I am James Swannick from Swannick and I'm joined today by Dr. Joel Kahn and today we are talking about proper nutrition. We're talking about veganism. We're talking about healthy health. What's that? It's a tongue twister. Healthy hearts. We're talking about healthy hearts. We're talking about looking great and feeling great well into our 60s. And today we are joined as I said by Dr. Joel Kahn who is a holistic cardiologist at the Kahn Center for Cardiac Longevity in Bingham Farms, Michigan. He is the number one bestselling author of Dead Execs Don't Get Bonuses. I love that. That is such a cool name. And a vegan, he tells me just before we join, of 43 years. Dr. Kahn, welcome to the show. Thank you very much. And I think as you were searching for that word, you said Hatha. It happens to be in the state's International Yoga Day. It may already be in Australia past that. So I think you were just giving a shout out to the yogic tradition. So it was a very fortunate stumble. Thank you. And also a big shout out to all the fathers out there because it's Father's Day at least in the US. I'm in Australia as we're going live and recording this, but it's not Father's Day in Australia, but it is Father's Day ever in the US at the moment. So happy Father's Day. Dr. Kahn, you're a father of three, I think. Yeah, exactly. Three grown adults. They're coming over for dinner in about an hour. Some wonderful pasta from Sardinia, some artichokes, mixing some lemonade that I've had sitting out in the sun. Just a joyful family gathering. I love that. If you're watching on Facebook or you're watching on YouTube, please do go ahead and post a question in the comments right now. Dr. Kahn would love to answer your questions. So if you're watching live on Facebook, go ahead and type in the comments where you're watching from and post your question. We've got you says happy Father's Day. Mel says happy Father's Day, gentlemen. Thank you so much. So let me just kick this off by asking you, Dr. Kahn. We've got meat eaters watching. We've got vegan lifestyle eaters watching. We've got vegetarians watching. We've got intermittent fasting experts watching. We've got all these different kind of ways to eat and nutrition. Let me just put it straight to you. Why veganism and why for 43 years? Well, OK, so I will respond in a personal way because I'm actually a bridge and commonality builder. I'd rather end the diet wars and build a uniform approach to nutrition, which I think you can do in a scientific way. And mine may be a little different than yours, maybe be a little different than JJ Virgin, maybe a little different than Mark Hyman, whatever. But it's going to be very similar. I grew up in a home in suburban Detroit, Michigan, where we kept the Jewish dietary laws called keeping kosher, no pork, no cheeseburgers. I went up to University of Michigan in 1977, 18 years old. I just wanted to try and continue that family tradition, important to my parents, my grandparents.  I mean, it was not good food. There's nothing I've ever seen like my mother's a very good cook. Was not a vegan home that I grew up in, just a healthy cook. And really the first week I said, salad bar, let's see how this goes. I had a cute girlfriend with me. She is now my wife for 39 years. She felt so good a week later. I think it was getting rid of dairy. It was just we took the package and slowly we started to read. And Ann Arbor was very friendly to do this with Indian restaurants and Thai restaurants. And Detroit has an enormous Arabic population. So there's Middle Eastern restaurants. We found, you know, honestly, wasn't that hard with some moments. I did cardiology training in Dallas, Texas, a real meat heavy town. All I ate for three years was okra, okra, okra, okra. It's just the official vegetable and the only vegetable of Dallas at the time. And there were moments like that. But it really was feeling good, good health. And then the science started to come out. And there was a book called A Diet for a New America by a wonderful human named John Robbins, who laid out health and environment and animal rights. And then the famous Dean Ornish MD came out with a cardiology article. You could reverse heart disease with a plant diet. And I was by then a cardiologist and I said, whoa, that's interesting. I took this funny little turn at that point, 13 years ago. Turns out it's a therapy. So I just stuck with it. I think for the patients I see with advanced heart disease, it's very important and I let them know about lifestyle centered around a healthy diet, which is largely a plant diet, but I'm very flexible with my patients in general. And as I say, I think I'm the only vegan ever to be on stage at Paleo FX and hold hands with Sean Baker, MD and Kellyanne Petrucci and Ben Greenfield and the others, Ben and Joe Rogan kind of discussing this. And I wasn't willing to try and squash my opponent. I'd rather find some unity. There's a lot of unity. So that's the story in a nutshell. I would imagine that the exact opposite of being a vegan or a plant or having a plant based diet would be the caveman diet, which is what I recently, a friend, a good friend of mine actually did it for 30 days where he ate nothing, excuse me, ate nothing but red meat with a little bit of grass, bit butter and a little bit of sauce inside. But no, nothing else. Now, I got a WhatsApp audio message from him saying he felt fantastic, wonderful and high energy and was sleeping well. And I was so curious about that because I was thinking, wow, like everything that I hear is that red meat raises cholesterol level that you need to eat lots of plant based, you know, like vegetable, obviously. How can eating just massive amounts of red meat make someone feel fantastic? And again, I don't want to get this into like the diet, but how is that possible? Can you explain explain something like that? Yeah, so it's an interesting question. And one of the issues with it is there is close to no science. There was an article published in 1930 about two men for one year, eight only meat. It's in the medical literature. It suggests that they maintain their health. And then you have fast forward to 2020 and you can't find much more science. You do find compelling stories like Jordan Peterson and his daughter, Mikaela Peterson and others. I won't, you know, there's plenty because the movement has grown. It begs scientific evaluation. What are vitamin levels? What are hormone levels? What's happening to arteries? You know, and I think as a physician, my problem with that approach, always wanting people to feel good is it's understudied and oversold right now. Most people feel it's the ultimate elimination diet. You know, people that are gravitating to that are largely people that have some health issues, autoimmune health issues or acne or something.  And then you remove some other food groups and you're left with, you know, meat can create food allergies. There's a very well known red meat allergy, so it's not completely benign, but it's less frequent than the others.  You're doing all of her, you know, top allergens out of the diet. So I fall back a lot when I talk about nutrition. And this is the Hakuna Matata moment. There's a scientist in LA, Walter Longo at University of Southern California, Ph.D. Italian born. And he spends his time between L.A. and Milan. He talks all the time, when you're evaluating nutrition, you go five pillars. What's the basic science? What's the epidemiology? What are the randomized studies? What do elderly people around the world in good health that, quote, blue zones eat? And how does it impact the environment and the entire picture of the earth? And when you put the carnivore K-man diet there, you have to say, does it fulfill any of them? It's mainly patient anecdotes or not even patients. So we need to learn more. I'm not suggesting that it's all, you know, hashtag fake news, but I wouldn't put it up against the Mediterranean diet with thousands of studies or the dash diet with hundreds of studies or veganism in the medical studies, which is, you know, hundreds of studies and so on.  But somebody wants to try it. It is an elimination diet. The other thing I'll just say, most are doing it with conventional meat, not organic meats. It's expensive to eat three meals a day and buy premier cuts that are also organic. So the potential burden of herbicides, pesticides, hormones, antibiotics in that diet, it's untested. But we're talking about MDs are recommending it. Well, just do the studies. Get pre and post labs, pre and post biotoxin levels. Let's find out the safety of it before we go on websites and social media and TV shows. So I've taken a few exceptions and some national TV shows with. Is it prime time to recommend this? And I know Dr. Longo would say, oh, not even close, you know, and I have a lot of respect for somebody at that level of scientific endeavor. We're talking to Dr. Joel Kahn, a holistic cardiologist at the Kahn Center for Cardiac Longevity in Bingham Farms, Michigan, and the number one bestselling author of dead execs. Don't get bonuses, the ultimate guide to survive your career with a healthy heart. We've got some questions that have come in, Dr. Kahn, live here on Facebook and on YouTube. So Vanny Sharkey on Facebook asks, what can I replace meat with if I go vegan? Sure. And again, consensus, because I want to leave your audience with good information, not angry, doctor, you know, on Father's Day. But in 2011, the Harvard School of Public Health, pretty prestigious group of researchers, you know, thousands of publications came out with a food plate, beautiful food plate. And I'd encourage everybody go to the social media, go to DuckDuckGo, my favorite search engine lately, and go look up Harvard School of Public Health healthy eating plate. It's a quarter fruits, a quarter vegetables, a quarter whole grains and a quarter protein with a glass of water, not milk and not alcohol, for sure. Just to give a shout out to your important platform there, James. And you know, the protein, although there is protein in leafy greens, there is protein in whole grains, there is protein even in fruit. But when you talk about protein, the recommendations of the Harvard School of Public Health are legumes, beans, peas, lentils. I like organic choices don't have to be beans, peas, lentils. Not processed meat, not bacon, pepperoni, salami, corned beef. They're the worst in terms of carcinogen burden and diabetes burden and heart disease burden and perhaps perhaps erectile dysfunction burden. But if you're going to do it, have a small amount of lean meat as clean as paleolithic as you can find a little bison, little elk, little wild caught fish. It's really a very doable consensus. So my plate, that quarter is going to be plant-based sources of protein. I have one last comment on it, you know, and it's an easy transition.  I don't think they're very healthy. You can make your own little black bean burger if you can eat beans at all, much healthier, much better. Kinwa burgers, kale burgers, all kinds. The last statement is there's been a lot of science about the protein requirements of humans need. And there's pretty good consensus from Dr. Longo from Harvard researchers that despite all the hype, you got to eat chicken to be strong.   There's actually a great impact on health, heart disease, cancer, diabetes to overdo animal protein. And head to head, I just wrote a blog on this that people can find on the web, head to head, plant-based sources of protein are without some of the burden that animal sources of protein are like aging. There these are specifically known how there's an amino acid called methionin. It ages us quickly. It promotes cancer. Well, it's much, much more concentrated in meat than it's going to be in your bean chili. So you might be wise as every organization society in the world says cut back or cut out, but at least cut back on all animal protein, substituting healthy plant proteins to some kind of hybrid mix. Or you can do without it. You know, the Association of Dietitians in the United States has endorsed if you're pregnant, if you're raising children, if you're middle age or if you're elderly, you can get by very healthfully without animal products. It's always an option. We have a question here on Facebook from Bianca, who asks, Dr. Khan, my dad has had two strokes. I want him to go vegan. How can I get him started? He's 65. I think you lock him in a room with some celery, apples, brown rice and a can of kidney beans. But since we're not going to do that and we're loving and it's Father's Day. Number one, so I do see patients all the time. And I'm as challenged as anybody to get them. See, one of the reasons this is not a total off track comment. The biggest enemy isn't the caveman versus the paleo versus the Mediterranean versus the vegan.  It is hyper processed food that's got refined sugars, refined poor quality oils, excess salt, very little fruit and vegetables. The average American eats under two servings of fruit and vegetables a day. That's the enemy. So transitioning your dad from that poor diet, if that's where he started to any of these options we talked about. But in terms of stroke and heart disease, you do want them to go plant based. So I take out my prescription pad and I write, you've got to watch three documentaries. You've got to watch Forks Over Knives 2011. You've got to watch What the Help 2017. I have a small role in that one. You've got to watch the Game Changer movie that came out late 2019. And that's your homework. And when you come back next visit, I'm going to quiz you that you watch three for three. And people do really respond to that. Everybody likes sitting on a couch and not opening a book. Now, if I can get past that, I might suggest a book I've written, a book that Dr. Ornish, a book that Dr. Esselstyn, Dr. Barnard. These are some of the plant based research heroes. And finally, I'm just going to ask them a couple of easy things. You know, just like add an apple a day. Why don't you try some dairy substitute? I don't care if it's soy milk, almond milk, hemp milk, oat milk, macadamia milk, cashew milk. Just try to go without, you know, cow based dairy for the few weeks till I see you back. So many people feel better on plant based milks, better skin. I'm a little brown right now from a sunny Michigan weekend, but I'm not burned. But, you know, better skin, better digestion, better sleep. The dairy thing is the easiest ticket to show them that food is medicine. Food is poison. That's just making easy transition. Yeah, I switched almost entirely to unsweetened almond milk or coconut milk these days. I very rarely drink dairy. I'm still surprised that when I go out to maybe a coffee shop or a restaurant or something, when I ask for almond or coconut, it's still like, oh, oh, no, no, we don't have that. And you kind of like that.  And you asking for almond milk or coconut milk, he's crazy. That's kind of like the deception, right? Man, they charge you more. Now, the good news is the market has shifted so rapidly that the price is quite comparable.  Right now, oat milk is the hot one in the United States, particularly a brand from Sweden called Oatly. It makes a great barista cappuccino. And they're starting not to charge extra. But when you talk about the mixed data on the healthfulness of dairy products, it's a no brainer to say, just give me oat milk for my coffee. And I agree, the restaurants at coffee shops should make it a little easier.  Go try and find almond milk in a hospital or soy milk or oat milk.  And if it doesn't happen there, how are we going to get the medical community to start making the changes or at least to consider that food is an important choice? But, you know, I find in the Delta Sky Club, I always have an option for hand-paste milk, at least when I used to fly. We'll see if we can get back to that habit pretty soon. Yeah, in hospitals, they have vending machines, don't they? Well, Pepsi, Coca-Cola and, you know, hot dogs and bacon three times a day in a patient's plate. Yeah, the biggest disgrace, at least the United States. But I hear from my, you know, social media friends, it's the same worldwide as the largely complete ignorance and, you know, not consideration for that. Patient who's had a heart attack in the first meal is a burger. The patient is just a part of their colon taken out. And the first meal is a chili mac sandwich. It's just insanity. But your your listeners are smarter. We have a question here on Facebook. And if you're just joining us, please do post a question here to Dr. Khan, if you're watching on Facebook or if you're watching on YouTube. Take advantage of the fact that we have a world class expert here on all things nutrition, all things heart related. We want to get to sleep in a second and the importance of sleep. Also, talk a little bit about alcohol. As you know, I help people reduce or quit alcohol, re-explore their relationship with alcohol. But first, let's ask, let's go to another question here. We have Connie Bezos on Facebook asked, Dr. Khan, are there any studies being done now to compare a vegan diet against a diet that is primarily plant based with organic animal protein, but at a much smaller quantity compared to the typical American diet of meat and potatoes? Yeah, it's a great question, Connie. I'm not aware and I'd be very surprised if they'll ever be what we call a randomized study. Two comments. It's very hard to do these studies. You're trying to encourage one group to maybe follow the vegan diet, let's say, six months and another group to follow the diet. You suggest that a clean diet, let's say 90 percent plants and 10 percent organic meats, it'd be very difficult to do and keep people on track. The best studies, they actually have people stay in a hospital. It's called a metabolic ward, and they actually block the place and they provide them the food and they make the measurements. But I don't think it's a hot enough question, not that your question was a good, that that will ever be done and funded. Very expensive, very difficult studies. Almost all people would agree. Let me just pick 90 percent, 90 percent of my calories, 90 percent of my plate comes from whole high quality plant foods. But I like three ounces of organic chicken or three ounces of line cut salmon or three ounces of venison. I think if we did those studies, there would be differences, but they'd be so subtle and so challenging to parse out. A buddy of mine, you may know John Mackey, the CEO and founder of Whole Foods, the big giant chain in the United States, wrote a book called The Plant, No, The Whole Food Diet, good name for a man who founded Whole Foods. And he makes the case, I can't and he had all the experts in the world around. I can't tell you if 90 percent or 100 percent are different. You have to bring in animal rights. You have to bring in the environment. You have to bring in your comfort level with the diet. When my patients tell me, Doc, look at it's 95 percent plant based, but I have a piece of fish once a week. I mean, I'm not yelling at them. That's actually what Dr. Volter Longo talks about in his own book, Longevity Diet, is 19 vegan meals. And let me say those aren't potato chips and Mountain Dew drinks. Those are beans and peas and greens and beets and purple potatoes and the whole gamut of healthy foods and a couple of servings of fish a week. So again, these subtle differences shouldn't be called a diet war. And I don't think we need a research study. Just do something in that range. I it's interesting, I have a partner who is I don't know if you'd say a strict vegetarian or vegan, because we do eat chicken, but we we go grocery shopping to an organic market each Sunday morning. And only organic vegetables. And then we buy a chicken for the week, which is an organically raised chicken. And the chicken yesterday was $46 for one frozen chicken. Something to do with time of year like availability, some COVID-19 related issues and things like that. But to get the chicken was $46. And then, you know, to buy all these organic vegetables, the price is up there. I mean, it's up there.  Or do we just say to ourselves, oh, this is that's how much it costs. And it's actually that eating what we consider the inferior way is just super, super cheap. Or we can convince ourselves that it's super, super expensive based on the fact that later on in life, we're going to be paying for it in medical bills and all that kind of stuff. So I guess I guess my question is. How are we going to make this? Become the norm to get have healthy humans, encourage them to eat super, super well when the price is seemingly so prohibitive to so many people. Right. That's a great question. I mean, there have been a proliferation of, you know, quality markets and grocery stores in the States.  You know, Americans, on average, spend less on food than Europeans as a percentage of their income. And that's the widespread availability of processed food, fast food. It's all federal subsidies. It's been argued the five dollar McDonald's burger should be $13 if the government got out of making bad food cheap. But that's the current situation. And nobody seems to want to take on these amazingly powerful lobbies and long term, you know, horrible subsidies. It's a real problem. I don't think, again, if you really talk again, the caveman, the paleo, the keto, the ultra organic vegan, the 90% plus like you're, you know, doing or in that range change. These are sort of the leadest diets. They, you know, not everybody's going to have a Cousin art and they bite a mix and all the toys that might go around making these foods. We need the message to be out there that it has to be cost-effective. You can eat plant-based cheaper than your $46 chicken.  They may not be organic. You buy big bags of dried beans at a bulk store. You get frozen fruits and vegetables. You can buy organic or not. It doesn't really matter if you're eating no fruits and vegetables and you start eating conventional fruits and vegetables. Yes, there's a couple of downsides to it, but the benefits far outweigh the downsides. So we just need simple, simple approaches. Just as I say, have a few recipes and nice vegetable soup and nice bean chili. Know how to make a couple of tacos, burritos, whatever you like. Find your favorite food and make a plant substitute. It doesn't need to be expensive.  But well, she actually left it behind at the thing. She bought the chicken and said, oh, I'm just going to go and do some other groceries. I'll come back to it because it was in their frozen portable truck. And last night she was my partner was like, oh, I forgot the chicken. So now she's got a phone the place to get the $46 chicken. I think we'll have to like get it next week. Or they'll have to like donate the $46 chicken. I think it was 40. It was either forty three or forty six or something around there. Anyway, it was a $40 plus chicken anyway. And we didn't even get to eat it yet. I can't think of a plant based entree that I could spend $46, you know, some medicinal mushroom. I don't think it's possible. That's quite amazing. You know, I've been in the restaurant business in Detroit, plant based restaurants and, you know, I buy organic and we prepare beautiful handmade foods. And it's expensive, but it's still far less expensive than the premier, you know, animal centered restaurants. There's just no way around it that, you know, fish coming from Northern Norway and meats coming from Alaska or wherever they are. It's an expensive process to get them into the store shelf in the restaurant, grow a garden for God's sakes.  It's, you know, low expense ways to get super nutrition. I wonder if we just eliminate the word organic entirely. And now we just rename any food that's not, you know, grown that way as substandard food.  Shit free. That's free. I don't have a good label. Yeah. Is there. I remember I was living in Hollywood, California for some years in the kind of mid 2000s. And I wasn't as educated on on food and organic food and nutrition as I am now. And there was a 99 cent store. A few blocks down from my from my home. And of course, there was a Whole Foods, many blocks from my from my home a little bit further. And me being the cost cutting, you know, efficient financial person that I was, I thought I'll get my vegetables from the 99 cent store. And so that's what I did for many months. And I bought, you know, like lots and lots of peppers and broccoli and all all kinds of vegetables from the 99 cent store, thinking that I was very, very clever and why would I buy the same product from Whole Foods or from, you know, a fancier store down the road for three times the price. Are those cheap foods from a store like 99 cent store incredibly inferior to what something is deemed as as organic? And if so, how like how inferior is it? Yeah. Well, you know, a couple of three comments. Number one, you know, try and source local.  It's probably in Michigan been shipped from California or some process far, far away. And I know the nutritional content does degrade with time. You're best to have, you know, the most recently harvested of foods, whatever their source supports your local market, supports your local farmers as best you can. You're plant farmers, too. That's one. Number two, frozen is always a good option. So if it was a 99 percent store and they had a big bag of frozen greens or frozen peas or frozen carrots, you know, at least the better companies, they actually have that processing right out in the field. I've seen this. So, you know, plants are harvested, they're washed, they're clean and they're frozen in a bag within a couple of hours. A lot of the nutrition is retained compared to that same fruit or vegetable being shipped, you know, and you're eating it and apple. You might be an apple six months after it was harvested. Still better than a donut. Everything is relative. And the third and final answer to James and the price issue, there has been a study to look at. Again, it's absolutely insane that they average American. Just there's five big factors for heart disease. Do you smoke? Do you have a mom, dad, brother, sister really heart disease? Do you have high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol?  The one that Americans fail the most to hit the mark because only now about 15 to 18% of Americans smoke, for example, is less than 5% of Americans eat five servings of fruit and vegetables a day and about 1% hit the target. Actually, in children, it's even even under 1%. That's a national statistic. So if you simply double triple the amount of fruit and vegetables you eat from the 99% store, there is a study that said that health benefits are really large. If you talk about across the entire population. Yes, you might be exposed to some PCBs and some glyphosate and round up and all that. And you could calculate a very small increase in cancer risk and some other diseases that might come from those environmental toxins that organic food won't have. But the benefits outweigh. And it was like an enormous difference, more than a thousand to one benefit versus risk. So if the only thing you got is a 99% store and they got, you know, wonderful frozen corn by the frozen corn. Got it. We've got some more questions coming in here on Facebook and YouTube. Just before I get to that, I want to ask you about sleep. As you can see, I'm wearing my Swanee's blue light blocking glasses, which promote healthy sleep. Well, there we go. Dr. Khan is rocking his Swanee's as well. Before we get into the importance of blocking artificial blue light as you do with a pair of blue light blocking glasses, such as these Swanee's, how imperative or how important is sleep to a healthy heart, to longevity, to living well? Like, where does sleep fit in when you compare it to, say, eating your three servings of fruit and vegetables every day or being a vegan and making sure that your nutrition is on point? Yeah, great, great question. And this isn't a setup because you're in the sleep business. This is actually my passion to always learn and develop. You know, 35 years ago in medical school, the only thing we learned about sleep was if you're 450 pounds, there's something called the Pickwickian syndrome, literally just suffocate yourself like a character in the Pickwickian papers by Charles Dickens. We learned nothing else. And yet now it is such a big focus of health for the heart, health for cancer risk, diabetes, risk, obesity, hormonal and cognitive function, dementia. So I actually, in my practice, I have a flip chart that all the patients look at and I teach them. I actually have good sleep as literally the foundation of the pyramid. And if you came, you'd be very proud of that. That's actually the bigger base than nutrition, bigger than fitness, bigger than stress management, which of course interacts with bigger than supplements or sauna or yoga or all the other things. If you sleep poorly, you will skip the gym. You will grab a donut. You will not make a healthy meal.  And I don't have to go through all the sleep about how compared to skipping a meal compared to your hydration. But one night without sleep, and when it does both your executive function, cognitive performance, it's profound. So I spend so much time with a new patient and fellow patients on hacks for sleep. And it's always blue eye blocking glasses. That's the honest truth. But it might be essential oil lavender diffusers and it might be a warm bath and, you know, don't eat for three hours and all the things we go through. In terms of cardiovascular health, I think one of the most important breakthroughs. I'm a big proponent. There's a scan you can get of your heart. It's by CT imaging. It's the topic of the dead execs book. It takes about 10 seconds to lie down CT scan.  You just want to get a checkup on your heart. If that comes back zero, you have no calcium in your arteries and you've got very youthful status. That comes back three, four, five, six hundred. A digital assessment of how much deterioration and damage is your heart. Are you got a problem now? So you need to wrap around love. So this study called the Morgan study looked at that. If you sleep five hours or less, you sleep seven or eight. Tremendous difference in the amount of silent heart damage in those that sleep under five hours versus the seven to eight. So it's absolutely on our radar screen. It should always be one of the questions that doctors ask and certainly cardiovascular specialists ask, but it hasn't really completely gotten there. You know, all we know is how to write Ambien or Sinester or one of the prescription drugs.  And I don't take that stuff and never will. How and when and under what circumstances do you wear your Swanee's blue light blocking glasses in terms of trying to promote healthy sleep? What's your understanding of the science behind an orange lens blocking out artificial light and how that's conducive to optimal sleep? Yeah, and my own personal practice always 60 minutes and sometimes 90 minutes before my anticipated bedtime and usually about 10 p.m. because you do want to have a routine in a schedule and not leave it up to the random whim of a day or a workload. And you want to, you know, maybe follow the kind of typical circadian pattern or going to bed when sunsetting and waking up when the sun's rising, it's a good pattern and all. But yeah, I learned before I heard of you, probably a good dozen, 12 years ago about the photoreceptors at the back of the eye that were, I think, discovered at Harvard that specifically are blue light receptors for that wavelength of the spectrum of white light and that they're related to the production of melatonin or the shutting down of melatonin in the penicillin. So yeah, by wearing my swanee blue light blocking glasses, I hope to promote the largest amount of melatonin production at the right time, which is soon before I go to bed. And yeah, I do a lot of things to get a good sleep and I do get good sleep. But I think the blue light blocking glasses are part of that program and a very simple part. We move the conversation now to alcohol, Dr. Khan. I've got a question here from Rod Villarje who asks, Dr. Khan, is red wine really good for the heart? It's confusing when I see articles saying that. Yeah, you know, and they come from, as I kind of mentioned, Dr. Longo, five pillars. Most of red wine or alcohol data is what's called nutritional epidemiology. We asked a lot of questions to an apparently healthy population, could be Loma Linda, the Adventist, could be Harvard School of Public Health, which has an enormous nurses and physician database. Every few years we updated their health status. And 20 years later, 15 years later, 30 years later, did you have a heart attack? Did you have a stroke? Did you have a bypass? Those kind of studies, and they always trying to adjust for smoking diabetes. So they'll pick out during those surveys, the weaker surveys of that type only ask the question once. The better ones like Harvard School of Public Health, every four years, they keep asking, asking because people's habits change. Those studies tend to show a trend. And there's a lot of medicine we call a U-shaped or a sweet spot.  So do you translate that and consider red wine a therapy? That is different than a randomized study. You might go look at some of the longevity pockets, Sardinia and Italy, pretty famous for their grapes and their canna now wine. Not true in Okinawa, not true in Loma Linda. I'm not exactly sure. And some of the others like Icaros, Greece, if there's any typical drink that is part of their culture. But, you know, there are that's cardiovascular disease. Then we got to go for overall mortality, got to go for cancer. The real hot button lately has been a very common heart condition called atrial fibrillation. A lot of people, 35, 45, 55, 65 and certainly 75, 85 start to get a regular heart beats jumping all over. It's called fibrillation or a fib. It's a big problem because in certain individuals, it can lead to stroke and devastation and even early death. And even if you have a long enough early dementia, this irregular heartbeat, there seems to be clear cut data. There's no amount of alcohol that can be tolerated if your goal is to resolve that problem that even small amounts of alcohol can trigger recurrent episodes. Certainly overdrinking can trigger even small amounts. So it's a very slippery slope for a physician or other health care providers to recommend alcohol. And if so, it has to be with such careful, careful comments about limiting the amount. But the reality is it shows up in studies from all over the world.  You deal with one study, but then there's a new one. And there was another one that was just consistent with this in the last month or so, of which there's hundreds of studies. But if in doubt, zero alcohol, I would offer or suggest, is going to be preferable to any amount of alcohol. Is that a fair assessment? I do believe if you really want to get your great based polyphenols, you can drink unsweetened grape juice. It's been studied. It has the same cardiovascular effects of alcoholic beverages like red wine. So that's always an option. There is a very welcome trend of more and more young people going alcohol free. That's a great trend.  And it's so, you know, there's no way alcohol would ever be approved as a drug because the difference, the dose difference between a social drink and inebriation is much smaller than it is with most drugs where there's a safety margin. So, you know, can't view it as that. So I agree with you, James. A, you know, a responsible medical message would be zero. We're talking to Dr. Joel Kahn. You can find more about Dr. Kahn on Facebook at Dr. Joel Kahn. We've put a link there in the comments there. If you just look under the swanic sleep comments there, you can go to Dr. Kahn's page and like and follow. You can also check out his book on Amazon. We've put a link to Dr. Kahn's book there in the comments as well. The book is Dead Execs Don't Get Bonuses, The Ultimate Guide to Survive Your Career with a Healthy Heart. If you're just joining us or you're watching on the replay, go ahead and post your question or questions and we'll get them answered. Let's have a look here. We've got Melanie's time now. So we've skipped two questions. Oh, have we? Oh, okay. So let's have a look here. Jaarico asks, does high cholesterol cause heart attack? Yeah, good topic. I lecture on that. In fact, I was probably spent three hours today reading on cholesterol because it's a endlessly interesting conversation. An anecdote, I did my cardiology training, as I mentioned, long ago in Dallas, Texas. The Nobel Prize in Medicine, 1985, I arrived in 1986, was awarded to two researchers in the hospital that I arrived at, Dr. Michael Brown and Joseph Goldstein. They identified a group of children that lack a receptor in the liver. The bottom line is you're five years old and your cholesterol is 1,000. And then that's the only abnormality. Their cholesterol is 800 or 700 or 1,000. And these kids were having heart attacks at age nine, age 10, bypass surgery, balloon angioplasty. Cholesterol is a real deal. And they have never had their data challenged. It led to the development of lots of therapies to bring cholesterol down. There is universal acceptance by the medical and cardiology community. The European Society of Cardiology came out last year with a beautiful series of papers. LDL cholesterol causes atherosclerosis. Something injures your blood vessels. You've got 50,000 miles of blood vessels in your body. The blood is coursing by. You just ate a cheeseburger. You just smoked a cigar with your buddies. You did too much alcohol or any alcohol. Your arteries get injured. That cholesterol, that LDL cholesterol loves to get in the artery. And it's what happens then. It's called the response to retention. The LDL cholesterol gets trapped there and inflammation starts. And it's called a fatty streak. Absolutely. If you could choose, I want my cholesterol to stay 140 by whole life or 280. There'll be somebody with the cholesterol 280 that'll hit age 100. There'll be somebody with a cholesterol 140 that has a heart attack. But across the population, you'd much rather have your cholesterol 140. Heart disease is a very complex formula and only one piece of it is cholesterol, which is why you'll hear about the 102 year old lady who smoked cigarettes and ate bacon and ate eggs and seemed to be pretty intact, 102. It's a very complex formula. But if you're a betting person, you're wearing a seatbelt when you drive and a bike helmet when you bike, you're gonna try and at least measure your cholesterol and maintain it at the low end of normal, which is where all the hunter-gatherer populations, if you looked at a chart, it doesn't matter if they're meat-eating tribes or plant-eating tribes or they're in Guam or they're in Polynesia, they tend to run cholesterol as totally 100, 110, 120, and you just don't see heart disease. You mentioned a CT scan before. So I had a CT scan six months ago, it came back to zero.  Oh, thank you. Thank you, I have a zero. So I've got a zero on the CT scan. Having said that, when I've done blood work before, it does demonstrate high cholesterol. Yeah. How is, what could that possibly mean? Because every time I've had my cholesterol tested, it's always high. Thankfully, the last couple of times it's going backwards because I've changed some dietary tips, but why would my CT scan be zero and my cholesterol be high? And your cholesterol went down because you left the $46 chicken in the freezer. That's right. I had to have bean chili instead of fried chicken. No, so you just hit my hot button. Although I know a lot about nutrition and I love to talk about that. I don't want people to have heart attacks and there's clear guidelines. You can prevent 80, 85% of heart attacks, don't smoke, get exercise, get your sleep, keep your waist thin and eat way better than average. Way better than average doesn't have to be vegan, but it's never gonna be McDonald's and Pepsi and donuts. Can't be the average American or probably similarly average Australian diet. It can't be. We can prevent heart disease, we can prevent heart attacks. The problem is that people right now, somebody listening right now or probably half the people listening right now have plaque in their arteries and they have no idea. Very tricky disease.  And this is what's so intriguing. Why does your doctor say to a woman at age 45, go get a mammogram? I don't have any problem doctor. Oh, just check, we can't afford to take a risk. Why do you get a colonoscopy at age 50 across at least the United States when you have no symptoms? And nothing is done to check the heart, which is the biggest risk of dropping dead or having premature disability. You just said, I don't know what you paid for it if you had it in the States or Australia, but for more than 25 years, a test has been available. In my city of Detroit, $75, you just pay cash. You don't pull out your insurance card. Five seconds, hold your breath, done. Heart, calcium, CT scan.  I had a zero at age 40, age 50, and at age 60 just about six months ago because about every 10 years, and I'd suggest you maybe repeat yours in 10 years, there is no better certainty that you're resisting aging and about half of us aren't zeros. And as you get older, it's far less than half aren't zeros. And we are at risk, but you and I are in an elite club. Congratulations. Now, as I said, why do you have a high cholesterol in a zero? Number one, you're not 72 years old, I think you're about 39, but you have time to go and you do wanna take care and you do wanna make those changes.  I would not suggest the caveman diet to make it the next 10 years with a zero. It might work, but we've studied it for plant-based diets. We have no idea what the caveman diet. Your blood sugar, if elevated, can cause plaque. Your blood pressure, if elevated, can cause plaque. Family history, like I mentioned, mother, father, brother, sister, grandparents raised the risk, but there's a reason why either your grandparents and your parents and your siblings had the same bad lifestyle so you're at risk, go change your lifestyle, you'll get rid of that risk. Well, maybe there actually is a genetic component. My current passion, besides just always talking about preventing heart disease, there is a fascinating kind of cholesterol that one out of every four of us inherit from our parents. It's called light-poked protein A. Why do I bring it up? It's the most common inherited risk of stroke, heart attack, blood clots, and heart valve problems. Light-poked protein A. And not trying to be too commercial, I just published a book on this in March, the first book written by a doctor in the world on this topic. It turns out for about 20 bucks, you could ask your primary care doc. You know, I'm a little worried. My dad had bypass, my mother had a stroke, somebody with one of the questions talked about a husband that had two strokes, definitely wanna ask a primary care doc. Please check my light-poked protein A. It's a kind of cholesterol, but it doesn't show up in the routine cholesterol panel that you just mentioned, James. I would suspect you didn't inherit it from your mother and father, and you get the blood test once and you never need to repeat it again for $20 or $30.   And they are two to four times the risk, heart attack stroke, even if they follow healthy diets and good guidelines. So we work with them.  It's not the cause of heart disease, it's a cause of heart disease to have high cholesterol. So you've corrected the majority of the others. But the convention, not the conventional, the cutting edge day that says the response to you is not to go on Lipitor or Crestor. If you have a zero, you really don't qualify. That's the good news. Just work with lifestyle.  But you're gonna be around for a long time, Mr. Swan. Thank you so much, Dr. Khan. I appreciate that. I would be remiss of me not to bring up one other health issue that I have. And I hopefully is that our viewers and followers here will relate to it. I'm a 44 year old man. I do not drink, have not drunk in a decade, but I still get gout attacks. I've had about six gout attacks now over the past four years. For those, for the uninitiated gout, it comes on as an attack, it's a swelling in the joint, it's a formulate, it's a very high uric acid levels and it causes tremendous pain. Mostly in the foot, in the joint, often in the knee. The first gout attack I had four years ago was in my left knee and my knee swelled up like this. And then the five gout attacks that I've had subsequently have always been in the, four of them have been in the right foot and one of them in the left foot, always around the big toe on the joint. And it kind of feels like someone has come along with a sledgehammer and smashed onto the foot and it actually feels broken, it swells up. So I eat, I think, very well. I exercise consistently at least six times a week. I sleep well, I do all those kind of things, but I do have a very high concentration of uric acid in my body and I am prone to gout attacks. Am I doing something in my diet to trigger those gout attacks or am I just cursed with genetics where I have high uric acid? Right, and I'm interested in gout because if you did like a Venn diagram, if you look at gout patients and heart patients, there's a lot of overlap. This is good science and you'd rather have a low uric, or a normal uric acid level and you'd rather not have gout. Of course, gout has been called the disease of kings, Henry VIII, rich, creamy, big calorie diets with obesity and certainly transitioning away from that to cleaner, smaller meals, more plant-based, may help. Genetics play a role in so many of these conditions and we don't have an easy way to measure your genetics. I mean, you can talk to mom and dad and aunts and uncles, it might just be friends and the family. Some people are doing tart cherry juice before bed as a uric acid lowering. There are some vitamin companies, not many. I don't have any affiliation with a Florida vitamin company called Life Extension, but you might look up, they do have a uric acid reducing herbal vitamin that they usually have some good research behind, never enough when it gets to vitamins. And then of course, there's a prescription drug that at least in the States, in Australia we call alopurinol. It's generic, it's inexpensive, it will dramatically lower your uric acid level. Really cool, I actually use alopurinol in my heart patients.  So, that's the last resort, although it's not a horrible resort. I mean, if I had had five horrible attacks at gout and it seemed like the last resort was to take 100 or 200 milligrams of alopurinol a day, you can get a rash from it and all drugs have some potential but I would probably grab onto that if I've really cleaned up my diet and still seem to have that elevated level. So, it's probably more of a hereditary thing rather than a dietary lifestyle kind of thing on initial inspection just based on what I've shared so far. Right, if you've eliminated the creams and the organ meats, liver brain, that would be common in Henry VIII's plate and all, then I think you're probably left with genetics being most likely. Yeah. Well, Dr. Kahn, thank you so much for your time. Let's head for home here in the last few minutes. I just wanna make sure that I tell our viewers that you can grab Dr. Kahn's book on Amazon. We've put a link there in the comments here. You can also follow Dr. Kahn on Facebook, which is Dr. Joel Kahn, K-A-H-N. Thank you so much for the questions that have come in. Let's ask one final sleep-related question as it relates to heart health. Can 10 hours of scattered sleep make up for seven or eight consecutive hours? So, you can now pretty simply measure the quality of your sleep in a reasonably reliable way. And so you can get a fit bit, a garment, a whoop, I'm more of a fan of the ring called the aura ring. I don't know how you feel about that, James. We probably both know they develop the aura ring. A lot of bio-hackers. It's a, if you don't know about it, just look up aura ring.com. It's a pretty attractive wedding band looking ring that really gives you some interesting detail. And a lot of times actually people think their sleep is interrupted, then you really get some metrics on it. It's actually better than they thought.  Maybe you also snore, you're kicking the covers off with the rest of the leg. You can wear, it looks like a big wrapper watch and it records everything about your oxygen levels, your skin temperature, your stress levels, and it creates a report that's very simple and low-cost to look at. And I'm always surprised that the quality and duration of sleep is better than what the patient's been reporting. They may not be in the deep, it does tell you how much is deep sleep that you want to try and hack your way to a little better deep sleep. I'm still learning how to do that in my own body. I sleep well, but it's not a lot of deep sleep according to my ordering. But finally, you know, so seven to eight solid versus 10 scattered.   You know, even cholesterol can respond to improve sleep. So if your biometrics that you can do are good, if your blood pressure is good, I wouldn't be too worried about, you know, that napping up. There's a lot of things you can do.  You can take some full spectrum hemp oil before bed. You can try magnesium before bed. There's a lot of herbal preparations, you know, you can try with valerian and other roots that are non-addictive and safe. And figure out maybe one of them's gonna, you know, maybe all of them, because you can stack them up, but one of them's gonna work for you. I like to rotate them. I have my own little mixture and some nights I don't take anything and it's never prescription drugs. But I am a, I really like full spectrum hemp oils. The kind that has all the chemicals found in the cannabis plant with the exception of THC, they're non-addictive and they're bought over the counter but, whoa, they're sleep bombs. They're good. Dr. Kahn, thank you so much. You're one of Rocky Swannies for the final minute. Let's do that. Let's bring them on. And this one is shut up and it's not a commercial thing. I've had these for about three years now. I actually have one in my living room, one in my bedroom, one in my office. I just need to get the daytime readers and then I'll be rocking them around the clock. Yeah, beautiful. And for those who don't know what the view looks like, there you go. That's very cool. You know, and I'll give you a shout out to, you know, there are other companies out there. I love that you also make clear glass and readers as a 61 year old guy, you know, having readers without having to wear glasses and glasses and looking like a freak of some kind. But if that's what you gotta do, it's what you gotta do. This is just a great, you know, innovation. Thank you, Dr. Kahn. And thank you so much for your expertise. Thank you so much for taking the time. Thank you to everyone on Facebook and YouTube who asked questions today. And thank you for those who will be commenting on the replay of this. Dr. Kahn, I appreciate your time. Happy Father's Day, sir. You stay well and good health to you. And we can follow up a bug out. We gotta get rid of that. Thank you, appreciate it, sir.


Did you know that you can change the type of pokeball on a regional variant in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet? Here's how to do it. This Hissuin Zoroark is in a cherished ball, which means its offspring will always be in a regular pokeball. However, if you catch a regular Fimo Zoroark in whatever pokeball you want, you then will have a 50% chance when breeding to have the pokeball of your choice. I caught mine in a dusk ball. Remember to have the Everstone on the Hissuin Zoroark so that the babies are Hissuin for. Once you get a Hissuin baby in the correct pokeball of your choice, put the Everstone on it and start breeding it with the ditto so you can get a 100% chance of having babies in the pokeball of your choice. This applies to all regional variants compatible with the game, and you'll 100% know more tricks like this if you hit that subscribe button.


What's up guys and welcome back to the channel in this episode of journey to the American passport We're going to talk about how to prepare for your naturalization test I'm going to share with you tips and tricks that I followed and I'm going to show you exactly how you can prepare and Successfully pass your test in the previous episode. We talked about your biometrics interview So when you go for your biometrics interview, they do give you a package and one of the most useful things in this Package is this little booklet to prepare for the naturalization test. So once you finish your biometrics interview This is the right time for you to start preparing for your test unless you do have more time to spare and you can Pretty much start whenever you want So this booklet has everything that you need in order to successfully pass the test if you do have a Decent level of English now when it comes to the test there are two main portions The first portion is English test and the second one is the civics test now for the English test There are three main portions reading writing and speaking so for reading your officer Who's going to be interviewing you is going to test you in your reading ability So basically he will start with one simple sentence on a tablet He's going to ask you to read if you read it very well He's gonna move on to the next step. Otherwise, he's going to allow you for two more sentences to read So pretty much three sentences if you read one of them successfully then you are good to go And the reading section is very very straightforward in mind. They pretty much just asked me to read. Thanks. Give it is a holiday That's it. Now the second portion is writing. You will be also asked same concept You will be asked to write one sentence if you don't write it. Well, maybe second one and then third one It's also a simple sentence nothing complex and then for the speaking category. It's nothing official It's just that the officer who's going to be interviewing based on the question based on the interview He's going to determine whether you are capable of speaking English. So that's pretty much it for the English test It's very straightforward. There is even at the end of this booklet There is a list of some vocabulary for places and holidays if you want to train if your English is not that great Now the second portion of the test is the civics test It's the one that takes a little bit of time So so the civics test basically covers important US history and Government now when you are preparing for the test There are 100 questions that they pick from and they do ask you out of these 100 questions They ask you 10 questions random 10 questions and you do have to answer six of them correctly So and I believe that this is a fair portion or percentage of passing or not passing 100 questions you have to prepare for them and all of these hundred questions are in this book So if you cover all of the hundred questions, you are good to go Now the only thing is for me personally, I don't like reading out of a book like this So there is something called flashcards for citizenship exams If you go to Amazon and you search for flashcards 2020 or flashcards 2021 for citizenship You will find a set of them. They are very cheap. I don't have mine with me right now But I do have some leftover cards because when I finished my test took uber and then the guy who was driving uber He was also going through naturalization So I just give them away But the cards look something like this and it's a set of more than 100 of them Some of them are just talking about the contact email for the company you get them from what is citizenship But then the rest of the deck of these cards are basically the 100 questions that you have to train on One side of the card have the question and then the other side has the answer So the easiest way to do this is to train with someone and have someone ask you So and this is how I did it I had the set of the flashcards took them out for the first time and I went through the questions one by one And then I separate them into two piles one pile all of the questions that I already know because to be fair There are some questions that are very easy. What is the capital of the United States? How many states are there in the US? Who is the first president of the US? So some of these questions you might be already familiar with So I've got one deck or one pile with all the cards that I already know So I set them aside. I don't touch them for for the training And then I have another deck of cards that I don't know or questions that I don't know So I go through these from time to time a couple of days Just have someone ask me and I really enjoyed the process so Alex would ask me the questions I would answer and I felt like it was fun It was fun to learn something new about this country about the government about the history It was all fun now. There is one thing to keep in mind There are some questions that are specific to your state. So for example for me here in Arizona There were some questions like what is the capital of Arizona? What's the name of the governor of Arizona? Name one of the representative from the House of Representatives of Arizona Name one senator of Arizona and some of these questions I was not familiar with but with these flashcards They actually allow you and they give you some space to write down the answer So all you have to do go online and search who is the governor of Arizona For example, and then write it down on the flashcard and then you just start practicing So this is what I've been doing just rounds of me going to the cars Which questions I know which ones I don't know and then when I train, okay I'm familiar with these 20 additional cars move them to the other pile and so on So just did that a couple of times a couple of times and obviously the two days before the actual test and They do ask you fair questions to be honest You're in the interview some of the questions are like very very straightforward I was asked why there are 50 stars in the in the flag because there are 50 states. I was also asked the The declaration of independence. I was asked name one of the representatives from Arizona Which I did not know this answer before I was asked about the two oceans in the US So some questions are very straightforward and this is pretty much everything that I did to prepare for the test If you guys have any questions, please do let me know in the comments We do answer every single comment within 24 hours And if you did enjoy this video and found it to be useful Please give us a thumbs up and consider subscribing to the channel and again The link to get the flashcards from Amazon is going to be in the description box If you do purchase one, I'm going to get a bit of commission and that's going to help me Just keep making videos and probably getting better gear So thank you guys for watching and we'll see you very soon in the next episode in which we will talk about Things that you should do after you become a US citizen. Thank you again, and we'll talk to you very soon


Stand by for contingency.   Hey, y'all got any face paint? Y'all got any camo sticks on here? Where's the magazine? That's full. Where's the empty magazine? Right here. I'm telling you. Okay. Up top. I see a sniper on me. Up top. Got it. Moving. Downrange to the left. You're going to see targets. They're steel. Straight away. Send it. Hit. Send it. Not animal. Okay. Lock it clear. All right. Good. Take that magazine. Nice to the tower. Roger. Send it. Wind ready. Engage. Wind ready. Engaging. Make sure you take the magazine. Get right here. We've got magazines. One line around.  The GFC. How are we? How are we? How are we? How are we? Great job. Great job.


Hello. Good morning. I have a bit of a heel on right now, so I have to like stand a little bit further away than usual.  There we go. Hey, welcome back to another vlog. It's Saturday morning. I wasn't planning on vlogging actually. I realized as I was getting ready that these next few days I'm gonna have some good vlog worthy stuff going on. Plus, I enjoy vlogging. I'm so used to doing it every week. I mean, it sounds kind of like weird and maybe bad to say, but I feel like the idea of just living my normal life and not talking to a camera and documenting it all feels unnatural at this point. So today I have three clients and I'm looking forward to it because we have a storm passing through. Thank you for like the well wishes that I got. Oh wait, I was about to put on mascara. I just lifted and tinted my lashes yesterday. Not only do I not need it, but I'm not supposed to wear any at least until tomorrow. If you guys saw one of my previous videos, I did like my beauty routine. I touched up my roots. I tinted my brows and my lashes. So I'm feeling good today. I'm like all refreshed and it just makes getting ready so much faster and easier. And yesterday I washed my hair and I've just been letting it air dry these days because now I have a keratin treatment on it. So it just air dries in like a really nice soft wave. Just makes my life so much easier. Did I say something about the storm and then lose my train of thought? We have a storm that's been passing through. So the temperature has dropped significantly and it has just been gloomy and raining and windy like all day yesterday. But yeah, it's just a gloomy cozy day and I have three clients today, but they are all regulars of mine. And they're also all like just really laid back and easy going. The one is actually my co-worker's mom. So it should be a good like comfortable more chill day. I love when you have those regulars and you know them pretty well and the conversation just like flows naturally and it's like you look forward to seeing them and it's just like enjoyable experience and easy. And there's not a lot of pressure because like you've gotten in a good routine. Like you know, you already kind of know them and what they like and they already trust you and you know low stress. Love those kinds of appointments. I will see you at the salon. So this client comes in once every couple of months and we've just been doing a full head of highlights on her but today she said she wanted to change it up a little bit. Nothing too drastically different, but she just wanted to change it up a little from what we usually do. So I suggested doing some low lights that way she could go a little bit darker for the fall. It would be a little bit more low maintenance that way too. But I was going to just use demi permanent color that way if she changes her mind and wants to go super blonde again in a couple months we can do so no problem.  I didn't bring them all the way down to the ends. I told her you know she could see how she feels about it and if she wants to go even darker next time we could but I wanted to ease in. I didn't want to you know shock her too too much. So it wasn't too different but I think it was just different enough that you know it made her feel it gave her that change she was looking for and I love how beautiful and blended it came out. Hi Hi Oh my god today was such a good day or it started out like such a good day my first client as you saw her hair came out beautiful. We did some low lights altered her tone a little bit beautiful blended chef's kiss and they didn't get clips of my other two clients because the second one was my co-worker's mom and we just do her roots and I don't know I I don't normally like I'm not normally her hair stylist I've just done her hair in the past when she like needs a Saturday appointment so I don't know they just didn't get clips and then my last client was my friend Maddie and I just forgot to get clips of her hair but I just touched up her highlights and she always leaves with her hair wet because she is just impatient and I mean I don't blame her she usually just like lets her hair air dry anyway because it's curly okay, this is the time you choose to drink your water but anyway it was all good like everybody's hair came out beautiful everybody was happy there was no issue everything like flowed smoothly. I'm finally done I'm like oh I can't wait to go home I think I'm gonna like order delivery and I'll just have like a nice chill night it's like so cold and cloudy out like I just don't have a cozy night I'm driving home and I get pulled over I haven't gotten pulled over in years and he tells me that I was going 50 in a 35 35 I was on a highway like no way is this we limit 35 here and it's not like I'm like speeding I'm in a rush to get anywhere like I'm just driving at a normal pace normal speed just kind of flowing with traffic pulls me over and of course it's this whole thing because the one day that I don't have my wallet with me I always make sure I have my wallet like I feel incomplete if I don't have my purse with all my stuff but this morning I just kind of ran out of here and I totally forgot my wallet and I realized as I was heading to the salon and I was like oh well it's fine I shouldn't need it for anything because I'm just planning on coming straight home so I didn't have my license on me so it's this whole thing he's trying to look it up but my driver's license is still Pennsylvania so when he was like trying to pull it up through my registration it like the address wasn't matching so I'm trying to like look through my phone look through my emails to see if I can find like a picture of my license somewhere and I was able to finally find it but I'm like just nervously like searching anyway after all of that he gives me a ticket for $250 for going 15 miles an hour over the speed limit I'm not like driving recklessly I wasn't texting I'm like and then he tells me yeah so just like go to the courthouse on this date um at this time and then like as long as you don't have like any previous record um they'll just like take it off for you like that's cool and all great but like what a complete waste of time now not only my time but like everyone involved whoever has to do the paperwork the actual people there that have like at the courthouse like this is such a waste of time like you it wasn't even like oh if you want to fight it you can he literally said here go to the courthouse on this date so now in November on a Friday at 8 a.m. I have to go to court I mean thank god I'm so grateful that at least I have a job like I don't normally work at the salon on Fridays and obviously like with YouTube and stuff it's very flat like you know I my work schedule is very flexible so thank god I can go like if I worked a traditional 9 to 5 I would have to like take off work to go do that and who knows how long I'm gonna end up being there for because I'm you know usually those kinds of things you're not just like in and out you have to be waiting around forever anyway but so um I ordered some Chinese food to cheer myself up anyway I'm gonna go eat this now and sit on the couch and I'm gonna just let it go like now I vented about it it's out of my system I'm letting it go I'm not gonna worry about it until November when I have to go to court but for now I'm gonna have a good evening I'm gonna maybe watch Harry Potter or something something fall related good morning it's the next day I'm feeling a lot better I'm in a better mood than I was in the last clip but this morning I have one client she's new I actually have a Google form that I made like almost a year ago now when I first started taking clients again and it has been a huge lifesaver for me I highly highly recommend if you were also in the beauty industry or like any industry really where you're taking clients make a form like this for yourself especially if you own your own place if you have like a salon suite it just takes a lot of the back and forth out of you know like communicating over instagram dms and or email text whatever so yeah I made this google form it's so easy and straightforward to do and you can customize it and do like whatever kind of questions you want you can do like multiple choice kind of questions you can have like open ended questions where they have to type out a response you can have them upload photos or videos there's a lot of different options so on my form I just ask for like the general information their name their phone number their email that way when I am booking them I don't have to ask for all of that again over the phone like it just I already have it there it's easy for me to just enter into the computer and then it just asks them like what their hair history is like what have they done to it chemical wise in the past year or so not only is that important for me to know obviously because like chemically you know I need to know like do they have box color in their hair they used sun in like is there anything that could create an obstacle getting to their goal but also it's good insight to see like okay over the past year have they changed their hair a bunch of times are they the type of person that's like really indecisive and like not super committed to one type of style because then if they're asking for something that's going to be like really permanent or really high maintenance you kind of have an idea of like all right well is this going to be a good choice is it going to be realistic for them it also kind of gives you an idea too of like how frequently do they normally go to the salon and these are all questions that like I asked during the consultation anyway but just so that way it gives me an idea of like how often are they like realistically going to come in for touch ups and then I asked them what their hair goals are and I you know I say like please be as specific as possible like what are you looking for and then I asked them to submit photos of their hair currently in natural lighting and then also upload photos of their inspiration pictures that way I know exactly what they look like what their hair looks like so when they walk in it's on a big shock because sometimes when you're doing a consultation back and forth and you're not seeing them in person they might describe their hair one way to you and then when you actually see them for the first time in person you're like oh that's not exactly what I was picturing like a few weeks ago I had a girl that was the color correction and the ends of her hair were bleached and I talked to her over the phone like she just like called the salon and I booked her over the phone and she told me yeah my ends are bleached but she failed to mention that she had like old rainbow colors throughout the bleached ends as well so it ended up being a little bit more of a complicated process than what I was anticipating so the form is fantastic because it just saves a lot of time a lot of back and forth and then that way you know exactly what the client's situation is exactly what they're looking for and you can better determine a if you're going to be a good fit for them and if their goals are realistic and then b what do they need to be booked for how much time do you need to block out for them etc and also I feel like taking that extra step and the extra time to like fill it all out upload the photos and all that it kind of can eliminate people that aren't actually serious about coming in like the people that are just kind of like booking appointment on a whim and then are going to like last minute no show you and I think it just adds like a level of professionalism to like it just makes it feel a little bit more of like a high end type of experience and it keeps everything more organized for me too because then rather than having like dms on instagram that like get lost in my hidden folder or something like that all of the responses are in one place but this client today filled out that form she is looking to cut several inches off her hair and do like a long bob cut which I'm really excited about because I think it's going to be so cute and then she just wants a balayage she said she's just looking for like really easy low maintenance color and the photos she submitted for her inspiration were like very very rooted I think that it should hopefully not go would be a really smooth easy appointment and yeah I don't normally work on Sundays the salon is actually closed today but we are allowed to come in and take clients even when the salon is closed if we want to there just won't be a receptionist there because I'm about to go away next week and be gone for like a month I'm just trying to work as much as I can these next few days and just get everybody in that wanted an appointment that way they don't have to wait till like November and also depending how I feel I might tone my hair while I'm at the salon because there's a couple pieces throughout that I don't know like it's just looking a little bit faded on the ends it's not bad but I feel like you know it could use a little bit of a refresh I did my roots a couple days ago with permanent color so like the roots are looking good but I feel like the ends could use a little bit of you know a gloss we will see but I'll bring you along look how long this client's hair was like I said she wanted to cut it pretty short and she wanted a balayage very rooted but a really nice bright blonde so that's exactly what we did this was her finished hair hi I'm home and I have packages and coffee first things first let's try this because I am dying ooh mm-hmm normally this time of year I just get the regular pumpkin cream cold brew but I wanted pumpkin but I just kind of wanted to like change it up a little bit because that other drink is not like as pumpkin-y it's really just like the foam on top that has pumpkin in it so I got a shaken espresso I added pumpkin syrup to it and then I got the pumpkin cold foam on top as well it's so good I was just craving a coffee and I was literally driving past Starbucks on my way home and I was like let me just pull in and get something for myself like let me give myself a little treat but this morning went really well my client was amazing she was super super sweet just like easy to talk to appointment went really well and I am so happy with how her hair came out oh my god it looks so beautiful and she loved it which always feels good and she hadn't cut her hair short in like almost 10 years she said so she was like I know I want to do this I'm excited but like I also feel like it's gonna take me a little while to get used to it and I might hate it at first but like I definitely want to do this so I was like okay that's fine like as long as you've been thinking about it for a while this isn't like an impulsive thing I'm not gonna try to talk you out of it because I think it's a great choice especially she has a lot of hair it's really thick but I was kind of you know like anticipating at the end for her to just kind of be like oh I don't know how I feel you know like be a little bit more in shock but she loved it like she was so happy and excited and it just looked so good and it felt nice to be able to like really just take as much time as I wanted and not feel rushed because she was my only client of the day and you know I didn't have to feel like okay I need to be done by a certain time because then my next client's gonna be here so I was able to really take my time styling it really well and get really good after pictures and oh I'm just so happy I feel like it's been a while since I was able to do that I feel like these days I'm not able to get as many good after pictures because I just don't have the time usually I think I need to start blocking out an extra like 15 minutes or so so I can have more time to like really style the hair perfectly and then get good pictures because it's nice to have pictures of your hard work but also posting on Instagram obviously is like I mean you need to be doing it it's huge to promote yourself and get clientele and be able to show off what you're capable of I used to be so good about getting pictures of all my clients and I don't know lately I just haven't been I guess giving myself enough time for that but okay the first package oh my god I'm so excited I got PR from Olaplex which if you know me if you've been following me for a long time I love Olaplex so much oh my god and this is perfect because I'm going on my trip and I needed like smaller shampoo conditioner bottles and I was actually gonna go buy some more but this is perfect oh oh my god so they sent me their shampoo in their conditioner and their number three treatment oh my god thank you so much Olaplex I am a huge fan and have been for years and years even long before I became a professional hairdresser their stuff has saved my hair on so many occasions and my clients and like the salon where I work now doesn't carry olaplex and I I still sell it to my clients I'm still like this is what you need I highly recommend it's amazing when a brand that you really love and have loved for so long knows that you exist it's so cool my other packages are clothes I show you guys in the last vlog that I ordered some stuff from cider a couple weeks ago and last week I got most of the stuff from my order but this shipped separately so I finally got this in oh I'm excited it's so cute it has that like lettuce sort of like raw hem but how cute is this color oh I'm excited I'm definitely packing this for my trip and then lastly I don't know how this is gonna look on me and fit and all of that but I got this I don't know would you call this a leotard I guess it's just like a onesie kind of thing from amazon and I love the back the back is cut out so I thought that would be cute to where to work out or even just to run errands or do whatever but yeah those are all of my packages I'm gonna heat up my leftovers from yesterday normally Sundays are my day off and they're the day where I like to just stay home not socialize with anyone or leave the apartment at all relax clean just reset reset the social battery so I am gonna spend the rest of the day doing just that I'll see you later hey good morning happy Monday I've been up since 6 30 this morning and of course today I'm just working from home all day and I was looking forward to like being able to sleep in and then um I don't know I just like naturally my body woke up at 6 30 and I was ready to start the day the sun wasn't even up yet and I was like all right of course figures but hey I mean whatever um but I've had such bad allergies since I got up this morning and I think now that the weather is like starting to kind of cool down a bit and it hasn't been as humid the dryness is just like making my allergies even worse so I think we're entering that time of year we're now I need to start sleeping with my humidifier on but yes I'm sorry that I am all nasally I took allergy medicine so I'm just kind of waiting for it to kick in but I've been sitting on the couch editing and my nose this is so disgusting but like this is real life my nose has just been constantly running and that was my pile of tissues I figure it's a little after nine now I'm gonna finally pull myself together um my friend Haley and I made plans to go check out this new coffee shop downtown it looks very very cute and we're gonna bring our laptops and sit and get work done because she runs her own business so she also you know works remotely because my apartment is so small you don't have a designated like work area or office so I usually just sit on my couch or in my bed honestly and just work from my laptop which is fine like I don't really mind it because it's comfy but it is nice to kind of get out of the apartment and sit like at a tabletop so yeah we're gonna do that and then we might after we're done working go for a nice long walk and I think the weather's supposed to be really nice today so it'll be nice to just you know get some fresh air too so that's the plan okay actually quick little detour I decided since I'm about to hop in the shower anyway I may as well just wash my hair and also tone it while I'm at it because I finally got the gloss I need and I was gonna do it in like the next couple of days anyway so I might as well just do it now that way I don't have to worry about it later because I still have so much that I need to do and I'm gonna be getting my nails done in a couple of days so I'd rather do it now and that way if I save the crap out of my hands and nails it doesn't matter lately I've been liking to just do it at the salon because how it doesn't make such a mess in my shower but whatever you know desperate times so I'm gonna hop in the shower I'm gonna wash my hair with this clarifying shampoo this is the Paul Mitchell shampoo too just so it can remove like any kind of buildup that's in my hair so that way it'll really accept the color really well I'm gonna rinse that out towel dry it and then I am using the Reckon shades EQ gloss gloss toner glaze all means the same shit um so I'm gonna use the shade 4n and then I have a little bit left over of this 3nb which is just like a tiny bit darker but I don't even have like half a bottle in here so I'm just gonna throw that in because now that I have all these extra extensions especially I need a lot of product so I'm going to mix that up with the shades EQ processing solution in my color bottle and I'm just gonna put it all over my head massage it in real good make sure it's fully saturated and let it process for 20 minutes then I'm gonna shampoo it out do conditioner and I'm gonna use my ola black shampoo and conditioner I'm excited because I love this stuff I usually I have like three or four different shampoos that I really like that I will rotate between so it's been a while since I've used this stuff but I love it I will see you when it's done all right I'll be there soon why do I always do this to myself like I always end up running I mean we didn't have necessarily a set time but I was like oh I'm gonna get ready and leave soon but then I decided to hop in the shower and tone my freaking hair and then she texted me a while I was still in the shower that she was leaving so it's like crap um so she just got there but it's fine um but the body suit is super cute let me show you wearing like the best underwear under this but you've been still I feel like it's really flattering like it you know cinches in it's pretty seamless so I mean this would even be nice to wear like a shapewear underneath a dress if you wanted to but the back cutout is so cute I'm just gonna wear this flannel wrapped around my waist because A I feel a little more comfortable like that and B um it's pretty warm out but you know just in case I get chilly or we're sitting inside and like the AC is blasting but got my book bag with my laptop charger headphones I think I'm good to go oh and I have my wallet I'm gonna bring some lip oil and my phone and let's head out and I'm just gonna leave I've been letting my hair air dry anyway so we're just gonna go with soaking wet hair but it's all good but it already looks so good so dark so I'll show you later when I get home once it's dry how it looks but I gotta go guess who got like pretty much no work done it was a good time though we were out for a few hours coffee spot we went to was so cute the coffee was good and it was just a really nice atmosphere and it was just something kind of different and then we were hungry so we went and got lunch at another place um and I like I started to get a little bit of work done but then we just started talking and yeah we just got distracted and caught up in conversation anyway here's how my hair looks now that it's dry uh I love when it's just like super dark and fresh no red tones at all but now that I'm home I am going to get back on my computer and I'm gonna get a little bit more work done so I'm gonna work for like the next hour or so and then I'm gonna leave again because I really need a pedicure and Hailey was actually planning on going to get one tonight too so we called and booked appointments so yeah in about an hour I'm gonna leave and go meet up with her again and we're gonna go get pedicures oh and also this bodysuit leotard thing it's super comfy and I'm gonna keep it on all day because I could like live in this thing it's so comfortable it doesn't like the shorts don't ride up or anything when I'm walking and it's not too tight or digging in anywhere and the material is just nice and thick and it's really good quality I am very happy very happy with my purchase so I'll link this in the description anyway that's the update I'll check in later hello good afternoon it's the next day I am feeling overwhelmed to say the least so yesterday because I didn't end up being productive and getting the work done that I needed to do in the afternoon I just did it all when I got home and I ended up staying up working till like 10 10 30 and then this morning I got up around 8 o'clock and I've just been working non-stop since then I edited and scheduled two podcast episodes which those take a while to do because you know they're long each episode is usually around an hour sometimes more but I feel good about that and all the podcast is good and taken care of and Julia is going to record a solo episode and she's gonna you know worry about editing and posting that herself while I'm gone so at least now I don't have to worry about any podcast related things like everything on my end is taken care of until I get back for my vacation but I need to re-record my apartment tour video and then edit and schedule that so that can go up while I'm on vacation and then I have some Instagram content that I need to get for two sponsored posts and then I need to just get like some little additional shots I have an Amazon favorites video all of this stuff by the time you're watching this should already be up you should have already seen it but I recorded and edited the whole thing already now I just need to record a couple little like close-up shots of some of the items and I just have to add those to the video and then schedule that and fill out the description get all the links to all of the products that I am showing in the video and I think that's everything content-wise that I still need to do before Thursday morning and I really am not saying all of this to complain and be like oh my god life is so hard work is so stressful I love what I do and it's gonna be amazing once I get all of this stuff done and taken care of that I can literally just go away and not have to worry about anything for the next three weeks and not have to do any work so this is not me like whining and complaining I'm just kind of like venting and sharing everything that's going on because it is a lot of stuff it's three weeks of work that I'm trying to squeeze into just a few days so you know it's a little bit overwhelming but it's going to be well worth it and I'm excited to go on my trip and see my family now I am getting ready a little bit trying to decide what I want to do because I have one client at the salon at four tonight so I have less than two hours till I need to leave to go to the salon so I'm kind of going to hurry because I need to record that apartment video like I have to do it today and I can't wait till I get home because I'm not going to have any daylight and so the lighting is just going to be funky and I'm definitely not going to have time tomorrow to film and edit it so I need to get it recorded today that way I can edit it tomorrow I'm so grateful right now though that I toned my hair yesterday because that definitely helped take something off my plate and I still have a bunch of laundry that I need to do I still need to pack I haven't even began packing and my bedroom is a mess like I just things are chaotic right now but I know it'll be fine I know I'm going to be able to get everything done but it's just crunch time you know so it's a little stressful but I'm going to go finish getting ready record eat and then head to the salon so I'll see you later if you guys want to get this box and try out these products for yourself you can click the link right here and go check out the teas on instagram by some miracle I was able to finish what I needed to do and I still have like 30 minutes 25 30 minutes till I used to leave so I'm making some hard boiled eggs really quick I'm super excited though I'm getting so many hair products this week um one of the things that I had to record for instagram was an unboxing video it's a subscription box from the teas I had never even heard of this before but they do a monthly box and it's like curated products and it's all professional hair products but I got a bunch of palmetial awapui products which I love I used to use that line at my old salon so I got a shampoo and conditioner and a couple treatments this is like a conditioning treatment for dry hair this is a gloss treatment it's like a clear gloss and then this is a texturizing sea spray I'm really excited about this especially because I kind of wait I might have to use this on wet hair what does it say uh yeah spray liberally onto clean damp hair okay so I'll wait um tomorrow when I'm getting ready I'll re-wet my hair and then I'll try this out very exciting stuff like I said this client was new she had been going to another stylist and kept asking for a balayage but she kept getting just a full head of highlights and she felt like the root area just needed to be stretched out a little bit more she wanted it to be a little bit softer and more blended so that it would have a nicer grow out so this is what her final hair looked like I just basically ended up doing low lights and then a few highlights in the front kind of similar to my client on Saturday this lighting sucks but I'm too tired to care it's 8.02 I just got home I took Benny for a walk and I'm about to eat dinner and I'm so hungry because those hard boiled eggs were not enough for me for an entire day I also just hate that it's starting to get dark out earlier because when the sun sets like my body's natural response is to get tired and to feel like okay it's it's nighttime the day is over it's time to line down so even though it's only eight right now it feels like midnight so I am making some salmon in the air fryer and then I have some roasted broccoli that I made last night so I'm gonna heat that up and then I have these Trader Joe's noodles I'm running really low on groceries but obviously I'm not gonna bother stocking up on anything because I'm about to be gone for a month so I'm just kind of make do with what I have and use up what I have oh but my client tonight was so great her usual stylist doesn't do hair anymore so she has been on the hunt for a while to find a new stylist that's a good fit for her so she seemed really happy and I feel like we clicked so hopefully I you know got a new regular client but yeah I'm gonna go finish making my dinner and eat and I'll catch up with you later let's just jump in let's start with hey good afternoon I'm feeling less stressed I stayed up pretty late last night and got a bunch of stuff done I cleaned up my kitchen I did a bunch of editing straightened up my bedroom put some clothes away I had like clothes and shoes just scattered all over my room so I put that stuff away oh and I made my thumbnails and everything last night too so I have one last little thing that I need to do for one of the videos but it's practically done and the other one is currently exporting so as soon as that's done I'm gonna upload and schedule it um and then same with the other video and I think I'm good on time because it's about noon now so I don't need to leave for another like 40 minutes and I'm just getting ready really quick I got laundry going so then when I get home tonight all I'm gonna have to do is put away my laundry pack my bags and I think that should be it I'm trying to decide too if I want to leave at like the crack of dawn tomorrow or if I want to wait till the afternoon I keep putting in my GPS different times because you know it can kind of estimate like what the traffic normally is like during certain times so I need to see what would be better if I should leave earlier or wait a little bit and I guess it depends too if I am able to get everything done tonight before I go to bed either way though I am dreading that drive it's like around 10 hours depending on traffic but I'm just gonna have some good podcasts and good music to listen to or usually if I start to get really bored I'll like call up a friend and just talk because that usually makes the time go by faster I wish I could fly but I'm bringing my dog with me but I want to try this new texturizing sea spray so I just brush through my hair and I wet it a little bit so that it's a little damp it says spray liberally onto clean damp hair and toss it with fingers air dry or blow dry with a diffuser spray on dry hair for additional lift and definition okay so let's see I hope that this doesn't make my hair like too crunchy okay I'm gonna just let it air dry and I'll show you how it looks when it's dry okay it's officially go time it's 741 I just got home luckily it was a little bit of a slower night so I was able to leave at 715 a little earlier than usual so that's nice and I officially have no groceries so I stopped at Taco Bell on my way home and got a quesadilla so that's gonna be my dinner I'm gonna eat that and then get everything done get everything packed up and be ready to go and I'm gonna pack up the car tonight because like I said earlier I keep checking the traffic like keep checking the GPS and I think my best bet is gonna be leaving as early as possible I'm gonna try to leave here by 6 a.m at the latest and I think that's gonna be my best bet because literally any time after that it just keeps adding time to the drive and if I wait even until 8 a.m it's gonna add like a full hour to the drive so that's the plan and I also want to try to get everything done tonight as quickly as possible so that way I can go to bed at a reasonable time because I am so exhausted and I need as much sleep as I can get I was able to fit all of my stuff for Italy in that carry-on suitcase this bigger suitcase is gonna be my stuff for Pennsylvania because when I get back from Italy I'm gonna be in PA for a week and I need to bring separate stuff for that because the weather is gonna be a lot colder there I'm finally done it's 11.33 I packed everything up in the car I just have this one last bag that I'm just gonna throw stuff in in the morning like my laptop and charger and um busting out the old vlog camera because I want to vlog the Italy trip but the camera that I have been using to vlog lately is quite big and bulky so this one the quality is not going to be quite as good but this is like so nice and small so I can just throw it in my purse I think that's it I think I'm done and can finally go to bed I'm gonna end this vlog here thank you so much for spending the last few days with me and coming along on this crazy ride stay tuned because the next one is going to be my Italy vlog I am so excited thank you guys for watching I'll see you really soon bye