In part two, we dive into the most important sleep and diet tips that will help you boost testosterone.

The biggest takeaways are to minimize screen use as night approaches, and to keep your bedroom as dark as possible. You also want your sleep environment to be as mellow and quiet as possible. And while screen entertainment is undeniably fun, let yourself rethink the choice to wind down at night with screen time. What are some alternative options you can do instead? I suggest reading, doing a nighttime yoga routine for flexibility and mobility (there are tons of free ones on Youtube!), taking the dog out for some air and activity, calling a friend to catch up and experience some live social interaction, taking a walk around the block, or journaling. That TV show or whatever it is you wanted to watch on TV will be on Youtube forever, so you might as well use this precious evening time to truly wind down for bed.

I also touch on the importance of a clean diet and talk about the list of things everyone should eliminate, such as inflammatory, oxidative junk food, refined seed oils, sugars, and grains. Another major thing to watch out for is the hyperpalatable pairing of sugar and fat together – sure, it tastes great, but nothing will make you gain weight faster! 

Finally, there’s nothing like the power of superfoods like organ meats or supplements. I talk about my latest smoothie concoction, a superfood blend that keeps me full for hours, and elaborate on how supplementing with organ meat pills has made everything, from athletic performance to recovery, better.

If you want to re-energize your body at the cellular level and trigger a natural boost in testosterone production, check out Ancestral Supplements Male Optimization Formula with Organs here for more details and a special product discount. 

TIMESTAMPS:

As we age, we have much less margin for error in some of the things we used to do when we were younger. [01:37]

Getting sufficient sleep comes down to the battle with screen entertainment versus a more relaxed ritual at bedtime.  [03:09]

Block the blue light with protective lenses that are UV rated. It’s important to get the oranges, reds and yellow colors going at night rather than offensive blue and white lights. [05:16]

Just looking at a pile of clutter of unfinished projects will provoke a subconscious stress hormone response. [10:33]

The bedroom should be completely dark. [11:15]

You really shouldn’t have to get up at night to pee. [14:12]

Expose your eyes to sunlight first thing in the morning….not staring at the sun, of course. [16:14]

You need to cool down your body temperature to have a deep sleep. [19:13]

The first and foremost priority for a better diet is a total elimination of inflammatory oxidative junk food, starting with the refined industrial seed oils. [22:51]

The hyper-palatable foods like those with sugar and fats together, encourage you to eat what is unhealthy. [27:19]

Don’t worry about whether you are paleo, primal, carnivore, keto, etc. With the knowledge you have gained about diet, personal preference is choosing clean foods in a diet that work for you. [30:31]

LINKS:

• Brad Kearns.com
• Brad’s Shopping page
• No. 1 Breather Show on Testosterone 
• Just Get FLUX
• IRIS Tech
• RaOptics
• UVEX   
• Himalayan Salt Lamp
• Dr. Jack Kruse Podcast
• Red Flashlight
• Chilipad
• Chilisleep
• Dr. Cate Shanahan
• Carnivore Scores Chart
• Kate Ouellette-Cretsinger

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B.Rad Podcast

Brad (1m 38s): Hello listeners. Here we go with part two of how to boost testosterone and avoid the slippery slope downhill into flabby floppy Mister Softee epidemic decline in male testosterone levels in modern life to the tune of 1% per year, since the 1980s. And in the first show, I picked out four factors. You know, the MOFO mission has 10 assignments, but we talked about sleep and downtime. Number one, we talked about cleaning up the diet, getting rid of that junk food that’s so damaging and promoting of the accumulation of visceral fat which is a real testosterone killer. Number three, we talked about relationship conflict and number four, we talked about doing the wrong kinds of exercise. Brad (2m 23s): So we’re going to turn the corner here and give some wonderful positive takeaways and suggestions to dial in your sleep, your diet, your relationships, and your exercise habits. Hopefully you’re sufficiently interested and motivated by this important subject of being the best you can be in optimizing your hormone levels throughout life. Especially as we age, we can’t get away with as much crazy stuff and cutting corners as we did when we were younger. Yeah, everybody hits that checkpoint don’t they. Might be at age 24, be at age 34, whatever I’m wrestling with different parameters at age 56, relating to recovery and how much my body can handle. Brad (3m 9s): And what’s the optimal level of stress during the workout and in the sequence of workouts. And I’m still a work in progress. It’s easy to overdo it, especially in the higher age groups. You realize you have much less margin for error and much less tolerance for overall workload, but hopefully I can make up for that. We can make up for that by being smarter and being more attuned to all the supportive lifestyle factors that help your fitness goals. But let’s start with sleep. I think it comes down to the battle between the temptations of screen entertainment and relaxing time versus adhering to a fixed bedtime and a fixed evening rituals. Brad (3m 53s): And of course you deserve to enjoy your life. You deserve to have some fun, relax, unwind, and enjoying your entertainment in the evening. But if you can put into action, some rules and guidelines that will keep you on track. I think that’s a nice way to create a balance here. So you don’t have to be fixed and rigid and no fun and not able to go with the flow. But we also want to have some rules in place where everything’s not a free for all, because that’s a, the time of day when your motivation and your willpower are probably diminished, right? And so you don’t have that discipline and structure and mindset that you might have as a fresh person. Brad (4m 34s): First thing in the morning. One thing I’ve been doing recently is I have this programmed alarm on my phone to go off 30 or 45 minutes before my desired bedtime. So it’s not going to disrupt me from doing what I’m doing. If we’re in the middle of watching a show or doing something else. But when that music comes on that little ding, ding, ding, it is a trigger to my brain to realize, Hey, this is really, we’re now transitioning into wind down time. And you want to have that dim light melatonin onset. You want to start feeling sleepy and feeling the need to slow down rather than feeling alert and energized and ready to watch one more show. Brad (5m 17s): And so that dim light melatonin onset just as it sounds like is greatly facilitated by the minimizing of artificial light and digital stimulation after dark and into those evening hours. So there’s apps you can get for your screens to kind of minimize the intensity of the light emission. One of them is called flux F L U X. I believe the website is just get F L U xXcom. And one that I’ve purchased and enjoy is called Iris tech. I R I S T E C H Iris tech costs, I think $15. Brad (5m 57s): And you can set your screen for all kinds of different programs and light programs. But basically it will minimize the extremely offensive high emission highlight intensity emission that comes from a typical laptop. You can also do this on your mobile device, Apple phones have something called night shift. And I think the Android system has night mode, but be sure to turn these things on because it will lower the color temperature of your screen. That’s the technical term for the wavelength of light that’s coming out and make it much less offensive. Brad (6m 39s): And also on the other side, you can get the UV protective eyewear, either the hardcore stuff, the beautiful things that you can find at Raoptics Raoptics.com. They’re stylish, they’re the best quality lens you’re going to pay 60, 70, 80, a hundred bucks for a really nice pair of blue light blocking UV protective lenses. Or you can go a little less expensive and look on Amazon for you. U V E X, and they’re orange colored lenses. You might see they’re often used for protective gear in the workplace. And as long as you can see out the lens. Brad (7m 20s): So if it’s light colored lens, but it has UV protection. So it has to be UV rated, just like a good pair of sunglasses. And when you have UV protection on your lenses, that will help minimize the adverse effects of the blue light spectrum. They call it blue light, but it comes from the bright white light bulbs or screens. Okay. So blue light is the visible spectrum on the, on the UV scale. That’s why the ocean’s blue. The sky is blue, right? That’s the most reflective wavelength of light. And so that’s the technical term, but we could also call it bright white light in the evening for layman’s purposes. So we want to just minimize that offensive, bright white light sources in our homes, AKA blue light by blocking it with protective lenses. Brad (8m 10s): So look at raopticsdotcom or you can go to bradkearns.com shopping page. And I have a great discount there. If you click through this guy, Matt Maruca, the boy wonder of the ancestral progressive health scene. It gives an incredible knowledge base on all aspects of how light affects your health. And he has a wonderful offering of really stylish glasses that you’re going to love to wear in the evening. You can also get the, the cheap route. I have both of them sitting around all over so that I always have some lenses to reach for. And then you can also, after it gets dark, start emphasizing a more mellow sources of light in your home. Brad (8m 51s): I love the Himalayan salt lamps that you can find on Amazon. I buy them for gifts all the time for people. So if I look on my Amazon account, it says you purchase this seven times in the last year or whatever, but I have several around the house and these emit a orange hue, right, coming out of the orange Himalayan salt. And so the orange spectrum is vastly less defensive to a dim light melatonin onset into your hormones, your sleep hormones, then the regular unfiltered blue light that comes in the white color. So if you can start lighting up those Himalayan salt lamps, of course, candle light fantastic has little or no influence on melatonin because we humans evolved using firelight. Brad (9m 38s): And so we can still get sleepy when we’re looking at the campfire, looking at candles and vastly superior to light bulbs in the evening. So if you can get the Himalayan lamps going, you got the orange lenses on, you have the candles going. Ah, I also have this wonderful red flashlight, handheld, red flashlight that I’ll use in the middle of the night of have to get up, or if I want to read something at bedside. So I’m trying to get the oranges and the reds and the yellow colors going instead of the offensive bright white light. So that’s setting up our environment for success. The bedroom is supposed to be a sanctuary for sleep and a couple other things, but not things like work, paperwork, piles of junk, unfinished home improvement projects, things that cause a stress impact just by looking at them. Brad (10m 33s): And research shows that looking at a pile of clutter will provoke a subconscious stress hormone response. Even we don’t even know, we don’t acknowledge it or say something out loud, mutter under our breath. “Dang. I wish that thing would be cleaned up”. It’s been sitting there for so long. Even when you just look at it, you get a stress hormone response. So the bedroom has to be a special place. That’s calm, dark, completely dark. When it’s time to go to bed, you want to achieve total darkness and mellow and not stress provoking. So there should be no connection to work like a desk or paperwork or digital device. Brad (11m 16s): Computer. Those things are super duper no-no in your bedroom environment should be bed. A very Spartan minimalist setting. You can look online and Google a minimalist bedroom and see these really cool tasteful designs. So walking into somewhere that feels like a sanctuary and boy, especially getting rid of even the most minor light sources that can disturb you. If you do happen to awaken in the middle of the night, or you’re trying to go to bed, you can put on an eye mask. But remember our entire body, even our skin cells are very sensitive to light. So if you’re using things like nightlights, or you have L E D devices emitting light, please do whatever you can to get rid of those, cover them up, tape them with electrical tape. Brad (12m 2s): I have the little green button on my power strip that stays illuminated at all times. And I will slap a piece of nice black electrical tape over that. And anything else, same with my air purifier de ionizer has the assorted lights of which button you’re choosing in which power speed. And I just tape that stuff up and put heavy, thick cardboard over it. We don’t want any of these tiny light sources admitted. It’s really, really important. Dr. Jack Kruse has a great article on his website. I did a whole breather show about our circadian rhythm and what’s happening at the various times around the 24 hour clock, but of particular note from 12 midnight to 3:00 AM. Brad (12m 45s): That’s when we need absolute total darkness in order for human growth hormone to come out to play. So it’s released is very sensitive and it needs to be, you need to be existing in total darkness to get the maximum hormone restoration repair rebuilding processes to happen that take place in the middle of the night. So a full, a perfect score here would be to have blackout curtains seal up any potential input of light from, from outside, especially if you’re not waking up right at sunrise every day. So my mother and listening and doing the timestamps and the summaries for these shows has zero curtains in her room because she wakes up naturally before sunrise every day. Brad (13m 30s): I don’t know how I didn’t get those genes. Maybe some other people in the family did, but good for her. She doesn’t need the blackout experience, but during the night, you want to make sure that room is completely dark. So no floor lighting or any of that nonsense aloud, just buy yourself a, a red flashlight. I can put a link in the show notes to the one I purchased on Amazon. And that’ll be your tool to get up and navigate around. And certainly never, ever look at your screen in the middle of the night. There’s research showing that when you get up and check the time it’s going to provoke a stress response, either a that it’s so close to waking up, you can’t believe it. Brad (14m 13s): Or gee, I only have a few more hours to sleep. And so you don’t want to know what time it is. If at all possible, just get up. If you need to use the restroom and you’re not supposed to, Dr. Maffetone makes an excellent point that our bladders are definitely capable of holding out until morning. Just like our pets are, right? they don’t have to have access in the middle of the night. They can hold there, hold their fire till later. And we should be able to too. So the idea that we have to get up to pee in the middle of the night, because our bladder is full is really incorrect. And what’s possibly happening is an overstimulation of the adrenal glands failure to completely wind down. Brad (14m 53s): Well, especially if you had too much artificial light and digital stimulation in your evening hours before going to bed. And so he says, boy, you know, try to look for times when you’re not getting up to pee in the middle of the night. And that’s when you get a truly good night’s sleep. And I think we can all reference those times when we’re nervous, jittery, anxious, maybe have an early morning trans continental flight. You’re sleeping fitfully or you’re sleeping in a hotel room and it’s a foreign environment. So you don’t sleep as well as your familiar environment at home. And you’re getting up to pee too many times at night. I know this has happened to me in the aftermath of really difficult workouts or something that was a, a race or a long duration effort. Brad (15m 34s): And I’m not fully, you know, recalibrated into parasympathetic dominance. And I get up and pee three times in the middle of the night. What’s that all about? So strive to remain in bed the whole night. But if you do have to get up the red flashlight is your go-to and it should be pitch dark in that room. And boy, when I stay with my friend, who’s got the remote control, a room, darkening blinds. He gets such an incredibly good night’s sleep even into, beyond sunrise and maybe sleeping in more than usual because it’s so dark, but we want to do everything we can with our environment to facilitate as much sleep as we possibly need. Brad (16m 15s): But yes, indeed it is very healthy and desirable to awaken near sunrise. And as soon as you awaken expose your eyeballs to direct unfiltered sunlight, I’m not talking about staring at the giant ball that will get you right into the ophthalmologist office for surgery. I’m not talking about being stupid, but basically getting your eyes exposed to direct sunlight. Even if it’s cloudy, I’m not saying it has to be a beautiful sunny day. It’s just getting into outdoor light immediately will prompt a desirable hormonal response, which is basically the rising, the desirable increase spike in serotonin and cortisol and decrease in the sleepiness hormone, adenosine that will help you feel alert and energized. Brad (17m 2s): That’s why caffeine is so effective by the way, is that it blocks the adenosine receptor. So it lowers adenosine and you feel alert and energize. You drop the identity and you wake up, you feel good, same with a spike in cortisol and serotonin. So all those things can happen nicely. When you get out into open air direct sunlight and, you know, bathe your face and your skin in sun, near sunrise. And by doing that guess what that’s triggering or setting up many hours later? That’s right. It’s facilitating the dim light melatonin onset later in the evening after the sun sets. Brad (17m 41s): So if you have a propensity to sleep in too long or stay in doors for hours before you first welcome the outdoor air, you’re not getting the optimal hormonal boost in the morning, and that could be compromising your ability to wind down in the evening. So a good night’s sleep starts. First thing in the morning, we talked about the environment. Also your body temperature is a big trigger for sleep. And so we want it to have lowering by a couple of degrees. I believe the research shows that you need to have a little bit lower body temperature to fall asleep successfully. Actually surprisingly taking the warm bath before bed can have a net temperature cooling effect, okay? Brad (18m 28s): Warm bath, you’re warm in the bath, right? But as soon as you get up and get out of the bath with the water on your skin and the transfer of blood from extremities, back to the core, you’re going to feel chilly. Interesting. I’m not talking about a hot bath or sitting in the jacuzzi for 45 minutes and then trying to go to bed. Cause if you elevate body temperature, you’re going to have a really difficult time falling asleep. That’s why we don’t want to do exercise, especially vigorous exercise in the hour or two or three before bed, ideally. But you can take this a nice warm bath. Arianna Huffington, big proponent of that. She says, this is part of the ritual to get your brain ready for sleep that you associate the bath followed by getting out, getting into your pajamas, right, changing into a different type of clothes. Brad (19m 13s): All of these things are preparing the brain to wind down and shut down for the evening. The other very popular thing, as you’ve heard from a lot of the ads, including on the B.rad podcast is the chili pad. So this is a device that will cool your mattress too higher temperature. So it’s circulating tubes of water that you install the device underneath your, a cover sheet on your mattress. And then with the unit, the Umar unit, you can actually program in the desired temperature of your mattress in time for bed. Brad (19m 53s): So you have a smartphone device where you can set the time, weekday, weekend program, number one, program, number two, just like a thermostat in your house. And boy jumping into pre cooled bed is a great facilitator of sleep. And then especially cause a lot of people wake up for whatever reason. If they have night sweats, they know why they’ve woken up, but maintaining that cool temperature on the mattress throughout the night as our ancestors would have when they were sleeping in an outdoor setting, right? But unfortunately indoors we’re turning that heat up a little bit too much, or we’re overdressed. When we get in there, there’s too many covers. And when that body temperature rises, that will interfere with good cycling through all the phases of sleep and waking up refreshed and energized in the morning. Brad (20m 42s): So the ChiliPad has been really popular, well received a lot of people giving thumbs up and great stories of improving their sleep habits. So important. You’re spending a third of your life. So, oh my gosh, go get yourself the best possible mattress. Most comfortable you can find and really consider trying one of these units out, go to Brad, kearns.com shopping page. And again, I offer a nice discount for listeners. I love this thing and boy, it really does make a big difference. So to be clear, what you want is an optimally cool environment. So the air temperature should be 68 or below when you’re sleeping and then your bed temperature should be somewhere in the sixties. Brad (21m 26s): I put mine all the way down to 59 and it’s cool because the, the Uber device allows for the people who share the bed on the other side of the bed is another device and your partner can choose whatever temperature they want. And you have all the stories of how the guy likes really cold and his partner likes it a lot warmer. And so yeah, you can optimize to your own personal preference and not have to hog the bed or dictate to the other side of the bed, what temperature that’s going to be. Very cool. Very cute. Okay. So you want a cool room, a cool bed, but you want to have skin temperature, optimally warm. And so that’s where the, the, the, the covers and your pajamas come in. Brad (22m 10s): So you can get nice and cozy undercovers. That’s still allowed, but you want to be sleeping in a cool environment. What does that mean? Have that’s right. Sleeping in a cave or an outdoor camping situation where the air’s really nippy even freezing, but you feel fantastic in your wonderful puffy down sleeping bag. And that was the best night’s sleep that we can reference. So do that yourself in your own home environment and check out chilisleep.com for more details. And I think you probably get a, a test period where you can try it out and I know you’ll love it. So I think that’s a good little overview, getting your sleep dialed. And now we’ll go into diet. Brad (22m 51s): We’ve talked so much about this on so many shows. So just as the grand overview. The first and foremost priority here is a total elimination of inflammatory oxidative junk food, starting with the refined industrial seed oils. Dr. Cate Shanahan has been talking about this for years. She’s been banging that drum that this is the worst stuff we can possibly consume in the human diet. And now it’s really caught on, and a lot of people are echoing this and agreeing that seed oils are perhaps the leading cause of insulin resistance, more so than consuming too many carbs and producing too much insulin because seed oils interfere with healthy fat metabolism. Brad (23m 39s): They interfere with the body’s ability to burn stored body fat. So if you have these ubiquitous agents present in your diet in large amounts, which most people do, if they’re not super duper careful, and that’s because takeout and restaurant meals are usually cooked in these oils, to the extent that Dr. Shanahan cites research that 40% of all restaurant calories come from these refined industrial seed oils, because the meals are cooked in them. And this is not just fast food dipping your French fries in the big vat of oil. This is also medium to fine dining where even the finest restaurants, just to save a few bucks because they don’t care. Brad (24m 21s): or aren’t aware we’ll use these crappy cheap industrial oils to cook these fabulous $50 steaks. It’s absolutely shocking and stunning and highly disturbing. So be sure to ask your server to cook your meal in butter, rather than in seed oil. A lot of times I’ll ask the server. I don’t want to be too much of a pain in the butt. They’re just, you know, doing their job, but I’ll say, can you tell me what kind of oils been used in the kitchen? And they’ll usually come back and they’ll say it’s an olive oil blend. So when you hear someone say olive oil blend, you should push a, an air horn and sound the alarm for the entire restaurant. Brad (25m 3s): No, just kidding. But an olive oil blend is typically code speak for A really crappy, cheap, old, extra Virgin olive oil. Like you see at the big box stores and the plastic jug, and it costs 12 bucks for what, a half a gallon of olive oil. What they’re doing here is they’re misappropriating that term extra-virgin olive oil, and also transporting these oils from distant origins, the main olive oil producing countries of the world in the Mediterranean area. So a lot of times these oils are super old and often have been cut with inferior quality oils. And, you know, using chemical solvents, repressing the olive over and over again, to get maximum extraction out of there, all these things, reducing the nutrient quality. Brad (25m 51s): So boy, the difference between a real olive oil, that’s fresh and first cold pressed only. So when they say first cold pressed only that means it’s been cold pressed, no heat or high temperatures involved, and it’s been pressed once and that’s it. And so that’s when you get the incredibly high antioxidant values and the incredibly potent taste of a true olive oil rather than a watered down version. And in many cases, the restaurants are using crappy olive oil and mixed with canola or any of the other super duper cheap oils. So we got to be especially alert when dining out to stay away from these oils. Brad (26m 32s): And also reading labels really carefully because it’s so surprising where these oils make their way into that. You wouldn’t, you wouldn’t believe of course, in all the condiments. And that was really the story. The rise of Primal Kitchen was an answer to all the crappy commercial mayonnaise that are made with industrial seed oils. Same with most salad dressings. I’ve seen it amazingly in some Ben and Jerry’s ice cream cartons. I couldn’t believe it. I had to go see for myself. Yeah, they’re using industrial seed oils, these hippie trippy super cool labels and the vibe of, you know, being the natural stuff from Vermont. No way. So read labels, scrutinize pretty much any, you know, commercial name brand frozen packaged, processed food will have these oils in there. Brad (27m 20s): All the buttery spreads and sprays that we were brainwashed into thinking these were superior. That data is now 40 or 50 years old has been disproven as being heavily propaganda and special interest influence lobbying that got us to transition away from a relatively healthy butter and saturated fat, into consuming these polyunsaturated oils in the diet. And boy, it’s time to unwind this completely. So you got to get rid of the industrial seed oils and then strive to minimize or eliminate your intake. The massive over consumption of refined carbohydrates in the form of all grains and sugars and sweetened beverages and taking special note, especially if you’re trying to drop excess body fat and clean up your diet is to eliminate consumption of those hyper palatable foods, which is when they put together sugar and fat and salt combination that is completely unnatural and not seen in the, the hunter gatherer diet at the ancestral diet, right? Brad (28m 28s): It doesn’t exist in nature, but we have all manner of these hyper palatable foods that hijack the dopamine pathways in the brain and deliver extreme pleasure, extreme flavor intensity. So we’re talking about cheesecake, we’re talking about ice cream, we’re talking about popcorn with butter and oil on it. Like I made my specialty and all the way down the list, even pasta with meat sauce, right? So you’re thinking about the packaging of, of a fat and sugar together. Boy, you can make stuff really, really taste good. And that’s when we start to sort of have an addictive relationship with these hyper palatable foods. Brad (29m 9s): And this is something that I’ve been thinking about more and more lately. I did a whole show on the fatty popcorn boy saga, cause I’m like, why do I love this stuff so much? And possibly the level of discipline and restriction in my diet for so many years, I don’t introduce a lot of these hyper palatable foods. I’m not out there grabbing something off the shelf and getting a ding-dong on my road trip, right. They just don’t, they don’t appear. So I’m mostly emphasizing delicious natural nutrient dense foods, but then when you put a bowl in popcorn bowl, popcorn in front of me, I can’t stand it. It’s so freaking good and same with a slice of cheesecake. I’m usually gonna go for a second slice. Or if I want to have a scoop of ice cream, it’s going to turn into four scoops. Brad (29m 52s): And that could be a personality insight so that, you know, deprivation and restriction, that’s natural and comfortable. And then all of a sudden they throw something in your face, you’re going to eat it. So my goal has been to kind of have an all or nothing approach here and just not let these things leak in at any level. And boy things go really well when, when that happens. And then, you know, you’re always kind of vulnerable to the reintroduction of these foods, because maybe you’re out there and you decide to have a dessert at a restaurant, and then it turns out you have deserved a five out of the next seven nights. Brad (30m 32s): So I think that’s kind of the centerpiece or the overview of the dietary aspects of optimizing testosterone. Cleaning up your diet is to steer clear of those hyper palatable foods. Acknowledged that they have the addictive properties and especially getting rid of the industrial seed oils. And what’s cool here is you can do that. If you can get rid of the modern processed hyper palatable foods, the industrial seed oils, excess consumption of grains, sugar, sweetened beverages, you are so far down the road to optimal health, that the rest of the stuff is nuance and splitting hairs and fun and games and possibly overly concerned with whether you should be keto, whether you should be paleo. Brad (31m 17s): What’s the difference between paleo and primal? What about this carnivore thing? Oh my gosh. It’s great to talk about when you’re that far down the road to health and you want to further optimize, but I think we can easily get tripped up by over obsessing on our carb intake and trying to see the difference between eating 75 grams a day and eating a hundred. Oh my goodness, people, if you just get the junk out of your diet, you’re going to be well far down the road to optimal health. My very first show on the B.rad podcast slash Get Over Yourself podcas, as it was called, it was with Dr. Peter Attia who’s gone deeper into this than virtually anyone with his own personal extreme self experimentation with diet and all his medical knowledge and research with its patients. Brad (32m 3s): And he’s the one that said just eat stuff that your great grandmother would have been able to eat, or don’t eat stuff that your great grandmother couldn’t eat. Right? So if you just get rid of the processed foods, you can relax, take a deep breath and then find the foods and dietary patterns that work for you. That was a great takeaway from Dr. Herman Pontzer, author of Burn. When he was talking about losing excess body fat or maintaining a healthy weight, it’s like find a diet that you enjoy and leaves you satisfied, but it’s not too many calories, simple as that. And so if someone’s going to step up and say, Hey, I need to have my cottage cheese walnuts and pineapples. That’s what really works for me every time morning at 8:00 AM. Brad (32m 44s): Oh, are you going to get a, a negative score because you’re not fasting for long enough or you’re, you’re not keto because that’s too many carbs. Not at all. It’s going to be personal preference, choosing the clean foods, not worrying or overstressing too much, but making sure that you clean up from the, from the junk and the hyper palatable stuff. And then I think in consequences, especially if you have performance goals, anti-aging goals, all that great stuff want to pay special attention to including more super foods in your diet and eating more percentage of your calories from the higher ranking foods. And I’d say in a nutshell, that’s really what appeals to me most about the, the emergence of the carnivore movement, the nose to tail eating popularity, eating strategy. Brad (33m 35s): I think that the, the complete restriction of all plant foods and all carbohydrate foods is unnecessary. Especially if you have performance goals, but if you’re sensitive and suffering and you’re allergic to plant toxins, boy, then it’s going to work for you. And it’s going to work for you probably forever like Jordan Peterson, Mikayla Peterson. But if you’re not, and you can certainly tolerate whatever it is, fill in the blank, sweet potatoes, fruit, you know, the least offensive plant foods. You can still have a carbohydrate intake of optimal level and be called a carnivore ish pattern. So I guess I would characterize myself that way, these days, where I have a animal-based diet, where I’m trying to emphasize the most nutrient dense foods on earth and have those be the vast majority of my calories, and then filling in whatever carbohydrate intake I need from the most nutritious carbohydrates. Brad (34m 33s): So that’s why Kate Cretsinger and I created the Carnivores Scores Food Rankings Chart. And you can download that at my website and that’ll help you look at these tiers of, you know, the top-ranked superfoods of the planet, which are oysters, salmon, eggs, and liver. And then you have the organmeats and then you have the oily cold water fish. You have the pasture raised eggs. You have the grass fed beef. And if you’re kind of looking at that chart, taped to your refrigerator and trying to emphasize the higher ranked categories every single day, that’s going to be a great way to proceed with a very rewarding and enjoyable and deeply satisfying diet. Brad (35m 16s): That’s nourishing your body at the cellular level, and it’s giving you just an explosion of health and energy alertness, cognitive function, all that great stuff, because you’re getting more nutrient density from your diet because you’re getting rid of these hyper palatable foods that don’t provide a lot of nutritional value. And that’s one of the reason why they’re hyper palatable is that Dr. Ted Naiman said this on his show with made a great point that, you know, the brain needs to get needs. Its basic needs met. The body’s basic needs met, which is essentially protein, the main survival nutrient that we need. And so if you’re consuming a bag of potato chips, that’s 3% protein or 5% protein, you’re going to want to continue to consume those chips and continue, continue, continue until you get your protein needs met. Brad (36m 4s): It’s a, it’s a vein or a futile attempt to meet your protein needs with these heavily processed modern foods. And that’s one reason why we overeat them. So go over to Carnivores Scores Food Rankings Chart. Tape that puppy up on your refrigerator and you are going to rock and roll with fun new stuff. And if you can’t seem to cook a lot of liver every single day, put it in a smoothie I’ve been making these morning smoothies. They’re fantastic. I put in a bunch of frozen liver, several ounces I put in six egg yolks. I got collagen protein and or whey protein. I have a couple of frozen peeled bananas in there. Brad (36m 43s): Maybe some coconut flakes and then a base of unsweetened almond milk, coconut milk or raw milk from the dairy. And that thing is so incredibly satisfying that if I have that in the morning hours, I’m not even thinking about foods or snacks or anything until an evening meal. And so it just shows to me the power of emphasizing the superfoods is that you feel so well-nourished in a way that’s hard to describe to someone who’s eaten processed foods, their entire life and complaints of being hungry three hours after their crappy processed cereal breakfast. Boy, what an incredible difference. So there’s a vote for the liver king smoothie. Brad (37m 24s): Brian Johnson, founder of Ancestral Supplements. First turned me on to that when he had his list of ingredients in a super food smoothie the liver king smoothie. And it’s like, wait, did you say 9 egg yolks? That’s crazy. And boy, it really does make a great difference and a great boost. So that is a nice takeaway for dietary strategies and sleep strategies. And that brings us to the end of the show. So we’re going to have to have part three where we’d go into the other two categories of relationship takeaways and exercise takeaways. Thank you so much for listening. Hope you’re getting a lot of value. And again, we talked about optimizing your sleep environment and your sleeping habits with little tips and tricks, like getting the ChiliPad but also just putting the frickin glasses on and saying no to endless streaming entertainment, knowing it’s going to be there tomorrow and getting to sleep on time, getting up in the morning, exposing your eyes to direct sunlight. Brad (38m 19s): Great strategy. And then with the food, get rid of the junk, emphasize the superfoods and you’re on your way. All right. Talk to you soon. Remember podcast@bradventures.com for feedback, comments, questions, have a great day. Thank you for listening to the show. I love sharing the experience with you and greatly appreciate your support please. Email podcast@bradventures.com with feedback, suggestions and questions for the Q and A shows, subscribe to our email list of Brad kearns.com for a weekly blast about the published episodes and a wonderful bimonthly newsletter edition with informative articles and practical tips for all aspects of healthy living. Brad (39m 3s): You can also download several awesome free eBooks when you subscribe to the email list. And if you could go to the trouble to leave a five or five star review with apple podcasts or wherever else, you listen to the shows that would be super, incredibly awesome. It helps raise the profile of the B.rad podcast and attract new listeners. And did you know that you can share a show with a friend or loved one by just hitting a few buttons in your player and firing off a text message? My awesome podcast player called overcast allows you to actually record a soundbite excerpt from the episode you’re listening to and fire it off with a quick text message. Thank you so much for spreading the word and remember B.rad.

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