Week 26: 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. All right, everyone, welcome to week 26 of a doctor's 52-week journey to an unprocessed life. This is the Go On Pro podcast. I am so excited to be here. Do you know why? Because I am an Aspen and I am on vacation. Get that seven days off. I am on, seven days on, seven days off. So every other week I get to go play, right? And that play is what is going to make me live to be 500 million years old, okay? So amazing, we're getting there. We're manifesting 111, okay?
So the reason that I'm changing this a little bit. and that's going to be the title of this book and this going forward. This is still the Go On Pro podcast. This is still a doctor's 52-week journey to an unprocessed life, but really the title of my book is going to be Manifesting 111. And the reason I want to do that I want to live to be 111, maybe even older, but I want that to be a healthy 111. I want to be able to do everything I want to do, love everybody I love now, and be able to be creative and be able to do everything. Creatively and create everything that I am now. And so my brain has to be there too, right? So this is halfway there, right? 26 weeks. And we're celebrating this, this week in Aspen. And with that, we're doing some live events here and we're doing some live in-person events. This is the
Doctor's 52-week journey to an unprocessed life. We did this in 2025. We're doing it in 2026. We went to the Aspen Ideas Health Conference last year. Had some really good conversations with a lot of people. Met some people from some food as medicine and also from, I think it's Unforked. This is a, and the Real Food Certified. These are. places, and Aspen epitomizes this, right? Aspen is everything about health, everything about what really should matter. There's a lot of money here. There's a lot of people that have a lot of money, and I'm sure that as soon as they go home, they're back to their usual ways. It really signifies everything that is healthy about the area.
I used to go to Vail a lot and I'm coming to Aspen a bit more now because there are just so many more trails available to run and to bike and everything just feels so much more authentic here. And so we're doing that celebration. We're doubling down, doubling down for the last half of the year, last half of the 52 weeks. Here we're going to and we're going to live stream some of these events so get ready for some live streaming we haven't really done this in the past and so we're brand new at it so if it fails it we have some glitches blame me because i'm the one that works on all that but we're going to be live we're going to be live on Facebook Live.
We're going to be live on TikTok Live as well. So that will expand going forward as we get more followers to this. But as we have some of these live events, we're going to be educating you on what I'm doing. Okay. So love everything that I'm doing for my health. And there are times I am not perfect. There are times when I will get to be too busy. And I find that sometimes comfort food is comfort, right? But we have to change that mental. aspect of this right about what is comfort and get comfort from being healthy okay so that comfort food really should be something different okay we're also talking this week about oral health Okay, so oral health is very important.
And that's something that I'm going to be doing doesn't fall with any of my five pillars, really. But it does. It is very important. There is an extreme importance. of oral microbiome for brain health and for longevity. So there they have found that if you have certain bacteria in your mouth that are associated with poor oral health, that that portends to a worse outcome for brain health. Now, with that said, Is there a reason that might be if you have poor oral health, could you all and could you also have other things happening with your gut microbiome and other aspects? But with that said, we're going to double down on this as well, because I have probably not been the most steadfast about my.
oral health about flossing and about getting to the dentist and I've really probably the past two or three years getting to the dentist every six months for cleaning that's really been part of this push but it's going to be even more so because I need to start and this is part of my mantra this week, not part of the five. Maybe I could put it in diet. Maybe I could put it into plastics. Maybe I could put it into somewhere else, but it does not fall into that. But we are going to be flossing more often, trying to floss daily, at least daily, at least three or four times a week. I know I get busy and I'm really rushing to get out the door.
I, in general, when I floss, I like to brush before and after and or if I don't brush after, I like to do a mouthwash right after. That way I can kill some of the bacteria that I've just uncovered in my nether spaces in between my teeth, right? So again, here we are halfway, 26 weeks. Let's talk a little bit about what we're doing in the diet Realm of one of our pillars okay so one of the things that I find is if I go off the wagon is that there it's tough when you do that because you tend to blame yourself you tend to think oh my god I'd fall off the wagon and what you don't want to do is string two or three of and really redoubling efforts, especially on the off days.
So if you can't for one or two days because of some stress that you're having, and again, stress begets poor eating, and poor eating begets stress. So if you fall off that wagon, And you don't exercise for a day and you have bad health for a day, bad diet for a day, bad sleep, bad connection because you're stressed. All four of those pillars, boom, throw you into then a snowball effect going down the hill. Right. So the quicker you can get off of that hill and out of that snowball. out of that avalanche. Just saw a video today because we're in Aspen about somebody snowboarding right in front of an avalanche and getting off into a safer area and or outrunning the avalanche, right?
So if you can outrun the avalanche and get to where your health is, it takes redoubling of those efforts. During a weekend when really the problem with that is if you're trying to focus on that saying on a weekend i'm going to be healthy is that some people and i'd say a majority of our country tends to go hog wild on the weekend and therefore you need to really make your weekends into a health status situation. Okay. So same thing with vacation. When you go on vacation, try to go to vacation in a place where you can exercise. I think I showed you guys earlier in the year when I was at a resort in the British Virgin Islands and they had no gym. Whoa. Where can you go to a hotel that has no gym?
That was certainly, but it's right in the middle of the water. There's all kinds of water activities. There was some hiking I could do on a nearby island. This island was the hotel and that's it. I love to go to places like that, but good Lord, why don't they have a gym? I think they were trying to maximize their space because they were a tiny island. But, all right. So, again, try to make the situation. And a week or two ago, we talked about Duckworth's book called, I think it's Situated or Situations. That book is really an amazing. book about how to put yourself in situations. If you put yourself in the bad situation, either money-wise or anything with your career, if you put yourself in a bad situation money-wise, the outcome needs to be changed by changing your situations along with your attitude, okay?
that you need to do is not only about your thoughts and about your actions, but sometimes it's about those you surround yourself with, the situation you're in, your household, your work, your friends, etc. Okay, so everybody needs to think about that with their own life for everything. It doesn't necessarily have to be this. It doesn't necessarily have to be everything that I'm doing. But it should be that for much of the way you live your life. And I like to live my life that way. So, all right. So our diet also, so redoubling efforts on vacation. We are also redoubling our efforts on alcohol. I don't really have. I think my maximum drinks per month is around eight to 12, something along those lines. And we're going to try to get to less than eight for sure.
We're going to shoot for six to eight drinks per month. So really what that entails is you never have more than one. If you never have more than one and you drink one on each of Friday and Saturday, then you can't get above eight, right? So as long as you don't drink any alcohol, myself included. You don't drink any alcohol from Sunday through Thursday and drink only one drink Friday and Saturday and then have a particular week try to go at least one week per month is what I’m going to work on one week per month where i have zero drinks for the entire that would basically make it 11 days in a row or 12 days in a row without drinking and therefore then that really sets me up for success in this to try to change that with that said and I’ve really found really good success with drinking non-alcoholic drinks when I’m out with friends and my girlfriend that is the key is that non-alcoholic beer it tastes
of the low alcohol or no alcohol beer, I'm blanking on the name, McDougall's or whatever that was called back in the day when we had just two options for non-alcohol beer. Now there's every single beer brand has one. I've got a Heineken Zero. I've got an Amstel Zero I can drink. I've got some other, and then there's Biro, right? celebrity brand, right? But I haven't really tried Biro yet, but the Heineken Zero and the Amstel Zero are pretty good. And so are some of the nicer beers as well. I used to drink a little bit of Heineken regular beer myself before. But that's that's the key for me is to do that and if i have um one regular oh and i and i used to drink a lot of Guinness too Guinness has now a zero that really tastes just like maybe a light Guinness and so maybe not as thick
But the Guinness Zero, if I'm going to drink a Guinness, boom, drink a Guinness and then a Guinness Zero and then continue to finish that out. So, all right. So movement here, I've always been someone who will... ignore the lower extremities in my gym routine. And certainly my running and my bicycling and my tennis, et cetera, they have involved a lot of lower extremities. But if you want to maintain the continuing to have a good either balance and or lower extremity strength, which is highly important for longevity. I need to not skip leg days and I need to not skip it during any general. I'm only in the gym for weightlifting three days a week, maybe four. And so. every time I go, I usually had about eight or 10 different exercises that I cycled through three.
And we're looking at really not necessarily a lot of hypertrophy now in older age. I'm looking at both muscular endurance, flexibility, and all of the other pillars of movement that we've talked about before. And so those eight or 10 exercises that I do. Really need to skip along to from biceps to deltoids to the chest to and then I do usually some ab work and I need to do, instead of just doing one exercise for legs, I need to do probably two or three. So trying to get every aspect of my leg muscles involved in the workout. Okay. So never skipping leg days really is important. And So that's what we're doing this week is really concentrating on the legs. And while I'm here in Aspen, got a nice little gym here that I can do that in.
And sleep, sleep. Here, my failures with sleep are in general only those time frames when I am working those seven days on, and I had really had some good success, maybe some failure, but success last week. at least three or four days out of that week, got some really good seven hour sleep days. And that's what we're working on is increasing those seven hour day sleeps. Last night here in Aspen, I got nine hours of sleep, nine and a half, I think it was. Amazing. Went to bed at 10, didn't wake up till like 7.30 this morning. Perfect right that's 9 30 eastern standard time that and so and granted a couple of nights before the night that we flew out at five got up at five in the morning to get out of the door into the airplane two hours of sleep didn't sleep well on the plane and was exhausted here that day.
So hence why I needed that nine and a half hours sleep. But again, tonight, this is going to be at least eight hours of sleep. If you can get maybe eight hours of sleep average on vacation and on weekends. And that really takes, to get that quality of sleep, really takes again, decreasing the alcohol that you drink on the weekend, because alcohol begets poor sleep. And so that lack of alcohol on the weekend can really help you to carry forward some good sleep into the weekend and from Saturday, Friday night, Saturday night, Sunday night into Monday and try to keep catching up. There is much data for that you can't really... catch up your sleep that well, but we are. in the United States of America. We have to work.
We have to sometimes do some things that are going to require us to work longer and harder. Okay. So, and that vacation sleep will help me to be able to eat better and to exercise better by getting that sleep. All right. So, So our fourth pillar here, connection, we're getting vacation connections. I love to meet people when I'm on vacation, meeting new people. And I love and then really meeting new dogs, really. So it's amazing. When I go on vacation, every single dog I see, I like to go, hey, can I pet your dog? Right. So I love getting to know people through their dogs. that is important okay so the other part of connection we're doing this week and then and for week 27 obviously because that'll be later this week for the for this aspen um
manifesting 111 festival is community connections and health connections the more people you can connect with and this is part of this and we could have talked about this in every single pillar right is adding and subtracting the worst of things, but really by adding healthy things, you can add stuff that's going to actually crowd out those things that are doing you harm, right? doesn't necessarily have to be that you have to think about the negatives and the negatives other than, you know, for diet from day one, we got rid of fast food. Can't remember the last time I have eaten at a fast food restaurant and Can't remember the last time that I've eaten wholly unprocessed foods, horrible foods, right? So again, we're not perfect.
We're going to be together with somebody who's going to be, we're going to need to go to some restaurant that's not going to be nice. And hopefully you can get the connections with people who are healthy. And that takes going to places that are healthy, going to gyms, and the gym bros, right? Gym, run clubs, joining a run club, joining any kind of exercise club. And I make fun of pickleball because I'm not a pickleball player. I don't really want to play pickleball because I'm a tennis player. You know, if we tennis players really... the people who are playing pickleball but pickleball has done something for the people who are in it gotten some people who are not regularly exercising into regular exercising, and people who have maybe not been connecting with people to get to connect with people in these pickleball tournaments, etc.
And so that's the connections we're doing this week for week 26. Also plastics, we're talking about oral health. I've already done this in the past, but... And that is where we're putting it, placing this oral health really about trying to find better products for toothpaste, better products for mouthwashes, using maybe some hydrogen peroxide, ones that are more natural and toothpaste tablets and toothbrushes are made with. bamboo and maybe boar's hair. There's some other ones out there. Pick your choices wisely. I went to a natural food store. I can't remember the name of it here in Colorado when I was up in the mountains a few weeks ago, three or four weeks ago. And they had the bamboo.
brushes the handle was bamboo but the bristles were plastic who cares about the handle being bamboo that's not going to go in my mouth i wanted i would rather have a something that's going to be going in my mouth that is natural not the handle i mean you want to be able to throw that away and be, that's fine for the environment, but go for the ones that have the bristles that are natural, right? So here we are in Aspen. Thank you for joining us. Again, we're live streaming. this week for week 27. We're live streaming an event on Thursday. Then we're going to have week 27 sometime on the weekend as well. We’re going to be doing some live streaming, just smaller events on tomorrow, just to test out our live streaming here.
We want to make sure everything's perfect before we live stream things everywhere. Again, podcasting. Our podcasts are in video format, in Substack, in our website called GoUnPro.com. YouTube and apple podcasts and Spotify podcasts okay so then anywhere else you get audio podcasts we're there we're everywhere okay so love you guys love that you're with me And from now on, this is going to be a thing. When I travel, I'm going to be doing this, this, these live events where I can get together community and build this community. And that is what I love, building a community, building a community of like-minded people that are going to go forward in this life. getting healthier, living longer, living healthier, getting that health span. And that's where we're at for week 26. Love you guys. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for being there for me and for you and for your loved ones, for where you're going to be in the future. Love it. See you later.
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