The TOP FOODS You Absolutely SHOULD NOT EAT To Live Longer! | Dr. Sten Ekberg & Lewis Howes

Dr. Sten Ekberg 0:00 So yes, top 10 foods would be, like, the, the ones we talked about

Lewis Howes 0:04 Mm-hmm

Dr. Sten Ekberg 0:04 But then in addition to that, which is really hard for people to understand, the number one food to avoid for you-

Lewis Howes 0:12 This video is sponsored by InsideTracker, and you'll hear more about them in just a minute. I think you gotta have a dream. The school of greatness. Really? [laughs] Yeah. Please welcome Lewis Howes. There's so many new Frankenstein foods out there-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 0:25 Yeah

Lewis Howes 0:25 ... you know, new manipulated foods-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 0:27 Yeah

Lewis Howes 0:27 ... um, processed foods that people think are healthy that maybe aren't healthy. So I wanted to dive in first and talk about really what you think the top five or 10 foods or the categories of foods we should be thinking about eating-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 0:41 Yeah

Lewis Howes 0:42 ... for optimal health in all sense of the word, from, from mental health, brain health, to physical health-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 0:50 Mm-hmm

Lewis Howes 0:50 ... to spiritual health.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 0:51 Yes.

Lewis Howes 0:52 What would you say are those top five to 10 foods we should be thinking about, and categories?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 0:57 Yeah. So first of all, there's no difference between physical health and spiritual health and mental health. If it works for the body, it works for the body.

Lewis Howes 1:07 Oh.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:07 Right? And it depends on where people are. So the, the, the number one rule would be to eat real food.

Lewis Howes 1:17 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:17 And people don't even know what that is anymore. 60, 70% of calories consumed are white. White flour, [laughs] white sugar, and, and flavorless semisynthetic seed oils-

Lewis Howes 1:33 Mm

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:33 ... that have been over-processed. There's no food value, nutritional value in those. It's, it's all empty calories and the-

Lewis Howes 1:41 60% of calories are from that?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:43 Yeah. I saw some numbers, 60 to 70%-

Lewis Howes 1:46 Wow

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:46 ... of calories are from fake food. So then ... And, and the rest of the, the 30, 40% aren't necessarily that great either.

Lewis Howes 1:55 Wow.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:56 So the first part is just to teach people to eat real food. And if the earth produced it, if it walked the planet or it grew on the planet, and you don't screw it up, then it's pretty good food.

Lewis Howes 2:10 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 2:10 Right? And then what I talk a lot about is low carb because ... not because everyone has to have low carb. Uh, like China and Asia, they got around, they got along for, for centuries eating a bunch of carbs.

Lewis Howes 2:28 Rice.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 2:28 But they didn't add sugar on top of it, and they didn't eat six meals a day with constant snacks, and they had physical labor, right? So we, we have to put it in, in perspective, in context for the, the, the whole lifestyle.

Lewis Howes 2:47 Mm-hmm. So the sugar, the calories, the empty calories with sugar and white carbs, and then low carb is what you're saying is to think about to start.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 2:56 Yes.

Lewis Howes 2:56 Yeah.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 2:56 Yeah. And, and the reason I talk so much about low carb is that somewhere around 80 ... Uh, I think Ben Bikman quoted 88% of the US, and probably a large part of the world's population, is insulin resistant today.

Lewis Howes 3:12 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 3:13 And if you are insulin resistant, that only means one thing. You ate too many carbs for you. And that could be 20 grams for one person or 200 grams for another, but if you're insulin resistant, you ate too many carbs. And that's ... It's not a few hundred million, it's most people on the planet today.

Lewis Howes 3:37 Really?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 3:38 I mean, it's billions. In the US it's probably somewhere around 88%. I think if you go around the globe it's probably still 60%.

Lewis Howes 3:47 Are insulin resistant?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 3:49 Yes.

Lewis Howes 3:49 And what does insulin resistant mean? What happens to the body if you are that?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 3:54 So it's an adaptation, okay? The body will adapt to circumstances. To whatever conditions you throw at it-

Lewis Howes 4:02 Mm-hmm

Dr. Sten Ekberg 4:02 ... the body will make an intelligent adaptation. And if you eat a carbohydrate, it will raise your blood sugar more than other types of foods. And if you raise blood sugar, now the way to control that blood sugar and get that blood sugar into the cell is to release insulin. So if you eat, eat carbs ... I use my hands a lot, so. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 4:28 Yeah. [laughs]

Dr. Sten Ekberg 4:29 So this is what I, what I tell people, that if you eat a carbohydrate your blood sugar goes up, and then your body produces insulin to get that carbohydrate into the cell.

Lewis Howes 4:41 Mm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 4:42 And now if you wait a few hours, that insulin will come back to baseline and you can start all over. But if you eat that carb and you produce that insulin to bring the glucose down, but then you eat again while the insulin is still high, now it's, it's a stairstep. Now you're just driving it higher and higher and higher. So insulin resistance is simply an adaptation where your body starts resisting insulin, right?

Lewis Howes 5:14 Gotcha.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 5:14 And I, I've done a couple of videos where I liken this to a, a salesman, right? Or a friendly neighbor. You're, you're new in your house. The, the neighbor comes knocking on your door and says, "Welcome to the neighborhood. Here's a pie."

Lewis Howes 5:30 Ah.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 5:30 It's like you go, "Great. I'm so happy. I feel welcome. Here ... Someone brought me something I need." So it's like the cell wants this fuel, uh, if it's occasional, if it's appropriate. But then you have 1,000 neighbors, and they're all just lining up outside your house, and every one of them brings a pie. So after a couple of hundred pies you're pretty tired of this.

Lewis Howes 5:56 Mm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 5:57 You start developing a resistance to neighbors bringing you pie. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 6:01 Right.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 6:02 Right? So anything that the body gets too much of It starts resisting. It's just, it's the way it's supposed to work

Lewis Howes 6:10 And when it resists the thing, what happens to the body? Is that when you store fat? Is that what that's meaning?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 6:17 Correct. Correct. So insulin is a storage hormone. It's an anabolic hormone. Its job is to get the glucose from the bloodstream into the cell, and whatever glucose the cell can use in the moment it will use.

Lewis Howes 6:33 Hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 6:34 But anything that's in excess of what it can use in the next near, near future, uh, is gonna be converted to fat. Because we can only store a tiny little bit of carbohydrates and then the rest has to be stored as fat. So we can store somewhere around 1,500 calories as carbs, but we have an unlimited storage for fats.

Lewis Howes 6:57 Really?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 6:58 So like half a million calories, and, and I, I call that a fortune of, of energy reserves.

Lewis Howes 7:06 Uh-huh.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 7:07 Right? 'Cause the body is smart. It wants to put on some extra weight for the winter when there's less food. So the body is super, super intelligent, and if you put on fat, there's a, there's a reason.

Lewis Howes 7:19 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 7:20 But a lot of people would like a little bit less of a fortune.

Lewis Howes 7:24 Okay. [laughs]

Dr. Sten Ekberg 7:25 [laughs]

Lewis Howes 7:25 Exactly.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 7:26 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 7:26 So I wanna, I wanna talk about, uh, losing fat in a bit, but let's, let's... I could go off course there, but I wanna, I wanna stick to what I was originally asking about, the, the top foods we should be eating-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 7:38 Yeah

Lewis Howes 7:38 ... and the foods we should be eliminating.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 7:40 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 7:40 So we talked about eating real food, low carb, and eliminating kind of the white, I guess, sugars.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 7:46 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 7:47 What, what would be the top foods you think are necessary?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 7:49 So I believe humans are made to eat meat.

Lewis Howes 7:52 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 7:53 Right? So I think that's a foundation for humans. I think our ancestors were hunter gatherers, and it doesn't really matter what you eat, uh, I think meat, lamb, pork, fish, poultry, it all has roughly the same protein and, and nutritional value. I think variety is, is really good. Um, but then I think there are lots of other things that we can eat. I think we should be very limited on grains. Uh, humans I don't believe were really made to eat, uh, a huge amount of grains.

Lewis Howes 8:32 Why is that?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 8:34 And I think it's because it, there, there's this thing called paleo that most people have heard of, and paleo, it, some people turn it into a religion, and a lot of diets become religions like keto and, and low carb and paleo become religions, but it's a philosophy. And the paleo philosophy says that humans have been around on the planet for a while, and during that time, wherever our ancestors were, how far ever you wanna go back, uh, to the, to the African savanna, uh, whether you wanna put that limit like a couple of million years back or, or a quarter million years back, our DNA is mostly unchanged since that time period. So the DNA is what determines what kind of enzymes you can make, what kind of digestive tract you have to break down those foods. So if we go a quarter of a million years on a certain type of food and then all of a sudden we change it, the body has no idea what to do with that.

Lewis Howes 9:42 Hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 9:42 That's, that's foreign. It's an experiment. So agriculture with grains was basically introduced some 10,000 years ago, and for most of those 10,000 years, we had what's called ancient grains, which were rye and spelt and einkorn and so forth. But then we got into the last hundred years or even the last 50 years, which in, in the big scheme of things, in, in the evolutionary scale, it's e- it's not even a blink of an eye. And now instead of four ancient grains, we have 25,000 different kinds.

Lewis Howes 10:21 Really?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 10:22 Yeah. So when they've started hybridizing all these modern wheats, they're not looking for health benefits. They're not looking for what humans can tolerate. They're looking for what is sturdy to grow and what has the highest yield and so forth.

Lewis Howes 10:39 Wow.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 10:40 So-

Lewis Howes 10:41 So you're not a fan of grains?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 10:43 I'm not. Uh, I think some people can tolerate some grains.

Lewis Howes 10:47 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 10:47 And I think if you do reasonably well with them, then I think you can eat some. Uh, but if you have any sort of sensitivities or digestive issues or allergies or brain fog or anything that isn't quite right, I think grains would be the first thing to go.

Lewis Howes 11:04 Really. Where does oatmeal fall into that?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 11:07 Oatmeal is, it's a grain. It is one, one of the friendlier grains-

Lewis Howes 11:13 Mm-hmm

Dr. Sten Ekberg 11:13 ... because it is, it does have some benefits. It is naturally gluten-free.

Lewis Howes 11:19 Hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 11:19 Which is... And it's not the only thing that people react to in grains, but it's the number one offender, so to speak. So normal, normal oats are gluten-free, but it's still a carbohydrate.

Lewis Howes 11:35 Hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 11:35 It's still almost all starch. And again, it goes back to the 88%. If you're insulin resistant, then you need to avoid oats. If you're not, if you're super insulin sensitive, then you can probably have some oats.

Lewis Howes 11:52 Right. And so does all carbs turn into sugar at some point?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 11:58 Yes.

Lewis Howes 11:58 Or most carbs or some carbs?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 12:00 Yes.

Lewis Howes 12:00 Yeah.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 12:00 Yes, they do. Now, there's this thing, I m- I might look into this and do a video on something called resistant starch. Right?

Lewis Howes 12:09 Okay.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 12:09 'Cause there's a lot of talk a- about it. I've, I've kinda kept it in the background for a while. Uh, but yes, basically all carbohydrate turns into glucose

Lewis Howes 12:21 Mm-hmm

Dr. Sten Ekberg 12:21 And what the argument with the resistant starch is that, well, some of it doesn't get digested and becomes food for your bacteria in the large intestine. But the, the key word there is some. So if, if 30% reach the large intestine, that still means 70% becomes glucose.

Lewis Howes 12:44 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 12:45 So a- again, it's the people who are insulin resistant need-

Lewis Howes 12:49 Sure

Dr. Sten Ekberg 12:49 ... need to watch it. And you need to understand where you are on that scale so that you can monitor, and if you're getting results, fine. Then that's kinda what it's all about.

Lewis Howes 13:01 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 13:01 If you're getting the results, then keep doing what you're doing. If you don't, then get a little stricter.

Lewis Howes 13:07 Right, right.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 13:08 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 13:08 So what about the, uh, so you're saying meat is kind of the main category you're saying, uh, or one of the top foods categories. What about all the different people coming out in the last five, 10 years talking about vegetarianism and veganism and, and the benefits of that eliminating meat? 'Cause I see different sides.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 13:26 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 13:26 I see people saying-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 13:27 Yeah

Lewis Howes 13:27 ... the, the lion diet only.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 13:29 [laughs]

Lewis Howes 13:29 It's, like, all meat.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 13:30 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 13:30 And how they've, you know, gotten rid of certain diseases and skin conditions.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 13:34 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 13:34 And I've seen other people are-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 13:36 Yeah

Lewis Howes 13:36 ... vegetarian and vegan who eliminate things, but also people that go that far extreme and have more issues. So h- you know, what are your thoughts on that perspective?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 13:47 I think people find the arguments that they want to find.

Lewis Howes 13:50 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 13:51 Right? So a lot of this is philosophical and, and ethical. So I was a vegetarian for seven years-

Lewis Howes 13:58 Really?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 13:58 ... back in the late '90s. And I read a book, and it was very convincing, and one of the arguments was that ... I mean, there were lots of them, but one of them that I later sort of had a different perspective was that, look at World War II. There was no meat around, and people had way less heart disease, and they had way less problems, and they lost weight. Well, they didn't have much of anything. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 14:25 [laughs]

Dr. Sten Ekberg 14:25 They didn't have any sugar. They didn't have any w- white flour. They didn't have any processed food, so you can't ... And, and that's the argument that is made erroneously so often. They, they pick something that's not a causative factor but just a correlation.

Lewis Howes 14:42 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 14:43 So vegans versus carnivore, I believe that plant food can have some cleansing properties, right? So if you have cancer, for example, and you have a toxic liver that it's a fatty liver, it's an overwhelmed liver, it's just congested and toxic in so many different ways, I think that you should go vegan.

Lewis Howes 15:10 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 15:10 Right? I think you should try that for three months, six months, maybe 12 months until you can reevaluate 'cause I think there's some powerful cleansing properties. But animal products are more rebuilding, right? So what are we looking to get from food? We're looking to get fuel to turn into energy. We're looking t- for building blocks to become tissue 'cause your body constantly breaks down, and you have to rebuild it.

Lewis Howes 15:39 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 15:39 Right? So you need what I call genuine replacement parts. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 15:44 Mm-hmm. Sure.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 15:45 Okay? And if you're gonna build a house, and you, you ... tree falls on your house and, and the brick wall is damaged, you don't rebuild that with foam, right? You need the, the right stuff. And, and we are built from the foods that the planet produces.

Lewis Howes 16:04 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 16:05 So we need genuine replacement parts. And then we also need vitamins and minerals. Those are the catalysts that help us convert the fuel and the building block into energy and tissue, right? And we get way more of that from animal foods, right? They have a higher food value, much more of the genuine replacement parts. And, and it kinda makes sense if you think about it because you are meat.

Lewis Howes 16:34 Hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 16:35 Right? Your body is-

Lewis Howes 16:35 Your body is meat

Dr. Sten Ekberg 16:36 ... your tissue is primarily meat, and if you eat something that's close to your tissue, it's gonna be less of a transition for your body to turn that into your tissue.

Lewis Howes 16:45 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 16:47 So yes, your body can turn vegetables and plants into protein and, and body parts, but it, it doesn't happen nearly at the same percentage of, of conversion or absorption.

Lewis Howes 17:00 Mm. I mean, you're, yeah, you're an elite world athlete, uh, you know, champion in the decathlon, arguably the hardest sporting event there is in the world. Uh, you ate meat during that time, I'm assuming, and then-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 17:14 Yeah

Lewis Howes 17:14 ... you know, after your career you went vegetarian for six, seven years you said.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 17:18 Yeah, yeah.

Lewis Howes 17:18 And now you're back on meat.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 17:20 Yes.

Lewis Howes 17:21 So you've probably ... I'm assuming you studied and seen all the documentaries about veganism and these elite athletes that turn into ve- vegan athletes, and they have this superpower.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 17:30 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 17:30 And then other people-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 17:31 Yeah

Lewis Howes 17:31 ... that are meat eaters, and you've done it yourself-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 17:33 Yeah

Lewis Howes 17:33 ... as an elite athlete, as a doctor-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 17:35 Yeah

Lewis Howes 17:35 ... and a nutritionist. So what did you notice when you became vegan for seven years or vegetarian and then now back on meat after that?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 17:45 I did fairly well on it. The biggest challenge for me was that when you don't eat meat, then you tend to be more limited. So if you're out somewhere traveling, now you're eating a lot of bean burritos and, and french fries instead of real food.

Lewis Howes 18:00 Carbs and ... Yeah.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 18:01 Correct. Um, but I didn't ... I don't think I really ... I don't know that I really suffered.

Lewis Howes 18:08 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 18:08 But what happens with a lot of people is that it might take six, seven, eight, nine, 10 years before a- They really become deficient in something-

Lewis Howes 18:18 Yeah

Dr. Sten Ekberg 18:18 ... before they become anemic, before they're missing vitamin D and B12, 'cause you have reserves of, of most of those. And, and in my case, I, I wish I'd known half of the stuff that I know now because I was not an educated athlete.

Lewis Howes 18:35 Right. Well, back in the '80s they weren't that teaching this stuff, yeah.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 18:36 Back, back in the '80s you, you were taught to eat carbs.

Lewis Howes 18:40 Eat your Wheaties.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 18:41 Yep.

Lewis Howes 18:41 Yeah. [laughs]

Dr. Sten Ekberg 18:42 And I-

Lewis Howes 18:42 Eat your Wheaties. Eat your carbs over breakfast.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 18:44 I, I kid you not, I probably ate more than 1,000 grams of carbs per day-

Lewis Howes 18:49 Oh my gosh

Dr. Sten Ekberg 18:50 ... on average. I mean, I was working out four, five, six hours a day eating five, six, 7,000 calories.

Lewis Howes 18:57 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 18:58 And you burn it all off, so you think that, hey, there's no problem here. But-

Lewis Howes 19:03 Then you stop working out and you keep eating that way. That's what happened to me. It's like-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 19:06 Yeah

Lewis Howes 19:06 ... oh, get the [laughs]

Dr. Sten Ekberg 19:07 Yeah. I, I never g- really gained the weight. I mean, I gained some.

Lewis Howes 19:11 Yeah.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 19:11 I got a little, little fatter than I was 'cause I c- didn't maintain 3% body fat exactly.

Lewis Howes 19:17 Yeah.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 19:17 But, uh, I didn't really learn about food until much later when I was in, in chiropractic school-

Lewis Howes 19:24 Mm-hmm

Dr. Sten Ekberg 19:24 ... and, and started putting it together.

Lewis Howes 19:26 Yeah. That's interesting. So you may not see the deficiencies in the first number of years, but you're-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 19:32 Yeah

Lewis Howes 19:32 ... y- what I'm hearing you say is you're probably-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 19:34 Yeah

Lewis Howes 19:34 ... eventually gonna be more deficient.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 19:36 Yes.

Lewis Howes 19:37 It's just gonna be harder.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 19:38 And, and what, what you see as a clinician is that there is no black and white.

Lewis Howes 19:45 Yeah.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 19:45 Ev- everyone is looking for, "Well, just tell me what to do." Well, you can't do that. You, you have to understand where you are on the scale. And for some people, I'm sure there are super strong weightlifters who are vegans because their body can tolerate it, at least for, for many years. But then I ... You have all these people who have been vegetarian for, or vegans for, for 10 years, and they start having all these issues.

Lewis Howes 20:18 Mm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 20:18 Especially, uh, thin females who might have stress issues and digestive problems and so forth.

Lewis Howes 20:26 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 20:27 So on, on the other ... So, so yes, top 10 foods would be like the, the ones we talked about.

Lewis Howes 20:33 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 20:34 But then in addition to that, which is really hard for people to understand, and which we test a lot in the offices, the number one food to avoid for you is the one that you react to.

Lewis Howes 20:47 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 20:47 Right? 'Cause that creates-

Lewis Howes 20:48 And it's different for everyone

Dr. Sten Ekberg 20:49 ... that creates inflammation.

Lewis Howes 20:51 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 20:52 That wreaks havoc. It doesn't matter how healthy that food is for someone else, but if you can't tolerate it, if you have a reaction, a hypersensitivity reaction, that's the absolute worst food for you. Okay?

Lewis Howes 21:06 People age at different speeds, and the date on your license may not represent your inner biological age at all. And if you're looking for ways to extend your health span and slow down the aging process, the keys to your health and longevity run in your blood. That's why InsideTracker provides you with a personalized plan to boost your metabolism, reduce stress, improve sleep, and optimize your health for the long haul. It's created by leading scientists in aging, genetics, and biometrics. InsideTracker analyzes your blood, your DNA, and fitness tracking data to identify where you're optimized and where you're not. You'll get a daily action plan with personalized guidance on the right exercise, nutrition, and supplementation for your body. Add InnerAge 2.0 to any plan for a definitive calculation of your true biological age to see how you're aging from the inside out. And when I got my results back from InsideTracker they told me, and I quote, "Lewis, you're beating the clock." And that feels good. And now that InsideTracker has shown me my biological age, they are now providing an action plan of science-backed recommendations with the goal of improving the quality and quantity of the years ahead. For a limited time, get 20% off the entire InsideTracker store. Just go to insidetracker.com/schoolofgreatness for more.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 22:33 Which brings us to the carnivores. And I don't ... I think meat is a great foundation, and this is just like a personal feeling. I don't think that carnivore is optimal forever for most people.

Lewis Howes 22:52 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 22:53 It might very well work, but I think for most people, I think a, a good variety is probably better.

Lewis Howes 22:59 You mean only carnivore. Only carnivore.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 23:01 Correct.

Lewis Howes 23:01 Yeah.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 23:02 Correct. But the people who get results from carnivore, the reason it's such a huge movement and it undeniably produces results, is that if you eat something you're sensitive to you get inflammation, then those are the worst foods for you. And some people are so sensitive that they react to everything except meat. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 23:25 Right. Right.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 23:26 Right? So it's the ultimate elimination diet. So now you've eliminated ... Like, if you go paleo, you're gonna eliminate dairy and processed foods and sugar and grain because our ancestors didn't have any of that. But if you're super sensitive, you might still react to-

Lewis Howes 23:46 Mm-hmm

Dr. Sten Ekberg 23:46 ... lettuce and bell pepper-

Lewis Howes 23:49 Yeah

Dr. Sten Ekberg 23:49 ... and, and all of these things. So the people who get the tremendous life-changing results on carnivore, they're the ones who only tolerate meat, right? That's the ultimate elimination.

Lewis Howes 24:01 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 24:02 So now for some per- someone it might be that they ate meat and lettuce, and it still didn't work. [laughs] And when they cut out the lettuce, then they got the results.

Lewis Howes 24:12 Yeah.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 24:12 But it doesn't mean that carnivore is the best for everybody. I think anyone who has Some issues that haven't been resolved and they have some autoimmunity, they have digestive issues and brain fog, I think they should try carnivore-

Lewis Howes 24:27 Mm-hmm

Dr. Sten Ekberg 24:27 ... and see if it changes something.

Lewis Howes 24:29 Right.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 24:30 But again, then we, then we go and we turn these things into religions and we say, "It worked for me, so you should do it too."

Lewis Howes 24:37 Yeah. This is the answer for everyone.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 24:38 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 24:39 But that's not the case, right?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 24:40 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 24:40 Yeah.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 24:40 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 24:41 So

Lewis Howes 24:41 what are some other meats that you recommend that we should be eating? Meat is... Or, I'm sorry, foods that you recommend we should be eating.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 24:47 Foods.

Lewis Howes 24:47 Yeah.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 24:48 I think then the next best would be tubers, like roots-

Lewis Howes 24:52 Mm-hmm

Dr. Sten Ekberg 24:53 ... sweet potato, rutabaga, parsnip, turnips, et cetera, um, because they are... They're generally f- fairly low carb. Um-

Lewis Howes 25:04 Sweet potatoes are?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 25:05 Sweet potatoes are a little bit higher in carbs.

Lewis Howes 25:07 Yeah.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 25:07 They're, they're way less than, than grains.

Lewis Howes 25:10 Uh-huh.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 25:10 But a lot of these, uh, like the rutabaga and so forth, they're, they're f- fairly low carb.

Lewis Howes 25:15 Sure. Gotcha.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 25:17 Uh, and they're also gluten-free, and they pretty much fit into any regimen. So if you're, if you're on an autoimmune diet, if you're on a lectin-free diet, if you're avoiding nightshades, the, the tubers are still safe.

Lewis Howes 25:33 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 25:34 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 25:34 What are the top tubers? Sweet potatoes.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 25:37 Uh, s- sweet potatoes, potatoes-

Lewis Howes 25:39 Mm-hmm

Dr. Sten Ekberg 25:40 ... rutabaga, uh, turnips, parsnips. Uh, what's the other one? The celery root.

Lewis Howes 25:48 Okay.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 25:50 So those are generally pretty good. And again, if... So the, the sweet potato is generally more safe than the potato because the potato is a nightshade.

Lewis Howes 26:00 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 26:01 So if you, again, have those sensitivities and you're avoiding nightshades, then potato has to go as well.

Lewis Howes 26:07 Okay. So we got the tubers. What's the next category you really like?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 26:11 So then assuming that you're not sensitive to nightshades, then I would go with all of the non-starchy vegetables. So now we got eggplants and bell peppers that, that I think for most people are good foods, but again, they are, they have some lectins.

Lewis Howes 26:29 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 26:30 Then I think the broccoli and cauliflower are like staples, uh, in, in my house for sure, that you can-

Lewis Howes 26:41 So those are low... Those, I mean, those are, like, very low calorie-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 26:44 Yes

Lewis Howes 26:44 ... nutrient-dense, but also low carb too, right? I mean, I'm sure you... Yeah, I mean.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 26:50 Yes. Broccoli, uh, cauliflower, they're, like, 4 or 5% net carbs.

Lewis Howes 26:56 Gotcha.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 26:56 So it's very, very low.

Lewis Howes 26:57 Yeah.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 26:58 And of course avocado.

Lewis Howes 27:00 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 27:00 Which is really a fruit by, by definition, but it has quite a bit of fat and very, very low carbs.

Lewis Howes 27:11 Yeah.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 27:11 It's like 2, 3%-

Lewis Howes 27:12 Really?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 27:13 ... net carbs.

Lewis Howes 27:13 Okay. And what's the deal with the nightshades? 'Cause I know there's a big, uh, um, you know, conversation about that right now where these, these foods are actually are hurting you, you know, these nightshades. Or it depends on your sensitivity level, right?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 27:27 Correct. They're hurting some people.

Lewis Howes 27:28 The plant paradise, right? Yeah.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 27:30 Correct. Yes. So then I don't know what the percentage would be, but I would not... I think gluten hurts everyone.

Lewis Howes 27:39 Mm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 27:39 Right? But I don't think lectins hurt everyone, not at those doses. A- again, it's, it's all about-

Lewis Howes 27:46 Smaller doses, right

Dr. Sten Ekberg 27:46 ... dosage. So nightshades have lectins, and if you are sensitive to something, if you have inflammation, if you have some issues, then I think sort of like the, the carnivore. You don't... Carnivore is more extreme, but before that you wanna try cutting out the lectins, cutting out the, the nightshades.

Lewis Howes 28:07 Mm-hmm. Okay.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 28:08 But again, it's not... Some people sort of pick their little niche and, and say, "I'm gonna, I'm gonna be the lectin guy. I'm gonna be the nightshade guy." And they, they promote that as the solution for everyone, but it, it's not.

Lewis Howes 28:25 Got it.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 28:25 And, and low carb is not the solution for everyone. I have some skinny patients that need to eat carbs.

Lewis Howes 28:32 Carbs. Yeah. [laughs] Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 28:34 Right? They don't need to eat sugar and white bread, but they, they would probably do better eating 70, 80, 100 grams of carbs.

Lewis Howes 28:42 Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 28:43 'Cause they're very, very insulin sensitive. Their body has trouble putting on some weight.

Lewis Howes 28:48 Right. Are there any other categories you think we should be eating?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 28:53 The, the leafy greens are kinda-

Lewis Howes 28:55 Mm-hmm

Dr. Sten Ekberg 28:55 ... in the, the non-starchy vegetables, but they're, they're sort of a little subcategory. And then I think, uh, some people kinda count the, the eggs with, with the meat.

Lewis Howes 29:07 Yeah.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 29:07 But I, I think it's a separate category because very few people are sensitive to meat. A lot of people are sensitive to eggs.

Lewis Howes 29:17 People are sensitive to eggs?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 29:18 Yes.

Lewis Howes 29:18 Okay.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 29:18 Yes. And, and again, it's not a mi- majority.

Lewis Howes 29:22 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 29:22 It's not like, not like with wheat or, or pasteurized milk, but I don't know, 5, 10, 15, 20%.

Lewis Howes 29:31 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 29:32 And, and it, it's hard to tell because the people that come to my clinic, they're the ones who have the problems.

Lewis Howes 29:40 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 29:40 So they're probably way more sensitive than, than the general population.

Lewis Howes 29:45 Sure. Are you a big fan of eggs yourself?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 29:47 Yes.

Lewis Howes 29:48 As a food group?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 29:49 Absolutely.

Lewis Howes 29:50 Yeah.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 29:50 Yeah. And I think quality is huge. I think a lot of problems develop because people eat really, really poor quality.

Lewis Howes 30:01 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 30:02 So I think if the, if the chicken or the hen had a healthy life and produces a healthy egg, I think you're much less likely to ever develop a sensitivity.

Lewis Howes 30:13 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 30:14 But if that chicken is eating chemicals and hormones and was raised Under horrendous conditions, I, I think your body is much more likely to develop a sensitivity to that because of whatever might be in there.

Lewis Howes 30:29 Right. Right. Any other final category you like as a food group? As the, the most nutrient-dense foods.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 30:38 Yeah, I do think even though dairy is a very common allergen, I do think a lot of people do well with some forms of dairy. So I typically recommend yogurt-

Lewis Howes 30:53 Mm-hmm

Dr. Sten Ekberg 30:53 ... and sour cream.

Lewis Howes 30:54 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 30:55 Because it's very rewarding. If you're doing a low carb diet, then adding a little sour cream to something is, is super tasty.

Lewis Howes 31:03 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 31:04 I think cheese is okay for a lot of people, especially if it's, like, a good quality cheese, not the, the melty-

Lewis Howes 31:12 Right

Dr. Sten Ekberg 31:12 ... Singles and all that. But-

Lewis Howes 31:13 Not the nacho cheese dip at the-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 31:15 Yeah

Lewis Howes 31:15 ... movie theater which tastes so good, but it's not that good for you. [laughs]

Dr. Sten Ekberg 31:18 Yeah, I don't even know about that.

Lewis Howes 31:19 They call them a cheese, yeah. Right.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 31:21 Yeah. I think I've trained myself into just associating chemicals with-

Lewis Howes 31:24 I know

Dr. Sten Ekberg 31:25 ... with that stuff.

Lewis Howes 31:26 I know.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 31:27 But yeah, I, I try to get things as close to nature as possible.

Lewis Howes 31:30 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 31:30 So if I have the option, I'm gonna get pasture-raised eggs, I'm gonna get raw cheese with as few additives as possible.

Lewis Howes 31:39 Mm-hmm. Okay.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 31:39 'Cause nature made things for us. We, we are nature, right? And all the other animals on the planet, they graze off the planet. They don't process things. They don't alter things. So as soon as we change it, we increase the likelihood of screwing it up.

Lewis Howes 32:00 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 32:00 And the more we change it, the more we screw it up.

Lewis Howes 32:03 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 32:03 So the closer we can get to, to the source, the, the better.

Lewis Howes 32:06 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 32:07 What would be three foods that you would recommend everyone eliminate? If you could eliminate or have very, very little every once in a while, but if you could almost eliminate these three foods from your diet-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 32:18 Mm-hmm

Lewis Howes 32:18 ... it would help you in a big way.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 32:20 So I don't know if we can call them foods.

Lewis Howes 32:22 Okay. [laughs]

Dr. Sten Ekberg 32:24 But obviously sugar.

Lewis Howes 32:25 Uh-huh.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 32:27 Uh, sugar in the quantity, refined sugar i- in the quantities we eat is, is absolutely toxic to the body. Number two would be processed fats. So healthy fats are natural fats, butter, meat fat, pork, avocado, olive oil, et cetera, because we don't change them.

Lewis Howes 32:53 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 32:53 We don't mess with them. But anything that we make an oil from that doesn't necess- that doesn't come easily, like a seed or corn. Corn has just a couple of percent fat in it, so it takes a lot of heat and chemicals and processing to get any oil out of it.

Lewis Howes 33:12 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 33:12 So it tastes terrible. And then you have to bleach it and deodorize it-

Lewis Howes 33:17 Ugh

Dr. Sten Ekberg 33:17 ... and all that shit. It's not a food anymore. And, and those foods are extremely toxic.

Lewis Howes 33:22 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 33:23 So soybean oil, corn oil, canola oil, all of those processed oils, and especially if they're turned into a food product like margarine or shortening or something like that.

Lewis Howes 33:36 Okay.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 33:37 So I put, I'd say sugar and, and seed oils. And then something, again, that's not really a food, but I would, I would put it up there, and every time I make a video on this, I get a lot of backlash, and it's artificial sweeteners.

Lewis Howes 33:54 Ooh, man. Why are-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 33:56 And-

Lewis Howes 33:56 Why are artificial sweeteners-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 33:58 And people-

Lewis Howes 33:58 ... not good for us?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 34:00 Because they are chemicals.

Lewis Howes 34:03 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 34:03 They're foreign substances. They were developed by companies who made pesticides. And, and the latest and greatest... So, so aspartame got a bad rap, so then they had to hustle to come up with something else, so they came up with sucralose. And they were very careful to name it in a way that sounded-

Lewis Howes 34:23 Like sugar

Dr. Sten Ekberg 34:24 ... yes, sucrose, sugar, sucralose. But the fact is... And, and then, [clears throat] and then they said that, "Well, you know, it's just like sugar, and then it just has some chlorine just like-

Lewis Howes 34:38 Ooh

Dr. Sten Ekberg 34:38 ... sea salt." Well, in nature, sodium chloride is only bonded through, like an electrostatic charge. I forget exactly what it's called, but it's not like a tight bond. So yes, sodium chloride, perfectly natural. But when we bind chlorine to a carbon, nature never does that. Basically, every form of a chloral carbon is a pesticide, and one of the most famous ones was DDT, which was banned as a cancer-causing agent. It almost wiped out the national bird- [laughs]

Lewis Howes 35:16 Wow

Dr. Sten Ekberg 35:17 ... the eagle. And it's so toxic, it's in our environment 50 years later. So chloral carbons are pesticides, and that's what sucralose is.

Lewis Howes 35:28 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 35:29 It's a chloral carbon.

Lewis Howes 35:30 Wow. So eliminate refined sugar, eliminate processed fats, which is mostly seed oils, and artificial sweeteners.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 35:38 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 35:38 Are there any non-sugar sweeteners-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 35:42 Yes

Lewis Howes 35:42 ... natural-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 35:43 Yes

Lewis Howes 35:43 ... that you like or recommend that in the right doses are okay for you?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 35:49 Yes. So I use quite a bit of stevia.

Lewis Howes 35:53 Uh-huh.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 35:54 And-

Lewis Howes 35:54 That's not an artificial sweetener, or it is?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 35:55 No. No. So some people bundle it together with artificial sweeteners just because it's a non-calorie sweetener. But it is a plant product. It's just a refined leaf, basically.

Lewis Howes 36:11 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 36:11 And the thing to watch for, though, is that they don't mix it up with a lot of other chemicals-

Lewis Howes 36:16 Sure

Dr. Sten Ekberg 36:16 ... that it is the, the concentrated version.

Lewis Howes 36:18 It's one ingredient, not-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 36:19 Correct

Lewis Howes 36:20 ... 10 ingredients.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 36:20 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 36:21 Yeah.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 36:21 And, and another similar one would be monk fruit.

Lewis Howes 36:24 Uh-huh.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 36:24 That is also Very similar in the, in the way it tastes and, and looks and so forth. It's super, super concentrated. Uh, and it's also a, a plant extract.

Lewis Howes 36:35 So if you're gonna add something to a coffee or a drink or something-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 36:39 Correct

Lewis Howes 36:39 ... stevia, monk fruit-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 36:41 Yeah

Lewis Howes 36:41 ... you say is, is okay in the right dosage.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 36:43 Yes.

Lewis Howes 36:43 Okay.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 36:44 And then in the gray zone, I would also put sugar alcohols.

Lewis Howes 36:49 Interesting.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 36:50 Right?

Lewis Howes 36:50 Okay.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 36:51 Uh, some of them are better than others. I think the best one would be erythritol because it is very slightly metabolized by the body, so it doesn't really affect blood sugar, but it's doesn't really cause any other problems. Some of the other sugar alcohols, they sort of stay in the digestive tract for a while, and then those sugar alcohols become food for your-

Lewis Howes 37:17 Mm

Dr. Sten Ekberg 37:17 ... intestinal bacteria, and that's where you get a lot of bloating.

Lewis Howes 37:21 Gotcha.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 37:22 So I would say sugar alcohols are okay if you eat them in moderation. So this, this is always the, the trick in recommending food when you, you make a list and people wanna know the best one and the-

Lewis Howes 37:37 Yeah

Dr. Sten Ekberg 37:37 ... so forth, and you, you categorize and rank them. And now they say, "That is a good one. I'm just gonna eat that." [laughs] Or, "Dr. Ekberg said sugar alcohols are okay, so now I'm gonna eat that every day. I'm gonna bake with it. I'm gonna buy the ice cream with it." And, and, and that's the thing, everything in, in moderation. So sugar alcohols, if you eat a teaspoon or a tablespoon here and there, I think it's totally fine, but if you start baking with it and doing the ice cream and you start getting half a cup a day, now you're definitely gonna upset the-

Lewis Howes 38:14 Mm

Dr. Sten Ekberg 38:15 ... the biome a little bit.

Lewis Howes 38:16 Now, what matters based on your age range? You know, if someone's in their 20s versus I'm in my late 30s, almost 40. You're in your, I believe, 50s, you said.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 38:28 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 38:28 Does it matter based on how old you are of what you should be eating, uh, how much you should be eating, types of foods, or is it pretty consistent throughout the decades?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 38:40 I, I would say it's pretty consistent throughout. And one, one analogy would be that... I mean, there's so many people, they say that women should fast this way, and teenagers should fast this way, and women over 40 or under 47. It's like we love to complicate things.

Lewis Howes 38:57 Right. [laughs]

Dr. Sten Ekberg 38:58 Right? But are there different foods on the savanna for one giraffe versus another? [laughs]

Lewis Howes 39:06 An older giraffe and a younger giraffe.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 39:08 Yeah. Does the, does the male and the female giraffe eat from different trees?

Lewis Howes 39:12 Mm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 39:13 It's like not really.

Lewis Howes 39:14 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 39:15 So I'm not saying that there's no value to that, but I think we tend to overcomplicate things. I think we, if, if we just understand that it's, like, 99% the same, and then that last percent is where if we wanna really pick it apart, then there may be some benefit there.

Lewis Howes 39:33 Mm-hmm. Gotcha.

Lewis Howes 39:36 What about when it comes to fat loss? You know, I think it... What is it? Over a third of the US is now categorized, uh, either pre-diabetic or obesity or something like that, right? It's-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 39:47 Yeah

Lewis Howes 39:47 ... the statistics.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 39:48 Yeah. Obesity is somewhere around 40%.

Lewis Howes 39:51 40% now.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 39:52 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 39:53 In the US.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 39:53 Yes.

Lewis Howes 39:54 Do we know what that is globally, or is that just...

Dr. Sten Ekberg 39:57 Um, I keep looking it up. I keep forgetting.

Lewis Howes 39:59 Okay.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 40:00 But it's increasing everywhere.

Lewis Howes 40:01 'Cause I thought it was 33%, like, five years ago in the US.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 40:05 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 40:05 And now it's 40%.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 40:06 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 40:07 That's kinda scary.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 40:08 Yeah. It is. It is. And what I talk a lot about though is the, the pre-diabetic. That's the gray area that nobody understands. So we have, we have 10% diabetics, and over a certain age, it's more like 25, 30%, but that's 10% of the entire population is, is full-blown diabetic.

Lewis Howes 40:33 Wow.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 40:33 And then they say... I, I forget the number. I think it's, like, a third of the population is pre-diabetic, but they base that off of blood sugar only, right?

Lewis Howes 40:46 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 40:46 But the only way that you really know where you are on the scale is to do some form of insulin resistance test, and there's some complicated ones that you could do if you want, like oral glucose tolerance test and all that. But the simplest insulin resistance test is just to measure fasting insulin-

Lewis Howes 41:06 Mm-hmm

Dr. Sten Ekberg 41:06 ... and see where you are.

Lewis Howes 41:07 Sure.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 41:09 And this goes back to, to the model that I used my hands for, where glucose goes up, insulin goes up and pushes glucose back down. So you could have a person who is... has a good glucose and a healthy insulin level, but then they eat too much carbs for them, and 10 years later, their insulin is three, four, five times higher, but their glucose is still normal.

Lewis Howes 41:42 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 41:42 So that person is not gonna make it into the statistics for the insulin resistant or the pre-diabetic. It takes 20 years to get there. So-

Lewis Howes 41:54 Mm. Interesting

Dr. Sten Ekberg 41:54 ... if we actually, if we actually measure the insulin and we stay... we, we're a little bit more sensitive to the gradient, now we're gonna see that probably 80% of the population has some degree of insulin resistance.

Lewis Howes 42:10 Gotcha.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 42:11 Right?

Lewis Howes 42:12 Wow. So how do we eliminate that? Is it through... I mean, how do we, how do we burn... Is it burning the fat? Is it changing the foods to eliminate that, or what is that?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 42:23 It's, it's reducing the insulin.

Lewis Howes 42:26 Okay.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 42:26 Because the insulin is ultimately the fat-storing hormone.

Lewis Howes 42:31 How do we reduce the insulin?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 42:32 By eating less carbohydrates

Lewis Howes 42:35 Mm-hmm

Dr. Sten Ekberg 42:36 ... and, 'cause carbohydrates are the foods that stimulate the insulin. And the other thing is to eat fewer meals.

Lewis Howes 42:46 Fewer meals.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 42:46 Because-

Lewis Howes 42:47 Mm-hmm

Dr. Sten Ekberg 42:47 ... insulin rises in response to food, so when you don't eat, you're giving the body a chance to drop insulin. But most people, the only time they don't eat is when they're sleeping. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 43:00 Right. Otherwise, they're eating all day-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 43:01 Right

Lewis Howes 43:02 ... snacking and-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 43:03 So at, at best they get eight hours of fasting, and then during their waking hours they just keep topping off the insulin. But if you can just extend that fasting window by a few hours, you've already made a huge difference.

Lewis Howes 43:17 Mm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 43:18 So if you go, instead of eating your last meal at 11 and your first meal at 7, what if you just skip that evening meal? What if you don't eat after dinner at 6:00? Now you've just extended that period where insulin could drop by five hours, more than, more than 50% increase-

Lewis Howes 43:41 Wow

Dr. Sten Ekberg 43:41 ... right? So those are some simple tools, and that's why, uh, intermittent fasting is so popular.

Lewis Howes 43:49 Yes. Now-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 43:49 And I would say it's even more powerful than, than low carb because-

Lewis Howes 43:54 Really?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 43:54 ... fasting is zero carb.

Lewis Howes 43:57 Now, like most diets and trends we see out there in the health world, you know, all these different names of diets, is intermittent fasting going to be another fad for a decade and then go away? Or do you think this is something that people will actually use because there's so much pain with, you know, pre-diabetes-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 44:17 Mm

Lewis Howes 44:17 ... and fat storage?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 44:19 I think when people learn to eat real food, then intermittent fasting almost becomes natural. It, it becomes so easy. It's such a no-brainer, and everyone who tries it, who, who gets to the point where they might eat twice a day, uh, they might have lunch and dinner, and then there is no... there's no temptation. There's no urgency to go back because it feels so normal.

Lewis Howes 44:49 Mm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 44:50 And if we look again, we go back to our ancestors quarter million years, how did they eat? Well, they didn't wake up to a stocked fridge.

Lewis Howes 45:00 Mm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 45:01 They, they might have had some nuts or, or a little bit of meat left over from the day, but I don't believe that they would eat it because they had a healthy metabolism. They were me- metabolically flexible. So they woke up and they went out to catch something before they ate again. So I think it's very logical to assume that we ate once or twice a day for almost all of human history.

Lewis Howes 45:29 Mm-hmm. Until, like, 100 years ago or something.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 45:31 Correct.

Lewis Howes 45:32 Wow.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 45:33 And, and even less than that, and that's why we've had this explosion, even into through the 1950s and '60s and even into the '70s, people ate mostly three meals.

Lewis Howes 45:47 Mm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 45:48 And that, and then is when they told us to eat low fat.

Lewis Howes 45:53 Right.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 45:53 That's when the low fat craze came, and what do you do-

Lewis Howes 45:57 High carb

Dr. Sten Ekberg 45:58 ... when, exactly. When you can't eat the fats, now you gotta eat something else, and those carbs are very transient, right? They raise the blood sugar, and your body has to get it out of there.

Lewis Howes 46:08 Mm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 46:09 And as soon as blood sugar drops, now you're hungry again.

Lewis Howes 46:11 Yeah.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 46:11 So this is part of what got us on this, this roller coaster.

Lewis Howes 46:16 When did, when did diabetes become a thing in the US? Like, when did this start becoming a real problem?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 46:23 Originally, when they talked about diabetes, it was Type 1 diabetes, right? Because that's a failure of the pancreas to produce insulin, and those people used to die.

Lewis Howes 46:36 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 46:36 There was no treatment. There was no cure. If they ate extremely low carb, they could live a little longer. But basically, Type 1 diabetes is, is starvation in the midst of plenty.

Lewis Howes 46:49 Mm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 46:49 That your blood sugar is 700, but you can't use it 'cause you don't have insulin. So insulin's not a bad thing. But Type 2 was unheard of, even at the-

Lewis Howes 47:02 Really?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 47:02 Even in the 1800s, they may... they might have known what it was, but it was so rare that it wasn't, like, a concept or anything. And it really wasn't until the 1970s that it became, like, a problem.

Lewis Howes 47:20 The '70s.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 47:21 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 47:21 So we're talking 50 years ago.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 47:23 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 47:23 Type 2 diabetes-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 47:24 Yeah

Lewis Howes 47:24 ... wasn't a thing before then.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 47:26 They, they knew what it was, and they, they had some insulin to treat it, but it was such a small percentage that it was... Uh, I wouldn't say it didn't exist, but I mean, it was such a small issue-

Lewis Howes 47:39 Sure

Dr. Sten Ekberg 47:39 ... compared to what we have today. The, the stats are it, it's exponential.

Lewis Howes 47:44 Mm. So do we have a metabolism problem where people aren't able to metabolize as efficiently what, what they're, they're bringing into their body and their system, and that's why the o- the, you know, the weight, the belly fat, the, the obesity is happening? Or is it an-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 48:01 Yeah

Lewis Howes 48:01 ... insulin problem, or is it a lack of movement problem?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 48:05 They, they all tie together.

Lewis Howes 48:07 Gotcha.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 48:08 They all tie together, and the, the s- the sad part is that it t- it's so much harder to reverse the manifested problem. And I've, I've talked about this in some, some videos. I call it you, your body has a carbohydrate tolerance or a carbohydrate processing machine, and it works to a point, but if you break it Now you're out of luck

Lewis Howes 48:40 Mm-hmm

Dr. Sten Ekberg 48:40 Right? So if you've, if you've broken your machine, now it, you have to be so strict. And, and this is where you're s- you're, you're talking about the, the, the metabolism problem. Now it's so difficult to get that body to start working healthy again, to become insulin sensitive and, and heal your metabolism. And that's why there's so many people who have trouble losing weight, so many people who have stubborn weight. And stubborn weight is basically that you broke your carbohydrate processing machine, if you will.

Lewis Howes 49:17 Hmm.

Lewis Howes 49:18 So how do we get rid of the stubborn weight then?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 49:21 And that's the trick.

Lewis Howes 49:22 [laughs]

Dr. Sten Ekberg 49:23 And th- this is, this is like the last few percent of the population. Like, if you check the, the comments on, on my videos, there is all these people say, "Hallelujah, this works. This is so great. Um, I lost 60 pounds in two months."

Lewis Howes 49:42 Wow

Dr. Sten Ekberg 49:42 "And, and all I did was just I followed your advice, I cut out the sugar, I cut out the white bread." But then there's, there's this other group that I really, really sympathize with, and they're the ones who go keto, they go low carb, they do intermittent fasting for years, and they lose like three pounds.

Lewis Howes 50:05 Really? Why is that?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 50:07 Because their bodies are so stubborn. And, and part of it, I, I do sympathize with them. Part of it I think is that it is so tough for them that it's challenging to be consistent.

Lewis Howes 50:19 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 50:20 That if they truly, truly were consistent on the low carb and the exercise and the intermittent fasting, they would probably see some changes. But then there, there are these people who get close to zero results even though they're, they're meticulous. And now we get into... Some of the things I'm testing in my, in my clinic is to try to figure out some of these patterns. And, and I find that there's these relationships between the, the bo- the stored body fat and the hypothalamus, for example, and between the pancreas and the hypothalamus, between the liver and the pancreas, where the, the organs are kind of stuck. They're just not-

Lewis Howes 51:06 Hmm

Dr. Sten Ekberg 51:06 ... talking to each other properly.

Lewis Howes 51:08 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 51:09 And then of course there's, there's hypothyroid, which is pretty common. Uh, but yeah, I, I do feel for those people.

Lewis Howes 51:17 Wow.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 51:17 And, and there is a small percentage that just have so much harder time than the rest of them.

Lewis Howes 51:23 Interesting. And what about the connection to losing weight, healing the body with psychological traumas, emotional heartache-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 51:35 Yeah

Lewis Howes 51:35 ... or other things that have hurt you in the past?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 51:39 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 51:39 There's a great book, The Body Keeps the Score.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 51:41 Mm-hmm.

Lewis Howes 51:42 Um, you know, is relationship trauma, childhood trauma, you know, breakups, breakdowns in life tied to losing weight as well?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 51:56 Yes. Um, everything is tied to everything. It's like that's the first thing that you learn when you're in, in clinical practice and you do the stuff that, that I do, is anything can cause anything.

Lewis Howes 52:08 Hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 52:09 Uh, and what I try to teach people is the holistic approach. I call it holistic health. And some people, they, they say, "Oh, you lost me when you said holistic."

Lewis Howes 52:22 Yeah.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 52:22 'Cause now they think it's about burning incense and, and, and crystals.

Lewis Howes 52:26 Crystals. [laughs]

Dr. Sten Ekberg 52:26 [laughs] But holistic simply means addressing the whole.

Lewis Howes 52:31 Hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 52:32 Right? You are a whole body. You want your body to be whole, so you need to look at all the aspects that tie into that. And some people, when it comes to weight, obviously they look first at the food, which is like the, the chemical, the biochemistry. And then some other people talk about the exercise, which is the physical, mechanical.

Lewis Howes 52:55 Hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 52:55 And then now you're mentioning the third, which is the emotional. We have to understand we are chemical, structural, and emotional. It's like three legs on a table. And for some people, they might have enough of a balance already that they just address one thing and they get results. But to truly get optimal health, we need to address all three for a period of time to, to get the results.

Lewis Howes 53:26 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 53:26 When you do all of it for a, for a period of time, that's when you can get that optimal health.

Lewis Howes 53:32 Sure.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 53:33 So with, with weight loss, I don't think it's ever... Well, I shouldn't say ever. For most people it's not the primary component, but it's definitely a contributing component. 'Cause we know, for example-

Lewis Howes 53:49 Mm-hmm

Dr. Sten Ekberg 53:49 ... that stress contributes to a hormone called cortisol, and the purpose of cortisol is to raise blood sugar. If you raise blood sugar, you're gonna trigger more insulin. The more insulin, you become more insulin resistant.

Lewis Howes 54:03 Right.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 54:03 So I mean, this is, this is so plain and so documented that you give someone cortisol and they become insulin resistant. So if you are stressed for whatever reason, now you will become more insulin resistant.

Lewis Howes 54:19 Hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 54:19 It's more difficult to reverse these processes if you are stressed at the same time.

Lewis Howes 54:26 So high blood sugar, l- let me make sure I'm understanding this, does not necessarily come from the foods you eat, but it can also come from the stresses you have with your thoughts?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 54:35 Yes. Absolutely.

Lewis Howes 54:37 Does it also come with foods also, or is it more from thoughts turn into stress and emotions?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 54:42 It's definitely more from food.

Lewis Howes 54:44 Okay.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 54:45 And I don't think- I think it'd be a very, very rare case of someone who is metabolically healthy and insulin sensitive and has stressful thoughts to become, to create a metabolic problem.

Lewis Howes 55:01 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 55:01 That by itself is probably not gonna do it.

Lewis Howes 55:03 Got it.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 55:04 But for people who are insulin resistant, now if they have stress on top of that, that becomes a very significant factor.

Lewis Howes 55:13 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 55:14 And same thing with, with exercise. I've, I've done some videos on this where too many people think that exercise is all about blood, sweat, and tears. That, yes, if you're gonna be an elite athlete, you need to go through some pain. You need to challenge your body to become better.

Lewis Howes 55:34 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 55:34 But that's not necessarily the healthiest way, and more isn't better. So for the person who has stressed their body, they depleted their body, they got this, this mid-weight gain, midsection weight gain, those people should not go to a boot camp in the gym.

Lewis Howes 55:55 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 55:55 Right? That's not gonna help them.

Lewis Howes 55:58 Mm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 55:58 Because this, this midsection weight gain is too much cortisol.

Lewis Howes 56:04 Really?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 56:05 Right? You can gain weight everywhere, but if you have it in the midsection, that's very indicative of, of cortisol. So now if you go join a boot camp and they ... You got this motivated, great trainer-

Lewis Howes 56:18 Yeah

Dr. Sten Ekberg 56:18 ... to whip you along, then you're just gonna make tons of cortisol that's gonna make the problem worse.

Lewis Howes 56:25 Really? So what type of physical activity should we be doing to lose the, the midsection weight?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 56:30 We should do truly aerobic exercise, and aerobic means with air, which means that it's at, at an intensity low enough that we can breathe comfortably and supply the oxygen.

Lewis Howes 56:46 Mm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 56:46 So as soon as you start huffing and puffing, that's not a bad thing for short duration, but if you go and you do a 45-minute spin class every day and you're just huffing and puffing, you're gonna make way, way, way too much cortisol.

Lewis Howes 57:00 Really?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 57:01 Yes.

Lewis Howes 57:02 So you might be hurting your chances of losing the weight-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 57:05 Yes

Lewis Howes 57:05 ... if you're doing that intensive a workout every day.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 57:08 Correct.

Lewis Howes 57:09 If you're doing a HIIT training two, three times a week for 45 minutes, is that okay? I feel like that's still intense.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 57:16 If it's 45 minutes, it's not HIIT.

Lewis Howes 57:19 Gotcha.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 57:19 Yeah. HIIT, high intensity, means that it's so int- To me, my definition.

Lewis Howes 57:25 It's like 10, 15 minutes. It's like...

Dr. Sten Ekberg 57:27 It's not ... Well, maybe the total duration would be 10, 15 minutes, but if you do interval, high, high intensity interval training is what HIIT is.

Lewis Howes 57:37 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 57:37 Then the intervals should be so intense you can't even do them for more than 30 seconds.

Lewis Howes 57:43 Wow.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 57:44 Like, they, they should be so intense, provided you're fit enough to, to do that, of course. But if you do 30 seconds and then you do 30 second rest and then 30 seconds, you should be able to bring your heart rate up to maximum in maybe four or five intervals.

Lewis Howes 58:02 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 58:03 That is HIIT. Okay? Now, now you're done.

Lewis Howes 58:06 Right.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 58:07 Right? You've, you've created your-

Lewis Howes 58:09 Five minutes, yeah

Dr. Sten Ekberg 58:10 ... your, your positive hormones, uh, your, your growth hormone to stimulate fat burning, your growth hormone to stimulate, uh, muscle building, to produce a- and, and to stimulate new brain synapses to enhance learning and focus. Uh, all the good stuff in the brain depends on, on hormones.

Lewis Howes 58:33 Mm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 58:33 And two of those hormones are human growth hormone and BDNF, which is brain-derived neurotrophic factor. And those two hormones are necessary to make new synapses. All right? So your, your brain is constantly remodeling and every time you learn something, whether you're 20 years old or 80 years old, you make new synapses. And the synapses you use, they get stronger. The ones that you don't use go away.

Lewis Howes 59:04 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 59:05 But these two hormones, which the, some of the strongest ways to produce them is high intensity exercise and fasting, s- are pretty much required to build a brain and, and to learn.

Lewis Howes 59:20 Really? So what type of high intensity exercise are you doing on a weekly basis?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 59:27 My favorite to really get the heart rate up is I go to my favorite mountain, uh, in, in w- close to where I live, where there's a trail, and it's like four, four miles around, and I walk a little bit, I jog a little bit, I walk a little bit, jog a little bit, just kind of enjoying the, the movement, and my heart rate t- probably stays around 100 to 120, 130 maybe.

Lewis Howes 59:57 Mm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 59:57 And then I, there's some hills, and then I do some sprints up the hills.

Lewis Howes 1:00:03 Mm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:00:04 So now I push it a little bit, and 30 second push and my heart rate's 160. And then I walk a little, jog a little, there's another hill, and I push it a little bit more and my heart rate hits 165, 170. And, and that might, I might do that in 30 seconds or it might take a minute to, to get to that heart rate, and then I'm done.

Lewis Howes 1:00:28 You do a few hills.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:00:29 Yes.

Lewis Howes 1:00:29 What if you did 20 hills?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:00:32 Then-

Lewis Howes 1:00:32 Is that too much? A 10 to 30 second.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:00:34 That might be okay if you're 20, 25 years old, you're an elite athlete-

Lewis Howes 1:00:39 Mm-hmm

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:00:39 ... and that's part of, of your event. But if you're 45, 50, 60 and you just try to stay as healthy as possible, I think that's too much.

Lewis Howes 1:00:51 Really?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:00:52 And in any event, it's unnecessary because it's not about the quantity. Quantity is good for fitness, but not, not necessarily for health.

Lewis Howes 1:01:04 Interesting. So you only need a, you know, a few sprints every couple... Is this every day or every few days?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:01:11 It's... I, I would say it's no more than twice a week.

Lewis Howes 1:01:15 Twice a week.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:01:15 For the, for the average person, Alan.

Lewis Howes 1:01:17 Mm. Yes.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:01:18 We, we have to... If, if you're watching this, you, you have to understand if you're in, in the elite athlete category-

Lewis Howes 1:01:25 Mm

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:01:25 ... or in the 50-year-old trying to stave off-

Lewis Howes 1:01:30 Just living life

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:01:30 ... degenerative disease.

Lewis Howes 1:01:32 Yeah. Yes, yes.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:01:32 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:01:33 So if you're more of a, uh, you know, if you're an athlete, even in your 40s and 50s, you could push it a little farther if you're competing and stuff or doing triathlons or marathons-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:01:43 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:01:43 ... or-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:01:43 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:01:44 ... just wanting to stay lean-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:01:46 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:01:46 ... it's important to be doing that a little bit more.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:01:48 Yeah. So there, there's no doubt. I mean, I, I talk a lot in my videos about moderation. Like, you do these HIIT exercises.

Lewis Howes 1:01:57 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:01:57 You, you do it twice a week. You keep it short. But obviously, that doesn't apply to someone who has a, a goal in an event. If you're going after fitness-

Lewis Howes 1:02:09 Mm-hmm

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:02:09 ... there is no substitute for punishing yourself.

Lewis Howes 1:02:12 Right. [laughs]

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:02:12 'Cause-

Lewis Howes 1:02:13 You gotta, you gotta do it

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:02:13 ... yeah. 'Cause if you're gonna perform in, in an event, you need to do something similar to that event at that level of intensity-

Lewis Howes 1:02:22 Yeah, yeah

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:02:23 ... and duration.

Lewis Howes 1:02:24 So fasting and high intensity exercise, but it's not doing a, you know, CrossFit every day, five days a week-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:02:31 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:02:32 ... 'cause that creates too much cortisol.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:02:34 Correct.

Lewis Howes 1:02:34 Especially if you're older, you know, past 30 or something.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:02:37 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:02:37 It's probably not as good to do that. Is something like that, you know, a 45 to 60-minute CrossFit type of training once a week you think okay, or is it still pro- creating too much cortisol?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:02:49 I think that's... I think once or twice a week for the average person, if you feel good, I think is fine.

Lewis Howes 1:02:55 Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:02:56 But again, I... When I have people come in to my clinic, those are people who have been to 20 different doctors. They have tried vegan and carnivore and low carb and, and yo-yo dieting-

Lewis Howes 1:03:12 Wow

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:03:12 ... and gluten-free. They've, they've done all that, so the- these are people with, with challenges. And now if, if you're a little frail, now that's where you really have to be careful and, and get everything right.

Lewis Howes 1:03:28 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:03:28 But yeah, if you're, if you're in your 30s, 40s, 50s, you're, you're feeling fine, then go for it. Do, do-

Lewis Howes 1:03:35 Sure

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:03:35 ... one or two of those spin classes. And what I would caution though is pay attention. Notice how your body is reacting. How do you feel after the class? Are you exhausted? Are you, are you stiff in the morning? Ca- do you have trouble getting out of bed? Do your joints hurt the, the next day? Then you're probably doing too much.

Lewis Howes 1:03:59 Doing too much, yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:04:01 And what about, you know, we talked about fasting a little bit here. What are the top three benefits of intermittent fasting or longer fasting, a 24-hour, 48-hour fasting, that you've seen in your research?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:04:13 So number one is lowering insulin. Uh, number... A- and, and with that, lowering blood sugar, losing weight, et cetera. The other big thing is that you induce something called autophagy, but that's with, that's with longer fasting. Autophagy is... It's called self... It- autophagy stands for self-eating, and that's where if you're putting food in your body, if you're putting especially protein in your body, there's plenty of resources. Your body knows, "Hey, there's some, there's some more coming. I can just use that to, to build tissue and to, to do the stuff I need." But if you stop putting it in, now it becomes a very, very scarce resource. So now your body has to figure out, "Where else can I get this?"

Lewis Howes 1:05:08 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:05:08 And that's where autophagy, self-eating, comes in. So now your body upregulates its recycling mechanisms. And-

Lewis Howes 1:05:19 How long does it take to fast before autophagy starts?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:05:24 So again, that's what everybody asks, and it's not a, a black or white. It's a continuous... It, it's a gradient. I would say that it barely starts around 16 to 18 hours.

Lewis Howes 1:05:38 Mm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:05:38 That's where you get, like, a trickle, but then it increases pretty fast, where there's a significant change between 18 and 24 hours.

Lewis Howes 1:05:49 Interesting.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:05:50 And then it, it sort of takes off from there. So f- 48 hours into it, it's, it's very significant.

Lewis Howes 1:05:58 48 hours into it.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:05:59 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:05:59 So the longer you can go every, you know, extra few hours, it continues to self-eat-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:06:06 Yes

Lewis Howes 1:06:06 ... more the, the fat-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:06:07 Yes

Lewis Howes 1:06:07 ... stored in your body more and more.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:06:09 Yes. Yeah. So the self-eating now, part of what it eats is, is fat, obviously, 'cause you're not adding any fuel, but the key with autophagy is protein.

Lewis Howes 1:06:20 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:06:20 Because you need protein to, to build tissue. Your, your cells have so much of a lifespan, they break down, and then you have to make new ones, and you need protein for that. So when you don't add any, now you have to go look for some. And a lot of people will say, "Oh, well, that's where fasting is dangerous, because you're gonna eat up your muscles."

Lewis Howes 1:06:44 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:06:45 The body is too smart for that, because you need your muscles to go on the next hunt.

Lewis Howes 1:06:51 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:06:51 So we have all these mechanisms to spare muscles, and that's why growth hormone increases also exponentially along with autophagy. And growth hormone is muscle sparing

Lewis Howes 1:07:06 Mm

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:07:06 It's basically telling the body, one of the mechanisms that tell the body, "Don't use the muscle. Go find something else." So now it gets much better at recycling these broken cells. It gets much better at finding any kind of resource like virus and bacteria and parasites-

Lewis Howes 1:07:26 Mm

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:07:26 ... that may also be made out of protein

Lewis Howes 1:07:29 Really? And, and kinda eating those things, the bad things first.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:07:32 Correct.

Lewis Howes 1:07:34 Interesting.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:07:34 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:07:34 What's the longest you've gone fasting?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:07:37 The longest I've done is five days.

Lewis Howes 1:07:41 No-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:07:41 Or four, four and a half

Lewis Howes 1:07:42 ... no food, water only.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:07:43 Just water.

Lewis Howes 1:07:44 Yeah, I've done three days.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:07:45 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:07:46 And you see the benefits a lot after-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:07:48 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:07:48 ... a day and a half. You really start-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:07:49 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:07:49 ... to see and feel the benefits.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:07:51 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:07:51 By day three, I went the to- the right up to three and I was like, "Okay, I need..." I was starting to get a little tired.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:07:58 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:07:58 And I think I pushed it because I worked out twice, which-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:08:01 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:08:01 ... you're probably not supposed to do, but I did like a, an incline walk for an hour and I-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:08:07 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:08:07 ... you know, which I, I don't recommend, but I was trying to be extreme. [laughs]

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:08:11 Yeah, that's, that's probably too much.

Lewis Howes 1:08:13 Yeah.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:08:13 And this is where we come into this muscle sparing thing.

Lewis Howes 1:08:16 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:08:17 That I'm all in favor of doing some exercise while you're fasting because-

Lewis Howes 1:08:23 Just walking though

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:08:23 ... 'cause you're gonna increase your ketones, you're gonna increase your, your growth hormone. But if you're not adding any protein and you do something intense enough to break down muscle, now your body has to sort of juggle the resources. Like it has to repair those muscles, and where's the protein gonna come from?

Lewis Howes 1:08:46 Mm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:08:46 So it might break down some other muscles to repair that.

Lewis Howes 1:08:50 Interesting.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:08:50 Okay, I haven't seen specific research on this or anything. It's just kind of common sense. What, what would the body do?

Lewis Howes 1:08:57 Sure.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:08:58 So I, I would exercise, but I would keep it to purely aerobic.

Lewis Howes 1:09:04 Mm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:09:04 I wouldn't even do HIIT.

Lewis Howes 1:09:05 Mm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:09:05 Not even brief HIIT during those times.

Lewis Howes 1:09:08 Right. Right. What did you do for those four and a half, five days?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:09:12 Uh, I probably not, didn't do much of anything.

Lewis Howes 1:09:15 Oh, right. Just rest.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:09:15 Probably just... Yeah, maybe a little bit of walking, but-

Lewis Howes 1:09:19 Mm

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:09:19 ... basically just my, my everyday activities.

Lewis Howes 1:09:22 Yeah. Did you feel pretty sharp after two, three days? Or do you start to feel a little s- slower towards the end?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:09:30 I don't feel as great as people tell me they feel. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 1:09:34 Oh, yeah, "I've got so, so much energy." Yeah.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:09:37 Yeah. So, so I, I do okay. I don't feel any, any dramatic improvement in, in focus, but I do know it that, that it happens 'cause I get the testimonials.

Lewis Howes 1:09:49 Mm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:09:49 And, and I do know especially for people who might have insulin resistance, when they fast they're gonna increase their ketones which becomes the, the alternative brain fuel.

Lewis Howes 1:10:01 Right. And it also kinda helps heal certain things. The, if you've been driving the insulin it's allowing that to recover more, right?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:10:09 Yes.

Lewis Howes 1:10:09 Yeah.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:10:10 Yeah. Y- yeah. Your, your whole carbohydrate p- processing machine is recovering 'cause you're not, you're not adding anything.

Lewis Howes 1:10:19 Right. Right.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:10:20 And, and one more thing about autophagy and fasting is for brain trauma. And, and this I've, I've hardly ever heard it spoken about, that the brain is, is kind of its own little world up there inside the cranium. We have the blood brain barrier, and a lot of things that go on in the brain are different than the way they work in the body. So the reason, for example, that, that spinal cord injuries are so devastating is that the nervous system is really poor at repairing itself.

Lewis Howes 1:10:59 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:10:59 Right? It's not... It's, it's encased in bone for a reason. It's not supposed to get damaged. You're not supposed to crack your skull or, or break your spine. And, and that sense, that, that tissue is a little different, it's sensitive and it doesn't have the capacity to repair itself very, very well. But the... If you have a concussion, for example, you get some, some tissue brain trauma, you get some inflammation, and about the only way that the brain can clean that up is through autophagy.

Lewis Howes 1:11:33 Mm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:11:33 The cells eating.

Lewis Howes 1:11:34 Interesting. Interesting.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:11:35 Right? So when people have a, a brain trauma, traumatic brain injury, that's the number one time that they wanna absolutely not have any sugar.

Lewis Howes 1:11:47 Really? Fast at that time.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:11:49 Yes. And if they can throw in a 24-hour fast or something, then that's gonna be huge for the, to reduce that, that inflammation.

Lewis Howes 1:11:58 And what about when you hear, like, you know, sometimes you might feel lightheaded or a little tired or lethargic, and peop- you'll peo- hear people say, "Well, I have, I have low blood sugar. I need to like have a piece of candy so it gives me-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:12:11 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:12:11 ... more energy in that moment."

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:12:12 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:12:13 What is that scenario?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:12:15 That's when you have trained your body to depend on carbohydrates, right? If you go year in and year out and feed your body sugar or, or carbohydrates every two hours, your body is gonna upregulate all of the pathways to deal with carbohydrates. It's gonna downregulate any pathway to pull from fat. So now after so many years of that, you cut out the carbohydrates, you have no fuel source because the, the backup system is dormant. Your body doesn't know, "Now what do we do?"

Lewis Howes 1:12:52 Right.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:12:52 Right? So it's because you trained your body and to depend on carbohydrates. And it's so easy for most people. The vast majority of people can get out of that in three to four days-

Lewis Howes 1:13:05 Mm

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:13:05 ... just by cutting out the carbs, eat more protein, eat more fat- Teach your body to up regulate the other system, which is fat burning, and that is where you have metabolic flexibility.

Lewis Howes 1:13:20 Gotcha.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:13:20 So most people, probably gonna take a few months to get like totally back to metabolic flexibility, but you'll, you'll break a huge part of that carb dependence just in a few days.

Lewis Howes 1:13:34 Mm.

Lewis Howes 1:13:35 What would you say the, the, the top three ways to increase human growth hormone?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:13:42 They're pretty simple, other than injecting it, which I'm not a fan of. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 1:13:47 Right, right. Naturally.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:13:48 Yes, naturally. So fasting is the most powerful.

Lewis Howes 1:13:52 Human growth hormone-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:13:52 Yes

Lewis Howes 1:13:53 ... occurs-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:13:54 Yes

Lewis Howes 1:13:54 ... when you fast over, I think you said 18 hours or, or roughly around there?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:13:58 It's the same as autophagy.

Lewis Howes 1:13:59 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:13:59 It increases gradually. I think you hit the maximum somewhere after four or five days.

Lewis Howes 1:14:06 Okay.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:14:07 Or up, up to seven days, then I think it's, it's pretty much plateaued at, at a high level.

Lewis Howes 1:14:13 Gotcha.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:14:14 Uh, so fasting, and the other one is the, uh, exercise.

Lewis Howes 1:14:19 Mm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:14:19 The high intensity exercise.

Lewis Howes 1:14:21 The sprints.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:14:22 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:14:22 Is that also with like heavy lifting or is it just-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:14:25 Yes

Lewis Howes 1:14:25 ... more sprints?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:14:25 Yes. So here's, here's how we want to think about this. Why... And, and this is what I encourage people to do. This is what I'm trying to do with my videos, is try to think like the body. What would I do if I was the body? Why is the body doing this? So what's the purpose of growth hormone, right? It's to grow tissue. And why would the body wanna do that? Because there's a need.

Lewis Howes 1:14:53 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:14:54 Right? So if you're sitting on the couch and you're eating potato chips, why would the body make growth hormone?

Lewis Howes 1:15:01 No, it wouldn't.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:15:01 Right? But if you challenge your body, if you push it, if you do pushups until you fail, like you get a million dollars if you can do one more, and you can't do it, [laughs] that's pushing your body till it fails, to exhaustion. And now what's the message? The message is, "I gotta get better." The body says, "If he's gonna do this again, I wanna be prepared next time he does this. I better build some, some muscle."

Lewis Howes 1:15:35 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:15:35 "And to do that, I need some growth hormone." Same thing with, with fasting. "Okay, they're not putting in any other fuel right now, I have to be smart about this. I have to get my energy someplace else, from fat." So growth hormone is fat burning. "I have to protect my muscles so I can go on a hunt tomorrow, so let's, let's protect the muscles."

Lewis Howes 1:15:59 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:16:00 So when you challenge your body, when you, when you scare your body, you're telling it your, your, what you're doing right now isn't quite good enough. You gotta get better tomorrow. That's it.

Lewis Howes 1:16:15 Mm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:16:16 And there, there's so many other little ways, like, uh, Wim Hof breathing.

Lewis Howes 1:16:22 Mm-hmm. Yep.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:16:23 That's a stress. Anything that's stressful is gonna increase growth hormone. You can even just sit and hold your breath for as long as you can, and you're gonna increase growth hormone.

Lewis Howes 1:16:33 Interesting.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:16:35 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:16:35 Don't pass out, but yeah. [laughs]

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:16:37 [laughs] And it's probably not at the, at the magnitude that you get with-

Lewis Howes 1:16:42 Right

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:16:42 ... with fasting and high intensity, but there's all these different things where you challenge your body, your body has to get better.

Lewis Howes 1:16:47 What about cold showers, hot-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:16:49 Same thing

Lewis Howes 1:16:50 ... hot steam?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:16:51 Same thing.

Lewis Howes 1:16:52 Anything that stresses the body, but you don't wanna be stressing it for hours is what I'm hearing you say.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:16:55 Correct.

Lewis Howes 1:16:56 'Cause that creates-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:16:57 Correct

Lewis Howes 1:16:57 ... cortisol, which is-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:16:58 Yes

Lewis Howes 1:16:58 ... spikes your insulin.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:16:59 Yes. And there is, there is eustress and there's distress. And the, the founder of... The, the guy who came up with the, the stress and the adaptive, uh, stress response was Hans Selye. He did tons of studies on this. And he found that short-term stress, I mean, eustress is good stress, right? Your body needs stress to get better.

Lewis Howes 1:17:30 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:17:30 If... Your, your body al- constantly breaks down. You have a turnover of cells. So it's going to break down, now you need a reason to make new cells. That's the eustress. Right? You need to use your body, you need to use your brain, you need to use your, your liver. Every, every tissue needs to have a purpose. Use it or lose it.

Lewis Howes 1:17:54 Right.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:17:54 So that's the eustress. We need a moderate amount of different kinds of stress, like gravity and weight bearing and so forth, that gives the body a reason to make new healthy tissue. But distress is when we're stressing the body too much or in a chronic way. Now it becomes instead of adaptation, it becomes maladaptation. And it's like exercise. So many people, they say they think that exercise is what makes you strong, but it isn't. Exercise breaks you down.

Lewis Howes 1:18:32 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:18:33 And it gives [laughs] the body a reason to build a better body, right? So it's, it's not the exercise that does it, it's the recovery.

Lewis Howes 1:18:41 You know, the sleep, recovery.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:18:42 Yes.

Lewis Howes 1:18:42 The, you know.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:18:43 So after a really, really hard workout, like if you, if you beat your body to pulp in the gym, you need 72 hours to recover before you do that again.

Lewis Howes 1:18:55 Wow.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:18:55 Right?

Lewis Howes 1:18:56 72?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:18:56 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:18:56 You said? Wow.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:18:57 I mean, it depends on, on how, how much do you break it down. Like how many fibers-

Lewis Howes 1:19:02 Sure

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:19:02 ... do you break. But-

Lewis Howes 1:19:04 Wow

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:19:04 ... you can typically tell if... And I'm sure you, you know this, that the day after you're sore, the second day you're more sore.

Lewis Howes 1:19:13 Uh-huh, exactly.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:19:14 Right? The third day it starts to go away. Your body hasn't healed In that time period

Lewis Howes 1:19:21 So you shouldn't push it again, the same muscle groups-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:19:24 Correct

Lewis Howes 1:19:24 ... the next day or two.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:19:25 Correct.

Lewis Howes 1:19:26 You-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:19:26 Depending on, on the intensity again

Lewis Howes 1:19:28 Right, right. You can do some ... If you're doing a leg day, you can do some, you know, walking and stretching, I guess-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:19:34 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:19:34 ... the next couple days.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:19:34 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:19:35 But you don't want to be doing another leg day back to back.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:19:36 Correct.

Lewis Howes 1:19:37 Right.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:19:37 And, and this is the trick for athletes to find that balance of, yes, you have to break it down, but then they get, they get into the blood, sweat, and tears mentality, no pain, no gain mentality. So they always think that more is better, which it isn't. It's like it's the re- recovery. Yes, you need to break it down, but it's the recovery that makes you stronger.

Lewis Howes 1:19:59 Mm-hmm.

Lewis Howes 1:20:00 So much has happened in the last decade in the health, nutrition, and exercise world that has seemed to be evolving, new science, new research, different fads that have come and gone. What do you see is coming over the, this next decade with nutrition, the science of health, optimizing the body, all these different things? Do you see anything new emerging that is actually gonna be beneficial, or do we just need to keep doing the same, you know, eat real food, work out consistently, recover well, and take care of your emotions?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:20:37 If I have anything to do with it, which I hope I will, [laughs] then we're gonna start developing some common sense. There's always gonna be fads. The- people want the quick fixes, which is why the, the yo-yo diets, they think that you can, "I, I've abused my body for five years. Now I'm gonna do something for three days to reverse all that. I'm gonna lose my 20 pounds, 'cause it says so on the tabloid, and then I'm gonna go right back to abusing my body, and I'll be fine again." That makes no sense to anybody and, and yet we do it. So I think my, my, my mission is to teach health, to teach some common sense, and that's where we wanna go back to historically what have humans done, what is our DNA designed for, what does a human body need, right? It needs the replacement parts. It needs fuel. It needs vitamins, minerals. It needs stimulation. Use it or lose it.

Lewis Howes 1:21:43 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:21:44 It needs a productive mindset. It needs a purpose. It needs joy. And it doesn't matter if it's a rat in a lab or it's a human. If you stress it continuously, it will break down. You cannot get health in, in that situation.

Lewis Howes 1:22:02 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:22:03 So again, chemical, structural, emotional, and then we need to find that, that balance.

Lewis Howes 1:22:09 Mm-hmm. I love it.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:22:11 And it's, and it's not, it's not optional. It's not like, do this if you get around to it. [laughs] It's a human requirement.

Lewis Howes 1:22:21 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:22:21 It's a law of nature. You can't, you can't fight it or, or ignore it any more than you can gravity.

Lewis Howes 1:22:30 Yeah.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:22:31 Like, the human body has requirements in the chemical, structural, emotional aspect, and if we understand what those are, then we can do something good with it.

Lewis Howes 1:22:42 Absolutely. I've got a couple final questions for you, Dr. Ekberg.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:22:46 All right.

Lewis Howes 1:22:46 But, but I want people to follow you first over on your YouTube, Dr. Ekberg, and also your website, drekbergaswell.com. You're all over social media, but YouTube is the main thing and your website. You've got so many great informational, educational videos teaching how to optimize the health, diving into the research and the science of these things. So I want people to follow you over there. We'll have it all linked up as well. Um, how else can we be of support to you today, before I ask these final questions?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:23:17 I would say look at my YouTube channel and take an active interest, and then share that information.

Lewis Howes 1:23:29 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:23:30 I, I tell people often in, in the office that ... See, here, here's the thing with health. It's like air. We, we don't value it until it's gone, right? But when it's gone, nothing is more important.

Lewis Howes 1:23:47 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:23:47 So people will give lip service to the fact that, "Well, do you wanna be healthy? Is health important?" Everyone's gonna put it number one on their list, and then they're gonna ignore it until they get a scare, right? But all these processes that we're talking about, the insulin resistance, the, the cancer, the di- the, the dementia, they hit people at, at an epidemic scale in their 60s and 70s, but they start in the 30s, and yet we don't care until it's too late. So that's, that's what I would like for people to understand, is that these things take ... Here, here's the problem. They don't kill us fast enough.

Lewis Howes 1:24:37 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:24:38 Right? [laughs]

Lewis Howes 1:24:39 Yeah.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:24:39 The ... If you eat poison and, and it kills you, if you have an anaphylactic shock to peanuts, you'll know about it, but this stuff takes 20, 30 years, so everyone ignores it un- until it's too late or much, much harder to change.

Lewis Howes 1:24:55 Yeah.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:24:56 And all these things, 100 years ago, people died from infections and poverty and starvation and natural disasters. Today, we don't die from that. 95% of ... There's still some, some unfortunate places, but most of the world, we die from manmade conditions. We, we die from things that 95% of them ... are degenerative disease that could be avoided-

Lewis Howes 1:25:28 Right

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:25:28 ... if we just understood what to do.

Lewis Howes 1:25:30 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:25:31 And why don't we care about health? Because we shouldn't have to. The body is so magnificent, it is so incredibly smart, that it fixes almost everything for us. It's just not invincible, and it takes 30 years to, to break it down.

Lewis Howes 1:25:51 Yeah.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:25:52 But the reason that we can't afford to just trust the body anymore is that the world has changed more in the last 50 years than it has in the previous 50,000.

Lewis Howes 1:26:03 Wow.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:26:04 There's no other animal on the planet that has to worry about it, because they live in their natural environment and they graze off the planet. We don't do that. We spend half our lives in front of a screen. We eat chemicals and processed foods. We have no connection with, with nature. We have changed the world so much, we can't afford to take health for granted anymore.

Lewis Howes 1:26:29 Wow. Yeah.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:26:30 And that's, and that's the message that I wanna get out there, but I don't wanna sound like a, a doomsday prophet either. I want people to understand that if you do something with this while there's plenty of time, I think we can have quality of life into our 90s and beyond, right? Instead of people, people say that we live so much longer today. It's like, no, we don't. We die longer.

Lewis Howes 1:26:56 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:26:57 For so many people, life is over at 60 even though they hang around for another 30 years.

Lewis Howes 1:27:04 They can't move the way they used to.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:27:05 Correct.

Lewis Howes 1:27:06 Yeah. They don't enjoy life the way they used to.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:27:08 They can't... Exactly. They can't go do things. They can't play with their grandkids.

Lewis Howes 1:27:12 Interesting.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:27:12 They can't, can't reach up and take something off a shelf. And there's, there, there are huge numbers of people who just don't have that quality of life, but we have to understand that it's, it's in our power to do something. If we just learn what the body needs and we don't take it for granted.

Lewis Howes 1:27:30 Wow. That's beautiful. Well, I want people to follow you on your YouTube, drekberg.com as well. Uh, we'll have it all linked up, but I've got a couple final questions for you.

Lewis Howes 1:27:40 This is called the three truths question.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:27:42 Oh, wow. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 1:27:43 So imagine a hypothetical scenario. It's your last day on earth many years away. You live as long as you wanna live, but, uh, you gotta call it quits on this world. And, um, you've accomplished all of your dreams. You've created everything you wanna create, but for whatever reason, we don't have access to your creations. All your content, your videos, anything you make, for whatever reason, it's gone in this scenario. But you get to leave behind three lessons to the world, three things you know to be true, and this is all we would have to remember your information. What would be those three truths for you?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:28:17 You have been gifted the most incredible healing machine ever devised. Your, your body is a representation of, of infinite intelligence.

Lewis Howes 1:28:30 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:28:33 And I don't know if I can come up with three things, but the second would, would be respect it and, and understand what it needs.

Lewis Howes 1:28:46 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:28:46 And, and this carries over to, to prosperity in, in every way because they're not isolated principles for health or, or wealth. It's like when your body is working, when you feel good, you're more productive. You, you feel more worthy. You can pursue things better. So it's like everything ties together.

Lewis Howes 1:29:09 Yes. That's beautiful. Was that the third one, or was that the second one? Respect your body. Is there one more?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:29:17 Well, here's, here's, um... We kinda talked about this, but I'll, I'll... And it's sort of a repeat, but I tell people that, that healing is a law of nature. So it's sorta like water flowing down a hillside, that the water is gonna flow because of gravity.

Lewis Howes 1:29:43 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:29:44 And it's gonna keep doing that no matter what. It's not, it's not optional. It's not gonna do it sometimes. It's gonna do it all the time because that's what it does. That's how healing works also. Now, you can build a barrier. You can build a dam on that hillside, and you can slow the water. You can keep it from running for, for a while, and, and that's what the, the obstacles, the, the stress, the toxicity, the, the lifestyle that we have. But if you, on the hillside, now, if you remove that obstacle from the hillside, the water's gonna start running again. Healing is gonna just pick up where it left off.

Lewis Howes 1:30:31 Mm. Mm. Right.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:30:32 You don't have to teach the water to do what it does. It's built in. It's the only thing it knows how to do.

Lewis Howes 1:30:40 Yeah. That's beautiful.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:30:42 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:30:43 Just remove the obstacle.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:30:44 Correct.

Lewis Howes 1:30:44 Allow, allow your body to heal.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:30:46 Correct.

Lewis Howes 1:30:46 Um, Dr. Ekberg, I wanna acknowledge you for a moment for everything you've created in your life and how you were an elite athlete, you know, and then you used that knowledge to continue to serve and help more people become athletes of their own life. You know, maybe not-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:31:02 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:31:02 ... as elite as you, but the athlete of their life-

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:31:04 Correct

Lewis Howes 1:31:05 ... to, to realign to their natural habitat.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:31:07 Health champions.

Lewis Howes 1:31:09 Health champions.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:31:09 Yes.

Lewis Howes 1:31:10 I love that. And I wanna acknowledge you for your consistent dedication. You know, you continue to learn. You continue to develop. You continue to serve so many people. So I appreciate all that you do for the world and how you help so many of us get back to that habitat. Um, my final question is what is your definition of greatness?

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:31:27 When you are honest with yourself and you realize what you can be and you go after the ultimate version of you.

Lewis Howes 1:31:42 Mm. There you go.

Dr. Sten Ekberg 1:31:44 When it comes to food and health, food is actually a medicine that we all take three times a day, right? We, we try not to take prescription meds whenever we can avoid, and even if you write prescription meds, you don't wanna be taking them forever. But food is something that you take three times a day from the time we're born to our very last breath. And when it comes to food and health, there is, uh, it's not just about the food. It's actually about how our body responds to what we put inside it.