The Shocking Truth About Microplastics, EMFs, and Infrared Saunas | Dr. Stephen Cabral

Hey everyone, welcome to the Dr. Josh Axe Show. I am your host, Dr. Josh Axe. Each and every week I dive into the principles and science behind how to grow in body, mind, spirit, and take your health and life to the next level. I am super excited about today's guest. This has been a long time coming. We're having Stephen Cabral on the show, and Dr. Stephen is a friend. He's also a naturopathic doctor. He's the host of a top 20 podcast on iTunes known as The Cabral Concept. And today we're going to be diving in, answering so many questions that we get on a regular basis about how to reverse autoimmune disease and hypothyroidism. We're going to get into EMF, we're going to talk about some issues around, uh, and benefits of hyperbaric chamber. We'll talk about infrared light therapy, cold plunging, microplastics, and how to heal numerous conditions on the show. Dr. Stephen, welcome to the show.

Thanks so much for having me. It's great to be here.

Well, you've got a pretty amazing story, uh, about healing yourself when you were 17 years old. I know that you saw over 50 doctors, uh, had over 100 different treatments, and nothing seemed to work. And finally, you found something that did work for yourself. So that's really where I want to kick us off with, because I think it's so important when you're able to heal yourself in a way it's easier to help other people heal. And so I'd love for you to share with us about your incredible journey of healing that started at 17 years old.

Yeah, and actually that was a great point that you brought up, is that there's so many people in the natural health field that got into this field only because they were almost forced to. They had to figure out their own health issues, and because of that they said, why doesn't conventional medicine share this with you? Why don't they ever talk about this in school or with family or a pediatrician? And so it's their mission now to share that with the world. And I think I'm really no different, is that my story started at 17 years old. But you could say it was all through childhood. My entire childhood, I had allergies, I had borderline asthma. I just wasn't the healthiest kid. I had ear, nose, and throat issues, swollen tonsils, tonsils taken out, adenoids taken out. It's like, well, if anything was wrong, conventional medicine just basically cut it out of my body. And so at 17 years old, what happened was that my immune system literally began to shut down. So I had swollen glands, uh, in my neck, my armpits, my groin. And what happened was conventional medicine ran their typical battery of blood work, but they couldn't figure out what was going on inside of my body. So they then started to run CAT scans and MRIs and X-rays, and they still didn't see anything as to why my immune system was not functioning properly. And I was beginning to— body was beginning to atrophy and literally shut down.. And so I'd lost 20, 30 pounds. I had tremendous brain fog and fatigue, and it felt like I was a walking zombie with flu-like symptoms all day long. So 2 years of going from doctor to doctor, specialist to specialist, only for them to say it's either all in my head or I'll get worse and they'll finally be able to see it on blood work. This is the mid-'90s. We didn't really know, people weren't really talking about natural health and functional medicine, but I got a tip from a neighbor that you may wanna check out this doctor in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I lived right outside of Boston. And that began then my road into natural health in the mid-'90s. And I could tell you that it wasn't straightforward. I didn't get well right away. There wasn't enough sharing of information like there is today with podcasts and books and all that. So what I was forced to do though was spend 10 years reading hundreds and then thousands of books and meeting with dozens of natural health practitioners as well, finally meeting my mentor, Dr. Pete, and by this time I had been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, an autoimmune issue, Addison's disease, which is the inability to produce cortisol. So you feel like a walking zombie and have flu-like symptoms all the time. And I had type 2 diabetes, and that's on top of the mast cell activation syndrome and the insomnia and the allergies and all those other issues. Well, within 6 months of meeting my mentor, she combined functional medicine, at-home lab testing, looking at my gut health, Looking at food sensitivities, looking at my cortisol, looking at omega-6s, omega-3s, all these different things, heavy metals. And within 6 months, no more Addison's disease, no more rheumatoid arthritis, no more type 2 diabetes. And I was healed. Now, I will say one thing. Although I was better, I actually didn't know how well you could feel. It was only years later as I continued to get better and better as, as my health began to compound. That I finally now today in my mid-40s feel better than I ever have in my life. And so I try to share that with people, that no matter how bad your prognosis is, that you can get well. You truly can.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's a great piece of advice. You know, one of the other things I want to point out, this is so many people today, people will go into the conventional medical system, they'll get blood work done, and their doctor will tell them, hey, everything's in range. Everything's normal, you're just fine. And you and I both know that's not true. One of the other things that I really, uh, you know, when I think about some of the people that are the best in the world at something, when I think about you, and obviously you're an expert at a lot of things, but analyzing blood work, being able to tell what's going on with somebody based on their, you know, their biochemistry and looking at labs is something that you are very, very proficient in. You're excellent, and you have a lot of experience there. Walk us through that a little bit, because there are a lot of tests out there. What do you believe today are the most important tests? Maybe what are your top 5 in ranking order, the most important tests that somebody should get done in order to tell if they're healthy or not? Yeah.

So even with functional medicine, which are basically at-home lab tests that don't diagnose disease, what they do is they look at the underlying root causes for why disease may manifest in the first place. So a disease is just I have what, Hashimoto's, or you have low thyroid, whatever you want to call it. Those, those are names for diseases, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, et cetera. But they all have underlying root causes. Now, conventional medicine will play it off as, well, it's just genetic. And you can say, okay, well, if it was just genetic, I have rheumatoid arthritis. Like, I have, I don't have great genes. And all four of my grandparents had rheumatoid arthritis. It typically hit them in their either early 50s or 60s. And I got rheumatoid arthritis. Yeah, it's in my genes at 17. Well, okay, why did it happen at 17? Oh, we'll just say, well, that's your genetics. All right, well, I'll go along with that. So I didn't have it for 16 and a half years, then I had it, and then 10 years later I no longer have it again. Well, if I have the same genes, why don't I have rheumatoid arthritis anymore? And so we have to understand is that yes, we all have a certain genetic predisposition, but there are underlying root causes that then allow for the expression of certain genes. And so these at-home lab tests actually look at that. There are 5 main labs that we use. Now, we have over 40 labs in our practice, and they're— I want to, uh, just share this, that they're not our labs. We use all third-party labs and testing to stay independent of that process. And so what they— the 2 most important ones are called the Starter Kit. They are a hair test, so you just take a couple snips of hair, and a urine test, and it's going to look at your mineral levels, your vitamin levels, your gut health, like yeast overgrowth or bacterial overgrowth. And it will look at things like your neurotransmitter metabolites. So your energy levels produced by the mitochondria, the neurotransmitters. And it will look at, if I haven't already mentioned, heavy metals. So it looks at vitamins and minerals, gut health, and heavy metals. And it does that because your hair is simply a protein that catches the excretion from your body, such as things like your electrolytes, calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium. Calcium excreted in greater times of stress. It's actually pulled from the bones. And then there's your zinc levels to copper levels. So everything in the body is in ratio. I'm happy to go in deeper if we want, but really at a high level, your body runs on the raw material— the vitamins, the minerals. Another lab test is the omega-3s to omega-6s. The typical diet is, for a healthy person, they're usually at a 6 to 7 to 1. We see in our practice when you want to be a 3 to 1. Typical American diet is an 18 or 20 to 1 of omega-6s to omega-3s. So highly inflammatory, which then expresses again a lot of these negative genes that we don't want. Then we have our food sensitivity test, and then we have our hormones test that looks at cortisol throughout the day, not just in the morning. Estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, DHEA, your thyroid, but not just TSH, which is a, just a signal for producing thyroid. We have free T4, free T3, TPO antibodies, and then we look at vitamin D and hemoglobin A1C, which is essentially a measure for your blood sugar over the last 90 days. So it's a very comprehensive look at your health, not just sickness. And that's what we wanna focus on in our practice is overall health. And just one more note is we've— the— nobody is great at this in the beginning, and I wasn't either, like at all. We've now run a half a million plus Plus Labs over and on over a quarter of a million people. And so we just have a lot of data and we can actually see now what works and what doesn't work.

Let me ask, what are some of the biggest root cause issues that you see in practice? Like, what are the most common vitamin and mineral deficiencies? What are some of the most, uh, the greatest imbalances that you're seeing that are causing chronic disease today?

So the first one I would just jump to is the omega-6s to omega-3s. Most people who eat a healthy diet believe they're, they get plenty of omega-3s and not that many omega-6s, but it, it's just not the case because you get omega-3s from so few places. That's the thing. So first of all, you have to be eating grass-fed meat and grass-finished beef, pastured eggs, and then I won't even talk about the fish quite yet. So if you're not doing that, then automatically The fats in those things are gonna be so swayed to be like an 18 to 20 to 1 from omega-6s to omega-3s. And so that's a really important one cuz a, a good healthy grass-fed meat, grass-finished meat, pastured eggs, they'll be about a 3 to 1, anywhere between a 3 to 5 to 1 of omega-6s to omega-3s. And people say, well, no, I have, we have meat that's a 1 to 1. I've never seen that before in my life. I don't know that that actually exists in nature.. And we have to understand that the animals are what they eat. And so when they're fed things like flaxseeds or like we're talking about chickens and all that, there's still a good amount of omega-6s in those.

So really the way— Stephen, I, yeah, I want to mention here too, because you're hitting on a good point. I just, I didn't want to, want to miss it. We, Jordan Rubin and I, own certified organic land and, and it does make a difference. And we, we raise a lot of livestock. And so for instance, if cows are eating clover and those sort of things, actually they have the highest omega-3 ratios. If they're eating, you know, barley or rye grasses, it actually is more 4:1, but it should be in that ratio. I think with us, even in our cows, it was probably like more of a 2:1 ratio. But, and the other thing I want to mention is, and how often do you see this, it's like somebody could be eating— and there's probably a few people on here saying, well, I've only eaten 100% grass-fed meat, I eat pasture-raised eggs— but if somebody has a single snack food that has sunflower or safflower or any of those oils in it. How much are those throwing everyone's ratios off?

No, you're exactly right, cuz you have to take the total amount of fat that you're getting from a grass-fed, uh, cow, let's just call it instead of saying grass-finished every time. So it's, it's grazed on grass and clover and all those great things that they should be getting from nature. But think about it, like that's already a lower fat animal because it's not as fattened with estrogen and recombinant bovine growth hormone. And then so you take an equal amount of fat, but now that's an 18:1 or 20:1 and it's completely oxidized. You just, you can skew the ratios so quickly. And so just like you're saying, even if you're doing a lot of the right things, it's the totality of your diet. And yeah, the nice thing is you don't need to be perfect. So what we typically say is you're trying to get a wild-caught fish, and the smaller typically the better, cuz they're gonna have less mercury. But a wild salmon, a wild trout, mackerel, sardines, anchovies. And if you can get those 4 to 5 times a week. I know it might seem like a lot, but you could have 'em at lunch, you could have them at dinner. That's the only way, literally the only way we've ever seen anybody outside of supplementation get to a 3:1 ratio, which is ideal for the human body. And that really helps not just with like overall aches and pains and brain fog, but it helps with the major things like cardiovascular. And I'd love to talk about this, but cardiovascular risk is still really the number one cause of death around the world and in the United States. And just fixing your omega-3s reduces sudden cardiac death by about 90%, which is like an absolutely remarkable— so much so that conventional medicine, who always makes fun of nutritional supplements, they have prescription fish oil, right? They have prescription omega-3s. So they know that this does work.

Yeah, it's pretty astounding. And so for everybody out there, get more omega-3s. As Dr. Stephen said, a great prescription there for fish 4 to 5 days a week. Talk to me a little bit about— so number one thing you're seeing is omega-3, omega-6. How about vitamins and minerals? What are the greatest deficiencies you tend to see there? And is there any difference between men and women that you test?

Oh, that's a great question. So that's actually a lot of the data that we're starting to run now. So we, we built an entire platform to, one, be completely HIPAA compliant, so trying to stay ahead of the curve even with functional medicine. Although it's not required, it's something we wanted to do. So we keep everything completely private. So when you run an at-home lab test, it doesn't get sent to your doctor, it doesn't get sent to your insurance company. It's between you, the lab, and your practitioner, which I think is really nice. And then on the backend, what you— we can do is everything's anonymized. So it just comes in basically as just numbers, ones and zeros. There's nothing attached to it. And you can start to look at trends over time.. So my company Equal Life, what we're starting to do is actually look at heat maps in the United States and eventually around the world, cuz we, we provide labs around the world, but we're gonna be able to show where the highest densities are of high glyphosate or low testosterone in men or forever chemicals. And then we hope as a general and free public service announcement to let people know like, hey, we're getting a lot of labs here in Ohio that are people with really high levels of forever chemicals, because they may not be testing it for it in your water. So we want to try to get those alerts out faster. So that's a lot of what we're doing. I know I kind of went off on a tangent, but vitamin and mineral levels, what we often see, and this is too bad, is even if you're eating organic, the soil just doesn't contain the micronutrients that it did before about the 1960s.. And yes, there's definitely more nutrient-dense food that are organic, and I believe in organic and I recommend organic. Uh, and if you can't, then the Clean 15, Dirty Dozen is a, is a great place at least to start. But we see B vitamins being depleted in people, and usually people think just right away, okay, B12. Yes, but now everything is kind of fortified with B12, and so that's not always what we see. And of course, we want the methylated version, methylcobalamin, But we see B vitamins like B2, B1 for the thyroid, B5 for the adrenals, B6 for the entire nervous system is depleted. And one of the things about B6 that's so important is it's used for serotonin production, happy feel-good neurotransmitter that we all need more of. And serotonin's needed for melatonin production. And so if you're low on B6, low mood, and then you're gonna have what, poor sleep, and then you're gonna have poor energy the next day. So we're really focusing on those. Another one is copper, and it's partially because one is you don't want high copper levels, that's for sure. But during the pandemic, people were taking very high levels of zinc and maybe continued on with it. Zinc is a great nutritional supplement. It's probably the most anabolic mineral out there to help build up the hair, the skin, the nails, the tissue of the body, regenerate, good for testosterone, all those things. But everything in nature works with a partner or an antagonist. And the more zinc you take, it pushes down copper further. And if you're not getting copper from a lot of the foods you eat, and typically we don't, like oysters, we're not eating all these things all the time, then what we wanna do is actually be careful that when we're taking zinc, we also take it with copper, but not the same amount. Yeah. It's usually a 15:1 ratio. So 15 milligrams of zinc, 1 milligram of copper.. And what that helps with is in kids, learning disabilities, allergies, skin rashes. In adults, the thyroid, the mitochondrial function. So always looking at everything in ratios is what we try to do in our practice. And these are, again, these are easy samples that you can do right at home that have been validated through clinical science. These aren't, you know, made-up lab tests that we're just, you know, doing for fun.

Well, you know, it's, it's so interesting, Dr. Stephen, because we, uh, Nature knows best, you know. The way God made food, it just, it, it works the best with our bodies. You know, when people started talking about vitamin D, you know, not that long ago, it was like, well, just take vitamin D. Well, now we're like, well, in order to absorb vitamin D, you absorb it better if you take it internally with some fat. Okay, well, now we also see we should take with magnesium Oh, well, now you need it with some K2 as well. Well, now you— and, and so on and so forth. And so again, we're seeing it's a similar story here with zinc. Well, for zinc to really— you really need to balance it with copper. The great thing is when you eat food, organ meats is a prime example of this. You're getting a lot of zinc and a lot of copper. If you're eating the muscle meat with the— with some of the organ meats, it's not— you know, you're, you're naturally getting that balance there. And this is why, for anyone listening, when you're taking supplements, supplements are for supplementing an already healthy diet. One, eat a really healthy diet, get all these foods. But also when you take supplements, take food-based supplements because you're going to tend to get more of those sort of things in there. Or at least you want to look for a balance or typically something that's more multifaceted, as Stephen's talking about here, is better. And so anyways, great advice there. But yeah, it's absolutely true that so many people will for instance, get on zinc and then they'll just stay on it. And if it doesn't have copper, it's going to create other issues in the body. Another thing copper is really important for— I know you know this, but it's like, you know, parasites, fighting off parasitic infections. It's really important for that. So there are a lot of things there. And so I want to encourage everybody, um, to, you know, get the right sort of lab work done. Some of the things Dr. Stephen was talking about, and you don't have to do 100 lab tests. He mentioned 5 there. Walk through that top 5 because you'd mentioned mentioned a few, but what are the 5, you know, the, the, the 5 that you typically recommend?

So the first 2 we call, um, either the starter kit or just the vitamin tox test. And so that's the minerals and metals test for the hair. And so that looks at all your mineral levels and it looks at your heavy metals. So in functional medicine, we don't say blood is the best way to test everything. Blood is the best way to test a lot of things like vitamin D and thyroid. And iron, like you need to test the blood that way. However, when you're looking at what the body is utilizing, we're going to look at excretion in the hair, we're going to look at excretion in the urine. So urine then is how we measure your vitamin levels and also what has been processed. So we look at that as your— so one lab is the Minerals and Metals Test, that's your mineral levels and your heavy metals. The other one is called the Candida, Metabolic, and Vitamins Test, and it basically just does exactly what it looks at. Looks at Candida overgrowth as well as Clostridia bacterial overgrowth in your gut. It looks at your metabolism in terms of your neurotransmitters, your mitochondria, your fatty acid production, and it looks at your vitamin levels— the B vitamins that I was just speaking about, plus CoQ10 and acetylcysteine, glutathione, a lot of these sulfur-based amino acids that we need for detoxification from the 100+ man-made chemicals that are in the environment. So those are the first two we recommend starting there for children and adults. But if you wanna do the full battery of labs that, again, I wish I had when I was younger, there's the food sensitivity test and it's from an IgG perspective. And I think that this is important to note is that there's different types of food sensitivity testing. And the reason we do IgG, which just stands for immunoglobulin G, is that it's a latent reaction of foods and it's healthy foods too. So like let's say that you're eating eggs. And you don't get any bloating, you don't get any gas, you don't get any hives after you eat them. But a day later, 2 days later, up to 72 hours, you might get joint pain or brain fog or skin rash or whatever it might be. So an IgG reaction is a latent response in the body. That's what we look at because people have shellfish, you know, food sensitivities and they eat mussels and they start to then get hives or they get, you know, mucus in the throat. We know that we don't need to, we, we already know, like, let's eliminate those foods. So we look at the IgG perspective, that's 190 foods that we look at, healthy ones of course, cuz we wanna know those. And then we're looking at the hormones test, which is called the, uh, stress, mood, and metabolism test. We look at estrogen, progesterone. So many women in our practice have something called estrogen dominance. Mm. Very infrequently talked about.

Yeah.

I know that you chat about it, you talk about it with people, but almost no one in conventional medicine talks about it. And that's because when you run their labs, they have totally normal estrogen. The problem is their progesterone— women's progesterone levels are getting lower and lower, especially during the luteal phase, which is the second half of the cycle.

Now, now, now, why, why is that, Stephen? Walk us through. What do you think some of the root causes today of women being so estrogen dominant, so low in progesterone? Why does that happen?

The number one thing that we see is a stress on the body. And that is why on that same lab we look at their cortisol levels. Now, with cortisol, it's the stress hormone. And you might say, well, then I should have lots of energy. The problem is it's what's called an upside down or an imbalanced diurnal rhythm. It means that their cortisol is low in the morning when they should be waking up with energy, right? Waking up without an alarm clock between 6 and 8 AM. But in the evening, their cortisol levels are elevated. Because of blue light stress, can't turn the mind off, a million things to do, etc. So what happens now is we've got low cortisol in the morning, high cortisol in the evening, leading to poor sleep, then poor thyroid function, and also then lower levels of progesterone. I can kind of go into why it affects progesterone, but that's what we see. Now here's the issue. You go and run blood work with your PCP— typical blood work you want to run fasted between 8 and 10 in the morning. All you look at is your cortisol in the morning and they're like, yeah, it's just, it's just normal. It's low normal. It's not out of range. 'Cause it's not gonna be out of range 'cause you don't have Addison's disease, right? And so the thing is they don't look at, we run cortisol 4 times during the day with a simple saliva tube. And then we can look at, oh, the pattern shows your cortisol rising in the evening when it should actually be falling so that you can start to produce melatonin and get a great night's sleep at night. And so that's the number 1 reason we see low progesterone, which then ends up as though water retention, bloating, irritability, low mood, brain fog, adult acne, um, and then it starts to affect everything from there.

Metabolism. Yeah, yeah. Wow, wow.

Uh, and that's a huge thing that we see right now, and it's easily correctable, but you do have to know that, okay, I have it, let's do something about it.

You know, it's really interesting in men and women because what, what women tend to start to have an issue with is this, you know, estrogen being high, progesterone too low, thyroid hormones, some of those getting too low. And in men, they're affected really different. For men, it's like testosterone, boom, you know, it's just like, yes, you know, that, that's what's just going to drop off the cliff. And they might even have estrogen— well, they're gonna have estrogen too high too, typically, when that happens as well. What are some of the things that you would recommend, uh, clinically if somebody comes into you? And of course, men, it's the same thing, right? You got to reduce stress. There's a lot of that, that, that thing that, hey, everybody needs to do that. And by the way, I don't want to glaze over that because Dr. Stephen and I both know it is one of the single, if not the single most important thing you can do is get the stress and get good sleep because it's when you're recharging your cells, your mitochondria, your entire body. So you have to do that. In addition though, Stephen, for, for, for the women out there and the men, what are a few things that you'd recommend maybe from a nutritional standpoint, it could be food, it could be a supplement for, for the women to help get that progesterone-estrogen balance and support the thyroid health. And then for the men on that side to start to do that to help with the testes and the testosterone.

Yeah, without a doubt. It's like you said, people always ask if there's only one thing I could do, you know, what would I do? And I can say I haven't always been a board-certified doctor of naturopathy. Before that, I worked as a nutritionist, personal trainer. And then I ended up going back to school once I got well because I said, this is something that I'm called to do. I felt that way. And actually, I didn't have the confidence to do it. It was my mentor who said, you need to go back to school and you need to get your degree. You need to be. And so I was like, all right, well, if she believes in me and maybe I can believe in myself. And so that was that. But I'll tell you this, if I could only work on, I always say, if I could only work on one thing, I need two though. It's stress and it's gut function. And the problem is that stress alone, high stress alone can cause leaky gut or intestinal, increased intestinal permeability. So I can't fix just the gut and not stress cuz I'll just keep relapsing with this inflamed intestinal path. And there's 26 feet of your digestive tract. So really important we work on stress. So how we work in our practice, just taking one step back, is we work on something called the de-stress protocol. I write about this, my book is called Diet, Exercise, stress reduction, toxin removal, rest. That's your sleep program, right? And then it's emotional balance, scientifically backed supplement protocols, and a success mindset. And I know you share the same exact things. We just talk about it in different ways. And I think that's what most natural health practitioners do. But I want people to know, and I think you would agree, that it's not all nutritional supplements. Nutritional supplements do work. And the reason is, is that they can move the needle really quickly. And then it allows you then to have some of that energy and better sleep so that you can then do a lot of lifestyle things. So I, I'll tell you, I wouldn't have got better without nutritional supplements because my gut function was so poor. I had to get rid of the candida overgrowth, the H. pylori, and the SIBO. I mean, like that, I couldn't do that through food alone. So there's a time and place for everything. But the nice thing is if you're following a system, you don't have to get an A+ in everything. You don't have to be perfect all the time. And so what we do is we actually look at this and say, there's a lot of women and a lot of men out there. Here's their life. They're either students or they're young professionals and they're working 12 hours a day, 14 hours a day, like I used to. And then they're skimping on their sleep at night. They're going out, they're exercising, everything is go, go, go. All right, so that's just a ton of energy coming out of your body. How are you taking energy back in? So that, that's how we look at it. We look at always like this yin and this yang or this give, uh, and take in life. And so one of the things we'll say, if a guy has low testosterone and a woman has, um, estrogen dominance, you can't be doing CrossFit 5 times a week. Like, I'm, I know that you probably love it, but it's just crushing your hormone levels and adding more stress and norepinephrine. So that's one piece of it. If we move towards diet, you can't be chronically hypocaloric. 'Cause now your body's in a state of starvation and it's saying, I, you're asking me to put out more energy and you're not giving me enough fuel. And also when you're not eating enough and you're not taking any supplements, then you're micronutrient deficient as well, which are your vitamins and minerals. And that's how your body functions. So my goal is to look at the nutrition, the exercise, the sleep, and the nutritional supplements. And what would I do for high levels of cortisol? There's 3 main things. One is a product we call Used Adrenal Soothe. You probably have your own version of it, but here's what it is. The name doesn't matter. It's L-theanine, it's ashwagandha, it is phosphatidylserine, which we know help to calm the nervous system or more shut down higher levels of cortisol. And then we use something called full spectrum magnesium. And again, why multiple versions of magnesium? Only because we don't know if you're gonna be a great absorber of magnesium glycinate, or citrate or lysinate. So we just kind of put a few in there so that, that are easily absorbed, won't cause loose stool. And magnesium then does what? Well, it helps to calm the sympathetic nervous system. That's what magnesium does. It's a nice, it's a sedative, it's a natural sedative. And the last one we use is a liquid melatonin, which then helps to shut down cortisol and increase melatonin and then be out of your system faster and not have to be processed by your liver. So there's not as much grogginess in the morning. So those are the 3 that we use to help sleep and then to turn off. Really what we're looking to do is turn off the machine at night. So you can go, go, go from 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM, but from 7:00 PM to 7:00 AM, I need, I need that recovery time. So that's, that's our place to start.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Let me share this, Dr. Stephen, that this, this was a realization for me when I first opened up my functional medicine practice. I was working so many hours. And about a couple years into practice, I started getting leaky gut. And, and I thought, well, this is weird. I'm eating perfectly, I'm exercising, I'm— and I went and met with an acupuncturist, this brilliant Chinese medicine doc. And he basically said, he said, he had this conversation, he said, Josh, here's the thing, you're expending more, giving more than you're getting. Like, you need to be able to receive, you need to be able to rest, whatever. And here's all that I did. When I got home from work, I would then after I ate dinner, I would be on my laptop and continue to work.

Yes.

And all I did was, hey, after 6:00, after dinner, I stopped working. And then my gut healed, period. I mean, that was the thing. And so, but the problem is, is most people are just, they're on all the time. And here's the thing, I used to think I'm not stressed because I'm a very, like, our house could burn down and as long as my family's safe, I'm okay. Like, I could live with nothing, like, and I'm okay. But I was on all the time. And so most people are never ever not on, you know, and you turn it off by reading a novel, going on a walk, doing lunch with the best friend, just doing things where you're, you know, not trying to get ahead or strive in life. And so anyways, this is such a good message for everybody. You know, one of the things that I've done is I followed you over the past year or so, as you put out so much great content, and One of the things I, I really appreciate that you address is, again, getting to more of the root cause of a lot of these issues. And there are certain conditions that have really continued to climb over the past 30, 40, 50 years. But specifically, I want to hit over the last maybe 10 years. Autism is one, ADHD is another, autoimmune disease and mental health disorders. All of these have a neurological component. Oftentimes many of them have an immune component. Why do you think those conditions in particular are growing so rapidly?

Yeah, and this is interesting because I can't think of the exact date, but it was probably somewhere around 2008, 2009. I was actually studying with Dr. Natasha McBride, and she created something called the GAPS protocol. And I don't study it and use it exactly before, But we were looking at it back then, and I was a novice, you know, really in the, um, you know, understanding the space and the neurological component and toxicity, especially a big one. But it's something that I've just kept up with over the years because, like yourself, if you have a functional medicine practice, you're going to start seeing children with autism. And we just started to see the numbers continue to grow, and, and it was, uh, I mean, it's alarming to say the least. So the typical pushback is there's just more diagnosis today. And yeah, I think we can safely say that's not true. It is true to a degree. There is more diagnosis, no doubt about that. And maybe some people are being labeled certain things more than they have in the past. I don't disagree with that, but the chart is up and to the right. And so when we look at why the prevalence, we actually now have scientific data to show us. I don't— well, I'm going to step back and say there's no one thing I don't believe. That causes autism or ADD or ADHD or anything like that. Yeah, I think it's a multifaceted-based issue. And to use the analogy I usually use is the rain barrel effect. So I think some kids, people, have poor detox-based genetics like myself, more prone to inflammation, and then they're exposed to certain in utero toxins or as a child. And I'll give you two, um, scientific research studies just done over the last couple years to back this up. University of Texas— anybody can look this up— the more mercury that is dumped into the environment, the greater, uh, diagnosis of autism in that community and state. Whoa. Upwards of 63% greater causes of autism. The more mercury's in the environment. So that's a pretty high correlation. The other one is women that use acetaminophen while pregnant have a far greater likelihood of ADD, ADHD, or ASD-based diagnosis for their children. And these aren't small studies. These are legitimate PubMed big studies. The last one I just noted was out of JAMA, Journal of, well, the JAMA Psychiatry Journal. And what they found was that it was actually dosage dependent. The more acetaminophen or Tylenol taken, the greater the likelihood of the ADHD or ASD diagnosis, meaning that they could literally see the higher the acetaminophen found in fetal cord blood, the more likelihood were for, for these particular diagnosis, which means we know that there is a correlation with that. Now, does it mean that every woman who takes acetaminophen is going to have a child with ASD? No. But there's something there that for whatever reason, these children are not able to deal with it. And they can go into, well, it has to do with the neurons and the chemistry in the brain, the nervous system. I'll tell you, one of my theories is this, and I'm not— I'm saying it's a theory right now, it has not been proven. When you take things like acetaminophen and you're exposed to a lot of toxins as a child, it begins to shut down glutathione production. Glutathione is our master antioxidant, helps with oxidative stress, and it helps detoxify these toxins from the environment. And if you get that shut down, it builds up in the body, the brain, and the nervous system. And so, yeah, it's something that we should look at. And it's also dangerous, and I don't want to take this too far because we'll be banned on YouTube, um, but then your body can't deal with the onslaught of other toxins that might be coming in from a conventional medicine-based protocol. So acetaminophen and additional toxins, really bad idea.

Yeah, yeah. And we know this field, whole field of epigenetics, is that, you know, what it really is astounding. I mean, what the mother and the father both, you know, before pregnancy, during pregnancy, and soon after birth, I mean, obviously really affects the kids in just a massive way. I was doing another podcast and I was— I was— we were having a conversation with somebody who's more of a, um, she was a, uh, she's a Harvard MD, works a lot with, with, uh, with, with, with people with neurological disorders. And we were talking about this very same thing in terms of the mother getting probiotics and the, the health of their gut microbiome and that being passed on to the children. I mean, it's just, you know, it's, um, it's, it's something we all need to be aware of. And this is why, I mean, it's crazy to think that What you do and the way that you take care of your own body when you're in your teens and 20s is affecting not only your health but the health of your kids. Isn't it wild to think about? You're a teenager, you're out hanging— I mean, whatever— and literally what you're eating, your mental health, your emotional health, all of those things, it's affecting your kids and their kids. I mean, the Bible talks about to the third and fourth generation. So like, what you're doing, it affects generations. I mean, it's It really is astounding. And so it really, I think, could put into perspective just the incredible responsibility we have and really, in a way, give our lives meaning to know that everything you do has a long-term, even if you're talking spiritual realm, eternal impact. I mean, these things are, they are significant. And this is also one reason why it's exciting to be a doctor, be someone like yourself that's helping pass on this information, because you're not only affecting your patients, you're affecting generations of people down the road. You know, one of the other things I've heard you discuss that I love to hear you talk about is our biological age. You know, looking at how old are we really. Stanford came out with a really interesting, um, study here recently that said it's not only that our whole body ages, it's that certain individual organs or systems age faster than other organs or systems. And so talk to me a little bit about how would you test for, or how is it done today, testing for one's biological age versus chronological age? And also, is there any testing that you're excited about in, or, or recommend for individual systems to see maybe what their, you know, age is? And I know it's not age exactly, but you, you understand what I'm saying.

Yeah, absolutely. And so this is a field that I'm fascinated in, and I said I wasn't going to dive head over heels into it until I kind of check the boxes on what I wanted to help people with first, because this to me is more the icing on the cake. Um, so I teach something called High Performance Health, which is taking everything to the next level, talking about full body MRIs, talking about biological age testing, looking at— there's, uh, 18 known factors for aging, all the different— now right now there are theories on aging. One of them we're talking about right now is the, um, triage theory. Basically is that as we're younger, we can almost do no wrong. We can consume alcohol, we can consume poor foods, we can eat the, you know, safflower oil, all of these different things. And our body keeps buffering all of these different stresses and oxidative stress. And then somewhere around our mid-30s to mid-40s, depending on the individual and also how full their rain barrel is, we start to then see the signs of aging. But it's always been there. It's just we're not able to triage those as well as when we were younger. So what biological age testing looks at is, okay, let's say that you're 46 years old. You could be 46, aging 1 year for every chronological year, or you could be 32 years old. And that means what? It means that your body is only aging for 7 months or 8 months out of those 12 months or so per year. If you were to look at it, then of course you can age faster. I'll give you an interesting story, and I, I, I'm always, um, very big on wellness client confidentiality, so I'll just share my own. Is that when I had my crazy busy practice, probably like yourself, I wasn't at peak health necessarily. I felt good. I think, you know, I think I was like keeping up with it exercise-wise and all that. But my biological age was like 9 years higher. Like it was not good. And that was— I was just— I was on all the time. I had a 1.5-year-old. Like, it was just like I was just in it. And so what I learned is that just because your biometrics, you can keep those in alignment. There's another layer to this. That's why I said I like to help people get to their ideal weight cuz it helps so much with wellness and then work on anti-aging. Because remember, you're gonna age faster if you're not well, right? And you're gonna age faster if you are 50, 100 pounds over your ideal weight. I'm not saying there's one weight for every person, but just the ideal weight for you and your body. That's all, right? Your uniqueness. And so then we can work on anti-aging, which is super fascinating because Right now, the average age is 74 for men, 77 for women. It's really not getting that much better. We're keeping people alive longer, but the truth is we only die from 5 main things. Like, that's the truth. Cardiovascular issues, stroke and blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, cancer, and Alzheimer's. Well, all 5 of these we can find early detection. The only one that we can't reverse right now is late-stage cancer. I'll be honest with you, I can't reverse late-stage cancer. I can help support cancer therapies and, and sometimes it could go really well, but I can't make any of those claims. All the others, yeah, we have scientific data on how to reverse high blood pressure, diabetes, cardiovascular, and Alzheimer's. Like, you can literally reverse these things. So if a person does not die from one of those 5 main things, it's things like, um, COPD, which is mainly smoking, kidney disease, accidents, falls, So for us, it's staying healthy, and then we get an extra 10 years to 15 years of life. You know, now we don't have to think about dying in our 70s, it's 90s. And now I believe we can take that beyond. We look at two things. We look at the biological age, which I just said, if you're 46, you could be 32, you could be 52. Yeah. But we also look at the rate of aging, and the rate of aging is more important than your biological age because that will change faster. And so the rate of aging is ideally every human is a 0.95 or less. That means you're aging less than 1, a 1 for 1 with your chronological age. And so I look for in my practice to help people get into the 0.8s. That's my goal. And ideally below. I've been able to take mine, so mine was deplorable. It was above a 1 when I was at my worst. And now there are certain genetic factors for that, but I never like to let genetics be an excuse. 'cause there's methylation, there's your APOE genotype. If you're 3/4 or 4/4, you're gonna have more inflammation, you're gonna age faster. But you can, again, you can fix all of these things. So I've been able to get mine down now to between a 0.67 and a 0.69. So my rate of aging has slowed tremendously and my biological age now is 13 years younger than my chronological age. So those are the two main measurements. Now the last thing I will say is this, is testing system— organ systems is not as easy and it's not as accurate yet. We're getting there, but it's mainly based on blood work, MRIs, inflammation in those organs, etc.

If you are for right now, let's say you're trying to keep your biological age low, okay, in terms of how fast you're aging, what are some of the top foods or supplements you're personally taking in order to help with that.

And supplements do work. Like, that's the thing. These things are helpful. But inside of High Performance Health, I have 4 tiers of supplements. So I have the Tier 1, which are foundational. People typically skip to the resveratrol or, yeah, quercetin or whatever it is too quickly without doing the foundational base products. And then Tier 2 would be, um, right below that, as you really need to get to these. And then tier 3 are your ones that we know work, that we should know, that we can take them on a daily basis and they're still safe. So those would be, well, let me go through them step by step and not give all of them, but give the main ones that are the most important. So the, the tier 1 are, these are the, these are what we call safeguarding your healthy diets. These are the ones we recommend for almost all humans. It's a good daily activated multi, or we use something, a daily nutritional support. It's basically all your vitamins. Your minerals, your electrolytes, your cofactors that you might miss them on a daily basis. They're not mega doses, they're enough to get into your system. The next one we're typically recommending is a, I call a rainbow powder, but it's a daily fruit and vegetable blend. It's veggies, it's fruits, it's superfoods that you typically wouldn't eat. So I'll give you an example. I try to get my 7 to 9 servings of fruits and veggies every day, mainly vegetables., but I'm eating broccoli every day, cauliflower, carrots. I'm not eating 22 different, you know, variety. Yeah. So this just allows for more of a variety, which I think is great for most of us. And it helps with natural detox factors, sulfur-based amino acids, et cetera. A good daily omega-3 support. So I try to eat fish multiple times per week, but I won't eat fish if I'm out at typically at a restaurant. And the reason is, is that microplastics, mercury, et cetera, I'm most likely not gonna choose that. And then a good daily probiotic you mentioned before, I think that's a great idea for most people. Now if you have SIBO, if you have something else going on, okay, you fix that first. And then the last one, uh, we're usually recommending a daily digestive enzyme, especially as you get older to break down your food a little bit better. Could be an activated B complex. There's a lot of great nutrients that your body needs. A magnesium we spoke about before, an adrenal soothe for the adrenals, and then The specialty products, I'll start to talk about those. So as we get, let's say, above the age of 50 or so, maybe 60 would be the maximum, we usually need to add a little bit more CoQ10 back into the body. And this could be in the form of ubiquinol, ubiquinone. CoQ10 to ubiquinone to ubiquinol helps with the conversion. Um, there are other more fancy ones, and I'll name some of the herbs that I'm a big fan of. One is astragalus. Astragalus is great for the telomeres. It's great for the immune system. Ashwagandha can be a really great one for testosterone production as we get older, for, of course, blunting the effects of cortisol. A few others that I really like are PQQ for the mitochondria, the NMN or NR, nicotinamide mononucleotide or nicotinamide monoriboside. I don't like to do megadoses, though. I'll be honest with you, I'm a little different than a lot of the other longevity experts. They like to do megadoses. I don't believe anything found in nature is a megadose. I think that that can cause its own issues over time. So I'm more of a little each day. And then, um, oh good, I'm glad to hear you say that because it's not— that's not the popular answer right now. I think we'll find it to be the truth in about 3 to 5 years, but that's that. So we use a product called Cell Boost. It has all these things in there. Other great products though are lion's mane, um, reishi for mushroom-based products help to modulate Th1, Th2 immune system. It's all the things that start to falter as we get older. So if we can keep these in check at a younger age, they never fall out of balance in the first place, 'cause it's harder to get it back than it is to keep it in check, the better. And so those are mainly the nutritional supplements we use. If you're looking at spermidine, if you're looking at fisetin, uh, we don't use those right now. It looks like those are better used pulsed, once a week, twice a month, uh, while fasting to help remove what are called senescent cells. Senescent cells are normal cells that don't get the signal essentially to die after 90, 120 days or so, so they float around creating more inflammation in your body. Those two particular products can begin to break down those cells to a greater degree. If you use them every day, it could lead to issues. How can you get a little benefit every day? Things like quercetin, Quercetin is an amazing herb, uh, nutrient that's used in the human body to help with histamine levels, immune system. We saw during the pandemic it helps to get zinc into the cells, kill viruses to a greater degree. So again, I like to use nature on a daily basis and then sprinkle in some of these additional, um, extracts that can help with biological age.

That's great. And I, I think, I think you made a good point in terms of, you know, you have food and then you have sort of foundational things that really are food. Greens powder is food. Probiotics, in a way, are very similar to food.

And so, um, omega-3s, and yeah, they're all, they're all from food, essentially.

Yeah, yeah. And so I think that's, that, that's what we're going to— yeah, yeah, these mega doses of vitamins, you know, I, I don't, I, I don't think it's going to help most. I don't think people are absorbing a lot of it, you know, for one. And I think long term, it's probably— we're going to find out later— maybe not the best versus, again, trying to do things as close nature as possible. You know, one of the things that's very far from nature is a lot of these microplastics and just EMF, these things we're exposed to on a regular basis. How, how damaging do you believe microplastics are to our, to our endocrine system and our overall health?

Yeah, a big— some of the big issues with heavy metals or microplastics is that you just don't see them, and so you don't think they're there, so you don't worry about them. And then we start to— but the problem is they still affect us. And that's why I try to share with people, like, my goal is not to create fear in the world, but it is to let people know that these things are affecting us whether we like it or not. And our children as well. I have two daughters. They're now 9 and 11 years old, and I've been trying to be cognizant without creating fear that we need to stay away from the artificial colors, the artificial dyes, the artificial flavors. We can enjoy ourselves, but there are just some things we're not going to do. But microplastics, we really have to be careful of. There was a, a new study, and this is probably the, the strongest study for really how it does affect us, is that they started to look at the plaque, um, when they would do a bypass surgery. And in 58% of those individuals, in the plaque, they found microplastics. And not just a little bit, a large amount of, uh, polyethylene., and then they've also found in a smaller percentage, but still enough, polyvinyl chloride. Basically, they found chlorine molecules and plastics from pipes that our water comes through in the blood and in the plaque. Now, wow, we can step back and say, okay, well, what does that mean? Twice as likely to have a heart attack or stroke with that much microplastics in your blood. So now we're like, oh, Well, here's one more reason why the two leading causes of death are growing as well. And you know, well, what do we do? Well, what we do is we have to first try to eliminate our sources of these microplastics. Use a good water filter. These are all different steps that we can take. I always like to say clean water, clean air, clean food. Like that's where we start. If you're worried about— Yeah. All the other fancy stuff, like, you know, buying goji berries, like all of those things, I get it. But put your money towards the things that you consume the most: food, water, air. And so like, we just, we want to look at those first as being clean. And then I can think that can be really helpful because microplastics do exist. They're not going to get any better. It's polluting our seas, it's polluting the fish. And so we want to be cognizant of the amount that we take in. And then try to detox these things from our body in as natural way as possible. Functional medicine detoxes, sauna, sweating, keeping the immune system boosted, keeping the liver strong, consuming enough water just to hydrate and flush the body. All of these are essential.

Yeah. Tell me a little bit about EMFs. What, what are your thoughts on, on how damaging those might be?

They are damaging, and the problem is that we can't eliminate them, right? So that's, that's the hard thing. So it's more, we need to mitigate the effects then. And the two most damaging things is proximity. So the closer you are to your wireless router, your baby monitor, your cell phone in your ear, like I'm wearing wired headphones right now. I know everybody's not watching this on video, but I don't wear wireless headphones. And you might say, well, the EMFs can be blocked partially to a degree, but there's also the radiation because one headphone beams through your head to the other headphone to work. That's how wireless headphones work. And so what I try to do is I, I love technology. I really do. Like if you look at me right now, I've got an Oura Ring on, I've got an Apple Watch on, but they're both on airplane mode. Bluetooth is off. My phone is beside me on my desk.. It has a Safe Sleeve, a EMF blocker, but it's also on airplane mode. I'm not using it right now. So my goal is to limit my EMF exposure when I don't need to be surrounded by EMFs. And also I use an EMF meter and make sure that I'm for 8 hours a night. When you're like, the most important thing you can do is really EMF-proof your bedroom. You can't have EMFs for 8 hours when you're sleeping. Because that's a third of your day. If you can eliminate it from a third of the day, you're doing phenomenal. Same with your kids' rooms. The most horrifying thing I found was when I had my newborn daughter, I had my EMF meter. The baby monitor produced more EMFs than almost anything in our house, which—

wow, really?

So we moved that then 6 feet away. And now you just— because if you get a foot or two away from these things, almost there is very, very low, uh, EMF against the body. So Uh, EMF meter, great. The Trifield one is the one that I use. Uh, you know, I'm sure you have recommendations as well. Uh, and just get to know, just kind of educate yourself. Don't become overly worried. This is the soup that we live in, but begin to lower your exposure over time.

That's so good. Well, what play— there are so many different therapies right now. We see the regenerative medicine space continuing to grow at a really rapid rate. Um, more people now are using infrared saunas, more people are cold plunging. A couple questions there: do you like and approve of infrared sauna and cold plunging? If you had to pick just one of the two for most of your patients, which one of those two would you recommend?

It's a great question, and I feel like I lived in a vacuum. I was the only one saying this for the longest time, and now I start to see on social media people saying it, which is great. But so I studied my, my background is in functional medicine. There's no doubt about that. I'm a doctor of naturopathy.

I love that. I love the work.

But my, my love is Ayurvedic medicine. And so my lens is Ayurveda, which is 6,000 years old. It's the basis for all other forms of medicine, including traditional Chinese medicine, which is amazing as well. And so when people are saying, oh, everybody should be doing cold plunging, and I'm saying, you know, not so fast. Like, have you seen these people's labs? Yeah, they have elevated cortisol, they've got estrogen dominance, they have low testosterone. And so what is the main response from a cold plunge? It's a spike in norepinephrine. Norepinephrine is an excitatory neurotransmitter. It starts the fight or flight and sympathetic nervous system response. So is that what I want for my burnt-out estrogen-dominant patients? No, that's not what I want. And so I will use cold plunge But it's so imperative that people learn that you don't just hop into a cold plunge and just fight it. The goal is actually to breathe out the stress and relax.

Mm-hmm.

And if you can induce the parasympathetic nervous system, you've now trained your body how to better deal with stress. Yeah. But there's no manual that comes with a cold plunge. And so I think it's very—

well, the other issue, Steve, people are doing this 7 days a week. Yes. And when you study hormesis like you and I have, it's like, well, you're probably better off doing 1 day a week or 2 rather than 7 and just allowing your body to adapt. And the other thing, in, in my lens, is very Chinese medicine. And so it's, it's, it's, it's like getting your body that cold that many times a week is a recipe for somebody that's sick, like hypothyroid or a number of things, is a total disaster.

I completely agree. I mean, it's another stressor on the body. So hard workouts, low calorie, low carb, cold plunge, not enough sleep, work stress. I mean, this is— if you're not already burnt out, you will be within the next 12 to 18 months.

And so you basically just described— I had somebody come to me about a year ago with infertility, and this is what they were doing: all the things you mentioned— CrossFit, cold plunge, time-restricted eating, paleo, like, you know, no grain, no none of this. And we just pretty much changed all of those things of this other functional med doc was recommending, and boom, she was able to get pregnant. But it's just 100% such a huge part of our practice.

We work on gut health and hormones, essentially. Like, those are the, like, major things. And yes, heavy metals and all that comes along, but like, just like you said, I'm recommending the opposite of all those. I'm recommending naps, good, whole food, warm food. Like, I'm recommending all the comfort things so a woman could tell her body, I'm in a safe spot, and then hormone levels can return to normal thyroid and, and progesterone like you just mentioned, and then she can get pregnant. It's— we're not working miracles, we're literally working to rebalance the body.

And so, yeah, wait, what, what are your thoughts on infrared sauna?

So I'm, I'm, I'm a huge fan of infrared sauna. I'm a, I'm a huge advocate. Um, Ayurvedic medicine, it was part of panchakarma. When I was over in India and Sri Lanka doing internships, we sweated out of people. Um, but like you said, for someone like my mom, she did 5 minutes for her first infrared sauna. That's it. Yeah. That's what, that's hermesis, just like you said. There's, if I start running, am I gonna start with a marathon? No, but that's what most people do. So like going back to cold plunge, 56 degrees on PubMed, it would get people the clinical benefit. But what are people showing online? 37 degrees, 33 degrees. Why? Because the colder, the more manly or stronger you are, right? You're, you're proving to the world I have to break the ice before I get in this cold plunge.

And again, don't get me wrong.

I have the same tilt towards that, that ego as well that I'm like, oh, I wanna show people that. I'm like, but I'm like, well, what are you doing here? Like, is that for you or is that the benefit of the world? Of course, that's my, the benefit to me. And so we have to understand is that more is not always better. And cold plunge is a really good example of that. But sauna though can induce parasympathetic nervous system if not overdone. It helps with microplastics, mold, heavy metals to sweat it out of the body. It also acts as zone 2 cardio, which I would love to chat about just for a minute because one of the things, so I love to weight train. I know you love to weight train. That doesn't necessarily lead to a longer life. Cardio in zone 2 does. Very strange. And I didn't want to admit that, like, at all in my 20s and definitely not my 30s. Um, but what happens is there is a definitive effect on telomere length. Now, telomere is not the only thing that helps with aging, but The shorter the telomeres, typically the less proper replication of DNA you're able to do. And so as you, um, replicate DNA over and over and over, there can be improper replication mess-ups basically in that replication, which means then you have greater chance for disease. And so believe it or not, getting your heart rate above a brisk walk for 30 minutes, 5 days a week can actually have a tremendous benefit on anti-aging and overall health. The nice thing is not everybody loves to go for a run or whatever it is. If you get in a hot sauna, you can get your heart rate to 110, 120 beats per minute, and it actually mimics zone 2. So I wonder, is some of the benefit of sauna, because we know it decreases all-cause mortality by over 40% and it decreases risk of cardiovascular disease and death by over 60%, is some of that because it's acting as actual cardiovascular work? I don't know. It's, it's an interesting theory.

That is interesting. You know what, as I've seen the benefits of, as you're mentioning, cardio for longevity, but especially walking. That, that's been mind-blowing to me because at first I thought, well, walking is just a mode of transportation, but in reality it is also just so critically important for our longevity. I mean, just getting out there moving, getting your heart rate up just a little bit, as you're talking about. And I'm with you on this too, like the infrared sauna. I think there are loads of benefits for mitochondrial health, for detoxification, for longevity. So I want to encourage everybody to do that. Last question here for you, Stephen. There are a million things that people can do to take care of their health. What is your best piece of advice for everybody in terms of what they can do to take their health to, to, to the next level?

There are, there are a million things that you can literally do, um, and if it's not foundational, it's not the answer. So I just, you know, want to state that for people. So if it ha— if it doesn't have to do with clean up nutrition, getting your walking in first. I think it's an important one that you stated. If you're not walking 7,500 to 10,000 steps per day, you don't need to worry about the fancy workouts and all that. You need to get that body moving each day. But if I could pick one, um, this might seem like a strange one, but it's a systematic way to decrease stress because we need to work on stress. So we can, we can kind of, because we could talk about the best diets and all that, But I use something called 3 anchors per day. So when I wake up, I take 30 minutes to myself. Now it means I need to wake up 30 minutes earlier than the rest of my family, but it's quiet time. It's something for myself before I try to then be of service to my family and the world. Like we all need that. And then at lunch, I try to take back another 20 to 30 minutes, typically going for a walk, listening to non-work-related things, comedy, podcast, something I enjoy. Why? Brings down that sympathetic nervous system. And then I do one thing at the end of the day. Actually, I do it before I meet with my family again for dinner at the end of my workday. And the reason is, is to then be present. And so it's just, I call it switching modes from, let's say, doctor to dad. That's always what I did in my practice. I lived about 10, 15 minutes away. I would always walk home. And during that time, No Slack, no email, no text messaging, mainly. And, and if I can give one more tip, focused on my breath. When all of us are stressed, we hold our bodies tight, we breathe through our chest, we're not relaxed. We need to relax the nervous system. If you can begin to understand how the nervous system regulates your health, then you can, I think, truly have the power to age gracefully and live a long, healthy life.

Yeah, it's so good. Well, Dr. Stephen, this whole conversation has been awesome. You are a brilliant doctor who, again, I think we share a lot of philosophies in terms of whether it be Ayurvedic or Chinese medicine or the functional medicine approach of getting to the root cause. And I want to encourage— Dr. Stephen's got a great book out, it's called The Rain Barrel Effect. Uh, he alluded to that in terms of finding the root cause of why these diseases are growing so, uh, so much today. Also, he's got a great show called The Cabral Concept you can check out as well, and he's got some great, great posts on social media. Follow him on Instagram and all the social platforms at Stephen Cabral, uh, Dr. Stephen Cabral. You can find him on there as well. And again, just brilliant practitioner. Dr. Stephen, thanks so much for sharing so much wisdom today. We covered a lot of topics, and I hope everybody is, uh, just loved this conversation as much as I did. And I just want to say thanks to everybody for tuning in here to the Dr. Josh Yak Show. Remember, each and every week we're doing these deep dives into science, into principles of how to heal— take your body, mind, and spirit to the next level, uh, and especially your health. And hey, if you're not subscribed, make sure to subscribe to the podcast, like and share this. If there was something that you took away from this podcast episode with Dr. Stephen that really added value to your life, hey, make a comment, leave a review, or share this with somebody, because we all want to pass on that blessing of health and healing to others. Thanks everybody again. Thanks, Dr. Stephen. I will see you on the next episode.