Charis & Alex: Foundation Video
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Cortisol is so demonized "Oh, you have to lower your cortisol," or, "Your cortisol is too high," or whatever, and really we want our cortisol to be high in the morning.
Welcome back to the Harness Your Health podcast. I am here today with my friend Alex, who is a nutrition student, and we are going to go back to basics. We're gonna talk about the foundational things that really every person needs to know [00:00:30] for their health, and why I even started this podcast, why I do everything that I do, and try and get this information out to you.
So thank you for being here, Alex, and this is gonna be fun. Of course. I'm excited to go back to the basics. Awesome. It's always more fun to have these as conversations than for, me to just do it on my own. So I think you know this because you know me and everything that I stand for, but I think what I really want people to know and why we list [00:01:00] the foundations assessment that I created in the show notes for every single one of our podcast episodes is that this is really a great place for anyone to start.
Anyone who is just looking to improve their health, looking to maintain their health looking to overcome a health condition or disease or anything, this is such a foundational way of looking at your health that it really applies to anyone. Yeah, it's like a, a handbook. We [00:01:30] weren't ever given a handbook for how to live properly.
Yeah. Which I think a lot of people could use, including myself. Yeah. I just love that they, that you said that because I really do feel that way. I've had a lot of questions from people who are like is this for your type of client that you take care of, or is this for a certain type of person?" And I'm like, "It's really for anyone."
It could be for your children even, it's just the foundational way that our bodies are built, and that's really [00:02:00] what we're gonna talk about today. We're gonna try and explain that so that people understand, and then also talk about what a good functional day should look like, and then what our modern society and just some of the things that most people have going on, how that impacts it and creates dysfunction and really disrupts your biology.
And so that's what we're gonna get into. Yeah, it's if you have two thumbs and you're breathing, this is for you. [00:02:30] That's awesome. Even if you don't have two thumbs, I would say. You don't have to have two thumbs. If you are supposed to have thumbs. Yes. That's awesome. I love it. Okay. So let's just start from the beginning.
First of all, maybe I should just mention the assessment. So the assessment is a 37-question assessment. It's really quick. It takes maybe five, maybe 10 minutes if you're really putting a lot of thought into the answers. But I think really you should just be answering the, what comes to the top of your mind when you read the question.
It's very [00:03:00] simple and straightforward. And it's very simple. You literally take the assessment, you put your email in there, it gives you an email at the end and tells you what your priorities are based on how you answered it. And so the way I like to explain this is in the realm of circadian rhythm, because the sun comes up every day, the sun goes down every day.
And sure, at different places in the world, that's at different times. That's not the point. The point is that happens and that our [00:03:30] biology and physiology, the way our body functions is very in rhythm with that, or it should be. And that's really how we've evolved as humans. And so when we make our daily rhythms aligned with that, then it's only setting up all of our processes in our body for success.
Yeah, people don't think about it 'cause it's so simple up until I was, probably 26, I ... That didn't apply to me. I was invincible. Of course. Then like, as you get [00:04:00] older you're like, "Oh, okay, maybe I need to, you know- Yeah
figure out how this is supposed to work." I'm not this invincible, 21-year-old not caring, but like- Yeah ... now I'm like, "Okay," "I'm starting not to feel great. My actions have consequences, so let's figure out what the sun does." And like, ... why it's important to me.
What is the whole point of this? Right. If you want to look into a little bit of research about this, we can put some information in the show notes about some of the research. There are some very predominant researchers who have done a lot [00:04:30] of research in this area, and this is how I learned about it.
So I think rather than bringing it up here, maybe we'll just go into that. I'll put some links in the show notes so you can look into it a little bit. But this is really the whole premise, is that your m- day starts with the light, at least that's how it did when we were much less evolved. Now we have lights in our homes, we have lights on our phones, like, all the things.
But really, the sun came up and we were outside, and so that is step number one. And [00:05:00] so the way I like to think about this in a healthy way or a functional way, is going outside in the morning, preferably first thing when you wake up. So , what most people do, and I would put myself into this category sometimes, is they look at their phone, right?
So you're like, "What's on my calendar today? What do I need to do? Did I get anything important overnight?" And so that is telling your brain, that is sending a light signal to your brain, but it's definitely not the light signal that we want, because the [00:05:30] sun has all kinds of different rays that are much healthier and have much better purpose for predominantly our hormone alignment.
We're gonna talk about that a little bit more. But- that is really what we're talking about. We want the sunlight to come in through your eyes and for that to signal to your brain that's, it's morning. It's morning time. It helps you feel more alert pretty instantly. If someone ever wakes up from a poor night's sleep, I always suggest to them to go [00:06:00] outside, and usually that's not what they wanna do.
They kinda wanna hole up and cuddle in on the couch or whatever, right? 'Cause you're feeling really tired. But that is the most important thing. So no sunglasses. Go outside. You can experiment with the different amounts of time that you're out there, but I would say if this is really hard for you, just start with five minutes.
And what about if it's cloudy? Yeah, so if it's cloudy, you definitely need a little bit more time outside. But I would say that even if it's [00:06:30] cloudy, it's more light than when it was dark, right? So you're still gonna get the effects from having it. And I just always tell people to not beat yourself up about this if you don't have a ton of extra time or if you're trying to restructure your morning so that you can do this.
Just be consistent. Consistency is always better than saying, "Oh I can't spend 20 minutes out there, so I'm not gonna do it at all." Just at least do something.
I live in western New York, so for [00:07:00] eight months out of the year I can't go outside. Yeah. Is a bright window fine?
Yeah, so windows have a natural coating on there that deflects some of the rays that we're really trying to get you exposed to. So it's probably better than nothing, but it's definitely not ideal. So when you say that you can't go outside, why is that? Let's say it's like a snowstorm or it's like -10 degrees or something, which now that I think about it, [00:07:30] probably doesn't happen that much.
Yeah. And I think I would definitely use that as an excuse if it was cold. But- ... what I'm gathering is you're saying bundle up and get out there. Yeah, that is what I'm saying. Yeah. Yeah. So like I live in Colorado, and we're lucky that we have a lot of sunshine here, especially in the morning. And the other day I woke up and it was raining, which is very unusual.
And so I was like, "Oh." And I grew up in Oregon, so I'm not, definitely not afraid of the rain. But I didn't really wanna go and stand outside in the rain. And so [00:08:00] I just... We have a covered front porch, and so I just sat on my front porch. So I wasn't like directly in the sun, but the light was there. So I would just say even if it's a snowstorm or even if it's cloudy, like you mentioned before, it's lighter than if it was dark.
So from a ray perspective, like the different rays that are coming through, I wouldn't get hyperfocused on that. Yeah. But literally just think about that it's light versus dark. How does it affect my day if I [00:08:30] don't? - ... What if I wake up, roll out of bed, straight to the shower on my way to work?
Yeah. So the beauty of the light is it really is a hormonal cascade that it signals in your body. So many people have heard of hormones. A lot of times when we think about hormones, we're thinking about sex hormones. If someone says, "Oh, I need to take hormones or balance hormones," or something like that, automatically I think people think about estrogen, progesterone, testosterone.
But you have so [00:09:00] many hormones. I don't even remember how many there are, honestly, but it's like 80 or 90 hormones. And hormones are all very intimately connected together. And so the circadian rhythm is influenced by your hormones. So when you don't go outside and get that light and especially if you have a bad night's sleep, then your brain just automatically never really turns on.
You might feel less alert. It's gonna affect other hormones. A lot of times people [00:09:30] feel like they don't feel hungry in the morning. That can be from that. And so that is often used as an excuse to not eat breakfast in the morning. And if you have dysregulation in your nervous system, you have a lot of stress in your life, there's other things going on energy-wise, you don't feel very good- It's gonna dysregulate all of that.
And so it sounds so simple that just that light is gonna do those things for you, but it really does. It's a complete [00:10:00] cascade. It's also really influential on digestive hormones. Your digestion is more on point in the morning, and so it really is very dysfunctional to not eat in the morning.
And then if you add coffee or caffeine on top of that's like a double whammy for improper hormone function. And that's crazy 'cause I feel like nowadays everyone is so rushed, and that is a [00:10:30] typical morning for a lot of people is get up, coffee, get in the car, go to work.
I feel like that's so normalized now. Yeah. Which is- Yeah, I think, I consider myself the supreme problem solver, and I don't think that every person has to do this exactly the same way.
I tend to work with a lot of people who work in the healthcare system, and so a lot of times they are getting up before the sun is even up, and they don't really have a choice. They have a shift that starts at 6:30 or 7:00 or something. And [00:11:00] so we work together to figure out how you could get some sunlight in, in your morning without it being if you have to take a shower when you get up and it's still dark outside, right?
And so there's lots of different things you can do, but I would just say that if this is you and you're thinking, "Oh I can't do that 'cause I can't fit that in," I would just challenge you to think that is a belief that you have that you can't fit that into your morning, and you just need to reassess your morning.
[00:11:30] What is your morning routine? And if you wanna give this a try, it's absolutely free. It's accessible to most people. I can't really think of anyone... I guess you could say- people who live in parts of the world where you don't get the sunlight or whatever, that's gonna be a lot harder obviously, but that's a pretty small amount of people.
I think anybody could really figure out how to do this in their way. Take your coffee, take your breakfast, take your dog, take your child, like [00:12:00] anything, take people outside. I'm constantly kicking my teenagers outside, and they don't like it very much, but if they're grouchy in the morning, it's like, "Go outside."
Yeah. And then, so after that, that's the perfect morning. Yeah. Sunlight, eating within an hour. Yep. And then- Yes ... yeah, what's next? Now, I didn't mention this, really what we're looking for is like a healthy cortisol response pretty quickly when you wake up. We want your cortisol to get, [00:12:30] be up and elevated in the morning because that is what helps you get going in the morning.
It's just a function of how our bodies work. And the normal cortisol curve is to go, it goes down gradually as the day goes on, and then it's low at night, and that way melatonin can be high, and I know we'll get to that. Cortisol is so demonized "Oh, you have to lower your cortisol," or, "Your cortisol is too high," or whatever, and really we want our cortisol to be high in the morning.
We want a proper cortisol curve. You can have [00:13:00] dysfunctional cortisol curves, And we can do a whole episode on that but really that's what we're looking for. And so we don't want something to amplify our cortisol like caffeine. We want that c- to come from light if you need help with that, and it really works very well to adjunct your cortisol.
So that's really the morning, just like you described, like getting outside and getting light, feeling alert and awake, eating something so that you feel like your body has some nutrition and some [00:13:30] nutrients to help it run throughout the day and you're not just fueling on caffeine or, something to keep you going.
And then a little bit later in the day, like midday, people often describe that they have lunch and then they have really poor energy after lunch. And this is actually physiologically pretty typical that in the middle part of the day or the middle part of the afternoon that, like 8 to 10 hours after you woke up, that you have lower [00:14:00] energy.
That's not a really horrible thing but obviously in our modern culture many people are working, They have to function. And so there's a lot of different things you can do to help with energy later in the day. But again, this is, s- this is where we bring in the concept of blood sugar and we're thinking about energy production in the body because many people are eating something for lunch that's really gonna kinda put them on a blood sugar pendulum or a blood sugar swing, and [00:14:30] then they're gonna crash in the afternoon.
So you have this normal physiological kinda downturn of your energy, and then you also ate a bunch of carbs or sugar for lunch, and then you crash really hard at like, 3:00 or 4:00.
Yeah, even like breakfast too, when I, I was younger I would eat the, cereal or whatever and i, I feel like that really set me up poorly for the day.
And then at 2:00 PM, 3:00 PM
I always... I called that my lay down time because- ... like [00:15:00] in college I was like, "That's my lay down time," 'cause I always would get so tired. Yeah. And then, sometimes coffee even made me more tired at that point. Like- Interesting ... my blood sugar was just out of control.
Yeah. And I now realize that slump, the afternoon slump that I think probably everyone experiences- ... had to do with what I was eating. I had no idea once I started, adding fiber and protein and having a protein breakfast I was like, "Oh, I feel great.
I don't need a coffee at [00:15:30] 2:00 PM." Maybe like, once in a while, but once I really honed in on managing and making my blood sugar stable the ebbs and flows that were supposed to happen, I thi- I felt the most incredible difference. Yeah That I didn't know, I didn't even know was a thing.
I didn't even know I could have that much effect over it. Like- Yeah ... it's crazy. It's so amazing to me because I think once people intuitively think about this, it makes total sense, right? But if you are growing up as a kid if you have cereal [00:16:00] is the perfect example. Cereal in your house, it's marketed to kids.
Parents buy it. If they take their kids to the store, the kids are asking for it. As soon as they have it, it's like all bets are off, they want the cereal. And so cereal inherently has very little protein, very little fat, and- ... you really need protein and fat and fiber, as you mentioned to sustain your energy levels throughout the day.
So that's what helps you go from eating breakfast at [00:16:30] 8:00 to lunch at noon without needing a snack, is you need- ... to eat enough for that. And it's not just from a calorie perspective. It's really a nutrient perspective. So protein, fats those things make such a huge difference when paired with a carbohydrate.
It's not that you don't get the carbohydrate, it's just that you eat that and then your blood sugar goes up, and your body naturally wants to get that down, so it releases a hormone called insulin to make that [00:17:00] happen. And so when you're on this blood sugar rollercoaster during the day, let's say you eat cereal for breakfast and then you're starving two hours later, and so you grab some quick snack that's probably mostly carbohydrate centric, and then again you're just on this rollercoaster of up and down, then you're starving at lunch again.
Maybe your lunch is decent and decently well-rounded, maybe it's not, but then you have that natural kind of lay down time in the afternoon, and it's accentuated by this rollercoaster that you just [00:17:30] went on for the last six hours. It's no wonder- ... you're feeling exhausted. And w- I guess why would that feel like a rollercoaster?
What about insulin going so sharply down? 'Cause like when you think of a rollercoaster, if you're about, you're going really high up like pretty steeply, like you can only expect to come down pretty steeply. But what- Why does that feel so crazy? Like, why does that make me hungry?
Yeah, so really if we're talking about cereal or, [00:18:00] we could even add in here like a piece of toast or, A donut ... a Danish or donuts Yeah, I like donuts for breakfast, yeah. Exactly. Anything like that's a traditional... Or if you go to work and they have a meeting and it's donuts and pastries.
All of those things have a lot of sugar and processed carbohydrates in them. And so what that does to your blood sugar is significantly more, increases it significantly more than if you also had protein and fat and fiber mixed with that. Let's say for [00:18:30] example you really want the donut. For me, I love maple bars.
I don't know what... I think it's a West Coast thing, but maple bars are my thing. I would- could never eat a full maple bar anymore, but I just want a bite of the maple bar, if I was going to a meeting and we were served something that was, like, protein, fat, and some carbs and I wanted a slice of the maple bar, I would cut a piece of it off and eat some of the maple bar with the rest of my meal.
And so what that does is when you eat [00:19:00] carbs with protein, fat, and fiber- It blunts the effect of the blood sugar in your body. And so instead of your blood sugar going from 80 to like, 120, it goes... That's what would happen with the protein, fat, and fiber. If you're eating carbohydrate on its own, if you just ate the Kind bar by itself or you ate the cereal by itself, it might shoot up to 150 or something.
It's a much higher spike of blood sugar, and that's much more alarming to the body. So then the body releases insulin. [00:19:30] It's in this alarm stage. It releases an amount of insulin to get the blood sugar out because it doesn't want excess blood sugar in your bloodstream. It tries to keep your bloodstream under very tight control, and so it's moving that blood sugar out.
It has to go somewhere and be stored somewhere as energy, so it's stored as fat. It's potentially stored as glycogen in your liver or your muscle, but it's out of your bloodstream. And so then what happens is your blood sugar comes down, and then if it was too much [00:20:00] insulin or the response was too much by the body 'cause it wasn't really sure what was happening, then it might drop down below that 80.
So now all of a sudden you have low blood sugar, and that makes you feel hungry, and it makes you feel jittery. And you're like, "Whoa, I need to eat again." And so that's where that mid-morning snack came in. You're like, "I'm shaky. I need to eat" and this was me when I was working as a nurse. I would eat something for breakfast, and even if I did try and eat a little bit of protein or fat I just [00:20:30] struggled to eat a big enough meal that I can make it to lunch.
And I'm on my feet. I'm busy, and so when I would get to lu- or get to that mid-morning time, I need to eat something with protein and fat to keep me going. Otherwise, you're just on this roller coaster of up and down where your body is putting more insulin out, and that's really what creates insulin resistance.
And it's not something that we want. That takes decades to develop, but we're talking about the day here and [00:21:00] now, right? We're not talking about decades from now, but just so people know 'cause they've probably heard about that. And so for your day, you're absolutely right that eating protein and fat in the morning sets you up for the rest of your day.
It is one of the most important things. I'm so glad you brought that up. Let's say I'm, like, having cake or whatever for the birthday.
If you eat a a vegetable before- ... could that lower the blood sugar? Yeah. They've actually done studies on that, that [00:21:30] eating fiber first before you eat something that's sugary or a lot of processed carbohydrate, or just saving that processed carbohydrate towards the end of your meal.
Let's say you're at a birthday party. You eat more of a well-rounded meal, so you eat some fiber, protein first, and then make sure there's a little bit of healthy fat in there. If you have that sugary piece of cake after, that it has much less impact on your blood sugar. It doesn't raise your blood sugar to the same degree as if you ate the cake, [00:22:00] like, all by itself.
My other question is I've also heard walking after a meal- does tremendous things for blood sugar. Is that- Yeah. There's some great studies on this too that w- that... Most of the studies are on walking. There's a great study about doing squats every hour that's related. But basically, the way to think about it is you're expending some sort of energy after your meal when your blood sugar is high.
So instead of your body just shuttling that blood sugar and [00:22:30] storing it as fat, which most people don't want you're gonna burn it. And so just by using your muscles to go for a walk, your leg muscles are some of the biggest muscles in your body or if you're doing squats or doing, like some people like to dance or do other things that are just gonna expend energy, your muscles are soaking up that energy and using that energy versus having that energy be stored.
I think if people are eating really well-rounded meals and they don't have a huge blood sugar spike [00:23:00] after their meal, they don't necessarily have to do that. Some people just like to have the practice of that, of doing the movement after they eat, and this can be, like, 10 minutes.
It doesn't have to even be very long. I make the excuse that I'm, if I'm gonna do laundry and walk up and down the stairs after, that counts, 'cause I think it does. It's the same idea. But just that you would expend that energy and it wouldn't be stored, and so, yes, it's not gonna have the same ping pong effect or [00:23:30] rollercoaster effect- Yeah
Makes sense. So then when we're getting to dinner time, and this is, I mentioned bookends of the morning or the beginning, but I didn't really describe it. Really, I like to think of this as the bookends of your day. And so the way to get started thinking about this is how am I starting my morning and how am I finishing my day?
And so people eat dinner at so many various times all throughout the day, right? And so it's hard also with time [00:24:00] change, so if in the winter here, the sun goes down behind the mountains at 4:30, 5:00. It's dark, right? And so in the summer, it's much... We have much more daylight, which is great, but, like, how does that influence your eating?
And so I think in the summer people tend to eat later. It's a little bit more social. I would imagine in western New York where it's cold, most people aren't outside in the winter eating dinner. And so it's really, the way to think about [00:24:30] it is, like, where's my dinner timed for when I'm going to bed?
And so if you normally go to bed at, let's say, 10:00, it's good to have your dinner finished at the minimum two hours before you're gonna go to bed. It would be even better to have it be three hours. But if this is hard for you, I would just start with something. Pick one number, even if it's an hour, and then gradually work your way backwards from that. If your blood sugar is higher and your insulin is up to get that blood [00:25:00] sugar down, then you cannot have an appropriate melatonin response. And a melatonin is really the opposite hormone for cortisol as far as on a graph if you look at it.
So cortisol should be high in the morning and low at night, and melatonin should be high at night and low in the morning, and they're just ping-pong from each other. And so if you have high insulin circulating in your body because you ate a meal or anything that's gonna raise your blood sugar, it is gonna [00:25:30] completely suppress your melatonin.
And there's a lot of people who take melatonin to sleep, and so that's basically also suppressing your body's own natural production of melatonin. Now, melatonin can be really helpful for jet lag and different situational things, but on an everyday basis, taking it because you can't fall asleep because you're really full or 'cause you're wired after eating and you ate really late, this is the number one thing to work on at the end of the day.
[00:26:00] Eating At least two hours early- Yeah. Two- ... and your body should be able to create the melatonin that it needs, right? Yeah. Two to three hours. And, I would say if you're eating a lot of carbohydrate at your dinner, you probably need to have a larger window of time in there, just because it takes that much time to get that carbohydrate out of your bloodstream, or the blood sugar down, and the insulin coming down.
And so, you know, nothing happens instantaneously. It's not [00:26:30] like your insulin drops and then your melatonin goes up, it takes a little time- ... for things to happen. And if you're, like, going out, let's say you're going out to dinner with friends or something, and you know you're gonna be eating pizza or pasta or something like that's has a lot of carbs in it, then maybe just think that you need to , make your bedtime even a little bit later, or try and push the dinner a little bit earlier if you can.
You can't always do that. So again it's not like getting hung up on every day here. On the, some of the days that are a little more of [00:27:00] the outlier that you can't always control the timing as much, it's like all those other days that you really can control, what can you do here? Yeah stuff happens.
Y- it's, it can't be perfect, but- insulin resistance doesn't happen overnight. But if you keep doing the same thing every day, that's h- how it happens overnight. Exactly. What happens is that everything is silent but still happening inside your body, and then you can find out if you poke and prod a little [00:27:30] bit and know what to look for.
But then you get the symptom someday or your, the signal from your body, right? And then you're like, "Why am I feeling this way?" It's been brewing for a long time. The other part about the nighttime or the, the end of the day bookend is light, back to light again.
Like ideally, if we were outside viewing the sun going down and watching that process actually happen so that your body is getting triggered and your brain is getting triggered by the light going [00:28:00] down and then not being influenced by light, and this is w- probably one of the hardest things for people to do.
But there are so many simple things you can do. It could be simply just turning a lot of your lights off or down, dimming them having low light in your house, like signaling your body. If you have kids, this is like the number one thing to do if your kids are, like, wound up at night. Turn the lights down, because they normally have pretty good circadian rhythm.
[00:28:30] And it really is helpful to get them to unwind. A lot of people use screens, to unwind- ... themselves or to unwind for their children. And I would just say you have to be really careful about the blue light that comes through your screen. It blocks melatonin. It definitely can disrupt your rhythm, and so it would be better to have s- intentional time before you actually go to sleep where you're not on a screen at all.
And so that is something that most people have to [00:29:00] really look at as an individual process of what is my routines and how can I, influence my habits to make this better for me? It sounds like the eyes are very sensitive to hormone production- Yeah ... which is interesting. Remember, a lot of hormone feedback and production and/or feedback comes through your brain.
So really the light is coming through your eyes, but it's signaling to your brain, and these foundational parts of your brain [00:29:30] that help regulate hormones. And remember what I said at the beginning is that hormones are all interconnected. They often feed off each other, and so that's really the trouble with taking something like melatonin for sleep, is then you're affecting other hormones potentially, and you don't even realize that.
Working with your body's own natural rhythm is the best way to optimize your own natural hormone function, which affects- Yeah ... your energy, which affects your blood sugar regulation, [00:30:00] which affects everything. And so it's that's why this part is just so foundational. So I developed just a short guide that we will put the link in the show notes for everyone who's listening that you can, the way you can get started with this. I think still ultimately taking the assessment and figuring out what your priority is for your body based on how you're answering those questions, but then secondarily, this PDF is really help you establish the bookends.
So [00:30:30] it will review what we've talked about here and how you can get started. Most everyone asks me "Do I start at night? Do I start in the morning?" I really feel like the best way to start is in the morning and build your routine as the day goes on. But for some people it might make more sense to start at night if their night is just really dysregulated.
And so just really think about your own habits and where you are struggling and what would influence you the most, because just like you said, these habits build on each [00:31:00] other, and they're very simple, and if we try and do a 180 and change everything all at once, most of the time nothing will stick. We just try and willpower our way through it.
But if we make these small, actionable changes that will build on each other, and then all of a sudden we're like, "I don't even remember that I used to do the, that other thing," and you just replaced it with a different kind of habit. Yeah, and I think what's cool about the next, three or four weeks of the series that you're starting [00:31:30] is that it gives us a reason to do it because I think it's really a lot easier to have a habit if you understand why you're doing it.
Yes. And I don't think... I think a lot of people are doing a lot of things and don't understand why. Yes. And I think if you understood why, I think you, it would give you a lot more motivation to do, why you should eat, a protein, fat, and carbs in a meal, or why you should see the sun. Having those tools in your toolbox- and [00:32:00] knowing why you have the tools. Like I have a Phillips-head because when I have a screwdriver that needs a Phillips-head, I use a Phillips-head. Yeah. So I think that's what's gonna be really cool about this series. Yeah, absolutely. So really we set this up so this is the r- overview episode, and then next week we're going to release the gut series, which will basically be a little bit different than how we've done it before, and this is how the, all the little mini series will come out, is we'll do a three-part series on the gut, [00:32:30] which
The gut is like one of the most talked about topics in health. People know and realize that the gut is so foundational, but they don't completely understand how to address it, or they think that they have to do all these extreme things to address it. And so step one with the gut is to do the foundational things that we talked about today, and then step two that we'll go into next week with the little miniseries is really how your digestion works, how your immune system and [00:33:00] your gut barrier works, and your microbiome.
Those three things together are gonna pull a lot of this information together for people, I think, so they really understand, like you said, the why, and why this is important, and how you can make some changes for yourself. I'm excited. I think it's a very popular topic right now. Yeah. People want to know more In a digestible-
pun intended way. Yeah, for sure. Yep. So stay tuned [00:33:30] for that. We'll have that series. We'll have a series on the nervous system because the nervous system is another pillar in my assessment, and we'll talk about the coordination of that with digestion, circadian rhythm the gut. And then a miniseries on nutrition, and then we're gonna do a whole episode on hormones because we talked about hormones a little bit today, but I'm gonna explain a little bit more of the cascade so that people understand, like, how priority hormones work in the body, [00:34:00] like where sex hormones come in.
What about all these other hormones that we're hearing about, like GLP-1 ghrelin, leptin, hunger hormones? There's so many different hormones, and I really wanna help people to make sense of that so that they can understand that really the premise for me is just to stop thinking about our health in like, I can't sleep, what do I take for sleep, right?
It's what if the answer to your sleep problem was your circadian [00:34:30] rhythm, was your bookends of your day? That would be a better place to start than be like, what supplement or medication do I take to sleep? Because that's not really fixing your sleep problem. And if you really wanna get to the bottom of this any health situation you have to do it with the building of these foundational principles.
And only, you know your habits, so- Exactly ... it makes it, you know what you're doing. Exactly. You know if you're not, if you're not getting morning light in the morning. [00:35:00] Yeah. And so just be honest with yourself- Yeah ... and gentle with yourself. You don't ha- like I said before, you don't have to do a 180.
You just literally need to start with one structured thing. And like you said these episodes are gonna be coming out over the next weeks, and so you could take some information from this episode now and think about what you're doing, and then implement something and work on that for a week, and be consistent.
And then see how you're feeling the following week, and reflect on that. And then listen [00:35:30] to those gut episodes and think about what's going on with your gut, right? And so I think it'll be really helpful for people. Thank you so much for being here, Alex, and thank you to the listener for being here as always.
Check out the Health Foundations assessment on my website. The link is in the show notes. And also that special bookends PDF, we'll have that link there as well as some of the research about circadian rhythm. So thank you for being here. Thanks.
The information shared on this [00:36:00] podcast is for educational and informational purposes only and should not be considered medical advice. I am not a medical doctor, and this content is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Please consult with a qualified healthcare professional before making any decisions related to your health, especially if you have a medical condition or are taking medications
