Week 24: 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. Lartz, Associate Professor of Infectious Diseases and Internal Medicine, neuroscientist, and best-selling author. All right here it is the go on pro podcast week 24 a doctor's 52-week journey to an unprocessed life where I am changing my life every facet of my life slowly but surely within one year I am getting to the healthiest I can be and we are manifesting 110 years of age we are manifesting a healthy 100 years of age and everyone before they die has that marginal decade right that decade that they are less than healthy less able to do what they want to do and the best scenario you can get is if you can stave until it's far into the future.
So if you can get to your 50s and 60s, like I am, relatively healthy, but then realize that you are headed into the same trough, into the same valley that your parents went through, and your grandparents, because we're all related genes-wise. to our parents and so you can you know I had a patient the other day just say just like my dad I think I was actually it was today this guy has an amputation he's got an amputation on his toe which was actually not the fault of his disease due to trauma but he has an amputation already he's got congestive heart fairies had, you know, at age 55, looking at this guy, he's two years younger than me .And he says the exact same thing happened to his dad.
His dad just died at age 78, but he had his first heart attack at age 50. This guy's 55, had his first heart attack at age 50. Can you imagine that? And I'm sure that there are some listeners out there that can wholly imagine that. They have family members that are that same way. I have. what was thought to be pretty healthy parents, but in their 60s already had developed diabetes and had limitations because of that. And I'm trying to stave that off, trying to prevent that with my knowledge, with my ability to know how to delve through the research to get to where I need um and I want to give a beginning reminder here because I usually put this at the end of the podcast why do I put this at the end of the podcast to remind you that we have video podcasting of this of this podcast and so the video is broadcast on apple podcast spotify youtube substack and go on pro.
com that's g-o-u-n-p-r-o.com and that is um I forgot to mute my phone right in the middle of the podcast wouldn't you believe it I get a spam phone freaking call unbelievable as we deal with our stresses. Take a deep breath, breathe it out, right? So this kind of thing happens a lot, some kind of noise, some kind of in this podcast studio that we have here. It is, again, relatively new. We are still in the process of designing the podcast studio to become more fancy as it is, trying to be a fancy pants, trying to be fancy with my cotton, all cotton, 100% cotton shirts, etc. And here's where the reminder needs to get to. GoOnPro.com is G-O-U-N-P-R-O.
com. There you can see the video. You can read. The full transcripts are available on Substack and GoOnPro.com. Most of the others just have an approximate summary of the podcast. All right, so let's get knee-deep into what we're talking about, and we are already knee-deep in football season, right? any sports season we have, and you could be listening to this, you know, in springtime of any year, and there's always some kind of sports seasons, you know, sometimes that late spring is a little bit of a downtime for sports as baseball's beginning, but here we are at the... very start of football season. We're in week two. We are knee-deep in it, and we're trying to make this, this is oftentimes a rather unhealthy time frame for Americans.
And so worldwide, you've got soccer season. Worldwide, you've got cricket season. You've got other seasons worldwide. Here in America, it is football season and what goes along with football season but drinking and eating poorly right and lack of exercise you might be able to go to a game but what do you do what do probably half of the sports fans out there do they sit on their couch and they eat potato chips right though so here's where we need to change this and break that cycle okay so in that football season and it's really also make this a change it's also get out and run season it's also bike season because in the fall we start getting to the time frame when we can get outdoors and it's a little cooler and we can geta longer time frame outside without being too hot.
In Florida, it's finally getting down into the 80s. And I know that some of my friends up north are going to say, hey, I'd love it if it was in the 80s because they're already hitting the 50s and 60s. What a cool time frame when you can get out and run and get out for a brisk walk in the fall time. Okay. So Again, we've also got baseball playoffs now coming up here in about a week or so, right? So what better time frame to get out and throw catch, right? So here's what I always told my kids when. They were getting involved in sports is you don't want to be just watching sports I never really watched that much sports a little bit with my kids but we always got outdoors and did it right so instead of um instead of watching that football game go outdoors go out to the backyard throw that football around with your kid throw it around with your neighbor your kids are all grown etc
get out there buy a football buy a baseball um I have my baseball glove here somewhere and my kids used to get out there I think um I have also my sons and my daughters baseball gloves and softball gloves here get out there and play some catch see what you can do okay so always play the game don't watch it okay as much as you can but then we're going to need to get indoors and watch the football sometimes right so what do you do during that football season let's try to shake it up this football season and make that our challenge the challenge is to every single that you make, that you prepare for that day. It's a game day preparation. You know, there's the tailgate, right?
And if you're going to go to a tailgate, try to make as many healthy foods as possible. You can bring in some of the unhealthy. You know, we're not nuns in here, right? We're not monks, and we're going to be... maybe partaking a little bit of it. But the more, and again, the adage for this podcast is that if you add healthy things, it automatically subtracts a little bit out of the unhealthy, right? So bring in the carrots and celery and a dip and hummus, okay? So A lot of these snacks and dips, a lot of the dips are relatively unhealthy unless you make it yourself. And I try to make my own salad dressings if I need to. I try to also go without salad dressings for my salads, but always homemade.
Try to avoid the salad dressings and the dips and that kind of thing that you get at the store. Again, trying to go for unprocessed, right? Those dips and salad dressings that you make yourself can be much healthier because you get to choose. What oils you put in it and putting extra virgin olive oil in something like a salad dressing is the best way and that's this is something from week two here what we did was making our own salad dressings all of these salad dressings with seed oils and I'm not saying that all seed oils are bad but there are a lot of seed oils out there and believe you me These processed food companies are not looking to put the most healthy seed oil in your dressing or in your dip, okay?
They're buying it for the discount price because they need to make money. They need to make money for their stock owners, right? If, you know, just like somebody who is interested in the cost cutting, just look at some of these organic food companies that get bought out by the bigger conglomerates and look at what that what turns out to be a couple of years later. look at that and find out for yourself how much better it is for you to make your own food. And not only that, but local food itself. One of the things we're going to be talking about this week for our diet is doubling down on organic and local food. Local food is picked at ripeness. When you get something from California, Mexico, etc.
They pick those before they're ripe and then transport them. And during the transportation week or two that it takes to get you, that is when it ripens. And that is a less effective way of getting vitamins to you. Okay. So local foods. have better vitamins they are less processed they get to you um in a better fashion okay so let's see um and it's better flavor there's less time in transit there's there's less likelihood that they can get to a place that they could be contaminated if they're grown locally. It also encourages you to eat a diet aligned with the natural growing seasons, introducing diverse nutrients throughout the year. So you may not necessarily be able to eat strawberries all around the year in Florida because the strawberry season is in the spring.
And so there's less strawberries available. Well, that means you need to pick and go go pick your own, pick your own blackberries, pick your own blueberries, those kind of things in the later summer. And then in the fall, there's other berries that the people are growing in grow houses, et cetera. So and obviously there's environmental benefits to that, too. But here's what we're going to how we're going to make sports more healthy. less alcohol, zero beers. Okay. Drink some beers with your friends, get, invite somebody over, bring some zero beers and improving that connection. Okay. So challenges to, to bring people in and actually have fun with this. And then, but yet at the same time, a healthy way, less gambling. If you can avoid gambling altogether.
and also avoiding some of that alcohol, avoiding some of the stress. If your team is losing, it's not that big of a deal. If you're drinking less alcohol it puts less stress on the game okay so um and less gambling and then the other part to this that I want to encourage um and I want to encourage for myself is exercising between plays or during halftime you don't need to see the halftime show get out and get in the backyard and throw that ball around get some exercise between the plays okay so That's something where we are challenging during this week is to to do those few things. OK, so also, again, try some different impacts of stress relief on yourself during these games.
If something is really if you're really PO about the coach and what they did, it's not that big of a deal. Okay, so it's a professional football team. It'll be okay. Okay, so it'll be okay. The times when people really have a problem is when they're gambling. The closest I get to gambling is a fantasy football game or fantasy football team I have with some college friends that I could care less. As a matter of fact, I spent so little time on it that I often I didn't even get to participate in the draft because somebody reminded me of it the day of. And then I said, oh, yeah, I might be able to get to it at 10 o'clock tonight. And, you know, I'm doing something else.
I'm getting ready for bed and I'm thinking to myself the next morning. Whoops. And didn't even check to see what that draft was for a few days later. Because, you know, when they auto-peck those players for you, it never turns out well. But that's as close as I get to gambling. And it's fun because I can then talk to somebody, an old college friend, and get the connection there. All right. So, and a reminder that action and vision go together. Okay. So any of these things we're doing in our five pillars, it doesn't just take vision. It just doesn't just take action because action without that vision, you might not really have a direction to go.
get that vision straight what you want to do that you want to be healthy for your grandson for your it could even be your son turning 18 and you're if you're already unhealthy get healthy for him and any potential future that you want to have and that's where you need to have the vision and then the action must follow it every action you do must follow that vision okay so um again we're not perfect I'm not perfect this week had a little bit of a really stressful week for work had to see a lot of patients and didn't have time to get to do some of what I wanted to do and that can be made up later but, and so I don't want to get down on it completely, but I also want to realize the importance of it enough to get down on myself enough to actually do the action.
Okay. So Here again this week, we are doing a few things. We talked about doubling down on local and organic for our diet. So pillar one, diet. We're decreasing our pasta as well and decreasing some of the carbs that we're eating. Carbs are not bad when you can eat unprocessed carbs that are complex carbs not so good if they're sugar right and I'm decreasing the pasta this week I've just bought a spaghetti squash that I'm going to make into some pasta this week spaghetti squash pasta not technically pasta technically um all right so and I've already last week during that raw veggie challenge which went very well for four or five days then I went to this 5k and didn't do so well because I'm eating out and brought some food with me but um So it didn't go the whole seven days, but it really taught me a bit, okay?
So we already riced the cauliflower for that during the week, and that tasted amazing, okay? So we're doubling down on local and organic this week. I have a great local organic store that I go to and can get some local vegetables, local fruits, etc. So that's what we're doing this week for the diet. For movement, we're increasing the variety again, getting back on track after a hard week at work. and easing into it. What you don't want to do is go take off for three or four days and then get into a really hard and heavy bout the first day. You don't want to get into that high intensity and interval training. The very
first day you want to ease into it get out for a walk first get out for a short run and then ramp up into it during the week and do some two days if you need to do some strength training and but easy strength training easy on the same day just to get back into it to limber up those muscles and again remember that movement is Four pillars of movement. Also, it is the strength and its strength of muscles that you need to prevent falls and to do the necessary things you will need to do in the distant future. Strength and then cardiovascular exercise and its flexibility. Flexibility is extremely important. So stretching. On a daily basis is extremely important to keep that going that flexibility can get you toward being able to prevent your fall if you can really quickly um reach out and be able to prevent that fall all the better okay same thing with then the mobility
in our movement okay so and our strength that we do is um you know not what we used to do when we were 20 years old okay in general I see some of these guys that that in general are big guys right and they're lifting heavy weights and they and I see also people doing really stupid things um, elephant swings with the, with a, with a kettle ball. And these, , people are going to injure their backs and then they're going to be less likely to go. And, and I see these big guys who it seems like they're kind of muscular, but at the same time, they're muscular in a way that is not really muscular. there is a lot of fat inside those muscles.
If you were to look at some of these guys who you think are moderately strong and they're older, 40 years of age, they've got fat marbling. Their muscle, if you took their bicep, it would surely look like a prime rib and not. A filet mignon okay so let's look at getting our strength training is in the range of 12 to 20 reps okay so we're looking at strength in moderate and you do still go to almost failure but at lower weights decreases and decreases the likelihood of injury and um keeps you going longer it's that muscular endurance that's important okay um again sleep we're continuing on this same challenge is the seven plus hour challenge for sleep and with busy an extremely difficult thing to do because everybody's got deadlines everybody has a time they have to be at work and sometimes that doesn't match your sleep phenotype if you're getting up at 4 a.
m and you are a mid or late sleep phenotype something difficult, right? Something's got to give and you're not in that, but you have to get that seven hours of sleep. And I'll tell you, there is something either social jet lag or some kind of jet lag about if you lack sleep one day and you make it up the next day. That is OK as long as you can make it up quickly and not have too many of these. So I think no more than two nights a week of less than five to six hours and then seven plus hours on the other days. That's what I'm tracking. OK, seven plus hours. And when I get around seven hours or better, I track that and it needs to be at least five days a week.
and it can't be you know sleeping in until 10 or 11 a.m. on Saturdays and Sundays that's got to be something where you're still getting a decent bedtime and still holding your circadian rhythms because that is important okay so it's going to help prevent that Monday jet lag and that Monday all right so connection we're going to get continuing into painting meditation again it's okay with connection because you should have be connected more with other people and we've been trying to do this but it's also okay to get connected with yourself and connections where you are alone okay connecting with yourself is extremely important that can be with meditation it can be with journaling it can be writing whatever it is painting paint something that's meaningful to you that you're going to be satisfied with and love what you're doing so we are continuing our painting challenge this week um and This can be done in solo.
It can be with a pair. And maybe what I've done with my girlfriend a couple of times is painting the same subject. and then seeing what the difference is. Sometimes, and oftentimes, it ends up being a little bit similar because you're comparing against each other. You're looking over there and go, oh, I see what she's doing. So get to that. No more than, no more than.um one painting challenge per week try to perfect what you're doing be as artistic as you can it's not always going to we're all we're not all bob ross right we're not all able to take a take a whatever it is I mean it's sometimes watching and we watched bob ross last week
he's taking like a little paint spatula and swiping it across the canvas and creating something that that it's difficult right so he's acting like we should all be able to do that it we're not all bob ross it doesn't have to be perfect but try to do something that's meaningful you to you this week we lost a dog and speaking of connection lost my girlfriend's dog and was a rather sudden thing and very emotional about it for the last couple of weeks and so my painting this week is going to be painting that dog in a in what she loved to do and that was to chase squirrels so I'm going to paint her in a tree up up against the tree and looking up to to see the squirrel she loves just running around this part that we have nearby and She, that was her passion.
And you know what? She had a connection to those squirrels. That was her connection. She was passionate about it. She lived life. Okay. She, um, and bad, um, bad juju at that point when she, , got to it. But,.we're going to do that. Also, potentially something else I enjoy that I love connecting with is wildlife. And you've seen me maybe on social media, hiking and getting out into the mountains, getting into sailing, getting into the islands as well. Nothing is better to me than photography as well. Seeing the photos that I've taken over the years and in sailing, in sunsets and sunrises I've seen, that kind of thing is another connection we can get. So that's something that we're going to look at. Our fifth pillar, you know, we've got diet, movement, sleep.
connection and plastics our fifth pillar we are again taking a good month to almost two months out of this year to replace some of our clothes and getting rid of the plastics in our clothes it takes a while telling you the you know it's difficult to get rid of everything all at once costs a lot of money right so especially with some of the expensive clothes I already wear and some of the expensive polyester clothes I've got some some what looks like club clubbing shirts that that are polyester that I have a hard time one shirt to my daughter that I love the color of that shirt and it does feel good, but I am looking and we are going to get into the different ways that we can get to getting these different fibers into our clothes, the hemp, the cotton, and just all the different fibers that we can get to.
um other than hemp bamboo and alpaca fiber and wool right wool is something we've had for centuries right we've worked with wool for centuries and they are and again I tell you about how some of these places are and these manufacturing companies especially when they're coming from China, they could potentially alter and adulterate those fibers by processing them into a fiber that is almost plasticized. Okay, so again, we're getting rid of that. I'm not going to go through much of a... a recap this week. We're going to save that for week 26. Week 26, we are going to be, you know, in two short weeks, we are halfway through the year and we are going to have a big to-do at that time, 26 weeks.
And right around that time, I'm going to be in Aspen. Hey, if you are in Aspen in two weeks, I'm going to be there and I can't wait to see you guys.um perhaps we're going to have some little events there in aspen all of my friends in aspen to get together and celebrate 26 weeks there is no better um mountain town than aspirin I think because I've been in a lot of mountain towns in Colorado and elsewhere and Aspen, while it is rather rich and conservative, they also love their foods and love their health because the outdoor spaces that they have and the bike paths and everything around town and the hiking that is around there between Aspen and Aspen.
and snow mass and obviously the skiing in the winter and this is obviously in October so too soon for skiing so I'm not going to be able to ski or snowboard but we're going to get outdoors and get after it there and we're going to have some great celebrations a whole week of celebration can't wait to be there my daughter's going to be there can't wait all right so um Thank you for joining us. I love everything I'm doing. I love even the times when I feel a little bit down of it because I get down and out a little bit when I make some mistakes in my diet and I have to, I feel like I have to, right? I don't have to eat poorly when I'm at the hospital.
but it seems that that's all that's available. That's when I need to change my situation, right? So that's what we talked about last week about changing situations. We're going to be going into that a little bit as I, in the next couple of weeks. get to these ways and methods that I need to do to change that situation at the hospital. And I've talked to some patients this last weekend about hospital foods. And this one patient said, they brought me two muffins. Why would you bring a diabetic two muffins for breakfast? doesn't make sense, right? But patients demand that kind of thing. I’ll tell you, nothing gets a hospital worse press Ganey scores than if the food is bad. I've heard patient after patient say, I don't want this heart healthy diet.
You must change my diet. You must change my diet. you know, that is what hospitals are up against because that kind of thing is what really impacts their Press Ganey scores, the food, and they're going to cook as rich and fatty diet as they can for these people because they don't want to be, it's not their fault that the patient has that diet. They're going to get what the patient, give what the patient.is requesting and they're requesting I saw this I think three or four times this past week where a patient said can you change my diet I don't want to eat this and I'm thinking you know and obviously there's great education time frames there but in general they don't have it once they've once they've decided that they're not eating fruit for breakfast and they want eggs Then, boom, there it is.
And there's not much, you know, once they're angry, there's not much education that's happening right then. So they need something from somebody else besides an infectious disease physician to teach them about their microbiome and why they're in the hospital in the first place because of their diet. But I try to as much as I can for those that seem to be open to it. I do a lot of education. Love doing that. But somebody who's angry about their diet at breakfast because they got some fruit. This patient that I was telling you about, the two muffins, she wanted less. She wanted, she said, oh, they're giving me all these carbs. How refreshing. How refreshing
to hear this from a patient loved it I was like hey give it to you as pointed to the patient care tech it's coming to take the vitals I said give it give it to give it to the patient care tech they'll eat it maybe or something like that jokingly obviously but you know this is what hospitals are up against in general 90 of people or the opposite of that patient not wanting two muffins for their breakfast. Okay, so but I digress, right? So I love every impact that I can have in somebody who is open to it. There's a lot of people that are open to it. And this is one of the problems of our sad American diet the standard American diet sad right sad is that in general we don't want it why don't we want it this is where this podcast comes in and this education comes in and the education I can give to my individual patients when they're open to it.
And it seems like if they're open to it, they're probably already thinking about this and already getting the education they need. But I am really open to discussing with open-minded people about this. Love it. I love that you're joining me. I love what I'm doing for this. Again, like I said, even when during this last week, when I had to get some energy on the fly and seeing a lot of patients. I love the fact that I can get right back up on the horse and get down the road and get to my exercise, get to my diet, get to my sleep scores better. I had a few more this past week where my sleep scores weren't very good. But again, I was waking up at 4.
30 in the morning trying to get there by six. And even with that, this weekend had some good sleep scores. So let's get to where we need to be and get there gradually. Take the big wins, but take the few small losses and don't dwell on them. Realize them, track them, but don't dwell on them. Add. don't subtract, okay? Subtract when you can, but that adding the healthy things is going to help you subtract, okay? So thanks for joining us. We'll see you next week for week 25. We're going to be having another Sunday Science next week, and I love that you guys are with me. Can't wait to get to where we're going to be for the rest of our lives and to manifest 110. Love it. Thank you. Thanks for following. Talk to you soon.
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