Sean Croxton is the creator of Underground Wellness, a website dedicated to educating people about how they can live the healthiest life possible. He runs the most popular YouTube channel on health and fitness, as well as his own podcast: Underground Wellness Radio. After a jam packed Q & A, Sean and Armi discuss some of the biggest myths about fitness and nutrition, as well as his new eBook: The Dark Side of Fat Loss.
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What We Cover
- Sean’s story of breaking away from conventional wisdom and educating himself through Amazon (no joke).
- The difference between health care and self care.
- The “5 Pillars of Health” and how to use them.
- Why you can’t exercise your way out of a bad diet.
- The difference between treating a condition and restoring bodily function.
- Glutathione: Nature’s most potent antioxidant.
- A supplement called Protandim that actually works.
- Why having the right mindset is the first part of becoming healthy.
- The secret to overcoming sugar addiction.
- Everything you need to know about “Nutigenomics”
Links From The Show
Underground Wellness (Blog)
Underground Wellness Radio (Podcast)
Underground Wellness YouTube Channel
Upgraded Self (online store)
Articles
The Glutathione-Autoimmune Connection! (Part 1)
The Glutathione-Autoimmune Connection! (Part 2)
Paleo Crossfit vs. Vegetarian Taekwan-do: Diet & Exercise Showdown
Gear
Cerebro Electro-Stimulation Sleep Machine
Dual N-Back Training i3 Mind Software (Upgrades your IQ)
Compex Sport Exelcto-Stimulation Kit
Normatec MVP Massage/Compression System
Blendtec Home The Professional’s Choice 1560-Watt Hp3a Blender
Cuisinart Smart Stick Hand Blender
Food & Supplements
Protandim Antioxidant Supplement
Alderspring Ranch Grass-Fed Meats
Paleo Pemmican Powder Upgraded™ Whey Protein
Books & Magazines
The Potbelly Syndrome by Russell Ferris
Listener Q & A
- Why are onions and garlic bad for your brain?
- What’s wrong with raw cocoa beans?
- Does your diet effect your physical fitness?
- How can you recover faster from workouts?
- What’s the best hand blender for making Bulletproof Coffee
- Is Kerrygold Grass-fed butter really grass-fed?
- What’s the difference between simple and complex carbs, and which is healthier?
Scroll down to see the full listener questions.
Biohacker Report (latest studies & research)
“Aerobic Exercise Bests Resistance Training at Burning Belly Fat”
“Scientists say obesity is a brain condition”
Updates
- Check out Dave’s article on strength vs power in vegetarian and paleo athletes.
- Stay tuned for the new (massive) series on grass-fed meat.
- We’ll be releasing the video from Dave’s talk in Sweden about online security and the problems with information overload.
Don’t forget to leave a ranking in iTunes. It helps more people find our show.
Transcripts
Click here to download a PDF of this transcript
Dave: Today’s cool fact of the day is that for every gram of glycogen, which is stored carbohydrate in your body, you store 4 grams of water, which means that when you eat carbs, you bloat up pretty quickly with excess water weight, which makes it look like you have a spare tire.
Today, we’ve got a great interview with Sean Croxton of Underground Wellness. He is a really interesting and down to earth guy, who has one of the most popular YouTube channels on Health and Wellness. He’s also going to discuss his new e-book called the Dark Side of Fat Loss.
Co-host: Sean Croxton, who blogs at Underground Wellness and is in charge of UW Radio, which is one of the best podcasts in the world. He also has a YouTube channel with over 25,000 subscribers. He is a nutrition expert who graduated in 2001 from San Diego State University with a bachelor’s in Kinesiology. He also enrolled in the Functional Medicine University Program and he is a functional diagnostic nutritionist. Sean, thank you so much for coming on today man.
Sean: Thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it.
Co-host: Cool, so I’d love … First of all, basically understand where your story comes from and how you got interested in this and how you started Underground Wellness and what you do now?
Sean: Oh, I love telling this story. My story just really is a matter of failure more than anything. When I graduated from college, I did really well in all of my classes. When I graduated from college, I thought I knew all there was that needed to be known about health and fitness and all that fun stuff and I did really well in my classes, but when I actually went and took that information that I’ve learned, that I’ve paid a pretty good amount of money to learn actually and put it actually into practice, it didn’t work with real people.
I was recommending people to follow the food guide pyramid, eating tons of grains, doing the whole low fat thing. You know warning people, “Don’t eat that much cheese! There’s too much fat in there!” I remember just some of the things that would come out of my mouth, telling people to get off cow’s milk and to drink soy milk. You know things that now to me sound absolutely crazy. People were paying me for that advice and it obviously wasn’t working. I’m a guy who really cares whether people get results or not and so, what I did was I just, as you and I were talking about before we started this is I became this Amazon.com junkee, and I just started reading as much information as I could. That was very countered to what I had learned in college.
I started studying other people of what they did, people who have actually worked with real people such Paul Chek and David Getoff and Dr. Mercola and just read what they read, learned what they learned and kind of slowly started to integrate it into what I did as a personal trainer back then. Started up the YouTube channel, started to convey this information to the public in a way that was fun for them to understand and learn, easy for them to understand and then it just kind of rolled into Underground Wellness and rolled into Underground Wellness Radio and now the Underground Wellness TV show and you know that the e-book I’ve got coming out pretty soon and it’s been a really fun educational journey.
Co-host: Yeah man, that’s crazy. You talked about something called self care instead of health care. Could you elaborate a little bit on that? because I love that phrase and I’m going to have to steal that but …
Sean: Health care is like … I almost feel like when people talk about health care, they’re looking for somebody to take care of them. Almost like, I hate to say, but almost like a babysitter. You know, I need my doctor to take care of me. I need to go in there when something is wrong with me and get my pills and complain about them which a lot of us do and I think that we need to be a little bit more proactive about our health and to prevent health and just learn, I mean learning simply how to take care of yourself.
If you go and get a dog or you go and you buy a cat or something like that, what’s the first thing you do? You start going online, trying to learn how to take care of your cat or your dog or your bird. You start learning how you should feed it because you don’t want that thing to die. You don’t want to have all these crazy veterinarian bills and all that good stuff.
Now, why don’t we do the same thing with ourselves? Why don’t we learn how to take care of ourselves, so we don’t have to go to the doctor for a 7-minute visit and get written some stupid prescription for some expensive medication? I don’t get it. It’s so backwards to me, but at the same time, it takes some effort and some time to actually learn this stuff and how to take care of yourself. I think we kind of take it for granted and just think, “Oh, I’m fine. I’m doing fine. I’m good,” until we actually get sick and so, not a huge fan of our health care system, especially in this country, but I do feel that we could kind of eliminate, or not even eliminate, but use our health care system more for emergencies and whatnot and just go ahead and take care of ourselves, so we don’t have to need all that other prescription weird stuff. You know, that’s what I mean by that.
Co-host: Yeah, yeah. That makes sense. This is self-education, so we can make decisions on our own and then when bad things do come up, knowing when to like use modern medicine and that kind of thing too.
Sean: Yeah, yeah. Somebody needs to write a book called “How to take care of yourself.” Real simple book, just how to take care of yourself, so that everybody will read. They still don’t know and I swear that would eliminate so many problems that people have.
Co-host: Right. Just like the Self Help Survival Guide or something like that. Yeah.
Sean: Something like that and it should be taught in like second grade.
Co-host: Yeah. Now, what are some of the specific things that they taught you in school that are probably just sound like absolutely insane nowadays, like you mentioned soy milk, burn the fat, what other kind of things, like exercise related or … ?
Sean: Saturated fat is bad for you. Grains are just the greatest thing in the history of the world. You know, grains will save your life and that’s certainly not true with 7 out of 10 people these days being gluten sensitive, but that’s a whole other topic right there. As you said, cardio, burn, burn, burn as many calories as you can. Calories in, calories out, is the biggest problem that I have like, as J.J. Virtue would say, what did she say? “Weight gain or weight loss is more of a math problem,” which it is not. We have oversimplified some of these things. I can understand simplification when you’re talking about complex things, but we’ve done it a little bit too much. You know, calories in, calories out, really isn’t how it works. If it really worked that way, I don’t think we would have the obesity epidemic that we have because the solution would be pretty darn simple.
Eat less and move more. Cool, move on with your life, but it goes so far beyond that, so I can go into all kind of myths about cholesterol being bad for you, animal products being bad for you, so on and so forth. I mean, it doesn’t really stop and I always tell people just to eat like your ancestors, move like your ancestors. It seemed to work really well for them and you know the other thing I’d like to say is that I really don’t understand how an old school food can cause a brand new disease. I don’t really get it. You know, heart disease is a fairly new phenomenon. In 1900s, medical schools didn’t even talk about heart disease. It wasn’t part of their curriculum, then everything got all switched up. We reduced saturated fat, we increased our vegetable oils, we increased our sugars, we reduced our saturated fat, we got heart disease and then we blamed the saturated fat. It just doesn’t really make much sense to me.
We’ve taken our ancestral history, our ancestral genetics, I should say, and we’ve done something really weird with them. You know, we’re cave people, we’re cave people with iPods and computers and Skype lines that we can talk over, but our physiology hasn’t really changed and now, we’re just full of all these degenerative chronic nasty diseases because we switch things up in the name of health when it’s not really healthier. It’s really weird and bizarre man. It’s like I live in this crazy weird science fiction movie, to be honest.
Co-host: Right and it’s seems like the flaw of the analogies and things we are using like taking pipes and then like pouring saturated fat down them and stuff like that. Again, it was some British commercial where there ads like a tub of like [inaudible 00:08:59] or something there sticking in a pipe and then like this is just happening to your arteries and I was like “Why are you doing that with a piece of cauliflower?”
Sean: Yeah.
Co-host: Some of these are same thing man.
Sean: It’s solid at room temperature.
Co-host: Yeah.
Sean: Well, my body is in the room temperature in the first place, you know what I mean. The broccoli is solid in the room temperature too. Is that going to kill me?
Co-host: Yeah.
Sean: It makes no sense.
Co-host: If you’re at room temperature, you have bigger problems than fat intake.
Sean: You’re dead.
Co-host: Yeah. You wrote something called the five pillars of health, and I thought that was kind of cool. You really broke it down well. Could you explain, kind of just go through this real quickly and like just describe what they are?
Sean: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The five pillars of health. Our health kind of stands on these pillars. When these pillars aren’t functioning properly, when just one of them isn’t functioning properly, then health kind of starts to take a little tumble. I used the analogy of like a five-legged stool, we say four-legged stool. I kind of added in that fifth one on diets, but the four legs on that stool. You make one crack and then of course, the stool kind of starts to fall over and whatnot. You break another one and now the stool is going to fall over itself and our hormones would certainly be one of them.
If you’re dealing with fat loss issues, fat loss resistance, weight gain. I mean, that’s all hormonal issue. Hormones store fat. Hormones should be in balance. You don’t want too much of them, you don’t want too little of them. You want them to be right there in the middle, nice and balanced and when they’re not, you’re going to have some issues. Your hormones would tell your cells what to do. If your cells are getting the wrong messages, then your body is not going to function very well.
The other one would be digestion. You can have the greatest diet in the history of mankind, but if you don’t have great digestion, it’s not going to work too well. You know what I mean, and so, digestion is something that a lot of people whom I work with, they present with digestive issues where there would be gas, bloating, constipation, diarrhea, acid reflux. I mean all these different things that they deal with on a daily basis, but they’re just kind of hesitant to share them with others, hesitant to say, “Hey doctor, I haven’t pooped,” like I was talking to somebody the other day and then she was like, “I go poo like every 6 days,” and I was like “Whoa!” That’s certainly something that she needs to get some help with. The other ones would be detoxification. If you’re not pooing in 6 days, you’ve got a toxicity issue for sure.
Look at our environment. Our environment is all screwed up. I’m inhaling things. I just moved into a new place and there’s a new carpet in my room right now and I’m inhaling fumes from that new carpet right now. We’re eating chemicals. We’re drinking chemicals. We’re rubbing chemicals all over our body and that’s getting absorbed into our bloodstream through our skin. We’re spraying stuff trying to clean the house, but at the same time dirtying up our body. It really doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. We need to kind of clean ourselves up, especially clean our environment. That’s one of the sessions that I do with my clients as I say, “Hey, let’s identify where the toxins are in your environment and let’s go ahead and first things first, eliminate those. Let’s get you through some more natural products and whatnot.”
The next thing, of course, would be the immune system. The immune system is huge. It’s so huge and it’s very much tied in with the digestive system. 80% of your immune system, I should say, resides in your digestive system, so we really need to take care of that. Just got done reading a phenomenal book. It’s going to be on my show pretty soon. The author is Russell Farris and the book is called “The Potbelly Syndrome,” about how infections actually can cause many issues, like smoldering infections that the immune system hasn’t gotten rid of, cranking up our cortisol levels, cranking up our blood sugar, turning up our insulin, making us more insulin resistant, of course, making us fat. Infections are making us fat. These are all smoldering infections. They’re giving us heart disease at the same time because you can actually find infections in the plaque within the arteries, so really, really fascinating concept, I’m really interested. I can’t wait to talk with him about when he comes on my show.
Of course, the last component, the fifth one would be diet and of course, I’d never say diet is first. I’ll always say the other things first, but diet of course is really critical, but it’s the one that we tend to focus on the most and I try to say, “Hey, we have to start thinking beyond diet and exercise because there’s a really strong possibility that your diet alone is not going to fix your insomnia problem, your libido issues, your digestive issues, your brain fog issues. You need some other help that goes beyond the diet and exercise component.” This is a really big puzzle, but we’re just focusing on two pieces. You just need to start thinking more laterally and getting outside the box. How’s that for a long answer?
Co-host: It’s perfect man. It’s great. Yeah, I talked with Paul Jaminet from the Perfect Health Diet and we were talking about his theory of aging and basically one of his theories is that aging is mostly caused by buildup of those like small infections, fungus, parasites and that kind of really has a lot less to do with other more classical like free radicals and that kind that really mess looking infections and that kind of stuff.
Sean: Yeah, there are many different theories on it. I mean the infection could be causing free radical damage. That’s one thing that I test for is lipid peroxides. Lipid peroxides are a measure of free radical damage to your cell membranes and clients who have infections, especially like gut bugs, H. pylori or Giardia parasites, things of that sort, they tend to have a lot of oxidative stress, really high free radical lipid peroxide scores, so they definitely all play a role.
Co-host: One of the things I really liked somewhere on your blogpost you mentioned the gym that you workout had a sign that said, “You can’t exercise your way out of a bad diet,” and I think that really kind of plays in a part, because I know a lot of people who are thinking, “Oh, if I just do enough cardio, it really doesn’t matter what I eat, like I can still just burn it off ” or even if you’re not doing cardio they think like it’s almost they are not fat, they’re still fit. They are like they’re still healthy and like I just want to hear your opinion on that.
Sean: Oh, I absolutely agree. I used to do that myself. I see pretty horribly, but I’ll just do my cardio and lift and I was young too. I was in college, I was in college for a long time, 17 to like 23, I was younger, so I can get away with some of that stuff. These days, I certainly can’t but it’s just a really huge misconception. Just because you’re not wearing it, just because I can’t physically see fat hanging off you, does not mean that you’re healthy.
That’s been a story that’s come up a lie. When you listen to my radio show, my first question is always, tell us about your journey, where have you been and for a lot of those people they’re what we call healthy, fit people or they’re unhealthy, I should say, fit people where they look good, but beneath all of that were some serious problems. I would like to use the example of myself. I was looking really good, but at the same time I had digestive issues, I had mood issues, I used to be on prescription of antidepressants and all that kind of stuff, and so you never want to just judge a book by its cover and say, “Hey, that person looks good, so they must be healthy.” Absolutely not, it does not work that way and you know people say body builders. I don’t want to say bodybuilders in general, but the body builders whom I’ve worked with yolked up, looking good, you would see that person in the gym and think, “Oh my God, that’s how I want to look,” but usually that’s a client that I’m going to have for a pretty good while because they’ve done a lot of damage to their bodies. There’s depression issues, constipation issues that I’d find very often, brain fog issues. It’s a truth man, you can’t judge a book by its cover.
Co-host: Yeah, I’ve noticed that a lot with bodybuilders and regiments. A lot of them seem to have a grain stuff like we’ve got to eat oats because that is like body building food and like we’ve got to do this and we’ve got to eat like mountain of cottage cheese and stuff like that and it’s like what you’re doing.
Sean: Somebody said that, that’s the thing that happens in the bodybuilder world. Somebody will say it. Ronnie Coleman will say “I eat oatmeal, so it makes me big” but Ronnie Coleman forgot some of the other stuff that he’s doing to make himself big.
Co-host: Yeah.
Sean: Hope that doesn’t get me in trouble, but I think we tend to overlook that as well.
Co-host: All right. It’s like, “Oh yeah, you’re also lifting weights for 2 hours like every day and doing all like…”
Sean: You’re also juicing dude, you’re juicing man. You’re using drugs to get big, don’t tell me it’s the freaking oatmeal.
Co-host: Yeah.
Sean: I don’t want Ronnie Coleman to show up in my front door one day but … Like he can fit through it in the first place.
Co-host: What kind of people do you usually encounter in your work? Like when somebody comes to you, you mentioned like work with bodybuilders. What’s the kind of normal person like, what’s the story behind most of people that are coming to work with you like have they been kind of rejected by their doctors or frustrated like what’s kind of the back story on those people?
Sean: Yeah, rejected by doctors, frustrated, have tried umpteen different types of diets, have lost weight, have gained it back, have lost weight, have gained it back. Every time they gain it back, they actually end up heavier than they were in the beginning, which is one of the reasons why I say dieting actually makes you fat in the long run. People who not only are overweight, but as I referred to earlier they do have sleep problems, they do have digestive issues, they do have brain fog issues, sugar cravings, itching issues. I find a lot people have Candida overgrowth and whatnot, lot of stress, too much work. I find some of these people are just literally married to their jobs, and it’s a bad marriage, it is not looking too good and so, people who don’t have any control over their schedule, its one of the things that I have to work on, that’s our first session with a lot of people. Hey, you know, pull out your Google calendar. We need to get your schedule right, no matter what I tell you or whatever I ask you to cook and to consume or do, if you do not have the time in the day to do it, it’s simply not going to happen.
It’s really that simple and again it’s not always diet and exercise. I’ll have to work with people on their lifestyles, so that’s a typical client for me and you know one of the things I always say, “Hey, how many pounds you want to lose?” and it’s “I want to lose 30 pounds,” “I want to lose 40 pounds.” I’ll say, “Will you be happy being 40 pounds lighter, but you still can’t sleep, you still can’t poop, you still can’t have a sexual relationship with your partner. “Is that what you really want?” and they go, “No”. It’s like, “You want everything right?” Okay, cool, then we have to go beyond the diet and exercise component and fix some of these dysfunction that’s going on in your body.
Co-host: Right yeah, that makes sense. I think that’d basically answers my next question just about restoring functions instead of just treating one condition and really just getting back to like where they want to be. I’d love to get into little more detail here. You’ve written a lot about something called glutathione, which I think really it’s fascinating, but I’d love to just hear more about that. Could you explain what glutathione is and why it is important?
Sean: Yes, yes, yes. Glutathione is something that I didn’t even know how to pronounce it like two to three years ago. What it is? It’s your master antioxidant, master detoxifier. Fantastic for your immune system and most of us after the age of 20, 25, we start to lose our production, it starts to diminish for us over time and what glutathione does is it protects ourselves from free radical damage. Of course, free radicals. If you’re breathing, if you’re eating food, if you’re inhaling toxins, you’re making tons of free radicals. These free radicals can cause damage to your DNA, which can increase your risk of cancer. It can damage the enzymes within your cells that help to repair your cells, so that’s not a good thing. They can damage the membranes on your cells and screw up your receptors for different hormones and whatnot and so, you want to be able to minimize that.
One of the many antioxidants that your cells make, and these are called antioxidant enzymes that your cells make it themselves, is glutathione. There’s other one, superoxide dismutase, few other ones out there that I’m familiar with and they literally can neutralize these free radicals at a rate of up to 1 million per second. That’s huge, that’s an antioxidant on steroids right there and your body makes that for you. Right? but what do we do, we take antioxidants from vitamins and minerals through our foods. I shouldn’t say minerals, but few minerals, but through our antioxidant supplements through our foods, which is fine. Totally fine and dandy. I don’t have any problem with that; however, those antioxidants, your vitamin C, your vitamin E, your vitamin A, your Oxy E, whatever, they’re going to neutralize free radicals at a rate of 1 to 1.
If the one molecule of vitamin C neutralizes one free radical, it is pretty much done. It can be recycled, but it’s pretty much done. The problem is that your body on average based on oxygen consumption is going to make about 300 sextillion free radicals every day. That’s 300 with 21 zeros behind, that’s a lot of free radicals, so if I’m going into a gun fight with free radicals, I’m going to go with the antioxidants enzymes. The glutathione and the superoxide dismutase that are neutralizing those free radicals at a rate of up to 1 million to 1, instead of the 1 to 1 guys and so, what we can do is we can eat particular foods or we can take one of the supplements that I recommend through the process of what’s called Nutrigenomics, which is the way in which foods and other substances influence your gene expression.
We can take these foods or take these particular supplements and it’s going to tell our genes to up regulate their production of glutathione and some of these other antioxidant enzymes and like I said it’s like antioxidants on steroids and sooner or later, it may not be sooner probably later, you know people are going to actually get hit to this game that these antioxidants that we are taking in through our diet and whatnot as fine as they are. They don’t come anywhere near some of the other foods and supplements that can help to get that up. Glutathione is huge. It’s great for immune system again, great for detoxification, great for fighting free radicals.
Co-host: I think it’s a perfect segway to talk about, obviously we both are like superintendent of real foods and getting like most of our nutrients from real food. We do have one supplement that you’re really passionate about, you’re wearing the T-shirt right now. I’d love to hear more about that stuff. What are the ingredients? There really weren’t many, but I’ve definitely seen them before. I’d love just to hear kind of why that works and why it’s different.
Sean: Well, Protandim is the supplement that we’re talking about. I’ve been pitched on so many different supplements, you have no idea, and continually said no over the years, I still say no these days, but Protandim was one that was really different because it had so much scientific research on it. I mean you can go pubmed.gov and type in Protandim, and you will be able to find 8 peer reviewed published studies from like real universities like Harvard, LSU, The Ohio State University, University of Colorado at Denver. I mean some really big names out there.
Also, you’ll find some research on different disease processes that unfortunately I can’t talk about because of the FDA and whatnot , but what Protandim does, it’s got 5 ingredients, turmeric, milk thistle, ashwagandha, bacopa and green tea extract and it’s the synergism of those 5 ingredients in the proportions that they are in the product that tell your cells or to tell your genes to make more of those antioxidant enzymes and by the way, I mean one of the reasons why I decided to “endorse” or recommend this product, being the first product that I’ve ever recommended to people and put my name behind, is not just due to the research, but due to the fact that Dr. Joe McCord from the University of Colorado at Denver.
If you go to Wikipedia and you type in that Elliott Cresson Medal. Elliott Cresson Medal, which is awarded to innovators, you know American innovators. I mean you’ll see Henry Ford on there, you’ll see Pierre Marie Curie, Alexander Graham Bell. Dr. McCord is the co-formulator of Protandim, he actually won the Elliott Cresson Medal for co-discovering the entire field of free radical biology and living organisms. I mean that’s absolutely huge right there, and so you know we talk about the man. He is the man when it comes to free radicals and so, I can’t be more than happy with the product. The testimonials that we’ve gotten have been phenomenal just through the roof and again, it tells your cells to increase your antioxidant enzyme production and that’s going to do far more for you than any vitamin C pill ever would.
Co-host: Right, and so does it make recover faster from workouts, is it more like longevity thing?
Sean: Well, here is the deal. I always tell people, don’t give anybody an expectation when they start taking Protandim and the reason why is because oxidative stress, which is pretty much that free radical damage we talked about earlier. Oxidative stress is associated with over 200 different diseases and conditions. For me personally, I get phenomenal workout recovery from it. When I started taking it, I actually forgot that I was on it. To be honest, I like getting free stuff. You’ve got a free bottle of something, send it over and I’ll try it, and I’ll just took it, and 4 days later, just noticed that I did chest the previous day at the gym and I wasn’t sore and I did it again, and I did it again the next day, and I called the guy because I was like, “What’s going on here, this is weird,” and I called the guy who told me about, he said, “Yeah, I had the very same experience,” so I did my legs. One weekend … He was a chiropractor. He does this full time now with the products. He was a chiropractor, did his legs on the weekend, and was expected to be very sore the next day and was not sore, just maybe a little tight and so that’s been my experience.
We’ve got a lot of people say that exercise recovery is just through the roof these days, some people don’t, some people say they have better sleep, better energy, their hair starts growing faster. I’ve had one of my friends who said that her dad’s hair grew back, he was balding and it was no longer gray. These are not typical results, but these are just some of the testimonials we have heard. I have known of 2 people who have been on oxygen tanks who after a week or so on Protandim were able to get off of their oxygen tanks. I mean, it’s absolutely nuts right there. If you go to PubMed, hope I don’t get into trouble with FDA for saying some of these things.
These are not typical results, yadayadayada, though the disclaimer in there, but if you go to PubMed and you type in oxidative stress, you are going to find 80,000 different studies on that. You type in oxidative stress in any other condition, depression, heart disease, cancer whatever, you are going to find multiple studies on that link between the 2 and so, whatever condition somebody may have that is linked to oxidative stress, there is a possibility. We make no guarantees, that it can improve, and everybody’s experience is a little bit different with Protandim.
Man, I hope that doesn’t get me in trouble with the FDA. Well, you know, you’re not supposed to make any claims of cures or talk about supplements on any conditions. I’m not saying it cures anything, I’m not diagnosing anything, I’m just talking about some of the testimonials that we’ve gotten regarding the product.
Co-host: Right, cool. One of the things I think a lot of people aren’t talking about very much is the whole mindset that goes behind like fitness and just getting yourself well and I know you’ve brought on some people on your show who really don’t have much to do with fitness but just cultivating that whole kind of self-empowered mindset, and I’ve loved the talk about kind of the importance of that self-empowerment and this free will that goes along with this.
Sean: It’s the most important question of the whole call right here. If your mindset isn’t right, good luck buddy. You know this is really not going to work, I mean It’s just, it’s just so, man, I can relate to this myself. I’ve been trying to write a book for the last three, four, or five years, and I would start and I would stop, then I would start and I would stop, and then I will start, you know what I would do, I would stop, and this has gone on for a really long time and I find the same thing with some of the people whom I work with, especially in their past. They started it and they stopped, no matter how badly that they want it.
Now, for a lot of people the issue is that they don’t have a big enough why. They don’t have enough big enough reason to do it. I have people, “Why do you want to do this?” “I want to look good for my 20th high school reunion,” “I want to look good in a bikini on my vacation,” “I want my 20-year-old body back,” and I’m like “you’re like 56 years old.” What are we talking about here, you know what I mean?
I find that their why is not big enough, it’s superficial. It doesn’t have anything to do with anything. It’s not motivating at all. It’s not enough to get them out of bed. It’s not enough for them to pass on the bread when they go out for a social activity or something with their friends. It’s just not big enough, so I spend a lot of time helping clients to find their why. I spend a little time as well helping people to find their values, what do they value in life, find somebody may value travel, religion, family, social life, education, on and on and on and they’ve been trying to get healthy and lose weight for the last 20 years, and I go, “Do you notice anything missing from this values list you just gave me?,” 20 seconds of silence typically and then they go, “Ohhhhh, health!”, and I’m like, “Yeah, health!” You don’t value it at all. It’s not important to you. I’m not a big chief. You look behind me for the audience who are doing the Skype video right now, you look behind me I’ve got a bookshelf full of books on nutrition. I mean that’s something that I highly value.
If you ask me how well traveled I’m, I haven’t been anywhere. You’re not going to see any travel books in there, you know what I’m saying and so, that’s just one of the things that I help people to work on how can you get in healthier, benefit some of the things that you value. How’s it going to help your social life? How’s it going to help your relationship? How’s it going to help your job, a performance at your job? Your relationship with God? How’s it going to help your travel?
Everybody’s been on a plane and you sit next to the overweight person, you’re like, “Oh man! This is going to be rough.” You know I’m saying if they have taken up almost 2 seats, I’m sure that doesn’t make them feel good when they’re traveling, you know what I mean, so those things. How does it benefit them and once they do and they can write down 100 ways in which getting healthier is going to benefit the rest of their life and the things that they value, it just goes to the roof. We had the authors of the Simple Success Solution on the radio show last week and it’s one of my favorite shows because we talked a lot about the subconscious mind.
The subconscious mind is running the show. 95% of what you do is pretty much on autopilot, back in the day you were 4, 5 , 6 years old, somebody keeps telling you, “You’ll never be successful at anything. You’ll never achieve anything. You’re always a quitter. Yada, yada, yada, yada,” and that got plugged in the subconscious mind and that maybe the hardware that you’re running on these days.
One thing that I’ve done is reading a book by Bruce Lipton “The biology of Belief,” and I started reading about the subconscious mind and whatnot and how the subconscious mind is not in line with the conscious mind, then you’re always going to have that self-sabotage issue no matter what you do. I figured that that was probably my issue, and so I took my butt over to hypnotherapy. I did some sessions with Marla Brucker and wrote a book. You know what I mean, with no problem, just bang that baby out, you know what I’m saying, so we’ve got the book coming out pretty soon.
I help people with that. I do recommend that some people go get hypnotherapy if they really having a hard time with self sabotage. They really do some personal work. I feel like some people need to do some work on the inside before we can really focus on their physical nature and whatnot. I wish I knew more about it. I wish I can do some of these techniques and whatnot with my clients as far as hypnotherapy and working with the subconscious mind, but of course I don’t know all that stuff. I’m not licensed to do that, so we have to do the referral thing, but mindset is huge. If you’re mind is not right, then you should probably get it right or go get yourself a new goal.
Co-host: Right, yeah. I think that’s like a big problem with a lot of people too. It’s like they’ll get this notion that in order to be healthy they need to do X, so like they need to work out 5 times a week. They need to do this and that kind of stuff, and it’s not really based on anything. They feel like they’re not taking care of themselves if they’re not doing those kinds of things. When they really start learning about it, it just doesn’t take that much. Like you don’t have to exactly what everyone else is saying or that kind of stuff, and this is being able to believe in yourself and understand your own goals too. Yeah! I love that. I thought that was very helpful.
Sean: Yeah, yeah. Thank you very much. You need something that’s customized for you, that’s what most people need. Most people are following this cookie cutter deal and there are different solutions for different people. If you’re one of those people out there who is overweight because you have an infection, you’ve diet and exercise problem, it isn’t really going to make it much better, and for a lot of people, exercise is actually making it worse.
Co-host: Right, yeah. I just have like few more questions, but one of them was, I think one that’s pretty common. When you have somebody come to you, when they are totally addicted to sugar and I purposely use that term because I think it definitely is an addiction, like how do you go about getting them off of that? How do you kind of educate them to the fact that it really is like a legitimate addiction and it’s not just like a little lack of willpower or anything?
Sean: For a lot of people, it really depends on the person. I mean it could be a neural transmitter issue, so we might use some amino acids. One of the amino acids that I recommend to a lot of people, doesn’t work with everybody and it can be sort of dangerous for some people if they’ve got cancers or if they’ve had cancers in the past, is L-glutamine. I find that to be very helpful not just for sugar cravings and addiction, but also for other addictions as well L-glutamine has been used for and so that can be helpful. Typically, I tell the client 500 to 1000 mg when you wake up in the morning as well as in between meals, tends to work really well for a lot of people. For some people, it’s a mental emotional thing, for other people it’s a Candida issue.
A lot of folks out there have fungal overgrowth secondary to bacterial imbalances, which may be secondary to some type of parasite or something like that that is going on within their gut or some other type of infection, and so you really need to think holistically with it, figure out what it is. If someone’s got a Candida infection, you’ve got to fix it, you’ve got to fix it. Again, it’s not just focusing on the Candida, it is focusing on the overall environment within the gut. Candida love sugar, they love it. It’s what they feed on and they are going to make you crave it all day long.
A diet that doesn’t have enough calories, which is pretty much across the border for a lot of people who are trying to lose weight. They’re screwing up their leptin levels. Their leptin since it’s all screwed up is cranking up there, was called Neuropeptide Y, which is going to make you crave carbohydrates. We have to fix some of that and increase the calories that people are consuming. They think it’s so bad, “You need me to increase my calories? I’m not even losing weight right now on this low-calorie diet,” but we need to increase your calories and restore your metabolism.
I think a lot of people don’t get. I’m kind of getting off subject here, is that again like I said earlier, you are still a cave person and cave people had, as we do too, certain systems to get us through periods of famine and that’s called leptin, and when you don’t take in enough calories, you start to live off your fat stores, your leptin starts to drop and so, that’s going to make your metabolism drop.
If you’re in a famine, your body has no freaking reason at all to burn as many calories as it can. That means if this is going to burn up fat, then you’re going to die. You know what I’m saying, it doesn’t make any sense. It is also going to increase your appetite to drive you and motivate you to go and eat some more food, in that way you can get your fat stores back, and so that way when the next famine comes, you’ll be able live through that. What do we do? We do voluntary famines to lose weight and what happens? Our metabolism slows down, we hit a plateau. We’re hungry all the time because our body is like, “Dude, we need some fat stores, where they at?” and so we end up breaking our diets because we want to eat up the freaking refrigerator one day. That’s what we’re doing, and at the same time … I’ve got to do a video about this. At the same time, think about this, we go to the gym and jump on a treadmill. What kind of cave person?
I’m sure they weren’t too evolved mentally and whatnot, but what kind of cave person went jogging during a famine? Right? They didn’t do that. You know what I’m saying, so that’s what we do and what happens is our bodies seriously start to rebel against us and so again you just can’t think calories in, calories out because your body will kick your ass, excuse me my friends there. It certainly will and it always wins. Hunger always prevails over willpower and hunger is certainly what you’re going to get by some of these ridiculous diet programs that people have out there as well as their crazy insanity whatever workouts they’ve got you doing.
It’s very hard, our bodies are just incredibly confused, our bodies are like, “Dude, you’re set up for a famine and you’ve got a convenience store in every corner right now, what’s going on?”
Co-host: Yeah. When I was relistening to some of your interviews with Gary Taubes too, I loved how he describes this too. It’s like, your body is just not made to do that man and then we talk about maybe like caveman not mentally evolved and yet we’re the ones who are going out here and doing this stuff to ourselves, so you have to wonder, right?
Sean: It makes us wonder, but you know I wrote this in my book. We don’t know that we have a choice. To effectively choose is to know that you have options in the first place and a lot of people out there don’t even know that they have any options and so, that’s why it comes down to you and me and Gary and all these other people to educate people.
Co-host: Right, yeah, I think it’s a perfect segway to talk about your book too. I know you’ve been working like crazy on it, you kept everybody updated on your blog, which I thought was cool. I love to going back and look at one of your posts that says like, “I’m on page 45. I’m going to have to finish this now.” Yeah, I’d love to hear a little bit about your book and what’s going to be in it.
Sean: All right, perfect. Well, it’s called “The Dark Side Of Fat Loss – Lessons From The Underground” and really what it is, it’s just a kind of a compendium of what I’ve learned during this journey over the last 5, 6, 7 years with the people whom I’ve interviewed, the books that I’ve read, the people that I’ve met, these courses that I’ve taken, all of that. A lot of people think and I get e-mails and they say, “What course should I take, what should I do, I feel like there’s so much to learn , yada, yada, yada.” I’m like what I’ve done is I’ve put pretty much, not everything that I’ve learned, but the really the critical stuff that I’ve learned into maybe about 150-page e-book and not only is it a fat loss book, but it’s about getting healthy.
I make the point really clearly that you don’t lose weight to get healthy, you’ve to get healthy to lose fat and you know what I mean and that’s the key right there, so the book is just about being healthy. It’s got the introduction, it’s got what is called the code of the underground, you know the code of the underground being what is it “hold no myths to be true.” It’s all about the hormones. Do what healthy people do, just eat real food, heal the gut, reduce stress, go to bed, detoxify your body, remove toxins, get your mind right. Those are the chapters in the book, a lot of stuff we’ve been talking about during this interview, and it totally rocks. It has been written in a really funny entertaining type of way. I’ve sent it out to a few people to read a few chapters. They are like, “Dude, I can’t put this down,” and so I’m really excited about it.
I’ve been up this whole week studying a few things. The hormone chapter is really hard because there’s so much information that I’ve to pack into about 10 pages and so, just figure out how to make it more basic than it already is. There’s going to be profiles in there, it’s called darksider. First time, I’m talking about this one, darksider profiles and so there’s all the different people like Gary Taubes has a profile. You can read about Gary, you can click and go on to his webpage. You can click on there and go to his radio shows that he has been on, so we’ve got those for Gary, for Cate Shanahan, for the Teta brothers. I mean pretty much all the people who’ve been on my show are going to have profiles, and so not only is it my information, but I’m also exposing a lot of people who want to lose fat, who want to learn about the dark side, who want to live the code of the underground exposing them to some of the other leaders that I’ve come across during this last 5 to 6 years and so, really fun.
There’s going to be a companion book. I may just include this in the regular book, still trying to figure it out, but the underground cookbook where you know my undergrounders, the people who watch, people who listen, they’ve contributed real food recipes, and so that’s going to be in there, but they’ve also made videos, so you’ll be able to click on it and watch them, instructs you on how to make the video, which is pretty cool.
Then, there is the third book, if you ever watch my videos, Brett Klika, a fitness questan, he’s done a lot of videos with me. He wrote the underground workout manual, and so it’s about the anti-gym. You don’t always have to go to the gym, you can do things from home with less than $50 of equipment and not only are we going to have different workout programs in there from basic all the way up to advance, and not only would you see like here’s the beginning of the squat, here’s the end of the squat, you’ll be able to click on it, and you’ll be able to see Brett instructing you on how to do the exercises properly and effectively and so, very interactive products that we have going on, and so we’re looking to launch on August 15th.
It was supposed to be July 28th, but we’re having some illustration issues right now and just thought, “Hey, it’d be good to hold it off for a little while anyway” and make sure it’s really perfect the way I like things and I’m pretty excited about it. It’s been a long time coming up and talking about writing a book for at least 6 to 7 years and finally got it done.
Co-host: It’s great man, yeah. Just before you finish, one of your articles I think is really important I think a lot of people should read and that was one called “This Is Silly.” I really like that one. I know Chris Pressor has mentioned it before, but I really think that was important just like, I know we’ve been talking about all the stuff, but it’s just crazy to get too wrapped up in it too. I’d love to just kind of hear some what’s your expression on that article again.
Sean: That was me wenting. I haven’t been doing a lot of video blogging lately because I just have been busy with the book, but there was a period when I just didn’t want a video blog where I just wasn’t interested in being part of this ridiculous health blogosphere with people talking trash about people, people literally bickering. I mean, there are so many things to be concerned about and to blog about, to spend our time focusing on. You’ve got people literally on the internet arguing over food and it’s just like this is just really stupid. This is just absolutely silly and I had people put me in their videos talking trash and like dude we are talking about foods, like really? and I just feel like it got real silly for a good while and I felt like we’ve just lost sight of the end goal and I started to put myself in the place of somebody who just wants to go online and just learn what they should eat and that person, if they went online to look for that would be incredibly freaking confused right now because we make things so darn complicated.
We always tell people the best diet to stick to. It’s a diet that you can stick to and all of these crazy diets that we’ve got these days, nobody can stick to them. Everybody is talking trash about everybody else’s diet and we just need to reel ourselves back in, you know like I said in the video before you can teach people how to spell, you have to teach them what their A,B,C’s are. and I think we need to just go back and focus on what real food really is and that’s when we came up with the slogan of just eat real food. My girlfriend at that time she called it jerf and I was like that’s cool, so when you call it jerf in, you know what I’m saying and it’s just what is real food, I think that’s number one.
If we go back and look at Western Price, lot of the audience may be familiar with Western Price. He in the 1930s traveled around the country, studying, living with and visiting indigenous people who have been living that way for centuries and he didn’t find that anybody had the same particular diet. What he did find though is that they ate real food. They didn’t eat processed garbage that we eat, that is in the media and had claims of being low fat and weight loss. They just ate real food and we have a society these days where people can’t even identify what a real food is, and so we need to reel ourselves back in, teach people what real food is, and then maybe they can move on to the next grade and get a little bit deeper but we’re just doing way too much. It’s almost like people are grandstanding, you know. I’m smarter than you and I’m smarter than you and just kind of goes back and forth and it just becomes freaking battle wrap and it’s stupid and so, that why I wrote it. It came from the heart and it seems like it resonated with a whole lot of people and I’m glad it did.
Co-host: Yeah, and I think that’s totally true. I mean when you really think about all these diets like the Paleo diet and even vegan and vegetarians and stuff like that, the idea is just don’t eat processed junk man. It’s like start getting in there and like playing with, “Oh, you shouldn’t eat more than 25 grams of fructose a day and you’ve got to do like this percentage of like fat and carbohydrates.” It’s like just don’t eat this crap and eat everything else.
Sean: It makes people stressed. Okay, what should we eat, I shouldn’t eat this, I shouldn’t eat this. It just becomes this mind boggle you know what I’m saying and it stresses people out, you know what, stress makes you fat. You know what I mean and so what’s worse, maybe the bad food that you may have had a little bit of before, now you try to eat all clean, but now you’re stressed out about eating all clean. You know I’m a guy, I’m a big fan of the 80-20 rule, some people have a problem with it, I really don’t care, you know what I mean. Eat right 80% of the time, other 20% of the time, get your groove on, have fun, enjoy your family, enjoy your friends, don’t be the weird one out there being all evangelical about your food. Nobody likes that, you are going to have no friends sooner or later and then it’s just not worth it, just live man, just live.
Co-host: Right, yeah, yeah. Sean, I just want to thank you so much for doing this man. It was like awesome. Finally talking with a guy from Underground Wellness Radio, you know you’re always so fun to talk to. I’d love to do it again sometime if you ever want to.
Sean: Whenever you want me man, any Friday, I’ll do it. I can run my mouth for an hour any Friday.
Co-host: Thank God, it’s Friday right. Yeah, cool man. I hope everyone goes over and follows you on twitter @ugwellness. Where can they contact you, if they want to learn more about you and what you’re doing?
Sean: They can go on undergroundwellness.com. If they’ve got any questions or need help with anything, just go ahead and click on the contact button, send me a message, I’ll get back to you as soon as I can, usually about 48 hours and yeah, looking forward to meeting you guys.
Co-host: Cool, yeah, you’ll check out this guy’s YouTube page too. It’s awesome. It’s got 25,000 subscribers for a reason. It’s great.
Sean: 40,000 now.
Co-host: 40,000. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
Sean: It’s all good.
Co-host: It’s your fault man, your website still says 25.
Sean: I know, I know.
Co-host: All right. Cool man. 40,000, hopefully it gets to a million soon by 2012, I know you will.
Sean: Got a long way to go, but we’ll see what happens.
Co-host: It’s good to have big goals.
Sean: Yeah, it is.
Co-host: Cool man.
Sean: I appreciate it.
Co-host: Thanks to you too man. I hope we can get back and do it again and keep up the great work.
Sean: I will. Thank you.
Dave: If you enjoyed this and got some benefit from it, it would really help us if you would go to iTunes and leave a positive ranking. That helps people find our show. You can also find us at bulletproofexec on Twitter or you can check out the blog anytime you like.
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