 So welcome to the Dr. Gendry podcast. You know, I'm really excited to introduce you today to this week's guest He's a best-selling author. He's a podcaster of incredible renown. He's a nutrition expert So that's why he's here with an amazing backstory. We're gonna get into that. So Sean Stevenson It's really easy to remember because his last name is like my first name with a bee Welcome to the podcast. It's my pleasure to be here And this is actually our second time together, but the first on my podcast so welcome and I'm excited And thank you for having me on your podcast in the past straight fire. It was incredible. We had fun So now we're gonna talk about what helped you, you know get through I want some of your backstory with degenerative disc disease and I think that's really important as a place to start because as you and I both know there are Millions and millions and millions and millions of Americans who are dealing with back pain and degenerative disc disease and Take me through what happened to you as a young man. Let's start there. Yeah, this is literally a backstory. I was 20 years old when I got this diagnosis what sent me in to see my physician at the time was I was experiencing this leg Pain that become a bit of a nuisance and I thought, you know, I was so disconnected from how the body worked I thought maybe I pulled a muscle or something and Once my physician checked me out. He had me go get an MRI of my spine and I was just like what is he thinking my leg hurts Not my back and We came into the office to look at my scan He put it up for me to see and he told me look this is we found the problem and I'm just like, okay What do we do? Let's fix this and he was basically like no slowdown son I got to explain something to you and he points at the MRI and he shows me that I have this degenerative disc disease And he also knew that my bone density was very low as well And I knew that prior to because I broke my hip and track practice No trauma just from running. I broke my hip when I was 16 But I didn't get this diagnosis until I was 20 years old And so I basically he told me that that I had the spine of an 80 year old man when I was just 20 So in a sense, I was a very old man inside of a young person's shell in a sense because I looked fit Mm-hmm, you know, yeah, as you know, there's a big difference between fitness and health and again, I was very Still optimistic because I just wanted to take care of the problem I was used to working with my coaches, you know, and you're a college student. Yeah, I was in college at the time and He told me that Well, basically he told me to pump my brakes and slow down a little bit because he wanted to explain to me that This is something that is incurable. You know, this is a condition that there is not a treatment for and he told me Lovingly, I guess that this is something you're just gonna have to deal with and I'm sorry and it was very heartbreaking for me because He was telling me that I have this condition. He gave me this diagnosis and that there was nothing I can do about it and I'm gonna have to spend the rest of my life in this very strange pain and I know a lot of listeners know about this We've mentioned this briefly on my show with you The power of the placebo effect and placebo is a lot of people don't realize this They're about 33% effective on average in clinical trials. Yeah So a fake drug a fake surgery fake treatment The person believing that they're taking the drug that will lower their blood pressure or kill their cancer For example, proceeds to do just that based on the power of the mind about 33% Effective on average and this is why the gold standard of clinical trials We have to do a double-blind placebo controlled because placebo's work now. He didn't give me a placebo He gave me a no-cebo. This is the opposite. This is a negative injunction from an authority figure Basically, you know, this is when you hear you'll never walk again, you know, you have six weeks to live, you know this is incurable and Every cell in my body believed that and so over the course of about six weeks I went from a nuisance of a pain to like chronic debilitating pain and it just began to destroy my life for the next two two and a half years and by the way, if you ever get a Bill of bad news like this get a second and and or third opinion, which I did but it was the same thing I Proceeded to Really break down mentally and physically, you know, I gained a lot of weight because you know I was just telling me be careful don't do anything So he gave me permission slip to not be active, which a lot of people want. That's right. I was just like, thank you And I sat there on my little college love seat and played a lot of video games and ate what I affectionately called the tough diet typical university food and I I gained about 50 pounds over that two and a half years and I was a more the thinner person of my family my fat gene it flipped on all right, so I always became very very fluffy and What was so tragic about this is that I Didn't realize at the time nor did my physicians inform me that not only is my spine going to atrophy but now everything else is because our bodies really do work on a use it or lose it basis and This two and a half years went by and I became and I just to give people a reference point You know on a scale of one to ten like one you have no pain ten is the worst unimaginably pain you can experience I Would get this sciatic pain that would shoot down my leg that would be a split second that was a level 10 like bring me down to my knees and It put me in fear like literally fear of standing up. Mm-hmm. And so I stood up as little as I possibly could Fast-forward obviously, there's a you know spoiler alert. There's a good ending to this But it took about two and a half years and we were just talking about this before the show and I think that everybody it's so important to have exposure and We really become what we are exposed to and I had a great environment coming up with my my grandmother's household And she was pestering me, you know through this period always calling check on me She knew I wasn't well, but I wouldn't tell I just you know You're annoyed by your grandparents and your parents at a certain point especially in college I'm college, you know, I'm fine, but I wasn't fine, you know, and I really realized like she instilled in me this Notion that I was special and that I was gonna do something really amazing with my life and here I was on all these medications, you know prescription and over-the-counter one of them was celibrex Oh on the side effects which later because what didn't have a name yet was the restless leg syndrome Which I had from taking the celibrex felt like my legs were gonna get up and leave me at night and My life, you know, I was definitely depressed. I was overweight and I was really lacking a sense of purpose and I realized that I had an opportunity in front of me and a choice to make Which most people never actually do this dr. Gundry. It's more like wishful thinking, right when they want to get healthy It's like I'll I'll try, you know, we'll see what happens. I wish this will work We'll give it a shot But when you really make a decision about something, right a true decision Even the word decision is from the Latin day meaning from and cardier, which means to cut Yeah, you cut away the possibility of anything else, but the decision that you make And so I decided no matter what I was going to get healthy and let me stop you there right there for a second because in my office in my exam room, I've got not only a big poster of Yoda, but also several Yoda dolls and one of our mottos is Try not do or do not there is no try and that's exactly right. And so go ahead Yeah, yeah chattel that you know and What was so fascinating for me in that time period and just experiencing that and By the way, I'm a very analytical person by nature I feel and so it wasn't as if I make this decision and you know, the clouds parted and everything just got better but I put a plan together, you know and that plan entailed three specific things and those three things just to rattle them off really quickly number one was When I first went to college, I went pre-med even though I actually hate I hated science like literally a Couple years ago. I was having still nightmares about biology glass. Yeah from high school, which is my deep passion now I love it so much, but I just couldn't stand it and I just didn't it didn't make any it wasn't visceral it didn't connect and I when I was in in college I start to see the upperclassmen because your top pathology and disease is basically the study of disease, correct You're not taught health. No, and so they were like always You know giving themselves diagnosis with problems, you know, it's just it really creeped me out. So I got out of that Because of you know, I went did the pre-med thing because I thought I should be a doctor Just because it's just a thing, you know, but I didn't have any exposure Except for television, you know, and so the other exposure was a movie boomerang from Eddie Murphy I know and he was in marketing. So I was like, I'll do that. That looks cool And so I got out of that and now life had other plans for me really and it circled me back to I decided You know what? I saw the study of disease already I'm gonna study everything I can about what it takes to be a healthy sovereign human being and so for me The kind of low-hanging fruit was movement, you know, I'd stop moving and being an athlete who was like I ran a four or five forty when I was 15 years old but then proceeded of course to break my hip eventually and spoil those plans, but that was my connection to health somewhat but definitely the fitness and so I began to just move my body again And it was difficult even just walking. So start off with a stationary bike and progress though We're doing some walking eventually pick up the weights again The other thing was I asked this really fundamental question My spine is breaking down My disc are degenerating. What are my disc made of? What are what is my bones made of if my bones are breaking down my bone density so low All I knew was calcium from commercials and come to find out there were dozens of other things It's many of them more important than calcium. They just didn't have a good marketing team, right? And so vitamin K2 silica, you know sulfur bearing amino acids all this stuff I'd never heard of and I was just Fascinated and I decided like let me get as many of these nutrients in to give my body the raw materials It needs to do the job. How can it do the job without the the raw materials basic stuff? third thing if You're not sleeping. You're not healing and my biggest struggle through that two and a half years was sleeping at night Because the pain would wake me up literally if I just changed positions. I get that electric shot down my leg And so I would take a cocktail, you know I had my over-counter and my prescription medication and knock me out Which was really just a pseudo sleep because I woke up in a fog every day. The last is several hours and Once I did change some things I was doing during the day. It Changed my sleep at night and I got better very quickly. So to put a bow on this it was about Six seven weeks later. I lost about 20 pounds which results not typical, you know Being the thin guy of my family like the weight just fell off I started making these changes the pain I've been experiencing for two and a half years every day of my life was gone And it was about nine months later I got a scan done and my two ruptured discs had retracted and the juiciness the suppleness of my disc Basically my disc had regenerated and you can see the light shining through me again and my physician at the time He told me that I'd never seen anything like this. Whatever you're doing keep doing it. I fired him and You know from there really the rest is history because people started to ask me how did I make this transformation? My professors at school fellow students faculty and they all became my first clients and I shifted all my coursework over to Health and biology and kinesiology and open my practice and here I am today and there you are Interesting. Well, you know, it's interesting my and let's get back to your osteoporosis. My my wife Penny Was a impressive marathon runner. She finished in quality certified for the 100th running the Boston Marathon and she had osteoporosis and it's like how is that possible, you know You're you're pounding the pavement and using your muscles and that's impossible. Well one of the things that I've written about in in all my books is that 10% of Chickens factory farm chickens are killed because of lameness and there's actually some very good evidence At least in my opinion that the lectins in the corn and the grains and the soybeans that they're feel that they're fed Are one of the causes of osteoporosis. So when I started my health journey, I mean we had a running with weights, you know well strapped to her back and When we changed her diet, which was a very very heavily carb-based runners diet, you know She she'd come home and eat, you know four bags of Doritos Carb loading And when we took that away from her, you know, she doesn't have osteoporosis anymore So I'm fascinated with your story because you were eating a college diet. Yeah, which is you know pizza. Yeah, it's poison Great poison, but yeah lots of pizza lots of Hawaiian punch. Yeah, there you go so So you brought up sleep and we've you know, we've talked off-camera about sleep and you and I have a fellow friend Ariana Huffington and she's Devoted to sleep. So tell me, you know, your your brand is sleep smarter. So How how in the ding dong did that come about as your brand and how do we sleep smarter? Yeah, you know as you know when you no longer have a problem, you don't think about it much That's when you really know you're healed And so once I got my sleep dialed in personally even though in my clinical work that, you know, this was 10 years later I didn't think about sleep anymore. And so I was working with clients and working with patients along with their physicians And we had incredible success, you know with helping people to get off You know the center brills for their blood pressure metformins things like that for various issues obesity, obviously we dealt with a lot and It always bothered me that percentage of people that weren't getting well even though they were making the dietary changes the exercise changes and It took about five years in practice before I had the audacity to ask people about their sleep Mm-hmm and when I did like I had to hold my chin up because it would just been on my desk hearing these stories from people about their struggles with sleep and so I dove into the research and And as you know, there's people want change, but they don't want to change that much And so I was looking for what are some clinically proven tactics that I can get people to employ to improve their sleep quality without turning their lives upside down and so I implemented with a few patients and One of them, you know blood sugars 200 300 just like how are you walking around and already I'm at form and about to go on insulin and Finally after five years of struggle, she was working with me for about six months Everything normalized once we got her sleep down and and I was just like this is very strange And then I'd see it with the person who's been struggling with their weight, you know trying to get the same 20 pounds off You know high blood pressure hypertension And I was just like there's something very very strange going on here and it has a lot to do with sleep And so it's basically like the floodgates would open and the things people have been struggling with were now being healed in a sense and so Seeing this firsthand. I was just like this is the missing piece There were so many books out there so many experts out talking about their diet and this is the way and exercise program But nobody was talking about this like a master class like and also the connection because Just be honest sleep is not a sexy topic, you know, if you really think about it. It puts me right sleep But if you see, you know, the next new exercise programs very sexy like oh, I need to do that Plus, you know that I'm doing something so in our psychology as humans today We think that we have to do something in order to get something sure which is kind of dangerous but with sleep you do nothing and you get all of these benefits, of course, that we'll talk about and For us to wrap our minds around that's this today when it's just like I'll sleep when I'm dead You know sleep is for the week and all of these things and I'm understanding that this is one of the biggest epigenetic triggers Literally, we got research showing that of everything that can affect your telomere length, right? So the telomeres are these kind of encasings on the tips of your chromosomes. This is the greatest biological marker We have of how long you're gonna live This might be the fastest thing to burn away those telomeres is being sleep-deprived So it's affecting our longevity. It's affecting our ability, you know blood sugar our brain function also our body composition, which we've got to talk about correct and All from the sleep that you're getting or better yet The quality of sleep that you're getting because my book is called sleep smarter not necessarily sleep more. I Think we need to do a video sleeper size. I can oh I like it. I like it You know, we can make it hip Put some leotards on yeah and go to bed and go to bed and just you know nah All right, so so what Tell me how you take person and figure out That they're not sleeping or that sleep was the problem here And I'll tell you some of my experience from coming from a different angle So you've got these people who are diabetic. Did you did you first say well? I'll do the clinical diagnosis. You got sleep apnea, you know, all I'm gonna do I'm gonna give you a CPAP and Presto change. Oh, it'll be fine. Yeah, which is the traditional treatment of all those What say you? You know, it's still CPAP is just like a medication You know a lot of times is masking a symptom We can help you to maintain a certain level of health, but we're not taking care of the underlying problem So a lot of folks that you know again, this is something that we use just as a bridge sometimes You know, but we need to address the underlying cause for a lot of folks even if they're thinner They still have a very high body fat, right? So carrying too much weight around in your face frame specifically body fat visceral fat visceral fat Can affect your ability to sleep and to breathe at night, you know So that's what we really need to target. But ironically, it's incredibly difficult to lose weight when you're not getting sleep Correct. And so that's what made it a catch 22 and very difficult for folks. And so so get get into the nerdy science Why is it difficult to lose weight when you don't sleep? This was a really great stuff and there's so many now, but University of Chicago wanted to find out specifically this question How does your sleep? Impact your body fat not weight your body fat And so they took test subjects and they put them on a calorie restricted diet Which is what I was taught in a conventional setting University, which doesn't necessarily work But they put them on this calorie restricted diet and they sleep-deprived them All right, they allow them to get five and a half hours of sleep, you know again Calor-restricted diet sleep-deprived another phase of the study. They take the same people They're same amount of calorie restriction. They're not cutting away any more calories They're not exercising any longer any harder They simply allow them to get eight and a half hours of sleep now at the end of the study They compiled all the data and they found that when folks were getting adequate sleep. They lost 55% more body fat Just from sleeping. All right, that's a huge amount. You got to like do Insanity, you know in Psyllum or whatever like these crazy and I know Shanti is good friend But you got to like really kick your own butt to get that kind of result But you can get that from sleeping more and so my question immediately immediately is how How is that possible? And there's a couple of things and the real underlying thing is hormones. All right So number one when you're sleeping especially during and we talked about this a little bit Deep delta wave sleep because let's let's just put this out here When we're talking about sleep, what is it? It's a very strange phenomenon. How do we know that your sleeping is changes in your brain waves? Right and we need to spend a certain amount of time in each of those stages to sufficiently heal your brain and body That's what really it is all about and so deep delta sleep. This is Known as anabolic sleep. This is when you're producing the vast majority of human growth hormone as adults especially You know kids have a ton of it. Right and this is why they're always running around so much energy And but it's also muscle promoting and muscle sparing which muscle is your body's fat burning machinery It's very expensive to carry And so you get this huge burst of this human growth hormone which helps with this burning of body fat potentially That's number one. Number two melatonin itself All right, so we've got a study published in the international international journal obesity And they found that When folks were getting adequate amounts of production of melatonin They were producing more more mobilization of something called brown adipose tissue. All right or bat This is a type of fat that burns fat I love it when we think about burning fat. We're thinking about the white adipose tissue That's the stuff we're trying to get rid of brown adipose tissue The reason it's brown by the way is that it's so dense so concentrated in mitochondria, right? This is stuff that we talk about. It's just so amazing And you increase your body's production and mobilization of that brown adipose tissue when you're producing melatonin Via being in darkness and getting taking your butt to sleep I'll share one more so many But on the other side one of the first things that we see clinically when somebody's sleep deprived is an increase in cortisol Right this glorified stress hormone. There's not a bad guy. It's important for thyroid function. I mean just on and on and on But if it's produced in the wrong amounts in the wrong times, it could be very problematic And so We would see people come in and we call them tired and wired Right, so they have a very difficult time getting out of bed in the morning because cortisol is too low And at night they're just up. They're wired because cortisol is elevated in the evening and so Folks in this study by them getting more sleep They're going to have a tendency to get better sleep just by the act of you know getting in the bed and having that whole process And so cortisol is going to come down and the issue how is that tied to fat loss is cortisol has this very interesting ability To break your valuable muscle tissue down when you feel stressed Because that's an ultimate stressor is when you're sleep deprived to your body It can break your muscle tissue down. It's a process called gluconeogenesis and turn your muscle into fuel Basically as a survival mechanism. So you're losing the thing That's helping you to burn fat whether you're active or not And the list goes on and on I could talk about another 10 hormones, but that's really how powerful it is For affecting our body composition. I can see I can see another video sleep yourself thin There it is. We're doing a series. Yeah, we're doing it. We're gonna be you know leotards in the bed No, I don't think so Yeah, so so in other words, I might are you telling me Penny if you're listening my wife So I don't have to do the spin class at 5 30 in the morning Three days a week. I could sleep through the spin class and do better I'm not giving you the permission slip. I'm not getting involved. No, I'm gonna I'm gonna do my spin class Okay, so you've got this you've got this human being How do you get them to sleep? They're on Tree medications. I mean just give us a little tease. What what what's the first step? Sure. Sure I always and this is for anybody who's a coach or a physician or You know chiropractor anybody who's in the wellness space And just coaching in general The most important thing to do is to connect and listen to the person They'll often tell you the cause and cure of their problem if you let them talk absolutely true and Looking for that leverage point for people. So I look I've got all of these strategies Let me find out the thing that's going to fit best with them And so for one patient, for example, they might be you know, they're exercising. They're eating well But they're exercising After work Right and so they're after work, you know, they're doing a nine to five They're in the gym at six to seven seven thirty and then they're trying to get to bed by ten And this could be throwing their whole circadian rhythm upside down, you know, again, some folks I'm not saying to not exercise But this might be that thing and Appalachian State University did a study and they tested to find out They had folks trained exclusively at 7 a.m Then at 1 p.m. Then at 7 p.m. At different phases of the study compiled all the data morning Exercisers spend more time in the deepest most anabolic state of sleep. They tended to sleep longer They had more efficient sleep cycles, which this is what sleep is really about And which is kind of overlooked sometimes These tests when they were doing that phase had a 25 greater drop in blood pressure at night As well, which is kind of correlated with the activation of that parasympathetic rest and digest. So What I want you to do, you know, if I was working with somebody who nests their story I would try to work with them to restructure their life because a lot of times They have that story of like, no, I can't work out in the morning or whatever the case might be And so to help them restructure things to try let's do maybe a shorter workout Instead of you going to the gym for an hour. Let's do a 20 minute very intelligently constructed highly effective and not given the research like do this thing for just 20 minutes in the morning And then you're going to get all these benefits of sleeping better at night because you're elevating cortisol Your core body temperature is going to be elevated for several hours afterwards And so that's one strategy is for folks to simply exercise in the morning If at all possible and even if they are exercising in the afternoon Still do some in the morning because it does something that we call a cortisol reset It gets that cortisol elevated so it can get back on a normal pattern Potentially so that's one simple tactic. All right. So what you're saying Penny, you're right. I gotta go spin at 5 30 in the morning. You're so brilliant You know, I love you. So thank you very much. No, I think you're right One of the things that we really do try to do in my practice is get people if they're going to exercise to do it in the morning Now I see I see a number of people who have sleep issues and they do have a high cortisol level and One of the things that I found miraculous and I actually told Dr. Oz this off camera. Who's a friend of mine? And I said, you know A supplement called ralora, which is basically magnolia bark extract and an arubatica called philodendron Is miraculous in lowering cortisol levels and it's known as a as a sleep aid and I've studied a thousand patients with elevated cortisol and ralora Works, I would say for 95 of them in lowering lowering cortisol And I so I told dr. Oz that it's it's a miracle and then I said, oh geez. I should have never told you that because Now you're gonna be in front of congress, right? You're gonna be back in court Any any have you ever tried ralora? Oh my goodness. Listen This is really a great pivot to one of the biggest and I love this because we talked about this together for your new book and And basically it's fix your gut to fix your sleep And also the things that are going into your body It's going to have a huge impact on your sleep quality And so one of the things that I talk about is eating plenty of good sleep nutrients. Yeah, and so what does that look like? Something as simple as vitamin c So there was a study that was published in the public library of science And so what they found was that folks who were deficient in vitamin c had a tendency towards waking up more frequently at night And once they fixed this deficiency They began to sleep normally all right a simple deficiency like that You would think i'm getting plenty of vitamin c from my, you know, pasteurized orange juice No, there are many different forms also vitamin c and also The bioavailability of that and also your gut bugs, right your your gut buddies as you call them And how it is interacting is this actually going to be able to get fed to your cells At the end of the day, you know, so the quality and I love Not just what is like a good source, but like what's the best thing like the top two to three things For vitamin c. There's camo camo berry. Yep Amla amla berry. There's acerola cherry. These are super like we're talking about 50 times more vitamin c than Like lemons or something like that And so you can look into stuff like that or just foods that are in your local area that are growing in season as well You're going to find in some surprising sources as well, you know Different teas even have good sources of vitamin c. It's not that hard to come by But we have to understand it's an antioxidant. So it kind of gets used a lot by the body That's one of the things another one is magnesium. This is huge Huge especially for like you brought that up now What we were seeing was somewhere around 70 to 80 percent of people Being deficient in magnesium the testing is to be honest is still a little I don't think we've got it Doubted in yet, but The seeing people addressing this and increasing their magnesium levels Amazing. So here's why magnesium is responsible for about 325 biochemical processes we know about right many of them related to muscle function brain function uh sleep and So one study this was done on folks that have clinical insomnia And they were seeing like 100 of them were deficient in magnesium getting their levels optimized We're seeing about 70 to 80 of those folks, you know, ironically Having their sleep issues subside just from that one thing Now the issue is this First food first very big advocate of that any food that's green It's going to be a good source of magnesium But I think more than any other mineral So I said nutrient deficiency. Let me say mineral deficiency More than any other mineral this one gets zapped because it's kind of an anti stress mineral It deals with a lot of stress. Absolutely. And we are in a hyper stressed environment We just are you know, even though we're inside of a building we're like we smell, you know Processed air or whatever, you know, and today our lifestyle is very different So we're dealing with a lot of stress is why I can get zapped from your body Eat plenty of magnesium rich foods supplementation oral supplementation Is good just need to be careful because of something called biotolerance If you take even a little bit more than your body can absorb at the time It's going to pull water to your bowels and cause what we call Uh clinically disaster pants, all right, you poop in your pants milk of magnesium is concentrated magnesium There's so many different works, you know, there's citrate. There's even a epsom salt Epsom salt is magnesium, you know, and so I love topical I love topical because your body absorbs basically the amount that it can use I feel that it doesn't do everything that an oral magnesium or food does But I think it's a great option for folks. So fix your gut to fix your sleep One other thing I want to share really quickly on the gut buddy Front is it was cow tech researchers They found and you already know this that there are certain microbes in our gut that communicate With cells that produce sleep related hormones and neurotransmitters Correct. So these microbes this friendly flora this cascade of of bugs these are gut buddies Are responsible for producing sleep related hormones and neurotransmitters one of them being serotonin And serotonin is found more in your gut than anywhere else As is melatonin. Yeah, so melatonin and this I I literally wanted to scream it from You know the balcony when I found this out in school. I was taught Melatonin is produced by the pineal gland end of story. Yeah You can actually remove the pineal pineal gland and your levels of melatonin will stay relatively the same in your gut And so you have about 400 times more melatonin in your gut than in your pineal gland And this goes this goes to show us serotonin is a precursor to melatonin Melatonin itself is produced there and this all has to do with this environment So we need to take care of this environment You know by supporting obviously the friendly flora getting rid of the things that cause the bad guys to take hold of our ship Support them with you know prebiotics And eat plenty of good sleep nutrients Very good. Very good So, um You know You talked about when you were learning about nutrition the revealing idea was calories in calories out um You probably hear it from all the time from people all the time saying You know, that's still the truth and how dare you question the Conventional wisdom that is the truth. What what do you what do you say to that? I mean at this point and there there's even some of my friends who are fantastic Uh physicians and healthcare practitioners Are really advocating that you know, just like you just you got to cut the calories, you know Why what are you complaining about? And it's not understanding, you know, even let's let's just take ourselves as an example Not just your friend who can eat the same diet as you but not gain weight And then you even smell a donut and your butt starts jiggling like extra, right? Leotards program. Okay. Never mind. All right. So here's the thing When you were younger Right, maybe in your team, you know in your teens you could you know, eat the pizza and Exactly ice cream and shakes and the soda and all this stuff and you really wouldn't Fall into that camp of becoming overweight and obese But today you do the same things And now it's a big problem. What happened? What changed same food same person? Possibly what's different what's different is your hormone function and we have to look at instead of a calorie based diet a hormone Friendly based diet how are these foods interacting with your hormones and also your microbiome? Right, and so and a lot of your hormones come from your microbiome. Exactly. Exactly. That's what we really need to address because Folks could again be on the same diet as the next person and one person can lose weight One person can gain weight, you know, another person can stay the same It's not just about the the quality. I'm sorry The the the quantity of the calories is the quality of those calories How are they affecting your hormones and your microbiome? That's really the key and sleep is very similar and I share this example of like It's very different when you eat 300 calories of broccoli versus 300 calories of ding dongs Right, which was you know the chocolate cream. I lived on those. That was my heart surgery resident Just stay awake all night. I was about at least 7% ding dong myself, you know A whole probably half of my hand. Anyway, so here's the thing With sleep is very similar because you can get You know eight hours of twinkie sleep or ding dong sleep When you're really looking for that high quality, you know broccoli sleep as it were, you know, because it's the quality Not just the quantity quantity does matter But the quality is going to affect you a whole lot. So same thing when it comes to food and sleep So you've been doing this now for is this your sixth year of podcasts and everything? Yeah So I've been in practice. So in the health space for about 17 years. Yeah somewhere around there You started losing count after a while. Yeah with the podcast It's been about getting close to six years now. So, um, how do you deal with criticism through all of this? Got any tricks? Oh man, that's such a great question I just posted on instagram the other day at Sean model shaw in the right way the right spell No, I'm just kidding. No offense But um, I just posted the other day to not get drunk off of Praise and don't get drunk off of criticism either I think you need to bring a very balanced perspective into this because today everybody's really a brand You know, if you have a social media account, you're you know, you're a brand in a sense, right? And you're going to be judged Automatically people are constantly judging you. It's just the nature of the beast But it's preventing so many people from sharing their gift because they're so worried about other people and they're And their beliefs, you know, their criticism And so for me It's great when somebody says something beautiful About me or about something that I've done. I think it's awesome. But I just let I let it go I give thanks and I let it go any criticism comes up. I could check it out and let it go You know, just don't let it destroy who I believe I am in my mission And so I got to say this if you don't have any critics, then you're probably not doing anything You know, so you want to press to get some critics and get some haters, you know But at the end of the day, I think that and I've seen this evolution take place with myself I don't see much of that and I don't partly because I don't pay much attention But also, you know, I'm very inclusive in what I do, you know, I'm not setting out to make other people wrong I have my perspective and my experience and that's what I've been sharing here And I also back a lot of stuff up with peer reviewed evidence Yeah, exactly and digging through I'm doing the work, you know, so we can argue about this all you want But you're kind of no, I'm just kidding. I just want people to understand that, you know, we can have healthy Conversation, you know, it as long as stuff is done respectfully. That's what it's really all about That's going to help move us forward and also I'm not tied To the fact that I'm right either that, you know, and that's a big secret, you know So it doesn't hurt me as much if I if I have my identity invested in that And you criticize it that's going to sting a little bit more, you know But I don't have my identity tied to any one thing. I'm very open to change And I think that's what the best in the field do, you know, because everything is constantly changing We know a fraction Of the data out there about food and barely know anything, you know But we're learning and to be open to that. I think it's a huge key Yeah, very good very good All right, um I guess I've got to wrap it up so As as I've told you we ask an audience question and this will be fun. You're going to get to answer this too. Oh, okay So the question comes in from sylvie I've been trying the recipes from your books But some of the suggested ingredients can cause bloating and flatulence such as cabbage cauliflower asparagus You mentioned broccoli and almond flour any tips on how to deal with this So you have to number one realize that that bloating and flatulence comes from your gut buddies Telling you how much you they enjoy what you're giving them And I want you to realize that in many parts of the world farting at the dinner table is a sign of respect for the chef The other thing you'll come to find out which is really true is if you're feeding your gut buddies right Your farts don't stink. They really don't so you know next time you're Just let one go and say oh my gut buddies are so happy. I do that all the time Sean uh any comebacks to that? I mean, how do we get past this period? The other thing Usually after a few weeks this all calms down. Yeah, and if I can talk people even with what they think is IBS Through this period of time where they definitely have cramps and bloating and they're farting a lot It really calms down True thoughts. Yeah, when you're changing making changes to your diet I mean, you know, it's those microbes, you know your your gut buddies They have a certain food that they're used to and when you change things up Certain bacteria are gonna feel less welcomed. Others are gonna start celebrating and giving off gas, you know, maybe Um, but one of the things that if you you know, we're kids beans beans good for your heart The more you eat the more you fart The issue with beans so we've got like amyl pectin b right and we don't really have The enzymes like in our mouth like amyl pectin a we can break down bread You know sugar carves in our mouth very quickly But not so for beans we're feeding those bacteria and it can set off a party And so the same thing how are you preparing them? It's gonna affect it as well So doing the soaking doing the pressure cooking Eliminates so much of that like almost like for most people it's gone So it's how you're preparing these things can really help a lot Yeah, if I can get people to get a An instant pot or another pressure cooker It makes such a difference and it makes so it makes it so easy for families who you know are working three jobs And the kids are going to 27 sports and violin practices and And how do you get food on the table? You know quickly that that'll feed them properly is is a big deal and and a pressure cooker will Will kill lectins and it'll get the food on the table good food quickly. Yeah, that's all right Well, listen, how can how can people find you? You mentioned your podcast and it's an amazing podcast everybody Social media, where can we find you besides your podcast? Awesome. Yeah So the podcast is called the model health show and I'm very grateful to say it's been the number one health podcast many many times over these years and it's just such a A passion project as well. It's one of the favorite things in my in my reality So you don't have to be a model to go to the absolutely not it's not for models But models could probably use it. All right. It's one of the things that gets people in the door You know they see my icon, you know, which is you know, you'll see it when you look at the show up But then they find out it's a whole lot more But you know, you're also showing people like we have the results that you're looking for But we cover every aspect of health. I'm very passionate about that Um, you talk about relationship health I think that our relationships are the biggest influence on our health and our success in life And so we talk about that and I'll have the very best folks on the planet to talk up like john gray women are from mar I'm sorry Men are for mars men are from mars women are from venus and we'll have him on there And I also do masterclass episodes myself where you know dive in and talk about what are some Tactics and also reverse engineer diabetes. Like what does that look like fascinating stuff that you can apply for your own life Every person can get something of value from each episode And also to help your friends and family in your community, you know So we've got a lot of folks who are in the health space that listen to this show So I definitely check that out again the model health show And on social media. I'm at shon model sh a w n m o d e l mostly on instagram now I found a little bit of a love for that in the in the recent year. I wasn't on social media I was focused on the podcast for quite a quite a while and so people can find it there and You can pick up see smarter at any Bookstores online amazon all that good stuff as well. All right very good Well again pleasure to see you again. Thanks for coming on the show and I have to have you back again If you don't mind absolutely. All right Well, that's it for the dr. Gundry podcast and we'll see you next time because I'm dr. Gundry and I'm always looking out for you