Week 22: A Doctor’s 52 Week Journey to an Unprocessed Life
Welcome to the Go Unpro podcast, a doctor's 52-week journey to an unprocessed life. Now, here is your host Dr. Brent W. Laartz, Associate Professor of Infectious Diseases and Internal Medicine, neuroscientist, and best-selling author.
Hello everyone. Welcome to week 22, a doctor's 52-week journey to an unprocessed life, the GoUn Pro podcast, right? This is week 22. Can't wait to get into this because I'm really excited about what's going to happen this week with the seven-day. Whole uncooked food challenge okay so it's basically the raw food challenge seven days now with that said i know it's a little bit controversial because uh raw food and versus cooked food there are some benefits to cooking food especially vegetables however we're looking for a polyphenol uh beneficial diet here and so We're going to go for a raw food challenge this week.
And I heard earlier this week a mention of a Robert Frost poem, and I wanted to read it here. Because not only are we going down the road less traveled.in an unprocessed life obviously the great majority of our world and our processed world is going down what we think is the wrong road the process road the ultra processed road and we want to be less processed and less plastic less of the headache of the world around us right so This is Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken, amazing poem, and it doesn't really speak to exactly what you think it does. Okay, so two roads diverged in a yellow wood and sorry I could not travel both and be one traveler long I stood and I looked down one as far as I could to where it bent in the undergrowth.
then took the other as just as fair and having perhaps the better claim because it was grassy and wanted wear though as for that passing there had worn them really about the same and both that morning equally lay in leaves no step had trodden black oh i kept the first for another day yet knowing how way leads on to way i doubted if i should ever come back i shall be telling this with a sigh somewhere ages and ages hence two roads diverged in a wood and i i took the one less traveled by and that has made all the difference and really what this says is that um In the future, having explained our path that we took, we wanted to romanticize it, and that's what it is, when really the two paths are about the same.
And so one could argue the processed and the unprocessed life really don't matter a lot overall in the grand scheme of things, because a thousand years from now, no one will ever know who Brent Lartz is. As a matter of fact, if the world may be destroyed for that matter, somehow something will probably be not as matterful as we think it is in this processed versus unprocessed life. However, in the smaller scheme of things, in a life and a road less traveled. One can argue that if you had a dozen years of healthier life, how much that could matter for your life, because that is more than 10% of the life. And if we're going to reach 110, which is what we want to do. we're going to get to that 110.
We're going to manifest that 110, right? And that is my idea of manifesting this 110. That road less traveled may well be the difference between a major deal and it may make me able to be remembered a thousand years from now. Because really, we talked a little bit about the economics of it a couple of weeks ago about how much more money you can make. But think about all of the different things you can do, the major impacts on different people's lives. Think about that granddaughter or grandson that you have that instead of age 10 years of age knows their grandfather or their grandmother as being a sedentary, sits in the lazy boy and sits there watching TV and that's all they do.
Or think about differently, that maybe 20-something-year-old grandson who has a great-grandchild, and that great-grandchild gets to see their grandfather, their great-grandfather, grandson, grandmother, great-grandmother, gets to see them. Being active at 100 years of age and think about the impact that that has on those young eyes and how much it might matter to them and how impactful it can be for X number of lives. Think about as a physician, think about all the help that I could make. for my patients that I could impact with compassionate, loving medicine to where they may be improved in their lives as well. And think about all of the different things that we can do with a dozen extra years of healthy living. So that's where we're at.
And I think that some people might think that this is a road less traveled is maybe not such much of a difference. And that's the meaning of that poem. However, it's really the same path really for, but I often say to patients, If you took yourself right now and split into two people and one person did this and another person did that, there would be a marked difference between the two. I often use smoking, right? But it could be just as much and just as well. I had a patient the other day that had small vessel peripheral arterial disease and They have diabetes, and they're obese, and they are trying to get things under control. The wife is helping him, and there are some improvements.
But think about if he had a mostly plant-based diet and how much could be benefited. Because there are some data to suggest that a plant-based diet can reverse. partially, not 100%, can reverse some arterial plaques. And we're going to get into that study in the next Sunday Science. So get ready for that. So it's not a very new study, but Again, with all the medications we have and all of the things that we have as far as GLP-1 and SGP-2, the things that we have now, the advances that could put us at a better stage going forward, but it's going to be artificial. It's going to be... And granted, I use for myself some artificial things. I use acarbose right now, right?
So again, it's a medication that's not absorbed into the system. But I think that if we solely rely on GLP-1s and SGP-2s and any other medication for that matter that prolongs life and longevity and health span for that matter. It's artificial and may allow us to enjoy the fruits of our labor and the different decadent things in life while taking this medication. I think that that is not a petty matter to think about those dozen years of extra healthy life and then the impact that it could have. If you could just do the whole food, plant-based, mostly plant-based, and calorie-restricted diet. And then all the other things that we need to do, the movement, the training, the resistance training, the cardiovascular training, the sleep that we need to get.
to benefit our brain right and the connection that we need to have with our family and friends and with society in a whole and our generosity that we need to exhibit toward our fellow man and then the plastics that we're going to get rid of those things are a huge difference in our lives if we can really make that a 90%, 90, 10, you know, it doesn't need to be 100%. That would be, you know, this Brian Johnson, this Brian Johnson, that, and he comes down with an autoimmune disease. And we don't know whether it's any consequence or whether he would have come down with that at all anyway. But there are 10,000 different steps we take every day, right? So that's our goal, 10,000, 12,000 steps.
I get sometimes 18,000, 25,000 steps when I'm really active on a day and walking everywhere. Those are different steps we can take each day, different routes that we can take to work or different routes that we can take. Every day we could take, we could go on a different running route every day if we did some different running or a new bicycle route. Choosing each and every day to be the best, that's 365 steps. That's 52 weeks. We're gone this 52-week journey. A little bit of an addition every day. Again, it's not a lot about subtraction in our life. It's not about taking away things. If we can add the healthy things, it'll naturally take away the unhealthy things. As long as we enjoy those things we add.
And I think it is something that is wholly beautiful in that we can take our diet to the next step and have fun with it. Okay. And it can taste good. We're going to take a little bit of a field trip today and we're going to... um talk about diet and what we're doing in the kitchen we're going to take a field trip next week as we venture out into the backyard into where we're growing some of our own food and planting some of our own food And it's going to be a work in progress over the over the second half of this year as we get out of the summertime and still into the kind of the rainy season here in Florida.
But get out of the summertime and get into where the sun is not so hot and can help us to grow our own food. We're going to, this week, talk about diet last, and that way we will have the diet be in our last stage of this talk here, okay? Let's talk about movement first. This week, we're training because of the 5K that we're going to be doing in a short eight more days. We've been training. I was training out in Scottsdale, Arizona, doing some running training here. These are our goals, okay? Increasing participation. increasing our goals as far as cardiovascular training. And obviously, that leaves out, you know, 5k, that leaves out the resistance training part. And I don't really want to do any kind of cross training competition.
That's not in what I what I want to do. But this 5k, I think will be beneficial for me. And I love the fact that there will be a lot of people there in furthering of some sort. Most of these 5Ks benefit a charity of some sort. I think that is important. So that's what we're doing this week is training for that 5K, which will be in eight short days. Sleep. um increasing to seven and a half hours average this next week i know that uh you know i have a one week on one week off week and oftentimes that one week on when i am working i'll tell you it is uh difficult when you're waking up at five in the morning to get seven eight hours of sleep because i'm not a person to go to bed at nine.
My sleep phenotype is kind of a little bit later. It's kind of mid range as far as the sleep phenotype goes. So the fact that I have to get up at five in the morning to do something for a whole seven days in a row, I have to shift that back.to where I am, which is probably going to bed around 11 a.m. and waking up around 7 to 8 a.m. Sorry, going to bed at 11 p.m. and waking up at 7 or 8 a.m. And that is my sweet spot. That's where we're trying to aim for, trying to get around six and a half to seven hours minimum. during those time frames when I am getting up at 5, 5.30 in the morning.
That puts me at about a 10 o'clock bedtime, 10.30, which is not bad. I can easily do that. I easily have the activity that puts my adenosine really high levels at that time that pushes my melatonin right over the edge into the sleep. So I have no problem sleeping. I do have an issue with my deep sleep, though, and I think I can get more deep sleep when I'm getting eight hours. I am going to be continuing to work on the blackout and the temperature that I have in the room. OK, so and let's talk about the connection here this week. And certainly every week I am trying to maintain connections with other persons. um, and people in my life that I feel like are important, my family.
But again, uh, it's also not just about connection with family and friends. It's about making new friends, making potential new cultural friends outside of my area. Okay. This week though, I am going to be buying another easel. My easel that I had several years ago was kind of left outside on a patio for a while at my previous house. And so I'm going to get a new easel, some new paints, and I already have several canvases. And we're going to do a seven-day painting challenge this next week. A challenging for that because i am going to be doing the 5k i'm going to be going away for that for a couple of days so i'm trying to get five to seven paints uh paintings that i can do these are going to be a mixture of different paintings some should have some emotional feeling to them some should have some
nostalgic feeling to them and then some should have a beauty feeling to them as far as a landscape of a vacation I've taken or something like that so a different painting each week and I'm going to share it on my social media so you'll be able to see that i can't wait to share with you these things that i'm going to accomplish with this painting i'm not the best painter i do feel like i do have a little bit of a realist version of things when i paint but also maybe because i do not have the exacting uh hand strokes of the painting, but it also might be then very, a little bit abstract. So let's see what you guys think about my painting, whether you think it's very abstract, whether you can even tell what it is, or whether it's not, because I love the couple of paintings that I've done.
I should share with you my painting that I had. As a matter of fact, when we do our field trip into the kitchen I will share with you some paintings that myself and my girlfriend did on a vacation we took about a year ago and which was in Sedona and the Red Rocks what a great place to be painting right in the Red Rocks and the beauty that's there and the uh, the contrast of the different layers of the earth that are there. So, um, the other thing we're doing this week as far as plastics. Okay. So plastics, we've been on a kick for our clothes, right? And I've got, uh, here, you can see, I've got my a hundred percent cotton shirt.
I'm sure that these are some sort of, I didn't, I'm not sure exactly the buttons. However, I've really accomplished a lot in the last. couple of weeks as far as my clothes go however what i um really and this is something i'm going to be looking into this week is pants um and i guess it didn't because of the motion of the of the camera it doesn't pick up my pants maybe if i move quickly see now you can see itI move quickly now that we can see my pants. All right, there you are. So now it refocuses on me. And so pants are incredibly plastic, artificial. and so that's the deal with our pants here going forward we're going to try to get um into some better formats better fabrics for our pants and we're going to research that and get that going so again my underwear undershirts socks all of those things that impact our
wardrobe going forward we're trying to alter in the future so all right thanks uh for joining me we are going to be heading out now to our field trip into the kitchen so we can show you what we're going to be doing for our seven day food challenge raw food challenge and what we're going to also be doing for fermenting i'll show you how we make our oat milk yogurt all right welcome to the kitchen here we're going to be talking about our seven day raw food challenge not really what you think it is not eating raw chicken raw turkey raw beef, etc. This is a whole food, raw food, plant-based diet this week, okay? Seven days, see what I can do. This is not going to be 100%.
There may be somewhere I am at that I need to eat some chicken. I don't know why that would be necessarily, but with that said, here's where we're at. We are going to be cooking not cooking. We are going to be preparing foods that are raw. Tomatoes and apples. Now, with that said also, we will be cooking a few things because I can't go without beans. Okay, so beans have to be cooked. All right, same thing with my oat milk yogurt, my homemade oat milk yogurt. That has to be cooked as well to start with. But with that said, everything else besides those two items. Will be raw this week okay so seven days first day is always a fast day Monday get the fast day out of the way Tuesday is my big running day again we're we are training as we said for a 5k this week and so there will be some protein that i need to get that accomplished right so Again, tomatoes, lemons, everything that I'm making will be uncooked.
Hummus will be cooked, has to be cooked, right? So, but everything else in the kitchen, we're going to be preparing by going to one of our favorite organic grocery stores, Rolling Oats. We'll go to Whole Foods and Sprouts as well to try to get some. Great organic vegetables fruits everything that needs to be accomplished okay so you know in my yogurt i put plain rolled organic oats um so love that what we're doing this week. It's going to be a great week. Can't wait to share with you every recipe that I share for the seven days, really just six days since the first day is a fast day. But in general, it involves yogurt. It also involves some pickles that I have. fermented as well. That's going to go into one of the bean dishes and, um, can't wait to show it to you. Love it. Love to see you guys following me. Thank you very much for following me. We are on Spotify, Apple podcasts. and on gounpro.com on our video feed, but also on YouTube. And then also everywhere else you can get an audio podcast, you're going to see it. Okay. So love it that you're here with me. Thank you very much. We'll see you guys later.
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