Go Unpro Week 19: A Doctor’s 52 Week Journey to an Unprocessed Life

https://youtu.be/_13ftf-cG8Q

Welcome to the Go Unpro Podcast, a doctor's 52-week journey to an unprocessed life. Now, here is your host Dr. Brent W. Lartz, Associate Professor of Infectious Diseases and Internal Medicine, Neuroscientist, and Best-Selling Author. All right, everyone. Welcome to another week of a doctor's 52-week journey to an unprocessed life. This is week 19. All right. So last week on... Sunday Science, we talked about sleep a lot, okay, about all of the different factors that play into sleep, and also then all of the health benefits of a better sleep, from decreased risk of cancer to basically the sleep is where we consolidate our memories, restores better memories, and restores clears Glymph, and that improves the clearance of senescent cells. And hence, that potentially could have an effect on dementia.

And it improves leptin and ghrelin profiles. And hence, when, you know, when you sleep better, you aren't as hungry. And There is a scientific basis for that fact. When you get less sleep or poor sleep, you feel hungry and you have to start binging and have more sugar. And it seems like that, oh, I have to get some energy because I need. to eat some sugar because I have not slept well. That kind of factor is actually based in scientific fact of the hormones leptin, ghrelin, and adiponectin in your body.it causes an improved lean muscle mass to fat ratio in persons who have better sleep and versus those who have poor sleep, especially those who are trying to lose weight. And again, decreased risk of cancer.

Let's just look at the risk of cancer. 61% at four years increased risk of cancer if you maintain an intermediate or poor sleep score compared to a high sleep score, okay? So very important, the sleep that we're getting, and that's what this week is. This week is going to be a concentration on sleep. happens to be that I'm off for a week. Hey, that's great because I can be able to sleep in a little bit. Although sometimes when I'm off also, I tend to stay up late at night. So that's an issue that I always have to consider and maybe even sleeping in later at that time. However, with that said, there is something called social jet lag.

And that social jet lag means you don't want to catch up too much on your sleep where you are sleeping later during the weekend, let's say. Let's say it's on the weekend and you sleep later and you stay out later because that social jet lag will cause poor sleep during the first couple of days. Monday and Tuesday and hence the Monday Maunday right so and that actually is better than if you continue to have a sleep debt that's zero, but it is not as good as sleep scores and health scores when you maintain that sleep during the week and weekend. So during my week off, I'm trying to get to bed early. Last night was not the case. However, okay, so I digress. All right. So we're going to talk again about our meal prep importance this week.

Connection, plastics. And I'm traveling this week, traveling out of town. It's going to be great for the movement section and maybe diet. However, sleep.um and plastics may be a an issue okay so always that um work and travel can get in the way of sleep so all right let's delve into what we are doing this week as far as our diet I’m consolidating the fasting consolidating and improving on that fasting last month when I Not so good on the fasting and the intermittent fasting and the time-restricted feeding. However, this week and this month are much improved. We are talking about consolidating a more vegan diet to now approximately... three to four days vegan. I had Brussels sprout tacos this week with onions and a great seasoning.

We are going to have a 50 vegetable challenge this next week. Okay. And this week is travel. So that's not going to take place this week because I haven't consolidated my grocery shopping for the week. And so next week. I'm going to bring into play a 50 vegetable challenge. We've already done the 40 vegetable challenge, and that is already a challenge in and of itself. So yesterday I had to start thinking about my grocery shopping list for the week. And I've already have probably half of these.vegetables and fruits and nuts and beans on hand however consolidated a a list of 50 of the vegetables and fruits and nuts that I'm going to eat this next week and updating that list starting the meal prep starting the meal prep on Sunday

for the week okay so that's where we're at this week 50 vegetable challenge uh let me list out i mean no it's a lot but um let me list out the 50 vegetables going from red cabbage lettuce romaine lettuce peppers obviously bell peppers are some of my favorites but i include all peppers in that we have i have a very spicy taste bud and so therefore my um hollow jalapeno and other types of spicy peppers definitely in the mix red onions garlic turmeric brussels sprouts tomatoes carrots cucumber ginger Japanese sweet potatoes the Okinawa type the purple nice sweet potatoes, green beans, broccoli, spinach, snap peas, radish, edamame, cauliflower, kale, beets, mushroom, butternut squash, olive, green olives. I don't like the black olives, green olives and Kalamata olives. Perfect for me.

And I love to mix those in with a lot of different types of recipes that I have. So then we go to the fruits. apples, oranges, grapes, strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries. Put these all in my yogurts, pineapple, mango, peach, cherries, lemon, fig, dates. We always have fig and dates in the house. Cranberries and raisins. I know raisins is just basically a dried grape, right? But love to have those in my salads. chickpeas. My hummus, my homemade hummus, we're going to really try to perfect that this week and hence the sunflower seeds because of the tahini I need to put into the hummus. Black beans, red beans going into my chili and almonds, walnuts, peanuts going into some of the salads. My peanut sauce for pistachio. I'm going to try to get into a pistachio recipe.

My girlfriend has some great recipes with pistachios, and we'll see if she can help me with that. I eat pistachios just by myself, but I want to try to get it into a recipe. Again, sunflower seeds, chia seeds, and oats. Oats are always in my yogurt. So, all right, so we're going to, again, make a homemade yogurt this Sunday we're getting back late but Sunday and Monday making a homemade yogurt oat milk yogurt making the homemade hummus to make again okay so again further decreasing the calorie total also though and hence that protein and carb restriction is seen as the way to go for longevity, okay? Consolidating that fasting once a week, 36 to 48 hour fast and every day. a time-restricted feeding to about eight hours.

Okay, so I usually go till anywhere from two to four o'clock in the afternoon before I eat most days of the week. Okay, so all right, so all of that leads me to a lower weight and lower BMI from where I started 19 weeks ago and so now we're getting into our movement. I am starting to prepare for my first 5k competition in a while then I'm going to do a 10k later in the month so really about this movement training to train and having a goal toward the training now. I feel like that I've had some goals about my time in the 5k when I'm running my run club and getting that connection at run club we're going to start running four days a week now with one trail run possibly per week three days of strength training one day of tennis one day of biking okay and this week I'm traveling Colorado.

So we're going to be able to do some hiking as well each day this weekend. So probably some running and hiking and strength training all weekend long for this. I love travel because I don't mind the hotel gym. earlier in the year, we had this hotel in the British Virgin Islands that had no gym. And so we had to do our exercise outside. Right. But great to get outside and outdoors. That kind of movement is important. OK. All right. So sleep. We talked about sleep and what we need to do to get sleep. All right. So redoubling, getting seven to eight hours of sleep every night, working on increasing the deep sleep. And so even if I've gotten six and a half hours, like last night and the night before and the night before, I had six and a half to seven hours of sleep, but my deep sleep and my REM scores are not as good.

And so this is, again, I caution people to use some of this measurement as fact when you look at your aura sleep score or your Apple watch sleep score, etc. What they are looking at when they do this deep sleep and REM sleep score on your aura ring, for example, is really about muscle movement and paralysis of muscle that occurs in REM sleep and some of the movement that occurs in deep sleep. That is a correlation that is not based on true sleep studies where you show that the brain waves are in deep sleep. So it could be that aura or it could be that Apple watch sleep scores might not be accurate as long as you're getting that seven to eight hours. Pay attention to what you can do to increase the deep sleep.

I feel like I wake up refreshed every day. I can wake up at 5.30 a.m. and feel refreshed after five hours of sleep, but that sleep debt is there. There are approximately 1% of people who can truly have less sleep and actually get a good quality sleep. score and not need sleep. Less than 1%. A lot of people are saying, I'll sleep when I'm dead and I know I'm doing fine and I'm sleeping well. And they think that they are part of that sleep prototype that can do that. and that is less than 1%, probably about 0.1% as a matter of fact, you are likely not that case. Okay. So, and so I may have thought that that might've been the case for me in the past, but now that seeing all of this data on cancer risk and with health risk because of sleep deprivation, then that's all the more important to get that in our bailiwick for this week, okay?

So three, we've gone through three. We've gone through the diet and the movement and sleep this week. Also connection, okay? Again here, I think I've mentioned this in the past about language and learning a second and or third or fourth language to try to get connection to people around the world and also within your own country, certainly Spanish, even French. If you're talking about maybe some Haitian immigrants, French here in the United States, but that travel and getting to know. other parts of the country. If you don't have the money to be able to travel to, you know, even parts of the other state, drive to another town and stay and walk around to a town that's not your hometown. Okay. So say hi and good morning.

to people on the street that you meet, especially when you travel, trying to meet new people. OK, so the other part about connection, improving, getting to a meetup group for creativity, also maybe even exercise. We've talked about the run club this week. Our neighborhood has a.a bicycle leisure club as it is, and they bicycle leisurely, and I ran with them. My girlfriend rode her bike, and that kind of connection to neighbors that are in the area also serves importance, okay? So the other part is about connection within family, mothers and grandmothers Connection to each other, a grandmother paying close attention and caring for a granddaughter or grandson is important, but also important for that grandson and granddaughter to get in contact with the grandmothers and grandfather.

to improve that connection within the family we had this past week my son got to spend a bit of time with his grandparents with his uncles and aunts and his cousins obviously and so that's all the more important so that connection, increasing the travel. Okay. So I think I haven't traveled recently in the past two months because we just moved into a new house, but that is going to change. Um, all right. So then for the fifth pillar of plastics and in the life, we are, um, redoubling on this next five free life okay so and it's a lot about again we talked about diet and the basically addition is basically like a subtraction because the more you add to your life that is not plastic the more you can get rid of other things that are that are plastic and so this week for five weeks in a row improve our wardrobe this week.

And last week we worked on our dress shirts. Here you can see I'm wearing my 100% cotton. A pretty expensive shirt but because some of these cotton shirts tend to be not as nice if you don't get the exact right cotton weave and cotton. the Pima cotton, the Supima cotton, and all those kind of things, right? So can be expensive. And hence why we need to spread this out over time. And hence why I'm doing this over such amount of time. The 52 weeks is because it does take some money and some time and some thought Into getting rid of the plastics in your life we've done a lot of things in the kitchen already we've done a lot of things in the yard and there and we've probably about maybe 20 percent improved our

wardrobe as far as getting a lot of different cotton things but this week and then in these next four weeks five weeks if you include last week and the dress shirts we're going for let's go for approximately 80 percent cotton hemp and bamboo in our wardrobe So this week we're doing some underwear. I got some great cotton underwear. There is about 2% spandex just in the band and it's underneath a cotton weave. So this appears to be what's going to be a really high quality. It is expensive. It is $120 or so to replace the underwear. It's going to get rid of my Lululemon completely rayon plastic spandex, whatever it is in Lululemon. I already have probably about half to two-thirds of my underwear that is completely cotton, but it is 5% spandex in those.

Actually, I think it was 15%. And those... are still there. I'm just going to get rid of about three pair of Lululemon underwear that I accidentally bought about six months to a year ago. And so I thought it was one of those fabrics that was relatively natural, but apparently it was not. And it's so easy to do is really when you are Buying these clothes is really easy for a clothing company to hide behind a natural fiber or some kind of a viscose, which might be made from bamboo. And I'm not saying viscose might be bad, might be OK, but viscose is actually very highly processed from bamboo into a into a more of a plasticky compound. Right. So it is a fiber that is nice, but trying to avoid these.

processed fibers as well, even if they happen to be natural. Okay. So we're again, trying to move to a full wardrobe that is 80% at least getting rid of some of my polos. I have a really nice But again, some of the base layers, if I'm going hiking, a lot of that tends to be moisture wicking and so tends to be not a good fiber. A lot of these merino wool fibers for hiking wear is great. However, again there, be careful of the... fibers that have been processed from merino wool, because you really need to pay attention to that when you're buying your products. Okay. So, all right. So again, let's, we haven't really recapped our 19 weeks for a little while. So let's go through really what we've done so far.

a daily serving of berries, almost a daily serving, really started an accountability app.  We've gotten our sleep back into circadian rhythms, getting bright morning light, mid-afternoon, some exercise, and then late in the evening, gotten our decreasing our light exposures okay we've paid attention to our diet and no fast foods trying to avoid sodas trying to avoid sugar water daily I have basically a water service now that really brings me in great water okay so also any supplements that we might need by going partially vegan might need some b12 and omega-3 and vitamin D and calcium. Those are the main supplements that I take. And doing Sunday meal preps, paying attention to the microbiome, very little dairy, if anything, cheese, red meat-free, poultry and seafood only.

Those that have a pescatarian diet actually have better longevity scores than persons who are completely vegan so I do like seafood I do like sushi so I try to do that home prepping hummus and bean salsas and using all natural ingredients all basically whole food ingredients basically this is The process here of going to an unprocessed life is making sure that you are eating a mostly plant based whole food diet and getting rid of as many plastics in your life. We do know and we're and I've had some of these Sunday science episodes. where we show about plastic exposure and the amount of hormone disruption that causes and also basically the disruption to babies and children. And to inflammation in your colon that can lead to colon cancer, could lead to inflammation that could lead to health problems and autoimmune diseases in the future.

So again, plastic exposure is Something we are striving toward to get rid of that processed packaged foods, fast foods all have microplastics within. them okay so again we're increasing our beans so that we can have some protein in our diet nuts and then we've gotten rid of for plastics oral care and our mouthwash and limiting screen time stress and reduction we've talked about entrainment I haven't really uh implemented that fully yet, but that's going to be by the end of the 52 weeks we'll have that. We’ve gone to our olive oils and avocado oils, 75% of that trying to avoid the processed seed oils. If a seed oil is cold processed, it might be better than the fully processed seed oils. Uh, we're trying to eat tomatoes, bell peppers, making homemade dressings, uh, glass mixing bowls.

And, uh, let's see what else. So week nine, we, um, started to, um, bring in some culture and our soaps and our shampoos getting to some more natural. We’ve improved our colder room for and the weighted blanket for and we've gotten the travel connection we did the 40 whole foods weekly starting in week 10 so we did that 40 whole foods vegetables that starting then and we've been doing a great job with getting close to that each week trying to improve our microbiome And that thus improving the inflammation in the colon and hence improving our risk for different types of cancer. OK, so decreasing alcohol, trying for eight drinks per month and drinking more non-alcoholic beers, doing some of the meditation and affirmation and.

manifestation that comes along with the need for a process to get to that unprocessed life okay so fermented salsas and hot sauces I have some fermented pickles in the cupboard right now that I need to get out of there I’m going to try them today when I break my fast today Water filtration, belonging, a sense of belonging we started to work at. Peppermint teas with honey using whole ginger, turmeric, cinnamon, cayenne, peppermint, any of these. I try not to be a juicer because that really just takes out the fiber from a lot of... a lot of foods that you could just eat whole. Why do you need to juice it, right? So juicing for homogenization might be something somebody might like, but again, you're taking the fiber out, okay?

We've increased our fiber, we've increased our fermented foods. improved our sleep, gone to, we're working on getting to a blackout room for our room, but finding that kind of expensive in this new house. So we're working on that right now. I'm using paper cups for taking and also stainless steel cups. So I have a stainless steel cup that I bring to work every day to drink 32 ounces after my initial 32 ounces in the morning and bringing a paper cup for my fiber that I try now to use my psyllium husk fiber. later in the day. Okay. So, um, worked on my own kimchi, which was a great thing on week, uh, 16, 17, 18, uh, lunch yogurt that I make every day, this homemade oat milk yogurt, making my own homemade oat milk basically from again organic milk because oats do potentially

have glyphosate and pesticides that accumulate on the oats and very commonly used in oat farming so therefore organic oats are better this week again we just talked about our fasting calorie restriction. And one thing I wanted to mention is that it's coming up time to have my blood work drawn, to see what my vitamin levels, my hemoglobin A1c, to try to improve that, to try to continue on my process of diverging my path away from my parents. Path of health okay so again there hemoglobin a1c kind of borderline and we're going to come along here and get some blood work again soon all right um that leads us up to week 19 where we are today and again we're consolidating the fasting 50 vegetable challenge We're improving our running and our strength training and other variety sports.

We talked a week or two about a variety of movement, actually having the best decrease in mortality over time. And we're redoubling getting seven to eight hours of sleep. And then we're going to work on also. improving our deep sleep. And I think once we have some blackout in the room, I think that might help because again, I think I told you I have a neighbor that has a spotlight that shines right into our backyard and gets at least some light into my room. And so that certainly could impact the deep sleep and REM sleep. Our connection, we're increasing travel. We went to Paris earlier in the year and met a lot of great people there. Got to get some great cultural challenges there. Again, plastics, we are.

changing out our underwear this week and improving that, trying to move toward 80%. And I think soon we're going to get there. 80% of our wardrobe will be plastic free soon. All right. So I...thank you very much for joining me. I love all you guys. I love the fact that you're joining me on this journey, or at least watching what I'm doing. Again, you don't have to do anything that I'm doing. And again, seek help with anything you need for this manifestation journey of better health, okay? Anything you need, you can find that help from someone. get help. Those kinds of things are important. If you need a counselor, if you need a life coach, whatever you need, I think it's, I think those things are very important.

And also your own physician. Don't try something that I'm doing that might not be great for you. Again, it's the N of one. Everybody is different. I'm different. What I'm doing might not be. the best for everybody else. But again, do the research. This is why we have this Sunday Science Podcast every week. And again, why we do this every week where I'm doing this gradually, setting small goals that can be attained and not a failure. If you try to go cold turkey and get rid of all your wardrobe, number one, it's going to be very expensive. On day one and it's going to be you're going to have some challenges along the way because like some underwear that I actually have about six pair of underwear in my drawer that are these fully cotton but they are not the fit that I wanted so again kind of a failure but that's the it goes.

You're going to find some products over time that are going to be what you want. And I'm going to start to post some of these products that I found over the 52 weeks to be important for you, but, and that'll be on the gounpro.com website. And so that just has to take me taking the time to get that there for you. OK, so we are this week having a Sunday science on marijuana. Had some questions earlier this week from some people about marijuana and. it's risks and benefits. There are some benefits to marijuana in older age, but what really opened my mind to this was actually a lot of risk from marijuana for longevity and actually accelerating biological aging. and potentially worsening cognition in older age, and that's with lifelong use.

And we're going to go through, and it's going to be a big Sunday science because I have about 10 or 12 articles that I'm going to be bringing up during that. Usually we only do about three or four articles at most, but I found that I just kept searching and finding new articles yesterday and finding some very important findings. And again, marijuana is something that can improve anxiety, can improve nausea in certain conditions. So cancer, nausea and may actually improve cancer outcomes after the cancer diagnosis. But we will also show a potential link to testicular and. breast cancer for marijuana use. And this somewhat makes sense from the mechanistic standpoint, since people on marijuana and using marijuana regularly have hormone, sex hormone, estrogen, and testosterone abnormalities.

And so we'll see that connection and we'll see what you think about the data that's out there, the different articles that we have that are that are telling, so again, thanks for joining me. The video podcast, again, is on Substack, YouTube, on GoUnPro.com and it is on Apple Podcasts on video. Then you can see it on audio podcasts, wherever you get your audio podcasts. And again, we are on social media. We're on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Threads, and Substack. We have our own little social media gathering there on Substack as well. Look forward to seeing you guys on week 20. We're almost halfway through the year. By the time we get our wardrobe somewhat replaced to get to 80% natural fibers, we're going to be almost at 26 weeks.

So I can't wait for the party.at 26 weeks when we get to halfway through and then we're going to go back through some of our life from the diet to movement to sleep to connection and try to maximize everything for the last 26 weeks for the last half of the year can't wait for you to join me can't wait for everything all of the successes that we're having with changing our life thanks for joining me we'll see you soon This site and any information communicated within it are not intended as medical advice. The information herein is not intended as medical care, diagnosis, or treatment of any medical condition. No component of this content, including discussion or comments, shall be construed or implied as establishing a doctor-patient relationship. Before you translate or copy any of the information, diet, exercise, or products utilized herein or on any social media post to your own practice, consult your own research, physician, therapist, or nutritionist for your own health. No warranties or claims are made as to the benefits or risks of any treatments, diet, exercise, or products herein. Research any treatments, diet, exercise, or products thoroughly before trying for yourself. Referral, affiliate, or advertising fees may be garnered by this site.