm pretty sure we're gonna get 50% over the next hundred years In fact, I think it's it's a very conservative number The the first person to live a thousand years is probably walking the earth today now the naysayers Would say why would anybody want to do that? Having spent so much time with vibrant Passionate older people My picture of aging is different than what most people watching us today are thinking about when someone says old you immediately Imagine the stooped shoulders the walker tubes monitors wheelchairs diapers not remembering your own name Like it is it is a dark place Right being alone in an in an aging home That's actually not what happened throughout all of history except for about the last 50 years what aging looks like is Being functional productive having family around you and being in a position to give back The village elder is what's missing the reason we do so many stupid things today as we aren't Benefiting from the wisdom of our elders and there's a couple things going on there One is your odds of dying from Alzheimer's disease are pretty darn good And if you're not dead from it you spend 20 years not remembering the wisdom that you could have shared Another one is your people just don't have enough energy to want to get back I'm too tired my body hurts all the time, you know, I have cranky was that movie grumpy old men syndrome grumpy old man Yeah testosterone deficiency we can fix that right so you you keep going into these things and you realize wait a minute Do I get enormous benefit? I have at least At least ten friends over 70 and you know what they have steered me around so many problems that I would hit in my 40s That I didn't I don't know about them because I haven't done them yet Well, the world needs a lot more of that if we're going to survive as a world All right. No, you're right there the village elder has basically disappeared Yeah, there's there's a lot of books I've read on philosophy of aging that the the purpose of having a good old age Is to actually give back your wisdom? to those coming up behind and I couldn't agree more that We've lost that and and like I write in the longevity paradox if it's no good getting old if you can't remember it There you go Better to talk about success than you I mean you've been named Time magazine's top 100 most influential people Two years into building the Huffington Post I was the divorced mother of two teenage daughters And I had bought into the collective delusion that in order to succeed you have to be always on You don't have time to sleep to take care of yourself And I collapsed I literally hit my head on my desk broke my cheekbone and that was the beginning of my studying all the latest science because I'm a nerd like you and Realizing that in fact all the new scientific findings Make it clear that when you take care of yourself your performance and productivity improve It's not just your health that improves But your cognitive performance improves so I became more and more of an evangelist I wrote a book called thrive and Then because everybody wanted to talk about sleep. I wrote a book about sleep and Two years ago actually I left the Huffington Post which was a very hard decision because it was like a third child and There's a global media company with my name on the door But I felt that I wanted to spend a hundred percent of the rest of my life helping people lead lives with less stress and Avoiding burnout because as you know Stress is so connected with disease and it is preventable so our behavior change Prescriptions are all based on what we call micro steps too small to fail Okay, so that's give me so it's the new year give me an example of a micro step that You can't fail that great, let's say that you want to Reduce your addiction to your phone and to social media and to technology Which as you know is a growing source of stress. Yes, because we are all increasingly addicted to this thing and We find it hard to disconnect at night to go to sleep 72% of people sleep with their phone by their bed So if they wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom or for whatever reason they are tempted Even if they tell themselves, I'm not going to look at my phone If they can't immediately go back to sleep they go to their phone and that again all the science tells us is incredibly disruptive to getting deep sleep so One of my favorite micro steps, and we have like over 700 is Pick a time at the end of your day that you declare the end of your working day. It's an arbitrary end To declare an end and we declare the end by turning off our phone and Charging it outside our bedroom. So that's a little step. It's a ritual But it's very significant because you have a clear demarcation between your day life with all its challenges and problems and your night life Which should be all about recharging and reconnecting with a deeper part of ourselves now You know my friend dr. McCullough would say that the other reason not to have your phone by your bed is the electromagnetic waves that are constantly coming out of your phone, right and Disrupting almost every every cellular function that we have and you're right sleeping with a cell phone near your bed is a really dumb idea and even if you turn it off and You don't have to worry about the electromagnetic waves It's still a reminder of everything you have to deal with it's really the repository of Every challenge every problem every demand on your time and attention and we need to disconnect from that It is amazing at least in my humble opinion the power of food certain foods To absolutely make your brain crazy any any mother of a four-year-old knows that you know a trip to Disney land with simple carbohydrates that you get a hyperactive Child who suddenly then collapses screaming and crying and you can see just immediately the power of certain foods to affect brain function If you I'm sure Thrive is incorporating that into your absolutely and We have incorporated The number one country rule Which is that your health depends more on what you don't eat rather than what you eat because people may Follow different prescriptions. I mean they may be vegan. They may be meat eaters but if they can stay away from sugar and Simple carbohydrates and processed foods That's already a big victory and also as you know this sleep Movement and diet are incredibly interconnected like I have all the science in the sleep book that if you are Sleep-deprived your body physiologically craves carbs and sugars So it's not even a mental decision It's like physiological a Carnivore diet is essentially a whole foods animal-based diet. It includes no plant materials So we're eating I would argue like our ancestors would eat if you're in the savannah Or you're in Europe and you're hunting and you kill a deer or a buffalo carnivore diet is eating animals nose to tail There's no plant material in a carnivore diet for the reasons that we will talk about the plant toxins So all of the animals so muscle meat organs connective tissue bones brain It also includes all animals. So fish shellfish You know things like this birds, but no plant material on a carnivore diet when my first book came out years ago or dr. Gundry's diet evolution which was bought by Random House who had done all the South Beach books and all the Adkins books and In the in the first part of that program was actually a high protein diet and then I through the stages I went more and more introducing plants, but My editor wanted me to introduce grains and beans as part two of the diet And I said you don't get it both Adkins and South Beach took away all these carbohydrates and then in phase one and then they reintroduced them and then everybody gained weight and All their symptoms came back and what did they say to do? Oh well go back to phase one and Eliminate all these carbohydrates again, and I said don't you get it? It was these plant materials that they were putting back in that was causing the problem in the first place So I mean the banding diet took away carbohydrates You know the Adkins diet took away all of these diets took away carbohydrates My contention is that they were taking away the major plant defense Carbohydrates out of their system, and I think one of the things that you and I just from the start So there were we remain friends is Is I mean this is the ultimate elimination diet in in my opinion Now the ultimate elimination diet is stop eating which is actually very effective But it is the ultimate elimination diet a bit you are getting rid of all these plant toxins now This is a good step off. So you're not saying that you can go out and eat factory raised meat factory raised pork and Have a wonderful time. I hope you're not saying that no that's not my intention to promote that I think that the quality of the food We are eating and the ethics which with with which the animals that we're eating are treated are very important So I'm an advocate for eating grass fed pasture raised meats They're organic the best meats that people can afford and we know that things like glyphosate You know which is also known as roundup and other pesticides can bioaccumulate in the food chain And you know all of the ethical environmental arguments aside We'll have to do a second podcast to talk about the environmental stuff We know that grass-fed agriculture is actually net karmid negative There was something that came out recently with white oak pastures saying that they're reducing the amount of carbon in their environment because the soil becomes so much more rich and Nutrient full that it can actually sequester more carbon So for so many reasons the nutrition of the animals that we're eating the lives of the animals that we're eating and the Greenhouse gas emissions the sort of overall balance. I'm not an advocate for factory farming I think people should be aware of the quality of the foods. They're eating I think glyphosate is a big deal We can't ignore the fact that grain fed animals are probably going to bioaccumulate that in the grains. They're eating Yeah, that's absolutely true And I think that's one of the really scary things that we need to pay more and more and more attention to is that you know roundup is sprayed on almost everything as a desiccant for harvesting and Nobody's washing this stuff off before it's fed to our animals Nor is it washed off before it's put in our bread our cookies our crackers our cereals and I think 20 years from now we'll look back and well, holy cow, maybe all of this was a glyphosate problem and We'll find out at least a big portion of it is I mean I saw posted on social media today that in these sort of Plant-based burgers these impossible burgers have like 11 times the amount of glyphosate of some of you know some of these other You know like other plant-based burgers So there are certain plant-based burgers that are Particularly just riddled with these pesticides so people shouldn't think that you know like by eating fake meat They're gonna avoid this either so no, that's true And in fact, you know one of the burgers I won't mention recently changed their formula to get rid of gluten-containing foods Imagine that a healthy plant-based burger that had gluten. It's like really The all of them they're all bad in my opinion Yeah, so many of them based on pea protein, which I think you and I would probably agree would not be high on our list of plant material to consume So many lectins no good. I totally agree with you. See there is commonality here What started you down this path towards the keto diet and intermittent fasting? What what piqued your interest? Well, let me give you an example of how I changed my views when many years ago I thought it was foolish and that's being kind for people who were fasting I thought clearly the evidence is obvious that you need to eat all the time and in fact 90% of the population according to Sachin Ponda Eat more than 12 hours a day more than 12 is it I know that's not you I mean you have a one to two hour window frequently, but So, you know that most all of us are doing the same thing believing the same and I've changed that and I Recognize that especially as keto started coming on board and experimenting with it and mark system taught me about metabolic flexibility I tried it for myself and was just amazed at what it did you've got to learn and adapt and Really modify things as you acquire new information some the the basic strategy is to Become first become metabolically flexible which I discussed in my previous book that for fuel That is the primary issue where and you do that With a simple step that doesn't cost anything saves you money and radically improves your health What is that? Compress your eating window when I give a lecture. I feel I Succeeded if I can get that one single message to the office compress your eating window and you're a big fan of that And have been actually much much before I I just understood that fact. So what's a compressed eating window? You know 12 hours, which 90% people aren't doing is not enough I think I 14 hours probably starts to get the benefit and I think a sweet spot of 16 to 18 I think most of us don't have to go to your level and I only do that six months out of the year. So yeah, what was that two hours? And what's it? What's it? Then you go to four hours. Yeah, what so the rest of the year I go to about 16 hours. Yeah Okay, 16 hours. That's fine. Then that's not a big deal. I'm glad because you know to do that long term I think you're going to run into some complications because really one of the basic tenets of the book is to Go into these cycles which you were designed to because the human species was never designed to have access to food 24-7 Just that that wasn't the case So we have to replicate that pattern if we want to maximize our biological benefits and what are what our genetic Are designed for? Yeah, no, you're absolutely right as you know my new book the longevity paradox Also stresses exactly what you're saying. We should be eating in circadian rhythms and There there is just utmost evidence even in looking at modern hunter-gatherers That there is cyclically feeding periods and there are extended periods of time Where we do not eat or we eat very minimally and so it's this cycle that you so eloquently talk about in keto fast is Is really important and the beautiful thing about it because and you know this once you're fasting the other side Benefit is distant to the mental clarity is that the hunger disappears, right? So as someone like you it's like you're not even doing it because you normally if you're eating one meal It's it used to lower the calorie rate, right? So and then then basically you eat your next meal and you're off to the races So it's it's you don't even think about it once you once you have that restricted Window of six to eight hours It becomes as easy as can be You know it's interesting My research in Yale was on evolutionary human biology and one of the interesting things is and this has been confirmed And you know that actually when you are fasting when you're literally starving your Performance actually increases and the reason evolutionary wise if if we were starving We had to catch that animal and if we didn't catch that animal that you know that was curtains Yeah, that was it. And so it's fascinating that you know, we have a built-in Evolutionary advantage to perform well while fasting and makes incredible sense Just to bring it down to what people can understand and then of course when we caught that animal or we Found the fruit tree or the honey tree, you know, we didn't sit there. Oh, I'm only gonna eat a little bit I Really So tell me about your decision to leave a brand that you helped build from the ground up and then start something Totally different. I mean what were what were your signs that it was time to move on? Well, I was a makeup artist before I even thought of making a lipstick. I made a lipstick I turned it into 10 lipsticks started selling them out of my house You know putting in envelopes my husband would mail them and after a year I met a Big big woman who worked at Bergdorf Goodman She took the 10 lipsticks and somehow in the next four years You know our business was sold to Estee Lauder. So four years after I started the company. We sold it I had two kids at the time I now have a third and it was just a super super busy time But the amazing thing was that I stayed as an employee for 22 years. I Help build that brand into a billion dollars and anyone that has worked in any kind of corporations knows I Wasn't the boss at the end of it I wasn't able to do what I thought what I believed in and I just got tired of fighting And so I said it's time to be the boss again and do something else So I left without knowing what I was gonna do. Yeah That's 60 years old Yeah, that's I Kind of left what I you know was great at at 50 Without kind of knowing what I was gonna do Are there any tips to know when it's time to move on to to change Well, the only tip I have is when you're not happy if it's not working I mean, that's really it if you don't come to work and excited to be at work or what you're doing is just you feel stuck Yeah, then it's time to maybe figure out what's going to make a change and some people do Something that we call the side hustle until they're ready to make the change and it could be you know Who knows you might you know be someone who nits I don't you decide you want to have a website that sells patterns and knitting things you want to make granola You want whatever it is You know what you've got to just give yourself the You know the opportunity to figure out what makes you happy. That's really it What's what you're passionate about and my favorite thing is why not? What's the worst that happens? Okay? It doesn't work. I don't believe in failure. I believe that when something doesn't work out It it's a message that says do something else. Yeah, you're absolutely right Even my biggest failures were huge successes and the things they taught me, right exactly So tell me about your new wellness platform. What inspired you to go in this direction? Well, I have been a health nut Pretty much my whole life growing up in Chicago in the suburbs. I was not a health nut I was a diet nut name a diet scar stale diet honey alone vinegar did everything with my mom I was either on or off a diet and then I realized when I moved to New York And I was working in the fashion industry no amount of starvation was going to have me look like a supermodel and On an off a diet is dumb. So I started to realize I feel better when I don't eat bread I feel better when I don't eat cookies and sugar. So I started slowly Transitioning and then when I had my own company I started teaching all the women not just about where to put the eyeliner or where to put the blush But if you if you look good if you're if your skin looks good, then your makeup is gonna look so much better It's gonna be easier. So I've always kind of given back in that field and Then my ninth book as I you know is beauty from the inside out Which is a book about what you put in your body? Affects your skin way more than any cream you're gonna buy out there creams are not gonna make you look healthy And when I left Bobby Brown cosmetics one of the first things I did is sign up to go to school to get my degree as a health Coach from Institute of Integrative Nutrition I've been hooked on it ever since That's fantastic. Well as you know your intestines are actually your skin turned inside out and Everything that happens on the wall of your gut is actually reflected on your skin and you're right So beauty comes from within and it's what you put in Your system that actually will be reflected out on your skin and for someone like me who yes I have very good skin. I've had digestive issues my whole life. I have never been able to figure out exactly what to do and It's another reason why I'm so excited to be part of you know the wellness industry Because I'm always searching for ways to feel better So is that why you decided to have a line of supplements? Was that just a natural progression of what you'd learned? It was definitely definitely. I'm not you know, I don't I'm not a doctor. I'm not a scientist I'm a beauty expert and now I'm a health coach and a health fanatic So my line is not things that are going to change your health. They're going to help your lifestyle So you will look and feel better Bobby. You and I both I think agree that Clean products and clean beauty is incredibly important because you know I talk about the seven deadly disruptors So can you define? What do you mean by clean beauty products? Well clean beauty products are really products that don't have you know These additives and chemicals and there are so many on the don't use list. There is a Great chain of beauty stores called credo that has a list on their website That'll tell you exactly the ones the ingredients that you should not be putting on your face So I live by that all my cleaning supplies in my house my shampoos my moisturizers they're all clean and I I Cannot tell you the difference it my house smells better and I just it just feels so much better Yeah, the you know these most of these products have such you know incredible estrogen disruptors that it's actually really scary and you know recently there was a Study showing that a lot of the ingredients in sunscreens which are problematic are absorbed through our skin and Can be detected in our blood and that is really scary So yeah, and I agree people have got to really concentrate on this because Our skin is an absorptive surface and boy the stuff we're putting on it is scary. So good for you Yeah, and we have to keep making sure that companies know this and you know, hopefully that everyone will change Yeah, and I think that you know the informed consumer like you and I are are trying our darned us Will demand changes as long as they know why they need to demand this and It's not going to happen from the top up. It's all got to come from below Before you go I just wanted to remind you that you can find the show on iTunes Google Play Stitcher or wherever you get your podcast because I'm dr. Gundry and I'm always looking out for you