​How can you sleep and eat smarter so that you feel better, you have more energy?

And you can put it in the places that matter too.

That's what we're gonna explore today with Shawn Stevenson on The Wise Effort Show.

Welcome back.

I'm Dr.

Diana Hill.

I am the host of this show, clinical psychologist and author of the Book Wise Effort: How to Focus Your Genius Energy on What Matters Most.

And let me tell you, it's really hard to focus your genius energy on anything if you are not getting the sleep or the nutrition that your body needs.

I first came across Shawn Stevenson.

The host of the Model Health Show, when I was postpartum with my youngest child, this is about 12 years ago.

It was about the same time I found Katy Bowman So I'd be listening to the Model Health Show and then listening to Move your DNA with Katy, my husband and I somehow came across, their two podcasts and it was such a breath of fresh air.

For multiple reasons.

One, I was in my own health crisis postpartum.

I had had two pregnancies back to back.

I was like postpartum when I got pregnant and then postpartum again.

And uh, if you know anything about me, I do not do well.

On sleep deprivation, like I don't do well, I get irritable.

Uh, everything becomes, uh, my fault or everyone else's fault.

I blame everyone for everything.

I, the dark cloud starts to set in and all I can see is darkness when I'm sleep deprived, which is what happens when you have a baby.

And then two, I really don't do well when my nutrition is off.

I've known this about myself for a long time.

When I'm not getting enough protein, when I'm not eating enough fats, when I'm just not eating enough.

Obviously our neurotransmitters are made or protein and fat,

our

our brain is made up of fats, and when I'm not eating well, everything goes downhill quick.

So both those were happening postpartum and I came across Shawn, who had so much charm for one, depth for two and three science behind what he was teaching on the Model Health Show in terms of nutrition and movement.

I was sold, so I got the battle rope.

We were like putting the battle rope around the tree, and my dog would go after the battle rope.

While I'd battle it out with my baby there in a little bassinet, I'd be crawling on the floor from the living room to the kitchen while my baby was crawling alongside me.

And we started getting really dialed in terms of our nutrition, in terms of the water that we were drinking.

Did you know that you need structured water?

If you're just drinking reverse osmosis water, it's going right through you.

You need certain ions and minerals in your water.

I got really into that mountain Valley water, which.

By the way, when I recorded this episode with him, I recorded it in his studio.

He had bottles upon bottles of that Mountain Valley water.

I am not sponsored by it, but I love that stuff.

There's something about a good bottle of spring water that makes you feel healthier, and I started making smoothies and putting spirulina in my smoothies and greens and coconut water and all sorts of things, all because of Shawn Stevenson, and it turned my mood around, turned my life around.

But he also was just a good human that I liked being around.

I liked having him in my ears.

I hope you like having me in your ears.

Sometimes you just need a good human that you know has been through something hard and that cares and maybe has gotten to the other side and can tell you about how they got there.

So that's what Shawn's gonna do today for us.

He's gonna tell us about what was hard in his life, how he got to the Model Health Show.

And it was not just because he was a nerd and interested in science and health, he actually was forced to find his way there from his own health crisis, and it was not easy.

And then he's gonna share some tips for you.

He's gonna give you some ideas around how you can sleep smarter.

He's gonna give you some ideas around how you can eat smarter.

Just some small things that you can do like now today, this week, that I think will help you be able to focus your genius energy on what matters most.

I have a whole chapter on wise effort in the body, in the book.

Wise effort, and I could write a whole book on this.

This is like my sweet spot.

It's what I care a lot about because of my own struggles and because of my decades of working with other people that struggle with taking care of their bodies.

It's just hard sometimes we prioritize other people's needs.

We think that it doesn't matter.

We think that we're being selfish or we just don't have a context and an environment that supports it.

We don't sit at the dinner table anymore.

We're in front of our phones.

We override our sleep schedule, we do all sorts of things.

So consider this coming back to ground one.

Wise Effort with Your Body?

We're focusing on this all month and enjoy this episode with the Model Health Show.

He's like number one in health podcast.

He's phenomenal.

Go listen to me on his podcast next week, and he's the author of three books, Sleep Smarter, Eat Smarter, and the Eat Smarter Family Cookbook, which I highly recommend.

All right, enjoy this conversation with my good friend and wise teacher on all things sleeping and eating and moving.

I, I had you in my podcast feed for so long and it was Shawn Stevenson, I, is it still this Shawn Stevenson with his shirt off?

I'd be like, I'm not listening to this because he looks like that.

I'm listening to it because it's so good.

it's your voice, it's your teaching, it's your message, it's your depth.

But so there, tell us a little bit about that, because I think people are attracted to the model hall show.

'cause they're like, I wanna look like that, but there's so much more there.

Yeah.

That was actually my wife's idea.

Was

it?

it worked, which is crazy.

Okay.

It's crazy.

That I wouldn't expect today.

I don't even think she would have that idea.

Yeah.

but at the time it was just to get people to click play.

Yeah.

So you can have your life changed.

Yeah.

and just invite them in with that superficial thing.

But it's so much more as Yeah.

there's a lot of heart, there's a lot of, there's a lot of science, there's a lot of, again, empowerment and so yeah, just that.

Even starting the show was again, part of that need this, the books were one medium, but also just to spread this message of wellness and empowerment.

And for me, this was, something I didn't expect to do.

Wasn't like, when you're a kid, like I'm gonna grow up and, be a nutritionist or whatever.

I wanted to be a professional athlete and when you asked me in our conversation before this, what was the thing that I would want to do after school?

And I couldn't wait to get home, to go outside and play and to play sports specifically with my friends and to compete.

And I was like, I was that guy.

I was a fastest kid at my school.

just that neighborhood kind of legend.

the guy that's always picked first.

Ooh.

And just having fun, just.

I, I was very good at transitioning skill sets and I really, if I'm being honest, I really wanted to win too, so I had those, that combination.

And everything was looking great for me.

I ran a 4, 5 40 when I was 15, in high school and, that's like a good NFL time, right?

But later that year, wait, you can

describe what a 4, 5 40 is for folks that aren't runners.

So

running a 40 yard dash in 4.5 seconds, which is, pretty fast.

Ridiculous.

Yes.

but again, I was just a kid.

But it was later that year.

That was the beginning prior to the football season starting.

Which, I played football and then there was off season training with my coach, and then there was track season during track season while doing a 200 meter time trial, which is half of the track.

I was coming off the curve of the track into the straightaway, and my hip broke.

All right.

I didn't fall.

There wasn't any, nobody ran into me.

There was no like, impact trauma like that, but my, bones were so weak that my body do.

And again, at the time, I didn't know that nobody said that to me.

I saw a physician and I saw a physical therapist, and both of them were just like, this is unusual.

I took an x-ray and they could see my iliac crest, my hip bone just broken all like a separate from my hip, And they're like, oh, that's why you can't walk.

I was limping and I came to practice the next day, by the way, I, because I'd never been injured before, so I was just like, limping.

I don't know what's going on.

But nobody stopped to ask.

What I experienced was standard of care.

Stay off the leg.

Here's some medication, you'll be all right.

And nobody asked, how did a kid break his hip while running.

Like that doesn't make, especially a very athletic performing kid.

That was an inroads or insight into, I was so deficient.

I was so deficient in the things that make healthy bone, that my body was falling apart, that then spread, which it was already happening, but I didn't know until I had another physical breakdown.

And I, had like literally half a dozen more injuries.

I've got game films at my house right now.

They're on VHS of me breaking away, as a football player on a sweep, right?

I get the pitch from the quarterback.

I go out, I beat the linebackers, I beat the defensive back.

I'm by myself five yards from the end zone, and I just fall.

Oh my gosh.

Because, another part of my body just breaks down and I like limp into the end zone.

And so eventually it was known that this had, this condition, this, degeneration was affecting my spine.

And so at the age of 20, after all of this, like I was having a difficult time walking.

I get diagnosed with degenerative disc disease.

So my introvert disc were deteriorating rapidly, right?

They showed up black, basically on the MRI, like they were so compressed.

So I had two herniated disc and it was causing me, I'm gonna put this accurately discomfort.

Okay.

It was discomfort.

It wasn't like agonizing pain, but again, standard of care.

The physician told me that, I just went into 'cause my leg was like I was having pain, like my hamstring, and he, I'm just like, okay, so what I need to do for my leg to feel better?

But he was like, no, This is your spine is the issue.

And I didn't understand how they were connected.

And I was like, okay, so what do I need to do to get better?

let's go.

Just tell me what to do.

I'll do it.

I've been used to being an athlete and working with my coach.

And he literally is slow down son, I'm sorry to tell you this, but this is incurable.

You have degenerative disc disease and I'm sorry, but this is just something you're gonna have to live with.

And I di it didn't register the first time he said it.

And so I asked him again.

I was like, but what do we need to do to fix this?

And he said, I'm sorry son.

there's nothing we can do, but we can help you to manage this.

I'm gonna need you some medication.

We can look at you for surgery.

I don't wanna do it just quite yet because you're so young and if need be, we can get you a back brace, but this is just something you're gonna have to live with.

I'm sorry.

And he also said, you have the spine of an 80-year-old.

I don't know, why, this kind of thing happens.

And I'm sorry it happened to you.

And what I experienced then I went from a nuisance of a pain to about, maybe about two weeks later to chronic debilitating pain like I was having.

Fear of standing up because I would get this sciatic shock down my leg.

And what I experienced was something called a no SIBO effect.

I was gonna say, there's a whole psychological component, to that of you, you are powerless.

There's nothing you can do over this.

Yeah.

From an authority figure.

From an authority, mind you.

And so is and your life

is over basically.

If you're an athlete, I have a teenager who's an athlete, and anytime he's gotten injured, it's like a fall off a cliff.

My identity, his whole identity.

Yeah.

My identity as a strong person.

My identity as somebody who perseveres my identity as the one.

In my family to make it out of the si situation and circumstances I was in at the time, I was 20, I was in college.

And I was living in Ferguson, Missouri, which is notorious now for, the environment to be very volatile.

So there's a lot of, there's, violence, there's just, it's what we have a term now food desert.

But, so I'm just surrounded, inundated by there's liquor stores and, and I was sleeping on a mattress on the floor and I didn't have much.

And that was part of the issue was because of, growing up in poverty.

And like I said, I was so deficient as a teenager, 90% of the food, and I'm not exaggerating, and this is, I've got data on this, you know me.

This really fascinating study was conducted.

It was about a 20 year study.

It was published in Jama, journal of the American Medical Association.

And they analyzed the diet of US children.

And the researchers found that in 1999, the beginning of the study, the average US child was eating about 62% ultra processed foods.

Was their diet 62% more than significantly more than half.

By 2018, that number was almost 70% of the average US child's diet was ultra processed, newly invented fake food.

Alright?

As that's a mean.

We have outliers on both sides, right?

Kids, some kids are eating 5% ultra processed foods.

I was eating around 90 to 95% ultra processed foods.

Yeah, so just to find a little bit more an ultra processed food for us, ultra processed food is.

So humans have been processing food forever, thousands upon thousands of years.

but generally it's minimally processed, right?

So this would be cooking something, alright, that's a processing, right?

Crushing an olive to get the oil out is a process.

And, the same thing goes for, taking tomatoes and making tomato sauce.

But you could still tell where it comes from.

It has a natural origin.

Ultra processed foods on the other hand, is when you have say, a field of corn and I'm from the Midwest, so a field of corn that somehow some way becomes a box of, my, one of my favorite cereals pops.

Or, smacks the honey smacks with that frog on it.

How does that corn become this?

Kind of monstrosity, it's so far removed from the thing that has some origin, it, some origins from.

Processing food is not something that's quote bad, right?

Humans have been doing that a long time, right?

Ultra processed foods are something totally different.

And our genes have not even had a, an experience historically of interacting with these foods.

It's all new, it's all new.

So 90% of your diet is at, and somehow you connected the dots between 90% of my diet is ultra processed and my hip is breaking and there's something going on here, there's a connection like maybe my body is made of some of that stuff that's, but it's few

years to figure it out.

because initially, again, I got such a, you're far more susceptible to the no SIBO effect when it's an authority figure.

And he was the expert on my body and my potential.

And so I accepted that.

And that's not my nature.

Like my tendency, my character is to be more like.

Question things.

I'm very like, I'm very analytical, and I silenced all that.

The nocebo effect being that he was giving you this a negative injunction prognosis.

Yeah.

This negative di diagnosis, this negative prognosis.

And then your body responded

right

in response to that.

Yeah.

Whether it's true or not.

And

I'm so grateful because one of my, she sat actually right there in that chair, Dr.

Ellen Langer is considered the, mother of mindfulness.

And she ran a lot of these studies on the no SIBO effect as well as some of her students who have cited in different, books and things like that.

And a placebo effect, which is, a lot of people know about this, but we don't, they don't really know.

'cause I didn't know placebos are powerful.

Placebos are powerful.

That's why you have to control for that, because consistently, the on average in studies, in clinical trials, placebos are like 30% effective in creating some kind of physiological or, psychological change.

Just the belief that you're taking a thing, right?

Our minds are so powerful.

some studies show that up to 80% effective, it's effective for everything from cancer to depression.

A nocebo effect is getting a negative injunction that something bad is going to happen.

And for me, that nocebo effect was so strong that I went into this chronic debilitating pain.

I went from medication to medication, stronger and stronger drugs.

I couldn't sleep at night.

The pain was so bad.

That was the worst experience for me every night, was just trying to sleep.

And that transitions into, this is the work on sleep.

'cause I went through it.

And so I, it was eventually a taking, I found like this combination of a pain med and Tylenol pm so not even a prescription, but the pain med was, Celebrex was a good combination of keep me asleep.

But it's pseudo sleep.

I, it took me hours to wake up.

Like I'd be awake, but it, I'm just dragging.

'cause I had to try to knock myself out every night.

I.

It was a lot of suffering for two years.

A lot of suffering.

I went from a full credit loaded college to one class, right?

I was barely hanging on.

It was embarrassing.

Now I went from, and also every physician I saw, which I always encourage people to get a mo, second, third opinion.

Find somebody that's on the same page with you, at least that has the same objective.

And each physician I saw, they wrote me a script for bedrest.

I walked in, I walked into their clinic and they wrote me a prescription for bedrest.

I can give my job, so I don't gotta work.

And what he was really doing, what they were doing was writing me a prescription for me to have permission to stop fighting because I've been fighting my whole life.

And that's what it really was.

And it's only recently that I'm aware of this.

And so I was able to stop.

I was able to put down my sword and my shield.

And just let life happen.

And so I gained a bunch of weight and not only was my spine and my bones atrophying, but now the rest of me is, and fortunately, there's always some unexplainable things about all of this, but I had an experience when I was a kid of, my mom had me very young.

There's no, my birth certificate's at my house, there's no father on my birth certificate.

And it's not immaculate concept type thing.

this was, I, never met my biological father and my mother was 18 and so she struggled, just to even, have a place to stay.

And she eventually, she met my stepfather, which he was there since I was a baby.

I was around nine months old when they met.

And, but they were just trying to, make it.

And so I got to live with my grandmother.

And it was the most magical time.

So this was from, kindergarten to second grade, and we had routines.

we had, I had safety and security.

I felt like I, I mattered, she saw me and I got to experience love, seeing my grandmother and my grandfather, because of that experience, I had a imprint, on.

What was possible.

And my grandmother just really affirmed to me that I was special.

that's gonna do something special.

And, I knew what I felt it, but I had put down my sword, and it was a couple years later she kept calling me, getting on my nerves, honestly.

But she knew that I wasn't okay.

And, because of the imprint, I remembered why I'm here.

And I decided to stop giving away my power.

And, I decided to get well and how powerful we are and the power of questions.

And my habitual question for those two years was why me?

And I just kept finding reasons why my life was terrible.

But for the first time I asked, what can I do to feel better?

What can I do?

I was looking for somebody else to help me to feel better.

And there were so many things, but I was just,

that question why me has two different, you could have two different tones to it.

Could have the why me, Why is this happening to me?

And or you could be like, why me?

Yeah.

And turning it to the why me side of things.

Yeah, why you?

Yeah.

Because you have, from that imprint, from just who you are, your being, your place on this planet is to grow, to evolve, to give.

And somehow you turned it around and you started giving maybe to your own self, figuring out your own health journey.

And then boom, it explodes to helping other people on their health journey.

And that's everything from sleep to relationships to food to movement too, is a huge, that's where I learned a lot of my movement stuff early on from you.

And, but sleep.

Sleep was the, yeah.

It used to be such a boring topic and maybe 'cause sleep researchers were boring,

Yeah, I know these guys and my friends and colleagues.

Yeah, for sure.

They're

sure they can be a little sleepy, but now it's like the hottest topic.

Everything from perimenopausal women to, our teenagers need to sleep more because they're on their phones too much.

we, have like sleep disruption in, nine year olds because they're on their iPads until nine o'clock at night, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

and the connection between food and sleep and then now sleep is about everything.

It's our mental performance, our mental health, our longevity.

Sleep is just eating is tied to everything.

Everything,

once I got my sleep dialed in, I healed so quickly.

and so this is one of the sentiments and I also talked about this in Sleep Smarter and it's become a part of cultural lexicon now that a good night of sleep starts the moment you wake up in the morning.

Yes.

And so the things that I was doing now that I decided to get well, which we're there the whole time, but I was tuned into the Why Me channel Disempowering version of that.

Yeah.

The empowering version is why me?

Because I am strong enough, because I have an incredible ability to take this information and to share it and to empower people.

And I had to go through this so that I understand, like I could have tuned into that.

I wasn't there yet.

So asking how can I feel better?

Led me to like certain relationships, So there's a girl that I knew for years, she was in chiropractic school at Logan.

Shout out to Logan.

One of the, most iconic, chiropractic schools in the nation is in Missouri.

And I just thought she was weird, but we kick it every now and then.

But I never went anywhere with her like that, But within a week of me making that decision to get well and to feel better, she, we went, we were driving.

She took me to Wild Oats.

Which

has since been bought by Whole Foods.

I'm from Missouri.

All right.

The hard land has messed up hearts.

Okay.

Like the, as far as heart disease, there was one Whole Foods in the entire city, and it's a big city.

And there was this Wild Oats location.

And so we go there.

And it's all this stuff like first of all, there's grass on the counter, which was, I'm like, this is super weird what's going on.

This is back in the day,

all that wheat grass, they were juicing, Right.

Yeah.

And they're making fresh juices.

But I went right over to the library there and there was a book called Nutrition Prescription, and I opened it up and I looked at degenerative disc disease and there were all these studies related to that.

And then I looked up the studies and it was like, one of the things was if your body is deficient in calcium omega threes, it's going to leach in particular calcium from your spine and from your hips to aid in other processes that calcium is needed for calciums needed to clot our blood.

Your body's working on an intelligence hierarchy.

It's more important than my bone density if my blood needs to be right.

and I'm just like, but I'm drinking milk all the time.

But for me, that was not doing the job.

As a matter of fact, all that ultra processed food was requiring a need for more of these things.

And another one of those big ones, as I mentioned, was omega threes.

There are several studies on this now.

I, shared a couple of them in my latest book in the eMAR cookbook demonstrating that Omega-3 deficiency led to degeneration of the spine and hips, both places I was breaking down.

Multiple studies on this now.

Yeah.

And so I'm like, how did nobody tell me about this?

And I went from, taking these medications to now I'm like full in natural pill popper and I'm taking all these supplements.

And that was a phase I went through and I felt better, but that was not gonna cut it with my very minimal college, income.

And so I asked the question, fortunately, what foods can I find these things in?

And I started to basically flood my body, flood my cells and tissues with all of these nutrient dense foods, whereas eating ultra processed foods 90% of the time, again, I got better so fast.

I finally provided my body, my cells with the things that they needed to rebuild me.

Like it's just step number one

and your brain and your mood and your motivation.

So as a psychologist, that's what I see when people start eating differently and sleeping differently.

Yeah.

And for myself, how my whole outlook can change if I, shift my eating and my sleep for, it doesn't take that long, maybe a couple weeks.

I can see a big impact in de we know the links between depression and inflammation in the brain.

Omega threes in the brain.

Yes.

I brought you some perine today from my garden.

So the, it was like, it's a success momentum, right?

So there's the downward spiral where the, bedrest and the poor eating habits lead to, if you're in bed all day, it's really hard to sleep.

At night, people that work in their beds.

Yeah.

I remember during COVID, yeah.

I saw some clients from my bed.

Yeah.

I'd hold the camera, the screen up high enough so you couldn't see my p my bed pillows behind me.

'cause I was just so down and so stuck in the bedroom.

'cause the kids were in the other room.

Saw some clients from my bed and guess where they were, my clients.

In their bed.

And none of us were sleeping.

Yeah.

So let's talk a little bit about, context, environment, and, sleep.

And then I wanna weave in the nutrition.

It's really, we have to separate all these things, but it's an artificial separation.

'cause they're all interconnected.

Yeah.

Everything is interconnected with everything.

But let's piece it apart.

Perfect.

And how I wanna go about it is,

can I suggest something?

yeah.

Because I want to give people a.

Why first?

Okay.

Give a why.

Yeah.

So what I experienced was essentially accelerated aging, right?

Ah, at a very old biology now.

Even though I was a young person and after making these changes again, what I was doing during, the day, now I'm sleeping so much better.

And I recovered so fast and effectively I got younger biologically, and now we have sound data on how real that is.

And so my spine, my, my bone density dramatically increased to the level of somebody my age.

My two herniated disc had retracted and healed and gotten back into place on their own.

And I gained back volume of my disc as well.

Things that he told me was impossible.

And so with biological aging, this is a big conversation right now.

This is the why I want to give everybody a study that was just published in 2023, just two years ago, over 6,000.

Study participants, and it's also gonna give an action step for people too.

This was bananas because they concluded how remarkable our sleep is for slowing our biological aging, okay?

Literally slowing our aging process at a cellular level by optimizing our sleep.

Now, what do I mean by that?

The researchers found that specifically people who had frequent changes to their sleep schedule.

So especially like weekend versus weekend, I'm sorry, weekday versus weekend, or what we call social jet lag, right?

Not having a consistent sleep schedule versus individuals who did have consistent sleep schedules.

They found the people who had consistent sleep schedules over the course of this three year study were nine months younger.

Than the people who had frequent changes to their sleep schedule

as measured by things like,

the

mitochondria and ome and things like that, or, yeah.

There's

simple blood parameters now.

and again, it depends on how far you want to get into the weeds.

Yeah.

Yeah.

just looking at what's going on with their blood, they're able to determine Yeah.

Their biological age and how quickly they were aging.

Yeah.

And so this can be getting into the hormone territory, but for this was a little bit more simple looking at cardiovascular and metabolic markers in the blood and immune system factors too.

And again, compiling all this data, what do we know and wanna take away from this if we want to slow down our biological aging, which I would imagine everybody wants to do.

Nobody's I want to age faster unless you're trying to get your driver's license, try to get there faster.

Yes.

You know about that.

or

get to Vegas, whichever one you're interested in first.

So slowing down our biological aging.

One of the top tier priorities is to have a consistent sleep schedule.

I talked about this, again, over a decade ago, but at this point we have something very solid to point to.

It's not just about, the sleep efficiency and getting to bed early, but having whatever time that is.

And it's because the researchers hammered down on what is the point when you're frequently changing your sleep time and your wake time you are tinkering with and sometimes smashing your biological clocks.

Yeah.

Like your body's always trying to sync up and find rhythm.

And that is determining when you're producing hormones and what amounts.

Stress hormones, sex hormones, immune system factors, digestion, cognitive brain, nervous system, all, everything about you.

Everything about you is being determined by these, what they are.

When we talk about biological clocks, they're essentially the circadian clocks.

These are.

Genes and proteins, circadian genes and proteins that determine the function of your other genes and proteins.

So it's like a master regulator of your entire biology.

So take away tip with sleep.

Do your best to stick to a consistent sleep schedule on, no matter what day it is, do your best.

Life happens some.

Sometimes stuff happens, but a lot of times we do, we're not adhering to a consistent sleep schedule because we just wanna watch Netflix or we're on our phone, or we're just, there's no real reason why.

If there's a reason why it's a party, whatever, cool.

But take it upon yourself.

And what I do, I have it on my, it's on my calendar.

So my Google calendar has lights out at a certain time and it's just eight hours blocked off.

Now I might sleep seven hours or whatever the case might be, but I have it blocked off as my sacred sleep time and I have an, it's like a alarm.

It'll pop up on my phone.

at 9 45 to say it's time to, lights out, time to start winding down.

My husband turned off every single device in our home at nine o'clock, so you cannot get on the de get on the devices to get on the internet, and then everything turns red at eight o'clock.

So I'm like going on my phone.

It's all the red, all the red light at eight o'clock.

So we have the hour before.

It's the most frustrating thing on the planet.

Of course.

So here's how it's frustrating.

So Shawn Stevenson texts me last night because you got this window for us to do this interview and you're like, Hey, we can do the interview.

And I'm like, crap, I didn't finish preparing for the episode.

So even if we have, I have a pretty regular sleep schedule because I'm also I'm, no, I'm no bueno.

If I don't sleep, I'm like, everything goes haywire, irritable, and, not great in my sessions.

All the things that I care, about get off when I'm not sleeping well.

But I got this, text about doing this interview today, and even though I put myself to bed.

At the right time.

My mind did not wanna go to bed at the right time.

My mind was like, oh, now I need to start preparing.

Now that I'm in bed and going to sleep, now's the time to get prepared.

And so now I'm like going on my phone, pulling up the Kindle with the darn red light, trying to see it, trying to get some notes in.

So there's this other part of it, which is like the, stress in sleep and how that impacts us, even if we're set, that this is a good first step is setting your bedtime like you did with your toddler.

Yeah.

But now what do we do with stress and sleep?

What are your go-tos there?

and how did you work through that for yourself?

Yeah.

That is one of the biggest, if not the biggest issue today.

and we give it different names.

There's diff the problem is stress is invisible.

We see it as something that's invisible.

It is calorie free, but it is very tangible biologically like we, your body changes.

When you're having, abnormal stress, exposure, stress is, by the way, stress is not bad.

It's just in the amounts and the processing, being able to metabolize the stress.

And so with that being said, that's a great example that you experienced yesterday.

There's this old quote, it's not that old.

This is more, it's recent society, but like my bed is this magical place that I go to remember everything that I was supposed to do.

Oh, yes.

And so people go to bed and then the busyness starts in the mind.

And a big part of that is the way that our society's constructed today.

Like, when do we ever stop?

When do we ever stop?

We're constantly external focused, constantly.

as we talked about earlier, we're not having this introception and paying attention to what's going on in our inner world.

And when you finally do stop, sometimes your mind is wanting to, we gotta, we got all this stuff we gotta process and look at and think about.

And funny enough, and this was one of the chapters in Sleep Smarter and there, this was again over 10 years ago now, there's so much more.

Alyssa Pel, our mutual friend, data on meditation, improving your sleep quality, right?

And what it's doing.

There's so many different forms of meditation, but it's giving you time whether you understand it or realize it or not, for you to metabolize stress and to not be externally focused so that your body and your mind can process some of this stuff.

And Having a practice of quiet.

So it doesn't have to be a conventional or what we tend to think is like a formal meditation.

It could just be time where you're just still, or maybe walking, but in an environment that you're used to and comfortable with that you don't gotta think about is not too much novelty.

Just some places you can just let your mind go.

so meditation is incredibly valuable for helping to reduce stress and sleep, improve sleep.

another thing is, and this is captain obvious, and again, I've been talking about this for years.

One of the biggest stressors that we don't realize is being on our devices.

Yes.

Just being on it itself, especially on our phones.

And I'm gonna talk about this from the perspective of physiology, this small space, and we are hyper-focused on this tiny screen.

When we're focused like that in nature, that means we are paying attention to something dangerous or something that we need to catch for that amount of time.

It is, incredibly fatiguing for parts of our nervous system, but it is just a, and we got sound data on this.

It's increasing these cortisol levels and some researchers at Harvard found that being on our devices, in particular phones, by the way, again at night, increases cortisol.

Yes, but it suppresses melatonin, right?

And these two, you can look at them as a little bit of antagonist relationship.

If cortisol is elevated, melatonin is probably not doing a good job or really feel it itself because cortisol is being dominant.

And what they found was that essentially every hour you're on your device, melatonin is being suppressed for 30 minutes.

Okay.

And most of us are on our devices for hours in the evening.

And it's a just, it's just a, it's a physiological and mental stressor.

And so giving yourself a break, if at all possible, build that into your routine.

Again, I've been talking about this a long time.

We are far more addicted than when I talked about this 13 years ago.

Yeah.

And going back to the paper book, I, am all about paper book with pages, a little red light, little itsy bitsy red, not itsy bitsy light, which is LED, but it's like a red light that I shine on my paper book.

and I've gotten into reading poetry before bed.

It's so good.

'cause it's just about long enough before I'm like to actually get sleepy pretty quick.

Yeah.

if I allow myself to get sleepy.

So the, when you have, at least for me, when I, anything that's in my phone is gonna activate me.

'cause it's all associated.

It's this is act connected to that.

Connect to that.

What I did, what I ended up doing last night was, putting it down and saying, I'm gonna, I'm gonna pass the ball to Shawn.

He's got it covered.

Whatever we're gonna talk about, I know he knows what to talk about and go into my body.

And that for me is if I can go into my body, like my body is where sleep happens.

Yeah.

So I just went into my body, I did a little body scan and then before I know I didn't get to my toes.

Yeah.

And I'm out.

Yep.

Yeah.

So out of my head and my body usually works.

That's another great tip just is to do a body scan.

start with your toes and just breathe into your toes, then go to your foot, your whole foot, then your ankle.

Each body part and just take a deep breath there.

Before you know it, you're probably not gonna make it too far.

You won't make it far.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Can we talk a little bit about just the sleep environment?

And you'd mentioned a mattress on the floor when you were, growing up and chaotic.

environments.

We have people that are sleeping with lights in their room, with sounds, with maybe partners that are in and out.

I got a dog that's making noise in my, it's just like we just moved into this like new home where my kids are like in like, these walls are thin and I can hear my other, my kids sometimes I hear them fighting, like how our sleep environment, what kind of sleep environment helps support this.

Yeah.

Deeper sleep too.

That's a great question.

The, thing about it is, like most people listening and a, huge percentage of people today, we have so much capacity to control our environment.

When it comes to sleep.

All right.

Sometimes some people, we don't have as much wiggle room In what we can do.

But you do have some agency.

Okay.

Like in college, I had a roommate.

He, to say he is a night owl is an understatement.

I'd wake up just open my eyes at three in the morning.

He's over there just typing away.

This is the beginning of the internet, by the way, like a OL whatever.

I, went to college for, my first year was 1997, which is crazy.

But yeah, he, was addicted early on.

And so these are things that I can't really manage, But I have it on myself.

I'm still gonna go to bed, I'm gonna put the cover over my head and I'm gonna get my sleep.

so it's like little things like that where even in an environment that's not as, conducive to change, having some agency, also not being too hard on yourself.

This is very important because we, he might hear something like this and then we'd be, try to be hypervigilant.

And one of the most important things with getting good sleep and just being healthy overall is that placebo effect versus a Nhat SIBO effect where you're Nhat SIBO in yourself, that all these things aren't right.

So I'm not getting the best sleep.

It's being relaxing into the fact that you are okay and the situation that you're in is okay, as long as you have a foundation of safety where you are just a feeling of safety that is immensely valuable.

and just trusting in life that you are.

Okay.

so with that said, with the environment, what's ideal?

I use a term a long time ago of creating a sleep sanctuary because, a lot of people can, and I could at the time, and so that sanctuary, whatever comes up for you when you think of a sanctuary, a peaceful place.

It is probably gonna be something that, inspires like a nature, some kind of Nhat nature element.

it's gonna be relaxing.

There might be water sounds that come up for you, maybe again, having that a water fountain, right?

little small one in your bedroom or, maybe a sound.

Maybe you have your phone but not by your bed, not right next to your head on, on the pillow, but maybe it's playing some nature sounds.

Maybe that's gonna help you to sleep.

Maybe some white noise.

so sound might have an element, for sleep.

We evolved sleeping in darkness because it's just safe that way.

most people that's totally fine, but some people they need a little light.

They might have some experiences or fears around, and as you mentioned, having light that is of a red hue or, the kind of like the dark oranges hue.

We fire, Colors that are closer to fire.

So that's something that.

You have a resonance with in your biology, has a resonance with, but one, one interesting study found that because we might use a sleep mask, which is that's really good for some people.

For most people,

I love my sleep mask.

Okay.

It's

like my teddy bear.

I can't, it's,

and it's also, it's di it's diverse.

It's flexible, yeah.

In a situation you could use them, but your skin has photoreceptors that pick up light as well.

Your skin is always sensing, trying to figure out what time it is.

Again, if we were living in natural circumstances, when the light is hitting, whether it's moonlight or sunlight, it's telling your body knows what time it is.

In this 24 hour solar day, you don't know, but your cells know and it's picking up that data and sending it to all your organs to try to inform and get everything in sync.

And and this is how your skin even changes colors.

Like that light exposure just to give people like a tangible, my, my skin picks up light.

Okay.

Yeah.

If there is light in your environment when you're sleeping, we call it light pollution.

All right, so maybe it's there was of course, like I had street lights outside.

I didn't know about this stuff.

So that's like shining into the room and your skin is picking that up.

It's like trying to figure out what is this, what time is this?

And it can throw off that body clock, right?

So if you can get some blackout curtains or get your room dark, also light pollution in the room.

So there's dimmers on most clocks now, but I grew up at a time, you just had that angry red, lights staring at you right by your bed, just getting rid of the light pollution, using a dimmer, getting the room dark.

Cool.

And of course, I don't wanna spend too much more time on this, but everything I'm saying has tons of science on it now.

A cool environment, peaceful environment, sound, things that can help the buffer, if there's any sound pollution in your area, or maybe again.

Kids are fighting next door.

maybe it's white noise, maybe it's, a relaxing sound or soundtrack.

just whatever it is that, and you gotta experiment and of one is the most important.

I can give you all the data in the world, but tinker and find out what works best for you.

You know what has worked really well for me and we moved in this new place is, have you heard of the term Sacha in yoga?

It's one of the yoga, Yama and yamas.

Sacha is cleanliness.

A clear, like having my Dr.

My bed is right across from my dresser.

If my dresser is clear, if there's no clutter, if my space like that sanctuary concept, like it's like a hotel room that's clean.

Yeah.

Something about that for my nervous system works so well when it's cluttered and there's like a some C clothes hanging or books out, my nervous system picks up on like undone.

Yeah.

So I do this little ritual of clean the room and then get in bed and that does it for me.

And it's super helpful.

So I think everyone has their thing.

Yeah, for sure.

And it may also be if you think about what your parents did for you when you were a kid or what your parents didn't do for you.

Yeah.

When you were a kid or that kid's house that you went to and their parents did that thing, they, we could start to do that, put ourselves to bed in the same way a little,

we need that neuro association.

Yeah.

as a child you have a certain, you have a sleep routine.

I shared that with my grandmother.

we had a certain sleep routine.

Hot bath, put on the pajamas, which is another like neuro association.

You put on a different set of clothes than your daytime clothes for you to go to bed.

And then we say our prayers and she tuck me in.

But as adults we're just, we just just, we're rogue, We're just, we.

It is whatever.

Like most of the time, for many people, it's just like they decide to go to bed when they're like, I really should get some sleep, right?

And get off their phone or the TV, or whatever it is.

Instead of creating that neuro association of.

Our bodies are looking for that rhythm where you maybe it is a hot bath or maybe it is, reading a book like you mentioned, having a physical book that you're reading, maybe it's listening to a certain podcast that you like to go to sleep with, where you don't have to stare into a screen.

maybe it's journaling, maybe it's reading poetry.

there's some data finding that of the types of books.

fiction is ideal versus nonfiction.

self-help, self-development, which some of that can put you to sleep too, but for some people it's might be too stimulating like a reading, a marketing book that, gets 'em excited about work ideas, but it's not bad division as well.

again, it's just gonna be dependent on you.

But having fiction helps your mind to literally work differently and start to paint these, these environments that you.

That you're reading about and you start to create.

So it's like turning off certain activity, turning on different activity

and making it something that you want to do that sounds good to do, right?

oh, I can't wait to go into my room and wash my face with my favorite face wash.

And you were asking about clothes that you put on, can't wait to put on this 'cause it feels so good to be in this and I can't wait to read that book that I've saved.

because we are battling all the things that are keeping us, not doing that behavior.

So the reinforcement, which is something that I appreciate about your approach to food too, and, sleep is connected to food.

So we can talk a little bit about eating and sleep and nutrients and sleep, but.

Your approach to food was that as well?

It wasn't like go on a diet, restrict all these things.

no more Cheetos for you.

But it was really about what kinds of foods could we bring in that are ones that I want to eat, that my family would want to eat, that I can enjoy eating that also have that success, momentum for my body and my being.

Yeah.

So let's talk a little bit about food and sleep, some of the key nutrients and then what are some of your go-tos, that could help us.

Perfect.

So we can have the best mattress, you can have this perfectly manicured sleep sanctuary.

If you're deficient in the nutrients that make your sleep related hormones and neurotransmitters and just run these cellular processes, you're not gonna get the sleep that you're trying to get.

You're not, you're going to be deficient in being able to get that high quality sleep.

This is top tier, top three things.

It might be number one.

Okay.

Because if we're talking about what's fueling the process, what's running the process of sleep?

So some of the nutrients that we've identified, and I call them good sleep nutrients, one of them, is one of the most accessible nutrients, but it's easy to become deficient in and it is vitamin C.

Yeah.

So a study that was published in the journal plus one Public Library of science, one found that individuals who are deficient in vitamin C had more interrupted sleep.

They woke up more frequently, and by addressing this nutrient deficiency, they were able to reduce.

Wake after sleep onset.

Okay.

Now, why would people become deficient in, it's because vitamin C runs a lot of processes related to stress.

And so your kid just, again, stressful situation happens.

Your kidneys can just dump, vitamin C into your system to it, it's, important for our immune system, right?

But it's related to all this other stuff.

But we know it for being immune system supportive.

When we're under stress, guess what your immune system is I gotta be prepared if you get stabbed or if you're going to kill something and you need to eat something, your immune system needs to be able to, these are all hardwired biological processes to protect us.

So this is one of those essential nutrients we gotta get from food, right?

We don't produce vitamin C ourselves, so be proactive in eating plenty of vitamin C rich foods.

Super easy when you're talking about fruits, wide variety of fruits, especially things like strawberries, but also vegetables like, of course, citrus fruits as well, but vegetables like broccoli is a pretty good source of vitamin C.

The highest source of vitamin C would be found in things like canu, canu berry, amla berry, ac cherry.

These are like super foods, be considered superfood 'cause they're so dense in vitamin C.

So

where do you get that Camma berry.

Are you like, is you getting a supplement?

Yeah.

You're not getting at

that whole, at your wild oats whole foods.

Yeah.

You're gonna find a supplement

form, like a powdered Yeah.

Version of it.

it is one of the most researched as far as vitamin C related, nutrients and the Journal of Cardiology.

This was crazy.

They were trying to find out how effective it actually is.

Versus a typical synthetic vitamin C supplement.

This is important.

Oh my goodness.

This is important for everybody.

Over 90% of the vitamin C supplements out there on the market, like those little emergency packets.

Oh,

no.

They're the little orange things that I used to chew that my dad had in the cupboard.

I thought they were like candy.

Listen, I grew up with the Flintstone vitamin too.

Yeah, it's so good.

like

it's the only sugar in my house.

90.

Over 90% of these supplements are derived from GMO corn syrup and corn starch.

Okay.

These are highly refined, these are ultra processed versions of this stuff.

So the Journal of Cardiology was looking at individuals and they used people who had a, A, A noted stressor that they were doing.

And so they used smokers right, to find out could we see an improvement with reducing their stress biomarkers and their cardiovascular, risk markers by utilizing vitamin C.

Okay.

Or cambuca berry.

There was no change over the course of the study period with the synthetic vitamin C supplement.

But the individuals who are utilizing camel, berry had significant reductions in stress, biomarkers and cardiovascular risk markers.

things like C-reactive protein, right?

And so that's a marker of inflammation and so it really does work.

So Campbell Cam Berry, big fan of that, supplement.

So Vitamin C is one.

Another one.

Researchers at Oxford found that Omega-3 fatty acids were able to help to reduce sleep disturbances and improve overall sleep efficiency.

another one, and I can go on and on.

another one would be magnesium.

Super popular.

Now, thank goodness it's responsible for hundreds.

We don't even know at this point, at least hundreds of biochemical processes in the body.

Magnesium needs to be involved even to make new mitochondria.

Magnesium needs to be present just from your mitochondria to make copies of itself.

So we're talking about power plants of life.

So what I got from you and what you have in your book is, cacao.

I do a no sugar cacao drink before bed where I just put, a couple teaspoons of cacao with, I do al like warm almond milk.

And then you have other stuff.

You have like other special stuff in your, in your cacao drink.

But I worry about that 'cause it has caffeine in it.

Is that okay?

Because it has magnesium, but it doesn't seem to bother me.

I mean it's, yeah, it depends.

Yeah,

it really, again, end of one.

See how it makes you feel.

Yeah.

this is a double blind placebo controlled study.

This was published in 2012 and it found that improving magnesium levels.

Was able to for test participants, improve sleep efficiency, improve melatonin function, reduce cortisol, and reduce wake after sleep onset.

So keep that in mind.

When I was in school with my expensive university education, we're talking about getting, like taking a vitamin mineral supplement.

We were not taught that there are so many different forms of magnesium.

There are multiple forms of vitamin C.

There's multiple forms of B12 vitamin D.

The list goes on and on.

What are you getting in this one daily or whatever the this rum or Flintstone vitamins.

And there's synthetic versions.

Unless you're getting like a whole food derived, you're getting some those red number fours

too, probably.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so are you actually getting the magnesium that you're looking for, right?

Food has it.

Yeah, food has a spectrum of these nutrients, different forms of magnesium.

So food first, and then of course there's different.

Magnesium supplements that are different forms and for different reasons, but, some good dietary sources of magnesium include avocados, pumpkin seeds is a great one.

Almonds, as you mentioned, dark chocolate, leafy greens.

Black beans, fatty fish.

Spirulina is a really wonderful source in the museum.

You and the

spirulina.

So I got that from you.

I have a, I've been putting spirulina in my smoothies for a long time and I totally forgot why I was putting in my smoothie, but I have this dark green, it's from algae.

Yeah.

And I got it from you, put the spirulina in the, so I just do it automatically.

But why, spirulina?

You're so into it.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah.

Yeah.

This was, I've been in this field for 22 or 23 years now.

This month is the anniversary.

I don't know if it's 22 or 23.

but spirulina was one of those early foods when I was getting That I happened to upon some research on.

And there was some research related to a NASA was utilizing 'cause it was so, nutrient rich, for the astronauts.

And.

It is the most protein dense food that humans consume.

But just to keep it in context, it's, you're not eating a lot of it right.

So this can't necessarily meet all your protein meat.

It's

like a tablespoon of it.

it's, yeah.

Yeah.

But it's it's 70% protein by weight and it's complete protein, which, again, outside of the animal kingdom, it's pretty unique.

There.

There are some plant foods that are complete proteins, but it's pretty special, but it's been utilized for thousands of years.

There's, evidence of, the, Aztecs utilizing it and, countries in Africa, the Chad and just, it's been used a long time and it has some unique compounds, like something called fco signin.

And this is a really rare pigment when the earth was different.

Alright, so this is like a ancient nutrient and fco signin has been found to stimulate.

something called stem cell genesis, the creation of new stem cells.

Crazy.

That's crazy.

Talk about anti-aging if you want some anti whatever or longevity, whatever way you wanna go about it.

Not necessarily anti, but yeah.

Stem cell regeneration for healing accidents.

Yeah.

Betacarotene.

And as you mentioned, just talking about this a little bit earlier, the magnesium as well.

I, I can go on and on, but it's just, it's a really remarkable nutrient source, not for everybody.

What I enjoy with, 'cause again, I used to put it in smoothies all the time, I enjoy putting a little bit in guacamole, right?

It makes this crazy alien color guacamole, but it's delicious.

I don't know why it meshes so well together.

I saw that

in your recipe book and I was like, maybe we could do that.

My kids make guacamole all the time.

Yeah.

It's like our go-to after school snack is guacamole.

Just put, yeah, put a quarter teaspoon in there.

Quarter teaspoon.

just a quarter teaspoon and just see, try it, what the vibe is.

Okay.

It's, pretty good.

And maybe again, because it's like ancient Mexico and like the avocados and the, the add spirulina.

Yeah.

You wanna do, you wanna do what kind of fits?

So we do the, I do the Mexican lines and we do oregano.

But yeah, a little spirulina would be fantastic.

Yeah.

So you are like a fire host.

You have information in all the things and what you've done.

if people wanna move into learning from you, from these three books that you have.

So you have the sleep smarter, which you're gonna come out with a revised, 10 year anniversary one.

The one that you have is full.

it's Jim, I was just looking at sleep positions.

The most popular couple sleeping positions, the spoon.

The honeymoon, hug, the shingles.

and just our, I mean you have so much in here from these power tips of the nutrients, but creating a sleep sanctuary, what we've talked about.

And then you also have a book on nutrition.

So Eat Smarter tells your story in terms of nutrition, but then also goes into a tremendous amount of detail.

Everything from what types of fats.

and these, are all stuff that I've learned from you from the Model Health Show over the years.

If you open my cupboard, you will see three, three different, four, four fats in there.

Yeah, you'll see ghee, you'll see coconut oil, avocado oil, and you'll see olive oil.

That's it.

There is no canola oil.

If a recipe calls for canola oil, I use the avocado oil.

and you'll explain why All the science Yeah.

Behind why, and then you have it in the practical application with the family in the cookbook.

I wanna just, I mean we could go on forever, but I wanna talk just a tiny bit about the family and the cookbook because you caught me.

This was the other thing that kept me up last night.

The things that we worry about most are the things that keep us up.

'cause they're things they care, about most.

I was worried about the interview, but, our habits around food and our family, and I've gotten a little bit off.

Yeah, gotten a little bit off of some of these habits, the importance of eating meals together, eating at a table, phones away, screens away, and why that is so central to the health of our children, the health of our bodies and our relationships.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'll just share from data first and foremost.

So some great researchers at Harvard compiled data on family eating behaviors, and they found that families that eat together on a consistent basis consume significantly higher amounts of essential nutrients that help to prevent chronic diseases in these family members.

And people who ate together less frequently, or not at all with their family, tended to eat more highly refined ultra processed foods and more ingredients that are correlated with.

Chronic diseases, heart disease in particular.

And that was a big catalyst for me to look into this more because I'm like, what?

Like why is nobody talking about this?

And that led me to something fascinating 'cause I wanted to look at what's the impact on kids specifically.

And what's the impact on adults and for kids?

one of the most, and this is action step as well, embedded in this was published in the Journal of Pediatrics, and they found that children who eat together with their family, caregivers, parents on a regular basis, what it was noted to be, three meals per week or more.

Three, was the minimum effective dose had significantly reduced risk of developing obesity and disordered eating.

All right.

And to take it one step further, a study that was done, because for me, I, didn't eat with my family ever, except the holiday.

But just during the regular days, we would often eat at the same time, but we would just scatter, grab food and go park ourselves in front of a TV or whatever.

I would eat my brothers and si my brother and sister, but not my parents.

we just didn't do that.

But had they known, because for me, one of the, and also one of the arguments, but also one of the things that I'm from, that I'm from an area where we're in poverty, where we're getting food from charities and on food stamps.

Like I'm from that.

I know if my parents knew that eating with me would've helped me to be healthier, they would've done it.

They just didn't know.

Yeah.

Okay.

And so for me, it brings up the argument of access.

you can do that.

You can sit and eat with your family.

Y my, my parents worked different shifts so that at least one of them can be there.

And there were times when both was there that we could have eaten together.

There is always a way, to get some of this input.

And so this study looked at minority children who are generally in the context of, a low income environment like I come from.

And they found that children who ate with their parent or caregiver, at least four meals per week could be any meal.

It doesn't have to be dinner.

By the way.

They, these children ate five servings, five to seven servings of fruits and vegetables at least five days a week, and they ate significantly less ultra processed foods, namely chips and soda.

All right?

And the researchers noted when the TV was never or rarely on during the family meals, there's something about the TV being on, right?

And so again, just knowing about this, it leads to better outcomes with our behaviors and with our health, especially for our children and for us as adults.

This was done on tech workers at IBM, which again, it could be a very intense, stressful environment to work in.

They found that when, workers were able to consistently make it home, quote, make it home in time for dinner, and have dinner with their families, their work morale stayed high performance job satisfaction was good, but as soon as work responsibilities cut into their ability to consistently eat with their families, work morale, plummets, performance, job satisfaction, all that stuff goes down.

The question is why.

This is all related to stress.

Being able to eat with people that you love helps you to metabolize stress, even if you're not talking about your workday.

Just being able to being around people that we care about.

Even for us right now, we are sharing, there's an energy exchange.

And there's also, there's a microbial exchange.

There's like a file sharing happening with that.

And there's a change in our biochemistry, right?

So being with people that we care about, we, and this is more recent, but I talked about this in Sleep Smarter.

Oxytocin is getting a moment right now being called like the love hormone I refer to as the cuddle hormone back in the day.

but it's associated with love and oxytocin.

Funny enough, I, one of the studies I shared has been found to help to, buffer or reduce the impact of cortisol, right?

So that feeling of love and being around people that you care about, it's a stress, it's a stress reliever, stress processor, and also the psychological impact of eating with people you love, especially for kids.

Today, more than ever, we have a deep psychological need to feel seen.

That's what got me choked up earlier.

Our kids more than ever.

That's why they're seeking these likes.

They're seeking attention.

They're distracted themselves.

They're not seeing their value.

It's not being displayed back to them because we have a society that's so artificial and superficial.

And so having that time for your child to sit in front of you and for you to see them for, them to know that you see them and that they are here and that they matter.

That matters more than anything today, more than ever.

And so it's feeding so many needs at once.

And we have practices, and again, we're not perfect about this.

We have seasons to where we eat together more frequently.

It might, but this, you can have unifier.

But the key, by the way, if you want to do this, it's like with any behavior change, especially if this isn't a habit yet, is to make it.

Equal or greater than what they're giving up, right?

So if you're going up against video games and TV and the phone, you gotta find ways to make it, enjoyable, right?

And that's gonna take some experimentation for us.

We found that, my kids knew that this meal, number one, the food's gonna be amazing, but also this meal is gonna lead to dancing competitions, rap battles.

Like it just worked for our family.

I don't know how it happened, it just happened, so much.

So eventually we got a microphone, I just got one off Amazon.

I got a little autotune to it, right?

And we're passing around the microphone as we're, doing our bars, rapping to my youngest son once he finally got an iPad right?

And somebody makes a beat on the iPad, right?

And so like we created this family culture.

And there's this thing that we look forward to, right?

And the unifier could be everybody sitting together and sharing three things that they're grateful for from that day.

That's what we do.

when we sit down and have dinner together, always, and we've, whenever we have friends around, we just, this is what we do.

And it's awesome.

It feels good because you getting everybody talking and thinking about, getting in a different space of gratitude.

Sometimes it might just be, I'm glad that, I made it through, this really stressful thing today.

I'm, just glad, I'm glad that I worked out today, or whatever the case might be.

could be big things or small things.

And lastly, and I can give so many tips to help to affirm this, something that's a part of our culture already is games.

So playing games together, if we wanna bring the tech into it, this could be like heads up on your phone or board games.

I found out one of my colleagues, they actually play a board game while they eat dinner, which I never heard of.

I, we do it after, right?

But they play a game while they eat, which is oh, that's dope.

and so it's just finding those things, getting everybody involved and making it fun

Okay.

So we started our conversation about your own.

Health crisis and how it led you to exploring everything from sleep to nutrition.

And just to sum up what, some of the tips that you gave us, some of the tools that you gave us is around sleep.

is starting to just begin with a schedule.

Just get yourself on a schedule like you were in third grade.

If you had a schedule and you were in third grade, school ended a certain time and it started a certain time so you can put a schedule into your sleep.

And that routine that was so beneficial to you with your grandma.

Our nervous system wants it.

Creating a sleep sanctuary with sound and darkness and coldness and yummy pajamas or whatever it is.

And then putting the phone.

Away somehow not being on the phone, but finding other things to wind you down at night.

And then we talked about how these different nutrients, some of the go-tos that people can start to think about in terms of food-based go-tos of vitamin C.

You mentioned omega threes, you mentioned magnesium, spirulina.

And then how that spreads, like getting into this better nutrition is also related to getting into routines and connection with our family.

So it's about this whole system that we're in, right?

Not just the micronutrient or the macronutrient, but the big nutrient of community and connection.

And those are, that's how your books go.

that's the storyline.

If you wanna go check out Sleep Smarter, eat Smarter, and then Eat Smarter Family Cookbook, you'll, see that thread.

And I, love all of 'em and, appreciate you just it.

Again, fire hose Shawn Stevenson, because you've done this work for yourself, and obviously part of your genius is, figuring it out to the, very, like minuscule, research based level, but then applying it in a very, as you said, the beginning, relatable way.

Yeah.

So appreciate that.

Of course.

It's my honor.

It's my honor.

And for folks that want, obviously the Model Health show, people can find you there, but are there things that you're up to if people wanna find you and Yeah.

Learn more from you?

if you want to a hot firefighter to come with the, no, I'm sorry.

Magic, magic Mike, Yeah.

but yeah, where you're listening to this podcast, you can find my show, it's called the Model Health Show.

And yeah, it's a incredible resource.

just click play whatever there.

We've addressed masterclasses, we created masterclasses on.

Pretty much every health subject matter that you can name.

And I'm grateful to say that even in Missouri, after one year of doing the show, it became the number one health podcast in the United States.

And it's kinda like billboard charts.

But we've been number one for, hundreds of times, hundreds of

Shawn has a masterclass on water that will change your life.

Water.

Yeah,

go Listen.

It was one of our most downloaded episodes for sure, but now it's so good.

It's changed the culture, structured water.

It's changed the culture,

Yeah.

yeah.

It changed our whole family world around water and our reverse.

I was talking

about microplastics and endocrine disruptors and water.

You're always 10 years ahead, literally like 15 years ago.

You're 10 years ahead.

I've got a YouTube video that it's my first video.

I think it was 16 years ago now.

And it's, I'm talking about stuff that people are talking about.

So, you make me 10 years ahead.

This is the secret for folks that listen to me about my health suggestions or see me do.

It's 'cause I'm listening to Shawn Stevenson, Katy Bowman's 10 years ahead too.

Yeah, so get in because you know why the research is always 10 years ahead.

So if you're actually reading the research, you will always be 10 years ahead.

It takes 10 years for it to get to the general public.

That's right.

That's right.

Yeah.

That's why you're so on top of

things.

So what's coming, just for everybody know Yeah.

What is coming?

Circadian medicine.

Yeah.

Circadian medicine is one of the biggest things.

It's gonna be impactful and this is whether you're, what time you're taking your supplements, medications, what time you're exercising.

We're gonna get so deep in the woods on that coming in the next 10 years.

And obviously this biological, aging conversation Yeah.

is so big and there's so many facets to it.

We could, did, a masterclass on what we know today that are.

Proven to slow your biological aging down.

so those are just a couple of the big things that are still to come in, kind of public awareness and education.

And the one, the not one size fits all.

Very individualized.

Yes.

Medicine.

Yes.

Personalized.

Personalized.

That's happening in psychology too.

Absolutely.

We're like, mindfulness isn't good for everybody.

Self-compassion isn't good for everybody.

Yeah.

Gratitude doesn't work for everybody.

Yeah.

So you have to personalize it based on, tracking yourself and what works for you.

Yeah.

Which is about all this stuff.

So try some of these things out, personalize it, see what works for you, and go listen to Shawn Stevenson on the Model Health Show, and you'll be 10 years ahead of everything.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Wise Effort podcast.

Wise effort is about you taking your energy and putting it in the places that matter most to you.

And when you do so you'll get to savor the good of your life along the way.

If you would like to become a member of the Wise Effort podcast, go to wise effort.com.

And if you liked this episode and it would be helpful to somebody, please leave a review over at Podchaser.

I would like to thank my team, my partner, in all things, including the producer of this podcast, Craig.

Ashley Hiatt, the podcast manager.

And thank you to Ben Gould at Bell and Branch for our music.

This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only.

And it's not meant to be a substitute for mental health treatments.