Managing Stress As a Business Owner – Dr. Carlos Jorge | Full Episode

[00:00:00]

Dr. Jorge, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you, Professor. It’s all yours. I appreciate it. Thanks so much. Thank you. Um, so I’ll try to navigate this room. I usually kind of like to walk, but I’ll try to not move too much. But, um, a little background on what we do. So I am functional integrative medicine trained at the family practice board and what’s called the lipidology board.

So I do a lot of cardiovascular disease preventative work. Um, and A lot of complicated long COVID hormones, peptides, stem cells, you name it, we’re sort of doing it on the, pushing the envelope. But a lot of the, the, the things that I’ll talk about today come from, we did a series for KPMG, um, where myself and four other team members did some talks for their accounting, um, division and so one of them was stress, but a lot of what I focus on is longevity and really how stress and [00:01:00] workplace, uh, stress can affect overall health, not only of you as business owners, but also of employees.

Um, so with that, we’ll go ahead and, um, so I’m going to talk about today a few things, maybe that you are familiar with or aren’t familiar with, but I’m going to start the conversation with an interest, just a concept of the blue zones. The blue zones are the areas in the world, um, where the longest people, where the longest living people live.

Um, we’ll talk about stress in the workplace. some stats there, um, talk about aging, health span, life span, what these things are, um, talk about chronic diseases and how stress and other factors actually influence that, and then we’ll talk about how to take control of your health and certain things to do.

So blue zones, for those of you who aren’t familiar, as a concept, um, five areas in the world where the longest living people sort of seem to exist, right? And so these areas were first studied by two [00:02:00] researchers in Italy. It was something that was picked up by Dan Buechner, who is a photographer or was a photographer at National Geographic.

It really made it his life work to kind of understand, like, what’s going on in these populations. Um, and what we find with blue zones, um, and these are just listed so you can see. So you have five, Loma Linda, Costa Rica, Sardinia, Icaria, and then Okinawa. When you look at those, you sort of say, wow, those are all sort of very different, and the population in Loma Linda, California, for example, are Seventh day Adventists, right?

So you sort of, you start thinking about, well, how are these populations connected, you know, and the big connection has to do with some of the following characteristics. And, um, and these will clip through so you don’t have to do them. So, part of them is there are nine characteristics. Partnership, managing stress, and we’ll talk about that one in detail.

80 percent rule in plant science. So let me just stop there for a little [00:03:00] bit. So when we talk about movement in Sardinia, Italy, like they’re not going to a plant fitness. Okay, they’re getting up, they’re walking around, they’re carrying things, they’re going up and down hills all day. They’re not staying in a chair.

They’re moving all day. So when we talk about to our clients about movement, yeah, jiff, cool. But really what we’re talking about is community. Get up, move around, do the things that you enjoy. Okinawa, for example, gardening, right? So they’re all very active into their 80s and 90s. Um, they’re practicing martial arts.

They’re doing sort of projects in their community. So that’s what we’re talking about movement. Partnership, we’ll talk about a little bit more. But partnership is both relationship and also kind of this type of community setting and partnership setting. Friends, etc. And I’ll talk about that a little bit more when we get into the workplace.

Um, managing stress, we’ll go a little deeper into that, mindset, those types of things. 80 percent rule really has to do with, um, how you kind of decide when you’re full. I think one of [00:04:00] the big things we see a lot in our population is retraining people on the habits and understanding of like signaling between brain, the eyes, the gut, et cetera, and understanding kind of how to engage when you’re full and be mindful of it.

Plants land, most of these populations are eating foods right out of either their gardens or fresh foods. Uh, if they’re eating meats or fish, usually, you know, grown in the backyard or locally sort of sourced, right? So, the majority of what they’re eating though is typically going to be heavy vegetable, heavy fruit, high fiber.

Um, alcohol and alco uh, wine at five. We, we sort of, we’re going to asterisk that one because there’s a lot of stuff coming out on alcohol. So How much is too much? How little is enough? How, you know, should you drink at all? Um, the concept of these populations is that alcohol is basically shared as a communal thing.

It’s not, I’m sitting at home watching the Panthers win again or something by yourself and [00:05:00] celebrating. Um, so the idea is that it’s more of a community type of setting that you’re enjoying. Um, purpose, right, so why you get up every morning. And then spirituality, that can mean anything. It can be a religion that you believe in.

It can be a faith, it can be Um, a meditative practice, et cetera. And then back to community, really having that sort of set group of people that you share things with. So, shifting gears a little bit, and then I’ll have time at the end for, um, questions too. So, the, the concept of stress, when, when, when you mentioned this to me, it’s, when we talk about the word stress, it’s a word that really has only been, And sort of in our vocabulary, you know, since the 1930s, it was described by a psychologist.

And really, to just describe it at the scientific level, it’s a hormonal response that we get to, um, to any sort of demand on our system, right? And when we talk about hormonal response, the hormone that we’re talking about is cortisol. And [00:06:00] cortisol is a hormone that’s produced in your adrenal glands. So we all have cortisol.

We need cortisol both for When we wake up in the morning, it helps mobilize glucose, which is sugar, and gets you going during the day. The problem with that hormonal demand is that when it’s occurring in an abnormal way, then we have consequences that can affect our physical, our mental, and our emotional well being.

So, you know, if you saw the last picture of sharks a little bit further away, as that shark gets closer, this is when we need our cortisone, our stress responses, right? We need our fight or flight responses. So these are really important when we’re either in a situation that we need to fight, get out of, chase down our kid who’s about to cross the street, get ready for a presentation, prepare for a test.

These are all acute settings that we need that stress response that makes us perform at a higher level. The problem is over time how chronic stress starts to [00:07:00] affect our system and that’s where that dysfunction of Immune function and inflammation starts to occur when we have more chronic responses of stress.

So symptoms of types of chronic stress, and when we talk about chronic stress, does everyone here have a phone? Probably so, okay? Every time that little notification goes off, a text, an email, Instagram, TikTok, X, whatever, you are getting notified. by your brain immediately fires, okay? And there’s a place in your hypothalamus.

Hypothalamus sends a signal to your pituitary. It sends a signal to your adrenals, and it says, you just got something. So pump marcissa full of cortisol, okay? So cortisol is constantly getting released throughout the day. Now, a million years ago, our cortisol responses occurred when we were being chased down by [00:08:00] tigers, and we had to fight, we had to find food, and we had to defend ourselves, okay?

The stressors that we now sit with are our phones, family, politics, friends having issues, relationship issues, okay, it’s a very different stress response that we’re under. It’s a different signal, but the response is the same, okay, it’s constant cortisol. So the chronic effects that we see when we start seeing people who are chronically stressed and under recovering.

is your immune system starts to get affected. You have a higher risk of cardiovascular disease. You have a higher risk of obesity. You have a higher risk of dementia. You have a higher risk of diabetes. You have a higher risk of cancers. You name the risk, you’re gonna have higher amounts of it when you are stressed, okay?

And so, I listed a few, but the big one that’s important that I always sort of bring back to people so they understand, is that when we’re chronically stressed, you’re aging faster too. Okay? [00:09:00] Because your cells go under a stress response. That is not a healthy stress response. Alright? There’s healthy stress response for the cells, and then there’s an abnormal stress response.

Chronic stress does that for us. And that’s not something we want. So, tying this to work, as business leaders and folks that have companies, it’s to understand where stress comes from in your workplace, but also stress in your employees and people that work with you. you. And this is based on data and I have all the references at the end.

But when they’ve done studies at the workplace, especially post COVID, all right, there’s a lot of dissatisfaction at work. Okay. You may think you have happy employees and everyone’s getting along, but the problem at work is that about 69 percent of people. Oh, sorry. I gave you a good look. About 69 percent of people are, um, unsatisfied.

They’re really unsatisfied with social connections. And if you [00:10:00] remember back to the blue zone sort of topic, one of the biggest things that allows longevity in health is having a community of people around you. Number two is that 43 percent of people feel they don’t really have a sense of connection with their colleagues.

They work together, right? Like, you know, what does that mean exactly? It doesn’t mean you need to be best friends with the person sitting across from you, but what type of connection do these people share? Well, it always jumped out at me that, you know, I think even when we did our presentation at KPMG, that was really surprising, is that 38 percent of people say they don’t trust their co workers.

Okay? Now, depending on the industry that you’re in, like, that seems to be pretty important to have trust be a real important concept and, and, and relationship that your employees have to have. And then, another one is 22 percent of people not having a friend at work. Whatever you think about the shutdown of COVID and workplace and return to work, hybrid work, the reality is that office work for a lot of [00:11:00] sort of populations, especially I would say my age and older, it was a sense of a place where you found connections, you had social relationships, perhaps relationships started.

Good or bad, these are places that you had to sort of have encounters with people. There’s a real sort of paucity of that happening right now in the workplace. And so, what is this causing? What is it driving? What it’s really driving is more stress. Like, already people are feeling perhaps dissatisfied with what they’re doing.

They don’t feel the social support that they should have. And they’re missing connection, which is one of the most important things that they need in the workplace. And it’s driving more stress for them. So, when you do the analysis to then say, hey, if we actually worked on these things in the workplace, you know, is this something you’d like?

And the response is overall is that, yeah, about 50 percent or more people would love more social connections. This isn’t like, hey, every Friday afternoon [00:12:00] we’re going to go out and get hammered. No, it’s simple things that we’ll talk about, connections, about how to build these things for your teams. But the idea is that people would give a career advancement in salary to have some of that more connection.

Can I stop you for a second? Yeah. Isn’t that the opposite of the trend of working from home and people not wanting to go to an office? So, my short answer to that is yes. I think there is probably a population of people that are more comfortable working from home. I think, I think it’s a realistic thing that we just are going to have to accept that there are people who are either, A, going to perform better from home, or B, would choose to work from home for multiple reasons.

It could be they have a dog, they have a cat, they have a sick child, whatever it may be. So I think finding that balance is important. I do [00:13:00] think allowing the option for that person to come into the office for social interaction every once in a while is important. Um, I personally, I do think working from Um, the office is important, at least for most people, for the social interaction and for the camaraderie that it builds.

But I, you know, in my industry, we run a clinic where we have 18 employees. 10 of those employees are part time employees. Most of them are moms. And they are, most of them working, um, video chat and video coaching for our clients. So, You know, could I say, no, all your interactions have to be in the office?

Perhaps. I think we would lose probably 50 percent of them. Because of the demands of their schedule with their kids as well. So, again, I think, For me, I think it’s an important thing to at least offer your employees the opportunity to engage with [00:14:00] your children. And, you know, if they want to work from home some days, I think that’s, I think it’s your choice at the end of the day.

What we’ve done is sort of done a balance of those two. Um, most of our full time employees though work in the office. It’s very rare that they’re not there. So, um, areas of connection that we talk about with kind of employee groups, um, you know, sharing language lessons, geography, obviously people who live together, finding kind of that commonality.

Career goals, so doing trainings that are specific for people in the offices that want to share certain goals and outcomes. Um, certainly hobbies is an important one. Um, world view, we’ll get in there. I mean, politics aside, I think, you know, having groups in the offices that discuss current events and having kind of conversations and bringing some of that without the vitriol that may occur through social media and having actually real conversations with people, I think is an important thing.

Um, sense of humor and [00:15:00] music are other ways of doing kind of, you know, connective activities. I mean, I remember Just anecdotally, my wife worked at Deloitte for many years in Chicago. One of the things that, you know, the team leader did, we used to go to concerts in Chicago every few months, you know. One time a year would be a big concert.

We got to see, you know, Bruce Springsteen one time, which was awesome. But usually it was small things, small dinners. But there was that sense of connection that you have with the group. So, results when this is done, um, you know, people who put, kind of, this effort into their For a work community, you’re seeing an 83 percent personal growth, and more importantly, you’re seeing people really sort of thrive in that professional development standpoint.

And from our standpoint, what it does also is kind of help, um, decrease stress. Because what we find is that they are calmer at work, they’re more pleased to be at work, their performance improves, [00:16:00] and they’re able to handle the stress responses that are occurring. Okay? So that is kind of the outcome that we really want to shoot for.

So, talking now about aging, um, so aging health span and lifespan, I’ll tie this back to kind of the, just the work and the stress of aging, um, is a really, um, complicated process. We all are going to age, and we’re all sort of going through different stages of our life. And there are close to 14 different, um, variables that affect aging and those can be everything from what we call mitochondrial dysfunction, I’ll show you that in a sec, cellular death, etc.

But one of the factors that seems to be common to all of this is that when you’re more stressed all the aging sort of parameters seem to be accelerating, okay? So, you know, I also tell people, kind of, the reality is like, look, it’s going to [00:17:00] happen. Um, everything that happens through our aging process is occurring for a reason.

However, one of the things that we really work on with our clients is to say, you know, yes, you are going to age, but what does that mean from a functionality standpoint, vitality standpoint, strength standpoint, um, sexual health standpoint, et cetera. So, you know, the idea is that we want to get a, we want to get older, at a much older age, if you will.

That’s the concept. So these are sort of the, you know, they’re probably hard to read, but everything there from, you know, loss of protein function, uh, telomere attrition, these are all things that, um, are being studied as, um, potential triggers and, and drivers of aging. However, one of the things, again, is kind of how stress and everything else builds into this, and we’ll talk about that a little bit.

Um, so, um, And this is something that, I mentioned that four factors being added, every sort of year there’s a lot of research being done into how [00:18:00] cells age and how we tend to age in general, and more factors are being added all the time. So concept of lifespan, so in the United States, um, the average lifespan, that is born, um, to death is currently about 77.

5 years and that was just recently updated because during COVID our lifespan actually decreased, um, women tend to have a longer lifespan, um, than men, uh, women are right around 80 and so that’s where that average men are around, you know, about 76 ish and so it kind of averages out, um, but the bigger issue that we have, especially in the United States, is that our health span is much lower.

Healthspan is the time that you spend, um, in good health during your older years. And what we’re finding is that most people are spending only about [00:19:00] 66 years healthy, and then they’re spending another 11. 4 years, on average, um, in chronic disease, um, health. Dealing with things like cancers, dealing with high blood pressure, dealing with dementia, dealing with, um, you know, cardiovascular diseases, okay?

And so this data, this is the average. Um, in men it’s a little bit longer, unfortunately. And so, it’s something that, you know, we certainly talk a lot about with our clients. And so, our goal when we talk about aging is how do we actually start really sort of expanding our health span. So that we stay healthier for longer and get sick much later in life, in a sense.

And one of the newer concepts, and I’m hitting a lot of stuff just to kind of give you an overview of kind of where we are in a lot of these things with longevity and stress, is that [00:20:00] in aging now we’re talking about something called inflammation. And inflammation has to do with a low grade inflammation that is occurring in your body.

And one of the biggest drivers of that is stress. Why? Because when you’re getting chronically stressed, you maintain a level of cortisol that is not modulating responses correctly, okay? So again, when you are under a high stress environment, performance, et cetera, you should have that stress response, part of it is learning how to control back down that stress response.

Most people aren’t doing that very well, and it’s driving a lot of this sort of accelerated aging from this chronic festering, um, cortisol response that they’re having. So some of the other factors again, and you know, I keep harping on these, you’re going to see that. Um, so our stress, our connection, our sleep, we’ll talk about that in a sec.

Nutrition, and then kind of environment, right? So the world we live in, unfortunately, exposures to chemicals, pesticides, hormones, antibiotics, medicines. Like, there’s a lot of stuff that we’re constantly exposed to that [00:21:00] may have some other sort of contribution to how our system is handling, um, both stress, inflammation, and aging.

So, in this slide they are equally divided, if you were, um, if we were sitting kind of across from each other, we would try to identify which one we would need to work on. Stress as a general rule, we work on with all our clients, however, you know, the gentleman who runs a PE firm, we’re working on sleep.

That’s it basically, right? Um, unless there’s, you know, uh, medication or something else. So part of it is we try to identify where and what things are different. What’s that? Say, every person is different. Yes. But, I got that. Every person is different, but when I say [00:22:00] equally divided, it’s most of the time, I know everyone is different, but most of the time this one is the main.

We don’t, let’s put it this way, we don’t not work on stress with people ever. A hundred percent of the people that we see, we work on stress management with them. Even the people who come in and say, I don’t feel stressed. I handle my stress really, really well. Okay, how many times did you get sick last year?

Oh, this. How much weight did you put on? Oh, this. How many drinks did you have in the night? Oh, I have this many. Why are you having that many? Because I feel calm. Helps me sleep. Like, so as we, as you dig into those things, you know, there’s a commonality there, and then we start going off into the sort of tangents of what we need to work on.

Um, so, we’ve talked about blue zones, connection, stress, work, um, let’s talk about the importance of this just as a general [00:23:00] kind of illness rule in the United States and what we’re facing in the United States. So, I don’t know if any of you have read, um, Peter Atia, right, so, Atia likes to call him the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, um, these are cardiovascular disease, um, they’re type 2 diabetes, cancer, neurodegenerative disease, and then we talk a lot, especially with workplace, um, the Fifth Horsemen, um, Click one more, which is loneliness and connection, and we’ll show you the data with what that actually does for, uh, disease risk.

So in the United States right now, despite spending 20 percent of our GDP on healthcare, um, 800, 000 Americans are still dying of cardiovascular disease every year. Sorry, I’m gonna pick on you, the only soul, oh, and there are two women in the room, um, but as a guest in a sense. Um, unfortunately, women [00:24:00] are dying at a higher rate, um, from cardiovascular disease.

It has to do with multiple things. I think, you know, everything from hormones and awareness of menopause to we tended to undertreat and under identify women at risk. And then, you know, but one of the things we always talk about is you have a higher chance of dying of a heart attack or stroke than breast cancer or uterine cancer and ovarian cancer combined.

Okay, so we spend a lot of time with our women executives and both, you know, Executives and also partners, um, really trying to help them navigate some of these risks. Um, diabetes, so currently, um, about, call it one in three ish people in the United States is pre diabetic. Um, obviously has to do a lot with obesity rates and the challenges that we’re seeing there and metabolic diseases.

Um, about 37 million people have diagnosed diabetes. Both type 2 diabetes, pre diabetes, [00:25:00] um, you know, are very preventable, very fixable. Not type 1 diabetes, not what I’m talking about. Type 2 diabetes has a consequence of a lot of factors that lead you through the process of pre diabetes and then into diabetes.

Um, usually most people who are pre diabetic are going to spend 5 to 15 years pre diabetic before they get diagnosed as a true diabetic. So there’s a lot of time to intervene and work. But really the big problem with diabetes, apart from the sugar and everything else, is that it increases your risk of heart attacks and strokes.

Cancer, um, We’ve gotten better at both screening cancers, everything from mammograms, pap smears, PSAs, colonoscopies, etc. You name it. There’s a lot of screening that happens and yet we’re still dying at a more accelerated rate from cancer. Now, we’ve gotten better with certain cancers and treatments, but we still have a lot, a lot of sort of runway to go [00:26:00] to start identifying people earlier.

There’s a lot of newer technology out there, we do some testing at our office, it’s a company called GRAIL, which is a test that looks at 50 markers, DNA methylation markers, early identification of like, you know, stage 0, stage 1 cancers. challenges. It’s not, you know, high level, able to be given to everybody.

It’s an expensive test, anywhere between 800 to 1, 100. So, at this, at that level, it doesn’t fit kind of criteria of what we would say is screening, full screening yet. But, again, there are different companies doing things. ColoGuard, which is Exact Sciences, um, you know, for colon cancer screening. There’s some newer ones coming out, um, multi detection signaling.

Lots of stuff being done for cancer screening, but to be aware of, like, you know, how many people have seen their dermatologist in the last year?

So, you know, skin cancer, you know, [00:27:00] very easy to sort of both identify and really stay ahead of, but you have to be kind of proactive about those things, too. Neurodegenerative disease, um, again, I hate to say that this is also increasing. You know, about 6. 2 million people will have Alzheimer’s this year, um, about 9.

7%, 10 percent of people over the age of 65, right? So, again, how we talk about Alzheimer’s is also shifting a little bit, um, how stress and inflammation and hormones and other exposures are affecting Alzheimer’s risk, so a lot of research being done into that as well. And then, loneliness and isolation. So, again, when we talk about stress inducing, it causes immune dysfunction, really affects um, your stress responses, but more importantly, you get increased risk of exposure to viruses and susceptibility to other illnesses, and we see it also in sort of, you know, um, certain populations, right?

Older adults, LGBTQ, um, [00:28:00] migrants, et cetera, we’re going to see a lot of these responses. And then, and then I’ll talk about, um, A caveat to that in a second. Um, loneliness and isolation by the numbers. So, what does it do for our health? So, about a 26 percent increased risk of premature death. It’s about equivalent to actually smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

You have about a 30 percent increased risk of heart disease. 32 percent increased risk of stroke. You have a 50 percent increased risk of dementia in your lifetime for loneliness. And you have increased risk of anxiety, depression, and As you can I can imagine it’s just a lot of things. So, that data that I just showed was from, um, Surgeon General did a, a major paper last year on loneliness and chronic diseases.

So the big papers that have ever been done by Surgeon Generals, loneliness was, has been one of the biggest ones and, and it has to do also with social isolation, phone use, and, [00:29:00] and social media and how all these, these other devices are causing some of this. And one of the big populations that we’re seeing this in is also in kind of younger men, so between the ages of 18 to, you know, 35, it’s a, it’s a population that’s also kind of suffering from loneliness and isolation, and that’s an area that, uh, if you’ve ever read, um, Scott Galloway, he’s a professor at NYU Business School, talks a lot about engagement with men, and trying to improve kind of that isolation that is happening at the same time.

And then, um, The, the other piece that I was going to mention about, um, the, uh, Surgeon General, one of the other big papers, if you remember, was just on cigarettes, right, C. Everett Coop, and my sort of, you know, when I was maybe in high school, in college, um, was on smoking. So, when a Surgeon General puts out papers like this, it’s not for, you know, to get their name in the paper, it’s actually based on years and years of data.

So, managing [00:30:00] stress, right? So It’s very easy to just, uh, tell someone to manage their stress. Again, put sort of this here, so it basically says, like, um, Oh wait, go back, you have to repeat it several times. Um, yeah, just, you know, take it out, place the kid on the surface, follow directions in the circle, and then repeat step two until necessary, you know, as necessary, until I’m conscious, right?

So, the reality is, most, Most executives, most company owners, most high performers operate with stress, right? It’s what drives you to perform. Years ago we used to call it a type A personality. The reality is, what we try to teach our, our, uh, our executives is the following. When you need to operate at a high level, we want you operating at a high level.

Okay? We want you being You know, top of the game, we want you to be able to call upon all the resources that you need, [00:31:00] until you don’t, okay? Because the problem with that sort of constant drive is what we’ve just sort of talked about, is that it is increasing that risk of really sort of serious events occurring.

Um, so, mindset is something that we talk a lot about with our folks. We talk about, um, that a lot of chronic diseases, a lot of the consequences that we may deal with with stress are very reversible. Um, and so, mindset is important and, uh, pretty famous, um, and has been famous, but why I have this slide is that for the Tokyo Olympics, if you remember, um, she was unable to compete.

She was depressed, she was stressed, and she withdrew, okay? Um, and then four years later Obviously, with therapy, mindset training, stress management training comes out and obviously performs at the [00:32:00] level that we all expected to see her perform. And so, with mindset, what we really start talking about with, with people is that mindset is basically a habit.

Mindset has to do, it has very powerful effects similar to like a placebo effect. And mindset over time actually starts to help you. develop more neuro, uh, neuronal connections or mirror neurons, and there’s a whole field, I don’t want to butcher the word, but it’s called neuropsychoimmunology, which really has to do with how stress, brain response, and, um, emotions and mindset all interact for, um, illness and illness prevention as well.

So when we start talking about the mindset, you know, we want to talk about, Sick care to well care, but what’s well care, right? So, we teach our, our clients about intention. We teach them about meditation. We talk to them about [00:33:00] groundedness. We talk to them about how to do breath work. We teach them how to journal.

We teach them how to take mental breaks during the day. We teach them how to actually prepare for a presentation or a, a project that they may have. Um, yesterday I reviewed with a, uh, an executive, um, Wim Hof, and so, if you don’t know Wim Hof breathing is, Wim Hof is a very intense type of breath work that you can do to get yourself activated in the morning and during the day.

But you can also do it before you go in for, you know, a presentation to a group or a board, etc. So, these are all things that we try to teach because what we want is that modulation of stress response. So, again. Hammering it all home, food is medicine, let’s talk about food, you know, we used to say, what you eat is, you know, you are what you eat, and it’s very important, so we really try to tell our population, you know, [00:34:00] how you fuel yourself is going to really be important.

Um, exercise. Exercise, apart from being a great stress reducer, it’s one of the best ways to kind of help modulate stress, but also release nitric oxide, release endorphins, I mean, You name it, exercise that we could bottle up would be the greatest thing to give. Sleep, um, why sleep is important. How many people got 8 hours of sleep last night?

Recovered really well, felt super fresh this morning? You just flew in from Australia, so you get, you get a pass. Um, so, look, sleep is, if there is nothing else, like, that you can do that will improve your overall health, is trying to focus on your sleep. When you sleep, you produce growth hormone. The only time we produce growth hormone is when we sleep, as adults.

Okay? When you’re a kid, you’re pumping out growth hormone all the time. But as adults, our growth hormone production does this as [00:35:00] we age. Except for when we’re asleep. Growth hormone is your most restorative, reparative molecule that you produce. And so, getting deep sleep is super important for your overall health.

Okay? Because that helps to reset cortisol pathways, reset insulin pathways, reset glucose levels, and pump out that growth hormone that helps with other production of other hormones, okay? So if you’re not focusing on sleep, that’s something you should really talk to somebody about. Smoking, I might even mention, if you’re smoking, just stop.

Question? The data’s there. Um, back to sleep, is eight hours the right number? So yeah, that’s a good question. So, the average would be anywhere between seven to nine, is what most people say, right? So, the goal being that if you’re able to have a device that’s helping you track some of your sleep, you want to be measuring deep sleep, you want to be measuring rough sleep, which is basically the cycling of these sleep, um, sleep cycles, sorry.[00:36:00]

Um, lots of devices that exist, I mean, so this is an Oura Ring, this is the fourth generation that, um, It basically tracks, uh, my sleep patterns, my activity patterns, so there’s WootBand, um, there’s Fitbit, I mean there’s lots of different devices. There’s, uh, Eight Sleep, there’s Pillows now that can do it. I mean, so there’s lots of different ways that you can be tracking these things.

And what we do with our clients is we have them download the data, and then we sort of review it with them. Their sleep, their strain, their recovery, etc. Because then, we, for some of the folks that we see, they’re Training, let’s say, for an Ultraman, right, it’s a 100 mile race, like, I need somebody to make sure they’re sleeping very well and recovering, because I’m not going to have them go run 100 miles if their system is going to take out, for example.

So, um, yeah, it just varies, but that would be sort of the average. Big things that disrupt your sleep, number one is alcohol, obviously, any amount of alcohol. So being mindful of the time of the day when you’re drinking is going to be [00:37:00] important. Stress management, we teach people how to do breath work before.

Going to bed, sauna work, hot showers, teas, etc. There’s lots of little tools and tricks. Does that mean we should drink at 9 a. m. instead of 9 p. m.? Exactly. Yep. Uh, yes, yes, exactly. So, while we’re talking about, because you mentioned it before, and the experts on TikTok have, I’ve seen it recently too, right?

They’ve said, you know, it’s as bad as smoke, you know, and there’s legislation saying they’re trying to put warning labels on, on, you know, alcoholic beverages now. What is the most current study based on, and what does that say? The, almost every study, especially for cancer, does show that alcohol is not good for you.

Alcohol is a, alcohol is a toxin, okay? When it converts in your liver, it turns into a fairly strong thing that has a derivative of acetyl aldehyde, which is not good for you. [00:38:00] Apart from that, alcohol can be cardiotoxic. So it causes a disruption in the way your heart beats. Now, the dose is in the poison, right?

This is sort of the old sort of adage, right? If you’re having a glass of wine or two with your friends and you’re having dinner and it’s throughout the night, probably not what we’re really worried about here. Because the community offset and the interaction is probably offsetting some of that response.

Amount of alcohol is going to vary a lot, right? And so, I I enjoy wine, I collect wine, and I’m probably not going to give up alcohol because I really enjoy it. Now, do I work on other things in my life to try to probably modulate it? Yeah, eat clean, sleep well. Um, you know, I know if I have more than two glasses of wine, I’m not going to sleep well, right?

And I prepare for that, let’s say. So, there will be movement on that. I think, you know, the Surgeon General, Dr. Murthy, is very much sort of pushing that. Whether [00:39:00] or not the, you know, obviously the dealing of the lobbies and everything else will take place. But I think the message we tell our clients is if you enjoy alcohol, do it with a group setting.

If you’re finding yourself drinking for, hey, this is how I handle my stress. This is how I get to sleep. This is the only way I can interact with people. Or, you know, you’re sitting alone and you open a bottle of wine, the next thing you know, there’s no wine left and you don’t know who had it and you’re drinking it by yourself.

Then we have to have different conversations. So the group setting offsets the So I’m good. You’re good right now, yeah. Uh, community setting, yes, exactly. Like engaging with, you know, people, right? I mean, if you’re sitting and watching a game with your friends, like, there’s, there’s a reasonable sort of amount, right?

If you’re 12 drinks on Friday and Saturday, and then you don’t want Um, [00:40:00] but yes, from a cellular level, alcohol seems to be,

um, connection, and then stress. These are all things that we, um, talk about. So, um, stress, I was going to do like a breath, a little bit of a breath exercise, but, um, you know, you all might, you might fall asleep. But we tend to, what we do is we do teach our, our clients, um, meditation. We teach them breath work, and meditation, you can do box breath, you can do, You can do 6, 7, 8 breaths, you can do, there’s tons of different apps out there, Calm, Waking Up, Headspace, um, there’s a lot of different ones out there, um, we, we sometimes will have, you know, executives, before they go into a meeting, they’re doing a minute of breath work, or a minute of just kind of, you know, in through the nose, out through the mouth, and just kind of centering them so then they’re able to kind of call along.

And then lastly, I just include [00:41:00] this slide just to give you kind of high level things that we do for some of our, you know, clients. Like, we do, you know, these are things that all providers should be able to do. So, more in depth cardiovascular analysis, APOB, um, lipoprofiles, um, understanding genetics, understanding your diabetes risk.

Um, Um, there are also sort of very easy, simple tests that we look at anatomy for our clients like carotids, calcium scores, these are simple tests at Atrium and Novant that we make cost total of like 250 cash because insurance doesn’t cover them. Um, we also focus a lot on our clients understanding kind of family history and really sort of, you know, being mindful of like what things have occurred in their family.

And then knowing your future, that seems silly, but like really sort of figuring out. Starting to talk about, like, what does 10 years down the road look like for you, what does 20 years down the road look like for you, what does 30 years [00:42:00] down the road look like. And, most people don’t operate that way. They may be thinking, like, if they’re running a company, you’re doing financial projections, etc.,

but you’re not thinking about your health projections. And so, we talk a lot about, with our clients, and we’ve written articles about, you know, health is wealth, and the same amount of, like, Kind of 401k and investments that you’re making, we really stress to our clients that making those investments is going to make a bigger return, right?

Why work this hard if you’re dead at 65? Like, to me that just seems crazy. Um, and so we really, really try to hammer that home. You’re working this hard, you’re generating this return for your family and for you and for your loved ones. Like, you want to be able to enjoy this as long as you possibly can.

Um, this is my grandfather. Um, my grandfather lived to be 99 shy of 100. Um, he worked until he was 96. He was a [00:43:00] cardiologist. He, I’m from Dominican Republic. He was the, one of the sort of leading cardiologists, um, graduated from the Sorbonne in Paris. Um, and he’s sort of, you know, one of my personal inspirations because he lived life the way, you know, I want to have my future, which is, you know, he, he ate well, he exercised every day, he did drink, he enjoyed a lot of French wines.

Um, different thoughts at that time, maybe, so. But he had a huge community of friends, huge contacts, and kind of gave himself a lot of activity. Um, and always seemed to sort of manage his stress very well, despite He smoked? He smoked for about a year when he was in medical school in Paris, and then quit when he got sick, I think.

the character of him. Um, and that’s, uh, that’s it, that’s just the mega republic, that’s the beach, uh, so I’ll stop there. Uh, if you have any questions, I’ll leave [00:44:00] it up. Well, I’m interested in the blue zones. Yeah, and then if you have any questions, that’s our QR code, you can just scan and let us know. I’m happy to talk to you.