Shawn is one of the world’s leading health experts as the bestselling author of Sleep Smarter and host of the #1 rated Model Health Show.

The first part of the discussion is about foot functionality. Shawn mentions the emerging research on how minimalist shoes can address the cause of foot dysfunction, “nourishing and rehabilitating our feet.” The describes the awakening he has experienced using Peluva five-toe minimalist shoes, with increased proprioception and ease of movement. 

Then the show gets personal, as Shawn describes how his journey to becoming a health leader took shape. Growing up as an athlete in St. Louis, MO, Shawn suffering a serious injury on the running track and discovered that he was severely malnourished and had a degenerative bone disease. With his athletic dreams compromised, he lost hope, endured further suffering that included his mental health and putting on a bunch of excess body fat, and had to start from the bottom to turn his life around. 

Shawn’s struggle included having to reject mainstream medical treatment and a “poor me” attitude and discover a path to health on his own. Shawn’s grandma gets a huge plug here, and you will be touched by Shawn’s emotional recount of how he turned the corner and truly saved his life. 

You’ll also learn that Shawn’s malnourished youth was not some bizarre bad luck, but rather the norm in modern life today. Shawn cites research published in JAMA that kids today are eating 70% ultra-processed foods; the situation worsens with low socio-economic conditions. 

Shawn tells us the main ways we are still screwing up our health, even with lots of great information and awareness today. He urges us to prioritize sleep and take bold steps to optimize health. It starts with controlling your use of digital technology, forming an empowering attitude where you place health #1, creating a winning evening ritual, and more.

Shawn Stevenson is the host of the Model Health Show and author of the best-selling books Sleep Smarter and Eat Smarter. Check out his Instagram @shawnmodel and his YouTube channel @TheShawnModel

TIMESTAMPS:

The wonderful cushiony shoes you are wearing feel terrific because they dull your sensations. [07:45]

When you get into the Peluvas, it is important to start slowly, making sure your feet that have been stuffed into shoes have a chance to adjust. [16:43]

At 20 years old, Shawn was diagnosed with degenerative disc disease. [20:00]

A 20-year study found that about 68 percent of America’s children’s diet consists of ultra processed foods. [21:29]

Shawn could not imagine spending the rest of his life with the pain he was experiencing, so he began to research for a solution. [25:48]

The most overlooked aspects of exercise is that it increases assimilation. [29:03]

He began to understand how important his sleep and the proper nutrition are to his recovery. [30:40]

Sleep impacts people’s nutrition and general health. [36:11]

Even though there is much information available for people to be informed on sleep and nutrition, we are still falling behind. [38:54]

Shawn has suggested 21 tips for better sleep. One of the most important is the evening habit of being on screens. It interferes with your circadian rhythm and melatonin. [42:24]

Having a cool bedroom is very important. [52:01]

LINKS:

• Brad Kearns.com
• BradNutrition.com
• B.rad Whey Protein Superfuel
• Brad’s Shopping Page
• BornToWalkBook.com
• Peluva Five-Toe Minimalist Shoes
• TheModelHealthShow.com
• Instagram @ShawnModel
• YouTube @TheShawnModel
• Sleep Smarter
• Eat Smarter

LISTEN:

We appreciate all feedback, and questions for Q&A shows, emailed to podcast@bradventures.com. If you have a moment, please share an episode you like with a quick text message, or leave a review on your podcast app. Thank you!

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TRANSCRIPT:

Brad (00:00):
Welcome to the B.rad podcast, where we explore ways to pursue peak performance with passion throughout life without taking ourselves too seriously. I’m Brad Kearns, New York Times bestselling author, former number three world ranked professional triathlete and Guinness World Record Masters athlete. I connect with experts in diet, fitness, and personal growth, and deliver short breather shows where you get simple actionable tips to improve your life right away. Let’s explore beyond the hype hacks, shortcuts, and science talk to laugh, have fun and appreciate the journey. It’s time to B.rad.

Shawn (00:38):
In truth, having a shoe like a Peluva nourishes our feet and rehabilitates our feet. It helps to fix problems we don’t even know that we have. So there can be stuff way up chain. Mm-hmm. Neck issues, right? Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Hip issues, knee issues. But if we’re looking even specifically at the feet, we are so blinded from the fact that

Brad (01:01):
I am so excited to introduce you to Shawn Stevenson, one of the true leaders in the Progressive Health Movement. He is the host of the extremely popular number one rated model health show on YouTube and on the podcast channels, a true OG of health information, and one of the early pioneers on YouTube and on podcasts of dispensing sensible health advice. A great resource. He has been going at it for a long time. I’ve been a big fan for a long time, and it was so great to finally connect. He’s right there in my hometown, the San Fernando Valley, doing his thing in his fabulous, beautiful studio. I hope you can watch our show on YouTube and see all the production quality that he puts into everything. So I really think that his gift is this ability to genuinely and sincerely care about the information he’s dispensing to his followers.

Brad (02:03):
You’re gonna hear about his really arduous and difficult journey to become the health leader that he is today. Uh, it really was kickstarted by a serious injury that he had in high school, and he realized he was malnourished, osteoporotic. He was diagnosed with what’s called degenerative disc disease, which the doctors told him was incurable. And as a young guy, he got into big trouble, bedridden, suffering, struggling, thinking that it was incurable. And he’s gonna talk about how he hit bottom. He was inspired by his grandmother to turn things around, take health into his own hands, and these are the things that motivates him today to really work hard and be the best he can be to help so many people out there. You know, I think he also has a gift for taking this complex scientific information that can often be overwhelming and dispensing it in a nice, clean, simple, doable manner.

Brad (03:03):
You’re gonna love his appearance on my podcast here. I got to record in his studio right after doing a show with him for the Model Health Show. And boy, were we excited to see that our interview, his interview of me rose to the top 20 overall most listened episodes on Apple Podcasts. We’ve noticed a lot of growth on the B.rad podcast, thanks to my appearance. So this guy, he’s my man now, and you are gonna love his game. This is a really powerful show.

Brad (03:32):
Please welcome Shawn Stevenson, host of the Model Health Show, author of Sleep Smarter and Eat Smarter, two bestselling books that he’s been putting out there and promoting for many years. Grab the book, subscribe to his channel, and here we go.

Brad (03:48):
Shawn Stevenson, host of the Model Health Show. I can’t believe I’m here getting to bum your studio off you <laugh> for a nice interview for the Peluva channel. It’s been so great connecting with you recording that interview for the Model Health Show. Uh, seeing that great show that you did with Mark, and now you’re really a, a good friend of Peluvas. The response from your group has been sensational. So you’re really authentically embracing this shoe. And we appreciate you very much. I wanna talk about a bunch of things today and just get to know you, but I think we should start, we should, we should get right into it. As I look down, I’m saying, where’s your Peluvas, man <laugh>?

Brad (04:28):
If if you’re, if you’re listening and not watching, you’re wearing a really sick pair of Nikes. I’ve never really seen those. They’re very beautiful. These

Shawn (04:35):
Are huaraches

Brad (04:36):
Oh,

Shawn (04:37):
Nike huarache

Brad (04:38):
Yeah. Yeah. But it brings up a cool point to discuss in a, in a authentic manner. Yeah. Which is, you know, we have shoes for all kinds of things, and one of ’em is, uh, you know, fashion and you’re the, you’re the fashion most fashionable guy out there. I think all the podcasters, I mean, the

Shawn (04:56):
Streets say, yeah, that’s what the streets say. I didn’t say it, but, you know,

Brad (05:00):
He, he’s gonna, he’s gonna own it. <laugh>, it says cross to bear. He’s always gotta bring his game, and they’re looking to see what

Shawn (05:05):
Gonna fashion like. I mean,

Brad (05:07):
You know. Yeah.

Shawn (05:08):
But yeah, you know, it’s, we were talking about this as well, you know, we have shoes for so many different modalities, and certain shoes are designed for certain things, you know, like your high jumping endeavors, for example. And that’s all well and good, but what Peluvas have done for me is give me rehab and prehab for my feet. And so, yeah. You know, I’ve got a bunch of different types of shoes that I, that I rock. But a great experience that, that everybody listening knows about is when you spend time in those other shoes and you get home and you take ’em off and it’s just like, ah, it’s like relief taking those shoes off. I never feel like that taking off the Peluvas. I never have that. Like, my dogs are barking. Where did that come from? Anyways? Where do they re relate dogs to your

Brad (05:55):
Feet? Yeah. Right.

Shawn (05:56):
Yeah. You know, but that’s a whole other thing. But I never feel like that when I take off the Peluvas. And so even, this is my, this is my routine. You know, we’ve recorded, I’m getting close to 900 episodes, but here at my studio, hundreds of episodes. And what I do when I get home is I kick off whatever shoes I might be wearing, and I put the Peluvas on. I go for a walk, and most mornings I start my day, you know, after I do my morning routine, not ducking my face in the sparkling water or whatever, but I do my morning routine, you know, maybe a little reading meditation, and then I put Peluvas on and I go for a walk to start my day. And I was doing that for over a year before I connected with you guys. Right. So Mark put the shoes into my hands and onto my feet.

Shawn (06:41):
Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And I, I just, I was skeptical. Yeah. I was skeptical. Like what could, after a year of doing that, I, I just felt different. I felt more connection with my body, if that makes sense. You know, and also just being able to see how it translates over. I felt so much better doing the other things. And I really, this is one of the biggest things, is I really noticed how uncomfortable other shoes were. Mm-hmm. And, you know, whether it was playing basketball, like I really noticed, like my feet did not like that. Right. And so, getting the Peluvas, or get, just spending more time and also just the intelligence of my feet being free more often as well was unlocked because a practice like, like this of wearing shoes, like this is like, it informs you, it turns some certain senses back on, obviously proprioception and the kinetic chain, all this stuff. But it’s more subtle. It’s just like my body awareness of what I like and what I don’t like, what feels right was turned up significantly. Oh,

Brad (07:45):
For sure. Uh, do you know why those really cushiony, pillowy running shoes are so comfortable? It’s because they dull your sensation. Oh, yeah. And so your proprioception is gone. And so if you take off jogging down the street at the running store, you’re about to buy the, the big cushioning pair, it feels fantastic because all you feel is like your foot landing into a foam and you don’t notice this inappropriately dispersed impact trauma throughout the lower extremities when you’re wearing an elevated cushioned shoe, because it enables the poor form where you’re, you’re not landing correctly, but it’s dulled. It’s sort of like going to the, the dentist and you get a shot of Novocaine, and then they drill and, and get your tooth out of there and everything feels fine. Thank you very much. How much is my copay? And then when the Novocaine wears off, you’re at home going, help <laugh>, you know, get me something. I need more.

Brad (08:38):
Yeah. And so it’s, it’s just like that, like the shoes are Novocaine. Yeah. And what you mentioned with that skepticism, we see that a lot when we’re at trade shows interacting with people, and they, they look at the shoe and they go, well, does it have a lot of support in there? Because support equals comfort with all this flawed shoe marketing that we’ve been pushed. Like, what’s the arch support like? And our answer is there’s no arch support. The arch support is your own arch being allowed to function and go through its range of motion and give you tremendous support, vastly superior to any shoe. As a matter of fact. What a concept.

Shawn (09:12):
What a concept. So these fluffy shoes, they basically, like you just said, they dumb, they dumb your feet down. Yeah. Right? So basically we get dumb and dumb, dumb and dumber on each of your feet. And we got like Lloyd Christmas feet out here walking around Christmas and not, and then that intelligence is, is muted. And so again, we have these epidemics of quote, overuse injuries, right. And it’s just people competing and just like not having that full intelligence of their body turned on. It’s getting muted. And so of course, I love that you guys are creating a movement where this is starting to, to translate over into, into other domains like golf, for example. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. You were telling me about that. And football. And what I’m hoping will be, you know, rolling out from all of this is ultimately is just again, spending more time barefoot, like letting your feet be feet.

Shawn (10:05):
And one of the things that was really compelling for me, and I shared this study with you, you know, on the video, maybe we can link the video mm-hmm. Below this one. But one of the studies that I shared was looking at, and this is a journal dedicated to orthotics and all this stuff. And so they’re, they’re wanting to find a hack for disabling your feet, basically. Mm-hmm. And they were wanting to see what they can do with Hollis Vegas, right. Or better known as bunions and would putting somebody’s feet in. Because what happens is, is that big toes getting pushed in over time. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Creating that bunion, what if they put people into shoes with a wider toe box? Would that help? Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And so they did that. And then they had another study group where they had toe separators and a wide toe box.

Shawn (10:52):
The group that was just put in suddenly that have bunions into shoes with a wide toe box only their bunions got worse on average. Alright. It wasn’t enough. But the toe separators in conjunction mm-hmm <affirmative>. Create a significant improvement in bunions. And for some test subjects, some resolution, like most people don’t even know that’s possible. Right. They’re suffering with bunions. Right. And they’re doing all these little cosmetic things to try to fix it, but it’s like, how about we remove the cause, which is having our toe pushed in constantly from our cute shoes. Right. Which specifically, this is gonna be impacting women more often. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And in truth, having a shoe, like a Peluva nourishes our feet and rehabilitates our feet, it helps to fix problems we don’t even know that we have. So there can be stuff way up chain, neck issues, right? Mm-hmm <affirmative>.

Shawn (11:47):
Hip issues, knee issues. But if we’re looking even specifically at the feet, we are so blinded from the fact that bunions, you know, corns and calluses and all this stuff often come from wearing these what we, what you call, you know, cushy shoes and then maybe spending some time suddenly we go with a, a wide toe box, zero drop shoe, you know, go for a hike after wearing, you know, Sketchers, which is right across the street. And, uh, Sketchers outlets wearing Skechers for years. He’s maximal on the whole other end. We got maximal issues, right. Rather than rehabilitating our feet, starting to wear some Peluvas and go for going for a walk and getting all that data input and integration with our nervous system, with our feet. And it’s just, it’s healing. Right? So that’s another thing I wanted to share too, is like, it’s not a good idea to go from zero to a hundred, right?

Shawn (12:39):
If somebody’s been hiking mm-hmm. And hiking boots, right? And then they suddenly they want to throw on their Peluvas and go for a two-hour hike the first time. Like just wear ’em, put on put, put some time in going for a walk and spending just time even around your house wearing the Peluvas or the Peluva socks is another thing that I haven’t shared with you. But a lot of times here at the studio, even if I’m wearing quote, regular shoes, I have on the Peluva socks underneath, and just having like that data, like, it’s like my feet are more aware when I have those socks on and the my toes are separated. So I don’t know if anybody shared that with you before.

Brad (13:17):
Oh, sure. We were shocked because we made the socks as a companion to wearing the shoes. Some people like to put socks in. I don’t, because you’re not gonna get blisters because blisters come from the friction of the toes being wedged together, right? Yeah. And so you don’t really need socks when you have five individual toe slots for your shoe. But the feeling and not wanting to get the, the sweaty in your shoes and all that, that’s great. So then we notice like, people are buying socks independently, or more pairs of socks than shoes because they’re wearing ’em in all the shoes. And so even a sock is still pushing, it’s, it’s applying pressure to push the toes together. And so it’s disturbing that natural desire for the toes to display outward and relax and, and realigned. So wearing five toes in any shoe is a big, is a big improvement.

Brad (14:07):
Of course, the best would be having the individual toe slots in the shoe. And you mentioned the wide toe box, which is great. And so we’re all happy to be in the same industry of people fighting against the flawed shoe marketing and the movement toward big shoes. So all minimalist shoes are great. I’ve used so many other models over the years. I’m good friends with Steven Sashen, the founder of Zero Shoes. Love what all those people are doing. But there is a distinction between the wide toe box, which is not bad. It’s not directly bad for your toes, but it’s not helping to relax, realign, and reeducate them like a five toe shoe would be because it’s sort of like wearing a toe spacer automatically throughout the day. And you can kind of tell this if you walk barefoot up a staircase, and when you put, when you plant your foot on, on the stair above you, you’ll notice that the foot, the toes splay and the metatarsals widen beyond sort of the outline cut shape of your foot. And that would be a wide toe box shoe. They, they, they stretch out so far. And you can see it instantly when you, when you go upstairs, or if you’re walking like in the sand or a really soft surface where the foot is allowed to do what it’s supposed to do. It’s, it’s, it’s like super wide, like a duck swimming underwater. It’s amazing to, to realize how wide the foot really will go if, if you allow it to.

Shawn (15:30):
Yeah. Yeah. And what happens is if, you know, you go from a standard shoe to a wide toebox, your feet have been trained <laugh> most times for decades, for some people Yeah. To stay cramped together. Right. They don’t just suddenly start to, you know, have that natural splay of course over time, with some training and all these different things. But if you are wearing Peluvas, it automatically creates that toe play, which is really

Brad (15:54):
Cool. Takes a while. People, now I, now I will take off my shoe if you’re watching, but you can see that baby toe is like tucked in bed there next to the other one. And it really should be straight out like this with the bone straight. Same with the big toe where we have that common condition of the bone growing out there. Um, but it takes a long time. You know what Mark Sisson says when people are trying on shoes at the, at the trade shows and public events, if you have a problem getting into them, that’s great because you really need ’em. Yeah. And if you can get into them me easily, that’s also great ’cause it’s a great shoe for you, and you’re not gonna have that education period. But, in case you were, you were watching how smoothly I put those five toes back into their slots, that’s a lot of work and a lot of time wearing these to where I don’t have to get down on the floor and wedge with my index finger and pull and make sure that baby toe goes in there.

Brad (16:43):
So the toes need a lot of love and support, and this is one step in the right direction along with trying to go barefoot or in five toed socks as much as possible. So, you know, I was teasing you at the start of the discussion here because you’re wearing these shoes, but like, how many steps have you taken in these shoes? You went from the parking garage up the elevator, down the hall. So it’s like, what’s the big deal? You can wear anything that looks cool, and I think a lot of people might relate to that and embrace this idea, but then when it comes time to take care of yourself, that’s when you can make this concerted effort to keep shoes off in the home. And if you’re gonna put in steps gracefully integrate, not that two-hour hike out of the gate, because our feet are so atrophied and dysfunctional.

Brad (17:29):
But, what Mark Sisson did in the early days was he’d pack a pair of five-toed shoes in his backpack and put ’em on until he needed some support from the old shoes. And then pretty soon he didn’t need the other shoes. And I’ve had that graceful transition for many years too. But we wanna be patient and we never want to experience things like, like, uh, soreness or discomfort in the day after we put on our fabulous new Peluva shoes and tried ’em out. ’cause that means we need to dial it back a little bit and then just allow the feet to strengthen naturally over time. Yeah,

Shawn (18:02):
That’s great advice.

Brad (18:03):
So, you know, you’ve been in this game for a long time. You started the Model Health Show, what did you say in 2013 or something?

Shawn (18:11):
Something like that? It’s been, yeah. Yeah, it was, we’re at, we’re gonna be at our 13 year anniversary.

Brad (18:16):
Fantastic.

Shawn (18:17):
Here in about a month.

Brad (18:18):
Yeah. Yeah. I first became aware of you when you, you brought sleep to much greater attention than it had been. Well, I shouldn’t say that. It’s like everyone says how sleep is so important, and we’ve heard that forever, and then no one does anything about it. And no one changes their ways. They just go, yeah, sleep’s important. So maybe we could get a little timeline of how, how you got into this extreme health game and what inspired you to, to focus on that topic of sleep, and then take it from there into everything that you’re covering these days.

Shawn (18:48):
Awesome. Well, I got into, I grew up as an athlete, and, but I had a bunch of health issues, and I was that kid, you know, I was the fastest kid in my school, and, you know,

Brad (18:58):
No, I don’t know, <laugh>, you said, you know, can we edit out those blips? Like when he says, you know, <laugh>, I was the fastest kid, you know? No, I don’t know. <laugh>. I was, I was the kid that ran after the ball because I had the great endurance, but the fast kids were fast, man. Yeah. Oh

Shawn (19:15):
Man. I know what

Brad (19:15):
That’s all

Shawn (19:16):
About, man. So, you know, I used that predominantly playing football, but I also ran track and, you know, I had aspirations, of course, going to college and that kind of thing to play, play football. And it was during track season, sophomore year, I was doing a 200 meter time trial. So again, time trial, it might be one other student with me, or just at this instance, it was just me and my coach. And so I took off and it’s like, you know, the 200 meters, basically half the track, right? So it’s going from the curve of the track into the straightaway. And as I was coming into the straightaway, my hip broke. Oh, mercy. Yeah. So I broke my iliac crest, like the tip of my hip bone broke. I didn’t know it at the time. I just came up limping. Right. And I thought maybe I pulled a muscle.

Shawn (20:00):
I had never been injured before. So I kept coming to practice the next two days, and I just couldn’t get my legs to fire. Yeah. Correctly. And so, you know, the coach was like, you can’t do this and we gotta go see a doctor. And so I went to see, uh, actually, he’s a physical therapist. He took an x-ray, and he is like, oh, that’s the problem. Your iliac crest is broken. And so as my bone was like floating off in space, basically on the scan, and I’m just like, I’m a kid, so I don’t know what’s going on. And he’s just like, oh, this is, you know, we’ll just give you some NSAIDs, stay off the leg, you are gonna heal up just fine. And that’s what I went through standard of care. Nobody stopped to ask how did a kid, how did that happen?

Shawn (20:39):
His hip from running? Yeah. This was a, a huge sign of what was to come for me, which was my body was breaking down prematurely. When you think of breaking a hip, you think of somebody’s much, much older. Yeah. And so it wasn’t until I had about half a dozen more injuries. I literally have game film of me at my house right now breaking away. I like ran a sweep on the football field. Right. And I get past the safety, I’m headed to the end zone. I’m five yards away from the end zone. And I fall because I like tear my hamstring like a severe hamstring tear. Like I just kept on getting injured and I couldn’t stay healthy. So my aspirations of playing at the next level, of course, were vanquished. And ultimately, at 20 years old, I get diagnosed with degenerative disc disease.

Shawn (21:29):
So my spine, my disc were degenerated severely to the point where my physician said that, and this was a great thing to tell a kid at 20. He said that, that I had the spine of an 80-year-old. Right. And your definition of 80 is very different, by the way, just to be clear, but like an unhealthy 80-year-old. Right. And so that sent me, and I went in because I was having sciatic pain, and I didn’t know why. And it wasn’t from trauma, it wasn’t from an impact, it was just from his perspective degeneration that was, in his words, incurable. And so, again, I’m thrown into standard of care, and all the while, this entire time I’m eating not just the standard of American diet, but the extreme of it. All right. So, and this is according to JAMA, this is one of the, this Journal of the American Medical Association, one of the longest running studies conducted on eating behavior of children.

Shawn (22:24):
Hmm. So this was starting in 1999, up till 2018. So about a 20 year study. The researchers found that in 1999, the average American child was eating somewhere around 60% ultra processed oof, newly invented <laugh> fake foods. By the end of the study, the average child was eating almost 70%. Wow. All right. So it was right around 68% of the average child’s dying in the United States was ultra processed food. With any study, there are gonna be people who are outliers. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Right? So not every kid is eating around 70%. I was definitely eating closer to 90% ultra processed foods because of the environment that I lived in. You know, living in the inner city, being on government assistance, shopping at, we were talking actually earlier in the show about off brand foods and stuff like that. So I wasn’t eating like Lucky Charms or whatever.

Shawn (23:19):
I was eating like, even worse, you know, uh, I don’t know, wizard, Wizard Drops or something, or I wasn’t eating like fruit loops. It was fruit rings. Right. So we ate a lot of generic off offbrand, ultra processed foods, a lot of ramen noodles and mm-hmm <affirmative>. Boxed macaroni and cheese. And, you know, I ate a lot of like frozen pizzas and offbrand pizza rolls. Like this was my diet pretty much every day, every meal. All right. And so I was making, literally making my tissues out of garbage. Yeah. All right. And wondering why I’m breaking down prematurely. I have arthritic conditions as a 20-year-old. And so one of the big principles and how I transformed my life and got into this field, and it took a couple of years of suffering, by the way, because I went through standard of care.

Brad (24:07):
Yeah.

Shawn (24:08):
On a slew of medications. And my biggest struggle during, from 20 to 22 was sleeping at night. Huh. Because I couldn’t, I couldn’t sleep for more than like a couple of hours because my pain was so bad. The sciatic pain kind pain. Like, oh, the pain is my just throbbing. And just like,

Brad (24:25):
oh my gosh.

Shawn (24:26):
It just, it’s so difficult to articulate.

Brad (24:28):
That’s so for a 20-year-old, I mean,

Shawn (24:29):
Yeah. So like it, and so I had to take medication just to try to quote, knock me out and keep me asleep. And so, but all of that changed, and it, the change happened so quickly. I was afraid. I was afraid for a few months because what, in just a short version of this, I kept, I saw different physicians to get a, you know, uh, another opinion, which I highly encourage people to do if they get mm-hmm. Bad news like that. But they keep, they kept telling me the same thing. This is incurable. I’m sorry this happened to you. Here’s another medication. And other me medications were helping me even with the pain, really. And so my lot in life could have been taking stronger, stronger medications. But each one of them also told me, bedrest, my gosh, don’t do anything.

Brad (25:15):
Oh my gosh.

Shawn (25:15):
And so now I’m completely, not only has my spine atrophied, but like everything else is, and I’ve gained a bunch of weight. So you had to

Brad (25:22):
Take that advice. You basically stopped exercising and

Shawn (25:26):
Yeah. I wanted to be a good, a good student. Yeah, sure. You know, do the doctor’s orders, but it gave me permission to stop. Right. And so, especially coming from the environment I came from where it’s so difficult, it gave me permission to not fight. Right. And just to sit there on my couch, play video games. Right. You know, watch TV and

Brad (25:46):
Maybe sign up, up for disability someday, you know?

Shawn (25:48):
Yeah. I was getting, at the time I was getting like, unemployment. Right. Yeah. Right. So, you know, just like I, that could have been my lot in life. But ultimately it was thanks to, largely from my grandmother and her bugging me, like always checking in on me and just like, it was annoying at the time, but she knew my potential and how special I was.

Brad (26:12):
Ah, wow.

Shawn (26:14):
And so she was checking in on me. And, you know, um, just one of those times after seeing a physician, I was, it just hit me like a ton of bricks. I was about to take the medication to knock me out to sleep. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And it just like, my question that I had habitually been asking myself of like, why won’t somebody help me? Why, why me? Why me? Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Why did this happen to me? I, for the first time, asked, what can I do to feel better?

Shawn (26:42):
Like my grandmother saw, sees all this potential in me, and she knows like, there’s something about me. There’s something about me, and I’m just wasting away here by myself in this one bedroom apartment in Ferguson, Missouri, you know? And my mattress is on the floor, just like, what am I doing? I was in college barely hanging on Uhhuh <affirmative>. I kept, I went from like 15 credit to 12 to nine to just like barely hanging on and just realizing like, she invested so much in me, the least I could do is do something. Yeah. And so, fortunately, you know, there’s nature and nurture in this, but like, I have a, I’m very analytical. Mm. I, I question things. And so it wasn’t just like I had this revelation to like, get up and do something. I was like, let me put a plan together. You know, let me, okay.

Shawn (27:34):
If they’re saying my disc or degenerated, what are my disc made of? Right. So this was a fundamental question. Yeah. And so I started to like, look into that if I, I need to lose weight at this point, because now, even though I was an athlete now, just sitting and being so sedentary, it caught up with me. And so I’m carrying around all this excess. So just logically, like, lemme take some of this excess off my spine. <laugh>. Right. Give it a break. Yeah. But the first thing I jumped to, to, to be honest, was because of marketing on the TV I did slim, a slim Fast Uhhuh. Right. The Shake for Breakfast, one for lunch, and a sensible dinner. Right. I was like, tell me Assor. Yeah. That’s the way to do it. Didn’t really work out for him though, you know? No. Respectfully. Or just, it’s like, it’s one of those It was suffering.

Shawn (28:14):
It was suffering. Yeah. And I was hungry all the time. I did lose like two pounds the first week <laugh>, but that went out the window quickly. But it’s because of my search. Right. And the search brought me to, again, what are my disc made of? And there were all these compounds that create the tissues that were needed. And I wasn’t giving my body any of that stuff on this ultra processed food diet. And this, for everybody listening or watching, is if you’re dealing with any particular issue, if you’re not providing your body, the raw materials to make the tissue, your body, the human body’s incredibly resilient. It’ll figure some things out Yeah. To help you to just quote, survive. But you can’t really thrive. Yeah. And so, learning about these disc, I found out how important omega threes were for my disc, and I didn’t hear anything about omega threes.

Shawn (29:03):
Like my bones, not the, the doctor’s office. Yeah. When I broke my hip, it’s just like, you need to eat more calcium. Like I was guzzling milk, like I was getting paid for it. Yeah. All right. Have you seen that movie? The Professional, by the way, with Leon, the Professional, he’s like an assassin, but he’s drinking a load of milk for some reason. I don’t know why. But anyways, probably his milk does a body good. Whatever wasn’t helping me. My bone density was incredibly low. But even for your body to assimilate calcium, you need other compounds. The the body works synergistically mm-hmm <affirmative>. And so I needed like silica. I needed these omega threes. I needed certain amino acids, you know, I needed sulfur, I needed all these different things that I was not getting in my drive-through diet. And so I went from, okay, I found this out.

Shawn (29:44):
Let me take a bunch of supplements, which was incredibly expensive on my college. Yeah. Ferguson income, all right. To what foods can I find these things in. Mm-hmm. And so now that directed me to eating real foods. And so that’s all I ate exclusively. So I was eating real foods. And now that I’m feeling a little bit better, and my lowest hanging fruit was exercise. Yeah. Because I’ve been an athlete. Yeah. I was scared to move. So I started off on elliptical. I’m sorry, I started off on a stationary bike. Yeah. And I moved to the elliptical, then I started to tinker around with the weights. I was just moving. Yeah. And also that movement exercise, one of the most overlooked aspects of exercise is it increases assimilation. Right. So those tissues that are moving and, you know, um, like your, your ligaments and tendons, it’s creating this kind of vacuum, phenomenon and pulling in nutrients, your muscles do the same thing.

Shawn (30:41):
Right. And so now I’ve got this nutrition, I’ve got this movement practice. Now I’m suddenly sleeping better. I’m sleeping better at night because of the things I’m doing during the day. Yeah. And without the meds. Without the meds. And now I got better so fast. It was, it was insane. Like six weeks to the day of making that decision, I’d lost almost 20 pounds, which is not typical. I just, I was a naturally thinner person. Yeah. And so the weight just kind of flew off me pretty quickly. But the pain was gone. The pain that haunted me every single day of my life for over two years, it had destroyed my life. You know, my livelihood. It was gone. Yeah. And so I spent those next few months in fear. Like I’m just like, I was scared it was gonna come back because it happened so fast.

Shawn (31:24):
Yeah.

Brad (31:24):
Oh, sure.

Shawn (31:24):
And my mind wasn’t able to kind of recalibrate. Yeah. But what helped me to, and this bridges everything and puts the cherry on top, what helped me to accept it was service. Because people at the university that I was going to, the University of Missouri, people started coming up to me and asking me like, what did you do? How did you, like I didn’t just look like a person who lost weight. I looked like somebody who went from being incredibly sickly to radiantly healthy. And so people were coming up and asking me like, Hey, can you teach me? Or like, what did you do? Whatever. Wow. And that was the birthing of my career because I didn’t know the people, because the first person was a friend of mine’s, that I went to high school with his, his little sister went to the university.

Shawn (32:07):
And so she knew me loosely, but she came up to me, she was like, you know, what did you do? Like, I <laugh>. She was like, can you help me? And I was like, yeah, can you come to the gym on Saturday? Like, what? She was like, how much should I pay you? Huh. And that’s when time froze. Like, what She would pay me. Like I was gonna do this for free. Yeah. And so, and this is true story. I said $7 <laugh>,

Brad (32:28):
because ’cause you had your eye on some minimum wage, some bone broth at the nearby market.

Shawn (32:33):
No, minimum wage was like $5 and 15 cents at the time. Yeah. And I’m from Missouri. Okay. I don’t know what now. It’s probably, what is it? It’s like $20 or

Brad (32:40):
Something crazy. What is Los Angeles? To up it to 20 bucks or something. Yeah.

Shawn (32:45):
But you know, like $7,

Brad (32:47):
Was it not as good as $5 back then, though? Still rough.

Shawn (32:49):
Yeah. $7 was like a nice job for a college kid. Yeah. And so I started training people like $7 a session. Oh, wow. You know? And, uh, I got my certification ah, and I switched, shifted all my coursework back to, because initially the first university that I went to, I went into the pre-med program mm-hmm <affirmative>. But I hated science. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. It doesn’t match up. I just did it because I thought I was supposed to because of marketing and what I saw on television. Yeah. And coming from poverty and a family that doesn’t have any examples, I was like, I should do that. But I hated it. And so I got outta that major. I went into like marketing from another television exposure, a movie called Boomerang with Eddie Murphy. I’m can’t remember his

Brad (33:27):
Oh, Eddie Murphy. Yeah.

Shawn (33:28):
But it was like, he was like, in marketing. It was so fly. So I did that. But, so this brought me all the way back to science, but now I understand it now in my biology class, I remember the last day of my biology class in college, the teacher cried. It was this big auditorium class. And all the kids, most of the kids were kinda looking like, this is weird. Like, why is she crying? And I got it. I understood. Because she knew that we were leaving that classroom. And she was hoping that this knowledge of what, what she taught was going to filter its way into the rest of their lives. Wow.

Brad (34:03):
That’s a dedicated teacher right there.

Shawn (34:05):
But I got it because of what I went through. Yeah. Yeah. When I was learning about biology prior to that experience with her, it was very superficial. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. We’re learning about the parts of the cell. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. The mitochondria, all these different organelles.

Brad (34:20):
The kreb cycle. Yeah. Yeah,

Shawn (34:22):
Yeah. But it’s so superficial, it doesn’t really matter to me. Right. But when I understood that, that mitochondria is made from my meals, when I learned that the nucleus is made from the nutrients that I eat, that everything that I’m looking at when we’re studying the cell, the human cell is made from food, it lit everything else up for me. Like I, I’m making this, this doesn’t just happen. I get to provide the raw materials to make this. So that was my connective tissue with it. And I get to determine the health of my cells. And so, you know, having that knowledge base and then healing from something that was su supposed to be unhealable, it gave me this power that you can’t, you, you can’t buy. And so that power was injected into, at, when I became a nutritionist and I was working with people every day, working as a strength conditioning coach all those years at the university to when I started a podcast, that essence is there.

Shawn (35:19):
It’s a part of the, the tone and the texture of what’s behind my voice. It’s like something undeniable there that’s telling you nothing is impossible. You know, you can get better. And so, and then that translated over into the books. And as you mentioned earlier, you know, sleep, I’m a nutritionist. It wasn’t my intention, but this was missing from the conversation at the time. And we talked about this before the show, the agents I was talking to <laugh>, when I self-published the first iteration of Sleep Smarter, they were like, no, you know, you should do a book on nutrition, you know, fitness book, it would do really well with you and your platform. Sleep. Sleep books just don’t do well. And I was just like, I was so adamant that I didn’t choose to work with them. And after selling the amount of books that I did, you know, self-published, which I didn’t have any per like, barometer of like what’s good.

Shawn (36:11):
I happened upon the person, the, the company that ended up being my agent. And with the success that I’d already done on my own just by sharing this message. Which was, by the way, seeing people every day who’ve got their nutrition dialed in, they’re exercising, but they, we can’t get their blood sugar normalized. Mm. We can’t get the weight off. We can’t get their hypertension under control. Hmm. When I finally started asking them about their sleep, and I gave them, I’m a researcher, so science-backed ways where they can do these small things where they don’t have to turn their world upside down to improve their sleep quality. Now the weight’s coming off now we got their blood sugar under control. Now we can working with their physician, get them off metformin or Lisinopril with their hypertension or whatever the case was. Just seeing these cases that would keep, ironically, keep me up at night.

Shawn (36:58):
Like, why can they not get the results everybody else is getting? Yeah. It really just cemented, like, this component of sleep is so big. It was impacting their nutrition. It was impacting their exercise. Sure. More so than I realized. And this is the thing too, when you’re healthy, like my sleep was good now, I just didn’t think about it anymore. So I didn’t think about it in the context of these other people. Right. Right. And so in the book, I put together 21 clinically proven strategies researched to back it up. This is long before people were grabbing research and sharing it online. Yeah. You know, as like a true, and I did that you had to go to the library, probably <laugh>. Yeah. The Dewey Decimal system. It wasn’t to that extreme, but like just hanging it on the tree of science and then using common sense to affirm it.

Shawn (37:44):
21 clinically proven strategies to improve your sleep quality. After meeting my, eventually my agent, we got 11 offers as I shared with you for that book. And it became like a bidding war because the book was such a powerful force, and it was already proven to be effective. And from there, now it’s translated into, it’s either 26 or 27 different countries, different languages. These are all separate foreign book deals. It was the first sleep wellness book to become, to become an international bestseller. And it was not my intention. I didn’t know that that was going to happen. My intention was to give people this tool set and this awareness to heal themselves. And it came through that medium. And so I’m very grateful that it came through me and that I was a part of it. And now it’s like, especially in the health spaces, it’s so, it’s so common knowledge about sleep wellness, and people are doing all these different things. But like, I helped to popularize Yeah. And bring forth the ideas of blue, blue light blocking glasses and screen time and all this stuff, you know, back over, you know, what, 12 years ago now. And so I’m so grateful that like the conversation has changed, but we’re still messed up.

Brad (38:54):
Yeah. I was just gonna ask you like 12 years ago. Come on. I mean, we, the information’s been out there. What are the main ways that we’re still falling behind? Yeah.

Shawn (39:04):
It’s, it’s really, the technology is not slowing down <laugh>, obviously. And that’s, that’s really the biggest deterrent right now. And by the way, um, those two, I had two herniated disc, they retracted on their own and I gained back the value. They

Brad (39:18):
Retracted, they retracted back into alignment. Yeah.

Shawn (39:21):
L four, L five S one, both herniated,

Brad (39:24):
They were just getting nourished by your exercise and by your diet. Yeah.

Shawn (39:26):
And so you could see it on the, on the MRI prior to this. Wow. They were like black. Yeah. Because they were so degenerated, but so to have that volume where the light is shining through them. And so, but that was nine months later after choosing to get well, by the way. Yeah. So I don’t know when, how quickly I got. Well, and I was scared to go get an MRI because I didn’t want to get bad news. Yeah. Right. Yeah. But the, my physician, the, the final physician that I had dealing with that issue, he was just like, literally just holding his chin. Like, whatever you’re doing, keep doing it. I haven’t seen results like this before.

Brad (39:59):
Dang. He should put your x-rays up at a medical presentation. Like, look at this dude. Nine months later. I told

Shawn (40:05):
Him though, I told him what I did, but it was just like pseudoscience to him at

Brad (40:09):
The time. Yeah. He was

Shawn (40:11):
Register, change the way I was eating and exercise, whatever. But here’s the, now today we have huge meta-analyses showing that the vast majority of disc herniations and bulges heal to some degree on their own. Wow. And some complete remission, complete heal, healing of the disc. Yeah. And so, but this is not true for everybody. There’s different situations, different states and different things that need to be done for everybody. Yeah. But the vast majority of the time, something can be done, your body is very adept at healing itself. And then to circle back to our current situation with sleep, you know, um, the biggest thing that I’ve seen, like it’s just more and more addictive. You know, we’ve got brilliant engineers who are designing things mm-hmm <affirmative>. To keep us just checking, you know, the just checks picking up our phone constantly or you know, we are living at the golden age of television. So much good stuff.

Brad (41:02):
Streaming entertainment with your next episode will play in seven seconds, six seconds, five seconds. I try to jump up ’cause I know I’ll watch the next episode, but if I can turn that TV off in seven seconds, maybe I’ll have a chance of going to sleep. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’re right. The, the, the world’s lead, the smartest guys and the highest paid workforce on the planet is Silicon Valley software engineer. And they’re, they’re, they’re ripping Yeah. Or Hollywood here making great content. Yeah.

Shawn (41:28):
And we’ve never had a time where we can work 24 /7, you know, like we’ve got, again, the the

Brad (41:33):
Isn’t that amazing. We’ve never

Shawn (41:35):
Been able to before. You can’t even step away from work. Right. Because it’s right there in your phone. Yeah. For so many of us. Right. So I’ve got work calling me everywhere basically. Yeah. You know, like I could do, get to some emails or I could, you know, I got Slack message coming in, whatever the case might be. Yeah. Yeah. You might be out trying to hang out with your family. Yeah. But you know, there’s that 24 /7 access that we didn’t evolve. This is new. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. This is new. And our brains have not caught up remotely with how to handle this because we have hundreds of thousands of years being a certain way Yeah. To like 40 years, 30 years of this complete immersion in the technology.

Brad (42:12):
This is the most challenging time to sleep of all times of two and a half million years of evolution. Yep. For sure.

Shawn (42:19):
Yeah. So what do we do? This is the thing. Yeah. So this is, gimme

Brad (42:24):
A few of those 21 tips this solution before we go. This solution

Shawn (42:27):
With the technology piece is very simple as most solutions are. It’s very simple, but we’ve gotta replace that evening habit of being on our screens with something of equal or greater value. Mm. Okay. So you can’t just tell yourself, okay, and by the way, we’ve got research from Harvard, for example mm-hmm <affirmative>. Showing that being on that device with the blue light. It’s not just the blue light by the way. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Okay. Just that stimulation of light is throwing off your circadian clock. It suppresses melatonin every hour. You’re on your device at night. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Suppresses melatonin for about 30 minutes. Alright. So even an hour,

Brad (43:03):
30 minutes. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Hour, 30 minutes. Yeah.

Shawn (43:06):
So even if you go to bed and you’re exhausted Yeah. You’re not gonna go through your sleep cycles efficiently because melatonin is all wonky. Yeah. Alright. Yeah. So we wanna give ourselves a little bit of a screen curfew. And I encourage people just even 30 minutes because most people, they’re on their device literally to the last moment. You know, many people, like, they look at their, they’re just like literally looking at their phone. They’re like, I really should get some sleep. And they put it down. Oh, right. So 30 minutes, start with 30 minutes if you wanna be a rockstar. 90 minutes Nice. Is is incredible. And of course you can get, have the blue light glasses in between and you know, there’s a modes for, you know, our computer screens, there’s flux. Yeah. You know, night shift is built into the phones now. Yeah. And I know these companies, they know they’re messing people’s sleep up, so they’re trying to be proactive and, you know, doing these things.

Brad (43:52):
It’s like PR campaign to say, Hey, look at our little, you know, adaptable things. Yeah.

Shawn (43:56):
We’re protecting sleep, we’re looking out for you. Yeah. Buy now. So have, having those things are cool, but you gotta give yourself a screen curfew because it’s still stimulation, right? Yeah. Outside of just the light inputs. And so replace it with something of equal or greater value. Mm-hmm. Okay. So our phones are incredibly valuable to us. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. All the, so many good things to look at. Right. Basketball and high jumping and uh,

Brad (44:24):
Jokes and Yeah. Friends. Friends, uh, interactions. Yeah. Connection. Yeah. And there’s

Shawn (44:29):
Butts everywhere.

Brad (44:31):
<laugh> Fitness,

Shawn (44:32):
If you, if you’re a fitness influencer Yeah. You might not even be looking for the butts. Yeah. But if you’re just falling a few fitness influencers, it’s gonna start feeding you some butts. Yeah. Yeah. And you maybe you could push not interested. Okay. Yeah. You don’t want the butts flying at you, but there’s so much stimulation coming at us Yeah. From our phone. Infinite stuff. Now what can be of equal or greater value than that? Mm. It’s tough. This is gonna be individual, right. Uhhuh. <affirmative>. It’s paying attention to yourself and what you value. Yeah. And so if you want to think back to like, when we were kids, many of us had a bedtime ritual mm-hmm <affirmative>. Right. We had our routines for going to bed. Right. Many high performing people have morning routines. Yeah. Right. That we self kind of impose on ourselves. But truly, my grandmother, for example, she had a certain nighttime routine Yeah. Which included maybe a bath. Yeah. Maybe, you know, reading a book, saying prayers together, whatever the case might be. But give yourself an evening routine that nourishes you. There’s a difference between relaxation and restoration. Right. Relaxation is kicking back and watching Severance. Mm. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. All right. Or Game of Thrones, or whatever the case might be. Restoration is being, getting away from all the stimulation, getting high quality sleep.

Brad (45:49):
Right. You’re still getting stimulated with an enjoyable show, even though you’re relaxing. Yeah. Big difference. That’s right. Your brain

Shawn (45:55):
Is firing like a mother in certain ways. And so what does that evening routine look look like for you? Do you love reading books? Like do you or do you, do you love reading, you know, romance novels? Yeah. Or Harry Potter or, you know, ideally in this, there’s some data on this as well that fiction is actually a little bit better for supporting sleep. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Right. Versus like, current events

Brad (46:17):
Non or things that

Shawn (46:18):
Could, you know, that kind of like personal development. Some stuff can be helpful though. Yeah. You know, spirituality, those kind of things. Yeah. It can be helpful, but sometimes you, you get, you might be thinking too much about like ideas and implementation and all this stuff. Yeah. So fiction is really great for supporting sleep. Here’s a cool thing. Now do you wanna stare at your phone on, or a Kindle or something like that? No. Physical books are still out here. They still exist. All right. So you could use a physical book or

Brad (46:44):
We still got some for sale, you and I so That’s right. You go out there and get that book. Yeah.

Shawn (46:49):
Or audio books. Yeah. We’re living at the golden age of audio books as well. Yeah. You know, and you don’t gotta stare at a screen to listen to an audio book.

Brad (46:56):
You close your eyes. Yeah. Right.

Shawn (46:58):
And so there’s also podcasts, but again, I’d be mindful of what you’re listening to. Yeah. Trying to wind down, you know,

Brad (47:04):
Should we like lure our voices If someone’s trying to fall asleep right now, we can take the last few. Yeah. And just talk a little slower. That’s great advice, Shawn. Good night. Yeah.

Shawn (47:13):
Thank

Brad (47:13):
You very much. Sometimes you might even fall asleep listening to a podcast. That would be great. You know what? I love how you, you’ve, you’ve characterized this whole conversation in a very positive manner rather than trashing social media and trashing our phones and we really good at that now. Yeah. And we can all tell us how bad it is, but like they’re, they’re very valuable to us. Yeah. You mentioned that. And so it’s all about, you know, weighing those priorities and finding something of greater payoff. And I was just thinking about this when you said it, like maybe the best payoff for me is how I feel the next morning. So if I can delay my gratification. ’cause I love watching the next Netflix episode in the series as much as anyone else. Yeah. But when I’m, when I’m good, when I’m not good, I’m staying up and I’m ruining my next morning.

Brad (47:59):
’cause I’m very sensitive to, we were talking about that, like, I need a lot of sleep, man. I always have. But like, if you can look at it in a bigger picture perspective or now we’re talking about kids too. What’s more valuable than streaming entertainment. Mm-hmm. How about quality home, family time where you get a little chatting in with those teenagers that aren’t likely to talk that much. That’s vastly more valuable Yeah. Than your shows. But like, we really have to be hugely disciplined and committed to put these things into the mix. Even your switch from phone to reading, it’s a big deal because we’re outta habit and sometimes I like to just veg out, rather than work my eyes hard, which have been working all day. Yeah. But you do get that payoff really quickly over time. I mean, your story is like the greatest payoff of all time of anyone to turn their entire life around, starting with getting better sleep. That probably helped those, those discs you know, get that nutrition that you were feeding them.

Shawn (48:57):
Absolutely. If you’re not sleeping, you’re not healing. Yeah. That’s where the magic really happens. Yeah. You know, just to lean into that point again, even bringing up family, like playing board games or whatever the case might be, is another thing that could be more valuable. But you just mentioned the thing that for me personally is really a powerful force for not being on my screen, which is I value feeling good better than I do the next episode.

Brad (49:20):
<laugh>. That’s for

Shawn (49:21):
Me personally. For other people it might not. No

Brad (49:23):
Judgment if you guys disagree. Yeah.

Shawn (49:25):
<laugh>. Yeah. And so for my wife, it’s like, it’s a, it’s a big deal if I’m like, you wanna watch another I know. And I also know that, you know, if she’s happy, you know, but which is could leads to another thing of maybe personal time with your significant other Yeah. Might be more valuable than the phone. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So talking with them, seeing them listening to the sound of their voice, you know, maybe investing into some other potential things that hopefully is more exciting than your phone, you know? Yeah. Um, oh,

Brad (49:53):
I tell my wife, I go, you have a standing appointment for a massage at 9:30 PM upstairs, but if you’re gonna, if you cancel, like I can’t take late customers like, you know, it’s, it’s like an incentive. She sleeps less than me, which is really interesting. And when we have more time to talk, maybe we’ll do a whole nother show on this. But like, she can easily stay up later than me, so I try to put in these things like, I’m toast, I gotta go to bed right now. And boy, it’s, it’s a constant like, te?ptation of many different options, which are all enticing, you know? Yep.

Shawn (50:25):
Yeah. And even, you know, with that physical touch, intimacy, these things help to relax that sympathetic fight or flight right. Help

Brad (50:34):
To, and the TV push to might not. Yeah.

Shawn (50:37):
Oh, for sure.

Brad (50:38):
Especially what were your shows? You mentioned,

Shawn (50:40):
You know, watching Vin Diesel before bed, like, you know, like you’re gonna be ready to, you know. Yeah. But you know, with that being said, on in sleep smarter, and I didn’t do this on purpose, on page 69 is the Big O and how sleep is related. A reader told me this, I had no idea how sleep and, and sex is so intimately connected mm-hmm. As well. And so, uh, having that intimacy and whether or not there’s an orgasm involved, like we release a cocktail of chemicals mm-hmm <affirmative>. That help to relax the nervous system, prolactin and oxytocin, all this stuff. But you can get a lot of that oxytocin in particular. And this is one of the, the hormones that’s been identified to kind of counteract the effects of cortisol. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And cortisol isn’t a bad guy. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. But for many people, cortisol’s high at night, again, chronic

Brad (51:27):
Overproduction of cortisol, in the other hand,

Shawn (51:30):
We called them tired and wired clinically, you know, where their cortisol’s too low in the morning, too high at night. And the, again, the stimulation from our devices isn’t helping. And so just a, a hug, being close to somebody that you love, that you trust dramatically increases your production of oxytocin. And so, again, these are just a couple of practical things. A warm bath mm-hmm <affirmative>. At night as well helps to raise that, the skin temperature mm-hmm <affirmative>. Uh, but then you, your body actually goes lower than normal afterwards, after it cools down. Yeah.

Brad (52:01):
Which helps. Yeah. People, I appreciate you. Maybe we’ll elaborate a little bit ’cause people don’t understand that. Like, you need to have that lower body temperature to fall asleep. Right? Yeah. There’s

Shawn (52:10):
Intense.

Brad (52:10):
So how does, how does it happen when you get a warm bath or jacuzzi, which is one of my favorite things to do before bed than what happens.

Shawn (52:17):
Yeah. So, and this isn’t necessarily to fall asleep, but to have more restful sleep, uhhuh <affirmative> to go through your sleep cycles more efficiently. We evolved no matter where you are on the planet, pretty much where humans have been hanging out at the temperature is cooler at night <laugh> than it is during the day. <laugh>

Brad (52:37):
Name somewhere where it’s not. Yeah.

Shawn (52:38):
Okay. But we have this perfectly climate controlled environment in our homes

Brad (52:43):
Where we never, it might be, it might not be true. You’re right.

Shawn (52:46):
Right. And so, ’cause

Brad (52:47):
We crank up the heat at night

Shawn (52:48):
When it’s, it’s called thermal regulation. Right. And so your body is always, we don’t have a perfect, like 98.6 degrees, whatever mm-hmm <affirmative>. Your body, your temperature changes significantly throughout the day. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. All right. Depending on the time of day, what you’re doing, if you’re exercising, your temperature’s probably gonna be a little bit higher. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And that’s okay. Now we have a natural drop in our body temperature in the evening to facilitate. It’s basically, it’s, it’s not necessarily causing, but it comes along with mm-hmm <affirmative>. An activation of all kinds of restorative hormones, enzymes, neurotransmitters, your body’s going into a more relaxed state to facilitate higher quality sleep at night when your, when your core body temperature drops. Now if your body has to fight against the environment because it’s too hot. Right. We all know what it’s like to get sleep because it’s too hot in the environment. Yeah. You know, and I, I got a memory that’s popping up. My mom didn’t turn on the air conditiong. I live in St. Louis. I grew up

Brad (53:47):
In St. Louis. Oh, that’s hot steamy man. Yeah.

Shawn (53:49):
Summertime. So it’s not just hot. It’s humid. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Yeah. So if it’s 95, the quote, you know, heat, it feels like heat

Brad (53:58):
Index it could be 110.

Shawn (53:59):
Oh, sure. Yeah. And it doesn’t go any here in la It doesn’t hold on. The air doesn’t hold onto that heat at night. So it’s cooler. Yeah. In Missouri, the nighttime hugs it holds onto that sleep and throws it into your window. All right. And so she wouldn’t turn on the AC and I, our room was upstairs. All right. And so heat rises as well, so it would be bacon in there. All right. And so I remember like literally spraying myself with water before bed, having a fan in the window, spraying myself with water and being bucket naked and having like the sheet around my, you know, around my special parts. Uh, just in case my little brother comes in or something. <laugh>, I don’t want, I don’t want him to feel inferior, you know, whatever <laugh>. Um,

Shawn (54:41):
But anyways, and so just trying to find a way to cool myself off just enough to fall asleep. Right. But it’s just like tossing and turning when you’re hot. Yeah. Yeah. And so with climate control that many of us have access to, or just opening your windows. Mm. Right. If you can in a safe way. But if you can drop the temperature on the thermostat mm-hmm <affirmative>. At night or just have less, you don’t have to have the big comforter, you know, maybe something a little bit thinner. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Now there’s all these different contraptions that help to cool down your mattress. Yeah. You know, mattress pads and things like that. There’s so many ways to cool yourself off that it might be an investment initially, maybe a couple hundred dollars for something like this if you don’t have like AC California’s, so SoCal, even my guy over here, he didn’t have air conditioning for years. Right. Amazing.

Brad (55:27):
Know, it’s

Shawn (55:27):
Amazing. Just move to a new place. Yeah. And you know, like it’s just a thing, but again, it’s cooler in the environment. You can open the windows at night and get a little bit cooler and fans and things like that. So yeah. Getting your body a little bit cooler, I got tons of studies on, on this and why it’s effective in sleep smarter and, uh, yeah. So

Brad (55:45):
Go get the book Sleep Smarter, people, way more in there. And I think your advice came into two major categories. One of ’em is like the artificial light and digital stimulation. And then the other one is the things that we have in our environment. And I’m sure we can go on and on with getting it really dark and not having the mental stimulation and the clutter. Anything you talked about, getting down to that parasympathetic state is the essence of restoration. And then we’re not good at that when we flick off the TV and then try to hit the pillow, right?

Shawn (56:14):
Yeah. Right. As my friend Kelly starred, Dr. Kelly Starrett says, we’re very good at going zero to a hundred, but we’re not very good at going a hundred to zero. Right? Mm-hmm. And so, and, and, but one of the biggest stamps of approval and like that does my heart so good, is when I found out before I even met Kelly Starrett, I was a fan from afar, student from afar, yeah. Is that they had copies of Sleep Smarter at their gym All right. For years. Yeah. And of course, people would sometimes not bring them back, and so they kept buying them before we even met. And it’s just, again, it was just, there’s nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come. Right. So there’s that great sentiment and it just came at that time. Now, even some of the things we talked about, many people have probably heard before, but this wasn’t a part of the health conversation, you know? Yeah. Some of these things are very practical, very commonsensical. Yeah. But if we’re in a culture that is basically programming us to have poor sleep, it’s, we’re inundated. We’re, we’re immersed in a culture.

Brad (57:09):
Yeah. Nobody cares, man. <laugh>. Yeah. <laugh>.

Shawn (57:11):
So you gotta be able to put up some defense for yourself and create a healthy microenvironment, right, for yourself, microculture that supports good sleep, that supports high performance and good function, and doing the fitness things that we want to do and have all these things in a synergistic way to where it’s just your lifestyle and it just feels good.

Brad (57:31):
Hey, thanks for dusting off that great old work, which is still ringing true. More so today than ever. Most people know we can follow you on the Model Health show, the fantastic guests and content that you put out. So what else do we, you know, how else do we connect with you?

Shawn (57:46):
Awesome. Yeah. So especially on the YouTube channel, we’re doing a lot of like original content for YouTube and some masterclass. And of course we have phenomenal guests on the show and things like that. But yeah, so the, the Model Health Show, YouTube channel, or anywhere people listen to podcasts, they could find the Model Health Show and you could pick up Sleep Smarter, or my latest book is the Eat Smarter Family Cookbook and Eat Smarter, both national bestsellers. I’m very grateful to say they’re very fun to read. And you can pick them up anywhere books are sold and yeah, those are the places to find me. Shawn Stevenson, everybody, killing It

Brad (58:19):
Thank you so much. Great studio here. Great to connect today. Thanks for watching listening, everybody. Thank you so much for listening to the B.rad Podcast. We appreciate all feedback and suggestions. Email podcast@bradventures.com and visit brad kearns.com to download five free eBooks and learn some great long cuts to a longer life. How to optimize testosterone naturally, become a dark chocolate connoisseur and transition to a barefoot and minimalist shoe lifestyle.