76. Shawn Stevenson : This is What We Lost When We Stopped Eating Together

What if the real reason you're gaining weight, feeling wired, or struggling to nourish your family isn't about willpower—but the culture you live in? On this episode of Extend, I'm joined by Shawn Stevenson—nutritionist, bestselling author, and host of The Model Health Show—to explore how our food environment, not personal discipline, is fueling the chronic disease crisis. If you're raising kids, trying to eat better, or just feel overwhelmed by ultra-processed foods, this conversation cuts through the noise. We unpack the science behind shared meals, how family dinner regulates your stress hormones, why many "healthy" foods aren't, and what it takes to create a home culture that supports real health. Shawn Stevenson is a bestselling author, nutritionist, and the creator of The Model Health Show, which has ranked as the #1 health podcast in the U. S. He's the author of Eat Smarter and The Eat Smarter Family Cookbook, blending nutrition science with practical strategies for home-cooked meals that heal. We Also Discuss: This Isn't About Food. It's About Culture. One Meal That Lowers Disease Risk? Why You're Craving What You Crave How Ultra-Processed Foods Hijack Your Brain Seed Oils, Satiety & the $1 Lie "Healthy" Labels Are Lying to You Calories Aren't the Problem. This Is. The Longevity Hack No One Talks About: Dinner Together Thank You for Our Sponsors: TruNiagen: Whether you are looking to stay sharp, feel more energized or simple age better, go to https://www.truniagen.com/IFit: If you are looking to elevate your home gym fitness experience with the best in fitness tech, choose IFIT. Go to https://www.ifit.com/Nexthealth: Your destination for cutting-edge health optimization—from IV therapy to hormone balancing. Explore at https://www.next-health.com/Vitaboom: For supplements you can trust and wellness solutions tailored to your health, visit https://vitaboom.com/ Learn more about Dr. Shah: Website: https://www.drshah.com/ Clinic: https://www.next-health.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/darshanshahmd/ Learn more about Shawn Stevenson: Website: themodelhealthshow.com https://themodelhealthshow.com/ Instagram: @shawnmodel https://www.instagram.com/shawnmodel/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Welcome to Extend with me, Dr. Darshan Shah, a podcast dedicated to cutting-edge science, research, tools, and protocols designed to help you extend your health span. Having become one of the youngest doctors in the country at the age of 21, and trained and board-certified at the Mayo Clinic, I've accumulated three decades of practice as a board-certified surgeon and longevity expert. Over that time, I've discovered that a mere 20% of health knowledge yields 80% of the results when it comes to your health span. We're living in a new era where we are creating a new healthcare system, no longer focused on disease management, but achieving optimal health and vitality. Join me as I interview world-renowned experts, offering you a step-by-step guide to proactively avoid disease, and most importantly, extend your health span.

• 0:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Shawn, man, so good to have you here.

• 0:51Speaker 01

  It's my honor.

• 0:52Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Thank you. Thank you. Well, I mean, you know, this is, as I was telling you earlier, this is a real honor for me because going on your podcast is a really, and talking to you about podcasting has really inspired me to do this. So I really want to thank you for that.

• 1:07Speaker 01

  I love that. And that's what I was sharing with you earlier as well. You're one of those people, speed of implementation. You know, you put the information into somebody like yours' hands, and you make things happen, and you impact a lot of people. And so I'm honored, truly honored.

• 1:21Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Wow, this is, this is such a great moment for me, and really like one of those moments that, I'll be writing about this in my journal tomorrow morning.

• 1:29Speaker 01

  Awesome, yeah.

• 1:30Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I really appreciate you being here. And, you know, I know you're an expert in many different topics around health, but we had a really great dinner a few weeks ago where you and your wife came over, and we made one of the dishes that you have a recipe in your book about.

• 1:46Speaker 01

  Which I was totally surprised, you know, at the very end. And, you know, we had the pumpkin muffins in the book. And I, you know, of course, I took a bite, and I was like, this tastes so familiar. And then you were like, Sean, you know what that is, right? It's from your book. I was like, man, this is, you made such a magical moment, you know, right then. You know, it's so thoughtful. And also the, the people that you brought together, you know, friends and, you know, people I'm actually really close with as well, that I had no idea they were coming.

• 2:15Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 2:15Speaker 01

  So Casey Means was there with her fiance. I don't know if she's gotten married at this point.

• 2:19Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 2:20Speaker 01

  Which he was awesome, by the way.

• 2:21Dr. Darshan Shah?

  They're married, yep.

• 2:21Speaker 01

  And Kelly Starrett was there with Juliette. And I love them so much. We've done a lot of stuff over the years. And, um, you know, just being able to, to, to spend time with you and your wife, and your wife is fantastic.

• 2:33Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 2:34Speaker 01

  Hearing you guys' story and how you got together and all this stuff. It was just really amazing. It was amazing. And it's like food for the soul, really.

• 2:42Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 2:42Speaker 01

  So.

• 2:43Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And we need that, right? And you know, that dinner that we had together, you know, it was the first time we have ever broken bread together, right? And it just kind of emphasizes the power of community and building community and friendships over meals, right? And I think that's an important point in your book, right?

• 3:00Speaker 01

  Of course. Yeah. This is something that's built into our, into our DNA, truly. You know, we evolved eating together. You know, there are all these different, really interesting representations of that. Like if you go on vacation, maybe Hawaii or something, you go to Maui and they do a luau.

• 3:14Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 3:14Speaker 01

  It's like a, it's like a reenactment of something that was a normal part of our lives, living in tribes and, and working together as human beings, you know? And everybody was involved in the process somewhere, you know? And there's so many rites, uh, rites of passage involved in that too. But that concept, you know, to witness that firsthand and to take some things away from it, it just like, this is what the data is showing, actually. And so one of those things is how, number one, everybody's involved in the process of, you know, putting this meal together. And whether it's the procurement of the food, you know, the hunting, the gathering, the preparation, and this is where everybody gets together and this is where also communication

• 3:59Speaker 01

  happens, right? Stories are told, which is passing on important vital data.

• 4:04Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 4:04Speaker 01

  For the survival of the, of the people, you know? And. And for me is just like, there's something really important and I, and I, my question was, is this missing in our society today, which we know this is? And what is the ramifications when we don't have this collective eating together with our friends and family? And one of the things that really prompted me to focus on this was, this hu- it's one of the biggest meta-analyses that's ever been done. Uh, it was a hundred and forty-eight studies and there was over three hundred thousand participants who were analyzed in the study, looking at longevity, looking at what is actually contributing to health and disease, to lifespan, what's shortening lifespan?

• 4:48Speaker 01

  So they looked at, of course, exercise, they looked at smoking, they looked at beating obesity. The researchers found, this was by researchers at Brigham Young University, by the way. The researchers found that people who had what they referred to as strong social bonds, strong social bonds had a fifty percent reduction in all-cause mortality.

• 5:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 5:07Speaker 01

  A fifty percent reduction in dying from essentially everything. Now, here's the rub, this would, it beat exercise. And I'm, I love exercise.

• 5:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 5:18Speaker 01

  All right, it beat beating obesity, smoking, all these other things. It was the number one factor that they found in their data that contributed to not just a longer lifespan, but a longer health span.

• 5:28Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 5:28Speaker 01

  So this got me thinking about how this is a truly, it's an epigenetic controller. If we're looking from the level of, you know, the genes. But if we're just looking at this logically in our own lives, and I'm a big fan of just like what works and paying attention to the obvious. If you really think about it, nobody impacts your sleep more than your significant other and your kids.

• 5:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly.

• 5:51Speaker 01

  Nobody impacts what you eat more than your significant other and your kids. The same thing with your exercise habits, the list goes on and on. Our family is deeply, deeply influencing what we do on a daily basis.

• 6:02Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 6:03Speaker 01

  And so leaning into that, how do we create a culture to where these things are normalized? The things that we do to feed our health are normalized. And so that study really kind of kickstarted me looking into, now we take that piece and we take the food piece, right? And I don't think a lot of people know this, and that was kind of another part of this mission. According to some researchers at Harvard, only about thirty percent of families eat together consistently on a regular basis.

• 6:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Thirty percent?

• 6:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, only about thirty percent.

• 6:33Dr. Darshan Shah?

  In modern society.

• 6:35Speaker 01

  In modern society, yeah. So this is kind of on the endangered species list in a way.

• 6:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 6:40Speaker 01

  The act of sitting down and eating with your family. And it only makes sense because I know a lot of people listening and myself included have replaced that human interaction with technology.

• 6:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, that's sad, yeah.

• 6:50Speaker 01

  So we sit and we watch YouTube videos and I I've been known to watch Conan O'Brien or whatever, you know, on my lunch breaks. But, you know, it's been, basically, we've gotten further and further away from each other, even if we're in the same household.

• 7:02Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, so true.

• 7:04Speaker 01

  And so my question leading from that was, and by the way, so this research at Harvard found that families that eat together on a regular basis consumed far more, significantly more micronutrients and macronutrients that were helping to prevent diseases in these family members. And when people were eating together less frequently, they had higher intake of ultra-processed foods.

• 7:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Makes total sense.

• 7:25Speaker 01

  Mainly chips and soda.

• 7:26Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Sure.

• 7:27Speaker 01

  Right? So there was something already just like, we tend to eat better when we're eating with the people that we care about. And so I'll share one more study.

• 7:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I I love it, yeah.

• 7:35Speaker 01

  But there's so much more in this, but and when I when I saw that research, I was like, I wonder if this is influencing, if there's any data on this, is this influencing the health outcomes for our kids specifically? And specifically, I was wondering about obesity, which has skyrocketed, not just in the general population, but in children.

• 7:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 7:55Speaker 01

  All right, it is essentially tripled in the last twenty, thirty years.

• 7:59Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I mean, they're they're using GLP-1 injections now on kids. They're studying because it's such a huge problem.

• 8:06Speaker 01

  Making this a standard of care, you know? And so this this study was published in the Journal of Pediatrics. And they found that children who ate with their family, or, you know, their caregiver, parents, just three meals a week was the minimum effective dose. Three or more meals a week had a dramatically lowered incidence of developing obesity and disordered eating.

• 8:26Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Hmm.

• 8:26Speaker 01

  All right, so again, we've got some data on this that eating with our family, eating with our friends, eating with people that care about us, there's something very powerful about what it's doing with our genetics, our metabolic health. And, you know, again, we'll unpack more of this and the impacts on adults and, you know, look at like, what what about access? Like, maybe it's just not doable. We'll talk about all those. But I want to give everybody a heads up of how powerful this can be and to be more intentional about it.

• 8:51Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right. I think that's the key there is intentionality. Because I would submit to you that fifty, sixty years ago, you didn't have to be intentional about it because it was just part of the culture, right? You came home, you had dinner with your family. You know, your TV, you had to turn the channels. The remote controls probably weren't even, you know, made, right? You had to click the channel thing.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  The antenna.

• 9:15Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, the antenna, right, exactly. You remember that. I don't, kids growing up now have no idea what that is. They can put their phone right in front of them and watch a YouTube episode as they're eating. And I think, you know, as I was growing up, there was no other option but eating at home with your family. It was rare that we went out to fast food or out to a restaurant for dinner. And now you have to be more intentional because the options are vast. And sometimes it's even cheaper and it's definitely less time consuming to not have that family interaction, right? To go out and just have a quick meal.

• 9:46Speaker 01

  This is the problem. This is the actual, if we're gonna, we could solve all of our health issues right here, right now on this podcast. We've been focused, myself included, working as a practitioner and same as you.

• 9:57Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 9:58Speaker 01

  We're telling people to make these behavior changes.

• 10:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 10:01Speaker 01

  But they're trying to make these changes in a culture that is largely unhealthy, that is fighting against them.

• 10:07Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 10:07Speaker 01

  That's the problem. We're trying to encourage behavior change in a society that is set up to make you unhealthy.

• 10:14Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly.

• 10:14Speaker 01

  If we change the culture, we change the health, right? And I think it will be valuable for us to understand, like, what is culture? Culture, I think about, you know, my college economy class and this concept like the invisible hand.

• 10:28Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 10:29Speaker 01

  Right? But culture is really the invisible hand. Culture is defined as the shared attitudes, values, beliefs and behaviors of a group of people that is passed down from one generation to the next. All right, that's what culture is defined as. And so the culture is like a container. That is determining your choices and your awareness of things, whether you know it or not. You don't even understand it, you're existing in this thing, you're born into it. And so in a culture, there's just certain things you do, you you wear certain things, you speak a certain way. You eat certain things, right, you communicate a certain way. And part of what brought me to this is I've had a unique experience of being intimately

• 11:11Speaker 01

  in different cultures, you know, being biracial myself.

• 11:15Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 11:15Speaker 01

  But also having the ability, working at a university. When I was in school and then becoming a strength and conditioning coach at the university. I worked with people from all over the world and I was often invited to stuff. You know, so I got to see these different intricacies. And it's just kind of adding to this patchwork quilt that I was able to develop and how do I communicate? And help different people. And universally, we all want the same thing.

• 11:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Sure.

• 11:37Speaker 01

  You know, we all want to be healthy, we all want to feel significant and and our family is taken care of all these things. But we don't think about how the culture is determining our choices. And so with that being said, we have a culture now, again, we just look out here. And you know, it's a little bit different here on Sunset, it's a little different. But you could pick so many streets here in America and you just look down the street and it is just littered with fast food.

• 12:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolutely.

• 12:01Speaker 01

  Ultra-processed food at every turn, you know. And this is something that, again, I didn't grow up with all of this access to all this stuff. And I remember it was a treat to go to McDonald's.

• 12:12Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes, exactly.

• 12:13Speaker 01

  I had a birthday party at McDonald's, I think it was like my sixth birthday. And I remember it so clearly, you know, it was like all the characters Grimace.

• 12:20Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 12:20Speaker 01

  Which is a terrible name.

• 12:21Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I know, Grimace.

• 12:22Speaker 01

  He's kind of, you know, he's obese, you know, and he's in pa- Grimace means pain.

• 12:26Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Grimace had way too much McDonald's.

• 12:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, yes. Then they got another one, the Hamburglar, he's literally a felon, you know. And McDonald's, the the he's a clown, clowns are scary, have you seen it?

• 12:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 12:40Speaker 01

  So I could go on and on, but you know, it's just, this was a, this was a rare occasion. It was a treat, right? And it kind of devolved in a way that that became the norm, right? So that was, and this is when I lived with my grandmother. And then when I, because you know, my, my, my mother was struggling, you know, just to have a place to stay, living in the inner city, you know, my grandmother, this is my white grandmother, and I lived with her from kindergarten through second grade.

• 13:05Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Is this also in St. Louis?

• 13:06Speaker 01

  St. Louis, yeah. So this was like, it was in Maplewood, so it was like a little bit nicer area, you know? And she made dinner every night, pretty much, you know? She had a garden. And my, my grandfather was a hunter and he would forage for things, like, right? It was a completely, but I was, as time went on, I was getting more and more distant because of my friends. I want the Capri Suns. I want the, I want the Lunchables, you know, eventually they came out.

• 13:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 13:32Speaker 01

  I want the Pop Tarts. I want the things that my friends are having. And so, over time, I got, and my grandmother, and this is another tie in for everybody, if they've ever read the book, The Five Love Languages.

• 13:42Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I love that book.

• 13:43Speaker 01

  This is a, it's so powerful. It's so powerful. But food ties into the five lovely languages so beautifully. Because oftentimes people, there are certain people who express their love through food.

• 13:55Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 13:56Speaker 01

  Right? It's a, it's a, it's a love language, right? It's a gift that they're giving. It's an act of service, right? And also the physical touch aspect of food.

• 14:05Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 14:05Speaker 01

  Nothing touches you more intimately than food. Like, you're taking something from outside of your body and putting it into your body. It's becoming a part of you.

• 14:14Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 14:15Speaker 01

  How intimate is that?

• 14:16Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I never thought of it that way, but you're right.

• 14:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I can go on and on with the connections, but because she's showing her love through food and wanting me to be happy, she would allow me or relent to let me have the fish sticks. And the macaroni and cheese, you know, because she wanted the kid to eat something.

• 14:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. And back then, they didn't even realize the dangers of ultra-processed food. Now we know, right? So, but.

• 14:40Speaker 01

  That's, I was exact, that's exactly what I was gonna say, because she wouldn't want to hurt me.

• 14:44Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 14:45Speaker 01

  She didn't, she just didn't know, you know, this was, these were new, like, revelations.

• 14:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 14:49Speaker 01

  And advances in nutrition. I just pop this in the microwave.

• 14:53Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Remember the TV dinners?

• 14:54Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 14:55Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, I love those. Right, exactly.

• 14:58Speaker 01

  Oh, my goodness.

• 14:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  With the little, with the little muffin or the, or the, or the

• 15:02Speaker 01

  Brownie.

• 15:03Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Brownie in there, yeah.

• 15:04Speaker 01

  Of course, yeah.

• 15:05Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Or the little apple pie in there, they got warmed up with it.

• 15:08Speaker 01

  Oh, my goodness. Never quite, microwaves were very different back then, too. They never, never warmed up evenly.

• 15:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Never.

• 15:13Speaker 01

  You know? But, you know, she was, again, she was just doing what was becoming more normal in the, in the culture. And eventually moving with my mother, because my grandfather, unfortunately, again, he was getting pulled into this and seduced. He had high cholesterol. At the time, this is in the eighties.

• 15:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 15:31Speaker 01

  His doctor recommended that he starts eating country crock.

• 15:35Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 15:36Speaker 01

  Right, so stop eating butter, stop eating eggs. Eat margarine, right? Watch your fat. He went from having high cholesterol to having a heart attack.

• 15:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 15:46Speaker 01

  And having open heart surgery.

• 15:48Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 15:48Speaker 01

  All right? And, you know, the things that, you shouldn't be eating the, the deer meat and all that stuff. You need to be eating, you know, lean, whatever, you know? And so, and again, not to villainize any of these things, but he started eating more ultra-processed foods versus the stuff that he was being told. And also, again, today we know that having, quote, "high cholesterol" is just, the, the, the metric itself, it, it is such an oversimplification of something, right?

• 16:14Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolutely.

• 16:14Speaker 01

  And so, again, I wish I would have known then what I knew, but then I'd be like five, like, hey, you know, pop, uh, listen. But, you know, I, I went back to live with my mother because my grandparents moved to, quote, "the country." So, this was in St. Louis, but he grew up down in the Boot Hills, like, southern Missouri.

• 16:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Sure.

• 16:32Speaker 01

  And so, going down there, like, gravel road. You know, that's actually where I learned, I learned how to ride a bike downhill on a gravel road. All right, that's how my grandfather was. It's like, literally sink or swim, you know what I'm saying? So, I fell off one time and I learned quickly, you know? But, you know, and, and that's, that part of that culture, but going back to live with my mother in the inner city, and, you know, going from like an all-white, not all-white, but just, you know, say ninety-five percent to now ninety-five percent black. And also now we're on government assistance, you know, so we're getting food stamps. Now we have like a corner store and like we're just surrounded by ultra-processed food. And fast food is everywhere now. Versus at my grandmother's, there was a McDonald's down the street, couple of blocks away.

• 17:16Speaker 01

  And then there was like Kmart or his venture. Venture, right. And that was about it. Laundromat, there was a liquor store and by the gas station. But now there's, you know, there's 7-Eleven, there's Domino's Pizza. Sure. There's Pizza Hut, there's White Castles, there's, I can go on and on. Multiple McDonald's. Multiple. You know, all these stuff pretty much in a walking distance. Right. And these are the things that my friends are having. I'm on the free lunch program at school, which is prison food. Yeah. You know, I got this little red ticket. And this is a true story and this is bringing a point, a really important point for everybody listening or watching. And this is the fact that my diet now evolved or devolved to being about 80% ultra-processed foods. For sure. And I was not abnormal.

• 18:01Speaker 01

  Because according to JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association. Huge analysis was published in 2019, 2019, 2018. They looked at the ultra-processed food consumption by US children. Okay. All right, and they tracked it from 1999 to 2018. All right. In 1999, the average child was already eating right around 64% ultra-processed foods. In 1999. 1999. Yes. Wow. By 2018, that number had reached 67.5%. Almost 70% of our children's diet is ultra-processed food in the United States. And of course, you know, there's kids that are gonna be on both, both ends. I was definitely on the higher end of ultra-processed food consumption. And so my body, from that point, everybody that I knew.

• 18:46Speaker 01

  I cannot think of one person in my family who didn't have one chronic condition. Sure. My little brother, chronic asthma, he's hospitalized at least every two months. Right. Myself, same thing. I'd spend these stints in the hospital, I had all these inhalers. I didn't have asthma previously. Yeah. But now I have asthma. My little sister, she had the worst eczema that you could ever see. She was suffering, this little girl. My mother, diabetes, obesity. Sure. You know, my stepfather, you know, heart disease, hypertension, alcoholism. You know, the list goes on and on. Everybody had something. Right. And this was abnormal, but it became normal. Right. Right, and that. I'm saying all this to say that is the power of a culture.

• 19:27Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly.

• 19:28Speaker 01

  This is what I was around. I didn't know that there was a difference between the fish sticks and some wild-caught salmon.

• 19:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolutely.

• 19:34Speaker 01

  This is just what I was exposed to. I didn't know that, you know, that there was such thing as meditation and yoga. And I didn't know what quote real food was. I thought real food was Doritos.

• 19:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  You know, I thought real food was, you know, or or just it was okay to drink these barrel juices, right? That was like in zero percent juice in the juice.

• 19:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 19:55Speaker 01

  And it's they're red, they're cherry red.

• 19:57Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 19:57Speaker 01

  Which now the diet has been banned.

• 19:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Now we know, yeah.

• 19:59Speaker 01

  Recently.

• 20:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 20:00Speaker 01

  So and that's the power of culture. So the point being, and we'll talk more about this today, is if we change the culture, we change the health outcomes automatically.

• 20:09Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 20:09Speaker 01

  If I was inundated and surrounded by, and I seen it because I've replicated it.

• 20:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 20:13Speaker 01

  If you see my children, you see what happens when they grow up within a healthy culture.

• 20:18Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly, exactly. No, and there's such a great point, you know, going back to these studies that have been done on culture and how they affect your health. You know, we hear about these blue zones all the time, right? And people are trying to dissect, what do these people eat? And is there one ingredient like olive oil that makes all the difference, you know, or blueberries? Really, what it's all about is the people are in a culture where the food choices are not ultra-processed food. These are foods that are real food, right? And so basically, and then the other part of that, on top of that, too, is they're cooking their food, they're respecting their food, they're eating together.

• 21:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And it all makes sense when you look at it that way. There's not a one magic ingredient. It's really the overall environment that you're surrounding yourself by, right?

• 21:08Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 21:08Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 21:09Speaker 01

  And that's that's another important point. You know, if you look at the data and be honest, I mean, the it's very difficult because we have our biases. You know, so people collecting this data can have their slant towards, oh, it's because they're eating a lot of, you know, plants, right? They're they're every, you know, they're vegetarian, whatever the case might be. The diets are very diverse.

• 21:28Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Very diverse.

• 21:28Speaker 01

  In these hotspots of longevity.

• 21:30Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 21:31Speaker 01

  And, you know, one of, I'm just gonna give an example, but if you look at places in Italy that were analyzed, one of them is popular for creating baloney. Like, that's where, it's the home of baloney.

• 21:42Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly.

• 21:42Speaker 01

  You know, and so they're eating pork and they're eating, you know, all these different pastas and cheeses and all these things and wine and, like, but you won't see that in the, in the research, you know, when it's packaged up.

• 21:53Dr. Darshan Shah?

  They'll pick out, right.

• 21:54Speaker 01

  The diet, but here's the thing. Number one, all of these different places, they're eating mostly real food.

• 22:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 22:00Speaker 01

  Pretty much, almost a hundred percent.

• 22:02Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Even the baloney, I mean, it's coming from wild fed pigs that are, you know, out there in nature. They're not fed like these mass produced grains and raised in like little stalls where they're not allowed to move, right?

• 22:14Speaker 01

  Synthetic newly invented chemical additives and preservatives and, and food colorings and all these other things that help things to look a certain way here. Or, you know, extend the shelf life.

• 22:25Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 22:25Speaker 01

  And, you know, so that's, that's the hallmark is they're eating real food, minimally processed.

• 22:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly.

• 22:32Speaker 01

  If you think about, you know, humans have been processing food a long time. And I, I'm grateful, I've got many of my colleagues who have been sharing this as well.

• 22:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Sure.

• 22:40Speaker 01

  But this is something that I made a point to talk about years ago because it's not about just like, just eat an apple, right? Or just, you know, whatever. It's, we can process foods in a healthful way, right? Olive oil, you mentioned olive oil, is remarkably healthy. There's tons of data on this. I'll share, I'll share just something teed up in my mind. But some researchers at Auburn found that extra virgin oleocanthal rich, extra virgin olive oil is one of the few things ever discovered that has a direct impact on the blood brain barrier. Essentially, researchers found that it has the potential to repair damage to the blood brain barrier and reduce neuroinflammation.

• 23:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, absolutely.

• 23:18Speaker 01

  Right?

• 23:18Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 23:19Speaker 01

  So it has this resonance with our brain and our nervous system, like for real. You know? And so we've got data on this associated with Alzheimer's and the list goes on and on. It's, it's a special thing.

• 23:30Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 23:30Speaker 01

  But it's processed.

• 23:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 23:32Speaker 01

  You take in the oils, but it's cold processed. Extra virgin means it's cold processed. Stone pressed, you know, you crush the olives. But you're not adding deodorizers and synthetic dyes and all this other stuff and hexane extraction.

• 23:48Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly.

• 23:48Speaker 01

  It's minimally processed bottled in dark glass if it's done right, right? Because it's photosensitive, there's some chlorophyll there as well, you know? But you take that versus the stuff that's, you know, ultra-processed, you know? There's, there's this debate going on with, you know, the vegetable oils. You know, I've got friends and colleagues who are like, vegetable oil, no, no, no, no, no. It's an ultra-processed food.

• 24:14Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It's made in a factory.

• 24:15Speaker 01

  By the definition, like, it is, are you advocating now with your nutrition degree? That people eat ultra-processed foods or, you know, everything in moderation? No, you, you don't want to do that.

• 24:26Dr. Darshan Shah?

  No.

• 24:26Speaker 01

  And also, again, understanding how it's made and also understanding, we got tons of studies on this. It's not, it's, it's alarming to me when somebody's like, you know, the data shows that, you know, there's no prob. Do you read? Because there's, there's a bunch of studies that show otherwise. And I actually cited a couple in my book related to heart disease, related to dementia.

• 24:48Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 24:48Speaker 01

  Related to damaging your DNA, just the smell. And this was published in the journal Inhalation Toxicology. And the researchers found that just inhaling the fumes of vegetable oil during cooking was enough to damage the worker's DNA, all right? It's, it's some gnarly stuff. Again, it is massively ultra-processed and it's got all of these different synthetic. It's already oxidized.

• 25:12Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 25:12Speaker 01

  It's, I love the analogy of being oxidation in a bottle.

• 25:16Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 25:17Speaker 01

  But sure, there are, there are some studies showing that it can improve health, different, different parts of health. But we got to look at all the data.

• 25:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Sure.

• 25:24Speaker 01

  And so I don't want to villainize anything. I don't want to villainize anything. But if we have a choice, we should probably lean towards the things that humans have been doing for thousands of years that are minimally processed, that we know to be safe over a period of time. That we don't have studies just showing like as we've consumed more of this stuff, like we're getting more and more obese, we're getting more and more dementia, we're getting more and more heart disease. And we could point fingers and this has happened over the years. It's the sugar, it's the vegetable oil, it's the this, it's the that. It's all of it.

• 25:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It's all of it together, right?

• 25:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, you know, the the seed oil debate drives me crazy, just like it does you, because if you have a choice of a seed oil versus avocado oil or olive oil on the shelf, why would you pick something that's massively processed? Maybe it's like fifty cents less or a dollar less, right? It's not, I I find the price of it, I went to the supermarket to see like, is it a price thing? It's really not a price thing, because there's there's a very expensive seed oils out there and there's lower cost avocado oils out there. So my contention is like, why are we arguing about something when we know it's already healthy? We know it's good for us. Let's just pick the things that are good for us, right?

• 26:35Speaker 01

  That's the cool thing today, you know, we have, we have choice.

• 26:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 26:38Speaker 01

  You know, but some people listening, I'm sure they've experienced the paradox of choice as well. There's so, so many options, so many experts saying different things, it could be confusing. So my principle that I would love if you would take on, everybody listening, is to ask yourself a simple question. What have humans been doing the longest?

• 27:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 27:00Speaker 01

  You know, what were, what did my grandparents eat? You know, what, this is something I got to eventually in my clinical practice, working with people every day. And there was a time, you know, fifteen years ago, whereas like, if I was into something, you were gonna be into it. If I'm into raw foods, guess what? I'm creating programs around my beliefs at the time. Thankfully, over the span of several years, I had to get honest and say, yes, there are certain people just crushing it, getting great results. But there's always this percentage of people who are not.

• 27:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 27:31Speaker 01

  And I had to get honest about that and to do a better job. And everything changed when I started paying attention to the individual person and their life, looking at their sleep quality, asking them about their heritage, like, where's your family come from? Right? So what, what did you eat traditionally? You know, I have a patient, for example, that lived in, their grandparents came from Greece.

• 27:51Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 27:51Speaker 01

  Right? And they were dealing with an autoimmune condition. So I started to bring up to you, so do you eat the da da da, what about this? And they're like, no, you know, my, my grandma, you know, she, she used to make this stuff, but you know, I was like, how about we swap this thing out and we add in more of that? She was like, I love that. I love that growing up. I didn't know that I could have that. You know, just like little things and also there's this connective tissue there as well for people. But instead of getting into this diet dogma and using some glorified framework.

• 28:21Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, for sure.

• 28:22Speaker 01

  I leaned into let's personalize this and everything is available. Let's do what's best for you.

• 28:29Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 28:30Speaker 01

  Right now where you are and giving you the awareness that it's probably going to change over time, too.

• 28:35Dr. Darshan Shah?

  For sure.

• 28:35Speaker 01

  You know, and to give you mental tools and cues to be able to switch things up when you need to.

• 28:40Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 28:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  If you're looking for the best in fitness equipment on the market, I've found it for you. I've recently joined IFIT as their chief science advisor, and I want to tell you why. Their commitment to science and research is commendable, and I see them doing more to incorporate it into their devices than any other brand out there. So whether you're aiming to crush your cardio goals or build serious strength, IFIT's cutting edge treadmills, bikes and strength machines are designed to bring the gym to you. With world-class trainers and interactive workouts built into every machine, IFIT doesn't just keep you moving, it keeps you motivated. So if you're looking to elevate your home gym experience with the best in fitness tech, choose IFIT.

• 29:26Dr. Darshan Shah?

  You know, going back to the culture aspect of this, a lot of people tell me, you know, a lot of my patients tell me like, oh, you know, we're around ultra-processed food all the time. Like you mentioned, there's fast food restaurants everywhere. But I feel that your culture is something that you can create around you, right? And so you mentioned your kids, my kids as well, they rarely eat any fast food. They're eating mostly whole foods all the time because that's the culture of our family. We don't have that stuff at home. So it doesn't really matter what they see as we drive down the road.

• 29:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 29:59Dr. Darshan Shah?

  They just know what is okay for our family and why. I think it's key to explain why. Our friends also have a similar mindset. And so we kind of create this culture around us that ignores the external influences of marketing. And that's what like red dye to me, like, yes, it was a massive thing that got outlawed or, you know, FDA took it off, the made it a banned substance, but it didn't really matter to us because nothing we ate had red dye in it anyway.

• 30:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I don't eat ring, ring pops anymore and you know, these fake frostings or whatever.

• 30:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 30:33Speaker 01

  Maraschino cherries and things like that, the chocolate covered cherries. That was another one of my grandparents. My grandfather's favorite things was this maraschino cherries, chocolate covered. But you know, this is the point, and by the way, just a sidebar with that with this ban.

• 30:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 30:45Speaker 01

  All right.

• 30:46Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Let's talk about that.

• 30:49Speaker 01

  I've been talking about this for years with the FDA and their policies because it's just so many holes in.

• 30:55Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So many, right.

• 30:56Speaker 01

  And they're supposed to be this watchdog, but it's not really like that.

• 30:59Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And that's a perfect example of the food industry just having way too much influence on the FDA, right?

• 31:04Speaker 01

  Oh, but listen, listen to this. So this was back in nineteen ninety seven. All right. So right around there, right around nineteen ninety seven, the FDA, and I went and pulled it up. This is the thing about it. There's been so many times that I'll find something and I'll popularize it that's right on the FDA site and then it'll be gone. All right. But right as of right now, they published this, it's on their website, that they intended to remove the, the red dye back in the nineties. But they, in their own words, didn't have the resources to do it. Subsequently, though, they banned it in cosmetics.

• 31:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, I saw that, right.

• 31:39Speaker 01

  But they're not in food. And so they literally said they were going to ban it in the nineties, but did not do it because of lack of resources. Now they're incredibly wealthy. Most of the money, of course, is coming from the pharmaceutical industry. About seventy five percent of their scientific review budget is from the pharmaceutical industry. But this is, it was just a matter of importance. And also, again, most people being unaware. And so my question was, all right, we're, okay, so they're, they're making this big move now banning red dye number three. I just invited people to think about, did they just start with number three? Was there a red number two? Was there one? What was, is there a four?

• 32:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly.

• 32:13Speaker 01

  All of these have been banned back in like the sixties, you know, red dye number one was like causing liver cancer. And you know, the list goes on. Gastr intestinal lesions by a certain yellow dye, huge outbreak in digestive distress. Like re- hospitalizations by kids after a Halloween and these kids consuming a, a orange dye, for example, and then it gets banned, right? So it's been this pattern and the pattern, what I. Want to wake people up to is that it's usually replaced with something that is similarly toxic. The food industry is like, okay, that didn't work. Let's create something other synthetic and then wait around for years, often decades for us to get caught. Instead of what is real, what is natural, what have humans been doing the longest? Yes, we can color things.

• 32:57Speaker 01

  Other countries have done this successfully, but the stuff looks different, right? The cereal, which again, that's argue arguable should we be eating in the first place. But it looks different in Japan versus the United States or, you know, in in Great Britain, whatever the case might be. Every country has its issues, but we're the king of these problems. We're the king of allowing all manner of this devastation. And so, you know, to just lean back into this and mentioning what you what you shared, and we actually, we went on a hike together with her with our two sons. And, you know, just being able to understand that we get to create the culture. And so we have a larger culture scape. That we're all existing in. We have a macro culture, but we can create a micro culture in our own household.

• 33:41Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 33:42Speaker 01

  I promise you, my son, and he will tell you this, my youngest son, he's not missing McDonald's.

• 33:47Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Not at all.

• 33:48Speaker 01

  He isn't. It's not a big deal to him. Now, I'm also going to share this from the perspective of, I understand we live in the world. All right. And he he goes to school, he goes to birthday parties. We're not the, and I, of course, like, I've been through these levels, right? So, and we still have friends who do this. They might bring their own kid's slice of cake to the party, you know, we're not those parents, you know what I mean? So he's he's been exposed to things, but here's the cool thing. Because of the culture, he knows what it feels like.

• 34:16Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Sure.

• 34:17Speaker 01

  He knows what it feels like when he eats this stuff and he doesn't feel that great. And so he's just like, this just happened. He just had a basketball game. Uh, he's thirteen and he just had a basketball game with his school. Moms got together, bought a bunch of pizzas. You know, like, I don't want it. I'm like, B, it's cool. Just, you know, like, you know, he's like, nah, I'm good. He doesn't want it. I can try and force it, you know, but he doesn't want it.

• 34:41Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And you know, our sons are very similar. My son will pass by McDonald's on the way home. He's starving. I'm like, you want to just stop by McDonald's and get something? He's like, no, I don't want to go to McDonald's. I just want to get home and eat at home. Or let's go to, you know, a restaurant where you can get something that is real food. And I'm not saying that to brag to the audience or anything like that. It's just like you said, it's a microculture that you create within your family and the priorities that you put as top of the list for your family. Right? And so if food is not one of the top things in the priority list for your family, I don't know what else would be there. Right? I mean, obviously, like food is part of your, you know, Maslow's hierarchy. Right? It's like shelter, food, safety.

• 35:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  We need to make this a priority for our family and make this something that we put some intentionality behind, I think. Right?

• 35:30Speaker 01

  We just don't know that it matters.

• 35:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 35:32Speaker 01

  When it really boils down to it. I know that I didn't. And I did really well in school, but this, I was oblivious to this.

• 35:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, I think we all were, right?

• 35:40Speaker 01

  Biology class in college. All right. My son's school now, they have a class, his, his science class is called the science of you. All right. So they're relating it back to him.

• 35:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, that's fantastic.

• 35:51Speaker 01

  This is what we're paying for. All right. One little, one little up, you know? But things change over time and it's often difficult, of course, to have our kids in these environments, you know? But that's a whole, that's with the education system, that's a conversation for another day. But when I was in my university biology class, it didn't relate to me. Right? So we're studying the cell and all the parts.

• 36:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  You learn more about the frog than you do you.

• 36:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. Why am I dissecting this worm? What is this? You know? And I get it. There's some people that are fascinated by that, but it didn't relate to me. I was not made aware, nor was my teacher even aware.

• 36:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Sure.

• 36:25Speaker 01

  That when we're looking at this cell membrane, that that membrane is made by your menu.

• 36:30Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 36:30Speaker 01

  Right?

• 36:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolutely.

• 36:32Speaker 01

  That the mitochondria is made by the meals that you eat. That the nucleus is made by the nutrients that you eat.

• 36:40Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's so true.

• 36:41Speaker 01

  Right? There's a disconnect. The cells that we're studying isn't, I'm looking at food. It's food.

• 36:49Speaker 01

  We get to choose what we're making these things out of. And there are certain things that will damage these cells. And there are certain things that will help them to thrive. And so creating more connective tissue, helping people to realize how powerful food like you're choosing what you're making your cells out of. You get to choose.

• 37:04Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 37:05Speaker 01

  Do you want shitty cells? Or do you want really healthy, resilient, vibrant cells?

• 37:09Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 37:10Speaker 01

  All the way to the mitochondria as well. Are you giving yourself the nutrients needed for your mitochondria to stimulate?

• 37:16Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Sure.

• 37:17Speaker 01

  Mitochondriogenesis, like to create more mitochondria.

• 37:19Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 37:20Speaker 01

  Are you getting enough magnesium in your diet? For example, are you getting in all these different things from real food? Predominantly to help your body do all the cool stuff that it can do to keep you healthy, to feel good. And again, most of us, it's a very superficial thing. When I was in college and you know, I had a college level nutritional science class, big auditorium class. Just thinking back on what I thought food was, and I left there with the same thought, which is food is about basically weight loss or weight gain.

• 37:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 37:49Speaker 01

  You know, very rudimentary, like make sure you tell people to get all their vitamins and minerals. What the hell does that even mean? Right? And this was a time of the food pyramid, by the way.

• 37:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 37:58Speaker 01

  You know, but even, and this is an important point, too. When we were taught about getting all your vitamins and minerals, like for example, you know, make sure people are getting vitamin C.

• 38:08Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 38:08Speaker 01

  There's different forms of vitamin C, different forms of vitamin D, B12, magnesium, the list goes on and on. There's so many different forms. Now people know there's different forms of magnesium, but we were not taught any of this.

• 38:19Dr. Darshan Shah?

  No.

• 38:20Speaker 01

  Right? It's just like because of that framing, it's just take a pill.

• 38:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 38:24Speaker 01

  Take a multivitamin and you're good.

• 38:25Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 38:26Speaker 01

  Take your Centrum, right? That synthetic whatever, you know, and just.

• 38:29Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 38:30Speaker 01

  But it's a looking at our health through this very microscopic lens, when in reality, food is what makes us who we are. When you look in the mirror, you're seeing the food that you've eaten.

• 38:41Dr. Darshan Shah?

  No. Every cell in our body is made out of food at some point and is constantly in renewal. And the substrates for those cells come from the foods that we put into our mouths every single day and from the environment that we expose ourselves to. And it's such an important point because, you know, we're not so separated from the foods biologically. We are made out of them.

• 39:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. And if you think about that very point, how distant are we now from where our food comes from?

• 39:08Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolutely. Very distant.

• 39:10Speaker 01

  You know?

• 39:11Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I would, I mean, what percentage of Americans have grown any of their own food in their homes?

• 39:18Speaker 01

  Right? It's exceedingly rare, exceedingly rare. And even farmers today, it's monocropping, it just like, it's, the whole game has changed. Yes. You know, um, this reminds me of, of the red dye. There, I, I remember growing up again, like having these little juices. Yeah, I always a fan of different sodas and things like that, but I really loved to drink. Like grape drink, apple drink. Yes. Right? And I would get this grape drink or fruit punch was my favorite from Prairie Farms. Right? Prairie Farms is right there, it said farmer owned, this little banner on it. It says zero percent juice on there, it's like propylene glycol, high fructose corn syrup, water, red dye, number whatever, you know, blue dye.

• 40:02Speaker 01

  And in reality, again, it created this perception of wholesomeness. It's from Prairie Farms, right? And it's farmer owned, like this is, this is wholesome, it's, they're delivering this, it's on the store shelves. Sure. But I don't know many farmers, like in the, not even traditional sense, but just in the sense of being a farmer. Right. Who's like whipping up propylene glycol and red dye forty and, you know, high fructose corn syrup in a vat like is breaking bad. You know, like, they're not cooking up, like, that's not, that's not a farmer. You know, so even farming in the true sense of what that is, is exceedingly rare. Right. You know, but it doesn't have to be that way.

• 40:43Speaker 01

  And there are, this is the same thing in our, in our country, the grassroots movements did change things. That red dye getting banned, that was through a grassroots movement. Absolutely, right. Of science-backed entities who can just compiling all this data over time and forcing the FDA's hand. Whereas in Europe, in particular, companies have to prove, and this is not true across the board, but largely that the newly invented synthetic ingredient is safe. Yeah. Before adding it. Here, it can be added and then it's on the public oftentimes in grassroots movements to say, this is harming us, let's do something about it because of the grass. Right, generally recognized as safe.

• 41:25Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Safe, right.

• 41:26Speaker 01

  Right, this loophole, it's not even a loophole. It's a gaping, it's a gorge. I just saw a billboard for a movie, gorge.

• 41:33Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 41:33Speaker 01

  It's a gorge.

• 41:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It's a gorge in our system, right? I mean, look, and there's enough stuff out there that a great change right now. Like, we don't need any more new chemicals in our food, right? We don't need another red dye.

• 41:45Speaker 01

  Twenty thousand is good, you know? That's enough.

• 41:47Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I mean, it's a good time in the current state of where our society is. Just put a stop to all of this and say, prove it safe before you put it in our food. Right? And you brought up another great point. It's deceptive marketing practices of these food companies as well, which is so, it's just irritating and annoying now to even walk into a supermarket and see the stuff in green boxes and marked as healthy and good for you. And it's just trickery and the falsification involved just in plain sight. It's just mind blowing, right?

• 42:19Speaker 01

  Now, the cool thing is, but it's also, it's a paradox because this shouldn't be like this anyways. But now we have real data on this and we're able to see where the bodies are buried essentially with these food companies and see their practices. There's, and actually I cited one of the studies in the Eat Smarter Family Cookbook on marketers for cereal companies and using very specific tactics to manipulate children. Right? And so one of the studies that they did was bringing in a bunch of kids and having them to have some cereal. Right, this is new cereal that we're creating and rating their enjoyment on a five face, smiley face scale, right? How many smiley faces do you give this?

• 42:59Speaker 01

  Now they give the kids a cereal, same cereal, but it has a mascot on the box. It has a cartoon mascot. The kids across the board rated the cereal higher that had the mascot, higher on the smiley point scale because they related to the cartoon character, right? And companies, they've been known this, they use this, they created so the eyes are looking a certain way. When you, when you go down the aisle, obviously the colors and these cereals.

• 43:29Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Toucan Sam with the big eyes.

• 43:31Speaker 01

  Man, Toucan Sam, bro. But these.

• 43:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Toucan Sam's probably killed a lot of kids, people, you know, over time, you know? I mean, it's like that.

• 43:40Speaker 01

  Two K Sam, Tony the Tiger, you know, the Snapcrackle pop guys, you know, they're all just like, there's a, there's a

• 43:48Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Public Enemy number one.

• 43:49Speaker 01

  There's a, there's a movie on Netflix, uh, it's done by, I think Jerry Seinfeld created it. And it was a story about Pop-Tarts origin and this ba- this battle between like Post and you know, whatever the other co- company was. And so they had these different characters, right? So like the, the, the cereal characters. And so here's the thing, we have, again, we're, we're born into conditions where we don't realize it's happening. I didn't know. I just wanted the fruity pebbles because they tasted good and I had a great food experience with it.

• 44:19Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And the crunch and they have scientists that like actually are food scientists that put

• 44:23Speaker 01

  They're geniuses.

• 44:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  They're geniuses. And for anyone out there that thinks that this is not an extremely intentional, lot of money put behind every marketing drawing, the colors, the, like you said, the, you know, the, the kids in a room, the focus groups, the scientists that study the texture of food, the addictability of food, like it is a massive billions of dollars being spent on this to get you addicted to it and get you to buy it.

• 44:51Speaker 01

  One of the greatest inventions and also demise of us is a gas chromatograph. So scientists were able to isolate flavors, right? So what makes that cherry flavor? What's the chemistry that makes that flavor? And now they could add that cherry flavor to things that aren't cherry. All right. And so this really muddied up the waters of our food intelligence. Because there's something really special about us as humans out there. There's a lot of really special things, of course, but I'm just thinking about my wife. Um, but there are a lot of things special about us, but we have a very diverse and intelligent flavor palette. All right. The nose that we have, we can't sniff out like, you know, we think like comparatively, like that

• 45:33Speaker 01

  dog can smell like who's got the cocaine at the airport. We can't do that, but we can taste the most subtle things, you know, and this is if you've never thought about like, do you think about people with the wine tasting, for example, I taste a hint of, you know, um,

• 45:47Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, absolutely.

• 45:48Speaker 01

  Cherry. Hurt and a rusty nickel, like you know what I mean? Like you could find these really unique flavors. But understanding that and understanding how these food manufacturers manipulate our senses. And this is a very powerful evolutionary adaptation that we developed on our sense of taste and our sense of smell. Because the taste of things were indicative of the nutrition in it.

• 46:11Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Sure.

• 46:12Speaker 01

  So there's something called post-ingestive feedback. All right. And so, for example, if we were to eat a real cherry, our body would take notes essentially in a way, a memory of what nutrients came along with that flavor.

• 46:27Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, so doing this all subconscious, like we have no idea in our brain, but.

• 46:31Speaker 01

  For thousands upon thousands upon thousands of years, this is just how it is. And so if you think about what a craving is.

• 46:37Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 46:38Speaker 01

  Why do we have it? Do we're just messed up, our design is just messed up? Why do we crave things? This is an evolutionary adaptation, it's an advantage.

• 46:46Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 46:46Speaker 01

  To know when we need something, we had to have a craving for it. All right, so we'll use that cherry example. Okay, we got some vitamin C. We got a food source of melatonin, that's interesting in this cherry. We got some anthocyanins, we've got whatever, so you get all these different nutrients. And when you start to get deficient on a certain thing, your body's like, you know, those cherries had that vitamin C that you need. You should go find some cherries, right? Great plan, right? Great way of living. Today, it's no longer the case because our flavor palate has been hijacked, right? And so we develop cravings and intentionally for all these abnormal things. That post-ingestive feedback has been massively disrupted.

• 47:29Speaker 01

  And so if we are deficient on something, we don't even know what to do. What it usually brings about, by the way, is hunger. When you're deficient, whether it's magnesium, vitamin C, omega threes, whatever, your body is screaming at you like, I'm deficient.

• 47:43Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 47:43Speaker 01

  Bring some food in here so I can get this stuff.

• 47:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 47:46Speaker 01

  I'm gonna go grab some Doritos and a sandwich, right? Because we keep feeding this infinite hole.

• 47:53Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 47:54Speaker 01

  And not getting the things that our body's actually calling out for. So this is one of the big hallmarks with taking back control of our metabolic health and beating obesity is addressing this epidemic of hunger. You know, we've got to address our micronutrient needs. Micronutrient and macronutrient deficiencies leads to chronic overeating. Right, we need the things that our body's actually asking for so we can just get to baseline.

• 48:19Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 48:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  This episode was brought to you by Nex Health, a health optimization and longevity clinic located in Los Angeles, Manhattan, and soon to be opening in Montecito, Nashville, Miami, and many other cities in the United States and Canada. Nex Health is the Apple Store of wellness, where you can optimize your health span and lifespan using cutting-edge technology. I actually founded Nex Health eight years ago to give my patients a place to go get extensive biomarker testing done and provide them with all the tools that I use to get my health in order. The longevity circuit in Nex Health using hyperbaric oxygen, sauna, cryotherapy, and LED light is a game changer. In addition, the doctors at Nex Health measure thousands of biomarkers and put into place

• 49:08Dr. Darshan Shah?

  a longevity optimization plan using advanced tools like ozone, plasma exchange, and peptides. Go to www.nex.health to check it out.

• 49:22Dr. Darshan Shah?

  This episode was also brought to you by Vitaboom. Vitaboom is a revolutionary company that sends you a custom supplement protocol based on your needs using blood-based biomarkers. You can either send them your latest blood test or they will send you a finger-stick test for blood analysis. Vitaboom then curates and ships you an extremely convenient monthly box of daily supplement packs that have your custom protocol in them. What's great is that they also provide all the best brands like Timeline, TruNiagen, and many others for your custom daily packs. I love mine especially for travel, since I don't have to bring 10 bottles of supplements with me and just open up a daily pack for every day

• 50:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  that I'm taking my vitamins and supplements. Go to vitaboom.com and check it out.

• 50:15Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I think you said something really key there, which is micronutrient and macronutrient deficiency leads to hunger. So like you were saying, you know, another great example is pica, right? That's when people eat dirt because their body knows it needs iron and they just, they're eating dirt.

• 50:30Speaker 01

  Chalk?

• 50:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, chalk, right, exactly. Because they're trying to find iron. That's just built into our neural pathways as almost like a subconscious reaction about what we need, to your point about the cherries, right? And so I think when you're hungry, it might not be that you're low on energy. It might be some, a lot of times is that you're hungry for nutrition, like real nutrition. So nutrient-dense food. And that's why when you're eating the ultra-processed food, which is minimally nutritious, very low nutrient density, you stay hungry and then you keep eating more and more of it, which leads to obesity.

• 51:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:04Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right?

• 51:05Speaker 01

  Sounds like a great business model.

• 51:07Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, exactly. If you're trying to sell more food. But I mean, for people that are having trouble with, and this is one of the first things I do, for people that are having trouble with weight loss, is we look at their micronutrient levels and we find massive amounts of micronutrient deficiencies. And a lot of people, they're like, how am I deficient? I'm eating all the time. Well, you're eating food that's not nutrient-dense. That's the issue. Yeah, it's such a, it's such a key unlock, I think. You know, a lot of people talk about calories in, calories out is what leads to weight loss or weight gain. But it's just such a simplistic view of what's really happening.

• 51:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I love the analogy, of course, I've said this many times over the years, that, you know, it's looking at the human body as a calculator.

• 51:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 51:46Speaker 01

  And it's just, we're so much more dynamic and, you know, and even, you know, one of the things I did in my last book, in Eat Smarter, was I took people through, and this is the first book to do, to do this, and I'm honored to say, where the hell calorie came from.

• 52:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 52:01Speaker 01

  Right? So going back to the origins, which started in physics. It had nothing to do with nutrition. And, you know, looking at How calories were measured, but how they're actually put on packages today is radically different. It's they're not using a bomb calorimeter and like incinerating the food and seeing how much eats the water and all that. No, they're just using it's called the at water system. It's just a generous, kind of like grass. Yeah. You know, just like it's sort of this, you know, whatever. But even in that, in its intention, your body's not a bomb calorimeter. When you don't incinerate a food, all right? Your body, there's certain, there's a lot of things in a food that aren't even digested. Right. Or their net, you know, it's just like, we are so much more complex and looking through that lens is,

• 52:44Speaker 01

  it is really making people, it is, this created so much confusion and so much unnecessary struggle. And I appreciate, because I've been that, I've been in this field for 22 years now. Where we're looking at calories, right? I've been through that phase. Same. And I appreciate the people who found great success with that. But you're probably going to find that most people are not successful following this calorie management idea. Because it's not looking at how the food impacts your overall metabolic health. Because your body, how you, how your body associates with the calories from the exact same food can be dramatically different from week to week. Right.

• 53:25Speaker 01

  All right. And there's certain foods that, there's certain, there's certain conditions, right? So if people have issues with their thyroid, for example, this can slow their metabolic rate dramatically. And yet they're on, they're eating a thousand calories a day because they're told like, I just gotta cut my calories. And they're not, not only not losing weight, they could be even gaining weight. How's that possible? Uh huh. How is that possible? Right. The, the body is smarter than your calculator, all right? It, it matters. It is a thing. It is something that we try to use to make sense of something we can't make sense of. Right. It is far too complex. Where we are today, just one of the things is the impact of our microbiome Uh huh. on how our body absorbs and metabolizes calories.

• 54:11Speaker 01

  All right, we've got some really cool studies on this and labels of like quote fat bacteria. Sure. And being able to absorb more from the food that you're eating. But this is, we're gonna bring us back to a very important point here. The quality of the food itself.

• 54:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 54:24Speaker 01

  All right. There's a study that was done in food and nutrition research and they had test subjects to eat sandwiches. One was considered to be a whole food sandwich, which was whole grain bread and cheddar cheese. All right.

• 54:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Got it.

• 54:38Speaker 01

  Versus a ultra-processed sandwich, which was white bread and cheese product. Right. Which is like Kraft Singles.

• 54:44Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 54:44Speaker 01

  Okay. After compiling all the data, and by the way, the sandwiches are the exact same amount of calories.

• 54:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Hmm.

• 54:50Speaker 01

  Fats, proteins, carbohydrates, same. Should impact them the same. When people ate the ultra-processed food sandwich, they had about a 50% reduction in their calorie burn after eating that sandwich. Their body just held on to more of the calories they just consumed for some strange reason. The food itself is a factor. It's not just the calories. It's how your body associates with those calories.

• 55:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 55:17Speaker 01

  And I can go on and on with that, but you know, it's just, we're oversimplifying the wrong stuff.

• 55:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes. I agree. You know, the same goes for exercise, not to get off food, but the same goes for exercise. I think, you know, I grew up in a time where if you want to lose weight, you just stay on that treadmill and keep burning calories on a little calorie meter. A little digital readout of how many calories you burned. If you eat a donut, then you'd go on the treadmill for an hour and try to burn 300 calories to make up for that donut. And what happens? The body's so much more complex than that. Sure, you burn 300 calories, but now you're hungry.

• 55:49Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 55:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  You're inflamed, you're, you know, you've, you're dehydrated. There's so much more going on.

• 55:56Speaker 01

  Your insulin levels are walkers.

• 55:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly. Exactly. And so these are all the things that people need to think about. Um, sure, like you said, if, if you had a bomb calorimeter, it would all work out, but we're not bomb calorimeters. We are a complex system of not just our biology, but the biology of the microbiome that's inside of us as well.

• 56:15Speaker 01

  Oh, man.

• 56:16Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And the microbiome controls our hunger, probably even more than our brain does because of the signals from our gut to our brain, through our microbiome. And this is all, we need to consider all of this, but in reality, it's a lot simpler than having to worry about any of this stuff. Because in reality, going back to the beginning of this conversation, it's just swearing off ultra-processed food. Right? 95% of the time, don't eat anything ultra-processed. Sure, once in a while you go to a birthday party, you need to, fine, but for the most part, you shouldn't. And create a culture around that for your family and the people you hang with.

• 56:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, just let's make it the exception and not the rule.

• 56:51Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 56:52Speaker 01

  Right, and so I'm a big fan, like, we live in the world. All right, we live here in the United States, that's where this is getting recorded. There is a lot of like food party stuff, all right, there's a lot of mouth pleasure out there. There are a lot of incredible things for us to to enjoy, right, to experiment with. But if we're coming into this with a foundation of real food, you know, number one, chances are this other stuff isn't going to be that attractive. And you're going to notice when you have it, like, it's just not going to taste the same. I remember after, I'm from St. Louis, all right, so one of the iconic places in St. Louis is Emo's Pizza. Thin crust, St. Louis style pizza, all right, I grew up, I was probably like, at least like, 2.5% Emo's Pizza, all right?

• 57:36Speaker 01

  And I remember, you know, it was probably 10 years of working in health and eating real food. And I, my, my oldest son, he wanted Emo's Pizza for a birthday party with, with his friends. It was like paintball and Emo's was like the things that he wanted. And so I remember taking a piece of the pizza and I was like, this doesn't taste real. You know, this tastes like pasty, you know, it's just like, it's not like I remembered, you know? And I would just wasn't impressed, it didn't want, it didn't encourage me to have more, you know?

• 58:07Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Happened to my pizza.

• 58:07Speaker 01

  Right, right. Now, we do have those moments as well. But the best thing that we can do, and this is going to circle us back, you know, just to complete this, is let's make it so that it's easy to eat good things. With this being said, coming from where I come from, I love flavor, right? I, I'm not one of these people that's like, eat to live, you gotta eat to live, don't live to eat. That's actually abandoning, and again, just as a scientist, that's abandoning reason. Because what drives us to eat things is that they taste good, it's built into us.

• 58:41Dr. Darshan Shah?

  We're not wired to eat to live.

• 58:43Speaker 01

  Right, exactly. We're kind of wired up to gorge on things, you know, that taste good. And, but also, again, living in a natural environment so that we can survive, you know? But we evolved this very unique flavor palate and we're driven to eat things that taste good. And that's okay, let's support that. Let's not go so far that we're hyper stimulating and damaging ourselves with all this fake stuff. Let's finally join real food. And so, part of doing this is, again, creating that microculture in our own household. It's easier to make healthier food decisions based on the data if we're eating with our friends and family on a consistent basis, alright? So another study, and this was for me about access, because growing up after I left living,

• 59:27Speaker 01

  from living with my grandmother, living with my mom, my stepbrother, stepsister, stepfather, it's my little brother and sister, and my mom, I can count on my hands how many times we ate together. And I'm not exaggerating. I can count on my hands, it's probably a holiday here there, but it's usually me and my brother and sister just getting food and eating somewhere.

• 59:46Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 59:47Speaker 01

  Right? Sometimes my mom would eat with us sometimes, but most of the time it's just like grab and go, we scatter. And had my mom known the data, I'm sure she could have made an adjustment and just been more intentional about us eating together, but she didn't know, just like most parents do not know. I know that I didn't know until I got this data. And so this study analyzed the eating behaviors of minority children, who are generally in the context of a low-income environment like I come from. And the researchers, because that was my thing, like, my mom wasn't around that much. You know, my stepfather wasn't around that much, like.

• 1:00:19Dr. Darshan Shah?

  They were working.

• 1:00:20Speaker 01

  This sounds like, this data is for people who have access.

• 1:00:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  No.

• 1:00:23Speaker 01

  But what they found was that when these children ate four meals with a caregiver, you know, an adult, uh, somebody who, you know, they're a parent, four meals a week, could have been any meal, breakfast, lunch, dinner, didn't matter. Four meals a week, these kids ate dramatically less ultra-processed foods, namely chips and soda. They ate five servings, five or more servings of fruits and vegetables five days a week.

• 1:00:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Wow.

• 1:00:45Speaker 01

  Alright? And obviously they had far better health outcomes.

• 1:00:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:49Speaker 01

  But the researchers noted, this was the rub, when the television was never or rarely on during meal times.

• 1:00:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Makes sense.

• 1:00:56Speaker 01

  Alright? There's something about that TV being on, you know?

• 1:01:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:00Speaker 01

  And so this was a super encouraging for me, because no matter where we are, no matter where we come from, we can be intentional about eating together, because it's gonna support the health outcomes of everybody, especially our children. Let me share something for adults. Tech workers. So a study was done looking at workers at IBM, and they found, this is gonna get to why this works. They found that the participants who were able to consistently get home, quote, "get home in time for dinner."

• 1:01:27Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Uh huh.

• 1:01:28Speaker 01

  Their work morale stayed high, work stress stayed manageable, productivity stayed high. But as soon as things started cutting to their ability to eat dinner with their families, work morale starts to plummet, stress elevates and their productivity goes down.

• 1:01:42Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:42Speaker 01

  This is Captain Obvious stuff, but we don't think about it when we're in it. All right. Eating with their families helped them to metabolize stress.

• 1:01:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:50Speaker 01

  It helped them to process the stress that they were carrying from the work that they're doing. We need that outlet. We need to quote "unplug." But what we usually do is we go from one plug to the next.

• 1:02:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Sure.

• 1:02:00Speaker 01

  Right? We go from that plug in our stressful job or whatever the case might be, traffic. Right now, if people only knew what you had to do to get here today with the commute because of the fires. But that and then going and just getting right on technology, we're not getting a chance. There's a difference between relaxation and restoration.

• 1:02:18Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Sure.

• 1:02:18Speaker 01

  There's a difference.

• 1:02:19Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:02:20Speaker 01

  And we're not getting a chance to actually switch over to that parasympathetic.

• 1:02:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Uh huh.

• 1:02:25Speaker 01

  What's the nickname? Rest and digest.

• 1:02:27Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:02:27Speaker 01

  Rest and digest nervous system. We're chronically in fight or flight. And we might have the feelings of being relaxed, like we're laying, watching TV, eating snacks, whatever. And there's a place for that. But if you want to be restored, sit down and eat with your family, eat with people that you care about.

• 1:02:42Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:43Speaker 01

  Be around real people because our chemistry change.

• 1:02:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:02:45Speaker 01

  Changes. And this is getting to the point. That IBM study was highlighting something, which is a big part of this is being around people you care about. Our chemistry changes. Our, of course, thoughts create chemistry in our bodies, but a lot of stuff is happening unconsciously.

• 1:02:59Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Sure.

• 1:02:59Speaker 01

  We start producing more things like oxytocin.

• 1:03:01Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Sure.

• 1:03:02Speaker 01

  And this is one of the hormones that, of course, there's been a lot of revelations recently. People call it the cuddle hormone or love hormone. But this is one that is really risen to the top because it has a nullifying effect on cortisol.

• 1:03:14Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, amazing.

• 1:03:16Speaker 01

  Right? And I talked about this years ago, my first book, Sleep Smarter, I talked about oxytocin. And so now we know that that's one of the things kind of counteracting, helping you to metabolize stress.

• 1:03:26Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Such a good point.

• 1:03:26Speaker 01

  Calm down. Oxytocin. There are a ton of different neurotransmitters and hormones that are changing when we're around people that we care about. Because what it's activating really is an overall feeling of safety.

• 1:03:37Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Safety, right.

• 1:03:38Speaker 01

  Right? Feeling seen, feeling like we matter, feeling a part of something. These are all deep psychological human needs, right? So, this is more of the kind of meta perspective of what's happening physically. A change is happening with that switch over from the parasympathetic, from the sympathetic to the parasympathetic. But, I wanna give a very practical psychological thing. When we sit down and we eat with our children, and I wanna give some tips too, if that's okay.

• 1:04:07Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Please, I would love them, yeah.

• 1:04:08Speaker 01

  Okay. When we sit down and eat with our children, which is again, is becoming, is an endangered activity in our society today. Our children today, more than ever, even when they're with their friends, they're not with their friends.

• 1:04:22Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, that is true.

• 1:04:23Speaker 01

  They're together, but they're separate. They're together, but they're on their devices. I've seen it. I've seen these kids hanging out and they're all on their phones. They might share a meme, we'll laugh like, look at this meme, but they're disconnected, alright? This is their chance, and they're missing, and of course, you see the, obviously, massive epidemics of mental health, metabolic health. The list goes on and on. There's a reason, part of sitting down and eating with your children, you get to see them. They get to feel seen. When the phone, when the technology is not in the way, someone is seeing them and letting them know that they matter. You get a chance to listen to them, to listen to the sound of their voice, to hear what's going on in their life. And, we need this. We need to feel like we matter. We need to feel like our voice is important, right?

• 1:05:08Speaker 01

  And so, we're helping to feed and putting in these psychological nutrients that help our kids to thrive, right? And the same thing for us too.

• 1:05:16Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:05:16Speaker 01

  You know, but we're gonna miss out on that if we're not being intentional about it. And so, one of the tips is, and this is one of the most science-backed things you could do right now. When you have that family dinner, or dinner with a significant other, friend, leave the phone out of it. Don't even have it sitting on the table.

• 1:05:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It should not be on the table.

• 1:05:33Speaker 01

  If at all possible, because one of the studies that I shared in the book, even having it in the line of sight

• 1:05:37Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 1:05:38Speaker 01

  led to disruptions. People, literally, are strapped to these brain monitors, all this stuff. Their brains were distracted just when their phone was near them.

• 1:05:44Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:45Speaker 01

  Because that phone, our brains, like- It's always looking to automate. Your brain knows there's a lifetime of goodies in that phone.

• 1:05:52Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Uh huh.

• 1:05:53Speaker 01

  Right? And so you might be trying to listen to your friend, but there's part of your brain is like, yo, there's some stuff on Instagram right now, like I could.

• 1:06:01Dr. Darshan Shah?

  No.

• 1:06:01Speaker 01

  So getting the phone out of your line of sight, putting it away.

• 1:06:04Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Not even in your pocket, I would say.

• 1:06:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:07Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Cause then you're anticipating a buzz, right? You're anticipating a buzz, you're anticipating it for to ring.

• 1:06:11Speaker 01

  They study that too. Is it on your person? Was it in a bookbag, whatever the case might be?

• 1:06:15Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:06:16Speaker 01

  A lot of times, and I'm just being a thousand, I'm, I'm the guy who doesn't bring their phone into the restaurant.

• 1:06:21Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:06:21Speaker 01

  If we're, you know, even if we sit down to watch a movie together, I leave my phone in the kitchen. You know, on the kitchen counter. Our table, our, make your dinner table a, a phone free zone.

• 1:06:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:31Speaker 01

  Make it a phone free zone. And some families have, because of the extent of the addiction, you know, some families have like a little lockbox, everybody puts their phone in before dinner or whatever. It doesn't have to go that far, but make it a phone free zone. But here's the rub, because we're addicted, we have to replace it with something of equal or greater value. You can't just be like, get off your phone, John. You know, Sarah, get off your phone, come eat dinner. We're gonna have a nice family dinner.

• 1:06:59Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:00Speaker 01

  I was listening to this really handsome guy on Darshan's show. And he said, I'm sorry, just kidding, I'm just kidding. But to replace it with something of greater or equal value. So what does that look like? Being intentional about creating something that is memorable and enjoyable for our kids. Now, this is where it gets, this is where the work comes in.

• 1:07:19Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Uh huh.

• 1:07:20Speaker 01

  All right? We have a, a culture that's like something for nothing.

• 1:07:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:07:24Speaker 01

  All right? Easy. We want it easy.

• 1:07:27Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:28Speaker 01

  But in reality, every, you get to choose your hard.

• 1:07:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:31Speaker 01

  Because if you're not doing this, you're gonna see the fallout in your family and in your health.

• 1:07:35Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:07:36Speaker 01

  If you do this, it might be challenging initially, but you're gonna see everybody thriving. And so part of this, I'm just gonna get, give an example of a family that I worked with. And they have multiple kids, all right? So, uh, two kids and the two kids have drastically different personalities.

• 1:07:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Uh huh.

• 1:07:56Speaker 01

  All right?

• 1:07:57Dr. Darshan Shah?

  They always do.

• 1:07:58Speaker 01

  Of course, of course. And so. One of the kids is very like detail oriented. You know, likes to know what time everything's happening. You can cater to that, but you have to pay attention to your child. You know, let them know what's going on, maybe, you know, this. This is another tip, actually, I'm embedded in here. According to the data, the minimum effective dose is three days a week. Pick which days those are.

• 1:08:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, make it always those three days.

• 1:08:25Speaker 01

  Monday, Wednesday, brunch on Sunday, whatever the kid, whatever it looks like for you and your family. But schedule it, this is another science-backed tip. Because it creates a tangibility.

• 1:08:35Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Sure.

• 1:08:36Speaker 01

  We got all this other stuff on the calendars, I saw one of your employees out here.

• 1:08:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:40Speaker 01

  Her calendar looked bonkers.

• 1:08:41Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I saw that too.

• 1:08:42Speaker 01

  It made me a little uncomfortable, alright, there's a lot of stuff on the calendar. But where's her time for her? Where's her time for her family? Right, she's gotta make sure that that's on the calendar too. Schedule it, make it real, it creates some tangibility to it. Also, three meals a week is the minimum effective dose. And so, circling back to invite that child in, who knows, you know, they like to be on their technology. They're a big fan of desserts, right? So just knowing like, okay, so, you know, tonight, we're gonna have the, the.

• 1:09:12Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Pumpkin.

• 1:09:13Speaker 01

  The pumpkin muffins, right? The pumpkin muffins from the He Smarter Family Cookbook is gonna be the dessert. Or you can ask them, like, get them involved, was another thing that was very helpful with them. Is to get them involved by giving them choices, and this is pretty true for all of us, but like. Hey, do you want the frozen yogurt cherry pops? Or do you want the pumpkin muffins tonight? Right? Oh, pumpkin muffins, right? And so just getting them involved in what is to come. Another thing was, and this for the other kid, loved games. Right, loved like activities. And so you can embed that in to, you know, show some attention to the other kid, right? And so, knowing that after dinner, they're gonna get to play a game.

• 1:09:53Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:54Speaker 01

  Or, I had no idea, but there are some families that actually have games during dinner.

• 1:09:59Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right?

• 1:10:00Speaker 01

  Right? So they're like maybe playing a board game, or you know, some kind of a, you know, charades, or whatever the case might be, heads up. You know, there's so many different things, but like bringing in things that are memorable. So now I'm gonna use myself as an example. For whatever, and this was not, I'm not gonna say it's not intentional, but it just, it just kinda happened, you know? Uh, we were having family dinners, but for somehow, some way, we ended up like.

• 1:10:25Speaker 01

  It would like evolve into like dance battle or rap battle. All right. And so it evolved to the place where my youngest son had iPad and somebody would like make a beat on the iPad. Right. Little like whatever, little rickety beat. And then it got to a place I I went on Amazon and bought a microphone. And just like we literally passed around a microphone. It just became part of family dinners.

• 1:10:48Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:49Speaker 01

  And what you what you focus on expands, what you focus on expands. The week that this cookbook came out, I went on Good Morning America and it was cool. It was fun. But one of the most memorable experiences of my life, I went on a show called Sway in the Morning. And Sway was really iconic for being an MTV VJ back in the day. But he's a big part of hip hop culture and you know, just within that month, you know, like LL Cool J was there, Missy Elliott, all these iconic people in music. And I went there to, of course, you know, which is amazing. Maybe they might be listening right now, but Tracy, you know, one of his co-hosts and Sway, of course, listened to my show.

• 1:11:32Speaker 01

  You know what I'm saying? Like, listen, follow me and you never know who's listening.

• 1:11:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Sure.

• 1:11:36Speaker 01

  And so I came there to talk about empowerment and to just, you know.

• 1:11:41Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:11:42Speaker 01

  And it was amazing. Like it was, it was electric in the room, you know, just sharing some information about health and taking some questions and things like that. And I thought the interview was over. So when artists come on this show, they freestyle. They do a freestyle rap. I'm not an artist.

• 1:11:57Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:57Speaker 01

  I'm an author.

• 1:11:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:11:59Speaker 01

  All right. I'm a scientist. But little did I know, when I was walking in, when my, when Sway introduced himself to my, to my two sons. My youngest son is now, he's 13 and my oldest son is, is 24. But at the time, they were like two years younger or a year younger, whatever.

• 1:12:14Dr. Darshan Shah?

  This is New York? You brought me in?

• 1:12:15Speaker 01

  It's in New York.

• 1:12:16Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes. You brought your kids with you and everything. That's great.

• 1:12:18Speaker 01

  So when my oldest son dapped up Sway, like met him, shook his hand, hugged, he whispered in Sway's ear, my dad can freestyle. I had no idea.

• 1:12:28Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Your son said that to Sway.

• 1:12:30Speaker 01

  Alright, so I'm sitting there thinking the interview is over, like that was awesome, like I'm ready to go. Let's go get some food. And then his producer DJ puts on his song. And like Sway starts getting hype, I'm like, okay, wow, this is interesting, I wonder what's going on here, I'm just, I'm oblivious. And then he was like, I heard there was, you know, healthy, you know, hyena in the house, whatever. Um, and I'm just like, what is happening? You could see my face on the YouTube video, I'm like, what is going on? I was like, okay, let's go, alright, so, you know, I just started freestyling off of what was in the room, you know?

• 1:13:04Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So cool.

• 1:13:04Speaker 01

  And it was amazing, I, I've never seen them flip out so much with any of the artists that come on there, because it's not expected of me.

• 1:13:11Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes, you're, you're an author, right?

• 1:13:13Speaker 01

  Well, we focus on expands, a part of my family culture reached its way out.

• 1:13:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:13:18Speaker 01

  To impact the lives of thousands of people that were listening live, maybe, you know, tens of thousands, whatever the case might be. And it was like an extension and the, and the message in that is wherever you go, you take your culture with you.

• 1:13:29Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Sure.

• 1:13:30Speaker 01

  Alright, that microculture you create is influential to the larger culture, potentially, if you, if you choose to, to demonstrate it, right? And so, I did this freestyle, I was like, I even put my sons into the song, you know, into the bars. You know, I brought the cookbook into the bars and, you know, it was amazing, man, and then.

• 1:13:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's awesome.

• 1:13:50Speaker 01

  And that experience is something I will never forget. And it was like, again, something that feeds into itself, and so, what you will find, my message is, what you will find is that when you invest in creating that microculture, you're gonna see it flower and present itself in the most amazing ways you don't expect.

• 1:14:08Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:14:08Speaker 01

  I'm not saying you're gonna have to freestyle at a parent teacher conference or anything like that, I'm not saying that. But something magical is going to happen, some things magical will happen when you choose to create that healthy microculture, no matter what's going out, on out there in the world, you get to decide the culture you create in your own household. Make it easy to be healthy, make it easy for your kids to make good choices. It's gonna take some work, you're going to have to pay attention to your kids. And I'm saying this with love, and I, I'm saying this because I've made mistakes too, I'm not, I'm nowhere near perfect. With that being said, our kids need us.

• 1:14:46Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:47Speaker 01

  Pay attention to them, see them. A lot of times, we don't want to make that choice. I'm just being a thousand. Sometimes it's like, you just need to get your ass in here and eat. You know what I'm saying?

• 1:14:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly.

• 1:14:56Speaker 01

  This isn't a democracy, alright? Versus having the energy, because I'm taking care of myself,

• 1:15:03Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Sure.

• 1:15:04Speaker 01

  to be more judicious, to be more patient and kind and perceptive and pay attention. This is, all starts to feed back into itself. It's gonna take some work because, I don't know if anybody's ever seen the show Yellowstone, but...

• 1:15:16Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I'm sure everyone's seen that show.

• 1:15:19Speaker 01

  There can be a bath in the family, alright? Who doesn't, she's always causing problems at dinner. You might have a family member like that, but love on them. You know them better than anybody. You know your significant better, uh, significant other better than anybody.

• 1:15:33Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Sure.

• 1:15:33Speaker 01

  But a lot of times, because we're tired, we're just like, I don't want to deal with this.

• 1:15:37Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:15:38Speaker 01

  I don't want to have to play the game with you, right? But this, they have their personality. We know what they like. We know what motivates them, what demotivates them. The same with our kids.

• 1:15:47Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:15:48Speaker 01

  So, do the work. Invest in yourself, number one. Which is, I know it's crazy. It's hard. It's hard to do. And this is, I'm, I'm involved in this too. Invest in yourself, but invest in your family. Pay attention to them. Invite them in. Make them a part of it.

• 1:16:04Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:16:05Speaker 01

  Alright. The more inputs that you can get, give them choices, you know, but follow these tips. Number one, three meals a week. Put on the calendar. It's a minimum effective dose. Do this for yourself and your family. Number two, make it a phone-free zone. Alright? Your family deserves this. You deserve it. Number three, it has to be replaced with something of greater equal value. It's gonna take you to listen to your kids, figure out what that is, and implement those things. Whether it is some kind of artsy thing that happens at dinner, after dinner, you know, singing or...

• 1:16:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  We do high-low what the hacks. What's the best part of your day, the lowest part of your day, and something funny or crazy that happened to you. We call it high-low what the hacks. We do it at every single dinner. Brings out some stories about school. They get to hear what we did during the day. I hear what they did during the day. And they had no idea like what my highs or lows were during the day before this. And so it's been a game changer for us. And then we played like the humming game, guess what song I'm humming. So exactly like what you're saying, like, you know, have some structure and intentionality around that dinner moment. Cause this usually for most families, it's the only moment you'll have that day with the family, right?

• 1:17:15Speaker 01

  This time's are limited, man.

• 1:17:16Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly.

• 1:17:17Speaker 01

  Like your kids will grow up before you know it truly like.

• 1:17:19Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:17:20Speaker 01

  These are the times, this is when we can really get that time together as well, you know? So take advantage.

• 1:17:25Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. So you said that was three, I'm sorry to interrupt you, four, what's four?

• 1:17:28Speaker 01

  Four, four would be, how did you know this, man? You beat me to it, which is like intentionally integrating something that is a unifier.

• 1:17:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Ah, okay, got it, got it, yeah.

• 1:17:38Speaker 01

  So a gratitude practice, for example, that's one of the things that we do, we've been doing for years. We'll, we'll share three things that we're grateful for from that day, right? And I like yours as well.

• 1:17:47Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:17:47Speaker 01

  We did, back in the day, we did something along the lines of, you know, what did I fail at today? You know, we did that one for a while, you know? And what these things do, it humanizes us as parents, right? Which is, again, I had this stoic, and I, you know, I, my boys still kind of feel that way about me, but it's, they're, they're more, they feel closer to me, right? And they also, the thing that I've noticed, and I've never shared this before, but when I'm not at my best, they're right there to lift me up.

• 1:18:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolutely.

• 1:18:18Speaker 01

  They pick it up, like because of me, and I, it's because I'm not acting like dad has got it all together. Which I might look that way, my wife has said that to me many times, like something, I'm like, she's like, but you look so good. I'm like, I'm not good, I'm not good, you know, but just, and it can be difficult, especially for men, but just vocalizing and sharing. And that practice has humanized me, and so my kids can relate to me, they can have a idea of like what might be to come and lessons. But also, they get to express themselves. What happens is it's an opener, it's something to get them talking, to get out of their like, especially my son is 13, you know, his little teenager bag, you know?

• 1:18:57Speaker 01

  And just to get him talking and to, again, to feel, to feel heard, to be seen. And it opens up things, it's a unifier, the dinner table itself is a unifier.

• 1:19:07Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It is a unifier, right?

• 1:19:08Speaker 01

  So those are, those are four tips.

• 1:19:11Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's so powerful, man. I mean, you know, to bring that intentionality and that much structure around dinnertime specifically for families is huge. And I think it's a game changer that most people have forgotten. Maybe not forgotten, but they de-emphasize it in their life. And so if that's the one message you take away from today's podcast is focus on that dinner again. And, you know, I read your book. You know, I love about this book is that it's not just a cookbook. Like you learn about nutrition, about the science of family, about structure around dinner, all these things. You learn so much. And I could tell you put your heart and soul into this book, for sure. You really have. And it's a beautiful book. And so glad you brought it to me when I was on your podcast, you gave it to me. You know, I read it and you made the recipe.

• 1:19:56Speaker 01

  Who knew that it would turn into a magical moment like that? Like, that was like, it really blew me away. You know, I was not expecting that to happen, you know, with you making the dessert from the book. Like, it just, it made me, it just, it's not that my heart was like small like the Grinches, but it just made me, my heart get bigger.

• 1:20:11Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Sure, sure. Absolutely. Like, one of the things, you know, we did at that dinner that we had shared together, and also I do with all my friends, and I've done this for years, is even if you're out with some friends, bring some intentionality to it. And just, you know, we did it around the table, where we asked one question, everyone gets to speak, and you listen to that one person. It's called a Jeffersonian dinner, because, you know, Thomas Jefferson, he couldn't hear out of one ear. So he would make everyone speak one at a time. And having, he asked everyone a question, and you go around the table, you answer that one question. It really brings what used to be just a random friend dinner into an intentional moment of connection by just doing something simple like that. And if you're listening to this podcast, you haven't tried this with your friends or your

• 1:20:55Dr. Darshan Shah?

  family, give it a shot. I mean, it really is a powerful thing, that bringing the community and connection back to our lives is insanely powerful and beneficial.

• 1:21:07Speaker 01

  Absolutely, absolutely. And I appreciate that, man. Just that experience, I'll never forget. I'll never forget that. And, you know, like you said, this was, you know, a lot of people say this, you know, being a labor of love, but this was, this was my family, you know, like I really opened myself up and, and experimented with these things for many years and working with families, working with individuals over the years. And, you know, for me, this is the best resource that you can have. And I see it now, of course, with social media, you see it in people's kitchens all over the world and, which is really, it's amazing. Like that's, I, I, I couldn't have dreamed of anything better, but I'm a big foodie, so obviously we, we leaned into the, the culture that we, you know, grew up here in the United States with.

• 1:21:49Speaker 01

  I love breakfast food. McDonald's breakfast was my thing, so I created like an upgraded breakfast sandwich with all real food ingredients. The sweet potato protein pancakes and, you know, the, the salmon burgers. Everybody's invited, by the way. It's inclusive.

• 1:22:01Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:01Speaker 01

  Whatever diet framework you prescribe to, whether it's, you know, from vegan to carnivore. Um, but we're just using, because you know, like the veggie burgers out there, they're, they're terrible. Okay, ultra processed. So it's like there's a veggie, you know, um, and then if it's the classic grass fed beef burger or pescatarian. The salmon burger might be my favorite. Now, let me take that back. It depends on the day. You know, but right now I'm loving the salmon burger, but also, as you mentioned, there are over two hundred and fifty peer reviewed studies embedded in the content.

• 1:22:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly.

• 1:22:34Speaker 01

  Of the book, told in, like in this great story form, like one chapter, I put a bunch of like superhero Easter eggs.

• 1:22:41Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh yeah, I love that.

• 1:22:42Speaker 01

  You know, which was really fun because, you know, it's a big part of my family culture as well. So, you know, you could just go through it. It's, it's fun. It's fun to read, but it's also giving you all the tools that you need to revolutionize your kitchen culture.

• 1:22:55Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 1:22:55Speaker 01

  Because that's a part of it too. The, you know, you have to create a vibe for yourself if you're gonna be in the kitchen. You know, giving yourself permission for that.

• 1:23:02Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, we didn't get a chance to talk about that a lot, about actually cooking the food and how much connection that brings back into your life to the food that you're putting in your body. And then, once you start doing that, you don't put chemicals in your body anymore. You understand how much the choices affect your biology when you're making the food, right? So, sorry to interrupt you, but I thought that was an important point that you made in the book, too.

• 1:23:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, thank you. And, you know, again, leaning into the fact that we do have this culture today, we're an emoji culture. And so, I leaned into that. And so, as I'm talking about these, it's just about 40 specific foods that have a ton of data on the efficacy for human health, creating different benefits, whether it's cognitive benefits, gut health, or, you know, heart health, whatever the case might be, supportive of metabolic health, quote, "fat burning." And there aren't really fat-burning foods, per se. But like, oh, wow, this study showed that, you know, this particular food does this with your metabolism. So, I use emojis to denote those, right? So, you don't even have to read the studies, just know like, okay, this one has the brain emoji,

• 1:24:07Speaker 01

  the muscle emoji, heart emoji, and then you'll see those emojis in the recipe section as well. So, you can eat for a purpose. If you're really focused on improving your sleep, right? You can eat some of these recipes that are giving your body these, I call them good sleep nutrients. That have the most data affirming how these are involved. And this is one of those things, again, you could have the most fancy pants mattress, do all the room hacking, biohacking. If you're deficient in the nutrients that create your sleep-related hormones and neurotransmitters, you're still gonna struggle. So, these are like basic things that can be addressed in one cookbook. So, yeah, it was a lot to put together. And like you said, I'm so grateful it came out so beautiful. And my family's involved in it.

• 1:24:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, there's some pictures of your family in the book all throughout, and it's fantastic, yeah. Well, man, thank you so much for joining me today, Sean. I mean, this has been such a great conversation, and I love how deep we get, man. I love it.

• 1:25:04Speaker 01

  Me, too. Me, too. This is fun.

• 1:25:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  This is so much fun. So, first book was sleep, right? Then, you wrote a book on nutrition and exercise, right? And then, this, right? And what's next?

• 1:25:18Speaker 01

  I can't let the cat out of the bag. Um, you know, there's, there are a couple of things in the works. There are a couple of things in the works. Being that relationships are so influential in all of this.

• 1:25:30Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Sure.

• 1:25:31Speaker 01

  That's where we're leaning towards. For this, I've been accumulating data, you know, I have this file of, you know, studies that I just put in there over time and little ideas and things like that. But I wanted to take some time off this, this past year and this year. Because I've, I've been kind of perpetually always writing a book.

• 1:25:48Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:48Speaker 01

  And I just want to teach. I want to get out and connect with everybody and I, I've spent more time with my family, you know, than I ever have. Cause I'm usually just in my office writing a lot, you know? But of course I've implemented these things, but just really being more present with them, spending a lot more time with my wife. Just like, I think, and I think it's part of what's emerging too with this new, new book that is potentially get or just, you know? But my agents have been on me like, Sean, you're hot in the streets. Where's the new book? You know, I'm just like, no, no, no, no. We need, right now, I really want to focus on getting Eat Smarter, uh, The Smarter Cookbook into as many people's hands and hearts and kitchens as possible. Because that food is such a powerful bridge for everything else, so.

• 1:26:33Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It is, yeah. Well, thank you so much for joining and I can't wait to have you on again. Maybe after your next book, we'll do another one. But this has been fantastic and thank you so much for putting your message out there. It's so powerful and brings, I love what you, how you bring together the science and the heart of everything that you talk about and everything that you do. So thank you for that.

• 1:26:54Speaker 01

  Thank you. Thank you for seeing me. I appreciate that.

• 1:26:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Awesome. Uh, where can people find you, Sean? I mean, if you can't find Sean, that's a problem, but let's just say it anyway.

• 1:27:02Speaker 01

  I mean, if people are listening to this podcast, they can find the Model Health Show everywhere you get your podcasts. You know, I'm grateful to say, being from Missouri, we, you know, we started the show, it became the number one health podcast in the United States.

• 1:27:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:14Speaker 01

  Uh, many, many times, it's kind of like the billboard charts, but you know, I'm very grateful to say we create master classes. Whether it's me teaching or bringing on the best people in the world, which of course you've been on the show in their respective fields, um, to, to, to share really definitive guide, but delivering it in a way that is yes impactful, but also fun. And a lot of heart is, is involved. And so again, thank you for seeing me. And The Smarter Family Cookbook, uh, everywhere books are sold, your favorite online retailers and, and bookstores as well. And eats smarter cookbook dot com as well. There's a bonus. We did a uh, health and fitness, family health and fitness summit that people get access to for free. You know, little cool bonuses if you get the book. So, um, those are the places to find me.

• 1:27:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And then you have a YouTube channel and you're on social media as well.

• 1:27:59Speaker 01

  Yep. The model health show everywhere, you know, um, the model show dot com.

• 1:28:03Dr. Darshan Shah?

  What episode are you on by the way? Model health?

• 1:28:05Speaker 01

  We're, I believe eight, episode eight hundred and fifty.

• 1:28:09Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Wow.

• 1:28:10Speaker 01

  Yes, it's bananas.

• 1:28:11Dr. Darshan Shah?

  You're the OG.

• 1:28:11Speaker 01

  It doesn't seem like it.

• 1:28:12Dr. Darshan Shah?

  OG health podcast. I love it.

• 1:28:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's twelve years.

• 1:28:15Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Twelve years.

• 1:28:16Speaker 01

  Twelve years. So it's, it's been amazing, man. And I'm just like, I love it so much.

• 1:28:21Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:22Speaker 01

  Because of doing this, it keeps, there's always something in front of me to work towards.

• 1:28:26Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Sure. Absolutely.

• 1:28:28Speaker 01

  So it's like built in to keep me growing and asking questions. And the cool thing that I found, the number one gift that has come from it is the relationships, which I never would have thought. I'm definitely come from like a lone wolf type of upbringing and background, but just like the friendships and the connections and, you know, yeah, I would have never thought. It's the amazing people that are in my life now.

• 1:28:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:50Speaker 01

  You know, because again, I didn't grow up like this, you know, and, um, but people who I learned from virtually, for example, like, uh, Michael Beckwith, uh, who I'm seeing tomorrow, you know, like I learned so much from him over the years and now he's like one of my best friends, you know, and so, and the artists that I mentioned, who listen to the show, like you'd never know who's listening.

• 1:29:12Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:29:12Speaker 01

  Uh, Dr. Oz, you know, for example, we were talking about before the show and, um, the number one, he, he's the number one country artist, for example, Brett Eldredge is a friend of mine. Now he listens to the show, to the number one, um, he's got billions, a couple billion streams. Big Sean was just on the show recently.

• 1:29:28Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Wow, that's amazing.

• 1:29:29Speaker 01

  So it's just like, you never know who's listening, just, you know. It's something to help me keep growing,

• 1:29:35Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Sure.

• 1:29:36Speaker 01

  to keep putting out great work and to keep being a voice of empowerment when we need it so much and solutions. I'm a big fan of solutions as well. So it's something that's shareable, like you could send, just like this, you could send this to a friend.

• 1:29:51Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolutely.

• 1:29:51Speaker 01

  You know, a family member and they can just hit play. Like, that's one of the great and right uses of technology.

• 1:29:57Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:29:57Speaker 01

  as well, but we just gotta use the technology and be careful about it using us.

• 1:30:02Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes, absolutely. Makes total, complete sense, but I'm glad you reinforce it every single time. Like you said, Captain Obvious, but it is like, you need to hear it, I think, a few times, right?

• 1:30:12Speaker 01

  For sure, yeah.

• 1:30:14Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Well, thank you, Sean. I can't wait to see you again and let's do dinner again soon.

• 1:30:17Speaker 01

  Ah, for sure. I can't wait. Appreciate you.

• 1:30:19Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Thank you, man.

• 1:30:22Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Thank you so much for listening to the podcast today. Please remember to subscribe if you like this episode and give us a good review and share a link with your friends. It really helps us support all of our efforts. I also want to remind you that the information shared on this podcast is for educational purposes only and is not intended to replace professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Please consult with your healthcare provider or physician before making any decisions or taking any action based on what you hear today, especially if you have any underlying health conditions or on any medications. Your doctor knows your personal health situation the best and it's always important to seek their guidance.