(Breather) It’s time for another Q&A!

Today we’re talking about the Carnivore Scores food ranking chart and the tradeoff between nutrition and plant reactivity, as well as environmental hormesis (like going from cold temperatures to hot) vs plant hormesis. You’ll learn why we don’t need polyphenols and oxalates, and I also touch on the usefulness of doing a 30-day carnivore experiment and the adding back less offensive plant foods (click here for the Carnivore Scores chart to see which plant foods are included on the list). I also talk about the importance of doing “rebound workouts” and why recovery should be the centerpiece of one’s training program. We wrap up with a discussion about inspiring your family to improve their sleep habits by actually walking your talk and setting the example for them.

TIMESTAMPS:

Brad talks about Usain Bolt as an example of questioning genes vs. training, environment, etc. in creating the talent of a fine athlete. [01:38]

Forward thinking leaders in fitness advocate a kinder, gentler approach to training. [04:39]

Recovery is a major emphasis. Often you are not aware of how tired you are after a workout. [06:02]

It is always important to tone everything down. You need to limit your heart rate to 180 minus your age. Get a heart monitor if you are doing extreme workouts. [10:06]

Having extreme fitness goals could be at the expense of your health and longevity. [17:25]

Casey asks why the carnivore diet on Brad’s published chart includes nuts and chocolate which are oxalates. [19:30]

It is a good idea to try the carnivore diet for 30 days and see what you can learn about your body. You then gradually add back the foods that you want. [30:12]

Stanley Johnson is asking about sleep routines for his family. Sleep needs actually vary according to the time of year. [33:13]

   LINKS:

• Brad Kearns.com
• Brad’s Shopping page
• Taboo
• The Sports Gene
• Firas Zahabi
• Dr. Craig Marker: HIIT vs HIRT
• Joel Jamieson: 8 Weeks Out
• Joel Jamieson B.rad podcast guest
• Dr. Phil Maffetone podcast
• Exercised
• The Great Dance
• Carnivore Scores Chart
• Paul Saladino Podcast
• Meat Heals
• Lights Out, Sleep, Sugar and Survival
• Why We Sleep
• Take a Nap, Change Your Life
• Your Vegetables Want To Kill You

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B.Rad Podcast

Brad (1m 38s): Hey, Hey, time for another Q and A it’s party time on the B.rad podcast. Yes, it’s more from Usain Bolt’s compilation called clockwork. Love Usain Bolt, man. One of the greatest athletes of all time. I’m going to say Usain Bolt and Tiger Woods, and you can feel free to email us podcast@bradventures.com with questions, comments, including your two favorite athletes of all time, or you think the two greatest athletes of all time. Brad (2m 19s): Yeah. Why are Usain Bolt? Because the Olympic hundred meters is the single most competitive and accessible athletic event on the planet, right? Every child in the history of the world has probably run a foot race at some point to identify their abilities and push them into further competitions. It doesn’t take any logistics or facilities even, you know, at the most rudimentary level and the great sprinters come from all over the planet. Interestingly, most all of them trace their ancestry to West Africa. And there’s some great books about this. One of them is called Taboo written many years ago by John Entine. Brad (3m 2s): Another one called The Sports Gene by David Epstein, where they tackle these interesting questions that interplay of genetics and environment and training and exposure to different training methods. But the genetic piece is really interesting. And boy, everybody looked at Usain Bolt and thought, Oh, he’s so tall. That’s why he beats everybody. And it’s such a great advantage and he’s such a natural sprinter, but what they don’t realize is the amazing level of hard work that it takes to be on top in such a competitive event in such an explosive event and how he dominated for such a long period of time. Like no one else picking for the great championships over and over. Brad (3m 43s): And there’s all kinds of facets that are interesting. There’s a great documentary. I think you can watch on Netflix called Bolt. And it goes into his training, his environment, his upbringing, and a particular note is how he was characterized throughout his career, and even on the show as a guy who was lazy and he liked to party, he liked to stay out late. And he, you know, he’d, he’d have to be coaxed into doing, you know, the complete workout and training and he’d complain and all this thing. But if he’s, you know, the greatest sprinter of all time, and one of the greatest athletes who’s ever lived, maybe he was onto something. And maybe our traditional approach to athletic training is poorly calibrated, such that most elite athletes, not to mention most recreational athletes, but many, if not most elite athletes have a tendency to overdo it also and thereby leave a lot of their performance potential in the dust. Brad (4m 39s): Fortunately, there’s some great momentum recently with the, the forward thinking leaders in fitness, advocating what I call a kinder, gentler approach, especially to high intensity training. You can look up a YouTube clip, Firas Zahabi. He was on Joe Rogan. He talked for eight minutes on this concept and they did a nice YouTube video compilation entertaining with his main points. Dr. Craig Marker, one of my favorite torch carriers on this topic has a transformative article called HIIT versus HIRT. H I I T that’s high intensity interval training versus HIRT high intensity repeat training. Brad (5m 22s): And that was published on breaking muscle.com. We’ll put that link in the show notes. And he talks about the cellular destruction that occurs when we try to push ourselves too hard in these high intensity workouts that seem to be the bread and butter, the centerpiece of traditional fitness programming. So most things that you see the Peloton workout with the peppy instructor, right there live from New York City or the neighborhood Spinning class or the neighborhood Boot Camp, or the less than evolved personal trainer who’s pushing you to do one more set when your form is already deteriorating and you’ve already accumulated fatigue and a cellular breakdown such that you can’t deliver explosive performance anymore. Brad (6m 2s): All these things are in the mix and causing a lack of results, lack of progress, and a lot of breakdown, burnout, illness, and injury. And so back to the Usain Bolt example, here was a guy that peaked over and over for the great championships, but was quote unquote lazy and liked to stay out late and go to the clubs and listen to the music. And now look at him now he’s making music. So I guess he was smarter than all of us. But it is a good takeaway lesson that this guy possibly erred on the side of being relaxed about his devotion to training and then stepping it up when he needed to of course, so a great, you know, blending of all the necessary attributes to be the greatest champion athlete, extremely hard work, of course, the genetic talent, but we don’t want to overlook all the other pieces and then a proper approach to training with that nice laid back Jamaican influence rather than the go go, go type A extremely goal oriented obsessive compulsive approach to training that we see so frequently, especially in the endurance sports, especially in the CrossFit community or anything where there’s a really fervent participation base. Brad (7m 12s): So for everybody let’s tone things down and talked about Firas and the video I talked about, Dr. Craig Marker. Joel Jamieson is another sensational leader in this area. He has a website called eight, the number eight weeks out.com. That’s eight weeks out from a title fight cause he’s working with a lot of MMA champions and we had a great show. It’s now a couple of years old, but of course, with the wonderful podcast app, you can just search for Joel Jamieson on the B rad podcast, J A M I E S O N. And listen to that show where he believes that recovery should be the centerpiece of one’s training program. So recovery is the major emphasis. Brad (7m 52s): And then when are we going to work hard? When are we going to do more intervals? When are we going to really push ourselves? Of course, those things are in there, but recovery is always the major focus. And he has this thing called rebound workouts, which are specially designed workouts that will rejuvenate you and help you recover faster than just sitting on the couch and resting. And that was an amazing insight for me to embrace when I got to know him in his work. Because when I was a triathlete, let me tell you, we thought the gold standard for recovery was to, you know, do your thing, do your 150 mile bike ride. And then the next day, Oh yeah, we’re going to wake up, eat a bunch of food, rent a bunch of videos and sit on the couch and you know what? Brad (8m 35s): That’s not a bad strategy. It’s better than trying to squeeze in extra training, especially after the really hard stuff where your stress hormones are still elevated in your bloodstream and you might feel okay the next day and feel like, Hey, maybe I should go out and bike an easy 20 miles. And you know, that’s a mistake because fatigue can accumulate slower than real time. In other words, you don’t know how tired you are due to the, the intoxicating influence of the endorphin, like hormones that are flowing in the bloodstream and the endocannabinoids new research is also showing that it’s not so much the endorphins that we always talk about, but these endocannabinoid cannabinoids, the internally manufactured cannabinoids, yes, that’s the same as you get from the drug from external sources, right? Brad (9m 24s): You can get this kind of calming pain killing effect when you ask yourself for maximum output. And so you’re feeling chill. Your legs aren’t feeling so sore stiff yet, but they will in 72 hours. But at the 12 hour mark, you’re kind of, you know, dosed on these natural chemicals, this natural chemical high that you get from pushing your body hard. And you have to reason with that and problem solve and process through, you know, personal experience so that you can make good decisions in the future. And after you work really hard for a single day of epic training or a good week of heavy training or a month where everything was really going strong and you put in a lot of, a lot of effort. Brad (10m 6s): Yeah, maybe you’re looking at one or two weeks of toning everything down and allowing the recovery processes to take hold. So Joel Jamieson gets a plug there. And of course the, the grandfather, the, the founding father of balancing health with fitness goals is Dr. Phil Maffetone. We’ve had a couple of great shows over the years. You can go listen to, but he’s a huge advocate and just toning everything down, advocating for that maximum aerobic heart rate, where you limit almost all of your steady state cardiovascular exercise to a pace that in many cases is extremely and frustratingly comfortable or slow. And so by and large, for the most part, when we’re talking about steady state cardio, most everyone is pushing themselves too hard with workouts that are slightly too significantly, too difficult. Brad (10m 57s): The heart rate is elevating beyond the maximum fat oxidation per minute. That’s what maximum aerobic function. The MAF heart rate is 180 minus age. That’s the point where you burn the maximum number of fat calories per minute, with a minimal amount of anaerobic stimulation, glucose burning stress, hormone production, lactic acid accumulation. Okay. So everyone pause and subtract 180 from your age. What’s that number? Oh boy, that’s pretty low. Isn’t it? But that is highly regarded as an excellent measuring stick cutoff point in beats per minute. Brad (11m 37s): Again. So if 180 minus 55 is one 25, in my case, that’s going to be the, the cutoff point when I need to slow down and listen to that alarm beeping and slow down my pace, such that I execute a predominantly, a fat burning workout. I feel refreshed and energized afterwards rather than toasted. And when you can kind of lock into this pattern, then you can build and build and build your fitness without the interruption that occurs when you do workouts that are even slightly too stressful, even a pattern of workouts where you’re a little bit exceeding the maximum aerobic heart rate, not too bad, you’re still going pretty easy. It’s still comfortable. Brad (12m 18s): You’re not wasted at the end like when you’re doing a, an extreme, you know, high intensity interval training session or whatnot. But as you accumulate that over time, you can run itself. You run yourself into real trouble. And I have an article on my Brad Kearns.com blog section, where I talk about a period of excessive, steady state aerobic training. It coincided with getting back into the wonderful sport of speed golf. So I was going out to the course and my heart rate was higher by 10 or 12 or 15 beats over my maximum aerobic heart rate. Pretty much every time out there because it’s pretty tough to regulate heart rate when you’re playing speed golf, as it turns out. Brad (12m 59s): In fact, interestingly, I would notice my heart rate rise after stopping, grabbing the club and hitting a shot and then resuming the run. So I’m running down the course for 300 meters of nonstop running, right? I’m running at a nice, comfortable pace below my maximum aerobic heart rate, and then stopping and hitting a shot due to the intensity of that experience even though I’m not moving, I’m not running anymore, the heart would start beeping and I’d have to slow down accordingly. And anyway, after months of speed golf, bingeing, guess what happened? That’s right. I burned up an organ, was rushed into emergency surgery to get my appendix out of my body. Brad (13m 39s): And it was a huge ordeal. I waited too long to go to the hospital. That’s another aside, if you’re in severe pain, don’t do it at home. Do it in front of medical experts. But anyway, I’m going to blame, you know, this is random. Mostly the medical, the medical commentary is that appendix is just go for whatever reason. Sometimes you’re 18 years old, sometimes you’re 51, whatever, but I’m going to blame this period of high stress, overly stressful training, such that, you know, there goes my, my reserves, my immune function, whatever was needed. And actually the incident, the, the ruptured appendix occurred on the heels of two really difficult sprint workouts in a, in a span of five days, each of them in temperatures over a hundred degrees. Brad (14m 29s): So here I am, I think a day after doing some bad-ass high jumping in 106 degree Fahrenheit, and there goes the, there goes the medical incident. And of course they’re related. No one can tell me otherwise, I believe that strongly. And so taking care of yourself, not doing stupid, crazy workouts and as an important big picture insight here, Hey, when I was out there on the track, when it was 106, I felt okay, because I’m pumped up, I’m excited. My body’s warm. I’m loose, right? 106. You don’t really need to warm up too much. Your muscles are working fine for a while until you get hot. But you know, I wasn’t out there forever. So let’s say I’m out there for 30 minutes of good, hard exercise. Brad (15m 12s): Yeah. You’re a little hot and bothered. You go into the, the store and grab some water and get into some air conditioning and you feel better, but it’s an extremely, highly stressful event. And when you string those together, I was possibly dehydrated from the previous workout. When I started the second workout in the a hundred degree plus temperatures and then further dehydrated myself. And in fact, when I presented in the hospital with the ruptured appendix, I was also severely dehydrated and there was numerous IV bags going into me one after the other. So there you go, important anecdote in favor of minimizing the stress impact of your workouts. If you’re a steady state cardio kind of person, we want to keep that MAF heart rate with great discipline. Brad (15m 57s): That means you have to, you have to strap up or get yourself the proper device. I guess the smart watches are measuring. It’s actually what they’re measuring is pulse rate, not heart rate. If you don’t have a strap on your chest, which is the most accurate, but if you can get into the rhythm of noticing and having something to regulate your effort and keep it at a MAFor below, that’s great, then when it comes to high intensity training, we don’t want to go out there and do those workouts unless you’re feeling 100% rested, energized, feeling great all the way through. And that includes the midway checkpoint. When I talk about the template sprint workout, I just wrote something on my Instagram post. So you can go and look at, you know, do this, do this, do this. Brad (16m 38s): And you’re doing the wind sprints before you do the main set of sprints. And if those don’t feel fantastic, that’s end, baby. Push them, pull the plug and leave the track and come back another day when you’re feeling great. And I think that’s a really important skill to develop. It takes a long time. That’s why I wanted to tell you about Usain Bolt and probably some of those days where he was out late clubbing and, you know, took it easy in the winter time instead of maintaining his training patterns. That was, you know, that that are unsustainable year round when you’re performing at that level. All these things might be okay, just to give yourself a little bit of a break and overall a kinder, gentler approach to high intensity training that kind of picks up where I left off in the previous Q and A show. Brad (17m 25s): When I was talking about that Robb Wolf contention, that if you want to live longer, lift more weights and eat more protein and the tremendous importance of challenging your body with brief high intensity efforts, putting your body under load, maintaining that muscle mass throughout life. And speaking of that, another vote against overdoing it is this excellent book by the noted Harvard researcher, Dr. Daniel Lieberman, the book is called Exercised. And he cites important research that we don’t hear about a lot that the hunter gatherer our lauded ancestors, especially in the ancestral health scene. They weren’t super fit. Okay. Brad (18m 5s): They weren’t gonna make it to the CrossFit games. They did the bare minimum of exercise and physical work that they needed to survive. Right. They had to go get food. They had to chase down the end antelope like you see on the great YouTube documentary, The Great Dance. So look up that. There is an amazing physical effort that the icon bushmen did to go bring down an antelope. But guess what? They didn’t go bring down antelope 17 days in a row. So after that, they rested and ate the thing and kicked back because they had had the bounty. And so to understand that is interesting when we put it in today’s context, when we have the freedom, the ability to go pursue extremely advanced fitness goals, but it could possibly come at the expense of our overall health and longevity. Brad (18m 50s): Okay. So if you are enjoying that lifestyle where you’re pursuing extreme athletic goals and wanting to build your muscle mass and look good and be part of the, a wonderful CrossFit community or the endurance community, take note of this idea that humans are not naturally designed to be extreme fitness freaks. We just want to be healthy and survive and live a long, healthy life. So on the other side, we don’t want to sit on our ass all day and lose our muscle mass and succumb to the number one, the number one cause of hospitalizations and death in Americans over age 65 is falling. That’s right. Brad (19m 30s): It’s the number one mortality factor. And that comes from obviously lack of activity, lack of muscle mass. So we don’t want to be on the sedentary side of the equation, but we want to be careful. Many listeners might relate here. We want to be careful that we don’t want to tip over all the way on the other side of going too extreme into our fitness goals. We want to be like Usain Bolt, man. Okay. Here comes a great question from Casey. Hey Brad, I just listened to the carnivores scores chart episode. I’m super interested in trying out this way of eating. However you have nuts and chocolate on there. I’m wondering if you’re concerned about the oxalates and the same question goes for sweet potatoes. So good question. Opening up the dialogue. Brad (20m 10s): Why a carnivorish dietary pattern in the first place? Well, for many people who are suffering from autoimmune or inflammatory conditions, it’s a fantastic way to experiment with a restrictive diet. Probably the easiest, most sustainable and most effective restrictive diet would be to eliminate all plant foods for a period of time, perhaps 30 days, and detect whether you have some sensitivities to plant toxins, plant antigens that are causing an inflammatory or an auto immune response. A mild one, a severe one. What have you? And as plants go there, are there a hierarchy of the most reactive plans to the ones that are least offensive to the point where, you know, almost, almost no one’s going to be allergic to iceberg lettuce because it doesn’t have much of anything in there. Brad (20m 60s): So there was a great article on the medium.com written by Keenan Erickson referencing a lot of the work of Paul Saladino and giving a nice overview of some of the categories of plant toxins and the foods that might be ranked from most restrictive to most offensive to least offensive. Casey, the, the listener mentioned oxalates, and these are high in the leafy greens category. So talk about kale, spinach, broccoli as superpowers, but they also have high levels of this offensive agent, which has no known benefits to the human, but can cause reactivity. Brad (21m 42s): So the stuff that’s been the superstars for a long time. Now, in many cases, certain people might want to try eliminating the kale smoothies and the spinach salads. Tumeric, the superstar anti-inflammatory has 2000 milligrams of oxalates per serving in comparison, let’s say a hundred grams of spinach has 750 milligrams. Spinach being one of the high oxalate foods. So if you’re shaken tumeric on your, on your foods or having a smoothie with something, you know, those, those super agents in there might be something that you have no idea is irritating your gut causing inflammatory or auto immune responses throughout the body. Brad (22m 26s): There’s another big category referenced in the article called polyphenols. And these are the high antioxidant agents that are present in many, if not most plants, foods, you’ve heard of some of them like resveratrol, quercetin, flavonoids, tannons lignans, curcumin, capsaicin, and many more. And these are believed to be antioxidant anti-inflammatory, but it’s really important to understand. I think you can go back to my shows with Paul Saladino. Will he explain where he explains this? But when you consume these foods, they aren’t antioxidant inherently. Brad (23m 7s): What happens is they prompt an antioxidant response by the body. So the master internal antioxidant known as glutathione is triggered. The production is triggered when you consume these foods that prompt an inflammatory response because they’re poisons. They’re toxins. They’re called natural plant toxins, plant antigens, and they’re widely regarded as healthy inherently. But I think it’s really important to understand that distinction, that they prompt a healthy response in the body. So they’re not, you know, we’re not saying this is a bad thing to eat a handful of blueberries with the high levels of antioxidants in there, but that they prompt an antioxidant response in the body. Brad (23m 54s): They also come with what Dr. Saladino calls a package insert. So these plant toxins can also prompt adverse reactions in the body. The kale, ginger beet celery smoothie. And boy, I was drinking these, these green smoothies prompted by Dr. Rhonda Patrick YouTube video stuffing in celery and kale and beets and carrots and drinking that thing down reliably would have a immediate inflammation of the digestive system. The stomach pops out and I experienced gas bloating for hours after drinking the smoothie. Brad (24m 34s): And so that was to me direct association with this huge dose of oxalates and other polyphenols and all the things that cause inflammation and auto immune response. And, boy, that won out over whatever benefits I was getting, because I’m going to contend that’s something that causes gas, bloating, and transient abdominal pain after consuming a is not going to be worth consuming due to the purported benefits. What’s really interesting about this package insert concept and the fact that these are hormetic stressors to the body, right? They prompt what’s supposed to be an overall beneficial response. So if you consume a food that prompts an antioxidant response by the body, Hey, you’re going to get thumbs up from all nutrition, dietary experts, right? Brad (25m 21s): But what’s interesting to consider is that you can obtain or achieve hormesis in many different ways. And Dr. Saladino talks about the categorizing of environmental hormesis versus dietary or plant hormesis. And so if you expose your body to a cold, if you expose your body to hot sauna, if you perform a sprint workout, do you do a high intensity strength training session you are stressing the body. You’re providing an optimally brief hormetic stressor that delivers a net positive response, just like the kale, ginger, beet, celery is supposed to do. Brad (26m 0s): So when you look at all plant foods across the spectrum, you are looking at a potential or hypothetical trade off between your personal level of reactivity and the nutrient density and the positive benefits that you get from the plant. So we have to consider this and learn a little bit about the spectrum of the most toxic most potentially problematic plant foods versus the least toxic which are very unlikely to cause an adverse reaction in, in, in most people. So in the most toxic category, we have seeds, roots, stems and leaves. Brad (26m 42s): And when you look at the category of root and leaves in that category are nuts, beans, grains, onions, potatoes, and, and so forth. So the seeds, obviously having a tremendous amount of nutritional properties, you’ve read all about the antioxidant benefits of the seeds and the high values of this or that positive attribute positive agent to consume, but they also can be highly intolerable. And of course there’s many examples of people that are extremely allergic to nuts and seeds. So, you know, look no further for proof that this stuff is legit. This potential reactivity to purportedly beneficial plant suits. Brad (27m 23s): And I want to keep dancing back to them. The original question from Casey, and he’s asking me about putting nuts, chocolate, and sweet potatoes on our chart. So I should start with the, the central insight that the Carnivore Scores Chart is obviously trying to start with the premise of a carnivorish eating pattern and looking at the most nutrient dense foods on the planet that don’t have concerns about reactivity. So on the top level, we have organ meats. We have oysters, we have salmon eggs, and we have all the great superfoods that the planet. The other organs, besides liver oily, cold water fish, pasture raised eggs, grassfed beef. Brad (28m 4s): And then we’re going down, down, down. And then at the bottom, we have a nice little chart talking about an assortment of plant foods that may offer the most nutritional benefits with the least concerns about reactivity. Things like honey. Things like fruit, starchy, tubers are generally regarded as low toxicity the starchy root vegetables and the high sugar things like fruit. Fruit being the final offering of the right. So if you’re thinking of a blueberry patch or picking blackberries by the side of the road in the summer, you’re not eating the root stem or leaves that those plants you’re eating the fruit and the plant doesn’t care. Brad (28m 45s): If you pick that fruit off, it’s going to live to see another season because you’re not consuming the root, stem or leaf. Right. In contrast, when you pull the kale out of the ground, this is something that the kale plant doesn’t want to happen. And as many colorful descriptions have, have referenced, the kale plant can’t run away from you. So it has to manufacture these natural toxins as a defense mechanism against potential predators of the plant. And that’s why the hiding the reactive categories are seeds, roots, stems, and leaves. You’re basically raiding the organism and consuming it like a fruit. Brad (29m 26s): Unlike a honey, honey could even be argued as a carnivore food because it’s produced by the bee. Right? So also I had mentioned iceberg lettuce. So, and finally in the very low toxicity category would be the non sweet fruits things like squash, avocados, coconut. So if you’re pondering this carnivore-ish experiment, probably the first 30 days out of the gate, you’re going to want to restrict all plants foods and see what happens. And then do this methodical, adding back just like Dr. Phil Maffetone has been talking about for 30 years, his two week test. You can probably Google that and see the basics, but he talks about cutting out all these offensive processed carbohydrate foods. Brad (30m 12s): And then with this carnivore experiment for 30 days, you’re going to stick with the eggs, the beef, the fish, extremely satisfying nutrient dense foods, where you’re not struggling or counting the days on the clock to where you can feel like a human again. No you’re eating these fabulous nutrient dense meals. You’re getting a lot of benefits and you’re giving your system a break from the toxic plant foods that could be irritating your gut lining, promoting leaky gut syndrome and causing all kinds of reactivity, especially gas, bloating, transient, abdominal pain in conjunction with meals. That’s not a good thing. It’s no bueno, but we accept it as kind of normal because it’s so commonplace. Brad (30m 52s): So that will be fun to, to embark on that path. You can look at meat, heals.com and read these amazing success stories that have been nicely categories in various different, under various different ailments. Right? And listen to the leaders like Dr. Shawn Baker, Dr. Paul Saladino Mikhaila Peterson has her own podcast. Now people that have turned their transformed their health through the carnivores strategy due to their highest sensitivity to plants. And so back to the question, yeah, I eat a lot of chocolate. I eat my Brad’s Macadamia Masterpiece. It’s delicious. I don’t have any adverse effects. But if you’re sensitive to nuts, then you’re not going to want to eat my product. And if you’re sensitive to the, the, the agents in chocolate that might be irritant to your gut lining, that’s going to be something that might come up when you restrict these foods. Brad (31m 40s): And so then the add back period, when you feel like you want to calibrate toward maybe more carbohydrates in the diet. A lot of people referenced a sweet potato as a great source of nutrition and a carbohydrate that doesn’t have the irritation. Same with the fresh seasonal fruit. Paul Saladino went straight for the honey, the honey hive when he was experimenting with his continuous glucose monitor and adding carbs back into diet rather than eating completely strict carnivore, which by definition is not going to avail you with many carbohydrates. And then you try to pair that with exercise and recovery, you could be looking at a problem or an overly stressful, unnecessarily, stressful diet, as I talked about in the previous Q and A show. Brad (32m 22s): So the idea is the 30 day experiment, and then adding back some of your favorite stuff and seeing what happens, but maybe emphasizing the, the, the least toxic most nutritious foods. And of course, steering clear of all the processed carbohydrates that don’t offer any nutritional value and have all kinds of health concerns. And that’s basically the, the, the essence of the Carnivores Score Chart. You can go to Brad kearns.com and download the chart, print it out, stick it on your refrigerator and have some thoughtfulness. The next time you’re heading down the path to prepare a kale, ginger, beet, celery smoothie, thinking that it’s the ultimate in health, but might have some, some trade-off between your reactivity and whatever nutritional benefits you’re getting, or whatever antioxidant response you’re stimulating. Brad (33m 13s): And boy, as you know, I’m an enthusiastic, cold exposure. And to think that jumping into the cold tub or jumping into Lake Tahoe and having a few minutes of cold exposure and the hormetic response occurring, and that going hand in hand, or being comparative to sitting down and eating a salad or drinking a green smoothie, that’s going to pop my stomach out. That’s a very interesting way to look at it. You’re getting the same benefit without the package insert without the side effects. Okay. Good question. Thank you so much for teeing that up, Casey. And then we go to Stanley Johnson talking about sleep, and, Oh, this is going to have a multifaceted response here. When you hear his message, Hey, I’m a long-time listener of your podcast. Brad (33m 56s): I’m a MOFO consumer, right on Stanley. Keep it up. It helps me stay on track. I love your honesty and your message. I’m trying to get my family on board with better sleeping routines. They won’t listen to me though. Wham, what is your top recommendation for a book that covers the science and the habits that will lead to better sleep? So before I start throwing around book recommendations, because I can do that all day long to people that ain’t never going to pick up that book and read it, we’ve got to address the, the family thing. Okay. So I think many experts agree, and I would concur from my own personal experience that walking your talk is the number one objective. Brad (34m 41s): And the number one way to positively influence the lives of your loved ones, especially kids, which is a whole separate category, but especially people that you care about, you care about their health, your well-meaning, you want to give your suggestions. You’re, you’re deep into the scene. Things are working for you. And you’re so enthusiastic about sharing the message. And of course, I’ve been in this position a long time, cause this is my life’s work. I live and breathe this stuff every day. And yes, we can get to talking all the time with them, my friends, family, and loved ones about health topics that they may or may not be interested in. So you have to be really sensitive to the concept that Mia Moore promotes that people need to be ready to receive before you waste your breath and start to advocate for whatever it is. Brad (35m 26s): So when that person is ready to receive, when they approach you with the question or looking for support or guidance, I’m looking for book recommendations, you will be ready and you will help them as much as they need. But trying to pick away and try to, you know, carve out an audience that is going to be a big challenge, especially with kids. And you have almost no chance of succeeding with your mouth versus demonstrating and walking. You’re talking life. And let me tell you this, sometimes there may be a time lag there. So I think about the battles that I fought with my son when he was in his formative years, and I was trying to argue against the consumption of nutrient deficient food. Brad (36m 11s): And of course, you know, going through high school basketball practice, they’re going to come home with a seven 11 cup in their hand, and they might hear a choice comment or two over time from dad. But now here he is deep into the culinary scene and extremely interested in healthy eating, which is cool to see, especially in his age group. So somehow there was an impact there, but it wasn’t a forced issue. He had to come to it in his own time. And so that also has the case for when I was coaching kids in the various sports. And, you know, we would stop practice and lecture them about how to play the game properly and be more unselfish as soccer players or basketball players. And you could see visibly, we started noticing the group of coaches that would hit these guys. Brad (36m 57s): And we’d noticing at about the 45 second mark. Their eyes would glaze over and they’d start, you know, darting their eyes to other things instead of focusing on the conversation. And so I came to realize that these openings, that occur to have a, a personal growth experience and a teaching point lasts about 45 seconds. And then your, your job is to shut up, roll the ball out and let them play and let them experience it for themselves. So I became a less talkative, more hands-on coach, and that seemed to work better than being the, the lecturer style of coach or parent. And the same goes for, with, you know, significant other close family, whether it’s your parents, your cousin, whoever it is that you’re getting into the mix with. Brad (37m 44s): Ah, however, on that kid’s note, especially with the topic of sleep that Stanley started asking about here, guess what? You’re allowed to draw boundaries and try to help them formulate healthy long-term lifestyle habits through your own example and through your influence. And so I love that suggestion where I don’t know who first presented it, but it’s been bantered around a lot now where there’s a big mixing bowl, a centerpiece at the dinner table. And the, the, those in the house who were under 18 are obligated to drop their mobile device into the bowl or add to the charging station in the kitchen and retired to their bedroom and continue with their evening. But yeah, the technology goes off at a certain time. Brad (38m 27s): Mark Cuban, you know, the Dallas Mavericks owner as a Tech Titan in the, the Shark Tank guy, he has an app, or he has the capability from his, his internet connection to shut off the wifi in the home at midnight or whatever it is on timer. So even if he goes to sleep before his younger offspring, they are going to have trouble accessing the internet after midnight. I love that one. That is bad-ass Sarah Fragoso long-time leader in the paleo scene, best-selling author of numerous books. She gave a lecture where someone asked her in the audience, Hey, so Sarah, do your kids eat paleo too? She goes, yeah. Brad (39m 7s): Cause I make the meals and it’s my house. And I’m like, wow, that is bad ass. So I, I accosted her backstage. I said, come on now, give me the straight scoop. Are you kidding? Your kids are fully on board. She goes, Oh yeah. She goes, it’s my money, my house, my meals. And that’s the way it goes. So I walked away from that greatly inspired to up my game a little bit and not be so wimpy about things that I had some control over and some influence over where it was within my parental boundaries to say, Hey, look, no, we’re not stopping off at seven 11, just because you’re begging for a Slurpee after your basketball practice. But you know, that’s a tight rope to walk. You don’t want to be too heavy handed, or you’re going to have people that are going to turn off to you message. Brad (39m 49s): So in conclusion of the question and the show here, how bout some suggestions? My favorite book on sleep is called Lights Out, Sleep, Sugar and Survival. And it’s a really entertaining, beautifully written and unusual book. It’s quite a few years old now. And I think you’re going to love it. And it talks about the ancestral underpinnings of our need to honor our circadian rhythm and how important it is. All of these different facets of health and hormonal function Bent Formby and T S Wiley, where the authors and I refer to that book all the time. And the lessons in there. One interesting anecdote or tidbit just to share with you is how they, everyone says, Oh, you need eight hours of sleep. Brad (40m 33s): Eight hours of sleep is the optimal. Okay. Okay. The authors argue convincingly that our sleep needs actually vary according to the time of year and the amount of light in our environment. Okay. So if you’re on the equator, your time of year, your day’s not changing much from a winter to summer. You know, in the Caribbean, it gets sunny at 6:00 AM and it gets dark at 6:00 PM virtually year round. If you’re in the Scandinavia or Canada and those upper Northern areas, you’re going to need much more sleep in the winter than you do in the summer. And so the authors throw out a figure of most people that are living in the Northern hemisphere, in the high population areas where the days change by, let’s say, you know, five, six or seven hours over the course of the year here in continental United States, you know, the winter, the winter sunlight is maybe 10 hours a day, right? Brad (41m 31s): Maybe 7:00 AM to 5:00 PM. And then the summer we’re talking about 16 hours a day. So that’s a six hour split there. The winter, they suggest that most people will do well getting nine and a half hours of sleep at night. And in the summer months, we can get by on much less, somewhere around eight, maybe even less for certain people. So that’s interesting, great book, Lights Out, Sleep, Sugar and Survival. Matthew Walker’s book, Why We Sleep has been widely publicized and become a bestseller. He’s a great entertainer on the, the podcast circuit, especially his appearance on the Joe Rogan show, where he gets deep into his work. Brad (42m 10s): Actually, some people have criticized him and maybe taking a few liberties with some of the research conclusions, but I appreciate his really strong message. And if it’s someone’s going to nitpick him, I’m not too worried because he’s really urging people to prioritize sleep, especially citing the amazing declines in productivity that happen when we get sleep deprived, even mildly sleep deprived. And here’s one great tidbit from some of his message is that when we’re even mildly sleep deprived, our cognitive performance slows down. And our ability to get shit done slows down to the tune of a 20 or a 40% decline. Brad (42m 53s): And it takes that much longer to do everything. So imagine your eight hour workday and you’re 20% slower because you’re not sleeping well enough. Now it’s a 10 hour work day. And then the kicker, the punchline is because you’re sleep deprived, your perception of your decline in productivity is not there because you’re not sharp. So you don’t even realize you’re slower. You just realize you put in a 10 hour day and you still have more stuff to do. And you’re not going to get enough sleep because you’re so busy. So he says, put sleep at the very top shelf, the highest possible priority. And then you’ll be sharp. Then you’ll notice things like, gee, my productivity is declining here at 8:15 PM. I better leave the office, go get a good meal, get some rest and tackle things tomorrow. Brad (43m 36s): But if you don’t have that sensitivity cause your zombie land, yeah, that’s going to be a bad downward spiral. And then finally, as I mentioned in more detail in the previous Q and A show, Dr. Sara Mednick’s book, Take a Nap, Change Your Life is also on my list of go-to books. So there’s three great go-to books, Lights Out, Why We Sleep and Take a Nap. Thank you, everybody. Maybe you’ll take a nap. Depends on when you’re listening to this. Thanks for writing in podcast@bradventures.com. We love to hear from you. Yeah. We also love, if you can take a few moments to leave a review, especially on Apple podcasts, it’s much easier now. You can do it right from your mobile device, unlike in the old days. Brad (44m 18s): So yeah, if you can choose between five and five stars and then write a few comments, it really helps us rise up the rankings and get more people paying attention to the show. We’re actually right there in the cutoff point where we were, we’ll being listed as favorites in our category on Apple podcasts, in the health and fitness, fitness sub category. And so when it pops up there, we experienced a rise in listenership and it’s all in your hands. I so much appreciate doing this. I appreciate you listening. And if you can do that little help to spread the word, that’s really super huge because then we pop up higher and, Oh my gosh, I love my podcast app. It’s called overcast. And while you’re listening to the podcast, you can push and do your own sound clip. Brad (45m 1s): If you like something that was said by myself or a guest during an interview, you, you push the button, you prepare the sound copy. You can change the duration of the sound clip. I think maximum is two minutes or a minute and a half. And then with another push button, text the sound, clip to your homeys and tell them them, Hey, listen up. Here’s what I was talking about. You might like this, the guy’s talking about sleep, whatever, and then they can punch in and listen to the show. So yeah, I appreciate it very much. Thanks again. And we look forward to hearing from you.

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