February 20, 2024 • 12 mins
Please enjoy this Q&A session I did at the EPIC Community event all about stress, nutrition and eating smarter.
Let me know if you have any questions via @drgregwells on social.
Also you can ask me questions via the Dr. Greg Wells GPT that is trained on my books: https://chat.openai.com/g/g-AetMyeiiv-dr-greg-s-wellness-gpt
Have a great week everyone!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hey, everyone. Welcome back.
Great to be with you. Thanks for joining me for
another episode. So thrilled with how things are
going with the show right now, with everyone really apparently
loving this Q&A format and just the captured content from the
Epic community event. And we're going to roll with
that. We're just going to keep talking
about the questions that you have with regards to health,
(00:21):
well-being and high performance.And very specifically, this week
what we've done is extracted some questions about stress,
nutrition and eating smarter. So it's just a continuation of
where we finished last week withtalking about some intermittent
fasting. We're going to dig deeper into
how we can use nutrition to overcome stress and what are
some specific philosophies and strategies that you can use to
(00:43):
eat smarter this year. If you have any questions about
nutrition, if you want more information if I reference
something in this. Podcast that.
Is of interest to you that you want to learn more about?
Or maybe you want one of the workbooks that I reference in
the session. Do not be afraid to ping me
through my website at Doctor Greg Wells or on social at
Doctor Greg Wells. And we'll do our very, very best
(01:06):
to get you with the information that you need, the resources
that you need to elevate your life this year, if this is of
interest to you and you think that there's someone.
Else that could. Benefit from hearing about this?
If you could share the episode with them, we would be so deeply
grateful. Of course, if you're listening
to this and you can want to justfollow along with everything
that we're doing, the best placeis probably Instagram at Doctor
(01:28):
Greg Wells or LinkedIn forward slash Doctor Greg Wells.
And that way you can keep up with other things like the
newsletter and the images that we're going to be putting out in
a ton of video as well this year.
So thanks for your interest. Thanks for your excitement.
Thanks for the interaction that we've had over the last few
weeks. Oh my gosh.
I cannot believe how much peopleare asking questions, which is
just absolutely fantastic. And let's dig into it.
(01:50):
Please enjoy this epic Q&A on stress, nutrition, and eating
smarter. When we see things in our
environment that's challenging is that that information goes in
through your eyes, your ears, into your brain.
And very specifically, it doesn't matter whether it's a
Saber toothed tiger or a COVID-19 headline, it's the
exact same physiological effect.That information then goes and
(02:13):
gets dissected and absorbed by your amygdala, which decides
whether or not it's a threat. Which?
Is why even though it's a piece of paper, it can make you feel
terrible, and it's just a piece of paper.
It can do absolutely nothing to you, but if you decide that it's
challenging for you, it will cause a cascade of effects
(02:34):
inside your body. Specifically, your amygdala then
signals your hypothalamus, whichshoots information down through
your spinal cord to activate your sympathetic nervous system,
which then triggers the release of adrenaline from your
pituitary gland that sits right on top of your kidneys.
(02:54):
And that then gives you the increased strength, power,
explosiveness that you need to run or fight, but not in the
world right now. You can't run away from the
exam. You can't punch someone if they
give you a performance review that doesn't meet your planned
expectations, right? That's not going to be good.
We have to cope with the fact that we have a biology that
really helped us to survive in aphysical, physically challenging
(03:15):
world, but right now we're coping with a mentally
challenging world. Really interesting research that
was published that shows that when we have high levels of
cortisol neurons in the brain stop making connections.
And remember it's how we it's making connections between
neurons, which is how we encode memories.
Which is why when you're super stressed, you can't find your
keys. Your short term memory doesn't
(03:36):
exist because you actually save no information because all
you're worried about is survivalin that moment.
So when it comes to keeping our brain healthy and coping with
this very challenging world thatwe're in right now, I want you
to consider leveraging the fact that at the connections between
neurons inside your brain, 100 billion of them, thousands of
(03:58):
connections. And it's at these connections
where thinking takes place. And when you eat certain foods,
specifically foods that are highin protein, we create
neurotransmitters, which are thelittle chemicals that move back
and forth between neurons insideyour brain that help you to
concentrate and to focus. So in this stressful world that
we are in right now, this era ofuncertainty, high protein foods
(04:22):
at breakfast and lunch or at thebeginning of your shift, the
middle of your shift or three hours before a performance is
really important to make sure that you have the
neurotransmitters that you need to concentrate and to focus.
But I still want you to have energy.
And we get energy from healthy carbohydrates, loads of
different kinds. The only thing that I want you
to think about is high fiber. We want slow digesting
(04:46):
carbohydrates so that they don'tspike your insulin levels.
Because when we spike our insulin levels, it damages the
hippocampus, the region I've circled here in red.
That's responsible for learning in the creation of memories.
Also navigation sooner the high processed food, high sugar diets
typically damage this region of the brain.
Also you have lower cyclic AMP, the energy currency inside brain
(05:06):
cells, lower BDNF brain direct neurotrophic factor that
stimulates the growth of neuron new neurons inside your brain.
So overall high sugar high processed food diets, we want to
try to just like lower that, noteliminate it.
I still have ice cream every once in a while, we just don't
keep it in the house for example, right?
We're just trying to nudge ourselves in the right
direction. If we want our brains to work
really well, what we're looking for is healthy fats.
(05:27):
And the reason why we want to leverage the power of healthy
fats is that if you look at the surface of the brain in between
those blood vessels, the brain is white.
And the reason why your brain iswhite is because it's made-up of
fat, very specifically omega-3 fatty acids.
So if you're looking for foods that are awesome for your brain
and your spinal cord and your nervous system, omega-3 fatty
(05:48):
acids are absolutely incredible.They're used to create myelin,
which wraps around the branches of your neurons just like bark
in the branch of a tree, and protects them from damage.
And so these are all foods, protein, carbs, fats, the
healthy versions that we can useas fuel, as structure for the
brain. But a couple of years ago I was
talking to Doctor James and he said something super profound
that completely changed my attitude towards nutrition.
(06:12):
We jumped on a call and said I'mstruggling with a couple things.
What should I do? Is like, your nutrition is
healing. I started to shift away from
thinking of food as fuel, which I've done as an athlete my
entire life, towards using food as healing.
And I dug into the research on this, found this data here,
which ironically enough I published.
(06:34):
So sometimes you don't even knowwhat you know.
And so this is a graph that we published a few about 10 years
ago, and this shows the inflammatory process inside the
human body. Simply put, is that when we
encounter any sort of stress, physical or mental, what happens
is that inside the cells of yourbody, it's basically like a
(06:54):
lightning storm. It is exactly like this
metabolically in your brain cells, in your muscle cells.
And that causes some damage, which is exactly like a forest
fire. It's exactly the same thing at
the metabolic level. Then a whole bunch of molecules
get released that trigger healing, repair, regeneration.
(07:16):
Think lifting weights. Your muscles get sore and broken
down. Molecules flow around your body.
You grab protein. You rebuild your muscles.
You get stronger. Same thing happens inside the
brain. You're stressed.
You sleep. Neurons rebuild themselves.
You're more resilient. This is a consistent pattern
that occurs if we allow the regrowth to occur, which we call
(07:37):
adaptation. This happens inside the body.
You run, you get fitter. You lift weights.
You get stronger. You read, you learn.
This is a consistent pattern through all of human Physiology.
And I want you to move your way through this pattern as much as
we can from stress, inflammation, oxidation, towards
(07:58):
healing and repair. And so I'm hoping that we can
all collectively this year approach nutrition as healing.
Because stress causes metabolic damage in the brain and inside
the body. And the way for us to heal,
repair, recover and regenerate is through essentially the
(08:19):
rainbow of fruits and vegetables, which are packed
full of polyphenols, flavonoids,incredible compounds that the
body uses to speed our way through that process that I just
described to you right there at a high level.
The other incredible ones specifically that you can use
are the fact that berries are amazing for the brain.
(08:41):
There's an incredible spread of berries out there this morning.
We'll do that again tomorrow morning.
Green tea catch tins and epic catch tins appear to be
specifically beneficial when it comes to mental health.
So these are anti depressive in a few studies, which is really
cool. So in the afternoon we're
leveraging herbal tea every chance that we can because
caffeine gets moved to the morning.
(09:03):
Obviously hydration is a massivefactor.
We're going all in on all sorts of different types of tea to
find ones that actually tastes good, just to try to leverage
this and to win the room back over.
After talking about all of that metabolic stuff inside of
studies, we can also leverage the fact that cocoa polyphenols
and flavonoids are incredible for us.
And specifically, the polyphenols and flavonoids that
(09:26):
are in cocoa increase what's known as vascular reactivity,
which is the expansion and contraction of blood vessels
inside your body, specifically in your brain.
So cocoa polyphenols and flavonoids increase the amount
of blood flow that can get into your brain to deliver oxygen,
nutrients, vitamins, minerals, and all of those other things.
So practicing nutrition as healing is a core practice for
(09:49):
you as well. In addition to sort of thinking
about what's the last hour look like before sleep, the second
absolute home run when it comes to ensuring that you are healthy
and well and thriving in 2024 isto consider and practice
nutrition as healing. The only thing that you need to
(10:11):
think about is making sure that you are absorbing the rainbow of
colors because those colors eachhave different polyphenols and
flavonoids that radically improve our health and
well-being. White, green, purple vegetables
for example have anti cancer properties.
Yellow, orange and red carotenoids help our
(10:32):
cardiovascular system, so there's loads of different
things that we can leverage their spices or antioxidant for
the brain, which is fantastic. So on page 27 homework, not
right now. I would ask you to consider on a
perfect day, weekday weekend, work day, what do you want to be
eating? Let's draw the target and start
shooting arrows towards that target rather than just randomly
(10:55):
moving through our lives. Let's be deliberate.
Let's be intentional, because micro changes when it comes to
nutrition make all of the difference in the world.
This is what we have been doing with Adam a ton over the last
few years. He learns differently and he he
really feels the world. And so we've been leaning into
this massively with him, just tomake sure that he is as healthy
(11:18):
as he can be inside of his brain.
We use sleep for for Ingrid and we're really using nutrition for
Adam and I think that all of us can be inspired by that as well.
We're also helping him with stress just by getting him to
just hit things really, really hard as well.
So this is really a simple, simple, simple practice that
we're talking about on this one to try to keep it really basic.
(11:39):
All right everyone, thanks for tuning in.
I really. Hope that was helpful.
Obviously it's a little bit of adifferent format, but super
psyched to be able to share thatinformation with you.
I hope that it was helpful. If it was, please share this
with your community. Please let someone else know
about the show. Let someone else know about the
episode. Forward it to them.
And that. Helps us tremendously if you
(12:00):
could also leave a review on your podcast platform of choice,
whether that's iTunes or Spotify, that also makes a
massive difference for us and really helps us out.
And of course, if you can followme on social at doctor Greg
Wells or on LinkedIn forward slash Doctor Greg Wells, that
would be tremendously wonderful as well.
Ping me with questions. Make sure that this is all about
you and we will continue to build content for you this year
(12:22):
that helps you to be healthy, toperform better, and to get to a
place where your well-being is exactly where you want it to be.
All right everyone, Thanks again.
We'll see you in the next episode.
Really. Really soon.
Hey, everyone. Welcome back.
Great to be with you. Thanks for joining me for
another episode. So thrilled with how things are
going with the show right now, with everyone really apparently
loving this Q&A format and just the captured content from the
Epic community event. And we're going to roll with
that. We're just going to keep talking
about the questions that you have with regards to health,
(00:21):
well-being and high performance.And very specifically, this week
what we've done is extracted some questions about stress,
nutrition and eating smarter. So it's just a continuation of
where we finished last week withtalking about some intermittent
fasting. We're going to dig deeper into
how we can use nutrition to overcome stress and what are
some specific philosophies and strategies that you can use to
(00:43):
eat smarter this year. If you have any questions about
nutrition, if you want more information if I reference
something in this. Podcast that.
Is of interest to you that you want to learn more about?
Or maybe you want one of the workbooks that I reference in
the session. Do not be afraid to ping me
through my website at Doctor Greg Wells or on social at
Doctor Greg Wells. And we'll do our very, very best
(01:06):
to get you with the information that you need, the resources
that you need to elevate your life this year, if this is of
interest to you and you think that there's someone.
Else that could. Benefit from hearing about this?
If you could share the episode with them, we would be so deeply
grateful. Of course, if you're listening
to this and you can want to justfollow along with everything
that we're doing, the best placeis probably Instagram at Doctor
(01:28):
Greg Wells or LinkedIn forward slash Doctor Greg Wells.
And that way you can keep up with other things like the
newsletter and the images that we're going to be putting out in
a ton of video as well this year.
So thanks for your interest. Thanks for your excitement.
Thanks for the interaction that we've had over the last few
weeks. Oh my gosh.
I cannot believe how much peopleare asking questions, which is
just absolutely fantastic. And let's dig into it.
(01:50):
Please enjoy this epic Q&A on stress, nutrition, and eating
smarter. When we see things in our
environment that's challenging is that that information goes in
through your eyes, your ears, into your brain.
And very specifically, it doesn't matter whether it's a
Saber toothed tiger or a COVID-19 headline, it's the
exact same physiological effect.That information then goes and
(02:13):
gets dissected and absorbed by your amygdala, which decides
whether or not it's a threat. Which?
Is why even though it's a piece of paper, it can make you feel
terrible, and it's just a piece of paper.
It can do absolutely nothing to you, but if you decide that it's
challenging for you, it will cause a cascade of effects
(02:34):
inside your body. Specifically, your amygdala then
signals your hypothalamus, whichshoots information down through
your spinal cord to activate your sympathetic nervous system,
which then triggers the release of adrenaline from your
pituitary gland that sits right on top of your kidneys.
(02:54):
And that then gives you the increased strength, power,
explosiveness that you need to run or fight, but not in the
world right now. You can't run away from the
exam. You can't punch someone if they
give you a performance review that doesn't meet your planned
expectations, right? That's not going to be good.
We have to cope with the fact that we have a biology that
really helped us to survive in aphysical, physically challenging
(03:15):
world, but right now we're coping with a mentally
challenging world. Really interesting research that
was published that shows that when we have high levels of
cortisol neurons in the brain stop making connections.
And remember it's how we it's making connections between
neurons, which is how we encode memories.
Which is why when you're super stressed, you can't find your
keys. Your short term memory doesn't
(03:36):
exist because you actually save no information because all
you're worried about is survivalin that moment.
So when it comes to keeping our brain healthy and coping with
this very challenging world thatwe're in right now, I want you
to consider leveraging the fact that at the connections between
neurons inside your brain, 100 billion of them, thousands of
(03:58):
connections. And it's at these connections
where thinking takes place. And when you eat certain foods,
specifically foods that are highin protein, we create
neurotransmitters, which are thelittle chemicals that move back
and forth between neurons insideyour brain that help you to
concentrate and to focus. So in this stressful world that
we are in right now, this era ofuncertainty, high protein foods
(04:22):
at breakfast and lunch or at thebeginning of your shift, the
middle of your shift or three hours before a performance is
really important to make sure that you have the
neurotransmitters that you need to concentrate and to focus.
But I still want you to have energy.
And we get energy from healthy carbohydrates, loads of
different kinds. The only thing that I want you
to think about is high fiber. We want slow digesting
(04:46):
carbohydrates so that they don'tspike your insulin levels.
Because when we spike our insulin levels, it damages the
hippocampus, the region I've circled here in red.
That's responsible for learning in the creation of memories.
Also navigation sooner the high processed food, high sugar diets
typically damage this region of the brain.
Also you have lower cyclic AMP, the energy currency inside brain
(05:06):
cells, lower BDNF brain direct neurotrophic factor that
stimulates the growth of neuron new neurons inside your brain.
So overall high sugar high processed food diets, we want to
try to just like lower that, noteliminate it.
I still have ice cream every once in a while, we just don't
keep it in the house for example, right?
We're just trying to nudge ourselves in the right
direction. If we want our brains to work
really well, what we're looking for is healthy fats.
(05:27):
And the reason why we want to leverage the power of healthy
fats is that if you look at the surface of the brain in between
those blood vessels, the brain is white.
And the reason why your brain iswhite is because it's made-up of
fat, very specifically omega-3 fatty acids.
So if you're looking for foods that are awesome for your brain
and your spinal cord and your nervous system, omega-3 fatty
(05:48):
acids are absolutely incredible.They're used to create myelin,
which wraps around the branches of your neurons just like bark
in the branch of a tree, and protects them from damage.
And so these are all foods, protein, carbs, fats, the
healthy versions that we can useas fuel, as structure for the
brain. But a couple of years ago I was
talking to Doctor James and he said something super profound
that completely changed my attitude towards nutrition.
(06:12):
We jumped on a call and said I'mstruggling with a couple things.
What should I do? Is like, your nutrition is
healing. I started to shift away from
thinking of food as fuel, which I've done as an athlete my
entire life, towards using food as healing.
And I dug into the research on this, found this data here,
which ironically enough I published.
(06:34):
So sometimes you don't even knowwhat you know.
And so this is a graph that we published a few about 10 years
ago, and this shows the inflammatory process inside the
human body. Simply put, is that when we
encounter any sort of stress, physical or mental, what happens
is that inside the cells of yourbody, it's basically like a
(06:54):
lightning storm. It is exactly like this
metabolically in your brain cells, in your muscle cells.
And that causes some damage, which is exactly like a forest
fire. It's exactly the same thing at
the metabolic level. Then a whole bunch of molecules
get released that trigger healing, repair, regeneration.
(07:16):
Think lifting weights. Your muscles get sore and broken
down. Molecules flow around your body.
You grab protein. You rebuild your muscles.
You get stronger. Same thing happens inside the
brain. You're stressed.
You sleep. Neurons rebuild themselves.
You're more resilient. This is a consistent pattern
that occurs if we allow the regrowth to occur, which we call
(07:37):
adaptation. This happens inside the body.
You run, you get fitter. You lift weights.
You get stronger. You read, you learn.
This is a consistent pattern through all of human Physiology.
And I want you to move your way through this pattern as much as
we can from stress, inflammation, oxidation, towards
(07:58):
healing and repair. And so I'm hoping that we can
all collectively this year approach nutrition as healing.
Because stress causes metabolic damage in the brain and inside
the body. And the way for us to heal,
repair, recover and regenerate is through essentially the
(08:19):
rainbow of fruits and vegetables, which are packed
full of polyphenols, flavonoids,incredible compounds that the
body uses to speed our way through that process that I just
described to you right there at a high level.
The other incredible ones specifically that you can use
are the fact that berries are amazing for the brain.
(08:41):
There's an incredible spread of berries out there this morning.
We'll do that again tomorrow morning.
Green tea catch tins and epic catch tins appear to be
specifically beneficial when it comes to mental health.
So these are anti depressive in a few studies, which is really
cool. So in the afternoon we're
leveraging herbal tea every chance that we can because
caffeine gets moved to the morning.
(09:03):
Obviously hydration is a massivefactor.
We're going all in on all sorts of different types of tea to
find ones that actually tastes good, just to try to leverage
this and to win the room back over.
After talking about all of that metabolic stuff inside of
studies, we can also leverage the fact that cocoa polyphenols
and flavonoids are incredible for us.
And specifically, the polyphenols and flavonoids that
(09:26):
are in cocoa increase what's known as vascular reactivity,
which is the expansion and contraction of blood vessels
inside your body, specifically in your brain.
So cocoa polyphenols and flavonoids increase the amount
of blood flow that can get into your brain to deliver oxygen,
nutrients, vitamins, minerals, and all of those other things.
So practicing nutrition as healing is a core practice for
(09:49):
you as well. In addition to sort of thinking
about what's the last hour look like before sleep, the second
absolute home run when it comes to ensuring that you are healthy
and well and thriving in 2024 isto consider and practice
nutrition as healing. The only thing that you need to
(10:11):
think about is making sure that you are absorbing the rainbow of
colors because those colors eachhave different polyphenols and
flavonoids that radically improve our health and
well-being. White, green, purple vegetables
for example have anti cancer properties.
Yellow, orange and red carotenoids help our
(10:32):
cardiovascular system, so there's loads of different
things that we can leverage their spices or antioxidant for
the brain, which is fantastic. So on page 27 homework, not
right now. I would ask you to consider on a
perfect day, weekday weekend, work day, what do you want to be
eating? Let's draw the target and start
shooting arrows towards that target rather than just randomly
(10:55):
moving through our lives. Let's be deliberate.
Let's be intentional, because micro changes when it comes to
nutrition make all of the difference in the world.
This is what we have been doing with Adam a ton over the last
few years. He learns differently and he he
really feels the world. And so we've been leaning into
this massively with him, just tomake sure that he is as healthy
(11:18):
as he can be inside of his brain.
We use sleep for for Ingrid and we're really using nutrition for
Adam and I think that all of us can be inspired by that as well.
We're also helping him with stress just by getting him to
just hit things really, really hard as well.
So this is really a simple, simple, simple practice that
we're talking about on this one to try to keep it really basic.
(11:39):
All right everyone, thanks for tuning in.
I really. Hope that was helpful.
Obviously it's a little bit of adifferent format, but super
psyched to be able to share thatinformation with you.
I hope that it was helpful. If it was, please share this
with your community. Please let someone else know
about the show. Let someone else know about the
episode. Forward it to them.
And that. Helps us tremendously if you
(12:00):
could also leave a review on your podcast platform of choice,
whether that's iTunes or Spotify, that also makes a
massive difference for us and really helps us out.
And of course, if you can followme on social at doctor Greg
Wells or on LinkedIn forward slash Doctor Greg Wells, that
would be tremendously wonderful as well.
Ping me with questions. Make sure that this is all about
you and we will continue to build content for you this year
(12:22):
that helps you to be healthy, toperform better, and to get to a
place where your well-being is exactly where you want it to be.
All right everyone, Thanks again.
We'll see you in the next episode.
Really. Really soon.
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