Eat, Sleep & Train Like Your Ancestors - Robb Wolf | Modern Wisdom Podcast 320

Robb Wolf 0:00 The Guinness Book of World Records will let you jump a rocket car across the Grand Canyon. You can juggle flaming chainsaws, you know, there's all this stuff you can do. You cannot go for a unbroken sleep deprivation challenge, because the last three people that have tried it, they get between nine and 11 days, they tap out, they go to bed, and they die, and they have no idea why they die.

Chris Williamson 0:26 Robb Wolf, welcome to the show.

Robb Wolf 0:28 Hey, huge honor to be here. Thank you. Thanks for tolerating the, uh, the many reschedules that we had with my moving and everything.

Chris Williamson 0:35 Absolutely fine. So, you've just made the move to Montana. How come?

Robb Wolf 0:39 Uh, a variety of reasons. Uh, uh, primary to it, I, I have eight and six-year-old daughters and they grew up in this northern Nevada area, and four seasons, it snows, um, they played in the snow, they, you know, we had nice summers and stuff also. And then we moved to Texas, which was, uh, cool in a lot of regards, but it snows there about once every 35 years and they wanted to murder me for doing that to them. So, um, the move to Montana brought us closer to family. It also, uh, definitely, we, we just, I didn't realize it, like, we grew up in the m- the mountainous area, and, and as cool as the hill country of Texas is, it's just very, very different. And then there's also a Straight Blast Gym here in, uh, Kalispell, Montana that's just phenomenal and the whole family does Brazilian jiu-jitsu and it, it's, uh, an amazing community here. There's actually three gyms within the greater Flathead Valley area. So within 30-minute drive of my house, I have three different gyms that I could go do jiu-jitsu with. So, uh, uh, multiple factors, but those are the biggies. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:42 It's so interesting, as someone from the UK, to hear you essentially say the weather wasn't bad enough.

Robb Wolf 1:48 (laughs) Yeah. Um, we, uh, you know, it's funny because the, the bad weather is kinda relative, like, uh, and we lived in a part of Texas that was, uh, that is understood to be very mild weather-wise comparatively. Um, it's not the heat and humidity of say like a Houston or a Dallas or like a Corpus Christi or what have you. But, um, on like a Christmas Day, uh, you know, Celsius, it would be 32, 35 degrees Celsius (laughs) or something like that, you know, and, and, uh, uh, we're sitting outside, you know, barbecuing. And, and it was interesting, like, I, I think most places, if it's, if, if it's like cloudy outside, you have this sense that it's going to be cool, like you might need a sweater.

Chris Williamson 2:33 Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Robb Wolf 2:33 And in Texas, if it's cloudy outside, um, it means the humidity has come and it's actually hotter-

Chris Williamson 2:41 (laughs)

Robb Wolf 2:42 ... than what it is normally, you know. It, it's like putting a blanket around like a baked potato or something. And, and, uh, again, where we were-

Chris Williamson 2:49 (laughs)

Robb Wolf 2:49 ... it, it's not that bad, but, um, the kids would go outside, they would ride their bikes and they'd run outside and then they'd come back in and they were just like bedraggled and, and hot. So like bad weather was, was relative. And kind of what we've noticed is cold weather, you can always put some clothes on and kinda deal with that a variety of ways. But if it's hot, and in particular humid, you just, there's not a lot of escape. Like, you just kinda sit inside and, and hope that the air conditioning doesn't break or something like that. And it, and it's definitely cool in some ways. Like, the kids spent the whole year swimming. Like we, the kids were swimming in, uh, November and December in the backyard pool, you know. It was cold but i- i- they, they were still able to do it. We definitely don't do that (laughs) in, in Montana. So yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 3:34 Yeah, it's an interesting one, man. It's a, the, the UK kind of doesn't really have weather. I mean, we, we just have an absence of anything on the extremes. It kinda gets a bit cold-

Robb Wolf 3:43 Right.

Chris Williamson 3:43 ... and a bit gray in winter, and then it kinda gets a bit less cold and a little bit less gray in summer and then it vacillates back down again. But, um-

Robb Wolf 3:50 Right.

Chris Williamson 3:51 ... yeah, man. Some of the, some of the, the, the buddies that I've got that spend time in Montana or go out there hunting or doing whatever, it looks absolutely spectacular, so it does not surprise me that you've decided to go there. I wanted to go through, um, ancestral health today, which is one of the terms that kind of swims in the circle that, that your work sits in the epicenter of.

Robb Wolf 4:10 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 4:11 For people that aren't familiar with it, how do you characterize the foundations and the fundamentals of ancestral health?

Robb Wolf 4:17 Uh, it's really tr- taking a perspective that, uh, if we buy into this notion of evolution via natural selection, that most organisms end up being fairly well-suited for the environment that they're in, and that changes in the environment could be either beneficial, neutral, or negative for the organism. And when we look at modern human existence, um, nobody's really quite sure what the year was or what the date was, but somewhere around like 2004 or 2005, humanity made this really fascinating shift where more people started dying from chronic degenerative disease than from infectious disease and starvation. And this is the first time in our, our history, you know, 2.5 bil- y- you know, million years of, of human, pre-human history, there's always been infection and scarcity that were the, the main killers, and now it's, it's diseases of abundance. And so this is kind of a primary example of where an evolutionary or ancestral health perspective could maybe be really valuable in how do we approach this stuff? Like, simply telling people, "Eat less, move more," ha- we've had 60 years of that and it just fails because it actually goes exactly contrary to the evolutionary wiring that every organism has, which is eat more, move less, because this, th- this is the way you survive in a, in, in a world absent, you know, significant technology and the benefits of, of being able to, to share information, uh, you know, via written and spoken language and all that stuff. So it's, uh, it's an idea that we don't like go back to trying to reenact the way that we lived or live under a bush or anything like that, but just where we see...... the problems, particularly with regards to human health. Like, maybe we could, we could look back a couple of generations or a couple of hundred years even. We don't even have to go, like, you know, caveman era to get some really interesting insight. Uh, the development of the electric light bulb- Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 6:17 ... is one of the most amazing things that ever has, has, you know, been, um, gifted to humanity, but it's got a cost to it too. And I think that that's one of the- the big things that isn't properly discussed within medicine at large. And, like, this- this age of COVID is a pretty good example of this. Like, uh, folks present things as if there is only a benefit or a negative and never that there's usually a risk profile associated with that, and that maybe we don't know exactly what the story is, but if we have a discussion around this, you know, maybe we can ferret some stuff out. It- it's pretty clear now that shift work is as injurious to health as, uh, uh, you know, like, a pack-a-day smoking habit. It's rec-, uh, you know, recognized by the World Health Organization, shift work, as being a known carcinogen because of the, uh, metabolic dysregulation that it imparts on us. Why is that? Because it's a really remarkable departure from the way that we've lived historically. And so what do we do about that? I'm not entirely sure. But if we're not having a conversation about it, we're certainly not going to find any answers, you know, if we're just kind of, uh, doing these very myopic, you know, views about sleep, and circadian biology, gut health, and what-, whatnot. So I- I don't know if I properly answered the question around what ancestral health is, but it's really just... It- it- it- one thing it is not, it is not an answer, it is a question and hypothesis generation engine. It's a place that we begin asking questions to try to get to answers. And sometimes it can point a likely direction of investigation, but I think that that's where, um, folks in the paleo diet or ancestral health scene ran afoul of the more established scientific community by saying, "Well, cavemen did X, so our response should be Y." And it's like, no, cavemen may have done X. What might those implications be for today, and what are the studies that we're going to do to try to ferret out whether or not that's- that's true, or not true, or some other detail in

Chris Williamson 8:18 there? Are there broad buckets that you focus on in the anhes- ancestral health sort of paradigm?

Robb Wolf 8:25 Yeah, I- and I- I guess I kind of broadly drop things into food, movement, sleep, and, uh, uh, community. And, you know, within the community, I get kind of cheeky and I- I dump the gut microbiome in that because, like, we're- we're collaborating together, you know? I'm- I'm more of a lumper than a splitter, so it- it, you know... But I- I think about, like, our... We evolved in- in extended small family groups and whatnot, and there seems to be some real power to- to the- the benefit of having adequate community. But those are kind of the- the broad buckets. And again, like, I'm- I'm really, like, I- I stick a lot of stuff under those- those umbrellas, for sure. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 9:04 It's funny that you talk about shift work and the effects on health. So my background for the last decade and a half, I've run nightclubs, so I'm a club promoter. I am director of one of the biggest events companies in the UK. So I've stood in the door of more than 1,000 club nights. In between the age of 18 and 33, I've lost 1,000 different nights, and then the subsequent slow reset back to something that resembles normal.

Robb Wolf 9:29 Right.

Chris Williamson 9:29 And the maddest thing about COVID was for the first time in my entire adult life, I had a stable sleep and wake pattern.

Robb Wolf 9:37 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 9:38 First time ever-

Robb Wolf 9:39 Wow.

Chris Williamson 9:40 ... since I was a legal child.

Robb Wolf 9:43 Right, right. And what was the impact on your life with that? I mean, clearly it's hard to ferret out because it's got all these other-

Chris Williamson 9:49 Mm-hmm.

Robb Wolf 9:50 ... knock-on effects of, like, social isolation and whatnot, but what- what- what did sleeping well do for you?

Chris Williamson 9:56 It made a profound difference. I'd already started to take the red pill, I s- I suppose, with regards to sleep. Um, Matthew Walker was a big- a big impact on that.

Robb Wolf 10:04 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 10:04 That Joe Rogan podcast. I would- I would guess that it's added thousands of years of collective life onto the entire human population.

Robb Wolf 10:14 Right.

Chris Williamson 10:14 People realizing, "Oh, God," just the- the- the effect of suboptimal sleep is catastrophic. And it was the same for me, and I was like, "Right, okay, I need to prioritize this." But really, if you're doing- if you're working... A typical week for me might have been do a- a Tuesday night, Friday night, Saturday night. So I would have worked until about 3:30, 4:00 AM on each of those, and then tried to fit training in and such, like, around that. But there is no mitigation strategy.

Robb Wolf 10:44 Right.

Chris Williamson 10:44 Do you want to try and stay on that schedule? No way. I don't want to stay up until four-th- four o'clock in the morning on the nights when I don't need to, obviously.

Robb Wolf 10:53 Right.

Chris Williamson 10:53 But then you also still need to get stuff done. You've got to be up, you've got to go to the office, you've probably got a meeting in the club. Also, the thing (laughs) the insidious thing about being a promoter is the most cognitively demanding part of the night at the very end when you count the cash and you complete the s-

Robb Wolf 11:06 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 11:06 ... the sheets and do the accounts. That's the thing that you do at the very end, just before you're then about to-

Robb Wolf 11:10 And you're smoked.

Chris Williamson 11:11 Precisely.

Robb Wolf 11:11 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 11:11 You're also really hungry, incredibly hungry at that time. So if you're trying to diet, I mean... E- essentially, a- a calorie deficit whilst working those shifts is borderline impossible.

Robb Wolf 11:21 Right.

Chris Williamson 11:21 A- and the only places that are open at that time are takeaways. And it's just, it is a catastrophe. Um, and then it comes to, you know, whatever, 14 months ago, all clubs are shut down. This, we still haven't been back into a nightclub in normal process since then, um-

Robb Wolf 11:37 Right.

Chris Williamson 11:38 ... and I found the main changes that I found were with my mood and with my calorie consumption. So my mood was so much more stable, um, I was able to... Actually, no, and a third one would be consistency of habits.

Robb Wolf 11:55 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 11:55 Um, what you're doing- what you're doing when you have shift work is your programming inconsistencies into your life, which means that if you're trying to do something-

12:04 ... hard, like build new myelin down somewhere. I wanna wrap myelin around this meditation habit or this walking after I eat every meal for 15 minutes habit, or wha- reading, whatever it might be. It just makes everything harder. Um, I always wanted worse food and more of it when I was tired. And my mood, I- I- I found... And all of these as well, will have contributed to each other, right? If I was eating better food, I would be in a better mood, which would mean I would have more discipline and resilience to do the habits-

Robb Wolf 12:33 Right.

Chris Williamson 12:33 ... and it became this. And man, I've made more progress over the last 14 months than in a significant period of time before that. And I thought I was working pretty close to capacity beforehand. So yeah, the- the foundation, that stable sleep... And I've got buddies that are doctors, nurses, firefighters, policemen, and, um, I- I really... I, you know, I feel for them because th- there is a- a cap being put on what you can do outside of your life, um, outside-

Robb Wolf 13:01 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 13:01 ... of work with your life, because it's just... It's so suboptimal.

Robb Wolf 13:05 Yeah. Yeah, it is. And, uh, it- it's, uh, it's something that societally we need to really figure out how do we take care of those folks and, to some degree, how do we protect them from themselves? You know, it's- it's ironic that, uh, uh, within medical circles in particular fo- and- and it's tough because folks will wo- work multiple shifts and they, uh, you know, to make more money, that's kind of how they plan for retirement and stuff like that. But after that first eight-hour shift or- or 10-hour shift, they're garbage. Like they are as cognitively impaired as somebody who has a blood alcohol level of like a 0.1.

Chris Williamson 13:40 (coughs)

Robb Wolf 13:40 Like they would be legally drunk were this caused by ethanol, but it's caused by sleep i- i- uh, uh, deprivation, and we're paying them more to remain in the hospital or- or whatever. And again, it- it's tough 'cause folks will be like, "Oh, I'm fine." And for super repetitious skills, you can get through it. Like you- you- you know, this is where surgeons can be super sleep-deprived, but they've tied those knots a million times. But if you're faced with a novel situation and you need to make a decision, that's where things can go horrifically wrong. And we have to kinda wrap our heads around societally, what do we do about that, you know? Yeah.

Chris Williamson 14:19 Did you see... I think it's Matthew Walker cites this study about the significant proportion of doctors or surgeons or nurses who after working an over- over-exaggeratedly long shift, then end up back in the same hospital having had a crash on the way home.

Robb Wolf 14:37 Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It's remarkable. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 14:40 And then there's another one about when daylight savings comes in-

Robb Wolf 14:44 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 14:44 ... 25% increase in... Is it stroke or heart attack or something?

Robb Wolf 14:49 It- it- it's all... It- it's, uh, motor vehicle accidents. And I mean, it varies, but, uh, it's remarkably stressful just that one-hour shift, you know? And then, um, I think about all the travel that I did where I would wake up and I'm like, "I don't even know which state, country or continent I am on currently." Like, I would... It'd take me a minute grab... Oh, okay. (laughs) I'm in Germany or I'm here or what- whatever, and that sh- uh, uh... you know, just a- a one-hour shift, we see it at a- a, uh, I guess kind of a- a systemic level, and then you can extrapolate that down, you know, doing an East Coast, West Coast in the United States. It- it's three times as worse, you know? And- and, uh, yeah, I- I wonder how much time I took off the end of my life by (laughs) by just my travel schedule in the past, you know?

Chris Williamson 15:42 Yeah. Well, I mean, that's-

Chris Williamson 15:43 that's the same if you're talking about smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. Well, that's it. I could have- I could have just not worked in nightlife and decided to sit at home and blaze up for the entire day. Have you got any other statistics or sort of crazy stories that you've come across in your research to do with suboptimal sleep or sleep deprivation?

Robb Wolf 15:59 Well, uh, uh, I've stole, uh, uh, most of my stuff from Dr. Kirk Parsley. He's a retired Navy SEAL, and then he ran the, uh, West Coast, um, kind of medical concerns for the SEAL teams for about eight years. Here's just an interesting side note. Um, the Guinness Book of World Records will let you jump a rocket car across the Grand Canyon. You can juggle flaming chainsaws. You know, there's all this stuff you can do. You cannot go for a- a unbroken sleep deprivation challenge, um, because the last three people that have tried it, they get between 9 and 11 days. They tap out, they go to bed, and they die, and they have no idea why they die. But it's like... It- it's virtually a- a- a given. Um, there's some other interesting stuff. There have been studies where a couple is, um... They get a group of couples. One of the- the husband or wife is sleep-deprived one hour, and then they- they survey the folks like, "How loving and caring and affectionate is- is your significant other?" If one spouse is sleep-deprived, both report that the other one is a bigger dick than what they normally are.

Chris Williamson 17:10 (laughs)

Robb Wolf 17:10 And- and so it- it, uh, it just kind of spirals down from there. Um, one hour of sleep deprivation accumulated daily by the end of a week leaves an individual as cognitively impaired as if they were like a blood al- you know, 0.1 blood alcohol content. But the- the really insidious thing about, um, serial sleep deprivation is you habituate to it and it becomes your new normal. You- you don't... When you've been sleeping well and then you have a super bad night's sleep, you get up the next day and you're like, "Man, I really feel that." But if that goes on, you don't really feel quite as bad so you aren't even as aware of how, you know, your reaction time is off, your- your, uh, uh, critical thinking skills. And you alluded to a bunch of the- the problems ar- around the rest of, you know, like diet and- and lifestyle. Your decision-making is poorer. You crave saltier, sugary foods, you know, hyper-palatable foods. Uh, your willpower is gone. Like it- it just... It- it's like doing a willpower, you know, excision process. Like you literally have no- no willpower. Um, the tendency to be cranky and- and have, uh, overly emotional responses are- are dramatically increased. Something like 85%, uh, i- in the United States, 85% of excessive force cases within policing occur within 24 hours of a significant shift change.... and I think about myself, like if I have a really bad night's sleep and somebody cuts me off, my kids are kind of being problem... Like, my reasonable response is very difficult to reach, you know? It, and so you think about police work, which is challenging under the best of circumstances, and then they're subjected not just to the shift work itself, but it's typically a shift change, eh, you know, where they've gone from day shift to night shift or vice versa, you know? There's some significant delta that occurs that really messes with their ability to, to do that executive functioning and the, the, you know, the, um, more emotionally intelligent type, type responses. So, is this a case for when you do a shif- shift change, like the, the cop is on desk duty or light duty, or they've got somebody who hasn't been off of a shift change. But this again, like, we've gotta pay for that stuff, but societally, how much would we save by taking care of these people and, and understanding the risk exposure we place them in with the shift work and the shift changes, and do some backstops to try to prevent that? You know, in the United States, the George Floyd thing is just created so much, much chaos and drama and loss of life, loss of property. And I don't know if Derek Chauvin had just gone through a shift change, but if he was-

Chris Williamson 20:01 That's exactly what I was thinking.

Robb Wolf 20:02 ... holy shit. You know?

Chris Williamson 20:03 Yeah.

Robb Wolf 20:03 It's, it's like, you know, how much other stuff might we mitigate if we, we use some of this to inform, like, public policy? Yeah.

Chris Williamson 20:13 It's, um ... the interesting thing about sleep specifically is

Chris Williamson 20:20 the externalities and the costs inevitably, even for the individual, there's some hyperbolic discounting, right? We think about how far we're going out into the future before the inevitable onset of incr- uh, rapid onset of Alzheimer's or perhaps some sort of other-

Robb Wolf 20:32 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 20:33 ... other cognitive decline. But because you can't see it, right? You can't see something happening to a person. For instance, if there was a substance, some sort of toxic substance that a particular portion of the workforce had to deal with, and what that substance, exposure to that substance caused to occur were the same effects as this deprivation of sleep, we would be up in arms. Look, you're destroying these people's marriages. You're forcing them to eat this food that they need to eat because they've been exposed to this particular substance. They're cranky, and then we've got this problem with the police 'cause the police need to deal with it as well. The, the issue is that it is so closed doors, we don't see the effect and we don't see the actual occurrence. And the, the main thing actually, I think, that I realized when I f- going back to when I first saw that Matthew Walker podcast on Rogan, it's so front and center of all of our lives. It's so ubiquitous that you can't see the wood for the trees. You don't-

Robb Wolf 21:34 It's hidden in plain sight.

Chris Williamson 21:35 Yes. You don't realize-

Robb Wolf 21:36 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 21:36 ... that it's a thing. You j- it's f- especially if you're a hard charger, right? If you're a type A go-getter, sleep is just a thing that gets in the way in between the two periods of waking and working.

Robb Wolf 21:46 Right. Right. Yeah. And, and I mean, look at a lot of the, you know, the, um, the folks that we really idolize, you know, surgeons, Navy SEALs, they're selected for their ability to, to deal with sleep deprivation, you know? And, and there are some outlier characteristics, like, uh, SEALs, uh, generally, um, walk around with a, a neuropeptide PYY that's like 600% higher than the rest of the-

Chris Williamson 22:15 What's that?

Robb Wolf 22:16 ... population. It, it, it's, uh, I'm not, uh, uh, nobody's entirely sure exactly what it does, but it seems to be very key to stress inoculation, resiliency and, and whatnot. Speaker 2: Is that highly heritable? This might be why. Yeah, I believe so. Yeah. Yeah, I believe there are some heritable, uh, characteristics there and I'm only familiar with it within these kinda SEAL populations. But is the difference between somebody who makes it through surgical residency or not because they've got this, you know, particular polymorphism or whatever. That's all well and good, um, but you can break those people eventually. They will break at some point. Like there's, this isn't an infinite well that they can go to, but we really do hold them up, you know, in, in high esteem this-

Chris Williamson 23:02 Celebrate it, right?

Robb Wolf 23:02 ... this ability to motor through and be tough and, and all that type of stuff. And, and there are, you know, it's funny just when you think about, uh, so I'm almost 50. I have an eight-year-old and six-year-old daughters. Very grateful for when I did have kids in my life just like kind of unfucking my own mental baggage and, you know, different things like that, more, more financially sound. But man, when I was 20, I could deal with sleep deprivation a lot better than at 50. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 23:27 (laughs) Dude, you're speaking to me. So I'm 33. I don't have, I don't have kids. I'm not engaged or married or anything, and this is in the back of my mind. I can't wait to be a dad. I'm so excited to be a dad. I've spent all of this time sorting my shit, right?

Robb Wolf 23:39 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 23:39 Making me the sort of... I would've been a shit dad at 23. I would've been able to deal with the sleep deprivation, but I hadn't sorted mysel- I still haven't sorted myself, but you know what I mean. I'm better. And, um,

Chris Williamson 23:49 but it does make me think (laughs) you're gonna be, you're gonna be dealing with up and nappy changes and all that sort of stuff-

Robb Wolf 23:57 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 23:57 ... when you're in your 40s and, yeah, I, I might have to message you and, and try and get whatever the tips are.

Robb Wolf 24:05 Y- y- the, the main tip is just grab what you can and, and, uh, you know-

Chris Williamson 24:10 (laughs)

Robb Wolf 24:10 ... it, it, uh, y- you i- it's funny and I don't wanna drive this in- into, you know, like, uh, being a dad land, but, um, it was interesting when they were-... kind of newborn up to about, I don't know, maybe two years, two and a half years. Both of them slept pretty well. Like, we'd, we'd put them to bed, they'd go to bed about 6:00, 6:30. They'd sleep 12 hours. So we still had kind of an evening, we could watch a little TV, hang out, chitchat and everything. And now, as they've gotten older, um, they want to do stuff. Uh, they, they push that-

Chris Williamson 24:41 Getting in the way.

Robb Wolf 24:42 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 24:42 Asking for activities and attention.

Robb Wolf 24:44 Yeah, yeah. I mean, they went to jujitsu yesterday. They had jumped on the trampoline all day, then went to jujitsu. Did a bunch of matches because kids got new belts and they Ironman the kids so everybody, uh, you know. It was all this stuff. We got home, we fed them, and then they went back out on the trampoline. And get this, it, they turned the sprinkler on the trampoline and it was still chilly here, but they're out jumping in their swimsuits on the trampoline in Montana in the spring, you know? And I'm just like, "I don't know that I ever had that much energy," but I guess maybe I did at some point. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 25:16 Maybe they've got that, that PYY61 600 thing.

Robb Wolf 25:18 PYY, I don't know, man. But geez.

Chris Williamson 25:21 What is it? One in... The, the same number of people that get struck by lightning twice in their lifetime have that genetic modification that allows them to go on, whatever it is, four or five hours sleep. You should get them tested.

Robb Wolf 25:30 Right.

Chris Williamson 25:30 You should get the kids tested, man. You might have two, two double lightning strikers there.

Robb Wolf 25:35 I, I think part of it is that I'm old and they're young and well-fed.

Chris Williamson 25:39 (laughs) And so they ghost.

Robb Wolf 25:39 And that's really just-

Chris Williamson 25:40 They ghost. It seems so bad. (laughs)

Robb Wolf 25:40 ... all there is to it, you know? This is just biology. It's like, I'm ready to die and they're just in the, the budding part of life, you know?

Chris Williamson 25:47 (laughs)

Robb Wolf 25:47 So, yeah. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 25:49 Yeah. So, okay,

Chris Williamson 25:50 so we've scar- we've scared people straight about that what happens when sleep's bad.

Robb Wolf 25:54 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 25:54 What, what would you say are your highest three priorities for improving sleep quality? Or what are some of the things that you focus on?

Robb Wolf 26:03 Man, um, proper glycemic load is really big. Like, some people do well on high carb, some people do better on lower carb. But I do find that, um, sleep disturbances oftentimes relate back to... So, like, some people on very low carb, they can have sleep dis- problems and, and they actually need to address some electrolytes to usually get that, that fixed. Like, sodium ends up being a, a piece of that. Um, but I do notice that if folks are eating an overly refined diet, uh, too many carbs for their constitution, it can kind of disturb their sleep. That, that's definitely something that can wake them up. Um, man, I gotta say that (sighs) this is, this gets into personal stuff and I don't know, uh, I, I think it applies to everybody. But, um, I pulled all social media off of my, my phone like, like, uh, six months ago. Um, I will do some via the desktop. And even from there, I write stuff now and then I send it to my assistant and my assistant posts it. And I don't really go on, like, Instagram or Twitter. Very, very rarely. Like, I have somebody else do that. But, um, my sleep improved dramatically just decoupling from social media, and it, it-

Chris Williamson 27:17 Why do you think that is?

Robb Wolf 27:19 I think the base level stress of, of just all the shit that's going on. And it may be different for somebody if they're just kind of like... My stuff was always, like there's always a battle I've got to fight, whether it's like the, you know, the, the knuckleheads within a- a- Ancestral Health. It's like, "Well, 30 grams of carbs is keto and 50 grams of carbs is not keto," and they're bickering over that. And while that's happening, I also have folks saying that, um, animal husbandry, like cattle are go- are the s- singularly largest contributor to greenhouse gases and they're gonna destroy the world. And so I'm trying to tackle that thing. So, like there were a lot of different, you know, things that I was, I was trying to address. And what I started doing was just, um, looking at what the concerns are, doing broadcast only, whether it's a written piece or like a podcast, and then that's it. And then I don't really-

Chris Williamson 28:13 Huns off, yeah.

Robb Wolf 28:14 ...interact after that. And that was huge for me. Like, the, the, just the stress level dropped. And I discovered that doing that freed up about three to five hours a week of time that I was previously, like, interacting with people. Which, some of it I really enjoyed. Like, there, I, I learned a lot interacting with people on social media. Like, I can connect with somebody in, in the UK or, you know, anywhere in the world at any time of the day. It's, there's some really cool elements to it. But it, it, I, I think it's safe to say it got pretty toxic. And so, uh, I think looking at glycemic load, I think looking at just kind of tech in general, like how much you're doing, when you're doing it, um, it, and then just-

Chris Williamson 28:54 Here's an interesting, here's an interesting one for you that you might not have seen. I looked at, into some papers that studied the equivalent effect on melatonin release and circadian rhythm from e-readers versus Kindles.

Robb Wolf 29:08 Mm.

Chris Williamson 29:08 Uh, and they actually said that even the normal Paperwhite, so you don't need the fancy Oasis that's got a warmer light on it-

Robb Wolf 29:15 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 29:15 ...um, basically the effect of the light is negligible on a nighttime. Which, for those of us that are part of the, uh, Kindle club, bow-bowing at the altar of Amazon-

Robb Wolf 29:26 Right.

Chris Williamson 29:27 ...um, that's really good news because it means-

Robb Wolf 29:29 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 29:29 ...you don't need to have a paper book and your big light on, or even a reading light on. You can go really dim and, you know, you can have it as far away from your face as you want, and then you kind of turn over and go to bed.

Robb Wolf 29:40 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 29:40 So that was, that was an interesting one that I discovered a couple of months ago. That if you are wanting to read on a nighttime, the optimal solution, it would appear, is to go Kindle, turn the brightness down, and get away.

Robb Wolf 29:53 Yeah. And I mean, I, I also do the little extra bit, I'll put on some BlueBlocs with it.

Chris Williamson 29:58 Yeah.

Robb Wolf 29:58 And I mean, it, between-

Chris Williamson 29:59 What's your BlueBlocas? What are your blue, BlueBlocas of choice? I've had Matt Maruca from Raw Optics on here, if you're familiar with those guys. They're, they're awesome.

Robb Wolf 30:06 Oh, I, I have a pair of those. I, I have a pair of, I suspect, just about everybody's, and my kids steal them and they end up in weird places, like on their animals and stuff like that. And so, I-

Chris Williamson 30:16 Of course, of course.

Robb Wolf 30:16 I'm just at the spot where, um, any port in a storm, you know? It's, it, I, no, no joke, um, I took some play glasses that my kids have and took a red-... a Sharpie marker and put that on the lens, 'cause it was a clear lens, and I used that for, like, three days 'cause I couldn't find any of my other stuff. And so, uh, I'm, I'm very non... I'm kinda like the guy in the bar that it's like 3:00 AM and I'm just kinda looking around like, "Who am I going home with?" And so, with the, my BluBlockers, like, I am very undiscerning (laughs) with that. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 30:52 That's so funny, man. That's so funny.

Chris Williamson 30:54 I had... So, moving on to diet. We've talked about sleep, one of the big ones, hopefully given people some good, good bits of advice there. I had Dianne Rodgers on the show a few months ago and I asked what most people get wrong with their diet, and she said, "Insufficient protein." I'm gonna guess-

Robb Wolf 31:07 Yup.

Chris Williamson 31:07 ... that your answer would be the same.

Robb Wolf 31:09 Absolutely, yeah. And I mean, I've, I've been around the horn on this where, uh, uh, I mean, just really looking at it clinically, like, there's great data from a, a research perspective that, that really supports this position. But we, we have a community called the Healthy Rebellion where we do these, uh, resets three or four times a year. Folks are trying to l- lose weight or get, get, improve their physical capacity, a whole host of things. And what's fascinating to me is folks in there will say, "Man, I've been following your work for 10 years, 12 years. It really helped me, um, but I've still had this problem like losing the last 15 pounds," or, you know, whatever the, whatever the case may be. And then when we get in and really weigh and measure their food, for, for a couple of days a week, they're 25 to 50% undereating protein and it shocks them. And, and, you know, for us, we have never yet seen somebody have body composition issues that was overeating protein. They have always been undereating protein. Now, every once in a while, somebody will be overeating in general, but it, it, it's kinda like, okay, well, shift the ribeyes into something that's maybe a little bit leaner or something. But even then, I mean, that's, that's like a fewer than 1% of people. Like, everybody's undereating protein. And you get that protein dialed in and it's somewhere between, like, a gram of protein per pound of lean body mass up to a gram of protein per pound of body weight, so there's a pretty good, pretty good spectrum there. And, uh, then you figure out do you run better on fat or carbs, or maybe a little bit of a combo? So, you figure out kind of your glycemic load. Like, I just seem to do better on, on kinda lower carb, higher fat. Not everybody does. But once you get that protein part buttoned up, then you figure out, you know, how much of the other stuff do you need? And then you just go out, and kick ass, and, and rock the world. And, and, uh, it is so easy if you can just get people to eat that adequate protein and, like, I, I... Just emphatic, like, it's gotta be from whole, real food. Like, shakes don't cut it. I wish they did. Um, it, it, in a pinch for some people, okay, but like, even my, my... I don't do a ton of work with athletes, but it's rare even with athletes that I find that a shake trumps real, whole food that you gotta chew, and like the, the satiety, and the, the nutrient density of it, and whatnot. But yeah, that, that protein piece is, is huge. And, uh, Dianne, the clinical practice that she does, she just sees this again, and again, and again. Folks are just, like, chronically undereating protein, like shockingly.

Chris Williamson 33:45 The problem is, especially if you want to go one gram per pound of body weight, I'm a- around about 200 pounds, there is no chance in hell that I am accidentally eating 200 grams-

Robb Wolf 33:57 Right.

Chris Williamson 33:58 ... of protein per day. No one in history has acci- unless you went to one of those buffets and-

Robb Wolf 34:04 Right.

Chris Williamson 34:04 ... decided that you were not going to look at any of the carbs and just went through the meat. So, give me some advice. How can people consume more protein, get more protein into their diet, especially if we're not permitting them, the, the, the allowances taken away with bars of protein and with supplements of protein? How do you advise someone hits that 200 gram, or that 180, or that 160 per day?

Robb Wolf 34:29 Yeah. Uh, uh,

Robb Wolf 34:30 I think a couple of different angles on this. One is definitely looking at your seasoning, like seasoning sauces, things like that, like kinda switching that up because it can get very monotonous just eating, like-

Chris Williamson 34:41 Talk me through some of your favorites.

Robb Wolf 34:42 ... chicken breast or chicken thigh. I, I like, uh... So, if we do kind of a, a matrix where we've got like garlic, ginger, black pepper, paprika, and then we have three different fats, say like olive oil, coconut oil, and beef tallow, um, you've got 15 different kinda flavor options there, you know? So, you could do chicken in garlic with beef tallow, um, chicken in garlic with olive oil, and it's a very different flavor experience. So, th- this is a thing called the food matrix that I developed a, a long time ago. It was pretty prominent in my second book, Wired to Eat. So, just a little bit of variability there can really help, uh, uh, you know, getting some, some different flavor experiences there. Something we've noticed too, and this takes a little bit of planning, but if folks cook say like some beef, some chicken, and some shrimp, and they have a little bit of each, or maybe the meal is mainly beef with a little bit of chicken and shrimp... So, uh, one of the ways that we help limit people from overeating is actually limit- limiting palate options. We have fewer options there. So, from a caloric c- control perspective, that's a great strategy, but from getting a protein in, like you start... Uh, you're like, like ribeye is great, but by the time you get past your sixth or seventh ounce of ribeye, you're kinda like, "Oh man, this is getting to be a lot." But if you add a little bit of chicken to break it up, a little bit of salmon, or, or shrimp or something to break it up, so i- it takes a little bit of planning, but if you can get two or three proteins at, at a given meal-... then that can certainly help. And those have been two of the, the main strategies that we've recommended within our community, and people really do well with it. And sometimes, it, it's just, uh, you get a piece of steak, and then you've got a can of salmon, and you put some mayonnaise in the salmon. And like, you, you do half of that and then save half of it for the next deal, and then, uh, that rolls over to your next day, and you scramble the salmon into some eggs. And then that, that flavor combination is different than just salmon by itself or eggs by itself. So, you start getting some of these combos going. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 36:51 That is because you're coming at the meals from a protein base.

Robb Wolf 36:56 Yes.

Chris Williamson 36:56 Whereas most people would maybe look at it from, uh, either a carb base or a, a vegetable base.

Robb Wolf 37:02 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 37:02 Like, if you were to say, "Here's your meal," and all the vegetables in it are spinach, and you're like, "Whoa, so you're telling me I've got like 150 grams or 200 grams of spinach in this one meal, and you want me to just eat that?" We'd say that was crazy. But it's very rare, unless you get, like, the seafood platter or a surf and turf or something at a restaurant, it's very rare that you go in and you go, "I'll have the chicken with beef, please."

Robb Wolf 37:25 Right.

Chris Williamson 37:25 That's just not what happens, and I think-

Robb Wolf 37:27 Right.

Chris Williamson 37:27 ... that that's now been rep- replicated when we cook for ourselves. The number of times that I have two different meats that I've made for myself in one meal is almost zero. So that's, I mean, that's a really good suggestion that I'm going to guess that if you were to do eggs on a morning, then putting some ham in with that or putting-

Robb Wolf 37:44 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 37:44 ... some tuna in with that is another good way to do it. How are you cooking? Have you got any advice about sort of exp- expedious ways to cook multiple different meats? Or what are some of your favorite ways to, to get the beef going-

Robb Wolf 37:57 Oh, man.

Chris Williamson 37:57 ... if, if you've got seafood going and, and chicken going at the same time?

Robb Wolf 38:01 Yeah, so it ... Having kids, like, that complicates it a little bit. Um, uh, you know, it's like one kid likes this. So I, I try to find things that pretty much the, the kids do eat what we put in front of them. But at the same time, like, just seeing your kid kind of pushing the same piece of meat around the plate and, like, trying to hide it. Like, I, I, I try to, to cater to them a bit. So, like, shrimp is something that both girls eat really well. Salmon is something that both girls eat really well. The shrimp we can get frozen, like we can get wild-caught frozen, and it's really easy to measure out how much we want, and that one lends itself to cooking. Like, I could cook it in butter. I could cook it in olive oil. I could cook it in butter and garlic. I could do, uh, olive oil and garlic. I could do some Thai seasoning. I could do some Indian seasoning. So again, with the ... And so maybe, um, I have some beef that's leftover. Like, we have a Traeger. It's like a pellet-fired, um, uh, uh, kind of, kind of grill. It's pretty big, and so I will cook three racks of ribs, uh, uh, eight to twelve hamburgers, and then, like, a couple of steaks. And then we freeze some of that, and, and we'll rotate that stuff through. So, um, I, and, and really for me, I, I'm able to kind of grind through stuff. Like, if I've got, uh, uh, three-quarters of a pound of meat, I'll just eat it, and I, I just get it done, and, uh, you know, I, I, I, I just do it. But for other folks, that's where they could have, say, like, some ribs, and then if they don't have the shrimp prepared, like, some frozen shrimp, you throw it in a pan, put some olive oil and a little bit of seasoning on it, then just put a lid on it, and it's gonna kind of steam. It's not gonna be the best shrimp you ever had in your life, but it's gonna be pretty damn good, and it's hard to screw it up, you know?

Chris Williamson 39:41 (laughs)

Robb Wolf 39:41 And it requires two minutes of time, you know? Just don't burn it, and it's gonna be edible and, and pretty good. And then I've got my, my two-protein combo there, you know, 30 grams of protein from the steak, 30 grams of protein from the shrimp, I'm, I'm good to go. Yeah. So-

Chris Williamson 39:57 What, what are the, um, the insights around the amount of protein that you can absorb per meal? There's some rumors around it's 35 grams, it's this sort of a ceiling within one sitting, anything on top of that just gets excreted out. Have you looked into this?

Robb Wolf 40:11 Yeah. It, it ... Y- you can absorb a lot. Now, you do start getting ... From an anabolic signaling perspective, it does start kind of plateauing out.

Chris Williamson 40:20 Diminishing, yeah.

Robb Wolf 40:22 Yeah, you do get diminishing returns on that. But you do also generally get really stable blood glucose levels. You still have the nu- the fact that protein, dense protein sources are nutritionally very dense. So, you're getting all these vitamins and minerals and, and whatnot that, that comes along. So I, I think it's a little myopic to just focus on, like, the anabolic response of the protein. Um, this is where I think, like, the one meal a day, the OMAD stuff, is really problematic. You ... It's really difficult to get enough anabolic signaling with one meal a day. Like, two meals, two meals and a snack, like, it makes it much more reasonable to, to, uh, support, like, maintaining muscle mass and, and whatnot. But yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 41:04 Got you. How about treats and sweet things when you're trying to control sugar? What do you go to?

Robb Wolf 41:11 I, I have some, uh, dark chocolates, and, and again, like, kind of catering to the kids, um, we've found some dark chocolates that they like, but they ... And, and what I try to do is find things that the whole family can enjoy but they self-regulate. I don't want to be the food cop at all, you know?

Chris Williamson 41:29 (laughs)

Robb Wolf 41:29 And uh, so we have some keto ice creams that are called Rebel. I'm not sure if you have this over in the UK, but it's like this, uh-

Chris Williamson 41:35 Well, the best we've got is sort of a, like a low-carb ice cream, but it's not going to be the same. Ours would be a, like a Halo Top or something like that.

Robb Wolf 41:41 Okay. Okay.

Chris Williamson 41:41 It's going to be nothing, nothing similar to keto, I don't think.

Robb Wolf 41:45 Th- this stuff is definitely better than a Halo Top, but I, uh, it's, um, it's good. But what's interesting, the, the kids will finish dinner. They'll be running around. They're like, "Hey, can I have some Rebel?" I'm like, "Absolutely." So, they, they go pull it out, and they scoop it up. They self- self-regulate. They self-serve. They have a bowl, and they're done. And every once in a while, like, uh, uh, there's a local, uh, ice creamery, uh, uh, Peak- Sweet Peaks, here, here in Montana. Their ice cream is amazing. It is not a self-regulatable deal. You know, like, the kids will have a much bigger bowl that they scoop for themselves, and then they finish the bowl, and then, like, 20 minutes later, they're like, "Can I have some more of that?" I'm like, "Tomorrow you can have some. Let's save some for tomorrow." So again, I try not to super be the food police guy. But I, uh, some keto ice cream, some dark chocolate.... uh, stuff like that. I, I try to find things that the kids... The kids really like chicharrones, the fried pork skins that are, that are flavored. Um, definitely a, kind of a southern thing, but, but, uh, uh, my mom was from Arkansas so I've, I've eaten those. So it's a salty, crunchy thing in- instead of, like, a potato chip. Kids love 'em. But it, it's also interesting. They'll get a bowl of 'em and they eat 'em and then they go put the bowl on the counter, and they're done. And so that's the stuff that I, I try to find that the kids enjoy it, but it's not that cocaine-like deal where it's like, "I need more." And so then they can start self-regulating. And we just have open discussion with the kids. We're like, "Yeah, this other ice cream tastes really good, but, like, we, we would eat the whole thing in one sitting, right?" And they're like, "Yeah." Okay. "And this is all the work that Mom and Dad do, is trying to help people, like, save their own lives from this amazing-tasting food." And so we, we just are really honest and open with them about that and we're like, "Someday you're gonna make your own decisions and you can do wh- whatever you wanna do, but a simple thing you can do is get the ice cream that's pretty good, but not so good that you're gonna eat the whole thing in one sitting." And they're like, "Okay, that makes sense." And, uh, so that's kind of how we, we monitor that across the board. Like, we try to have a variety of, of options, but stuff that, uh, all of us, um, can self-regulate on. Like, there are some kind of keto granolas and they're really good, like, to the tune that my wife's like, "Hide this." You know, because she'll just go back and go back and go back. And, and so it, it, it's funny, even with some stuff like that, they put a little honey glaze on it and, you know, they've got a, the, the mouth feel, the crunch and everything. It's got some cinnamon. Like, it's really good in a big-ass bag. You could crush the whole thing in a day-

Chris Williamson 44:29 (laughs)

Robb Wolf 44:29 ... easily, just each time you walk by, like, heck man, like a quarter cup. You know, super easy to do. And each quarter cup, it's like 200 calories or whatever, you know. So yeah. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 44:39 That's awesome.

Chris Williamson 44:40 What about training? How does ancestral health get applied to training? I know that you were the co-founder of the first ever and the fourth ever CrossFit affiliate.

Robb Wolf 44:50 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 44:50 What's, what's the paradigm? Draw me on a p- a spectrum from where CrossFit's at to sort of where you see health and training and physical fitness and stuff now.

Robb Wolf 44:59 Oh, man. That's a really good question. Um, I, I think the most important thing is whatever folks are going to stick to. Like, that-

Chris Williamson 45:07 Mm-hmm.

Robb Wolf 45:07 That's def- if your gig is walking or your gig is yoga and you just hate everything else, fine, fine. But the one pitch that I would throw out to people though is that as we age there is... We all have a, a potential for cancer and for heart disease and for neurodegenerative disease, but we all have a risk value of one. We have 100% risk of sarcopenia a- as we age, uh, age-related muscle loss. Like, we will lose muscle, strength, power, volume as we age. Now, we can dramatically change what happens with that based off of some, some smart training. And, uh, doing, like, a full body strength training session two times a week can dramatically, um, i- uh, mitigate the, the loss of muscle mass as we age. And so even if you have somebody that really hates strength training, they don't like being in the gym or whatever, um, you join, like, one of these key-in 24-hour fitness places that has a bunch of machines and you go and you, you hit one machine, say, like, it's a bench press, and you, you find a very light weight. You do it nice and easy for 15 reps, increase the weight, do it for 8 or 10 reps, increase the weight, do it for five, increase the weight, grind out two or three, and you're done. Now do a pull. And then you do your pull and now you do some sort of a leg movement, maybe do a little bit of bis and tris, delts, do some abs and low back, and you're done. Like, you're in and out of there in, like, 15 minutes doing this, uh, kind of, uh, superset type format. You're never gonna be a bodybuilder, you're never gonna be a powerlifter doing that, but, like, a really, like, time-efficient workout, um, minimum investment, maximum return, I, I, I think stuff like that is incredible. Some CrossFit type stuff can be a little bit like that too, um, but I, I just almost beg people to do, particularly out of that kind of, like, yoga and endurance athlete scene, it's like, "Running's great, cycling's great, but, uh, let's do something to fix your posture. Let's do something to keep some muscle mass in that upper body so when you crash your bike, hopefully your, your, uh, collar bone doesn't snap like a twig."

Chris Williamson 47:17 You don't get shattered.

Robb Wolf 47:18 And stuff like that.

Chris Williamson 47:19 Yeah, exactly.

Robb Wolf 47:19 Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 47:19 Split in two.

Chris Williamson 47:21 What about for yourself then? Obviously having had all of this time and exposure to CrossFit from nearly 20 years now, two decades of exposure to that, where do you or how do you try and optimize your training as someone who obviously did enjoy the high intensity, the heavy weight, the loading-

Robb Wolf 47:36 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 47:37 ... et cetera?

Robb Wolf 47:38 Uh, I do, e- everything physically now is kind of geared towards just doing Brazilian jiu-jitsu, so I try to do that two, two to four times a week. Uh, it's usually more like two for the most part. And then I do two days a week of strength training and it's a, a press, a pull, a hinge, a lunge, you know, a squat, something like that. Tends to be more like a five sets of five, uh, eight sets of three, like, kind of heavier...

Chris Williamson 48:06 Yeah.

Robb Wolf 48:06 In, in between I do a lot of mobility work from the Kinstretch FRC world because I, I noticed that, um, you know, because I sit a lot and whatnot, like, uh, uh, a- and the demands of jiu-jitsu. That mobility piece is another part. Like, the strength is really important, but also... And mobility isn't just stretching. Like, it's actually figuring out how the joint articulates and all that type of stuff. I remember I, I, um, I had to swerve to avoid hitting a deer and I hit kind of a curb and it knocked my car out of alignment and it took me, like, two days to get to the, the tire place and the, you know, the auto repair place.... and the tire that was kind of just a little cattywampus, it was destroyed. Like, it- it- and I didn't drive it that much, but properly aligned tires, like, they wear very, very slowly. And then you get it just a tiny bit out of alignment and it just shredded this thing. It stripped the tires off. And that's where, like, if you're doing any type of repetitive movement, your shoulders, your hips, you know, your knees, and things aren't tracking well, that's where you end up really destroying the joint surfaces. So, some amount of mobility work I- I think is really important. So, I mean, my- my main focus is jujitsu. I do a couple of days a week of some dedicated strength training, usually about one day, sometimes two, of some low intensity cardio, just kind of recovery stuff. Sometimes that's just wearing a weight vest and taking the dog for a walk. Sometimes it's putting on, uh, an episode of The Expanse and getting on my- my Airdyne and just kinda- kinda going at a nasal breathing pace, but th- that's most of what I do. And one thing I started doing in the- in the evenings, instead of doing any TV, we listen to some books on tape for the- for the kids and I just, uh, do, um, stretching while that's going on. I get my phone, I set a timer, I hold each position for, like, four minutes and- and, you know, I do almost an hour of stretching each night, but it's while we're hanging out as a- as a family.

Chris Williamson 50:03 It's crazy when you try and socialize something like that, assistants, recovery work, some sort of accessories, stretching, if you're just chatting away. I went to, um, CrossFit Reykjavik in Iceland-

Robb Wolf 50:15 Oh. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 50:16 ... a couple of years ago.

Robb Wolf 50:16 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 50:16 Have you ever been?

Robb Wolf 50:18 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 50:18 Yeah. So, I don't know when you went, 'cause they- th- this thing grows extra limbs like- like an octopus.

Robb Wolf 50:25 Crazy.

Chris Williamson 50:26 Um, and when I was there, the warm-up and mobility- warm-up and cool-down area, which is fully matted and looks like a BJJ gym-

Robb Wolf 50:35 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 50:35 ... it- it's kind of recessed right in the middle of a lateral gym. And from that viewing platform, you can see everything that's going on. So, everybody arrives and rather than standing by the reception desk talking shit, they sit on the mats and talk shit, but while they're sitting-

Robb Wolf 50:52 Right.

Chris Williamson 50:52 ... on the mats, they're doing stretching and they're rolling their arms out-

Robb Wolf 50:55 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 50:55 ... and maybe they've got a- a massage gun on themselves. And then everyone finishes and they go back there and everyone's finished and they're still doing the same. And it's- it was crazy while I was out there training, you realize just how much more you get done and how much- how much less painful. It's the same as listening to an audiobook while you go and do some steady state cardio or you've got a- a- one of your favorite TV shows on or something while you're on a bike. We had a Wattbike-

Robb Wolf 51:22 Right.

Chris Williamson 51:22 ... um, throughout lockdown. The- My buddies Jim Jordan very thankfully gave me a Wattbike, which I think saved me from probably about five kilos of body weight gain.

Robb Wolf 51:29 (laughs) Right.

Chris Williamson 51:30 And, um, yeah, I'd do podcast research. I'd be like, "Right, who've I got coming up next? Oh, I've- I've got Robb Wolf. Right. I'll watch Robb Wolf on the, like, HMVN, uh, podcast."

Robb Wolf 51:40 Right.

Chris Williamson 51:40 "Or whatever it might be." And I'd just pop it on and you think, "Right, it's a- it's a podcast at one and a half times speed." And before you know it, you think, "Well, that's 45 minutes of cardio I've got in. I needed to watch this thing-"

Robb Wolf 51:50 Right.

Chris Williamson 51:50 "... in any case." So yeah, I- I'm a big, big advocate of trying to, um, dampen down some of the inevitable boredom that comes from the repetitive-

Robb Wolf 52:01 Yep.

Chris Williamson 52:01 ... less exciting stuff of exercise by trying to pair it with something that's a little bit more exciting and interesting.

Robb Wolf 52:06 Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And it- it frees up th- th- that, uh... It's very time efficient. Like, you're- you're- you're getting some multitasking in, but multitasking in a way that doesn't make you crazy.

Chris Williamson 52:19 Yeah. It's not chaotic.

Robb Wolf 52:20 Most multitasking is... Yeah.

Chris Williamson 52:20 You know?

Robb Wolf 52:21 Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 52:21 Yeah. It-

Chris Williamson 52:22 it- th- that's a really good way to put it, because you're already in this presumably what- you're not gonna be doing this while it's a cognitively demanding task, like while you're trying to learn a new BJJ move or something like that.

Robb Wolf 52:31 Right.

Chris Williamson 52:31 You're not gonna be watching something. So, you're already probably somewhat parasympathetic.

Robb Wolf 52:36 Right.

Chris Williamson 52:36 You're already a little bit calm. You may be focusing on your breathing, you said moving at sort of a nasal breathing pace when you're on the Airdyne, and then you're watching this thing and it's ki- kind of a nice experience. So, you've maybe got to either do a little bit of research or watch your show or listen to your audiobook, but you don't have any of the guilt of having just spent the last hour on YouTube or Audible or whatever-

Robb Wolf 52:56 Right.

Chris Williamson 52:56 ... because you're, "Oh, God, I also got my training in." Yeah. I think, um- I think that's a really good way to do it. Talking about supplements, what is a supplement which people rely on too much

Chris Williamson 53:07 in your opinion?

Robb Wolf 53:08 I think probably, like, a multivitamin, like these high dose multivitamins. Um, when you look at, like, the amounts and the ratios of- of B vitamins in particular in these things, they're, uh- uh, way, way higher than what we would get from any type of food source in- in the-

Chris Williamson 53:27 Is that dangerous?

Robb Wolf 53:29 I think it could be. I think it could be. Like, we're really- these things are really important in, like, methylation pathways, which are important in, like, uh, uh, cancer regulation and whatnot. And in- and interesting aside, like, the- the studies looking at, say, like, s- vitamin supplementation use, it really doesn't- it- there doesn't seem to be much upside generally. Now, I do think some folks end up with some legitimate, um, deficiency scenarios and whatnot, um, particularly if you're kind of more vegan or vegetarian, like, uh, B vitamins, B12 in particular, are really, really important to supplement, but I'm kind of underwhelmed on that. Like, if somebody wanted to do a- a multivitamin as just kind of hedging their bet, I would find one where they recommend, like, six tablets a day and you only take one and maybe you take it every other day or something, like, really just kind of a- a really baseline kind of hedging of your bets. But trying to think about that, like, I- I think, like, just the general multivitamin is probably one of those things that I- I think is overused and- and, uh, could... Lauren Cordain ages ago made- made the case that, um, these super high levels of B vitamins could be problematic with different types of- of cancers. And it- it was really speculative, but I mean, there's some mechanistic stuff there that's kind of like, ah, I could- I could see where that could maybe be problematic.

Robb Wolf 54:50 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 54:50 What about a supplement which is too underused?

Robb Wolf 54:56 Maybe vitamin D. My, my, I would say actually creatine maybe, because like it seems like everybody should do creatine. Like it seems like no, no downside. It's neuroprotective, it's antioxidant. Um-

Chris Williamson 55:08 So even a non-athlete, even someone that's-

Robb Wolf 55:09 Yeah, even a non-athlete. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 55:11 ... yogaring?

Robb Wolf 55:12 Yeah, yeah. So maybe creatine. But uh, uh, man, if uh, if we could get everybody with like a, a spurty vitamin D lamp, I, I think that that would solve so many, so many problems. Like uh, you know, just uh, if we had community vitamin D lamps where you could just like go walk in, you know, strip down, zipper something closed, do three minutes front, three minutes back and, and then go about your day, like I, I think that that could be amazing for seasonal affective disorder, all these other things that we know were definitely vitamin D driven. Um, but the, the bugger there is that like supplementing, say like liquid vitamin D, um, it doesn't seem to do quite the same thing that getting it from the sun does, but it, it definitely seems to confer a benefit. So that's where like if we could rig up some sort of a, a smart UV supplementation process to generate that vitamin D would be

Robb Wolf 56:04 pretty cool.

Chris Williamson 56:04 How much better is the smart UV versus a oral supplement?

Robb Wolf 56:10 I don't know, but it, it just, um, there are some folks, uh, Pedro Bastos, he's, he's in, uh, Lisbon, Portugal. He's really smart on this stuff, as are some other, uh, physicians that are kind of, kind of uh, tight with him. Um, they, they understand the research on this much better than I do, but i- you know, kind of the limitations about how they are looking at vitamin D. Oftentimes also these vitamin D studies, they're, they're supplementing with really paltry amounts. It's like 400 IUs a day and you should be doing like 5,000 IUs a day to really start moving the, the needle at all. So there's a lot of, there's a lot of challenges within interpreting what's going on there. The stuff that we can hang our hat on is that it seems like when folks have adequate vitamin D levels, particularly from, from sunlight, like there's all this other stuff that happens, like it releases nitric oxide, it, it's immune modulating, um, kind of beta endorphin activation so you just kind of cognitively feel better. Um, we have more that we can hang our hat on with that, and then the supplementation side is just harder to kind of ferret out like what, what exactly is going on here.

Robb Wolf 57:21 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 57:22 Mm. What are your thoughts on nicotine? I'm seeing-

Robb Wolf 57:25 I like it.

Chris Williamson 57:26 I'm seeing more talk now about people reducing their caffeine intake and then using a nicotine gum or something else as a, a shorter acting stimulant.

Robb Wolf 57:36 I, I, I like it and I, I learned about it and-

Chris Williamson 57:38 What is that? What are you, what are you holding up?

Robb Wolf 57:39 It, it's the Nicorette... mints.

Chris Williamson 57:41 Okay, yeah. Is that gum?

Robb Wolf 57:43 It, these are mints, and I like the mints because the gum, I, I start getting like TMJ from chewing it too much. But um, uh, this first got on my radar when I was doing work for Naval Special Warfare, uh, Resiliency Program back in 2008, 2009, and it, what they wanted me to talk about was, uh, sleep, food, uh, booze, caffeine, and nicotine to, uh, different Navy SEAL groups, which was, was really cool and, and super interesting. And in trying to do my diligence, I, I wanted to look at the toxicology of nicotine, and when I really started digging in and looking at it, it was really interesting. I was like, man, the problem with this is the delivery system. Like tobacco is really, really bad for you. You know, it's a terrible carcinogen whether you're chewing it or, or smoking it, but just nicotine as a standalone item, can't quite call it a vitamin, but it, it does some really interesting stuff. And uh, one interesting thing is when you look at neurodegenerative disease among smokers, it's shockingly low, and this is kind of mind-blowing because neurod- the brain is so exposed to like oxidative stress, to microvascular stress. Like it, it, you know, it is so o- uh, uh, kind of exposed in that regard, but yet whatever it is that nicotine is doing, which it seems to be modifying like the, the dopamine re- uh, release and then clearly the, uh, nicotinic receptor sites, it's so beneficial that it, it, like I, I forget the exact numbers, but I want to say that among smokers the, the uh, incidence of Parkinson's and Alzheimer's is like 40% less, 60% less. Like it's stunningly less. And it's one of these things that medicine is just kind of like, "Nobody talk about this shit," you know? It, it, it... because it, it, it's too confusing, but then what it, it's fascinating there, that when you keep digging and digging, it, it, you find some articles that are like, "How do we get our patients who have successfully quit smoking off of nicotine gum?" And there's all this like back and forth and hand-wringing, and then you, you get to like this final page and there's a WebMD article that's like three pages long, it's remarkably long, and then it finally wraps it up and it's like maybe this isn't that big of a deal. It's almost like the person started the process like I did and they kept working their way through, and then they get to this spot and they're like, "At the end of the day, there's none of the health, det- detrimental health effects that we see with uh, nicotine gum and, and mints relative to tobacco ingestion." So maybe it's not that big of a, a deal, but it, I, I, I, I can ping you that, that article. It's really, it's kind of interesting. It's like it was a, a uh, uh-

Chris Williamson 1:00:30 Journal.

Robb Wolf 1:00:31 ... a journal or a train of consciousness thing that they just wrote, 'cause they clearly had kind of one orientation at the beginning and then this thing... WebMD articles are not typically like four pages long and this thing kept going and going. And so yeah, I'm a, I'm a big fan of the stuff it's d-

Chris Williamson 1:00:45 What do you use it for?

Robb Wolf 1:00:47 I, I just use it for uh, kind of focus, and, and interestingly also, um, although my gut health issues have improved a ton over time, um, it just seems to improve my, my digestion and my gut health, and, uh, this is another...... interesting thing when you, when you look at, like, ulcerative colitis, Crohn's. Um, those things tend to improve if people begin smoking and tend to worsen if they stop smoking. And so, it- it is just another one of those. Definitely the digestive part, and then also kind of the neurocognitive part. Yeah, I mean, I usually-

Chris Williamson 1:01:19 So, you use it as a nootropic. How, what's dosage and timing?

Robb Wolf 1:01:23 Uh, I take a four milligram mint and I bite it in half so it's two milligrams, and then I just stick it between my, my lip and just let it dissolve, kind of.

Chris Williamson 1:01:32 Oh, is that how it works? Is it sublingual?

Robb Wolf 1:01:35 Thi- this one is, yeah. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:01:36 Got you, got you. Okay, yeah.

Robb Wolf 1:01:37 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:01:38 Um, something that you might be interested in. Scott Alexander from Slate Star Codex. Do you, are you fami- familiar with his work?

Robb Wolf 1:01:45 Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:01:45 Okay, so he's now on, um, uh, what's he on? Substack as AstralCodex10.

Robb Wolf 1:01:51 Yep.

Chris Williamson 1:01:51 He just released, within the last-

Robb Wolf 1:01:54 Like, the 200 or 20, uh, uh, uh, nootropics that are

Chris Williamson 1:01:58 Yeah, have you seen it? Did you watch it?

Robb Wolf 1:02:00 I, I have not watched it yet. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:02:02 Oh, you watched it? Read it? I listened to it on the podcast that an Australian dude does of it, um, which was actually-

Robb Wolf 1:02:08 Oh, okay.

Chris Williamson 1:02:08 ... totally awful to listen to because he's just describing what's in a bar chart. Um, so that, that was a really awful one to listen to.

Robb Wolf 1:02:15 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:02:15 But I was listening to it earlier on today. It was like torture. Um, but yeah, they go through ... Dude, they go through all sorts. There's probably 50 plus compounds in there. Um, he gets rid of a few that have got such a small, uh, number of suggestions that it kind of wouldn't make sense to put it in there.

Robb Wolf 1:02:30 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:02:31 But it's, there's people talking about microdosing LSD, where that ranks, microdosing psilocybin, But like, uh, NMD, NAD, everything. And, um, that's, that was fascinating. I'm gonna ... It's saved to my Pocket to watch later. So yeah, I'm gonna, uh, I'm gonna have a little look at that. I thought that was really, really interesting.

Robb Wolf 1:02:49 W- when I look, uh, next to the screen that you are in, I have a tab open with that Astral Codex, uh, topic, right, ready to, like-

Chris Williamson 1:02:57 No way.

Robb Wolf 1:02:58 ... ready to roll. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:02:59 How funny.

Robb Wolf 1:03:00 That guy is brilliant. That guy is brilliant. He's, he's operating on a whole different level. Like, uh-

Chris Williamson 1:03:06 Dude.

Robb Wolf 1:03:08 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:03:08 He-

Robb Wolf 1:03:08 I, I don't know if I would love hanging out with that guy or I would want to, like, throttle him, he's so smart. Like I, I, it would be either/or. I don't think it would be any middle ground. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:03:18 The thing that I think is most terrifying about Scott is his ability to write clearly.

Robb Wolf 1:03:24 Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:03:25 He has the least barriers, the-

Robb Wolf 1:03:29 Fluff.

Chris Williamson 1:03:30 ... the fewest restrictions from brain to fingertip of, of potentially anyone that I know. So, you had, um ... Who did Doors of Perception? Aldous Huxley, right?

Robb Wolf 1:03:39 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:03:39 So you, what, what you did, what we did i- in the '60s and '70s was we needed somebody with the linguistic capability to describe this incredibly complex experience. So, what happens? We find, like, the writer of the era, right? And we call him in like the champion to come slay the dragon. And we say, "Right, okay, you're going to experience this thing that basically few people struggle to put into words. T- try your best. Tell us what you see." And what Scott does, for free, every single day for 15 years, is try and wrangle the chaos of the entire world and all of his inner sort of, uh-

Robb Wolf 1:04:16 Right.

Chris Williamson 1:04:17 ... vacillations as well, um, and he puts them ... Dude, he did one. Have you read one called Untitled? It was about, uh, feminism.

Robb Wolf 1:04:24 Yep.

Chris Williamson 1:04:25 Yeah.

Robb Wolf 1:04:25 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:04:25 Man, that is ... It's a, a magnum opus of someone being able to go from, uh, to just see clearly. He sees what's going on, and then he's able to repurpose it into words. The man is, is phenomenal. I love him.

Robb Wolf 1:04:43 Yeah. Amazing guy.

Chris Williamson 1:04:43 But I'm terrified of him at the same time. (laughs)

Robb Wolf 1:04:45 I, he only got on my radar maybe about nine months ago. Somebody forwarded a piece that he did, um, The Only Thing I Can't Tolerate Is Intolerance. And it was so ... I thought it was completely in response to, like, the current cancel culture scene. It was written in, like, 2008. And I, I was just like, "Oh my God." Like, "This is amazing." You know? And, and so prescient. Like, really, really incredible. And then I was ... Oh, I just went-

Chris Williamson 1:05:13 Safe.

Robb Wolf 1:05:13 ... so far down that rabbit hole. I'm like, "Who is this guy?" You know? Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:05:17 It's endless. It's one of those people. It's, it's the fortune, I'm sure, that you have it with your show as well. And, and, and now this will be episode 320 something. Um, it's great because when you find a new creator that you really like and then you realize that they have this sort of Alexander's library of, of past-

Robb Wolf 1:05:35 Right.

Chris Williamson 1:05:35 ... content, and you think, "God, I can ... I, I, I don't need to listen to anyone else or read anyone else for the rest of my life."

Robb Wolf 1:05:40 Right.

Chris Williamson 1:05:40 "I can just go through, I can just go through this." Um, a couple of, a couple of other blog posts of his that I absolutely adored. So, Meditations on Moloch-

Robb Wolf 1:05:48 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:05:49 ... um, is the single best thing I've ever read.

Robb Wolf 1:05:51 Wow.

Chris Williamson 1:05:51 Um, so it's about 25,000, 30,000 words. So, it's a few, couple of hour read, but it's outstanding. It's, it's absolutely amazing. It's very profoundly sort of changed the way that I see the world. And then he did another one about, um, Is It The Only Thing I Can't Bear Is The Out Group?

Robb Wolf 1:06:08 Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yep.

Chris Williamson 1:06:08 And it's talking about in, in-group, out-group differences.

Robb Wolf 1:06:11 Yep.

Chris Williamson 1:06:12 And that's really interesting 'cause I had, um, I had a, a sociologist on recently, and he was talking about the fact that before 2012, both Democrats ... Oh, specifically Democrats, they preferred their own party, members of their own party-

Robb Wolf 1:06:27 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:06:27 ... to the hatred of the other party. But in 2012, the reason that Democrats voted Democrat wasn't that they loved other, other Democrats. It was that they hated the opposite side more.

Robb Wolf 1:06:38 Right.

Chris Williamson 1:06:38 So, their hatred was a motivation greater than their like. And that, simply understanding that, which is explained in In-Group vs Out-Group by Scott, explains so much-

Robb Wolf 1:06:49 Everything.

Chris Williamson 1:06:49 ... of what's going on.

Robb Wolf 1:06:50 Yeah, yeah. And it, and it paints a really, um, dangerous and kind of depressing picture because it's going to be very difficult to unfuck and walk all that back. Like, it, it's, it's, it's bad news. Like, it is really, really bad news. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:07:08 Rob, man, thank you so much for today. It's been a while coming. I'm very, very glad we managed to finally get it done.

Robb Wolf 1:07:14 A, a huge honor being here. Uh, r- really enjoyed the time, and thank you for, uh, uh, putting up with the multiple schedule tweaks we had to do.

Chris Williamson 1:07:22 Do not mention it. So, uh, drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom. I was chatting to Blake earlier on, so we've got something set up for the listeners for that.

Robb Wolf 1:07:30 Oh, awesome.

Chris Williamson 1:07:31 Um, where else should people go? They want to find out about this, the health revolution stuff.

Robb Wolf 1:07:36 Uh, The Healthy Rebellion is-

Chris Williamson 1:07:37 Yep.

Robb Wolf 1:07:37 ... join.thehealthyrebellion.com. And they can check out the, the podcast, uh, same title, Healthy Rebellion Radio, and you kind of get a sense of a lot of what we're up to. We kind of describe what goes on in The Healthy Rebellion, and also we just do a lot of Q&A. Uh, my, my wife and I do that. Yeah. And that's most of where I'm at. I'm not on ... I have stuff that looks like me on social media, but it's, it's, uh, mainly me writing stuff and my assistant posting it. You won't get a response on social media from me. That's for sure.

Chris Williamson 1:08:05 Well, if it's helping you sleep, I think it's worthwhile. Rob, brother.

Robb Wolf 1:08:08 It is. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:08:08 Thank you so much for coming on.

Robb Wolf 1:08:10 Thank you. Take care.

Chris Williamson 1:08:11 Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that, then press here for a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last few months. And don't forget to subscribe. It makes me very happy indeed. Peace.