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 There's no medication that reverses diabetes.
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There's no medication that reverses heart disease.
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There's no medication that reverses Alzheimer's dementia.
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They manage the symptoms, you know, and maybe... Maybe some relief a little here and there.
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Relief, but they do not create health.
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And what health is...
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 Help is.
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Welcome to the School of Greatness.
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My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur.
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And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness.
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Thanks for spending some time with me today.
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Now let the class begin.
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 Welcome to this special masterclass.
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We brought some of the top experts in the world to help you unlock the power of your life through this specific theme today.
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It's going to be powerful, so let's go ahead and dive in.
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I've also heard examples of people who, let's say, eat perfectly.
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 but still have challenges.
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Maybe their relationships are off and they're in a stressful environment in their relationship or their marriage or whatever it might be, or they just react poorly.
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They worry often to things they see and experience.
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They're a worrier.
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And so every time they worry, there's a, I guess a stress hormone is spiking, right?
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And sending hormones to the body, which is spiking blood levels there, right?
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Blood sugar.
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 So it sounds like the psychological side of things is also extremely important to understand, and that every time you're allowing your body or your mind to ruminate on a consistent basis, it's sending a signal to the body in a negative way, which is helpful if there's a real life threat, but not when it's on a repeat every day.
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Is that right?
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 That's exactly right.
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It's that chronic low-grade stress that can be really damaging.
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Something that's been really fun to experiment with is there's now heart rate variability monitors like OuraRing or WHOOP or Leaf Therapeutics.
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What these do is heart rate variability is a metric that you can track that looks at actually the
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 time between each heartbeat and oddly enough we want the time between each heartbeat to actually not be consistent like a metronome we want it to have some variability yeah like maybe 0.7 seconds and then one point i'm sorry 0.7
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 Yeah, seconds, 1.1 second, .9 seconds, that's variability.
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Why do we want that?
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It really is a symbol of a dynamic system.
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You want elasticity in the system, and that can sometimes have some irregularity to it.
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Sort of the way I kind of think about it is like a stiffer system is gonna be a little bit more regular, and there's sort of that, and these are subtle.
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It's not like you can feel it in your pulse if you just feel your pulse, but you can pick it up.
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And so we want more heart rate variability.
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 And usually less, lower heart rate variability is an objective measure of stress.
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And I've worn these things and been giving a talk on Zoom or something like that and I'm looking at my data afterwards and my heart rate variability plummeted during the talk or I'm processing email, my heart rate variability goes down.
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And then of course glucose may go up.
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And so you see these things happening together.
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 And the immediate thing I think is, this is where our tools come in.
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This is where the deep diaphragmatic breath, where the mindfulness, where having awareness of this happening, and then there are so many things we can do to modify that stress response, even telling your body you're safe.
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You know, everything is actually okay can have a huge difference.
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So really dialing into awareness, and then where can I apply the tool?
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So I would say I take about,
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 a hundred times more diaphragmatic breaths now than I did a couple years ago because I realized, wow, if this is happening all the time throughout the day without my awareness, that's gonna add up over the next 30, 40, 50 years and have a huge impact.
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But it's not actually just the chronic low-grade stress.
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There's been a lot of research showing that acute traumatic events, like loss of a loved one or divorce or childhood events, so adverse childhood events, which are usually, there's an acronym in ACEs,
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 Um...
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 people who have many of these tend to actually have worse metabolic health.
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And this actually may be related to changes in the brain that affect metabolism.
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So really changing sort of our set point for stress thresholds early on in life.
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And so sometimes we'll have that patient, like you talked about, who's doing everything right.
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They're eating really healthy, but they're just really not quite making that progress towards thriving that they want.
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And a lot of those patients I'm thinking about, what is like the deep,
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 core wounds and what's the set point that's causing you to feel that this world is not a safe place, that is causing you to be inherently hypervigilant.
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And doing that work even on myself has been so positive because I think what you start to unpack as you go down that journey is that
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 Your perception of the world and whether it's safe is very much dictated by your lifetime of experience.
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And I think for those of us who have been on a journey of like therapy and now people are very interested in, of course, how psychedelics can fit into this and then other modalities.
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 long-term meditation, deep meditation events and things like this that can really unwind some of those kind of amygdala-based, fear-based responses in the brain.
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I think there's huge potential there for that to potentially unlock a new level of health because what it's doing is changing the fundamental way you see the world as a place of threat or a place of safety.
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 unfortunately, I think, in our modern world.
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 fear has become a currency that we've used to profit in a lot of ways.
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If we can get people to be fearful, we can get them coming back for information that assuages that fear, and we see that with social media, we see it with the news.
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There was that undercover reporting of one of the CNN executives who said, was recorded saying, if it bleeds, it leads, that we need to get people fearful for them to come back and watch,
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 what that's doing to our stress hormones, to our brain set point, to our desire to have dopamine stimulation, to kind of get some pleasure in the face of all this fear, the way that's affecting our cellular biology is profound.
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And so, you know, I think
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 all of this movement that we're seeing right now towards helping people, towards normalizing mental health care, normalizing, you know, psychedelic use is not an end all be all, but I think it's interesting how that's now being talked about as a way to really help people unlock some of this chronic, you know, fear.
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I think it's gonna have, you know, could have positive impacts on the body, because if we're living with chronic fear, our bodies are not functioning properly, and many of us are.
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Did you live with chronic fear for a while?
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 I think that the healthcare system, the conventional healthcare system unfortunately uses fear as a way to control patients in a lot of ways.
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You think about a conversation between a physician and a patient and it's like your cholesterol is a little high, you need to take a statin
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 And the patient might say, well, can I have some time to like work on diet and lifestyle?
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Well, I mean, it's your choice.
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I mean, I'd recommend the statin right now, because obviously I don't want you to have a heart attack, but like, you know, sure, if you want to try a diet and lifestyle, like that's the type of thing that's happening every day, like where this fear of bad outcomes, um,
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 is, I think, driving very much a pharmaceutical and invasive intervention type of strategy.
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 that really was unsavory to me, because it's very disempowered.
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It's like, if I can drive fear in a patient, then I can essentially get them to do whatever intervention I recommend.
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And as a surgeon- Medicines, procedures, anything.
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Right, exactly.
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Oh, well, if we don't treat this ear infection with antibiotics, then it could travel to the brain and create a brain infection.
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And it's like, most ear infections resolve on their own without antibiotics, and overuse of antibiotics is causing
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 huge, huge problems with our gut, which then leads to mental health issues and metabolic problems.
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And it's like, but if people are scared of the potential outcome that may be very rare, then of course you can kind of get them to do stuff.
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And I think that, I don't think that doctors are intentionally doing this.
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I think we have an incentive system in Western healthcare that really drives people towards intervention.
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But I think that
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 You know, I also think that with COVID we saw this happen where, you know, this fear of, you know, anyone, you know, being harmed from COVID or, you know, that we, you know, kind of got people to do anything and everything and we're kind of losing this.
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 we're losing kind of that rational sense of the risk that is inherent in living.
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We get in a car every day and there is risk involved in that, but we choose to do it.
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And I think that there's just a lot of sort of fear-based thinking that happens in the healthcare system that unfortunately disempowers patients and pushes them to do interventions more quickly when I think that
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 There is so much opportunity to help coach them with diet and lifestyle which takes longer.
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It's harder But ultimately it generates health rather than just putting a band-aid on disease.
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There's no medication that actually generates health
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 only diet and lifestyle strategies generate health.
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And so that's obviously the foundation of our medical system, but unfortunately we're not very well trained as physicians to know that information or to coach on it.
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But yeah, to answer your question, I think a large part of my personal journey has been trying to overcome fear.
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Personal fear.
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Personal fear.
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I think one of the biggest examples of this is my mom just passed away about a year ago from cancer.
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 Just as any normal person, I spent my life fearing my parents' mortality.
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It's like, oh, this is going to be horrible and devastating.
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I think a lot of people worry about premature loss of a parent.
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I think going through that experience and it actually being a very beautiful transformational experience,
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 It was sort of a surprise and she had two weeks between her diagnosis and her death.
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We had this beautiful time together as a family.
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She was actually very much on the same page about holistic health as me and knew in her heart that she was dying very rapidly.
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She chose to
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 stay at home, be with the family.
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We were all together, had this spectacular two weeks.
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The hospital system, through every possible medium, was trying to pull her into the system.
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It was pancreatic cancer, so it's like, you need a liver stint, you need a liver biopsy, you need a blood transfusion, you need to start chemo immediately.
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And the reality was, she knew, I'm dying right now.
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She ended up dying in two weeks.
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None of the interventions would have helped.
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We wouldn't even had a,
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 You know.
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Would it have lasted maybe a few more months or a few more weeks?
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Maybe you don't know.
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I actually don't think at all.
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I think that.
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Might have caused more stress and more.
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Well, and it was COVID.
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So she would have been in the hospital and we could have not visited her.
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Oh, that'd be tough.
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So anyways, that experience of seeing her approach.
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 Seeing her pure joy in the face, she was just ended her last two weeks very joyfully, was very at peace.
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We had that time together.
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She was not just like locked in the hospital doing interventions that would not have helped very much.
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I realized, oh, something I've been fearing my entire life happened
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 was the most transformational growth experience I've ever had.
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I still feel way more connected to my mom than I ever could have imagined.
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No one can tell you, oh, you're going to still feel connected until you maybe experience that.
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And it kind of made me realize.
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 fear is kind of not useful.
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So I think that something like that, and I think probably lots of people have their own examples, just kind of makes you realize the futility of living in fear, and what does it do?
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It damages your body.
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It doesn't really change the outcome.
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A little bit of healthy fear is useful, of course.
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You don't want to cross the street without looking, but the idea that we should be fearful all the time,
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 then that's gonna protect us is such a fallacy.
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So turning to Stoic philosophers, turning to some sort of Eastern texts, Buddhist and Taoist texts, like sort of looking into traditions that have thought this way has been a really useful part of my journey and I think needs to be a part of how the healthcare system reforms because we weaponize fear of death
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 as a way to control patients into doing anything we want.
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And I think fundamentally overcoming your fear of mortality, which is the
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 the only thing we can be certain of in this world, and really approaching that with a sense of awe, and a sense of curiosity, and a sense of what can this teach us about how to live, I think is an absolute foundational part of what we need to do as individuals, but also the healthcare system, because otherwise we're just using fear as this thing, fear of death as this thing.
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 to just wrangle people into as many interventions and as pharmaceuticals as possible with the off chance that people think it's gonna somewhat reduce their chance of mortality.
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So what I heard you say in there was that there is no medicine that can actually make you healthier.
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Is that correct?
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Or that could actually solve the issue on the medicine itself?
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The vast majority of all medications
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 I probably wouldn't say all on a record, but I would say the vast majority do not generate health in the body.
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They manage symptoms.
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If you take away a diabetes medication from someone, their diabetes is not gone.
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It's right back there where it was.
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 Whereas if you get someone to really foundationally improve their cellular function, which can only be done through consistent dietary and lifestyle habits, they can truly reverse their disease.
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But there's no medication that reverses diabetes.
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There's no medication that reverses heart disease.
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There's no medication that reverses Alzheimer's dementia.
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They just kind of manage the symptoms.
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They manage the symptoms, you know, and maybe.
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Maybe some relief a little here and there.
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 relief, life extension for some of them, but they do not create health.
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And what health is, health is optimal cellular functioning.
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We are just a big bag of cells, and each cell needs to be functioning properly for us to have health.
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What is a symptom?
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What is disease?
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That is cellular dysfunction happening on the individual level,
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 If that's happening in mass, that might be tissue dysfunction.
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If that's happening in a bigger way, it's organ dysfunction.
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That's when we see symptoms of disease.
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We have to really zoom in on what's happening in the cell.
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A cell is getting its information from what you're eating,
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 What it's being built from, which is your food, what stress hormones it's seeing binding to its little cell membrane, what's happening with your hormones, which of course is dictated by stress and by sleep and by exercise and by food, it's the super complex milieu that can
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 only be optimized by the choices that we're making every day, day in and day out, consistently.
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Even by the sunlight we're exposing ourselves to in the morning.
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Andrew Heuermann talks about this all the time, but literally the consistent exposure of sunlight first thing in the morning is chemical information to your body through the sunlight's energy to tell your cells how to function.
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You can't put that in a pill.
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It has to happen through these millions of years of evolutionary evolved processes.
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And so yes, medications can't
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 with their one pathway that they might be intervening on truly generate foundational cellular health, which is what we need to achieve.
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They don't bring wholeness back to the cell.
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I guess there's what, some creams or something that might help you heal a cut or something like that, but we're talking about like a chronic illness medication, right?
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 Yeah, but even if you think about a cut, you know, I mean, a cut is like, it seems so simple, but it's actually so complex.
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It's like, for a cut, if you think about people with disease, like diabetes, for instance, one of the reasons that people with type 2 diabetes die is because of chronic wounds.
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They have wounds that won't heal.
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Interesting.
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Oh, yeah.
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Are they internal wounds or external wounds?
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External wounds.
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People can get, something that happens with people with diabetes is they often have nerve damage.
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 because of the way the blood sugar is affecting the nerves, so then their feet become numb.
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And then they might get a cut on their foot, they don't feel it.
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And then that festers.
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And because of their high blood sugar, their immune cells don't work, so they can't heal the wound.
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And then they die from the wound.
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And then they get a huge systemic infection that might lead to death or an amputation.
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So the majority of lower limb amputations are caused by diabetes, diabetic ulcers that are like wounds.
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 People have type 2 diabetes in the u.s.
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Do we know the number?
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Oh, yeah.
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Well, there's a hundred and twenty eight million Americans with pre-diabetes or type 2 diabetes of those 30 million have full-on type 2 diabetes 30 million other what 300 and what is that 300 something?
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Yeah, it's about 13% of the population has time to diabetes Yeah, and it was less than 1% in the 50s and 60s.
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So
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 And pre-diabetic, you're saying 100 million.
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What does pre-diabetic mean?
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Who is someone who might be pre-diabetic?
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 Well, it actually can be quite surprising.
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There are lots of young, healthy people walking around who look otherwise fit, who have prediabetes and don't know it.
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90% of people with prediabetes do not know that they have it.
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How do you know if you have it?
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Well, the easiest way to do it is through a blood test.
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So you basically get a fasting blood sugar test from your doctor, and if it's between 100 and 125 milligrams per deciliter of fasting glucose, that's considered prediabetes.
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 100 to 125.
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What do you want to be at?
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What's a healthy range?
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So what's considered normal is 100 or below.
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100 or below.
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But I would say that that is way too lenient of a range because what we've figured out is that people in the low end of normal are much less likely to develop long-term problems with heart disease, stroke, or diabetes.
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So even if you're in the high normal range and your doctor says to you,
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 oh, your fasting blood sugar is 97, you're great, you're normal.
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You should see that as a huge red flag.
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You are metabolically dysfunctional if that's the case.
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And so really where you wanna shoot for is about 70 to 85 milligrams per deciliter.
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 Do people get a test that they can order and do this themselves?
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For sure.
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You can actually buy it at CVS or at the pharmacy.
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What's it called?
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You just prick your finger.
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What are these called?
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They're called glucometers.
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They're literally $20 on Amazon.
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There's Keto Mojo.
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You just prick your finger and then it'll tell you right away or in a few minutes?
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In five seconds, yeah.
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Then it just tells you what your level's at.
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 what it is, and it's cool to check it actually day to day, like for a few weeks, because one thing you'll find is that, let's say you have one poor night of sleep, like let's say you had a big work thing due and you got six hours instead of eight hours, your blood sugar in the morning might be 10 points higher.
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Oh, for sure, yeah.
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Or let's say you had a really late meal the night before, your blood sugar might be higher the next morning.
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So what it starts putting together for you is, this is very dynamic,
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 And if I did these activities day after day, year after year for my whole life, I'm building.
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So figure out what allows you to be in that 70 to 85 range.
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Maybe it's like a really awesome workout in the middle of the day prior and getting to bed a little bit earlier and getting morning sunlight exposure and doing some deep breathing in the morning.
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 and all of a sudden you're like, oh cool, my blood sugar is 72 milligrams per deciliter, or fasting for 16 hours or something like that.
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But figuring out what works for you to stay in that low range and then dial it in for as many days of the week as possible as you can.
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The other really interesting thing about fasting blood sugar as a test is that
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 You know, the body, like we were talking about with the insulin resistance, it's very adaptable.
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And when the body starts becoming insulin resistant, so it's saying, we're seeing too much glucose around, we're producing, like, we're going to create an insulin block.
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What the body does is it's like, well, we've got to get this glucose out of the bloodstream.
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So it starts producing more insulin.
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 So your insulin levels will actually start rising as you become insulin resistant to push more of that glucose into the cells.
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And so a study in The Lancet, a big medical journal, showed that you can actually keep your blood sugar levels normal for like 13 years prior to them elevating, and all the while insulin is rising, but it's compensating to keep glucose low.
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Unfortunately, because we don't check fasting insulin in this country,
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 we're missing that window where people are clearly becoming insulin resistant, but their glucose still looks normal on their yearly check.
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So to just make this concrete, you and I could both go to the primary care doctor and have a fasting glucose of 80 milligrams per deciliter.
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And so the doctor says to both of us, you're both in perfect health.
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If I'm really insulin resistant, because I'm on that glucose rollercoaster, and I'm getting poor sleep, and I'm chronically stressed and not managing it, and I have childhood trauma that I haven't addressed, blah, blah, blah, all that stuff.
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 I could be at 80, but I'm doing that by my insulin being elevated to like 35 or 40, and your insulin might be two.
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So your body's not working hard at all to keep your insulin at 80, and my body is having to produce that so much insulin.
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So I am clearly on the path towards metabolic disease, diabetes, and all the associated conditions, heart disease, stroke, cancer, Alzheimer's, dementia, fatty liver disease, gout, infertility, retinal dysfunction, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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And you're in the clear, but our doctor tells us that we're the same.
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 So this is why I recommend that every patient ask their doctor for a fasting insulin check because you have a sense of what's actually happening under the hood.
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 Have you seen anyone who is, the mind is under so much attack that they've been addicted to substances, they've tried to get off and they're unable to stay consistent with healthier habits because they had some type of mental condition that was so aggressive that they were just like, I need to drink, I need to smoke because I've tried the other way and it doesn't work.
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 Or have you seen people who have been successful time after time, if they're able to follow the challenging practices consistently to improve the quality of their brain?
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So I would say they're simple practices.
0
SPEAKER_01
I've seen people- Challenging for people to- I've seen people both ways, right?
0
SPEAKER_01
And often it takes enough pain for them to change.
0
SPEAKER_00
Meaning what?
0
SPEAKER_01
But sometimes like losing their kids.
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SPEAKER_01
But sometimes even when they lose their kids, they don't change.
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SPEAKER_01
 because their brain has been hijacked.
0
SPEAKER_01
I mean I don't know if you're like me but one of the reasons I never did drugs is I never wanted something else to control my life.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, that was one of the reasons.
0
SPEAKER_00
I also never wanted to make an excuse because I would see people, especially playing football in college, guys would get drunk after a game.
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SPEAKER_00
 And then they would not be well the next day at practice.
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SPEAKER_00
That was one.
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SPEAKER_00
I was like, I want to have an advantage.
0
SPEAKER_00
But then people would do things and they'd like cheat on their girlfriend.
0
SPEAKER_00
Oh, I was drunk.
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SPEAKER_00
I'm sorry.
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SPEAKER_00
I was like.
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SPEAKER_00
 If I cheat or do something bad, I want to own it.
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SPEAKER_00
I want to be responsible for being a jerk or being an asshole or whatever I did, as opposed to blaming a substance that did that thing.
0
SPEAKER_01
So you want to be in control of your whole life.
0
SPEAKER_00
And that's what I want.
0
SPEAKER_01
I don't want anything else controlling me.
0
SPEAKER_01
And if you know these things are potentially addictive, it's like playing Russian roulette.
0
SPEAKER_01
It's like, I would never play Russian roulette.
0
SPEAKER_01
I'm like, that's stupid.
0
SPEAKER_01
 You know, why would I increase my chance of trouble?
0
SPEAKER_01
I mean, you know, to think you're invulnerable.
0
SPEAKER_00
What about the wave of plant medicine use and normalization of plant medicine, the people saying it's transformational work.
0
SPEAKER_00
 helping them heal their pain of their past, helping them overcome trauma, helping them break through things they've never been able to mentally break through with, this work of ayahuasca, plant medic, all these different things.
0
SPEAKER_00
What are your thoughts on that in terms of brain scan results?
0
SPEAKER_01
Well, I actually did a study with Ibogaine, which is one of the plant medications.
0
SPEAKER_00
It's like an ayahuasca?
0
SPEAKER_01
It's like ayahuasca.
0
SPEAKER_01
 and it wasn't good from a brain perspective.
0
SPEAKER_01
But I think it's gonna be an interesting, exciting part of psychiatry.
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SPEAKER_01
And there are lots of studies that's just recently legalized, not now, but in two years in Oregon.
0
SPEAKER_00
And... They legalized what, plant medicine?
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SPEAKER_01
Plant medicine.
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SPEAKER_01
In Oregon?
0
SPEAKER_01
Mushrooms.
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SPEAKER_00
Oh, they are?
0
SPEAKER_00
Psilocybin.
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SPEAKER_00
In Oregon?
0
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01
Microdosing.
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SPEAKER_01
 The problem is, I wish, so the big innovations in psychiatry now are magic mushrooms and marijuana and more medications.
0
SPEAKER_01
And I'm like, how about diet exercise and learning how to not believe every stupid thing you think?
0
SPEAKER_01
Don't you think we should at least start?
0
SPEAKER_00
Let's start there.
0
SPEAKER_00
Let's start with brain health.
0
SPEAKER_01
 But I think it's gonna be a interesting, exciting thing.
0
SPEAKER_01
But you know, psychiatrists were really interested and excited about Valium.
0
SPEAKER_01
And they were really interested and excited about cocaine.
0
SPEAKER_01
Freud used cocaine.
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SPEAKER_01
And they went, oh, they're interested and excited about marijuana.
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SPEAKER_01
And they go, well, the brain has cannabinoid receptor sites.
0
SPEAKER_01
 Well, the brain also has benzo receptor sites and that didn't work out well.
0
SPEAKER_01
And the brain also has opiate receptor sites and that didn't work out well.
0
SPEAKER_01
We should be finding ways to naturally increase opiates and that's exercise.
0
SPEAKER_00
Well, people say, well, plants are natural, you know, and this has been happening for centuries with our ancestors.
0
SPEAKER_01
And cocaine is natural.
0
SPEAKER_01
 Right?
0
SPEAKER_01
I mean, just because... Sugar is natural, I guess.
0
SPEAKER_01
Sugar is natural.
0
SPEAKER_01
Right.
0
SPEAKER_01
I mean, is it helpful?
0
SPEAKER_00
That's the question.
0
SPEAKER_00
So what about magic mushrooms or mushrooms or micro dosing this?
0
SPEAKER_00
You know, I've heard mushrooms are good to eat, you know, food mushrooms.
0
SPEAKER_01
Well, I actually make, I have a supplement company called Brain MD.
0
SPEAKER_01
 And we make something called smart mushrooms.
0
SPEAKER_01
I put a scoop in my shake every morning.
0
SPEAKER_01
It's got lion's mane and cordyceps and reishi and they have both immune system benefits and cognitive benefits.
0
SPEAKER_01
And I feel it's