If you care about mental health, care

about your weight, and your energy

levels, you have to care about the

because if it's not healthy, you're not

healthy. Dr. Will Cole, best-selling

author, one of the top 50 functional

medicine practitioners.

And is a health expert for the world's

largest wellness brands such as Goop.

There's so much medical gaslighting

going on. The average conventional

doctor would fail a basic nutrition

test, and I find that to be problematic

because we have the worst health care

system. Yet you're criticizing people

that are trying to do something

different.

You define yourself as a functional

medicine doctor. The differences between

mainstream medicine and functional

medicine is they're trained to diagnose

a disease and match it with the

medication. But I think a nutrition

forward approach to health care is

vastly important. Why? Because the vast

majority of health problems are

lifestyle driven. Foods we eat, exposure

to toxins, these lifestyle things are

really what's plaguing our society.

60 to 80% of all Western countries are

dealing with some massive metabolic

issues.

In part fed by chronic stress. Part of

our trauma in our life has to do with

the trauma that our ancestors have gone

through. It sounds science fiction, but

looking at how trauma is literally

stored in the cells and then passed

through family lines is very much

science. Are you optimistic that there's

things we can do to change it? As trauma

can be inherited, so can healing.

There's three main things. First thing

is

Number two, the third would be

Before we get into this episode, just

wanted to say thank you first and

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Let's get on with it.

Dr. Will,

my friend. Thanks. Thanks for having me.

I'm going to start this um conversation

where I started it quite recently when I

spoke to

Max, who I think you you're familiar

with, um which is

what you do

and why do you do it?

Mhm.

I've always been a health nerd, I guess

you could call it, and then in

hindsight, I

I now look back and think of how what a

weird kid I was. My first job was at the

Finish Line when I I don't know if you

have those in the UK, but they're

basically tennis shoes, like sneaker

stores. And I I'd use my paycheck at 16

years old to go to the health food store

and buy the latest superfood that I'd

see research on, the latest supplement,

and that was always fascinating to me.

How could you optimize your health using

natural things, using things that are of

the planet and food to feel great?

And needless to say, my I was packing my

lunch in this in the brown bags with

like peppers and

bananas and these whole grains, crunchy

things in the in the '90s. And my

friends weren't doing that. So, that

evolved in me being interested in that,

food and nutrition, to want to be

formally trained, and I have a family

history of autoimmune conditions, and I

just have a passion to figure out these

complex puzzles. And it's a sacred

responsibility for me to then take my

own passion and how can I problem-solve

for these people and hold space for them

cuz I see

in the topic of autoimmunity

specifically, it's a vast, in many ways,

a silent epidemic of people that are

struggling. There's so much medical

gaslighting going on. They're told

they're just depressed, given

antidepressants, they're told they are

just stressed out, but the research

speaks for itself, the statistics speak

for itself that we we have in the United

States alone about 50 million Americans

having an autoimmune condition, but

millions more are somewhere on this

autoimmune inflammation spectrum where

they're they're labeled with things like

chronic fatigue syndrome and

fibromyalgia,

and they they may not even be

diagnosable, but they're they're feeling

that sort of anxiety and fatigue and

brain fog and digestive problems and

different iterations of inflammation.

So,

it's if you know anything, I guess to

answer your question pointedly, my

enneagram, if you know anything about

that sort of personality

study, I'm an enneagram five, which

means I'm a researcher. So, I'm sort of

this voracious, like, let's figure this

out and get to the root cause of why

you're struggling. So, that's why I do

what I do. And you do define yourself in

terms of your job title as a functional

medicine doctor. Yes, I'm a functional

medicine doctor. What does that mean?

So, if I had to break it down, the

differences between conventional

medicine and functional medicine,

mainstream medicine and functional

medicine. First thing is we interpret

labs using a thinner reference range. If

you know, you get your lab and you have

your number and you have this X to Y

interval, this reference range

that your GP or PCP is comparing you to.

We get that reference range largely from

a statistical bell curve average of

people who go to that lab. It's

non-standardized for the most part.

People that are predominantly going to

labs are people sadly going through

health problems. So, a lot of people

know intuitively something's off here,

my fatigue, my brain fog, my digestive

issue, my hair loss, whatever it is.

They go to the doctor and the doctor

runs the basic labs, and they say,

"Look, the labs pretty much look normal.

You're just depressed. You're just

you're stressed out." What they're

unintentionally telling the patient is

they're a lot like the other people with

health problems that they are being

compared to.

Just because something's common doesn't

necessarily mean it's normal. Comparing

yourself to people with health problems

is no way for you to find out how you

can feel at your best and why you feel

the way that you do. So, in functional

medicine, we're looking at optimal, not

average. So, the Cleveland Clinic here

in the United States has a functional

medicine center, main many mainstream

institutions have functional medicine

and integrative medicine institutions,

and all of us in functional medicine are

trained through what's called the

Institute for Functional Medicine. So,

we're looking at optimal, not average.

We're running more comprehensive labs to

get to the root cause cuz ultimately

speaking, we're none of us are sick from

a pharmaceutical deficiency. You know,

you can't uh like

pharmaceutical your way into health one

day. They are disease-managing

medications and are needed many times,

but ultimately, we ask the question,

"What is your most effective option that

causes you the least amount of side

effects?" And for some people,

medications fit that criteria and they

need to be on it, but often times,

medications really don't fit that

criteria, yet it's the only option given

to them, and there's a root upstream

causation as to why they have to be on

that disease-modifying medication in the

first place. So, we're looking at things

like underlying gut problems, chronic

infections, nutrient deficiencies,

hormonal imbalances, or things like

trauma and shame, the things that I'm

talking about my latest book. And

ultimately, it's predicated on

bioindividuality.

We're all different. And even good

things, even healthy things that's

relevant, that's pertinent for one

person, may not be relevant for you. And

even healthy foods, what works for one

person may not work for you. So, it's

really

curated, customized, evidence-based

medicine, in short. If you know, when

you think about conventional medicine

and conventional, I guess, health

advice, and then you contrast that to

your perspective, your view of health

and medicine, what are the real stark

differences?

Well, I think

the the diagnostic aspect is the is one

of them because they're trained in the

standard model of care to diagnose a

disease and match it with a medication.

So, that sort of sort of um medicinal

matching game, if you will, is a major

part of the conventional model of care.

And

I think a nutrition forward approach to

health care is another one. And I

mentioned a study in Gut Feelings how

the this it was it's

study in a medical journal and showed

that in this one group that the average

conventional doctor would fail a basic

nutrition test because of the training

that's not there. And any conventional

doctor will tell you, and actually, most

of my colleagues in functional medicine

are conventionally trained, and they

will tell you they have to go to

post-doctorate training to even learn

about nutrition.

And I find that to be problematic

because we're dealing with the vast

majority of health problems that people

are seeing are lifestyle driven, meaning

that the foods we eat or not eating, our

stress levels, our sleep, our exposure

to toxins, these epigenetic lifestyle

things are really what's fueling what is

plaguing our society and what the major,

like, endocrinologist, PCP, GP are

seeing on their day-to-day visits. So, I

would say the approach is different cuz

there's a place for medication. Again, I

I mentioned that sort of litmus test of

maybe a piece to your puzzle, but

ultimately, it is not the totality of

what's going on here. And we have to

look at a in my opinion a both and not

an either or sort of reductive tribal

approach. And that's where I think

functional medicine attempts to bring

things together where it's not us versus

them. It's well what is the most

effective tools within this person's

toolbox and medications may be part of

it, but there are often times a lot more

effective, a lot less side effects

tools within than that tool block to

within that tool box. You mentioned

earlier that you you had family members

that had autoimmune um

inflammation conditions. Yeah.

What was that and how did that have an

impact on you at all?

Well, I mean I could go with the both

sides of my family really. There's

there's different neurological

autoimmune issues like MS type symptoms

if you know anything about that.

Uh diff- type 1 diabetes on both sides

of the family where the immune system

attacks the pancreas and then the body

cannot produce insulin. You have to take

insulin to manage your blood sugar.

People have uh autoimmune thyroid

issues. Hashimoto's disease is really

our one of our top patient base today is

people that have autoimmune thyroid

issues. And different and other

inflammatory problems. So how it

impacted me I think was just seeing

how it impacted the quality of life. And

health and life on earth I think in many

ways is just so fragile. And it's we

take things for granted so much until

it's not there. And I'm reminded on an

hourly basis from with my patients now

too. It's just a sacred thing that

I want to do everything I can to help

them regain it.

Gut Feelings book you've just

finished writing I believe. Um

Why did you write a book called Gut

Feelings? What what was the you know I

always say this when I speak to authors

that writing a book is an absolute labor

of love. I mean it takes forever to do.

It's a painful process. Yeah. So to so

to do that you must really have

found a topic subject matter that really

really mattered to you. Why Gut

Feelings? Why did you call it that? Why

did you write that book?

So again, this is my fourth book and

as with anything that I've written it's

really born out of my passion for my

patients and just seeing things play

out. And I think in many ways my

patients are kind of like

you know that saying canaries in the

coal mine. I think they're canaries in

the coal mine for the rest of the world

cuz they tend to be you know further

down that autoimmune inflammation

spectrum. They're they're struggling

with different inflammatory problems,

but then I look at the statistics and I

realize it's just they're the tip of the

iceberg of really what's going on. Um so

Gut Feelings is really a conversation

around

mental health and autoimmunity and

people's I would say diet culture as a

whole.

And talking about the sort of duality

within wellness both gut and feelings.

The physiological and the psychological,

the physical and the mental emotional

spiritual. And again this both and

approach that I think is needed to have

sustainable healing in people's lives.

Whether they're going through anxiety

and depression brain fog or fatigue or

they're going through an autoimmune

condition or different inflammatory

problem. You have to deal with the both

this both physical and mental emotional

spiritual.

And I I love the fact that I think in

our culture in the past years we've made

great strides to normalize mental health

care and destigmatize people getting

access to mental health care. Wonderful.

I just feel like it's in many ways

this is sort of

the next stage in that conversation cuz

I think in many ways it's an incomplete

conversation around mental health care

cuz in the West we still like to

separate mental health from physical

health. You know it's a mental health

problem. We sort of relegated it as sort

of this abstract sort of philosophical

chemical imbalance if you will which is

in now it's coming out it's flimsy

science at best anyways that we have to

realize that mental health is physical

health and our brain is a part of our

body just like anything else. So it's

really in in a part Gut Feelings is a

conversation around what's known in the

re- research as the the cytokine model

of cognitive function. Cytokines are

pro-inflammatory cells, right? So it's

research looking at how does

inflammation impact how my brain works?

How does inflammation impact mental

health? So things like anxiety,

depression, brain fog, fatigue have this

inflammatory component, but then the

question is what I really talk about in

the book is what's driving the

inflammation cuz inflammation is a

normal part of the immune system, but

what's triggering this chronic

inflammation that's sort of this this

forest fire that's burning in

perpetuity. That's the problem of what's

triggering people's mental health issues

just like it's triggering their

autoimmune issues.

So both the gut and the feelings part of

it are the things that we know from the

research and I have a lot of clinical

experience to show how these things

impact people's health. So the gut

things I e. like underlying gut

problems. The 75% of the immune system.

Inflammation's a product of the immune

system. Our gut and brain are actually

formed from the same fetal tissue. So

when babies are growing in their

mother's womb the gut and brain are

formed from that same fetal tissue and

they're inextricably linked for the rest

of our life through what's known as the

gut brain axis. So the connection

between the gut and the brain. And if

you think about it the intestines kind

of even resemble the brain. 95% of

serotonin is made in the gut. 50% of

dopamine is made in the gut stored in

the gut. Researchers call it the second

brain for a reason because of this.

This is a lot of far-reaching

implications to underlying gut problems

to not only inflammatory problems i.e.

autoimmune issues, but also to mental

health issues because it is the second

brain. But then conversely the feeling

stuff like I really talk about in the

book the research around chronic stress

and trauma and even intergenerational

trauma. How these big complex things

these mental emotional spiritual things

are literally stored in our cells.

Dysregulating our nervous system,

raising inflammation levels, impacting

how our hormones are expressed. So it's

both a gut and a feeling side of two

sides of the same coin that impact so

many people and I don't you know I just

I have these conversations with my

patients all the time. It just was a

matter of when I had the conversation in

book form.

Inflammation.

I don't really know what that word

means.

How would you summarize or um simplify

that word for anybody that also doesn't

really understand the term inflammation?

Yeah. It is abstract. I think to your

point it's I use it so flippantly that I

realize I'm in this weird health bubble,

but it it is a nebulous term. It's not

inherently bad. It's a product of the

immune system. The immune system makes

different proteins, different amino

acids, different chemical messengers if

you will

that fights viruses,

fights bacteria, heals wounds. So when

you think of inflammation in this sort

of normal acute state it's if somebody

gets a sporting injury and their knee

swells up, right? That's acute

inflammation rushing nutrients and

healing and oxygen and white blood cells

to the area to repair it, to rejuvenate

it.

That's normal measured human

inflammation. We would be goners as a

species without normal

a normal inflammatory response.

It's when inflammation goes chronic

that there's a problem.

Chronic inflammation

it's associated with just about every

health problem under the sun. When

you're looking at what researchers are

looking at these inflammatory components

you're looking at autoimmune issues,

metabolic issues like type 2 diabetes.

When you look at um

cancer, heart disease to mental health

issues as I mentioned this sort of

cytokine

looking at the neuroinflammatory

component to things like anxiety and

depression.

So that's what inflammation is. When it

when it goes chronic it really sets off

a lot of cascade of dysregulation in the

body because it's it's a lack of

homeostasis. It's the Goldilocks

principle. You know it's not too high,

not too low, but just right. That's

where you want inflammation just like

many things in the body just like the

gut bacteria in our microbiome. We don't

want bacterial overgrowth. We don't want

a deficit of beneficial bacteria. Like

hormones. We don't want too much

hormones like a a dominance of hormones.

We don't want a deficiency of hormones

either. Inflammation is the same thing.

We don't want excess inflammation.

That's what's associated with all of

these chronic health problems and we

don't want a deficiency. That's

immunosuppressed people that people have

immunodeficiencies. That's not good

either. So it's about modulating and

supporting healthy inflammatory

pathways. It's really the clinical

objective for my patients and for the

average person out there that's looking

to optimize how they want to feel that

should be their goal as well.

So I I got two questions that what what

is a symptom that one might notice in

themselves of chronic inflammation and

what are in your practice what are the

leading sort of causes of that chronic

inflammation? Mhm. Sure. So there's

three

the way that we see it in functional

medicine there's three main

stages if you will on this continuum.

This inflammation spectrum. On one end

there's silent inflammation, silent

autoimmunity. Meaning if you ran labs

you'd see some some markers off like a

high sensitivity C-reactive protein

which is a quite a conventional marker.

You'd see that spiked. You see maybe a

homocysteine level elevated and other

inflammatory protein, but the person

feels all right. They say everything's

cool.

Stage two is the inflammation

reactivity. That's the vast majority of

people living on our planet today are in

stage two or three. Stage two, a lot of

people are there. They have things like

brain fog. They have things like

fatigue.

They have some sort of dysregulated

nervous system response. A way that

people typically will say it, they'll

say I'm anxious but I'm exhausted. Or

wired and tired is the other way of

putting it.

They have different digestive problems.

I mean, the

amount of people that have chronic

constipation or IBS or some sort of

digestive issue that again, it's their

everyday so they normalize it. But these

things are anything but normal. They're

just ubiquitous.

And I would put under that category

mental health issues, like anxiety and

depression, autoimmune reactivity

issues, and people that have hormonal

problems. And the stage three is a

full-blown diagnosable issue. Like

they're going to their doctor and

they're given an ICD-10 code in the

states. They're given some diagnostic

code and they're given a medication or

recommended some conventional treatment.

But researchers estimate

it's about 4 to 10 years prior to that

diagnosis when things were brewing on

the spectrum. Meaning, by the time

somebody gets diagnosed officially, it

didn't happen overnight for most people.

So it's no matter where you're at, how

can you be supporting your gut and your

feelings? How can you be supporting your

physical health and your mental,

emotional, spiritual health? So then to

get to the second part of your question

is like, what are the most common causes

of it?

It really stems like the broad umbrella

of it has to do with what researchers

refer to as an evolutionary mismatch or

an epigenetic genetic mismatch. Our

genetics, it's estimated, hasn't changed

haven't changed in about 10,000 years.

But yet our world has changed

dramatically in a really finite period

of time when you're putting that into

context with

the totality of human history. So the

foods we're eating or the foods we're

not eating, our stress levels, our

collective and personal traumas,

environmental toxins, our soil

microbiome disruption and depletion

and in turn impacting our gut

microbiome.

So all of these epigenetic modulators,

if you will, our DNA is living in this

brave new world and it's awakening

genetic predispositions

that have been lying dormant there for

10,000 years, but they're being

triggered like never before in human

history because of this onslaught of

this chasm between our DNA

and the world around us.

So on that point then the world's the

world we live in is um

maybe misaligned to our genetics, which

is kind of what I heard there. Let's

start with the the emotional stuff. One

of the topics you introduce in chapter

one of your book is this idea of

shameflation.

Never heard that term before. Yeah.

Shameflation. Shame, okay. Shameflation.

Um

what does that mean? Um

and what's what science have you got to

support that that's a

real thing? Yeah, well, it's it's infla-

it's really a commentary on

inflammation. It's not that shameflation

is a literal real thing. It's a

commentary on how does what's shown in

the research as far as in things like

chronic stress, which is so well

researched, and trauma

and I talk about in the book something

called intergenerational or

transgenerational trauma, how do these

things impact our body, our physical

health? So shame is sort of a term that

a lot of my patients feel varying

degrees of shame. They feel shame that

they're not perfect enough with their

body or around food or around life

itself, not you know, being the best

parent or the best whatever in their

life. There's a lot of health-related

shame in our world and just shame in

general when it comes to life. So shame

is sort of the

term that I used in the book of how to

explain the sort of mental, emotional,

spiritual feeling that people have how

does impacting their health? In the book

I I talk about this study around

self-compassion.

Um which is really, right, the

antithesis of someone that's shaming

themselves is someone that has sort of

grace and a lightness and a

self-compassion around it. And study

they the study had people do they had

them speak in public

or do math, which apparently that's what

we hate the most as humans. But they

they measured their inflammation levels

when they were doing these stressful

things, right? And their inflammation

levels were high. Interleukin-6 is IL-6

inflammatory protein. But the people

that practiced self-compassion during

this time had the lowest levels of

inflammation. And on day two, you'd

expect, okay, the person would sort of

adapt and the people that were doing the

math or the public speaking, maybe the

inflammation would come down. Actually,

the inflammation levels were higher on

day two than day one. Sort of this

cumulative effect. But again, the people

with that practiced self-compassion,

which I talked about the different

practices in the book that I've seen

effective for my patients, it

attenuates, calms that inflammatory

response. And that's just one of many,

but we know most health problems of why

people are visiting their doctor are

stress-related that are either

exacerbated by stress, that are flared

up by stress, or literally caused by

stress. When you're looking at things

like autoimmune issues, we have patients

fill out what's called an adverse

childhood experience score every

telehealth patient that we have. And

research has sh- has shown that people

that have these higher ACE scores, these

cumulative childhood and beyond

childhood lifestyle like life

stressors, whether physical abuse,

sexual abuse, mental emotional abuse,

alcohol abuse in the home growing up,

people that have gone through these

things in life

have an increased likelihood of an

autoimmune issue later on in life or a

mental health issue later on life or a

metabolic like type two diabetes issue

later on in life. So again, there's a

lot of shame around that stuff, too, as

far as what people have gone through. So

shameflation is really just my

term to explain this phenomenon that's

in the scientific literature that I see

out I see play out in people's lives on

a daily basis. You talked about how how

vicious uh stress is as a

cause I guess for inflammation.

You know, people tend to think of stress

as being a really, really bad thing. I I

hear often that some kind of stress is

is a good stress. What is in particular

the type of stress you're talking about

that is leading to um

this

this shameflation? I'm I'm assuming it's

chronic stress. Mhm. Yeah, human species

the human species wouldn't be here

without some grit and resilience. And I

think in some ways you could argue

that we're really lacking the resilience

and grit. And that's something that I'm

teaching my patients and in the book for

people to sort of gain a resilience to

handle stress. There's nothing wrong

inherently with stress. And even if you

look at the research around hormetic

effects or hormesis, like people are

doing the cold plunges you see all

around the wellness space or sauna

therapy or high-intensity interval

training or even things like fasting.

These are all hormetic effects that

humans would have spent times in, like

difficult times, periodic times of

stress. It actually makes our cells more

resilient and and our souls more

resilient in in many ways.

But it's the chronic stress where it's

out of alignment with

that ancestral health perspective that's

it's

it's there's a that evolutionary

mismatch that I mentioned earlier. That

is something that we haven't aligned

with. We have these these different

stress adaptation responses in the body

and the body's releasing things like

cortisol and adrenaline and we never

allow this sympathetic fight or flight

stress aspect of our autonomic nervous

system to calm down.

So we're always in this fight or flight

stressed state to varying degrees that

people never a- are able to regulate

themselves and never able to support

that parasympathetic, that resting,

digesting, that hormone balanced state

of their their nervous system. So yeah,

it could look different for different

people. But I the things that I hear the

most with from people, it's their jobs.

It's it's like a lack of I would say

healthy boundaries with their jobs and

their families can be a source of

stressor, finances can be a sort of

stress, and their health. I think when

you don't feel well, that's stressful as

well. Those are the most common things

that I hear from people. This fight or

flight response, this sort of prolonged

state of feeling like you're kind of in

fight or flight, which is sort of

characterized by being short of breath

or feeling a bit on edge or nervous.

What is the consequence of being in that

state for too long? Cuz a lot of people

can probably relate to that. Yeah.

Well, it's that is

in part what's driving these these vast

epidemic of health problems in our world

today. When you're talking about 50

million Americans having autoimmune

condition, hundreds of millions

worldwide are having autoimmune

condition,

type two diabetes, I mean, it's the vast

majority of people in the west are

somewhere on this insulin resistance

spectrum. Meaning, they have things like

PCOS or weight loss resistance or

insatiable cravings or prediabetes or

type two diabetes.

All of these health problems that we are

plagued with as a world are in part

fed by chronic stress. It's just a

matter of

how much your body can handle. And

that's sort of the conversation

in the book about bioindividuality,

right? Some people have the buck-

analogy sort of the bucket analogy. Some

people have massive buckets and they can

handle a lot of things in their life

before it's going to hit that tipping

point. What is the the point? The

tipping point is health

Where something's got to give and they

realize they're diagnosed with a health

problem and it's stressors, the foods we

eat, trauma, all of these things

accumulate. You can't change your bucket

size, but you can change what you put in

it. You can't change your genetic

tolerance for stressors, but you can

change what you put in it. So, it's

really a message of agency, right? It's

a message of what can I do? We all have

different abilities or thresholds to

handle things in our life, but we all

have the ability to clear these things

out and to heal ultimately.

You know,

hearing all of this it makes me feel so

deeply that the way we've chosen to live

our lives is really

unhuman. Mhm.

And when I think about what we can do to

to change that from like a real systemic

level, it seems

like it might just be too big of a job

Mhm. because of the direction of travel

of everything, technology, the way we're

organizing our lives in terms of like

cities and

work and professionalism and social

media, etc., etc.

Are you optimistic that there's things

we can do to change it and what are

those like real systemic things we have

to do within our own lives as

individuals, but also as a society?

Yeah, I mean, it's something I think

often about and I think that there's a

growing amount of pockets of people, if

you will, that are

that know intuitively they have to do

something different to see something

different. And being in functional

medicine

for the past 13 plus years at this

point, I have to say what was once

considered radical or fringe 13 years

ago, the idea that stress and trauma

could trigger autoimmune issues

is now very much talked about in

conventional settings. And the things

that may have seemed woo-woo and strange

13 years ago now is being researched by

reputable institutions. I I talk about

the research in the book around shinrin

yoku, which is the Japanese term that

translates as forest bathing, which

sounds weird when you think of it in

English, but it's actually a beautiful

description, I believe of the Japanese

art of using nature as a meditation,

using nature as a medicine and how

researchers show that just spending few

minutes in nature and taking in with all

of your senses, like a sensorial effect

of nature lowers inflammation levels,

lowers stress hormones, balances the

human immune system, actually improves

the human microbiome because of the the

things you're smelling in and taking in

with all of your senses. So, I I think

the fact that researchers are looking at

these ancient arts

is a good sign that we as a culture are

looking for something different. Cuz I

think in many ways, if you remember that

Pixar film Wall-E? Mhm.

I think Wall-E's prophetic in many ways

of like the path we could go down where

people are just sitting looking at a

screen and we've lost all sense of

reality. That I don't I think whoever

wrote Wall-E, the people at Pixar, we

can go a different direction. You know,

this is such a

an interest strange question to ask

based on what you've said, but I was

just just as you finished speaking then

I was thinking about how we know this

stuff.

Like you know this stuff, I know this

stuff. It's not the

in terms of like getting back to being a

little bit more human in the way that we

organize our lives, but we I was going

to ask you the question, like do you do

it?

Yeah, I mean, to me I don't think you

have to pick between modernity and

decreasing that chasm between genetics

and epigenetics. So, I live in a modern

world. I run a telehealth clinic. So, I

use technology to speak to people around

the world at for the past 13 years and

we ship labs to them. And so, I very

much am a fan of technology and people

are

listening to us right now around the

world. I love the decentralization, the

democratization of health information

because of technology. It's wonderful.

But I think these sort of unfettered

lack of healthy boundaries with this

phenomenon that we only have relatively

a few years of experience with as a as a

world I think that that's something we

just have to learn how to check

ourselves.

And we are all trying to figure it out

right now. So, do I live it? Yes, I live

it, but I I live it in a balanced way

where I have boundaries with technology.

Like my son's here in the studio with us

right now. He's 16 years old. He just

got a phone at 16. And so, as a parent,

I'm making these decisions of

kids that are like 8, 9 years old having

social media. And we have the US Surgeon

General,

Dr. Vivek Murthy,

say recently that he says, and this is

the US government saying, children under

the age of 14 shouldn't have social

media. If the US government's saying it,

who takes well-measured, conservative

advice for these type of things when it

comes to wellness historically, if

they're recommending it, I could only

assume that we have an issue at hand.

So, yes, I I I think it's just a matter

all of us to make these decisions for

ourself out of self-respect, not out of

shame, but out of self-respect. What do

I need? What healthy margins, what

healthy boundaries do I need to live a

more sane life, to live a more joyous,

to live a a more meaningful life?

Some people can handle probably more

technology than me. Some people could

probably We all have again this

bio-individuality when it comes to these

things, but I think we just need to to

out of self-respect check ourselves.

It's I'm thinking even beyond technology

into things like, you know, we're

becoming more lonely than ever before,

but we all know that's not good for our

health or our happiness. We know that

being in a community is great for our

health and happiness. We're eating

things that we all know are not great

for our health and happiness as well.

And and so, like the really and many of

the things you've said, I was like, you

know, I know that to be true, but like

why don't I do all of those things?

And my my conclusion in my head was that

I think I optimize for something else. I

think a lot of us actually optimize our

lives not for like health or really even

for

what we know at our deepest level would

make us happiest. We optimize for other

things, like status and success and

we're or reproductive reproductive

pursuits. And I was just thinking I was

just trying to mull it over there why

that is, why like everything you've said

in terms of being healthy and being

happy

um we all understand and even I think

about myself here I think

I could go do all of those things, but

what I'd have to do

is probably log off the internet.

You know, probably wind things down a

little bit, be a little bit less

ambitious.

Um would I be happier?

Probably.

But I'm not doing it. And would I be

healthier? Yeah. Probably. Yeah.

But I'm not doing it. And that's really

what I'm trying to get at. It's like why

people don't do what they know they

should do and why they seem to be

optimizing for like success and

happiness.

Yeah.

I think it's it's our culture's

priorities, right? It's like burnout is

this badge of honor and like status and

how many followers you have on social

media, how many downloads you have is

seen as it's deified, it's glorified in

many ways. And I think

this

unsexy stuff, like, you know, getting it

whatever, fasting or eating well isn't

as alluring cuz it's people don't see it

all the time. So, I think it's human

nature. I think our culture is really

sells us a lot of things as far as

what's important. And how we look and

things that are materialistic

tend to be

top of the list. So, I don't think it's

about

it's not just you, it's me, it's all of

us. We all are in this culture that

tells us this is what's important. But

ultimately, my experience is to be the

best you, like to be the best CEO, to be

the best successful human being, to be

the best partner

we have to have our health.

And I see a lot of high-performing,

successful people that don't want to

choose either or.

They want to be successful, but they

realize they cannot be the

highest-performing person if they don't

have their health. And I see people

start their health eroding because it is

unsustainable to always be in that

sympathetic fight or flight stress state

and they know intuitively something's

off here. I got away with it in my 20s,

I'm getting away with it mostly in my

30s, but they start to erode. And then

when you have your health

look not as sustainable and impenetrable

as you thought it was

then at that point, often times it's

that motivation that you just said that

actually motivates them to get healthy.

One of the things that orientates us and

changes our priorities is trauma and

that's something you talk about in the

book as well.

Um the really fascinating thing that

I've always

been keen to ask somebody is about this

idea of intergenerational trauma, which

you've referenced a second ago. Mhm.

Cuz I wasn't sure if intergenerational

trauma was just like woo-woo spiritual

stuff or whether it was real science,

i.e. that the idea that your parents'

trauma can be passed on to you somehow.

Is that true? Yeah.

Well, and that's yes, it is true. It is

true. It's what researchers are really

exploring of how it's expressed in our

descendants. And then

we all have trauma just in our own life,

right? And we all

these are things that we can accumulate

and through things like therapy and

somatic experiences and things like EMDR

that I talk about, you can work on your

trauma in your life. But for some of us

part of our trauma in our life today has

to do with the trauma that

our ancestors have gone through. So, two

geopolitical, historical things that

were big things in our world are really

were explored in the scientific

literature to see how this plays out.

One was Ukrainian genocide, man-made

famine

in the early 20th century.

Joseph Stalin, the Ukrainian people

wanted to have freedom. Really nothing

new is under the sun. Every time the

Ukrainian people wanted to have freedom,

there was some sort of authoritarian

squash on their efforts. But this famine

in the early 19 hundreds

was done on Ukrainian people. Millions

of people died. And what researchers

have found is not just the people that

went through this atrocity, their their

children and their great grandchildren

had the same methylation gene variants.

Methylation is something that we

quantify on labs. It's a

sort of

interconnected different biochemical

pathways that impact inflammation

levels, impact neurotransmitters and how

our brain works, different

detoxification pathways

that literally

this trauma that the people went through

during this Ukrainian genocide

was passed on like an epigenetic

heirloom of how genes were expressed by

their experience. Similar research was

done in the Holocaust and the

descendants of people that went through

the Holocaust in Germany and Poland. So,

yes, it sounds science fiction, but

intergenerational trauma or

transgenerational trauma looking at how

trauma is literally stored in the cells

and then passed on through family lines

is very much science. And it's shown

that these people have increased

likelihood of mental health issues,

autoimmune issues, type 2 diabetes,

different hormonal problems.

And I you know, this is what's being

explored in the science, but I could

only imagine that it exists on a

spectrum that maybe all of our

descendants haven't gone through the

same things. But I think intuitively

again, we can know that there's certain

behaviors and certain ways that people

live in part because of what our

ancestors have gone through.

So, yeah, that's what's being explored.

Feels a bit like a feels like a lot to

deal with like having to deal with my

own trauma, let alone Mhm. my great

grandparents trauma as well having a

role in my my life. And in that in that

way, I think

that can make a lot of people can think

about this is like, "Wow, I'm screwed."

Like I if it wasn't a

I have my own junk, let alone

my ancestors stuff.

And I'm going to pass my junk onto my

kids. Right.

But I think

so for the average person, you don't

necessarily to even have to think about

it cuz it's just where you're at today.

And but I would say this,

if you shift your perspective,

it almost give yourself a little bit

more grace,

a little bit more forgiveness and

compassion to say, "Wow, there are some

big things at play here." And I see

people

up against seemingly insurmountable

things that have gone through a lot of

personal trauma trauma as well as

ancestral trauma, break the chains of

dysfunction, break the chain of disease

and disorder in their life and heal not

only themselves,

but heal their families.

Heal their children's children. Heal

generations they'll never get to see.

So, I think it's how you look at it.

Yes, it's heavy, but as trauma can be

inherited, so can healing.

Interesting.

The the in that chapter where you talk

about intergenerational trauma, you also

talk about polyvagal theory. Mhm. Big

word. Big phrase. Yeah.

What is what is polyvagal theory?

Polyvagal. All right. Of course I got

vaginal. Jesus Christ.

We'll keep that in.

Is there anything called polyvagal

theory?

probably. After we have to learn about

that together. I don't know about

Let's talk about polyvagal theory

instead then if you don't know anything

about polyvagal.

That'll be the next episode.

The after dark episode.

Uh polyvagal theory is well, it gets its

name in part because of the vagus nerve.

It's the largest cranial nerve in the

body, right? And it's

it translates from the word wandering or

wanderer and it sort of wanders from the

brain down into the gut. And it's the

main nerve that's responsible for our

parasympathetic

uh our resting, digesting, our sort of

zenned out, hormone balanced state of

which that aspect of our autonomic

nervous system is weakened or what

researchers call a we many of us have a

poor vagal tone. Our vagus nerve is

weak, our parasympathetic is weak cuz

our sympathetic, that fight or flight

stressed, super productive, always on

the go

type A is really

strong. It's really overactive.

So, the sympathetic nervous system is is

where the the fight or flight, the

stress response is happening and then

the the parasympathetic nervous system

is ultimately what calms us down.

Yes, exactly. And both are important.

Both are important. It's about but many

of us have a dysregulated nervous system

response because of this sort of

imbalance within the autonomic nervous

system. And then the enteric nervous

system is sort of the third aspect of

our autonomic nervous system. But

polyvagal theory is

a way to understand how trauma can be

stored in our body. So, there's three

main

in this sort of study of the human

nervous system, there's the dorsal

vagal, sympathetic, the ventral vagal.

It's understanding how upon this

continuum can the human nervous system

reside. So, can we be in a sort of I'm

in the state of calm and protected and

I'm grounded and and I'm in balance all

the way to sympathetic fight or flight,

all the way to I am

under threat, I am shutting down, I'm in

hypervigilance. And the end stage of

that is something called dysautonomia or

dysautonomia. It is when the nervous

system is perpetually stuck in that

fight or flight state, which is that's a

diagnosable disorder. But again,

polyvagal attempts to describe how these

things exist on a spectrum

to understand how things like thoughts

and emotions,

trauma, shame,

our bodies are like cellular libraries

where we're storing all of these things.

And the thoughts we speak, the the

thoughts we're thinking, the words we

speak are literally stored in our cells.

And we have trillions of cells that are

listening intently to how we speak and

how we how we live our life. So, that's

what polyvagal theory is talking about.

So, in essence there's the

three states where you're relaxed in

state one, state two you have sort of

acute stress, small small amounts of

stress. And then in state three you have

severe things like burnout and you know,

physiological collapse, I guess. Yeah.

Um

And what what sort of proportion of the

population do you think are

living in each state there?

Yeah, I mean I would assume when you

look at the statistics of chronic

disease and the fact that you're talking

depending on the study that you look at,

60 to 80% of the West, US, UK, all

Western countries are somewhere are

dealing with some massive metabolic

issues, which is very much stress

related. Food plays a part of it cuz

unhealthy foods that don't love us back

is also stressful. But also the mental,

emotional, spiritual stress of it. When

you look at the the phenomenon of

insulin resistance of what is which is

the leading cause of heart disease in

the world and doubles the risk of many

cancers as well, that phenomenon of

metabolic issues and hyperinsulinemia or

excess insulin and glucose issues,

that's the vast majority of people. So,

the vast you really can't have a

regulated nervous system

when you're looking at that. So, I would

venture to say that the between stage

two and three,

between that sympathetic to all that

that system hypervigilance, it's

the vast majority of the human race

right now. I always think about, you

know, there's I have stress in my life

and

I worry that at some point ongoing

stress will put me into that state of

hypervigilance. My understanding of

hypervigilance is basically where like

really regardless of stimuli or

environment, you just can't shake the

the feeling of stress. Some people like

you know, they're just kind of stressed,

on on edge, anxious at all times. Mhm.

I've always thought that that state is

reached after a prolonged period, maybe

in state two.

Um

is that accurate? Is that kind of how it

how it works where you're in you're in

sort of chronic stress for too long that

you fall into this category of

hypervigilance where you're basically

just anxious forever? Yeah, I think in

most of the cases, it's cumulative like

that. It takes time. I mentioned that

that sort of general statistic of most

people that have metabolic issues, most

people that have an autoimmune issue,

these sort of end like more diagnosable

things, right? It's about 4 to 10 years

prior that things were brewing. So, yes,

I think for most people like it's it's

like that. But then you have you sort of

the outlier that I think that goes to

just such intense trauma, that such

intense

loss in their life that things could

happen,

speed up if you will, speed up that

degradation of

how their nervous system and immune

system's regulating itself.

And you mentioned food a second ago and

the role that plays, the foods that

don't love us back. What are the foods

that don't love us back?

I'm going to lose some friends right now

on this podcast, but

what I would call the inflammatory core

four

plus one if I can. But the would be

gluten containing grains would be on the

list. That's things like wheat and rye

and barley and spelt. And the sort of

nuanced conversation about this is that

is it really the grain or is it what

we've done to the grain? I think it's

more of what we've done to it. We're not

properly preparing it, plus we're

hybridizing it, we're spraying it with

tons of stuff, and then we're over

consuming it, right? We're over

consuming a famine food. We're feasting

on a famine food that historically was

stored well, and now we're always

consuming it. Let alone what we've done

to the crop and the soil in which it's

grown. But the for the sake of

simplicity, I think the average sort of

wheat that people are consuming is

triggering a lot of inflammation levels.

Definitely doesn't love the human

species back very much. And number two

would be industrial seed oils.

Things like canola canola oil, vegetable

oil, soybean oil, these things that are

not I'm this is kind of controversial

for me to say in the health space. I

don't think that they are inherently

bad. I think they are just over consumed

because the we need healthy ratios of

omega-3, 6, and 9. When you think of

omega-3s, it's like the healthy fish,

right? The people or like the the mega

healthy long-chain omega fats you get

predominantly from fish. People are not

having enough of those of healthy

omega-3s. They're having a lot of these

seed oils that are in a lot of packaged

foods. So, I think it's just the

overconsumption of one and not eating

enough of the other.

The third would be conventional dairy.

By conventional, I mean there's the

average dairy that you're getting, the

milk that you're getting at the grocery

store. There are better versions of it

when you're looking at

grass-fed organic A2 milk you'll see

popping up because beta A2 casein is the

subtype of casein that would have been

consumed by humans for thousands of

years. Now, because of the crossbreeding

of cows, most casein is beta A1 casein,

which has been shown to be more

inflammatory because of again of this

evolutionary mismatch. Our ancestors

wouldn't have consumed all of this. The

fermentation of dairy can make it more

digestible cuz it's breaking down the

casein, the dairy protein, and those

dairy sugars. So, things like kefirs and

cheeses and yogurts

can be more more digestible.

And the fourth would be sugar.

And the overconsumption of that, but

most people know that, but I would be

more mindful of even the

nice-sounding euphemisms for sugar. You

know, where it's like oh, it sounds like

agave nectar. I think of that, right?

Agave just sounds so natural, like

they're squeezing the agave in the cup

and just consuming it. It's mostly

marketing because it's still sugar and

it's still high in fructose. So, I would

be just mindful for the

listener out there to look at the grams

of added sugar you're consuming in a

day,

no matter where it comes from. Um and

then the plus one would be alcohol,

which is really a saboteur to our gut

feeling connection. It will impact our

gut microbiome. It's been shown to

increase leaky gut syndrome, really

raise the stomach inflammation, and it's

a neurotoxin. Researches have shown that

even drinking small amount a few times a

week is associated with lower brain

volume, lower hippocampus size, which we

which we need for

focus and energy and and having optimal

cognition.

This term gut microbiome is one that

I've only come across in the last couple

of months, maybe the last three to four

three three to four months roughly. And

the importance of the gut microbiome.

For anybody who is new to this this term

gut microbiome, why does it matter and

what is it? Yeah, it's

vastly important. And

as I mentioned earlier, the gut and

brain are formed from the same fetal

tissue, right?

That's our gastrointestinal system.

Within it, we have upwards, depending on

the study that you look at, upwards of

100 trillion bacteria in our gut.

And it's sort of this gut garden that

influences a lot of things in our body.

As I mentioned, about 95% of serotonin

is made in the gut, 50% of dopamine. So,

our happy, pleasure,

joyous

chemicals, neurotransmitters,

are made in the gut, stored in the gut

almost exclusively when you're talking

about serotonin and dopamine. And these

bacteria also regulate the immune

system. So, we're talking about the way

that 2/3 of the immune system is living

in the gut or an inflammation, as I

mentioned, so ubiquitous, most of it's

driven it's originating in the gut.

So, there's a lot of gut-centric

components, both from a gastrointestinal

system and nervous system standpoint,

but part of that crosstalk between the

gut and the brain and the nervous system

and the immune system has to do with the

microbiome, which is the collective term

for all the bacteria and yeast

and parasites living in the human gut,

which we coevolved with. And in some

ways,

it kind of made us. It it kind of we

would not be here without the

microbiome. If the microbiome all of a

sudden left, we would not be able to

produce neurotransmitters, we would not

be able to have an immune system, we

would not be able to digest food, we

would not be able to convert hormones.

20% of the thyroid hormone is converted

in the gut in the presence of healthy

bacteria. So, the point is we are it is

regulating these bacteria, which are not

us, is regulating how we think, how we

feel, how we operate, what we crave. I

mentioned a study in the book where

there's bacterial imbalances in many

people's guts actually causing them to

crave certain foods cuz it wants to eat

it eats what we eat.

So, again, this message of really, I

think, grace in many ways where it's not

your lack of willpower, sometimes it's

just these gut bacteria that need to be

tended to and pruned so we can actually

have proper signaling as far as our

blood sugar control and craving control.

So,

if you care about mental health,

if you care about your overall health as

far as inflammation is concerned, if you

care about your weight and your energy

levels, you have to care about the

microbiome because if it's not healthy,

you're not healthy. How do I go about

caring about my gut microbiome?

So,

it starts with the foods you eat, right?

The So, I would say that there's that

inflammatory four plus one, decreasing

those, and then focusing on foods that

love us back. I One of the action items

that I talk about in the book is those

soups and stews that I mentioned. It's

comes from a gap what's called a gaps

protocol. It's an acronym. It stands for

gut and psychology syndrome or gut and

physiology syndrome. So, it's a food

tool that we use within functional

medicine, or at least I do, that's

really helpful for calming a lot of

gut-centric inflammation. And it's sort

of a

proverbial siesta for your gut because

it's almost predigesting the foods when

you're cooking things. Again, our

ancestors would have known all of this

because they would have if you talk

about just ancestrally, soups and stews

were a thing that people did, especially

when you're going through a health

problem. When you think of chicken soup

and someone's sick, it wasn't the

noodles that were

the health benefits of of the soup. It

was these broths and these cooked

vegetables and cooked meats that were

easy to digest and break down.

So, somebody that's going through a

digestive problem, gut health problem,

or has inflammation levels and suspects

there's gut-centric components to that

inflammation, or they're going through

things like anxiety and depression or

fatigue, I really would implement I

mean, put a lot of recipes in the book

so people can really learn how to cook

this way that's really quite easy, and

it's an affordable way to do it, and you

can batch cook it and really have it

throughout the week as well. So, that's

one thing. Um and then like these

feeling action items of breath work.

Huge for vagal tone, huge for microbiome

health. Is is simple meditation, simple

breath work, all the way to just like

holotropic and more of the advanced

tools that I talk about. Is there a

really way to support vagal tone? The

more you're supporting your vagal tone,

the more you're supporting your

gut-brain axis, the connection between

the two, which is innervating the gut to

something called migrating motor complex

or the MMC, which is your gut kind of

keeping the bacteria

in the large intestine in the colon. But

your brain has to be the one that's

regulating this bidirectional

relationship between your gut and the

brain and the brain and the gut. So,

breath work and meditation,

I mentioned the forest bathing, hygge,

like thing acts of stillness is what I

call it in the book. Pick which one you

want, but stay consistent with it

because these supporters of the

parasympathetic, these acts of

stillness, are hugely restorative to

your vagus nerve and in turn your

microbiome. If someone's in a

supermarket or on the way to a

supermarket today,

and they've heard your your first

comment there about the importance of

food and the foods we pick, about the

broths and the the stews, etc., as

they're walking through those

supermarket aisles, what things should

they be picking up if they are trying to

be good to their gut? Mhm.

Well, I would start with fiber-rich

vegetables cuz you're going to be

cooking those in the soups. Mhm.

So, you really could pick any of your

favorite vegetables that you would want

to be having. And then your favorite

protein that you'd be having. You could

do chicken, grass-fed beef, you could do

fish, really or a plant-based protein.

And you could do the what stock you want

to be having. You could do the a bone

broth, you could do a plant-based broth

like a galangal or ginger broth or

seaweed broth. And just of your choice,

really curating these soups and stews.

And think of it again as sort of this

nourishing, grounding, healing time for

you and your gut. That's what I would

do. So, wherever that's at in the

supermarket, go find those things.

And then for I would say fermented foods

can be something that people could

consider. Starting off low and slow cuz

they can't they are kind of potent

things, but things like sauerkraut and

kimchis and kefirs, those can be good,

too, for many people.

As you might know, the show's not

sponsored by Airbnb. I can't count how

many times Airbnbs have saved me when

I'm traveling around the world, whether

it's, you know, recently when I went to

the jungle in Bali or whether it's when

I'm staying here in the UK or going to

business in America. But, I can also

think of so many times where I've stayed

in a host's place on Airbnb and I've

been sat there wondering, "Could my

place be an Airbnb as well? And if it

could be, how much could I earn?" It

turns out you could be sitting on an

Airbnb goldmine without even knowing

about it. Maybe you have a a spare room

in your house that friends stay from

time to time. You could Airbnb that

space and make a significant amount of

money instead of letting it stay empty.

That in-law, that guest house, that

annex where your parents sometimes stay,

you could Airbnb that and make some

extra income for yourself. Whether you

could just use some extra money to cover

some bills or for something a little bit

more fun, your home might be worth a

little bit more than you think. And you

can find out the answer to that question

by going to airbnb.co.uk/host.

You were vegan for 10 years, weren't

you? Mhm.

Why are you not vegan anymore?

your research on me. Yeah.

I was a vegan for for a while.

Um it didn't love me back. It worked for

a while and I think that's that's

And I my first book was called Keto

Terry and it really was that

exploration of being that health nerd

and trying something new and feeling

great and doing it in a whole food-based

way and then evolving from it and

realizing it didn't love me back. And

just because something's better,

meaning just because something's better

than the standard Western diet, which it

certainly was,

doesn't necessarily mean it's optimal.

And it's okay to pivot. It's okay to

evolve. Um so for me, I talk about it in

Ketotarian, but it's

I wasn't getting the complete protein

that I needed. And a lot of the proteins

that I was getting really wasn't working

for me on a digestive standpoint. It

just was like a lot to digest. It was

kind of irritating my system.

And

there were some nutrient deficiencies

from a bioavailable iron standpoint,

bioavailable B vitamins, like folate and

B12 standpoint, and true vitamin A,

retinol, which you cannot get in

plant-based form. Now, in theory, I

could have supplemented with all of

these things. I could have supplemented

with iron. I could have supplemented

with B12, which I was, and I could have

supplemented with vitamin A, which I

was. But, this they're synthetic mainly.

The the retinol that you're getting from

supplement form is synthetic. It's not

in its whole food form. So, the question

that I posed to myself was

if I have to supplement,

is it really the most ideal diet for me?

So, I have many patients that are vegan

for various reasons, like religious and

ethical reasons, and we want to make

them the best vegan or vegetarian if

they're vegetarian

food protocol for them. But, for me, I

was able to pivot out of that where I

could still be predominantly plant-based

but still be omnivore and feel amazing.

So, that's that was my journey. What

were the physical sort of symptoms that

you experienced that made you awaken to

the idea of pivoting out of being vegan?

It was fatigue more than anything. It

was fatigue, brain fog, and digestive

problems more than anything. And I

thought, you know, it was just me and,

you know, I evolved from it. I have a

not to get super

sciency on you, but I have a double

MTHFR gene variant, which just we all

have different gene variants, right?

But, this is one of the gene snips or

single nucleotide polymorphisms that we

can measure, we quantify on labs. We get

raw gene data from something like the

different um genetic tests that people

get, like Ancestry or 23andMe. We can

look at their own genetic

bioindividuality. My body is not as good

in that way at methylating, meaning that

specific MTHFR gene has a lot of signs

behind it. Basically, I'm not as good at

converting folic acid into folate. I'm

not that good at bringing this

inflammatory protein down called

homocysteine. Many people have this and

higher homocysteine levels, even

slightly elevated, is linked in the

research to increasing the blood-brain

barrier permeability, basically

contributing to in part

neuroinflammation. So, people that are

going through things like brain fog or

different inflammatory problems or

fatigue, often times homocysteine is

implicated in that. So, for me, to get

those levels optimal, bringing in things

like wild-caught fish and grass-fed beef

and more soups and stews with like bone

broth-based soups and stews, like

collagen-based things,

loved my body back tremendously. Did it

fix the physical symptoms? 100%.

So, it and that's the thing is like it's

science and art. Like not for all for

all of my patients that are are vegan or

vegetarian, maybe they're not willing to

pivot. So, I want to give them let's be

pragmatic and be the best option for

you. But, for someone that is willing to

test these things out, still be

predominantly plant-based, but still

bring these things in, I think can do

wonders if you're willing to do it. A

lot of people when they're thinking

about being good to their body or or

good to their gut, they'll have like a

detox. Mhm. You know, like detox juice

week or something.

What's your thoughts on on that? You

know, I think it's a lot of

probably

Well, first of all, it's such an

ambiguous term, right? It's like you

don't know what they're actually talking

about when people say that or it's

mentioned on a bottle or a protocol that

you saw online.

juice detox. Yeah.

Yeah, so I

I get why people want to do it cuz we

live in quite a toxic world and eat a

lot of foods that don't love us back.

So, people are looking for some

reprieve. But, I find in many ways it's

sort of like diet culture has snuck its

way into wellness in that way where it's

like

it's this yo-yo dieting of the '90s is

now in the form of like juice detoxes

where you just drink and eat like crap

and you go and do a juice detox. It to

me it's not what wellness is really

about. I want people to have tools

whenever they do fall off the wagon, so

to speak. I don't even like that term.

But, when you know what I mean, when

they're up against maybe a stressful

time in their life or kind of have been

busy and haven't been eating the best

and they want to kind of find their

center again. I think that's great. I

think that juice cleanses, juice detoxes

probably aren't the way to go, I would

say. Again, better than the standard

American diet, maybe, but not

necessarily optimal. And my my point

would be in thinking about this is the

lack of fiber. I think if somebody wants

to eat whole foods and maybe get

smoothies cuz the fiber's in blended up

in sort of this

fruit-based, vegetable-based smoothie, I

think that has its place because the

fiber will buffer all the fructose

that's in there, the fruit sugars. If

somebody's having copious amounts of

fructose

for 7 days with no fiber,

I don't feel like that's setting them up

for success. Where do you go from there?

I think after the 7 days would be my

mind. And if they have a game plan

long-term, cuz look, a lot of people

have unhealthy guts, we know that. So,

sometimes giving your gut a break from

all the junk in any form can be good.

So, it's not necessarily the juice

that's the most healthy thing in the

world. It's that you're not feeding it

junk for 7 days. So, your gut's like,

"I'll take it. I'll take the juice over

whatever, the beer."

Your son your son is sat in the studio

as you said. Um he's sat over in the

corner over there, 16 years old.

Based on everything you know about

the gut, about food, about our emotions,

about stress, and the sort of causal

relationship all of these things have

with each other,

um

if you could design your son's life to

be optimal as it relates to health, can

you talk me through the the

I I was going to say adjustments, but

how you would design that life for him

to be have an optimal life in 2023 and

beyond?

Yeah.

So, for me, like

if we're talking specifically to my son,

it I look at him now at 16 years old and

I think all of us as parents, like

whoever the parents listening to this

right now, it's

plant seeds by first living it out

yourself, right? And

living your life out of as an example

instead of sort of

preaching and being dogmatic and being

making it about sort of diet diet

culture. I don't think that that's

healthy at all. But, it really shift

your perspective away from

all the things you quote unquote can't

have, but really focus yourself

back to all the things you get to have.

And avoiding things

that don't love you back isn't

restrictive.

It's self-respect for your body.

And really that's something that I've

tried to do with my son and his sister

is really focusing on foods that love

and back. So, if you want a day in the

life of what it would look like, um he

it's funny to see at 16 years old, he

starts to own it for himself. It's not

this thing that I'm just talking about

or thing that that dad does. Now, I see

him. He actually said to me this the

other day. He said that like it he said

that very thing. He he's now taking it

for himself. I took it He said, "I took

it for granted for all these years of

just it was in the house and this is

what was dad was doing. But, now this is

like now he can own it for himself." So,

I think there's hope for us cuz he be

the first one to tell you he's a picky

eater and that's okay. And it's really

just meeting your kid where where

they're at and planting seeds and then

at some point the goal is for them to

own it for themselves. So, in the

morning,

I mean, he typically does some

intermittent fasting in the morning,

which isn't for everybody. But, at 16

years old, he's working out, he's eating

clean. He does some time-compressed

feeding in the morning. So, that's

something that's not for everybody, but

it works for him and I. We both do it.

Why? Why is it good? Because it's a goal

to

support metabolic flexibility. Humans

would have done this.

They just would have called it life

because of food

availability. Food wasn't always

available for our ancestors. Again, most

of our genes haven't changed in 10,000

years. So, to having some intentional

time where you're not eating and you're

breaking your fast a little bit later in

the day or you're ending your eating

window

in mid-afternoon. Those are two ways

that you can do it. Be sensible about

it. Be moderate about it. You have, you

know,

an eating disorder, I wouldn't recommend

it. But

for the average person that's looking to

optimize their health, most of us are in

the west stuck in this sugar burning,

metabolically inflexible state where

we're where

we're on this blood sugar roller

coaster. We have these insatiable

cravings, even if it's for the healthier

sugars. And intermittent fasting is a

way to sort of train your metabolism to

be more resilient, to be more flexible.

So, then break the fast around lunchtime