Latest / The You Project / #1655 Reconnecting With Your Body - Dr. Bill Sullivan
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: I get a team.
- 0:02Speaker 2: I'm here with my favorite scientist, my favorite researcher, doctor
- 0:06Speaker 2: Bill Sullivan, all the way across the other side of
- 0:09Speaker 2: the world in the States.
- 0:11Speaker 3: Hi, mate, how are you doing great? Meat, Good to
- 0:14Speaker 3: see you again.
- 0:15Speaker 1: Yeah, good to see you, buddy. We were just talking.
- 0:17Speaker 2: I was just telling you, which is probably the world
- 0:19Speaker 2: doesn't need to know this, But I have this weird
- 0:21Speaker 2: thing that happens everyone, and that is I could be
- 0:24Speaker 2: sitting at my computer like I am now, and I'm
- 0:26Speaker 2: just chipping away at stuff and just doing it, and
- 0:30Speaker 2: all things are kind of just status quo, just humming along.
- 0:33Speaker 2: But then when I have to really focus on something,
- 0:36Speaker 2: like I was saying to Bill, read an academic paper
- 0:39Speaker 2: or something that for me is cognitively challenging, where it's
- 0:43Speaker 2: extreme focus concentration, I've got to be fully present. I
- 0:47Speaker 2: get hot and I usually have to take off Often
- 0:50Speaker 2: I'll turn off the if the heat is on, even
- 0:53Speaker 2: in the middle of winter, I'll open the door to
- 0:54Speaker 2: my office, I'll take off a layer of clothing. I
- 0:58Speaker 2: think maybe a lot of people don't realize that twenty
- 1:00Speaker 2: percent of our energy expenditure is the brain built, which
- 1:04Speaker 2: is a lot of energy for a tiny little thing
- 1:07Speaker 2: sitting in the old skull.
- 1:08Speaker 3: Hey, yeah, and that's what they estimate happens with the
- 1:13Speaker 3: brain at rest, So when you're using it, it ramps
- 1:16Speaker 3: up even higher. So it's probably not surprising that your
- 1:21Speaker 3: body's getting a little overheated reading some of those papers.
- 1:24Speaker 3: So yeah, yeah, if we talk down on you and
- 1:28Speaker 3: you're you're down to your underwear, we know what you've
- 1:30Speaker 3: been doing, right, you've been reading academic papers.
- 1:35Speaker 1: Oh, look at him, he's in his boxes. Clearly he's studying.
- 1:38Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll go obviously obviously with.
- 1:41Speaker 1: That one hundred percent.
- 1:42Speaker 2: It is funny though, like, so my body weight is
- 1:45Speaker 2: eighty six kilos, what's that eighty four one seventy it's
- 1:48Speaker 2: about one ninety pounds, and the brain weighs about one
- 1:52Speaker 2: point three or four, which is kind of three pounds ish.
- 1:56Speaker 2: That's a very small percentage of our body weight for
- 1:59Speaker 2: a very high percentage about energy use, isn't it?
- 2:02Speaker 1: That's wire is portionate.
- 2:04Speaker 3: Yeah, well, you know, if you think about it, that
- 2:07Speaker 3: is the key organ that defines who we are, and
- 2:12Speaker 3: it takes a lot of energy just to keep it
- 2:14Speaker 3: running at a basal level, you know, just couch potatoes
- 2:17Speaker 3: is still consuming twenty percent of your caloric intake. So
- 2:22Speaker 3: if you happen to use it beyond couch potato, yeah,
- 2:26Speaker 3: you're going to burn some more calories, which is kind
- 2:28Speaker 3: of fun. You know, you can just sit around thinking
- 2:30Speaker 3: and that's kind of an exercise, you know, it.
- 2:33Speaker 1: Is it is.
- 2:35Speaker 2: I remember a sign outside a gym near where I
- 2:38Speaker 2: live and it said something like thinking about going to
- 2:42Speaker 2: the gym doesn't burn any calories. You've actually got to
- 2:44Speaker 2: turn up or something. And I'm like, well, technically they're wrong.
- 2:47Speaker 3: You know, technically they're wrong. But you're probably not going
- 2:50Speaker 3: to lose too much weight or increase your health parameters
- 2:54Speaker 3: in a good way just by thinking too much. So
- 2:57Speaker 3: I understand marginal game.
- 3:00Speaker 2: One hundred percent. Hey, I want to start with something
- 3:03Speaker 2: weird today. Now I found this video. You I haven't
- 3:07Speaker 2: told you. By the way, we did know prep. I
- 3:09Speaker 2: do a little bit of prep everyone, and you know,
- 3:12Speaker 2: it's solid three four minutes. But Doctor Bill and I
- 3:15Speaker 2: literally chat for about one or two minutes before we
- 3:18Speaker 2: go live, so he doesn't know this is coming. It's
- 3:21Speaker 2: not anything weird, and I don't even know how we
- 3:23Speaker 2: get away, but this is this is a video from
- 3:27Speaker 2: Tucker Carlson was talking to a lady, some health expert.
- 3:31Speaker 2: I apologize or couldn't find her name, but you'll find
- 3:34Speaker 2: it everyone if you want to. So it's Tucker Carlson
- 3:37Speaker 2: talking to this lady. I won't tell you what it's about.
- 3:40Speaker 2: It only goes for about a minute.
- 3:41Speaker 1: Mate. I want you to have a listen, and then
- 3:43Speaker 1: I want to have a chat. Is that all right
- 3:44Speaker 1: with you?
- 3:44Speaker 3: You want me to watch Tucker Carlson. You're gonna say
- 3:48Speaker 3: I want you to watch I know, no, no, no,
- 3:50Speaker 3: it's not about him.
- 3:51Speaker 1: I know you're probably a fan, but not a fan.
- 3:53Speaker 1: But here we go, here we go.
- 3:55Speaker 4: Just give us the being slain condition of health in
- 3:57Speaker 4: the nastace, absolutely so. Seventy four percent of American adults
- 4:02Speaker 4: now are overweight or obese. Close to fifty percent of
- 4:06Speaker 4: children are overweight or obese. Seventy seven percent of young
- 4:09Speaker 4: adults are unfit to serve in the military because of
- 4:11Speaker 4: these issues like obesity.
- 4:13Speaker 3: Now, let's talk about diabetes.
- 4:15Speaker 4: Fifty percent full fifty percent of American adults have pre
- 4:19Speaker 4: diabetes or type two diabetes, which is a fundamental issue
- 4:22Speaker 4: in how ourselves contrasts the country Tucker have pre diabetes
- 4:25Speaker 4: or type two diabetes, and thirty percent of teens now
- 4:29Speaker 4: have pre diabetes. We have eighteen percent of teens with
- 4:32Speaker 4: fatty liver disease, a disease that used to be in
- 4:35Speaker 4: late stage alcoholics. Cancer rates are skyrocketing and the young
- 4:39Speaker 4: and the elderly. Young adult cancers are up seventy nine percent,
- 4:42Speaker 4: and this is the first year in American history We're
- 4:44Speaker 4: estimated to have over two million cases of cancer. Twenty
- 4:48Speaker 4: five percent of American women are on an antidepressant medication.
- 4:52Speaker 4: Forty percent of eighteen year olds have a mental health diagnosis.
- 4:56Speaker 4: We have the highest infant and maternal and mortality rate
- 4:58Speaker 4: in the entire developed world. Infertility is at peak rates.
- 5:04Speaker 4: I mean, I don't know how this is not front
- 5:05Speaker 4: page news. Infertility is going up one percent per year.
- 5:08Speaker 4: Sperm counts are going down one percent per year since
- 5:12Speaker 4: the nineteen seventies. Now, the thing that people need to
- 5:15Speaker 4: understand is that all of these conditions are caused or
- 5:20Speaker 4: driven by the exact same thing, which is metabolic dysfunction.
- 5:25Speaker 2: I would imagine, I would imagine that Australia is similar,
- 5:29Speaker 2: not in terms of absolute numbers, because we have a
- 5:31Speaker 2: smaller population, but you know, percentage wise, I wouldn't think
- 5:35Speaker 2: we would be drastically different.
- 5:37Speaker 1: What did you think about that?
- 5:41Speaker 3: Those are some pretty sobering statistics, and obviously I can't
- 5:45Speaker 3: fact check all of them, but I can say that
- 5:48Speaker 3: I've heard the same trends. You know, clearly our country
- 5:52Speaker 3: and many many in the western developed world have problems
- 5:55Speaker 3: with obesity, which spiral into problems with diabet There's also
- 6:03Speaker 3: I believe what she said about fertility and sperm counts
- 6:07Speaker 3: is also true. I've read similar articles to that effect
- 6:10Speaker 3: as well, although I don't know that it's completely attributable
- 6:15Speaker 3: to metabolic dysfunction. There are many other potential explanations that
- 6:19Speaker 3: could factor into changes in fertility rates, some of which
- 6:23Speaker 3: have nothing to do with biology at all, but just
- 6:25Speaker 3: psychological trends, social trends. So but yeah, a lot of
- 6:30Speaker 3: what she's saying, those trends, at least I've heard similar statistics.
- 6:38Speaker 2: It's interesting that like, we've never been more educated, we've
- 6:42Speaker 2: never had more resources, Like we've never been I was
- 6:46Speaker 2: going to say, we've never been smarter. That's not true behaviorally,
- 6:51Speaker 2: maybe we're stupid, who knows, But yeah, it seems that
- 6:56Speaker 2: despite all of our technology and all of our research
- 7:00Speaker 2: breakthroughs and everything that's happening in science, as a.
- 7:07Speaker 1: Bunch of people living on.
- 7:08Speaker 2: A planet, from a physical wellness point of view, we
- 7:13Speaker 2: seem to be going backwards, not forward.
- 7:15Speaker 3: Stock Oh yeah, I totally agree with that. And it's
- 7:19Speaker 3: like we're a victim of our own success. I mean,
- 7:21Speaker 3: the human species has been so successful around the world
- 7:26Speaker 3: in creating a lifestyle where we have easy access to
- 7:31Speaker 3: high caloric foods, which we used to struggle obtaining a
- 7:36Speaker 3: long time ago, you know, on the African savannah. So
- 7:40Speaker 3: now we have a bounty of those high calorie foods,
- 7:43Speaker 3: and our brain is wired to lust after them. Okay,
- 7:48Speaker 3: our brain is wired to crave them, and they're in abundance.
- 7:52Speaker 3: So there's a mismatch between how our brain reacts to
- 7:56Speaker 3: these foods and drives our behavior and the environ in
- 8:00Speaker 3: which we've currently in which we currently live. And I
- 8:03Speaker 3: say we're a victim of our own success, because you know,
- 8:06Speaker 3: humanity as a collective species has done a marvelous job
- 8:11Speaker 3: utilizing agriculture, domesticating animals, creating foods that can deliver a
- 8:19Speaker 3: high amount of the you know, nutrition, but also a
- 8:24Speaker 3: high amount of the bad things that we need to
- 8:28Speaker 3: get out of our diet if we want to get
- 8:30Speaker 3: back to a healthy lifestyle. You also couple that to
- 8:34Speaker 3: our intelligence in creating machinery and industries that can do
- 8:38Speaker 3: hard labor for us. So the amount of physical labor
- 8:42Speaker 3: that most human beings on the planet have to engage
- 8:44Speaker 3: in has gone way down, and in fact, most jobs
- 8:48Speaker 3: are sedentary. You know, you're just sitting on your butt
- 8:52Speaker 3: all day and there's not a lot of time left
- 8:55Speaker 3: for exercise and activity, which again, back in All D's
- 9:02Speaker 3: on the African savannah, we were always hunting, foraging, moving around.
- 9:07Speaker 3: You know, we were more of a nomad species, relocating
- 9:11Speaker 3: from place to police. Yeah, long story short, we were
- 9:15Speaker 3: getting a lot of physical activity that we simply don't
- 9:19Speaker 3: obtain today.
- 9:21Speaker 2: I heard something. It's it's probably not an accurate stat
- 9:24Speaker 2: but I think it couldn't. It might be somewhere in
- 9:27Speaker 2: the ballpark, but the average Australian expends about eight hundred
- 9:31Speaker 2: calories a day, which is a lot of calories, but
- 9:34Speaker 2: eight hundred calories a day less than fifty years ago.
- 9:39Speaker 2: And you know, we're the sit down generation like we've
- 9:43Speaker 2: never in the history of our species. We've never sat
- 9:48Speaker 2: more than we currently sit, because you know, I would
- 9:52Speaker 2: assume ninety percent of jobs are done seated or I
- 9:56Speaker 2: don't know what percentage, but a lot, you know. So
- 9:59Speaker 2: it's not only our we're eating more. So the volume
- 10:02Speaker 2: is up, the quality of food depending on you know
- 10:06Speaker 2: who and where, but the quality of food arguably is
- 10:09Speaker 2: down or the crap, you know, more more processed food,
- 10:13Speaker 2: less nutritional value, all of those things. But yeah, overall,
- 10:18Speaker 2: we just don't like incidental and occupational activity as we
- 10:22Speaker 2: call us ex sized scientists call it incidental and occupational
- 10:25Speaker 2: activity is down. So in general terms, we just don't
- 10:29Speaker 2: move as much as we used to move fifty years ago,
- 10:32Speaker 2: one hundred years ago, and especially hundreds of years ago,
- 10:35Speaker 2: when you know you would think a lot of people
- 10:37Speaker 2: moved a lot.
- 10:40Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, and then you know that's that's good news
- 10:44Speaker 3: bad news. I mean, we know these are the problems
- 10:47Speaker 3: that are leading to obesity and diabetes. We know it's
- 10:50Speaker 3: poor diet, we know it's not enough exercise, and you
- 10:55Speaker 3: know we should throw stress into that equation too. Remarkably,
- 10:58Speaker 3: it goes back to the paradise you alluded to earlier.
- 11:01Speaker 3: Craig in that we live in a tremendously wonderful time.
- 11:07Speaker 3: I mean, a lot of our basic needs are met. Okay,
- 11:10Speaker 3: even if you don't do a great deal of work
- 11:13Speaker 3: or make a lot of money, you can live a
- 11:14Speaker 3: pretty comfortable lifestyle. But we generate an extraordinary amount of
- 11:19Speaker 3: unnecessary stress and pressure and anxiety, and I think that
- 11:23Speaker 3: feeds back into making many of us miserable, which drives
- 11:27Speaker 3: appetite and discourages people from wanting to move around and exercise.
- 11:32Speaker 3: So I think ironically we have a higher level of
- 11:36Speaker 3: stress than maybe our evolutionary ancestors even did.
- 11:41Speaker 1: Yeah, that's interesting. I often think this.
- 11:44Speaker 2: Imagine going back a couple of hundred years and just
- 11:47Speaker 2: like being there for a day and you say, guess what.
- 11:51Speaker 2: In the future, you're just gonna like, if you're hot,
- 11:53Speaker 2: you're just going to push a button. And I'll go,
- 11:55Speaker 2: what's a button? We have to explain that you're going
- 11:57Speaker 2: to push a button on a wall and the room's
- 12:01Speaker 2: going to get cool, and then when you're cold, you
- 12:04Speaker 2: push another button, then the room will get warm. And
- 12:06Speaker 2: by the way, you're just going to have this thing
- 12:09Speaker 2: where it's going to have all this food in it.
- 12:11Speaker 2: That's fresh all the time and it keeps it cool.
- 12:16Speaker 2: And then you're going to have this other thing that
- 12:17Speaker 2: you can cook food in about ninety seconds. It's called
- 12:20Speaker 2: a microwave ove. And and then you're going to have this
- 12:22Speaker 2: thing you can just turn and cold fresh water comes
- 12:26Speaker 2: out like as much as you want. Like they'd be like,
- 12:29Speaker 2: that's bullshit, that's aw or you know, you know what.
- 12:33Speaker 3: Would happen to you if you were to go back
- 12:35Speaker 3: to the middle you would be burned at the steak
- 12:38Speaker 3: as a heretic and loon. That's what you would be,
- 12:41Speaker 3: you know, that's what they would do to you. Well,
- 12:45Speaker 3: Craig on the barbie.
- 12:47Speaker 1: But even imagine like when I was born, you know,
- 12:51Speaker 1: in the sixties.
- 12:52Speaker 2: Imagine if you said, in the not too distant future,
- 12:54Speaker 2: you're going to have you know, that telephone on the
- 12:57Speaker 2: wall with the bloody rotary do siling system. Well, you're
- 13:01Speaker 2: going to have a phone in your pocket that's you know,
- 13:05Speaker 2: like the size of a pack of cigarettes or smaller,
- 13:08Speaker 2: because that's what they had in their pocket in those days.
- 13:12Speaker 1: And not only not only will you be.
- 13:14Speaker 2: Able to talk to anyone anywhere in the world, it'll
- 13:18Speaker 2: also basically have more information than you know, all the
- 13:24Speaker 2: Encyclopedia Britannicas, which were also big in the sixties, put
- 13:28Speaker 2: together times a billion in your pocket and you can
- 13:31Speaker 2: just ask it a question and it will tell you
- 13:34Speaker 2: the answer to any like a game. And it's not
- 13:37Speaker 2: like that was a thousand years ago, that was last week.
- 13:40Speaker 2: In terms of the evolutionary you know timeline.
- 13:44Speaker 3: Yeah, it's crazy to think about, and it would be
- 13:47Speaker 3: a fun experiment to be able to go back and
- 13:49Speaker 3: see what those individuals thought. I mean, you could even
- 13:52Speaker 3: like go back in time to the Middle Ages and see,
- 13:56Speaker 3: you know, you're not feeling well, not because of bad
- 13:59Speaker 3: error or because of demons or you know, gods that
- 14:03Speaker 3: are angry at you, it's because of this tiny germ. Oh,
- 14:07Speaker 3: we'll show it to me. Well, we need a microscope
- 14:09Speaker 3: to see it. What's a microscope? And so we're going
- 14:13Speaker 3: to have medicines one day that can get rid of
- 14:16Speaker 3: these germs and make people well. And yeah, they'll just
- 14:20Speaker 3: be looking at you like you're crazy. And it makes
- 14:23Speaker 3: you think, twenty forty one hundred years from now, what
- 14:27Speaker 3: are humans going to come up with that we can't
- 14:29Speaker 3: even imagine today. Yeah, you know, you know, I'm assuming
- 14:34Speaker 3: we last that long. What are they going to come
- 14:36Speaker 3: up with that'll just blow us away? It's it's fun
- 14:40Speaker 3: to philosophize and think about those sorts of things.
- 14:43Speaker 1: And it's amazing.
- 14:44Speaker 2: Like we look back at the science in inverted commas
- 14:47Speaker 2: from you know, twenty thirty forty years ago, and some
- 14:50Speaker 2: of it was solid and some of it were like,
- 14:52Speaker 2: how on earth?
- 14:53Speaker 1: How on earth? You know?
- 14:54Speaker 2: Even for example, with the food pyramid is one that
- 14:57Speaker 2: I speak about too much, but you know, that was absolute,
- 15:00Speaker 2: that was break groundbreaking research and we found out that
- 15:05Speaker 2: it isn't and it's bullshit, but you know, but at
- 15:09Speaker 2: the time, everyone was like, this is the way to eat.
- 15:12Speaker 2: Low fat eating equals low fat humans, and off we go.
- 15:17Speaker 2: And yeah, it makes you wonder in fifty years what
- 15:20Speaker 2: they're going to talk about that was science in inverted
- 15:22Speaker 2: commas in twenty twenty four, That to them will be laughable.
- 15:27Speaker 3: You know, I'm going to make a prediction because I
- 15:29Speaker 3: won't be here to verify it or not. I won't
- 15:31Speaker 3: care if I'm right or wrong, but I'll make a
- 15:33Speaker 3: prediction that we are obsessed way too much with the
- 15:37Speaker 3: individual components of of you know, what types of bats
- 15:42Speaker 3: and how much sugar and all this other stuff that
- 15:44Speaker 3: are in foods. We're too obsessed with that. And you know,
- 15:48Speaker 3: to an extent, we do need to pay attention to
- 15:51Speaker 3: how much sugar, salt, and fat are in there. But
- 15:53Speaker 3: what that misses? What that misses or all the chemicals
- 15:57Speaker 3: that are put into food, all these preserved and all
- 16:00Speaker 3: these other chemicals that we have no idea what they
- 16:04Speaker 3: might be doing in our body, either alone or in combination,
- 16:08Speaker 3: because they're not sufficiently tested before they're utilized in food products.
- 16:13Speaker 3: Europe is a little better about this, and lo and behold, Craig.
- 16:17Speaker 3: They don't have a huge obesity problem.
- 16:20Speaker 1: Wow.
- 16:20Speaker 3: I just came back from a from a tour of
- 16:23Speaker 3: the Mediterranean, Okay, and it's striking the difference of how
- 16:30Speaker 3: thin people are, how lean people are in general over
- 16:34Speaker 3: there compared to almost anywhere you put yourself into in America.
- 16:39Speaker 3: There's it's a striking difference. But one thing that is
- 16:42Speaker 3: not different when you go to the Mediterranean, it is
- 16:46Speaker 3: full of cafes, pastries, canola's, gelato. There's all kinds of sweets, pastas, carbs, everything. Right,
- 16:54Speaker 3: The diet doesn't strike me as being ridiculously different. Maybe
- 16:59Speaker 3: the portions are smaller, and there's there's more fruits and
- 17:02Speaker 3: vegetables and stuff. But the thing that struck me was
- 17:07Speaker 3: the freshness of the foods. Okay, people like go out
- 17:10Speaker 3: to the market and or their gardens and grab what
- 17:14Speaker 3: they want to eat right then and there, right off
- 17:16Speaker 3: the vine, so to speak. Okay, it's all fresh. There's
- 17:19Speaker 3: no chemicals, there's no preservatives, and maybe the stuff that
- 17:24Speaker 3: we're putting into food in order to process it or
- 17:27Speaker 3: ultra process it, maybe those are the real culprits. And
- 17:30Speaker 3: fifty years from now, my prediction is that we are
- 17:34Speaker 3: going to sort some of that out and we're going
- 17:35Speaker 3: to look back and say, oh, why were we so
- 17:37Speaker 3: obsessed with a little too much sugar? It was these
- 17:40Speaker 3: chemicals that were making everybody so large.
- 17:43Speaker 1: That is a very very interesting hypothesis. Stock I don't
- 17:48Speaker 1: disagree with you.
- 17:49Speaker 2: And you know, further to that, when you have I
- 17:55Speaker 2: always talk to people about you know, packaging and food labeling.
- 17:58Speaker 2: And you know what's written on the front of the
- 18:01Speaker 2: box or the can or the packet is advertising. And
- 18:05Speaker 2: the tiny little box, the tiny little square down the
- 18:09Speaker 2: bottom of the back of the package with the teeny
- 18:12Speaker 2: tiny writing that you really, I can't read it because
- 18:15Speaker 2: my eyes are shit and I'm old. But there's a
- 18:18Speaker 2: reason that it's hidden away down the bottom at the back,
- 18:21Speaker 2: and there's a reason that the writing is so small,
- 18:25Speaker 2: and there's a reason that they're trying to make it
- 18:27Speaker 2: is as obscure as possible, because they don't want you
- 18:31Speaker 2: to pay attention to that, you know. And it's funny
- 18:34Speaker 2: when you look at something like and this is ironic,
- 18:38Speaker 2: but a protein bar, you go, I might have a
- 18:40Speaker 2: protein bar that's better than a Mars baruck.
- 18:43Speaker 1: Probably not.
- 18:44Speaker 2: I mean some of them, like some of those protein
- 18:48Speaker 2: bars in inverted commas, which sell like hotcakes in Australia
- 18:52Speaker 2: because ironically hotcakes, we think, you know, that's a healthy option.
- 18:57Speaker 2: Some of them have got fifty ingredients and forty of
- 19:01Speaker 2: the ingredients you don't know what they are.
- 19:04Speaker 3: Yeah, And we have the same trends over here, people
- 19:08Speaker 3: gobbling these things down like their candy, and they're marketed
- 19:12Speaker 3: as if they're not candy. Yeah, you know, and it's
- 19:17Speaker 3: kind of goofy to me. I think one of the
- 19:19Speaker 3: manufacturers of these bars got sued because they were making
- 19:22Speaker 3: health cleans, when in fact they were just a glorified
- 19:25Speaker 3: candy bar.
- 19:26Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, Well, I mean, I don't know how
- 19:29Speaker 2: it is in the States, but there's a I think
- 19:33Speaker 2: it's called the Heart Foundation in Australia where you can
- 19:36Speaker 2: buy what's called a healthy Heart tick or something like that.
- 19:41Speaker 1: So companies pay.
- 19:43Speaker 2: It's all about just a transaction to get this tick
- 19:46Speaker 2: of approval from the Heart Foundation on the front of
- 19:49Speaker 2: their product. And it doesn't it's not because it meets
- 19:52Speaker 2: some criteria. I could be wrong on this, but I'm
- 19:55Speaker 2: pretty sure. Maybe it's got to meet some very low
- 19:58Speaker 2: level criteria. But for the most part, my understanding is
- 20:02Speaker 2: it's something that companies pay for, which is good for
- 20:06Speaker 2: the Heart Foundation, I guess, because it gives them money
- 20:09Speaker 2: in the bank. But it seemed to be some kind of,
- 20:13Speaker 2: you know, brand improving kind of strategy. Do you think
- 20:17Speaker 2: that like talking about the past and the now. I
- 20:22Speaker 2: always feel like we have become disconnected from the wisdom
- 20:28Speaker 2: of our body. And I know that sounds fluffy, but
- 20:32Speaker 2: you know, like our body is so smart now. Bio
- 20:35Speaker 2: is a biofeedback system that's always talking to us. But
- 20:39Speaker 2: you know, in the days of instant gratification and fast
- 20:43Speaker 2: food and basically dopamine at will, you know, or dopamine
- 20:48Speaker 2: providers of sorts, you know, like where we can just
- 20:50Speaker 2: push that button and get a quick fix. I feel
- 20:53Speaker 2: like we've disconnected from our body in a way.
- 20:57Speaker 3: We are totally disconnected. There's a scientific term for these phenomenon,
- 21:02Speaker 3: and it's called evolutionary mismatch, and it's basically that we
- 21:06Speaker 3: are not born for this time. We are not born
- 21:10Speaker 3: for the modern environment that we have created. We are
- 21:13Speaker 3: born to literally be hunters and gatherers and small tribes
- 21:17Speaker 3: on the African savannah. That's what we've evolved to be
- 21:20Speaker 3: for tens of millions of years. So that is deeply,
- 21:25Speaker 3: deeply wired into our brain and that's just how things are,
- 21:30Speaker 3: that's our history. But you put us in. You put
- 21:33Speaker 3: an animal like that into the modern world where it's
- 21:36Speaker 3: a veritable candy land and you don't have to move
- 21:39Speaker 3: around as much. You know, you sit and watch television
- 21:42Speaker 3: passively for hours. You have an animal that is ill
- 21:47Speaker 3: suited for its environment, and there's negative health consequences that
- 21:51Speaker 3: start to accumulate over time with that lifestyle. And it's
- 21:56Speaker 3: a catch twenty two with our brain because back in
- 21:59Speaker 3: our old evolutionary days, you know, millions of years ago,
- 22:03Speaker 3: when it was hard to come by something sweet or
- 22:06Speaker 3: something fatty, our brain would go absolutely nuts when it
- 22:12Speaker 3: finally tasted something that had something that had a sweet
- 22:16Speaker 3: flavor or a fatty flavor, it would just go nuts.
- 22:19Speaker 3: Dopamine would be surging because it's a substantial reward, and
- 22:23Speaker 3: it would induce us to move our bodies to go
- 22:26Speaker 3: find those foods as much as we can. But they
- 22:29Speaker 3: were quite rare, so they were they were rare treats.
- 22:33Speaker 3: But now we can just sit and hit the dopamine
- 22:36Speaker 3: button all day long, popping in crisp after crisp, you know,
- 22:40Speaker 3: candy bar after candy bar, and you know that our
- 22:44Speaker 3: body was not built to handle that level of sugar, fat,
- 22:47Speaker 3: and salt. It just simply is not. And then you
- 22:50Speaker 3: couple that on top of the fact that many of these,
- 22:53Speaker 3: you know, these these candies and potato chips and pretzels
- 22:57Speaker 3: and so on, are highly processed foods with all sorts
- 23:00Speaker 3: of other chemicals added into that. You just have an
- 23:05Speaker 3: incredibly artificial nutritional source that our body has not evolved
- 23:11Speaker 3: to metabolize properly. Okay, it's evolved to enjoy the taste
- 23:17Speaker 3: and the texture, but it's not evolved to translate it
- 23:21Speaker 3: into something nutritionally valuable.
- 23:25Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think like one of the challenges is,
- 23:30Speaker 2: you know that you can push the dopamine button and
- 23:32Speaker 2: go all right, I'm going to eat the cake, or
- 23:34Speaker 2: I'm going to eat the candy bar, or I'm gonna
- 23:35Speaker 2: eat the crisps, or I'm going to eat whatever it
- 23:37Speaker 2: is that thing that while simultaneously being in a body
- 23:42Speaker 2: that isn't working well, you know, and simultaneously thinking I
- 23:48Speaker 2: want to get in shape. I want to change my
- 23:50Speaker 2: body composition, lose fat, lose weight, be healthier, have more energy,
- 23:55Speaker 2: have more function, improve my immune system, create a longer
- 23:59Speaker 2: health span, all that stuff. But for the moment, I'm
- 24:02Speaker 2: going to eat this cake because when I eat this cake,
- 24:04Speaker 2: I get instant gratification. But if I don't eat the cake,
- 24:08Speaker 2: then I don't get instant transformation. And so I'll eat
- 24:11Speaker 2: the cake today, but I'll start tomorrow. And that becomes
- 24:15Speaker 2: a twenty year in a dialogue. And now I'm fifty
- 24:18Speaker 2: two and now I'm morbidly obese. My back hurts, I've
- 24:21Speaker 2: got high blood pressure, I'm diabetic, and I've almost been
- 24:25Speaker 2: changing my operating system since I was thirty, and that
- 24:28Speaker 2: is I think that is the hard thing about delaying
- 24:31Speaker 2: gratification is that they're you know, the point of the
- 24:36Speaker 2: point is that we love that fix that whatever right now,
- 24:40Speaker 2: and when we say no, you just left in this
- 24:43Speaker 2: kind of space of well, this is not much fun.
- 24:46Speaker 2: And the worst thing I've put that in inverted commas
- 24:50Speaker 2: is that you've got to have quite a lot of
- 24:51Speaker 2: those days to actually see real shift, and then you've
- 24:56Speaker 2: got a string years together to actually change your you know,
- 25:00Speaker 2: your hardwired operating system. And this is you know, when
- 25:04Speaker 2: you've been eating and thinking and behaving and socializing and
- 25:08Speaker 2: living a certain way for twenty five years, you're not
- 25:11Speaker 2: going to fix that by next Tuesday.
- 25:13Speaker 1: You know.
- 25:14Speaker 3: No, it's a step wise process and it's not something
- 25:19Speaker 3: This is a misconception that a lot of people have,
- 25:21Speaker 3: and that's why fad diets are so popular. Everybody's looking
- 25:25Speaker 3: for a quick fix, just like you know, the satisfaction
- 25:28Speaker 3: you get from a piece of cake. They want to
- 25:31Speaker 3: get a quick fix out of a dietary program. And
- 25:34Speaker 3: that's not going to happen. That's not how these things work. Yes,
- 25:37Speaker 3: these are more like lifelong changes. Lifestyle changes. You have
- 25:42Speaker 3: to program your brain to resist instant gratification, keeping in
- 25:49Speaker 3: mind the long term goal and the long term satisfaction
- 25:53Speaker 3: that will come with a healthier you know, with a
- 25:58Speaker 3: healthier body. So it's hard for human beings to think
- 26:02Speaker 3: like that because again we're not evolutionarily designed to think
- 26:06Speaker 3: in the long term. Our lives used to be much shorter, okay,
- 26:10Speaker 3: and resources were much more scarce, so we operated on
- 26:15Speaker 3: a very here and now level okay. And again that
- 26:19Speaker 3: kind of behavior is deeply ingrained into our brain. It's
- 26:22Speaker 3: deeply hardwired there. So you really do have to put
- 26:26Speaker 3: forth substantial effort. And that's why this is not easy. Crazy.
- 26:30Speaker 3: This is why so many people fail when they try.
- 26:33Speaker 3: Is you have to put forth a daily effort to
- 26:36Speaker 3: try to resist the instant gratification, keeping in mind the
- 26:39Speaker 3: real prize is down the road, and it's full of
- 26:43Speaker 3: hurdles to get there, but it's worth getting there.
- 26:47Speaker 2: Yeah, I my listeners know this, but don't after you know,
- 26:51Speaker 2: at doc, But I spent. I always had food issues
- 26:54Speaker 2: when I was a kid because I was a fat
- 26:56Speaker 2: kid and I had everything that wasn't niled down. And
- 26:58Speaker 2: then I got in shape, lean strong, functional, and then
- 27:02Speaker 2: towards my late twenties and early thirties, I had five businesses.
- 27:07Speaker 2: Life was good, making lots, do you know. From the
- 27:10Speaker 2: outside looking in, everything was good. But my volatile relationship
- 27:16Speaker 2: with food kind of re emerged, and I started to
- 27:19Speaker 2: just I'll have a little bit of this, little bit
- 27:21Speaker 2: of that, and that won't hurt you know, one piece
- 27:24Speaker 2: won't kill me, that kind of idea, and of course
- 27:27Speaker 2: one piece won't literally kill you generally. But then I
- 27:30Speaker 2: looked up a minute later, which was probably a year later,
- 27:33Speaker 2: and I was basically fat again.
- 27:36Speaker 1: And I remember, so here I am.
- 27:39Speaker 2: I'm this guy who's got quite a high profile in
- 27:42Speaker 2: Australian fitness and workshops and seminars all around the country.
- 27:47Speaker 2: I'm writing for magazines and news. I'm doing all this
- 27:50Speaker 2: stuff and I'm lying. I'm lying to people about what
- 27:55Speaker 2: I do, you know, And I'm wearing bigger and baggier
- 27:59Speaker 2: workout so people won't know.
- 28:02Speaker 1: Of course they won't.
- 28:03Speaker 2: No, nobody could possibly tell, because these are magic clothes
- 28:06Speaker 2: right right right Like for me, I don't know about you,
- 28:10Speaker 2: but for me, like food was it really took until
- 28:15Speaker 2: I was and even though I knew what to do.
- 28:17Speaker 2: I had pretty good understanding, I was pretty educated all that.
- 28:23Speaker 2: For me, it just took, I would say, until I
- 28:26Speaker 2: was about thirty five before I got I would say
- 28:31Speaker 2: almost the analogy would be clean and sober, do you
- 28:34Speaker 2: know what I mean?
- 28:34Speaker 1: Where I wasn't pushing itself or others. It took me
- 28:37Speaker 1: a long time.
- 28:40Speaker 3: I've heard psychologists talk in those terms about food addiction
- 28:43Speaker 3: and john food addiction, treating it as such and people
- 28:47Speaker 3: who can finally modify their habits as kind of a
- 28:50Speaker 3: sobering up. I've heard that before. So it's a pretty
- 28:54Speaker 3: apt analogy, I would say. And there's even been studies
- 28:57Speaker 3: that show that sugar lates up to seeing parts of
- 28:59Speaker 3: your brain cocaine will, So there are some parallels there.
- 29:04Speaker 3: And everyone is well aware how hard it is to
- 29:07Speaker 3: break addiction with substances like cocaine or alcohol. But what
- 29:11Speaker 3: we don't appreciate very much is it's just as hard
- 29:15Speaker 3: in many cases to break those addictions to sugar, fat,
- 29:18Speaker 3: and salt as well. I applaud you for doing it,
- 29:22Speaker 3: and I know a lot of people struggle with it because,
- 29:26Speaker 3: like I said, we are evolutionarily hardwired to go after
- 29:29Speaker 3: those types of foods. So we're basically trying to put
- 29:33Speaker 3: a break on the human spirit itself. We're trying to
- 29:37Speaker 3: put a break on innate, impulsive actions, and that's really
- 29:42Speaker 3: difficult to do, but it can be done. And what
- 29:45Speaker 3: I found, you know, as I started to eat better
- 29:49Speaker 3: and because you know, as you get older, your metabolism
- 29:52Speaker 3: isn't what it used to be, and the same foods
- 29:54Speaker 3: that you put into you start to pack on pounds
- 29:57Speaker 3: rather than just magically, you know, disappear. So I noticed
- 30:01Speaker 3: in my twenties I was gaining weight for like the
- 30:04Speaker 3: first time in my life, but my diet wasn't changing much.
- 30:09Speaker 3: But since my metabolism was changing because of age and
- 30:12Speaker 3: I was a little more sedentary in those days, I
- 30:15Speaker 3: had to make some changes in order to stay as
- 30:18Speaker 3: lean as I used to be. And I wanted to
- 30:21Speaker 3: do that because in my brain I knew it was healthy.
- 30:23Speaker 3: You know, I'm here working in biomedical sciences, so I
- 30:27Speaker 3: have to toe that line, right, you know, I have
- 30:31Speaker 3: to practice what I preach, kind of like your story
- 30:33Speaker 3: was alluding to. So I made those changes and they
- 30:37Speaker 3: were really difficult, you know, breaking habits and forming new ones.
- 30:42Speaker 3: It's serious business, but it can be done. And the
- 30:45Speaker 3: good news is that, at least in my experience, as
- 30:49Speaker 3: you start to eat healthier and as you start to
- 30:51Speaker 3: move around more and get more exercise, these sorts of
- 30:55Speaker 3: activities become addictive as well. So you're trading off an
- 30:59Speaker 3: addiction for junk food for an addiction with healthy behavior. Okay.
- 31:05Speaker 3: I used to be addicted to mountain dew, doctor pepper,
- 31:08Speaker 3: these sodas, okay, these are these sugar waters. I made
- 31:12Speaker 3: a clean cold turkey break from those after realizing it's
- 31:17Speaker 3: hard for me to fathom that. When I was younger,
- 31:19Speaker 3: I did not appreciate how much sugar was in a
- 31:21Speaker 3: single can of pop or soda. And once I learned that,
- 31:26Speaker 3: once someone told me that, I'm like, holy crap, I
- 31:28Speaker 3: really got to knock this stuff off. This is an
- 31:31Speaker 3: easy way to start losing weight. Okay, So I quit
- 31:35Speaker 3: them cold turkey. I just started drinking water. You know,
- 31:38Speaker 3: water is plenty of refreshing for me. That was one
- 31:41Speaker 3: of the biggest changes I saw. You know, in my
- 31:45Speaker 3: history of dealing with weight issues, is that just dropping
- 31:51Speaker 3: soda out of your life can work. Wonders. But then
- 31:55Speaker 3: I'm like, you know, get addicted to all sorts of teas,
- 31:58Speaker 3: you know, and you know there's other alternatives out there
- 32:03Speaker 3: that you can find and enjoy with as much you know,
- 32:08Speaker 3: passion as you did the other products. The big difference
- 32:12Speaker 3: is they're healthier for you.
- 32:14Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 32:15Speaker 2: One of the things I used to do doc when
- 32:17Speaker 2: I owned gyms and I did you know, my I
- 32:20Speaker 2: was at the cold face of personal training forever. And
- 32:24Speaker 2: when people would come in, we'd do an assessment, which
- 32:27Speaker 2: would be, you know, there'd be a bit of formal stuff,
- 32:30Speaker 2: a bit of hesting per se, you know, strength and fitness,
- 32:35Speaker 2: and a few bits and pieces, but we'd have a
- 32:37Speaker 2: really good chat and I would say to people.
- 32:41Speaker 1: People would say, no, I've got to I eat too much,
- 32:43Speaker 1: you know, I moved too little, all that kind of stuff.
- 32:45Speaker 2: And I'd say, take me through a typical day of
- 32:48Speaker 2: what you put in your body. And they'd tell me breakfast, lunch,
- 32:52Speaker 2: and dinner. And I'd go, yeah, but tell me about
- 32:54Speaker 2: all the stuff you drink. And what was interesting was
- 32:59Speaker 2: a bigger percentage of people than you might imagine drink
- 33:04Speaker 2: about a thousand calories a day on top of their meals.
- 33:08Speaker 3: Right, they make coffees over here that are almost a
- 33:12Speaker 3: thousand calories in one serving. It's insane.
- 33:16Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's what people don't realize.
- 33:18Speaker 2: So I used to say to people, what we're going
- 33:21Speaker 2: to do, Like if obviously this would be a collaboration,
- 33:25Speaker 2: but I'd say, why don't we do this, Why don't
- 33:28Speaker 2: we just cut out liquid calories for one month, Let's
- 33:31Speaker 2: try that. Let's leave your food as it is, because
- 33:34Speaker 2: my experience is the more things you try and change
- 33:36Speaker 2: the more drastically, the less likely people are to maintain
- 33:39Speaker 2: it over any length of time. Right, So, or we
- 33:42Speaker 2: might even say, you know, like have one flat white
- 33:46Speaker 2: or one latte a day or whatever it is, but
- 33:48Speaker 2: we go from a thousand calories to two hundred calories
- 33:51Speaker 2: of liquid.
- 33:51Speaker 1: So that's eight hundred calories.
- 33:53Speaker 2: You know, over thirty days is twenty four thousand calories
- 33:56Speaker 2: we're cutting out without eating any less food. Just that
- 34:00Speaker 2: one little hack or that one little protocol would absolutely
- 34:07Speaker 2: create real change, you know, Like it doesn't need to
- 34:10Speaker 2: be this overwhelming kind of massive global shift in your
- 34:17Speaker 2: operating system. It might just be like, oh, you know, well,
- 34:21Speaker 2: let's say you have one or two wines a night,
- 34:23Speaker 2: and you have three coffees a day, and you have
- 34:26Speaker 2: fruit juice in the morning, and then you have phil
- 34:28Speaker 2: cream milk on your cereal and.
- 34:31Speaker 1: There's a thousand calories. Oh, there's more than a thousand calories.
- 34:34Speaker 3: So so I like that approach though, because it's kind
- 34:39Speaker 3: of like taking baby steps. That approach, to me is
- 34:43Speaker 3: pretty ingenious, and it's a good way to kind of
- 34:45Speaker 3: get people to wade into the water of a healthy
- 34:48Speaker 3: lifestyle because you're allowing them to continue to eat as
- 34:52Speaker 3: they normally would, but you're strategically looking at the beverage factor,
- 34:57Speaker 3: which is underappreciated and offmost people's radars. They don't realize
- 35:02Speaker 3: how many calories are in the sodas and some of
- 35:04Speaker 3: these you know, you know, these lattes and cappuccinos and
- 35:09Speaker 3: stuff or you know, or milkshakes or whatever. Get those
- 35:14Speaker 3: out of your life and maybe walk fifteen twenty minutes
- 35:18Speaker 3: a day. You'll see a pretty revolutionary change just with
- 35:23Speaker 3: those small modifications.
- 35:26Speaker 1: One of the things that I think, I totally agree.
- 35:29Speaker 2: One of the things I think that a lot of
- 35:31Speaker 2: I can only talk from my industry or the industry
- 35:33Speaker 2: that I came from, which is the fitness industry, is
- 35:37Speaker 2: because a lot of people who work in the fitness
- 35:39Speaker 2: industry are of course fit, strong, healthy, functional, and they
- 35:44Speaker 2: not all of them, but a lot of them have
- 35:46Speaker 2: a certain way of eating, and you know, by typical standards.
- 35:52Speaker 1: You know. It's like.
- 35:54Speaker 2: I put up a post yesterday on Instagram which is
- 36:00Speaker 2: essentially a reflection of I didn't intend to read this,
- 36:03Speaker 2: I'm just going to bring it up right now, which
- 36:04Speaker 2: is not very and so one of the things that
- 36:07Speaker 2: I've been told a thousand times is but you've got
- 36:11Speaker 2: to have a life, right And so people are inferring,
- 36:16Speaker 2: you know, and I understand it doesn't make I completely
- 36:19Speaker 2: understand why they say it, because when they look at
- 36:22Speaker 2: my life through their lens, I'm the most boring person
- 36:25Speaker 2: on the planet. I'm clearly malnourished, I clearly have no
- 36:29Speaker 2: fun I have no you know, And so I understand this.
- 36:33Speaker 2: But one of the things that trainers do sometimes also
- 36:36Speaker 2: is they look at the client through their window and
- 36:38Speaker 2: their lens and they try to take the client from
- 36:44Speaker 2: this operating system at one end of the scale to
- 36:47Speaker 2: the other end of the scale in a week, and
- 36:51Speaker 2: it just never.
- 36:51Speaker 1: Works because you too much as you've just got to you.
- 36:55Speaker 2: Know what, this is a multi dimensional challenge. This is psychological, emotional, sociological, behavioral, physiological.
- 37:04Speaker 2: You know, there are so many variables here. And what
- 37:06Speaker 2: you're trying to do is work with Sally or John
- 37:09Speaker 2: that for twenty five years have kind of been in
- 37:12Speaker 2: this reality and now you're taking them over to Disneyland
- 37:18Speaker 2: and going you've got to live here.
- 37:20Speaker 3: Now.
- 37:20Speaker 1: It just doesn't work like that.
- 37:22Speaker 2: So being able to I mean, this is something that
- 37:25Speaker 2: people roll their eyes at, but I remember I worked
- 37:29Speaker 2: with a guy who used to smoke. This is not
- 37:31Speaker 2: a lie over one hundred cigarettes a day. So basically
- 37:35Speaker 2: from when he woke up to when he went to
- 37:36Speaker 2: bed and he came to me and like, clearly so
- 37:41Speaker 2: many things to deal with. But and so our goal
- 37:46Speaker 2: in the first week, our goal was to smoke fifty
- 37:50Speaker 2: cigarettes a day. And people are like, how on earth
- 37:54Speaker 2: are you okay with that as a goal. I'm like,
- 37:56Speaker 2: that is a smart goal, you know why, because that's
- 37:59Speaker 2: half like me setting him a goal of zero or five.
- 38:03Speaker 1: He's not going to do it. He's not going to
- 38:05Speaker 1: do it.
- 38:05Speaker 3: Yeah, you need to frame it in terms of like
- 38:08Speaker 3: a percentage. They say, I got this person to cut
- 38:10Speaker 3: back fifty percent. That way, they're not here in the
- 38:13Speaker 3: raw numbers, you know, but when you hear is that
- 38:15Speaker 3: someone cut their habit in half, that's really admirable, you know, yeah,
- 38:19Speaker 3: cut it in half again, and so on, and you
- 38:22Speaker 3: know it's a reasonable approach. I think you're right. You know,
- 38:27Speaker 3: it's a really good point that you raise in that
- 38:29Speaker 3: there's no one stop shop for everybody when it comes
- 38:32Speaker 3: to changing their habits. You really do have to factor
- 38:35Speaker 3: in their holistic life. You know, what sort of experiences
- 38:39Speaker 3: have they had to have led them to their current behaviors,
- 38:43Speaker 3: and you have to work through those channels and see
- 38:46Speaker 3: things through their eyes in order to design the most
- 38:51Speaker 3: ideal program that's going to be effective in modifying behavior.
- 38:55Speaker 2: Yeah, spirit of mind, doc, trying to understand someone else's
- 38:59Speaker 2: bog of right now? All right, I've got a few
- 39:02Speaker 2: I've got a few Bill Sullivan questions for you. Firstly,
- 39:07Speaker 2: I read that I read that Adam Alter wrote basically
- 39:13Speaker 2: a testimony on your your book. So, doctor Bill's book,
- 39:18Speaker 2: if you haven't heard of it, you should by now
- 39:21Speaker 2: please to meet me.
- 39:22Speaker 1: Jean's germs and the curious forces that make us who
- 39:24Speaker 1: we are.
- 39:25Speaker 2: But I read Adam Alter's book Drunk Tank Pink, I
- 39:29Speaker 2: must have been ten years ago or eight or seven
- 39:32Speaker 2: years ago.
- 39:32Speaker 1: A long time ago now, but what a great book.
- 39:35Speaker 1: Great book, and can you have you read it? Have
- 39:40Speaker 1: you read it?
- 39:40Speaker 3: Like you It was about eight years ago or so
- 39:43Speaker 3: when it first came out.
- 39:44Speaker 2: Yeah, so I remember the story that he tells doc
- 39:47Speaker 2: of and maybe you can explain how this works.
- 39:50Speaker 1: Right. So one of the things that they there.
- 39:54Speaker 2: Was a a police station and they had these holding
- 39:59Speaker 2: cells basically for drunk people. And so it was in
- 40:03Speaker 2: this area I forget where it was, but really violent
- 40:06Speaker 2: people and they'd put all these blokes essentially men in
- 40:09Speaker 2: these holding cells overnight and there'd be punch ons and violence.
- 40:13Speaker 1: It was one of the most violent.
- 40:15Speaker 2: You know, kind of places in the States, or holding
- 40:20Speaker 2: cells in any way. They they found out that through
- 40:25Speaker 2: a range of different things, that if they painted the
- 40:28Speaker 2: holding cells pink, that it completely changed the behavior of
- 40:32Speaker 2: the prisoners or the people being held, and it totally
- 40:37Speaker 2: affected their nervous system the way they communicated that the
- 40:42Speaker 2: violence almost went to zero. Like, what an amazing thing
- 40:47Speaker 2: to think that having like being basically in a pink
- 40:52Speaker 2: room versus a gray room is going to change behavior
- 40:56Speaker 2: that much.
- 40:58Speaker 3: There's been a lot of stuff that have looked at
- 41:01Speaker 3: the behavioral effects of responding to different colors. You know,
- 41:07Speaker 3: there's been some studies that show if a boxer has
- 41:10Speaker 3: on red trunks, he tends to be perceived as much
- 41:14Speaker 3: more aggressive than say a boxer who's wearing neutral or
- 41:18Speaker 3: white trunks.
- 41:19Speaker 1: Wow.
- 41:20Speaker 3: There's been also studies and pharmaceutical companies do this where
- 41:24Speaker 3: they you know, you know how pills get their colors.
- 41:28Speaker 3: It's marketing. They give different colored pills to different people.
- 41:34Speaker 3: And I forget some of the specifics, but like a
- 41:37Speaker 3: yellow pill works fantastically better as an antidepressive depressant than
- 41:45Speaker 3: an antidepressant that had no color or some kind of
- 41:47Speaker 3: neutral color. But if you make it yellow, it seems
- 41:50Speaker 3: to work even better. So it's like there's a placebo
- 41:53Speaker 3: effect accompanying some of these drugs just because of the
- 41:57Speaker 3: color of the pill. It's pretty remarkable. And people, if
- 42:01Speaker 3: you want them to be more urgent, more productive, you
- 42:04Speaker 3: put them in a red room as opposed to like
- 42:07Speaker 3: a green room, because red has a more of an
- 42:10Speaker 3: urgency about it, and people seem to work faster and
- 42:13Speaker 3: harder in a red room and in a green room
- 42:15Speaker 3: they're kind of more chill, but they can get more creative.
- 42:18Speaker 3: So it's really interesting how those colors which we're not
- 42:22Speaker 3: even thinking about, right, it's not on our conscious radar,
- 42:25Speaker 3: but it is somehow affecting us at a subconscious level,
- 42:28Speaker 3: and it's percolating up to change our behavior.
- 42:32Speaker 2: It's amazing the amount of different stimulile variables that can
- 42:37Speaker 2: impact your psychological and or emotional system without you knowing
- 42:43Speaker 2: or without you being super conscious in the moment. Like,
- 42:47Speaker 2: I'm very affected by music, and the wrong music can
- 42:51Speaker 2: make me agitated, and the right music, when I say
- 42:56Speaker 2: right music for me can just literally make me happy.
- 43:01Speaker 3: Like well, as someone who in a is someone who
- 43:04Speaker 3: works in a gym, you have to know that music
- 43:07Speaker 3: can make a really big difference. If you're playing air
- 43:09Speaker 3: supply in the background, you're not going to have a
- 43:11Speaker 3: great workout.
- 43:13Speaker 1: Oh loud of love, God, how do you know is supply?
- 43:17Speaker 1: How old are you?
- 43:20Speaker 3: Well? How you from Australia?
- 43:23Speaker 2: Yeah, that's good, dude. Well you just got to mention
- 43:25Speaker 2: the beg's in excess and.
- 43:27Speaker 3: There you know, but like you put on you put
- 43:30Speaker 3: on survivors ay the Tiger and it's a different story. Right,
- 43:34Speaker 3: you're lifting twice as much as you used to be
- 43:36Speaker 3: able to do when you were hearing lost, lost in
- 43:39Speaker 3: Love or whatever their whatever air supplies U songs.
- 43:44Speaker 1: You're not helping You're not helping your brand by knowing
- 43:46Speaker 1: that I'm just going to say you that, I tell
- 43:48Speaker 1: you that. Hey.
- 43:49Speaker 2: So, one of the pieces of advice that I got
- 43:53Speaker 2: it's not going to surprise you growing up, was that
- 43:57Speaker 2: you need to control your emotions.
- 44:00Speaker 1: My question is is that possible? Can we control our
- 44:04Speaker 1: emotions or do we just respond to them? Or do
- 44:07Speaker 1: our emotions control us? Or is there a better question?
- 44:14Speaker 3: Well, there's certainly a lot of variability, But let me
- 44:17Speaker 3: ask you, do you think you control your emotions better
- 44:20Speaker 3: than when you were two years old?
- 44:24Speaker 2: But most people that'd say, yes, I know you, I do, Yes,
- 44:29Speaker 2: I do.
- 44:30Speaker 3: Well, yeah, then we can control our emotions. We certainly can.
- 44:33Speaker 3: So we have that capacity. Is it easy? No, No,
- 44:37Speaker 3: it's not. Emotions are primal. They surge within us beyond
- 44:44Speaker 3: our control. Okay. We can't control what emotions we feel,
- 44:49Speaker 3: can't really control what sort of thoughts pop into our mind.
- 44:53Speaker 3: But we can put a space in between those sensations
- 44:58Speaker 3: that we feel and what we're going to do about them. Okay.
- 45:02Speaker 3: That's what makes us human is we can insert this space,
- 45:07Speaker 3: this pause in between our emotions and our actions, and
- 45:12Speaker 3: we can take the time to evaluate the emotion and
- 45:16Speaker 3: produce the corresponding reaction that is appropriate to it. Okay.
- 45:22Speaker 3: The classic example is that and we're by we're strongly
- 45:27Speaker 3: biased towards paying attention to our negative emotions. I think
- 45:30Speaker 3: everyone is pretty aware of that. But that's a survival mechanism.
- 45:35Speaker 3: Because if you're walking through the woods and you hear
- 45:38Speaker 3: rustling in the bushes, okay, your first instinct is probably like, oh,
- 45:42Speaker 3: this is an animal or a snake or something out
- 45:44Speaker 3: to get me, and you might you might run and
- 45:46Speaker 3: take off, but it could have just been the wind. Okay.
- 45:49Speaker 3: So again, the beauty of being human is that we
- 45:53Speaker 3: hear these noises, these suspicious noises, we can evaluate that
- 45:58Speaker 3: emotion in the context of the situation and see if
- 46:01Speaker 3: it's a real threat or not. If it's a threat,
- 46:04Speaker 3: we'll run. If it's not, we can deal with it
- 46:06Speaker 3: more rationally.
- 46:08Speaker 1: Yes.
- 46:08Speaker 3: So it's just like the old stoic philosophers used to say,
- 46:13Speaker 3: there's nothing wrong with emotions. It's natural to feel them.
- 46:16Speaker 3: You shouldn't feel guilty or ashamed for feeling those emotions,
- 46:20Speaker 3: but you are responsible for the behavior that was inspired
- 46:27Speaker 3: by those emotions, and you have time, you have a
- 46:29Speaker 3: space that you can put in there to evaluate the
- 46:33Speaker 3: emotion and see what the appropriate response is going to be.
- 46:36Speaker 1: Do you think this is a very personal question, but
- 46:39Speaker 1: do you think that you've gotten more courageous or more
- 46:42Speaker 1: fearful as you've gotten older, or or neither you kind
- 46:48Speaker 1: of status quo?
- 46:50Speaker 3: I think it probably depends a lot on the situation, right.
- 46:55Speaker 3: You know, there are some things that I think I'm
- 46:58Speaker 3: probably much more braver about, and then there's other things
- 47:03Speaker 3: that I'm still very cautious about. So so yeah, it
- 47:07Speaker 3: really depends on the nature of the specific situation. I
- 47:10Speaker 3: would see.
- 47:11Speaker 2: So I watched you on a video and you're on
- 47:16Speaker 2: You're on television, and you said, if you take intestinal
- 47:21Speaker 2: bacteria from a brave mouse and you put it in
- 47:25Speaker 2: a shy mouse, then the shy mouse becomes braver and
- 47:32Speaker 2: less fearful.
- 47:33Speaker 3: I think something like one of it's one of my
- 47:36Speaker 3: favorite experiments. I mean what I mean, what what It's crazy,
- 47:44Speaker 3: isn't it?
- 47:45Speaker 1: And is that? I mean?
- 47:47Speaker 2: I know, can we could we make a race of
- 47:51Speaker 2: super soldiers just by transplanting intestinal bacteria from great people.
- 47:58Speaker 3: I would I would, I would guess no, because in
- 48:04Speaker 3: these studies, and you describe the study quite well, you know,
- 48:09Speaker 3: mice have different personalities. Different strains of mice have different personalities.
- 48:13Speaker 3: Some are more timid and some take greater risks. And
- 48:17Speaker 3: just as you said, if you take the intestinal bacteria
- 48:20Speaker 3: from the brave mouse and put it into the cowardly mouse,
- 48:24Speaker 3: that cowardly mouse starts to become a little more brave.
- 48:28Speaker 3: And we see these types of behavioral changes almost every
- 48:32Speaker 3: time we do these sorts of intestinal microbiota transplant experiments. Okay,
- 48:39Speaker 3: here's one that has been done in humans, and this
- 48:42Speaker 3: one will blow your mind too. There are people who
- 48:46Speaker 3: have certain type of cancer and they're all treated with
- 48:49Speaker 3: the same type of chemotherapy. Some people respond to it,
- 48:53Speaker 3: some people don't. But if you take the bacteria from
- 48:57Speaker 3: the people who respond positively to the key chemotherapeutic treatment
- 49:02Speaker 3: put it into the patients that aren't responding to it,
- 49:06Speaker 3: those patients suddenly respond to the chemotherapy. Wow is crazy.
- 49:12Speaker 3: So what this is telling us is there's something that
- 49:16Speaker 3: the trillions of different bacteria in our guts are producing
- 49:21Speaker 3: a metabolite of some kind, you know, basically a chemical
- 49:25Speaker 3: at the end of the day that is bestowing upon us,
- 49:28Speaker 3: you know, this magical property that we previously didn't have.
- 49:32Speaker 3: And it can work in bad ways too. You know,
- 49:35Speaker 3: there's there's people who have undergone fecal transplantation to actually
- 49:39Speaker 3: treat a superinfection called sea diff. Okay, this is a
- 49:44Speaker 3: colitis infection that many people who are on prolonged antibiotics
- 49:49Speaker 3: suffer from, and this bacterial species called sea diff is
- 49:53Speaker 3: naturally resistant to most antibiotics. What has what can cure
- 49:58Speaker 3: ninety five percent of those cases is if you take
- 50:02Speaker 3: intestinal bacteria from a healthy person put it into that
- 50:05Speaker 3: person with the superinfection, superinfection has gone almost immediately. It's
- 50:11Speaker 3: crazy that it works so well. However, there is a catch.
- 50:15Speaker 3: The donors of this bacteria need to be screened very
- 50:18Speaker 3: carefully because they can also transmit pathogens with these intestinal bacteria.
- 50:23Speaker 3: And there's also a couple cases where allergies were transferred,
- 50:27Speaker 3: and I think at least one case where depression was transferred. So,
- 50:33Speaker 3: you know, it's a marvelous concept and I think it's
- 50:36Speaker 3: going to be a really big piece of the future
- 50:40Speaker 3: medical pie, if you will. I think this is going
- 50:42Speaker 3: to be a mainstream therapy, maybe forty fifty years down
- 50:46Speaker 3: the road, remodeling the microbiome, so to speak. But there
- 50:50Speaker 3: are some caveats that are pretty serious we need to
- 50:53Speaker 3: pay attention to if we're going to engage in this
- 50:56Speaker 3: sort of therapeutic. But yeah, it's pretty fat. You know.
- 51:00Speaker 3: Another thing that can make people take more risks is
- 51:04Speaker 3: that parasite that we've talked about before called toxoplasma GANDHII
- 51:08Speaker 3: that we study in my laboratory that has infected one.
- 51:13Speaker 3: That's the one from cats. No, you get it. You
- 51:16Speaker 3: get it from cat feces, not the urine. You can.
- 51:19Speaker 3: You can drink all the cat urine you want, but
- 51:23Speaker 3: it's the cat feces that that is dangerous.
- 51:26Speaker 2: So you.
- 51:29Speaker 1: Just did our promo, Thanks for that.
- 51:33Speaker 3: Well, yeah, always happy to help. But yeah, the infected
- 51:40Speaker 3: cats can spread it through their stool, okay, But you
- 51:43Speaker 3: can also get it from raw under cooked meat, contaminated water,
- 51:48Speaker 3: and there's multiple ways to get it. But the point
- 51:50Speaker 3: I'm trying to make is that when you do get this,
- 51:53Speaker 3: you don't really get sick. But the parasite will live
- 51:55Speaker 3: in your brain for the rest of your life. And
- 51:57Speaker 3: there are some really compelling studies that correlate the presence
- 52:01Speaker 3: of that parasite in the brain to an increase in
- 52:04Speaker 3: risk taking activity. You know, you're more brave, you're more reckless.
- 52:09Speaker 3: So there's some really interesting things that are beyond genetics,
- 52:12Speaker 3: because there's a genetic component to risk taking behavior as
- 52:15Speaker 3: well that factor into the equation as to whether someone
- 52:19Speaker 3: is timid or risk taking. But what in the world
- 52:22Speaker 3: those bacteria are doing in that original experiment you described,
- 52:26Speaker 3: We have no idea at the moment, but it opens
- 52:29Speaker 3: the doors to some fascinating science.
- 52:33Speaker 2: Yeah, there's just so much we still I mean, there's
- 52:36Speaker 2: so much we know now that we didn't, but there's
- 52:38Speaker 2: still so much that we don't like. And it's interesting
- 52:40Speaker 2: when we know what the out or what a potential
- 52:45Speaker 2: outcome of some intervention or some treatment or whatever is,
- 52:49Speaker 2: but we don't know the mechanism and we know you
- 52:51Speaker 2: do this and this happens, but we don't know why.
- 52:54Speaker 1: It's the That's the bit we need to get right,
- 52:57Speaker 1: is the why.
- 52:58Speaker 3: But that's the great starting point, and that's why I
- 53:00Speaker 3: love working in science because there is no end to
- 53:04Speaker 3: the list of interesting observations that people have made, but
- 53:08Speaker 3: each one opens up a whole new can of worms,
- 53:11Speaker 3: a whole new you know, treasure trove of questions that
- 53:15Speaker 3: we can then go address. And that's what's so endlessly
- 53:19Speaker 3: fascinating about my job.
- 53:22Speaker 2: I know how many things have been discovered, you know.
- 53:27Speaker 2: Accidentally I was talking to on the show today. We're
- 53:31Speaker 2: recording this on the twenty third, which is Monday. I'm
- 53:35Speaker 2: just blanking. What's it called? What's that I'm blanking? What's
- 53:39Speaker 2: the erectile dysfunction drug called?
- 53:42Speaker 3: Oh? Viagra?
- 53:44Speaker 1: Yeah, viagra? Sorry.
- 53:45Speaker 2: I was talking to Alex. Doctor Alex, who's a neurosurgeon,
- 53:50Speaker 2: a friend of mine. He comes on the show. You
- 53:52Speaker 2: two would have a great We should both get you
- 53:54Speaker 2: on one day. But oh, he's great. He's great.
- 53:58Speaker 3: I love to pick the brain of a neuros scientists.
- 54:03Speaker 1: I say, what you did there, We'll put a whip
- 54:06Speaker 1: cracking sound in there.
- 54:09Speaker 2: But we were talking about how I mean that, like
- 54:12Speaker 2: biographer example, was developed as I think a blood treasure
- 54:16Speaker 2: pressure treatment or something similar, and it just had this
- 54:20Speaker 2: weird byproduct that pharmaceutical companies went, hey, look what we
- 54:24Speaker 2: did we just cured one of the greatest man problems
- 54:27Speaker 2: of old time?
- 54:28Speaker 1: Or not?
- 54:28Speaker 3: Really right? No, you're exactly right. It was a blood
- 54:32Speaker 3: pressure medication. That was what it was designed to do.
- 54:36Speaker 3: But as they started putting it into clinical trials, men
- 54:40Speaker 3: started exhibiting this peculiar side effect of erections that would
- 54:44Speaker 3: just appear spontaneously and wouldn't go away. And they started
- 54:47Speaker 3: reporting these to the nurses that were taking care of them,
- 54:50Speaker 3: and that obviously got back to phiser people, and I'm
- 54:54Speaker 3: sure that people who were interested in high blood pressure
- 54:57Speaker 3: were really disappointed. So geniuses in marketing or whatever department
- 55:03Speaker 3: were like talk about, you know, taking lemons and making lemonade.
- 55:09Speaker 3: My god, they turned into a blockbuster drug. They invented this,
- 55:16Speaker 3: this syndrome that didn't even have a name in order
- 55:20Speaker 3: to sell this pill that was going to go into
- 55:23Speaker 3: the trash can because it was not doing what it
- 55:26Speaker 3: was intended to do. Yeah. Wow, they ran away with
- 55:30Speaker 3: that side effect.
- 55:31Speaker 1: It was.
- 55:31Speaker 3: It's quite a story.
- 55:33Speaker 2: And think about the potential, Like if it was efficient
- 55:36Speaker 2: as a blood pressure treatment, they might have made one X,
- 55:40Speaker 2: but with Viagra that made a thousand X, so probably
- 55:46Speaker 2: a million X.
- 55:47Speaker 1: You know, in terms of that.
- 55:49Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, lemons to lemonade a couple of quick questions.
- 55:52Speaker 1: Have you got a little bit or have you got
- 55:54Speaker 1: to go?
- 55:55Speaker 3: No, I'm good, this is fun.
- 55:56Speaker 1: So one of the.
- 55:57Speaker 2: Realities of living in Australia. Well, this is my version.
- 56:01Speaker 2: I've been here for a while now. Is that not all?
- 56:06Speaker 2: But and maybe it's changing a little bit, but a
- 56:09Speaker 2: lot of doctors hand out antibiotics like lollies.
- 56:13Speaker 3: Right, that's too bad.
- 56:16Speaker 1: This is not a good.
- 56:19Speaker 2: I'm not proud to say this, but I reckon I've
- 56:22Speaker 2: been on antibiotics at least twenty times in my life, right,
- 56:26Speaker 2: which is not I know that's not a great thing.
- 56:28Speaker 3: Well, that might not necessarily be a bad thing. Antibiotics
- 56:32Speaker 3: are not evil per se, and sometimes they're life saving,
- 56:35Speaker 3: but there is a tendency in Western civilization to over
- 56:38Speaker 3: prescribe them.
- 56:39Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel that.
- 56:40Speaker 2: So that's my point is just I don't I'm not
- 56:44Speaker 2: asking a specific question, but I'd love you just to
- 56:46Speaker 2: riff on antibiotics and give us like a bit of
- 56:50Speaker 2: your thoughts on antibiotics. And yes, of course they obviously
- 56:54Speaker 2: serve a very legitimate medical purpose.
- 56:57Speaker 1: We know that, but in general, have a chat for
- 57:00Speaker 1: us about that, if you would.
- 57:02Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah. I lecture on this to medical students every year.
- 57:06Speaker 3: Antibiotics are some of the most precious drugs that have
- 57:09Speaker 3: ever been developed. In fact, the first, well the one
- 57:12Speaker 3: that most people ascribed to be the first, was penicillin,
- 57:16Speaker 3: and it was literally called the miracle drug because it
- 57:19Speaker 3: was saving people from fatal infections that we never had
- 57:24Speaker 3: cure for before. These were truly miraculous treatments, and it's
- 57:29Speaker 3: even been suggested that the advent of penicillin helped the
- 57:32Speaker 3: Allies win World War Two. It was that important in
- 57:35Speaker 3: order to save soldiers on the battlefield and soldiers from
- 57:40Speaker 3: suffering from gangreen so they could get back on the
- 57:43Speaker 3: not gangreen, gonorrhea. Actually they were suffering from gonorrhea. They
- 57:47Speaker 3: wanted to clear that up so they can get them
- 57:48Speaker 3: back onto the battlefield. But anyway, these are precious, precious drugs.
- 57:54Speaker 3: But as Alexander Fleming, who discovered penicillin, suggested during his
- 57:57Speaker 3: Nobel Prize speech, if we're not careful with these drugs,
- 58:01Speaker 3: the bacteria are going to evolve resistance to them, and
- 58:04Speaker 3: boy was he right. Within five years of penicillin being
- 58:08Speaker 3: on the market, we started seeing widespread resistance to that antibiotic,
- 58:12Speaker 3: and that's a very scary thing. So antibiotic research exploded
- 58:16Speaker 3: in the subsequent decades up until about the seventies, and
- 58:20Speaker 3: then it started to taper off. And as a consequence,
- 58:23Speaker 3: we had dozens and dozens of wonderful antibiotics that we
- 58:26Speaker 3: could give patients and in many cases they cured their
- 58:30Speaker 3: infection and in some cases it saved their lives. These
- 58:33Speaker 3: are literally life saving drugs. So what's the problem if
- 58:37Speaker 3: he over prescribed them. If we give them when they're
- 58:40Speaker 3: not needed, a couple bad things happen. First of all,
- 58:45Speaker 3: we create environments where bacteria can evolve resistance. Okay, the
- 58:50Speaker 3: more often we use a drug, the higher the probability
- 58:53Speaker 3: that the germ is going to develop resistance. And if
- 58:56Speaker 3: it develops resistance to a series of antibiotics, we can
- 59:01Speaker 3: literally run out of drugs to treat that pathogen. There
- 59:05Speaker 3: will be nothing left in the medicine cabinet to get
- 59:08Speaker 3: rid of that infection. So this leads to what's called
- 59:11Speaker 3: the so called superbugs that are resistant to multiple antibiotics.
- 59:15Speaker 3: That's a big problem. Right now. Sixty five thousand people
- 59:18Speaker 3: die in the United States each year from these superinfections
- 59:22Speaker 3: because doctors can only shrug their shoulders and say, we
- 59:25Speaker 3: have no antibiotics left that will treat this infection. It's
- 59:28Speaker 3: resistant to all of them, and unfortunately, pharmaceutical companies are
- 59:33Speaker 3: not investing in new antibiotic research right now. So that's
- 59:39Speaker 3: a whole other can of worms we can talk about later,
- 59:41Speaker 3: but anti microbial resistance is one of the number one
- 59:45Speaker 3: things we want to be aware of when we give
- 59:47Speaker 3: antibiotics to people. The second problem relates to the microbiome
- 59:51Speaker 3: that we talked about before, so there's been some suggestive studies.
- 59:57Speaker 3: I don't want to say that this is decided science,
- 1:00:00Speaker 3: but if we give antibiotics to infants and young children
- 1:00:05Speaker 3: for prolonged periods of time, that disturbs their microbial environment
- 1:00:11Speaker 3: in their gut, and this can lead to negative health
- 1:00:14Speaker 3: consequences as they grow up. It's been linked to things
- 1:00:17Speaker 3: like allergy, social behavior problems, inflammation, and things like that.
- 1:00:27Speaker 3: So giving antibiotics, especially at a young age, can be
- 1:00:31Speaker 3: life saving, but you want to make sure there are
- 1:00:33Speaker 3: as short term as possible and that you're not giving
- 1:00:35Speaker 3: them for a long time, just in case there are
- 1:00:38Speaker 3: some long term effects associated with damage that the microbiotic receive.
- 1:00:43Speaker 3: This can happen in adults too. I already mentioned earlier.
- 1:00:46Speaker 3: People who are on prolonged antibiotics are more susceptible to
- 1:00:50Speaker 3: see diff infections, and that's naturally resistant to antibiotics, and
- 1:00:55Speaker 3: it takes some really drastic measures in order to treat
- 1:00:58Speaker 3: this horrible infection. So those are some of the main
- 1:01:04Speaker 3: reasons why we are a little more leery about giving
- 1:01:07Speaker 3: antibiotics out liberally. They're life saving medicines, but we want
- 1:01:12Speaker 3: to use them only when necessary. Antibiotics do nothing against
- 1:01:17Speaker 3: viral infections, for example, So if you go to your
- 1:01:20Speaker 3: doctor with your sneezing and sniffling and they don't know
- 1:01:25Speaker 3: if it's a virus or a bacterial infection, antibiotics should
- 1:01:29Speaker 3: not be given, Okay, it should. They should only be
- 1:01:32Speaker 3: given if there's a high probability that the illness is
- 1:01:36Speaker 3: in fact caused by a bacteria, Because if it's caused
- 1:01:39Speaker 3: by a virus, those antibiotics are not going to do anything.
- 1:01:43Speaker 2: Wow, and we're just putting something in our body that
- 1:01:46Speaker 2: that our body.
- 1:01:47Speaker 3: Doesn't Yeah, you're taking it unnecessarily and what goes into
- 1:01:51Speaker 3: our body. Craig also goes into the sewer system, it
- 1:01:54Speaker 3: goes into the waste which gets out into the environment.
- 1:01:57Speaker 3: So a scientists have sampled many places around the environment,
- 1:02:01Speaker 3: at least in the United States, and antibiotics, the ones
- 1:02:05Speaker 3: that we make as human beings, are out there everywhere.
- 1:02:09Speaker 3: And that's a really sad thing to see because if
- 1:02:11Speaker 3: the antibiotics are out there in the environment, then there
- 1:02:14Speaker 3: are germs out there that are resistant to those antibiotics,
- 1:02:18Speaker 3: and then then when they start to infect animals and humans,
- 1:02:20Speaker 3: we have a major problem on our hands.
- 1:02:23Speaker 1: Wow.
- 1:02:24Speaker 2: Hey, one of the things that I've spoken about on
- 1:02:28Speaker 2: this show, not with you, but with another regular guest.
- 1:02:31Speaker 2: We have who's an Australian author and researcher, David Gillespie,
- 1:02:34Speaker 2: who's a gun. He's written a book, a bunch of books,
- 1:02:37Speaker 2: but he's obsessed with sociopathy, right, with sociopaths. And I
- 1:02:42Speaker 2: wanted to ask you and this.
- 1:02:44Speaker 3: He should come over here and comment on our election.
- 1:02:48Speaker 1: Oh he's.
- 1:02:50Speaker 2: He's a genius, but he talks about toxic box bosses
- 1:02:55Speaker 2: and a whole lot of stuff.
- 1:02:56Speaker 1: But anyway, so if one end of that kind of spectrum,
- 1:02:59Speaker 1: we've got.
- 1:03:02Speaker 2: Sociopaths, psychopaths and At the other end of that scale,
- 1:03:07Speaker 2: we've got, you know, compassion, people who are predisposed to
- 1:03:12Speaker 2: being very kind, very compassionate.
- 1:03:14Speaker 1: Do you think that Do you think that there's a
- 1:03:17Speaker 1: genetic component to compassion and what we might broadly call
- 1:03:22Speaker 1: morality and all that kind of stuff. Is that how
- 1:03:26Speaker 1: moral someone is. Do you think that's more.
- 1:03:28Speaker 2: About whatever morality means or ethics, or do you think
- 1:03:31Speaker 2: that's more about environment and upbringing or is there.
- 1:03:34Speaker 1: A genetic component to that?
- 1:03:36Speaker 3: Also, I don't think it's in either. Org there's clearly
- 1:03:40Speaker 3: genes that have been implicated in aggressive and violent behavior. Okay,
- 1:03:44Speaker 3: this has been shown pretty convincingly in mouse models and
- 1:03:48Speaker 3: in some human families where aggression seems to be hereditary.
- 1:03:51Speaker 3: Think like the generations of psychopaths that are born in
- 1:03:54Speaker 3: certain family lineages that can be traced to genetic defects.
- 1:03:57Speaker 3: But what those genetic defects really mean is that there
- 1:04:01Speaker 3: is a change in the brain structure or the brain
- 1:04:03Speaker 3: chemistry in these individuals that make them abnormal. Okay, but
- 1:04:08Speaker 3: there's many, many other reasons that people can snap and
- 1:04:11Speaker 3: go psychopathic, which include any sort of damage to the
- 1:04:15Speaker 3: brain which can be brought upon by infection, trauma like concussions,
- 1:04:21Speaker 3: old age can do it. You know, dementia can sometimes
- 1:04:24Speaker 3: make people violent. There's a whole host of things that
- 1:04:27Speaker 3: can happen to the brain that have nothing to do
- 1:04:30Speaker 3: with genetics, because the brain was perfectly fine before it
- 1:04:33Speaker 3: got injured in some way and then it produced psychopathic behavior. So,
- 1:04:41Speaker 3: and that's not to say that the environment is not
- 1:04:42Speaker 3: important at all, Craig. There's the phenomenon of epigenetics, and
- 1:04:46Speaker 3: it's been shown very clearly that children who are exposed
- 1:04:51Speaker 3: to adverse childhood experiences or aces as they're known in psychology,
- 1:04:56Speaker 3: have a propensity not always, but they have a propensity
- 1:05:00Speaker 3: grow up with behavioral problems, you know, antisocial behaviors, sometimes
- 1:05:05Speaker 3: violent and aggression. And this has been linked to epigenetic
- 1:05:09Speaker 3: changes that happen because of the environment they grew up in.
- 1:05:13Speaker 3: These adverse childhood experiences can modify the gene activity of
- 1:05:19Speaker 3: the genes that are responsible for managing stress, and they,
- 1:05:23Speaker 3: as a consequence, have lifelong problems managing stressful situations, and
- 1:05:29Speaker 3: this can lead to anxiety and even violence later on
- 1:05:32Speaker 3: in life. Yeah, I go again, many different variables in
- 1:05:38Speaker 3: the equation.
- 1:05:39Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes, it just seems like I meete a
- 1:05:42Speaker 2: lot of people who it's like I meant. The reason
- 1:05:45Speaker 2: I asked that was I was talking to a mum
- 1:05:47Speaker 2: and her daughter the other day, and they're both like
- 1:05:51Speaker 2: the nicest people, like just genuinely loving, kind, compassionate.
- 1:05:55Speaker 1: They do all this work and they just don't want anything.
- 1:05:58Speaker 2: And I'm like, if I wonder if the daughters like
- 1:06:01Speaker 2: the mum because she grew up in that kind of energy,
- 1:06:04Speaker 2: in that environment and that mindset, or there's a genetic
- 1:06:07Speaker 2: component to that.
- 1:06:08Speaker 3: But you know, we should do we will take the
- 1:06:12Speaker 3: We should take the intestinal bacteria of hippies and put
- 1:06:16Speaker 3: it into a violent criminal and see if that doesn't
- 1:06:19Speaker 3: change their behavior.
- 1:06:24Speaker 2: Well, if any of you hippies who listened to this,
- 1:06:26Speaker 2: and any of you violent also listened to this, want
- 1:06:29Speaker 2: to be involved in doctor Bill's study, so I want
- 1:06:32Speaker 2: to read you something. The symptoms of the proposed type
- 1:06:35Speaker 2: three diabetes condition may include symptoms of dementia, such as
- 1:06:42Speaker 2: seen in early Alzheimer's disease. According to the Alzheimer's Disease Association,
- 1:06:48Speaker 2: these symptoms include memory lost, blah blah blah. So this
- 1:06:52Speaker 2: this this term type three diabetes.
- 1:06:55Speaker 1: Have you heard of that. Is that a thing or
- 1:06:57Speaker 1: is that just is that just bullshit?
- 1:07:02Speaker 3: To be honest, I've never heard it before. It could
- 1:07:04Speaker 3: be a thing. I'm only familiar with Tape one and two.
- 1:07:08Speaker 1: Yeah, me too, And I don't know that it's Yeah,
- 1:07:11Speaker 1: there's just that they're talking about. I heard somebody the
- 1:07:15Speaker 1: other day, and I.
- 1:07:16Speaker 2: Don't think this is solid science, but they were talking
- 1:07:19Speaker 2: about how essentially dementia is.
- 1:07:24Speaker 1: An expression of or a consequence of type three diabetes. Anyway,
- 1:07:29Speaker 1: I'll do some more research, maybe you'll have a reason.
- 1:07:31Speaker 1: We might talk about it next time. My last question
- 1:07:34Speaker 1: for you is this, are some people more genetically inclined
- 1:07:42Speaker 1: to enjoy exercise. I've spoken a lot of people over
- 1:07:47Speaker 1: the years who go, it's just not my thing. I
- 1:07:49Speaker 1: just don't enjoy it. I hate it.
- 1:07:51Speaker 2: And I wonder if that's again, if that's truly just
- 1:07:55Speaker 2: who they are genetically, that's just that's just part of them,
- 1:07:59Speaker 2: or if that's just because I grew up in a
- 1:08:01Speaker 2: family where that wasn't encouraged or supported.
- 1:08:06Speaker 3: I think it's completely possible that there could be a
- 1:08:09Speaker 3: genetic component to someone's inclination to exercise or not. But
- 1:08:14Speaker 3: I think what's more likely is there's probably a genetic
- 1:08:16Speaker 3: component into the type of exercise that someone might want
- 1:08:19Speaker 3: to enjoy. I mean, there's the best study that I
- 1:08:24Speaker 3: can think of within this realm would be like the
- 1:08:28Speaker 3: genes that govern fast twitching of muscles, and it governs
- 1:08:32Speaker 3: the recovery time of muscles. And basically, if you have
- 1:08:35Speaker 3: one variation of this gene, you're really good at distance
- 1:08:39Speaker 3: or marathon or endurance type sports, but you're really crappy
- 1:08:43Speaker 3: at those that require a real sudden burst of energy.
- 1:08:47Speaker 3: The other genetic variants the opposite. The other variant says
- 1:08:50Speaker 3: you're really good at short bursts of activity, You're a
- 1:08:53Speaker 3: great sprinter. You know, you have better abilities with returned
- 1:08:59Speaker 3: in terms of strength. That genetic variation is one of
- 1:09:03Speaker 3: the clearest cut that I've seen, But that really doesn't
- 1:09:06Speaker 3: get to the heart of motivating people to exercise. And
- 1:09:10Speaker 3: I think what is happening there is that some people
- 1:09:13Speaker 3: might want to fall back on genetics as an excuse,
- 1:09:15Speaker 3: and that's the last thing we want anyone to do.
- 1:09:20Speaker 3: People need to keep in mind is that exercise can
- 1:09:22Speaker 3: be fun. I mean, it can be If you enjoy running,
- 1:09:25Speaker 3: get out there and run or walk. If not, try swimming.
- 1:09:29Speaker 3: If not, try playing basketball or football. You know there's
- 1:09:33Speaker 3: something out there that you're going to enjoy that will
- 1:09:35Speaker 3: give you the exercise that you need. And I know
- 1:09:39Speaker 3: very few people who just can't go walk around the
- 1:09:41Speaker 3: block a few times, and you can do lots of
- 1:09:44Speaker 3: things while you do that. You can listen to the
- 1:09:46Speaker 3: U Project podcast during this walk, and what better way
- 1:09:51Speaker 3: to exercise and entertain yourself at the same time. And
- 1:09:54Speaker 3: if you're not a fan, and that's the new promo,
- 1:09:58Speaker 3: but if you're not a fan of Craig Harper, first
- 1:10:01Speaker 3: why uh? And then second, turn on a different podcast,
- 1:10:05Speaker 3: or listen to a book or some music, whatever, float
- 1:10:08Speaker 3: your boat, do whatever it takes. Find a regiment that
- 1:10:12Speaker 3: works for you that's going to allow you to get
- 1:10:14Speaker 3: in the exercise you need. It's really important underdersent.
- 1:10:18Speaker 2: We'll finish with this as we as the world is
- 1:10:21Speaker 2: watching on it. The fucking shit show that is the
- 1:10:25Speaker 2: upcoming election.
- 1:10:28Speaker 1: What are your thoughts. Who's gonna win?
- 1:10:31Speaker 3: Who's going to wing our election? Yeah? I think it's
- 1:10:34Speaker 3: our election forty less than forty five days away?
- 1:10:39Speaker 1: What is it November five or is that it?
- 1:10:42Speaker 3: Yeah? So it's coming up in early November, and all
- 1:10:45Speaker 3: of this will be said and done, you know, a
- 1:10:48Speaker 3: day or two after that, so we'll see what happens.
- 1:10:52Speaker 1: Who's going to win.
- 1:10:52Speaker 3: Really, it's a really interesting cycle. Oh that kind of prediction.
- 1:10:59Speaker 3: I'm really hoping for Harris to tell you the truth.
- 1:11:04Speaker 3: If it is Trump, I fear not just for the
- 1:11:08Speaker 3: States but for the world.
- 1:11:10Speaker 1: Yeah. Wow, it's it's it's it's entertaining and terrifying to
- 1:11:18Speaker 1: look on from afar, but anyway, it's probably more terrifying
- 1:11:22Speaker 1: to be in the middle of it over there.
- 1:11:24Speaker 3: Well, what surprises me is that roughly half this country
- 1:11:30Speaker 3: is perfectly fine with a convicted felon running for office.
- 1:11:36Speaker 3: That's just unfathomable to me. I just can't get over that.
- 1:11:41Speaker 2: Yeah, it's almost like that's almost like he's superpower. Is
- 1:11:46Speaker 2: that he doesn't.
- 1:11:48Speaker 3: He's teflon man, He's teflon everything. Everything bounces off of it.
- 1:11:52Speaker 3: It just slides off. People just create excuses for this guy.
- 1:11:56Speaker 3: He can't formulate a complete sentence, and then people are saying, well,
- 1:12:01Speaker 3: that's part of his genius, Like, no, that's that's dementia
- 1:12:05Speaker 3: talking dude.
- 1:12:06Speaker 1: Yes, yes, Wow, it's just crazy.
- 1:12:10Speaker 3: The twisted knots that people are putting themselves in so
- 1:12:14Speaker 3: they can make excuses for this guy. It's unbelievable to me.
- 1:12:21Speaker 2: Conformation biased doc work like we just we live in
- 1:12:25Speaker 2: the echo chamber. Don't let the facts get in the way.
- 1:12:28Speaker 2: Doctor Bill Sullivan is the author, pleased to meet me, jeans, germs,
- 1:12:32Speaker 2: and the curious forces that make us who we are.
- 1:12:34Speaker 2: Do you want to point our audience in any other direction?
- 1:12:38Speaker 1: Doc?
- 1:12:39Speaker 3: Is there anything else? If people want to learn more
- 1:12:42Speaker 3: about the book, or follow up on some of the
- 1:12:44Speaker 3: writings that I've done, or other appearances on the You
- 1:12:48Speaker 3: Project and other podcasts, they can go to my website,
- 1:12:51Speaker 3: Author Bill Sullivan dot com. There's also a mailing list
- 1:12:54Speaker 3: option you can sign up for if you want to
- 1:12:57Speaker 3: sign up for that.
- 1:12:58Speaker 2: I think it's time for a new book, bro, I
- 1:13:00Speaker 2: think it's five years. I think you're getting a little tardier.
- 1:13:04Speaker 2: I think you better just get a hurry along.
- 1:13:07Speaker 3: I'm still getting some good mileage out of this one,
- 1:13:09Speaker 3: so I don't want to equipse that. Okay, but hey,
- 1:13:14Speaker 3: you know, tell the major publishers to come knock on
- 1:13:18Speaker 3: my door and we'll see what we can do.
- 1:13:21Speaker 1: A com believe they're not knocking, all right.
- 1:13:24Speaker 3: I got ideas, man, I got ideas.
- 1:13:27Speaker 1: Of course you do, all right mate.
- 1:13:28Speaker 2: We appreciate you, love having you on the show, and yeah,
- 1:13:32Speaker 2: I value your contribution greatly.
- 1:13:34Speaker 1: Thanks so much again.
- 1:13:35Speaker 3: Hey, always a pleasure to look forward to next time.