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Chef AJ: 700th Episode Special A LIVE QA | Chef AJ LIVE! with Dr Doug Lisle and Dr Jen Howk
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live i'm your host chef aj and this is where i introduce you to amazing people like you i gotta get my bell who are doing great things in the world that i think you should know about i gotta ring the purple bell because this is the 700th episode of chef aj live and i have terrific guests to celebrate this momentum momentous occasion none other than dr jenn hawk and dr doug lyle welcome them to the show it's great to see you guys again cool aj thanks for having us absolutely 700. you're in the 700 club what's so great is uh for for people that are in your group like me we already got to hear you guys talk today so that's something you guys might want to consider and i will put that in the show notes before i get to the questions if you guys wouldn't mind this is true north health week and you were scheduled but as it turned out this is perfect because even though you might not be working there right now you both were a big part of the success of true north and one of the things dr goldhamer is promoting is the fact that many of his doctors do health coaching or uh consultations via phone phone resume but you guys always did that and i want people to know that and i'm curious with your experience at truenorth like what what was the kind of patience that would be great candidates to have phone consultations with you people that were at the true north health center or even people that are just watching and don't know that you guys do this huh um i i think i i don't think that there's a i think it's anybody that's got a um that is struggling with any kind of challenge and that they're they're they're they've you know they've gone and alone with the information that they have and they're stuck and they just can't get get out of a self-defeating pattern so that's yeah but but jen and i are you know we do that that kind of consulting we also do consulting uh the certainly on all broad issues in in your life in other words the health challenges are a are simply a special case of a wider uh a wider issue which is how do you go about organizing your life and the choices that you make in all all domains of your life so we're both generalists in that way but we certainly uh know a lot about the problems in and around the pleasure draft we've certainly talked to an awful lot of people and have worked that over from all angles so that that's you know anybody that's struggling uh which is common just because the the problem is is that knowing what to do and then executing on it are two different things and sometimes there are fine details that are worthwhile so yeah you can come to our website at steam dynamics and and that's where you can find us the uh and you can also find uh we also have we have a little thing called the healthy helpers corner uh with nathan gerschfeldt who does consulting uh can consult with people about doing uh water only fasts uh virtually uh doesn't mean you do it virtually means you do you do it in reality at your home but nathan can check in with you and also justina fries who also is a person that we refer to for people that are struggling with eating problems so we all do very similar things there but i think jen and i are certainly uh uh are certainly available for food related that's that kind of stuff but we're also available for everything else just general life problem solving in in kids romance relationships friendships in-laws you know uh ego trapped with respect to career doesn't matter what the domain is uh we are we are there to try to help people make their lives better by sometimes shifting their perspective and helping them move forward yeah i would say that we we really think of ourselves more as problem solver we're we're like mechanics for a car we're trying to locate the the actual problem and fix it we're not trying to create a client for life we're not trying to get you to come back and dig deeper into your childhood to figure out what's going on we're trying to figure out why you're hitting a wall why you're stuck what's going on um so yeah if you if you've been repeating things to yourself like i'm stuck or the the number one thing that i hear from people which is i know what to do why can't i just do it like why am i stopping myself what's wrong with me um those are the kind of things that are a cue that it would be really helpful to to potentially talk to one of us or these other people that doug is mentioning um and yeah we we definitely deal with everything and the life experience from from health to relationships to work to everything else so great thank you and i'm guessing a lot of people think you're just causing me a lot of trouble teenager oh the tina yes yeah yeah sorry aj oh no i was just saying i'm guessing that a lot of people that met you at true north probably are still clients today yeah i think we talked to talk to lots of folks who have been in and out of true north um either when one one or both of us was there or before we were there there's a lot of overlap so great well thanks i want to thank the super chat donation and get to the first question from jesse which i've often wondered myself why is it that people seem to have no problem making critical comments about our health and weight when we have lost weight but rarely comment on our poor health condition when we're fat yeah um interesting i i i i i'd actually want to see evidence on that before you know pontificating about that but i think it's i think people if they see a change that that uh looks like you could be thinking that it's in a positive direction then then it's not it's not uh essentially bad manners uh in principle to comment in that direction i would be bad manners comment in any other direction so uh but you know i i saw my father rudely inform women that looks like the bed gained weight that's my both my grandparents my grandfathers were famous for that i think that's a generational thing yeah i don't think you see that as much anymore right now i think the the world has gotten a little more sensitive about that but uh yeah i think it i think it has to do with the inference of whether or not we are uh whether we'd like to hear it or not right yeah that's what i'm thinking there's also probably a component of um you know when something doesn't make sense look for the status that's one of our kind of guiding principles of life and and i do think there is a particularly between women kind of a little competitive dynamic that can emerge where uh women are very unlikely to comment on somebody gaining weight or being unhealthfully large but if they start getting more competitive they start losing weight it starts looking like they're they're having success that may or may not be attainable for for that other person they might say something in a competitive strike that could be part of the dynamic i think that often happens um emergent from the personalities that are involved um but i do think there is some that's that's not a hugely widespread phenomenon there's a little bit of selection bias because people tend to be very sensitive when that does happen that they perceive it happening more often than it actually is happening out there in the world so right people who are sort of disagreeable and blunt are likely to be disagreeable and blunt about a lot of things um and we're just we're only going to notice it when we feel offended well i remember once dr mcdougall told me i looked like i had gained weight and i was still pretty thin so again that's the grandfather factor it reminds me a lot of my my very disagreeable grandfather who just which is a very matter of fact like point that out yeah yeah well and now another super chat donation from diane thank you and there's a comment from best that dr lyle you're looking very handsome today oh he got himself a haircut very nice and and people as always they love your laugh here's a great question and i don't think i've listened to every episode of beat your jeans at least once and i don't think you covered it if you did i don't remember but candace says uh dear doctors i'm a big fan of the beat your jeans podcast and i don't know if you've ever answered this but i'm very curious from an evolutionary standpoint why female orgasm exists in order to ejaculate a man has to have an orgasm but a woman can still ovulate and conceive without one so what is the purpose of female orgasm well jen can answer or i could answer there's we have we have talked about this it has come up before um i mean there's a there's a couple of of purposes um but the main one is you know it may or may not aid in the pregnancy process the the sort of you know actual uh fertilization may be more likely if you have an orgasm i think the more important relevant reason that we evolved this feature is that it's it's a signal that you're in the right place i mean you're you're sort of you're with the right of all of your choices of all of those uh male apes wandering around bidding for your attention this one is the best of all um and so you know most women are uh this is this is not a purely physical process for most women it's an emotional it's a there's a lot going on with um a woman's ability to reach that point in a sexual relationship so it's it's really just nature's way of telling you you've made a pretty good choice about where you're spending your evening but uh doug can add to anything that he might have to add to those things are um i think i think an additional sort of overall way of looking at this would be that orgasm would be an incentive to have sex in principle okay so that that's the the larger wider context and uh and then in addition to that what we call a mr right detector uh so that's a that's a again imperfect because you could have a a great relationship that the technical aspects of the the sexual action between those two people doesn't wind up mechanically hitting an orgasm for the female but it doesn't it wouldn't matter all it would have to be would be something that that you are one percent more likely to have an orgasm with mr right than mr wrong if it was just a tiny little effect size then that would be enough to get selected by evolution and i'm sure that it's more than that okay so in fact we know that it's more than that and yeah the contractions that go on an orgasm actually result in a retention of seminal fluid uh significantly so all all three of those things i think stir the pot and make that uh part of human natural female psychology wow that's really interesting well a place where they force females to have circumcision that that's not good then for this process not good for a lot of processes right of course i mean i know it's very very but if it's true that an orgasm helps facilitate you know pregnancy that would be a reason also not to do it yeah barbaric beyond belief absolutely okay so on to happier things rats like if if you substitute spiders for this i can relate sharon's question it's bad when rats are happier than orgasms i just have to point out that i met the wrong that's funny so can you help me with the fear many years ago i was sitting at a public event and a rat ran across my feet it touched me when i had on sandals since then i've developed a fear of rodent rodents i can't even look at a picture of them any suggestions to help me overcome my fear well there there could be things that you could do so for example you could get yourself a pet rat okay if you got yourself a pet wrap then you would uh and then you're very secure with this pet wrap then you also might find that you could take it up and hold it and then its little feet and the way its little deep deal on your your skin won't be as freaky okay so this is just uh systematic desensitization uh if you wanted to start and you're in a rat was two to grizzly and where the hamster yeah yeah so that that that would be a a reasonable way to try to combat that yeah yeah that was the first thing that occurred to me too this is this is just the nervous system kind of running correlations on on how likely this is to happen again and how scary it is likely to be if it happens again so i've told this story several times where i was i was bitten by a centipede when we were um living in uh in hawaii which was terrible super super painful and i had some window of time where i avoided the location of the crime it was it was a particular couch and it was hiding in the cushions of the couch and i was very paranoid about going over there and relaxing too much on that couch because it could be in there it could bite me again and that eventually wanes with enough time it never totally goes away um but there's you just keep adding data to the little equation that's running in your head of how many times have i sat on this couch and been bitten versus how many times have i sat here and not been bitten under exactly the same circumstances so you're you're you're putting new information into that little risk assessment and and doing something to kind of hack that system by uh introducing the thing that you're afraid of and and exposing yourself to it in a systematic way by but with a hamster or with a rat um i think would be would be very very helpful um and should work most of the time unless it was like a long-standing pre-existing terror of this of this thing then we might have to go a few notches back get smaller smaller creatures with different types of feet to run across your feet wow great thank you so this is from julie she says i heard dr lyle say that people want to recreate humans who look like them i'm adopted and i wonder how parents adapt to that scenario well uh they they want they don't want to recreate humans to look like them they are they're designed by nature to be to be looking for cues that the little creatures that they that that are ostensibly their children do look like them okay and that they like those looks by the way in other words people when we take uh digital photography and morph faces into uh into another face like if i were to take uh for example my face and and morph it into aj's face so you might say well what do you mean by that well it would still you'd still look at the picture and it would look like aj but it would we could take like 10 of some of my features and put them in there and it would you would say oh it's just aj kind of on a different day looking slightly different you know maybe she's been you know out on a boat and and things are a little you know wind swept or something but what would ultimately happen is if i were to look at that photograph i would like it a little better okay this is strange truth okay so and yet if you if you were to take my next door neighbor and morph it into aj space i wouldn't like it better okay so so there so we do have machinery for that and of course uh the reasons for that pro almost certainly have to do with human beings uh forming in-group feelings towards a tribe where they've got little pieces of their genetic code around the tribe so this would this would follow the rules of altruistic behavior where i should be uh more willing to self-sacrifice for people who are my genetic code as opposed to not so that's how it is that that works we have a preference for genes that that look like us now we're going to go back to the question since i lost it so go ahead and say the question again adoption um so what's what's what's up with adoption let me go back to it i was already going and i'll find it again okay it's here oh come on i think basically just how do parents adapt to that or how do they come to terms with that i'll find it i skipped one more okay here it is uh dr i heard dr lyle say that people want to recreate humans who look like them i'm adopted and wonder how parents adapt to the scenario because a lot of times people adopt people uh children of other races and things like that how do they adapt to that scenario well the truth of the matter is is that um that we know that in other words the attachment that people would feel towards an adopted child is is rarely going to equal what they would feel towards a biological child now that doesn't mean that they can't you know love and adopt the child very much uh but we're gonna we're gonna typically find that that it's going to be less than uh it would have been had there been a biological child been biological that's just normal that's just in the in the dna of the species and probably not just our species but all species well other species aren't doing much adopting okay so uh so there's no this applies to step kids too by the way step kid mixed families and so a lot of the conflict that you know emerges in mixed families there there it there are some differentials and and preferences that a lot of people are really uncomfortable talking about you just feel a different type of connection a lot of times yeah this is uh this this is one of the chief architects of major conflict in blended families uh is that you know if i've got a son and she's got a daughter uh i am totally favoring my son over her daughter and she's favoring her daughter over my son and everybody feels like they're playing fair but they aren't uh because everybody's got their thumb on the genetic scale so that's how that goes and so again adoption is an amazing uh amazing characteristic that human beings uh desire the process of parenting so much that they are you know that they would like to do that process uh even though it's not their dna and so the uh i understand that since i sort of half assed halfway raised step children the um but so i understand the the value of those processes that many of those parenting processes that i did during those times felt really valuable and productive uh felt very heroic and therefore worthy of of the woman's admiration for me it's still heroic when they drive you out of your own refrigerator when they're 25 and won't leave yeah that's a whole different story then it's then it's warfare you know yeah yeah yeah so in other words there's nothing uh all that one could feel as an adopted child this is that you you you hope to feel loved and that you're very important uh you may feel that um that it wasn't you know it wasn't as as strong as you've sometimes observed in other people uh and however sometimes it's probably better than some other people about it so yeah yeah but their parents coming to terms with that that there is no terms to that in other words they're they're just they've got this child uh and they are attached to it and they they have empathy circuits that they like they want to watch it grow and thrive and they're trying to aid in a bad bad and they've got mirror neurons that share in your joys and that they share in your sorrows um but they're not feeling it probably at the level of intensity that they would feel if it was their jins that's all it's kind of like it may be nice music but it may not be out on quite as loud as you'd like it and in other words it's just not quite the intensity and that's probably what the life experience is great thank you so this question from laura we get a lot in various forms you might have touched on it in our private group i'm not sure you talked about it on youtube but it's about volume eating and eating pasta and she says i've always been obese because i ate too much through a lonely childhood my menu used to include processed and sos foods with lots of animal products for the last two years i've been whole food plant-based but i still feel compelled to eat past satisfied i overeat even though it's mostly veggie soup salads rice potatoes and fruit with occasional aj type recipe identify i identify with the term volumeter as only massive amounts of food comforts me and turns off the compulsion to eat i eat until i feel sick i have high blood pressure medications had cancer twice i'm a type 2 diabetic on insulin and have atrial fibrillation i'm also a very successful retired teacher professor and grandmother age 73 who was 130 pounds overweight for decades but is now stuck at 90 pounds overweight i feel like i'm stuck in the pleasure trap yes i've read it lovely and on the cramped circuit even though i'm without the sos foods i've been stable for the last two years whole food plant base any advice is welcome dr justina okay so this is yeah justine is the go-to for this yeah this is not a uh this is not a sort of one-off thing that we can give you something quick in two minutes uh you probably want to process this with uh with somebody that uh and develop some plans developing some little experiments that you run you're going to want to try to triangulate and feel your way to a set of choices that may be more successful for you so go to go to our website steamdynamics.com look look for the healthy helpers and you'll see justina freeze and go to her website and then communicate with her that's that's where you want to go for battling this type of thing okay you know i sometimes hear this question though for people that aren't struggling with weight and they they complain that they always eat past full but if if your weight's okay why i mean why is that a problem that's what i don't understand yeah i hear that all the time people sort of uh putting putting this on themselves as some kind of judgment that oh i'm eating too much or i'm binge eating but it's not actually having consequences really um and so this is this always goes back to uh just kind of the a lot of this is this kind of short-term cycle where you're uh you're behaving badly and then you sort of feel like in the in the language of 12 step i know this is a family program so i'll try to modulate my language but you get a case of the efforts you know just screw it i'm just going to forget the whole thing i'm just going to go all in on doing whatever i want so very it's very rare to have a consistent period of time but let's say 60 days where you're you're volume eating um or you're or you're binging on healthy foods um and you're not using that as a pretext to go off plan and do other things that that maybe are more detrimental to your health if you're if you're if that's really all you're doing for the 60 days you're not going to see um you're going to be losing weight probably even though you're binging on healthy foods and so it's it's this process that people don't give themselves enough time and consistency even with the behaviors within that that they feel or um out of bounds or problematic when really that's it's just kind of the the hunger drive calibrating to a new diet most of the time that's that's most often what i see um or it's people carrying uh the assumptions of what binge eating looks like from a from a more calorie dense diet um or uh you know all of these kinds of you know you you're used to these weighing and measuring programs and so you're only supposed to eat a certain number of calories or a certain uh volume of food and so you have these feelings that you're just you're being bad and you're doing the wrong thing uh you really need to give your nervous system time to observe over 30 to 60 to 90 days that it's not having these adverse consequences that you're anticipating yeah and i think i agree with what you say they came from a history of some kind of restriction so maybe they've never felt full before until right right and so suddenly they feel bloated or super full and it's like that's that's actually you just have a belly full of potatoes and that's what it feels like and so you have to kind of re readjust and recalibrate to the the new normal there right some people are saying but it feels uncomfortable to be too full so well i'll tell you what uh i have done this with people there's no reason in the world that you can't eat four or five times a day not at all right okay so you don't have to put all that pressure with the low calorie dense diet on say three meals don't do it so you know if you're if you're gonna if you're eating you know a pound and a half of food three times a day and a pound and a half is too much then eat you know a pound of food four and a half times uh i mean that that's how that's how i would go about doing that and sometimes that is very effective we take pressure off by essentially incorporating one one additional meal time uh so that we we are not you know cramming our way to the guilds yeah there's a lot of people out there who are um have put themselves in really uh strict intermittent fasting programs or um you know they have a really narrow little window or they're trying to do one meal a day or they're trying all of all of these kinds of things that uh are seeking a different goal than finding this just stable equilibrium with your diet so those two things often can't coexist at the same time i once asked dr goldhamer if he ever overeat me said it every meal i mean literally and and i you know i only eat two meals a day not because i'm intermittent fasting because i never ate breakfast and each of my meals is three pounds and i'm like i don't get what you're talking about this is great yeah people need to go to true north and see the the multiple plates that the gold hammer comes out with loaded fully loaded um his son who is who is tiny totally out eats him you know multiple giant plates of food at every meal time so um there is there's sort of an adjustment recalibration process great thank you and i want to thank susanna for the super chat donation and i saw one more hold on it's going very fast i don't want to forget anybody and annette thank you so much okay the next question is from morgan i've heard about dr lyle's behavioral equilibrium and i've been at a plateau for over two years i still have health concerns that i believe could be alleviated by losing more weight i'm 44 and currently weigh about 160 pounds at five foot six i feel guilty for wanting more results my husband and friends see how far i've come and to them it's enough my husband says i look amazing heck yeah i do but he doesn't understand my remaining health concern and is scared i'm trying to become a toothpick i'm not i'm a hyper conscientious highly agreeable highly open low emotional stability introvert that prefers to be a caretaker over taking the spotlight how can i push through well i'm not sure what it is that she's eating that that has her at five six one sixty uh but and it also sounds like she's come a long ways we don't know where she came from so if she came from 225 and now she's 160 we may be hitting a genetic limit uh with a two-year equilibrium if she's doing a really good job on her diet and that may be what the genes have to say to her uh in terms of what is a very healthy situation for her so um alan has a way of looking at things that is slightly upside down and backwards from the way most people would look at and that is that he would say don't worry about your cholesterol level for god's sakes just worry about what you're eating what are you eating if you're eating a really good food then i'm not going to be worried about your cardiovascular disease yeah so i'm not going to be chasing numbers around so in that same way i'm not sure what her health concerns are but if she's eating a very healthy diet and has obviously made a tremendous amount of improvement if she's made substantial improvement and now it is sort of stopped here i'm not i'm not sure what i would be worried about health-wise unless we had objective evidence that there would be something to be worried about and in terms of the weight also i would have the same kind of an attitude about this there are people that are five foot six and 160 pounds and who are in very very good condition and based on what their genes are they are at an equilibrium okay so uh could they be a thinner equilibrium sure they we could move them more towards some rabbit food and we don't know exactly where where it would ultimately land but the some of this variation is natural so again the question uh not not that i'm cross-examining question for the person to be looking at is am i actually doing a really good job at the food that i do uh if you are then we're not there is no breaking through uh to some other side there's no mythical process by which suddenly we're going to become pounds eating the very same foods that we're eating now okay so that's not going to take place so the question is do we have the food right and if we have the food right you know this is kind of one of those things where we live with the results unless there's some bizarre reason why we might suspect there's something out of whack like a thyroid uh would be the only thing that i would check but i don't know that's my meanderings jen what yeah i know exactly that i think people especially when they're coming from a much higher weight they've come a long way i mean your your genes are talking through you saying that you've you've got uh just kind of a higher equilibrium you're you're just gonna it's gonna if you're eating a very healthy whole food plant-based diet you're gonna be floating around at the higher end of your healthy bmi um and there's this range depending on how how tight you tighten those screws and how low you bring that calorie density but there's no point in bringing the calorie density to a point that's not sustainable for you long term unless you're trying to drop a few pounds for a high school reunion or something because you're not going to stay there if you are if you're eating a diet that is sustainable and satisfying for you and and you've you've had this stable weight and it's a whole food plant-based diet that's your genes telling you that that's where you're hanging out given this diet so of course you can adjust it of course you can bring the calorie density down and and move toward rabbit food as doug is saying um but it's going to be very very very difficult to stay there long term unless you continue eating in that sort of unsustainable under the hunger drive sort of way um and some people can do that and some people because they they have innate reward that comes from volume in a way that other people don't so um other people you know some people cannot eat a a calorie dilute diet and and get the sort of satisfaction from the volume that other people will they need to they need to notch it up a little bit and that probably means they're going to have a little more weight on them as a stable equilibrium so people exist in a range um and that range fluctuated a lot during the stone age depending on the availability of food and resources at any given time so it's it's hard we get attached to numbers we get attached to sort of wanting to be in a certain place or feeling like we haven't gone far enough but we know that if you if you were stable at a really high weight on the standard american diet that you you have genes that are uh easily put on and keep on weight and and so you are just hanging out there at that at that higher point in that spectrum great yeah one other little detail which is that it wasn't part of the question and it probably is not related but it could be and which is exercise so you know the world thinks exercise is this big deal with respect to weight um it's a small deal but it's not a zero deal and so uh the truth is is that uh typically people are under exercised uh and so and often if you increase the amount of exercise which can be very modest with respect to calorie burning you might you might burn 80 to 100 calories a day doing a little bit more exercise than you're doing uh and which would be a fairly significant workout however it may very well be the case that you do not increase your caloric intake that often can happen and so now suddenly the person that was at 160 you know we look at them 18 months later and they're at 150 because we have changed something in the equilibrium and what we changed was we added a moderate amount of exercise that they weren't doing so that we'll add that to the equation but when when jen's talking about genes and individual differences i chuckled a bunch of us a whole bunch of people in this community that i there's a hundred guys out there that play basketball and we're all we're all like you know elbowing each other around pushing each other around calling fouls there's a whole bunch of guys that can play and some are better than others but it's all pretty similar and then what walked in the gym about three weeks ago was a six foot seven inch african-american young man about 24 years old but apparently played at the university of nevada at reno so he wasn't six foot seven and 190 skinny pounds he was six foot seven and 225 pounds and he could jump and he could it was like what do you do why are you playing here okay they're like all of us that are struggling for a little status out there it's like a joke this guy is just completely different than the rest of us so if you're if you are doing a good job and you're five six and 160 and you're exercising and you're good shape hey you're one of us okay fair enough and and when when uh you know when i don't know angelina walks by that's just a whole different creature and we could just blink well that's poor basketball you got you know maybe he's been in the ego trap he used to be a superstar and now he's just it's the equivalent of going and auditioning for community theater you know he's got to get back out there yeah we don't know his story or or maybe he's trying to be a big fan ridiculous i have to tell you all right okay we have one more question that was submitted in advance which is the best way especially when we have doctors and then we'll get to as many as we can in the chat this is from rich five years ago you did an interview with potato strong called nutrient obsession stop it now if it's true that our bodies recycle nutrients then why are so many vegans worried about getting their g bombs and daily dozen and now everyone is worried about their selenium and dha and drinking mushroom coffee green tea and eating broccoli sprouts for sulfurophane and afraid to eat rice and potatoes will the madness ever end um probably not this is the same madness that drove the entire natural foods industry so the natural foods industry would not exist today if it were not actually the concern of nutrient deficiency so nutrient deficiency is the number one concern of people in and around diet nutrient excess is not really a concern and nutrient poisoning is so people are are more worried about pesticide residue and nutrient deficiency than they are worried about macronutrient imbalance particularly excess that's never going to change you're you're looking inside of human nature and seeing that humans needed to be worried about two things in the stone age being poisoned by their food and they also so they have innate mechanisms both the smell taste preference mechanisms as well as unbelievably outstanding conditioning mechanisms that if you get sick after you eat something you wind up with what's known as a conditioned diversion this is true throughout the animal kingdom animals have this uh characteristic and human beings happen so we've got a lot of natural concerns about being poisoned by food uh that's easy to translate the concept that somebody sprayed some on and it's all going to kill us and give us cancer it's very easy for for people to be worried about that it's also very easy for people to be worried about nutritional deficiency i.e we don't get enough to eat we're all going to starve to death so those two problems of imbalance will always lead this show those will be the two stars of health seeking behavior around diet the third the also ran is hey we're eating too much okay that's always gonna come in third and so the truth is is that that belong that belongs first second and third and the other two things belong not even on the podium okay so but but we the reason why our instincts on this are so wrong is because the environment you find yourself in is dramatically different on these questions uh than it was in the stone age for which your mental machinery evolved so that is the story the madness will never end so when you listen to start people pontificating about the the grandiosity of nutrients or their terror of some kind of a poison uh keep it in perspective that those don't belong on the podium uh they're not non-existent concerns they are they are concerns that we have to have one little lazy eye that wanders over the left every now and then and make sure we're paying attention uh but those are the last thing that you need to be worried about the first thing you need to be worried about is eating too much rich crap okay and once again it's interesting one thing i i don't know i probably not said this i don't know that i've ever said this publicly aj this now comes up as an issue in these questions but i've told many people this uh personally or that have come to me with questions um and this this goes to alan's issue of pay attention to what you're eating don't be paying too much attention to uh somebody's you know false god of a score and that is that um uh i have very high cholesterol so my cholesterol consistently runs over 225. i've never had a cholesterol under 25. my cholesterol typically runs around 250. so there's probably some people gasping out there it's like well i'm not gasping uh the cholesterol is just a measurement that correlates on a population level with cardiovascular disease so if we take a million people uh over here this cholesterol level is 225 and we take another million people whose cholesterol level is 175 we're going to find that the people that have 225 that population of a million people is going to have a hell of a lot of heart disease in it and the population with 175 will have very little heart disease in it why okay it's not because cholesterol is damaging it's because the cholesterol is a marker for how much animal food you eat it's the percentage of animal food in the diet it is not the cholesterol level per se cholesterol level per se is a naturally fluctuating variable in human beings by virtue of genetics i happen to run high cholesterol this is endogenous it's not coming from the animal food that i eat so therefore my cholesterol level is not a now if my cholesterol level went up 50 points after i had introduced a bunch of animal food then we would know that i was getting myself into trouble okay but my cholesterol level is what it is naturally this is just totally akin to the person who if they're eating healthily and they're five six and 160 pounds if they're eating healthy food they're healthy okay that's i mean that's how that works this is naturally varying genetics so um anyway the the but the point is is that people then would get worried about such a thing and if i was to talk to a hundred cardiologists that were not really sharp and aware of the causal connection between animal protein and vascular disease those those hundred cardiologists around sacramento would all tell me oh boy you better go on statins i'd be like you're a yeah you did not ask the critical question how the hell did you get the high cholesterol you didn't actually check another measure of whether or not i've got a pathological condition which would be my sensitivity c react to protein if you check my high sensitivity c react to protein which is an actual measurement of a pathological condition you'll find that it's basically zero okay it's better than somebody who is eating 10 percent of their intake from animal products whose cholesterol levels 135. if we check their high sensitivity react to protein and find out what inflammation they have in their cardiovascular system we're going to see some inflammation it's going to be higher than mine okay so this is don't get caught chasing false gods but people and their anxiety are going to do that so they're going to they're going to be chasing you know nutrients and nutrient concentrations and so on and so forth rather than looking at first second and third in health is going to be is going to be how much crap is in the diet that's the that's the issue after that we worry about how much poisons possible nutrient deficiencies and also by all means exercise levels sunshine exposure all of these things put together are the picture of health but first second and third is how much crap are you eating that's the biggest issue and that will never be the thing that gets the most airplay yeah well i think these oh i was just gonna say i think these things can sometimes be um a smoke screen too for just running into trouble and failing um and so people people you know it's very very difficult to escape the pleasure trap for any amount of time and as long as there's some sort of uh threshold at which there's this you know there's there's a list of rules that you need to accomplish to be successful if you've taken that on as your metric you you have sort of a built-in excuse for why it is that you haven't met your goals when really it's just incredibly difficult to get out of the pleasure trap it's incredibly difficult to make these changes in your life but i think there is a tendency and a lot of personalities to to um you know oh well i i haven't been able to lose 50 pounds because i don't get all of my g bombs every day when which that you know there's there's nothing wrong with getting all of your g bombs every day that it's very you know it's a great very uh health promoting selection of foods but that's probably not what's keeping you from meeting your goals but it can serve that purpose for people who are feeling really competitively cornered with a really difficult problem great thanks well what was i thought was interesting in that video dr lau because i watched it before asking the question is nobody else talks about the fact that our bodies can make these nutrients it's like it's almost like that's a missing piece nobody seems to know that that oh their bodies can for example recycle them right because that's that's the cycle that i'm not making all of them yeah people people are so afraid and it seems like a lot of the people that are touting these deficiencies have something to sell us not all but some but a lot of people don't realize that our bodies can actually make these nutrients well or not make aj or they could they can recycle manufacture et cetera et cetera out of other pieces yes so usually not not everything there are things that we we do need to supplement with or we need to be careful that we're getting but but yeah i think there is sort of a feeling that you need to get your rda every day and if you don't hit your rda every day then you're in big trouble which is rarely the case yes the the best document that i that i've ever read on this uh it's the most definitive argument i've ever seen is whole by colin campbell so and whole uh colin goes through the logic and the evidence with respect to [Music] many nutrients showing the fascinating recycling capability of the body when it gets put under a deprivation situation i can't remember exactly what the nutrients are i've known about this for a long time because alan obviously when he was an early student at fasting uh the big thing that everybody will jump up and down and scream is that if you're fasting you're going to die of nutrient deficiencies because suddenly the body has nothing and and alan educated me clear back in the 1980s about the fact that the evidence was already clear that many of these critical nutrients are being recycled beautifully at incredible levels and it's like oh okay well that's how this miraculous machine works and then the next time i'm able to observe this is 40 years later when i'm reading whole uh and and i'm reading whole and i'm seeing exactly the same arguments the very the same type of evidence and i've forgotten if we flipped open a copy and we would we would find somewhere calling showing that some nutrient or other gets recycled at the factor of ten thousand to one so in other words you can you can literally take one ten thousandth of what it is that you might need and whip it into what it is that you need so in other words unbelievably uh the body is tremendously capable of dealing with deficiencies um you know obviously if you put it under an extraordinary deficiency for a long period of time you're eventually going to get some health compromises but that is an atypical result particularly in a land where people get some french fries and they get a pickle on their on their cheeseburger and they get some coca-cola in there i mean they're getting all kinds of stuff and that that's enough to actually spin the average human with a cigarette in its mouth through its 78th birthday for god's sakes so the vegans who are eating a very healthy diet uh with all kinds of variant nutrients in there the fact that they are worried about something that they're missing you know this is hcnc but that's one reason they're here you know what i mean if they weren't hcnc they wouldn't be anywhere near us so it's no surprise that just because they find exactly where it is that they ought to be that their that their psychology continues of course it would you know uh it's it's it's just just like the guys at facebook are trying to figure out how to get more business it's like well no surprise who who do we think got to where they are so yeah that's what's going on but yeah the the it's not madness it's just the obsessiveness and it uh it isn't doing particular harm other than it's taking up a lot of time and energy that we could be doing some other things but if you're in hcnc and you're stuck you know you found the holy grail of diet and health this is as good as it gets and if you're an hcnc sorry you're probably going to spend a while such as life thank you well i'm going on my 11th year of not eating nuts and seeds and i'm waiting to see when i develop this deficiency very good yep all right thanks so actually one question was sent in and i apologize to kath i didn't see it could you please ask the lovely doctors this question my stepson recently wrote to my husband sharing that he has felt disconnected from him and the rest of the family since my husband separated from his ex-wife 20 years ago and blaming him for a variety of problems this came to a huge surprise because my stepson lived with his father and they always seem to have a close loving relationship apart from the usual challenges of divorce and blended family there have been no traumas in the family however we noticed a growing distance after he got together with his wife about five years ago she is disagreeable emotionally unstable and studying psychology reminds me of somebody we both know she has had major dramas with most people in the family and a number of family members have been thrown out of their village he also sent some videos to watch of a psychologist take talking about childhood traumas like divorce and its effect on adult problems as i listened to him my meter was going crazy how do we just respond in a way that doesn't threaten access to our grandchildren ah finally we get to the uh the real the nugget of the question no problem right yeah my my uh the uh wife uh daughter-in-law step-daughter-in-law is holding my grandchildren hostage right what do i do about it that's really how we could have formulated that question i believe the uh yeah um i i don't know uh this sounds like the the the step-daughter-in-law has little borderline tendencies uh so in other words it sounds like whatever her own insecurities are she's essentially building a barricade around her husband so that uh so that he does not find any possible way of escape that is standard sort of borderline-ish uh game game plan burn every bridge there is so that the guy has nowhere to go but stay right at home with you so that's probably what's happening and uh yeah that sounds to me like that's probably right does that sound about right to you jen that sounds exactly like what's going on yeah i i borderline or not she's definitely getting very tribalistic and territorial and and uh drawing strong lines in the sand yeah we we don't know how uh susceptible she is to a circuit flooding strategy to to sort of there are a lot of different things that you could attempt we would kind of need to know this is a very this would be a good beat your genes question because we would need to know more about the particulars of the situation and how um you know what kinds of conflicts you've negotiated before my my first strategy would be kill it with kindness basically you know go go flood those circuits as we say and give that daughter-in-law a lot of status a lot of status about how great she is and how um you know important it is that you you connect with those kids and you you just make yourself very low-cost you're nothing but a great asset and a benefit as far as the interactions go and i would i would sort of uh you know build that up for a while before attempting anything else just sort of stoking the goodwill and and making yourself into um somebody who is a great flatterer and a great asset to her and see if that softens things up at all and if that doesn't work there are some other things you can try but often that will work with sort of narcissistic personalities who who when you come and tell them how wonderful they are they're like well i'm glad you finally figured it out i am god's gift in fact yeah all i can all i can say is one of the one one of the joys of my life is that uh being being a couple decades older than jen and having found her it's like it's like when you find a quarterback that can you can throw it better than you can and you're like i'm gonna teach you everything i know but you got some sauce that i don't have i don't have that kind of patience that is exactly the right thing to do exactly what what jen is telling you is exactly how you would draw that up i couldn't do it it's hard i would i would struggle yeah but this is kind of this case where when it comes to grandkids you can suck it up and make it happen you know you can and and if you can't do it verbally one-to-one you can send flowery letters you can send like lots of little digital things you can you can kind of pile it on in a way that doesn't like torture your nervous system in the interactions yeah but this is always the first line of defense when you're dealing with this sort of disagreeable territorial person is like hey i just think you're amazing um and you don't have to believe it you just have to sell it and that this is the narcissist test where even if you're not particularly convincing they they are so desirous of and willing to hear this that they will they will just be like well thank you okay i do deserve this they're not gonna their bs meter doesn't exist yep yeah i've heard you guys say that whenever there's a problem in a relationship always look to status and i do take your advice when i can but it's really hard for me but i always think they're going to know i'm insincere yeah well as jen's talking about this is that narcissist is that you you you feed them extra okay it's kind of like somebody at your dinner table that says that they're not that hungry for dessert but you suspect otherwise and you put a big chunk of carrot cake out there and then when they swallow it down hole and are looking around you realize uh it's not quite what we thought or the person who doesn't fight back twice on the bill like you know there's sort of there's a negotiation with them when the bill comes where it's like no no no no no i'll get it no no no i'll get it okay beautiful that is absolutely fabulous yeah there should be a little more pushback be prepared that that that uh i i of course smell the deep rat as this jen i believe that this is that you are up against a tough uh that if he's writing a letter to his father about how shitty his life is because he got wrecked in the divorce 20 years ago and then he's sending you a therapist talking about the childhood trauma of the whole thing this you are in trouble and so the grandchildren are hostage they're not even hostages okay the truth is is that that your relationship with those grandchildren is for probably the present time in all in all likelihood nothing other than collateral damage to the anxiety and insecurity of a borderline-ish female who is cutting off all family communication support between her spouse and his life okay so that's that too bad and unfortunately you don't get to dictate those terms uh you have to live with what it is that you can get and your life is gonna have to be plentiful without uh grandchildren contact to speak of and that is that so that is probably where we're going but by all means take dr hawk's advice uh carefully because it is it is the best advice even though it's not right also i mean while this is going on you're you're leaving a strong paper trail of cards at every birthday every holiday letters phone calls skype calls etc so even if she is patrolling the borders very closely until those kids are teenagers when they are 12 13 15 um if they do desire a relationship with you they have some foundation and they they have some memories of you unless she's truly you know she's she's burning the letters as they come in and the cards are navigating to them which happens sometimes that as long as you're maintaining a presence um as as much as possible and you're doing so in this sort of saccharine sweet way as much as you can manage um that is pretty it's keeping the door as open as probably it's realistic to keep it for the duration of their childhood um and then when they're older they they get to negotiate that relationship with you on their own terms um and they'll have something to base that on how are these horrible people getting married in the first place they've got talent this was so much like do you want to call it a day or do you want to take one question from the chat uh we'll take one from the chat okay i'll ask them in the order received and it was from video nights 1000 what if the thing you are craving is in your house there will be a moment where you have the presence of mind and the strength of will to throw it away and in that moment you you just have to throw it away i'm assuming this is something you kind of bought for yourself as a treat that's not normally there if it's if it's something that someone else who lives in the house brought in then that's a whole other you've got to negotiate that whole situation and make sure that that doesn't happen but if this is something that you got for yourself in case of a rainy day there will be a moment where you you're able to throw it away and you know put dish soap on it or whatever you have to do to keep yourself out of it and you just have to seize that moment and do it um and not not lose the day and get the case of the efforts yeah i think they didn't say but i have a feeling it's because it's somebody else's but that's yeah if it's somebody else's then you get into the whole other set of tools in the toolkit which are you know first you you negotiate and you say hey this is really a problem for me i'm trying to reach some goals i'm trying to make some changes and and this is a real trigger food for me would you be willing to uh you know keep it out in the garage or not bring it in the house or do whatever you have to do if you run into a lot of resistance there then um there are other techniques that you can employ including locking it up um you know sort of doing whatever you have to do what did you say doug lawrence yeah other techniques like that sorry or you could just throw the other person out that has the crab or you can move out or you know they're this is kind of this is i always file the sender the pleasure trap is not a normal problem and sometimes the solutions are not normal they require us to do things that are uncomfortable and cause conflicts in our relationships and and disrupt our status quo um but otherwise that that substance is gonna be in your house and it's if if that's what's standing between you and your in your goals your health your health goals then that's what needs to be addressed and so it's the same i mean i you know i'm a recovering alcoholic i can't have a full bar in my house it just is not a good idea so um people need to kind of draw these lines and figure that out with people that they're living um and every every relationship is going to have a different set of negotiations absolutely but i think as long as it's there they are going to they're not going to be able to stop thinking about it yeah yep yep well thanks it's gotta go all right thanks so much dr hop dr lyle it's always a treat to have you on this 700th episode may you come back 800 900 and even maybe a thousand oh fantastic thank you all right take care to be here please go to steamdynamics.com and they have a wonderful membership that's about the price of a cup of coffee and they do monthly q and a's twice they had one today so please check it out i'll have everything in the show notes and thanks everyone for watching another episode of chef aj live please come back tomorrow when we we uh continue with true north health week we have dr sadiq shiraz and on sunday you know who we have guys alan that's right the hammer himself yeah he's gonna write it and we've got like a hundred questions he probably can get him done in an hour knowing him probably absolutely awesome well good luck with that thanks so much everybody take care and see you tomorrow
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