Isolation, Loneliness and Alienation: Dr. Richard Louis Miller

My colleagues, Jock, tell me that one out of every three children born this year will need dialysis sometime in their lifetime.

Wow.

We have a social contract, an obligation to take care of those people in a way that makes it all possible for the country to run. We have become isolated, alienated, and lonely. We need to care more about everyone. That's what we got to get around to understanding, that we are one people.

Dr. Richard Louis Miller, one of my absolute favorite people in the entire world. Welcome back to the Pathway to Peak Performance. It's so great to have you here, my friend. Thank you for making the trip to see us.

Oh, Jock, thank you so much for having me. And yes, it was a long trip. I drove down here to Tiburon, where your office is, from Fort Bragg in Mendocino County on the Pacific coast. It's a beautiful place, Fort Bragg. It's a beautiful place, a beautiful ocean, and it was a lovely drive down here, too. Fortunately, I have automatic driving on my car, so, you know, I was able to do some thinking and some creating and even a little talking to my telephone to take notes.

That's always a good thing. Yeah. Yeah. With all of the books that you've written, I can imagine that you've got a million more to do. Uh, I I figured out the other day that I'll never catch you, uh, with, uh, the books. We have a lot to talk about with that. Let's save that for a little bit later. Uh, let's cover the, uh, charity that you chose.

I chose the Modern Family Institute. The Modern Family Institute is a teaching and training and information dissemination organization that is specially aimed at everyone other than heterosexual couples. This is an institute that is for everybody else. Everybody who lives in any way other than a man and a woman cohabitating in a relationship. This is for everybody else so that they also feel like they have a special place that's studying them, because we're a research organization. I say we because I was one of the founders of the Modern Family Institute, I'm pleased to say.

Wow, what an interesting study that must be. Um, to take a look at that. And I imagine that, uh, as time has gone on, you've learned quite a bit about how those people, um, live their lives and how they feel about, uh, society and how they fit in, which must be fascinating to listen to them.

It's fascinating, Jock. It is utterly fascinating.

Our show is now sponsored by a company called KetoneAid. How do you say that? KetoneAid, almost like Kool-Aid. Oh, KetoneAid. Yes, I see. So this product is an exogenous ketone, which is like the — called the fourth fuel. So when we go into dietary ketosis, uh, the brain starts to use ketones to fuel it. Normally we're using glucose, as you know. And so this, even in a medical, uh, metabolically flexible diet, so we're getting in all the the right nutrients and the right nutrition and all that good stuff, this becomes a fourth fuel.

And when you take it, um, I take it pre-workout to fuel my workouts so that, when I'm going through, I don't have a crash in the middle of my workout. I can work out stronger and harder. I take it in the middle of the day when you would get that afternoon circadian rhythm slump about 3:00 in the afternoon, somewhere there, two through three. Yeah. And then right before I go to bed at night I take just a little bit, because it affects GABA and it helps you to stay into a deeper sleep.

Really? It doesn't jack you up?

No. If you take too much, it will. I see. But if you take just the right amount, it really helps. And it also helps with that nocturnal, um, hypoglycemia where we have a drop in blood sugar. The response from the body is to send out cortisol and adrenaline to say, "Hey, you're — I need food, cuz I'm in recovery mode. I need some food to fuel the cells. I'm out of — I'm out of whatever it is that I need." And that's where catabolic effects happen with muscle, uh, for those of us like you who work out. We're trying to maintain as much muscle on our bodies as we possibly can.

So this product, and I think this is the place where we should start, this is called KE2. The other one is called KE4. So I'd like you to do me a favor and, uh, this is not an endorsement from you by any any way, shape, or form. Um, they would have to pay you for that, and that would cost them more than they probably wanted to pay.

Or at minimum send me a couple of cases of it.

Well, maybe we'll do that. So you can see here, this has now been popped, and so we have some water set aside, and what I'd like you to do is go ahead and put some capfuls in, uh, to each one of these cups, and then we'll drink it and we'll see what you think. Take a capful, put it in here. Yeah.

So one of the things I really love about this is that when you feel it kick in in your workout, it's all of a sudden the energy peaks. You start to peak. And — or for you. Yes, please. Um, what is really powerful about it is by the time you're walking out of the gym, you're not gassed. You're saying to yourself, "We have to actually take it easy because we don't want to overtrain." Which is pretty cool. So, cheers. Yep. Mm. Sort of a sweet taste, right?

It tastes like, to me — although it has changed — but it tastes like maple syrup a little bit.

A little medicinal. That's okay.

Um, all right. So we have talked, Dr. Miller, um, many times —

I always laugh when you call me Dr. Miller because it sounds so formal. And, you know, at this point I think we know each other well enough. Since I — unless you want me to call you Mr. Putney.

I think call me Richard. Well, I never call you Dr., uh, Miller when we're on the phone. Yeah. Okay. So, Richard. I know you mean it to be respectful. It's very kind of you. Well, you deserve the respect. Thank you. You — you know, it's an honor and a privilege to spend any time with you, and I I always enjoy our conversations, and I learn so much always.

So we have talked about — and I just recently posted on some social about something, and I talked with my last guest, or the guest before last, about you. And what I said was, uh, you had mentioned to me, "Jock, we are living in an epidemic of loneliness and isolation." And alienation. And alienation. Yeah. Okay. So loneliness can exist in a variety of ways. Uh, isolation can be self — we're self-isolating, or we're isolated for geographic reasons or whatever it might be or however. And then alienation is another thing that we can get into and talk about.

So what I wanted to talk to you about is the — what you had suggested. Let's work on a project together where we get people to want to just — when you have somebody come into your mind with no agenda, that they come into your mind and you feel you have a good feeling about that person, you want to just call and say, "I just was thinking about you." So last night I did that with a friend. Yeah. Because I knew you were coming. Yeah. And I wanted to have a very fresh — and the response was, "Man, thank you so much for thinking about me right now. I I really appreciate that that you were actually — that I was in your thoughts." I could show you the — the — the, you know, the text message. It was a text.

I I'd love to dig deeper into that and understand more about your thoughts around this — this notion of that, because I don't think anyone can achieve peak performance if they are, uh, lonely, isolated, or alienated.

Yes. Human beings, we're tribal, Jock. We're tribal animals. Right from the time we came out of the caves, we sat around the fires in little groups. Maybe 97% of us — not everybody, but very high percentage — are friendly animals, and we love doing all kinds of little things together. Whether it's swimming together or coffee clubs together, sewing circles together, knitting circles together, football, you name it. Golf, boating. We like doing it in little groups. We like doing it with other people. Even in — people bring people into their homes all the time. People meet in social places and bars and restaurants. That's who we are.

And we have become, as a result of many factors, isolated, alienated, and lonely. And I could go into all the ways it's happened, and I'll mention a few. But more importantly is what we do about it. Just as I said earlier in the program, we spend a certain amount of time on diagnosis. All right? So we've diagnosed the problem. It's isolation, alienation, and loneliness. And we know 30 to 40% of us are suffering. It's a very big number.

And we know that the COVID epidemic supercharged these problems, because when you take tribal animals and you say, "Go to your cave and stay there alone," and then you say, "When you come out in public, stay social distance, six feet away," and when you see other people — the opposite of human connection, the opposite of you and I the way we're looking at each other right now, making connection with our eyes. The opposite of being able to reach out and touch your hands. The opposite of hugging. We couldn't hug babies. People were outside baby rooms where you could see the glass wall and they're looking at their little baby. That's what we went through. Things like that. People sick in hospitals and the people closest to them couldn't come and visit them. We did the opposite of what our DNA calls for. It was a slam in the soul. And so that supercharged what was already going on, which was alienation, isolation, and and loneliness for economic reasons. And now you have this pandemic supercharging it with those rules. Whoa. We took it in the gut, Jock. We really took it.

Enough diagnosis. Now, what are we going to do about it? I'm not interested in these cures that serve the two or 3% at the top. I mean, what good is it? Okay, you can get less isolated and alienation and lonely if you go to this seminar for $18,000 and go to this one over here for $6,000, and then go to this exotic island and take this exotic drug and you're going to be all better. And that's for a very small — and it may even work. And by the way, some of the psychedelics are phenomenal, but it's for a very few. You do a psychedelic journey nowadays, if you hire a professional, not somebody off the street, you know, if it cost you $300 an hour and they're with you for 12 hours over the weekend, it's 3,600 bucks for the weekend. And that's the low end.

I'm looking for something for everybody, for the rest of us, that doesn't cost a lot of money. I'm looking for something, in fact, that's the antidote to isolation, alienation, and loneliness. I want something that maybe is free for everybody. And so I'm using my creative skills, and I'm asking you as a — as a colleague and a friend to join me — and I know you want to, and you have, to a certain extent — and I want us to use our platforms to ask others, many others, to join us in some simple exercises that I create, that you create, and that people listening and watching create and mail to us and say, "Hey, Jock, try this. Hey, Dr. Miller, try this. I tried this, it might work."

And so I came up with a few right away. And the first one I came up with was the one you referenced, the telephone call. Just to call somebody. Somebody you might have met at a meeting, somebody you know from work, but you've never really called. A family member is fine. A friend is fine. It's the call instead of the — the text. The text takes away the voice. It takes away the sound. The sound of our voice is the message from our soul. The sound of our voice. It's hard to fake, unless you're a professional actor, to fake the sound and timbre of your voice. Not just the words, but the music of your sound. And that disappears with tech.

But when you make that phone call — I call people on the phone sometime. I think I've done it with you. I just say hello. You know exactly who I am from one word. What does that tell us about how we're able to decode communication based on sound? I say hello, you say hi. "Hi, Dr. Miller." You've said it. And other people do too. And we all do that with each other. We know people, they say hello. We know just who it is from the sound. But if you're sitting there and you get a text and it says, "Hi," you don't know who it's from. It's just fonts on a page. And even when you do know who it's from, it's still fonts on a page on — on — on a little machine called a computer or a telephone.

So the telephone voice — and so I'm recommending, pick up the phone once a week and call someone and just say, "Hi, I just wanted to check in and see how you're doing, and I've got no agenda whatsoever." So some people have written back to me and they say, "Dr. Miller, you know, I'm nervous about doing that because I'm afraid — I'm afraid they're going to think I'm up to something. What does he want? Why is he calling? What does he want?" Right? Always, because we're all on guard. We get all these scammy phone calls, people calling us or texting us, all this stuff. They want to sell us and lay on us, right? And you get these calls, "I'm with so-and-so and — " and we're all like, you know, enough already. We don't need that.

And so he says, "I'm afraid that's what's going to happen. They're going to think I'm just another one of those junk callers." And I said, "Tell him you heard this doctor on the internet who says that we're suffering from isolation, alienation, and loneliness. And he thinks that if we call each other on the phone and we get like hundreds of thousands of people calling each other, it may help a lot. And when I thought about it, I thought, you know, he's not asking for any money, and it doesn't hurt anything to call a friend, and it might be nice. I don't see what I have to lose, so that's why I'm calling you. And if you want to say goodbye right now, that's okay with me. I just wanted to call and say hello." So there's a way to do it. There's always a way to do it. You can put it on me, you can put it on yourself. I understand people are afraid about it. I get it. But there's a way around that.

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There's so many things I see people that are afraid of doing that I'm not afraid of, but I have to respect the fact that they are afraid of that and — and it doesn't come naturally to them. I'm around that a lot. I imagine you are, in the line of work that you've been in all the years, of seeing thousands of patients, I would imagine. So it's always something where I — I say to — I I'm not that way, that I — I can just make any call. I can do — I can speak to anyone and, um, and I can be sincere in that.

I thought a friend last night, uh, is a person that I know he needed that call. Yeah. I called and he sent back a text message. He has a new job and he — I basically said you could just text. So I would have preferred to speak with him, because I believe in what you're saying is true. Tonality — like what you're saying, the sound. Hopefully we can help people understand that the sound of someone's voice, the body language — we think it's all what we're saying, but it's so much about the sound. The sound, the — the — the tonality, the cadence, the inflection of what we say, how we say it, means so much. It's almost like when you're singing and you're singing from your diaphragm, just from your throat — you, people sense the emotion, right?

And I think there's this electromagnetic field. We know that through the research that — that — that we can remote view, we can, uh, we can telepathically communicate with people. Uh, we're — we're capable of all of those things. Um, and so people know when you're sincere. They know. And that's why, when you're around someone, when you go, "Oh, something's not right." Uh-huh. You can tell, right? Right. But you can tell when something's right.

So I'm answering your question again about the treatment plan for isolation — yeah — alienation and loneliness. One piece, one little piece: the phone call. Another one: introducing ourselves to people in our daily lives.

Oh, I love this one. What does that mean?

Right. It means you go into the supermarket and there's a person there who's checking you out. You say, "Hi, my name's Richard. What's yours?" You go into the post office. You say, "Hi, my name's Richard." You say, "My name's Jock. What's yours?" Sometimes you shake hands, sometimes you don't. You're respectful and you watch the body language. Each little place that you go, you say hello and introduce yourself. The next time you go in there, you've already introduced yourself to that person. You already know them, but you say it again. "Hi, I don't know if you remember me. My name's Richard."

The third time I went into the supermarket and did that with Daniel, who's the checker behind the market — in the market at Harvest Market in Fort Bragg — it was, "Hi, Daniel." "Hi, Richard." And now we're neighbors and we know each other. We've got a connection, like your hands made. And we've got a connection.

Recently I had a bill to North Coast Plumbing in Fort Bragg, California. I just took over my bookkeeping for the first time in 50 years. First time in 50 years. Oh, I was a little nervous about it. And I try to connect to do it all electronically like everybody else does nowadays. The people in Wells Fargo — with all due respect to you, Wells Fargo, I've been with you for over 40 years — they couldn't teach me. They weren't able to get my Wells Fargo account to connect with something called Zelle so that I could make payments. Two managers, two hours, they couldn't do it. I went home, pulled out the checkbook, and started just writing checks by hand.

And what I'm leading up to is I hand-delivered a check to this North Coast Plumbing. Now, I've been dealing with them for 30, 40 years. I never hand-delivered a check. The bookkeeper mailed it, etc., or electronically sent it. I walked in. I said, "Hi, Jeanie." "I know that voice." She says, "Who are you?" I said, "You've been talking to me for 20, 30 years." "Oh, I know that voice. I know that voice. It's Dr. Miller." "Oh," I said, "I decided to come in and give you the check in person, and here it is." And she lit up, and we had a talk about her kids and my kids and blah blah blah. And then off I went. All of a sudden, connection. Connection.

Now, I don't know a lot about Jeanie. I don't know a lot about Daniel at the — at — at the supermarket, Harvest Market, or about the man in the post office, or the man at Rossi's Hardware. But I know enough that we're connected and we have a nice feeling. And that nice feeling is breaking down isolation, alienation, and loneliness. If any of those people that I just mentioned, or the others that I bump into, are living alone and they're lonely or isolated, they just had a little interaction during the day that can just brighten their day a little bit. And if there were so many more of me saying hello to them in the same way, of all the people that come in the post office and all the people that come in, right? We would have all kinds of people saying hello to each other. "How you doing?" Then it becomes, "How's your kid? Oh, is your kid graduating?" Then you know a little something. You got something to talk about. All of this antidotes — medicine — for isolation, alienation, and loneliness. Simply by introducing ourselves. Simply by introducing ourselves in our daily lives. Doesn't cost anything. Making the phone call doesn't cost anything. Everybody can do it. Well, almost everybody who has a phone. I have to be respectful of those who don't.

So those are some of the ways. I'll give you one more and then enough. These are just the teasers, and I — I have a lot more work to do because I want to come up with a list that's very long. Waving at stop signs. You come to a four-way stop, you can just wave and say hello. It's safe. You don't get out of your car. You don't have to worry what kind of person's in the other car. You just give them a smile and a wave. It's a simple thing like that.

Well, I've been doing it. And guess what? Most everybody waves back and smiles. Most everybody waves back and smiles. I was a little nervous at first. I really was. I — I'm going to say it out loud. I'm thinking, "Oh, are they going to think, oh, what's that old man weirdo doing waving in the car?" Right. But I — I got over that. I said, "Forget it. If they want to think that, they can think that." Let alone the fact that I'm driving this weird-looking vehicle called a Cybertruck, so it makes it even stranger. But so — but it's working, is what I'm saying. I would say easily two of the other three people at the — at the, uh, at the stop signs, two every time give a little wave. No question.

You know what I — what I find every time I interact with you, is — and I'm fascinated by — is this never-ending curiosity. Never-ending curiosity. You have the curiosity with a far greater maturity, but like the curiosity of a child.

That's right. That's why I'm laughing. The reason I'm laughing is you so nailed me, that the first thing I thought of when you said that was going to my father's office when I was a little boy and opening up every drawer, every cl— you know, he was a dental surgeon, he had all the cabinets with all these little drawers. I'm opening the drawers, looking around. The same around my house. I wanted to look. Where? Curiosity.

Yeah, very curious. Very curious. The other thing that I really admire about you is that you really respect all people and you're willing to hear what they have to say. And we live in — another piece of this, uh, loneliness, isolation, alienation is this divide that we've, uh, allowed to happen in the country. And we have to find a way back to listening to one another and respecting that people are different than we are. And if you're not my way, well then you're just not — I can't talk to you. I don't have to agree, but I need to listen. I have to hear what they have to say and be willing to just hear them out, and I can at least respect them as human beings. And I think that is a really important thing. And I — I wanted to ask you what you thought about that.

Yesterday my younger daughter, Everesca D'Angelus, who lives in Manhattan, had her 40th birthday. And what she reminded me of recently, which really — it brought tears to my eyes, and it might even now — she said to me, "Dad, when I was about four years old, you said to me, 'It doesn't matter if it's the garbage man or the president of the United States, you treat him the same way with respect, and you listen to them the same way with respect.'"

So I guess I believe that for at least 36 years, if not longer. And I really do. You know, the fact that I taught her that 36 years ago really says a lot to me, that, you know, that I knew it then in my core 36 years ago. I was 50, and, uh, and I'm — I'm very happy with that, and I really believe it, and I think it's essential.

And what you just said now is accurate about the division in the country, and there's a reason for that. And I'll try to be careful about going political here. Throughout all of history, it's been a political maneuver for the people at the top to get the citizens fighting amongst themselves. Whether it's fighting about being black and white, whether it's fighting about being middle class and poor, whether it's fighting about you have kinky hair and I have straight hair, whether it's fighting about your color, your skin has various colors and mine is just white. All these things they push out and sensationalize throughout all of history. It's a tactic. It's a known tactic to get the people fighting amongst themselves. Why? Because if the people fight amongst themselves, they're not looking up at the leaders and what kind of job they're doing. They're fighting amongst themselves.

And if they pull together as a people and say, finally, we are more alike than we're different — we may disagree on abortion, we may disagree on immigration, we may disagree on healthcare, but you know what? We all want our kids to go to school and be safe. We all want to come home at night and have some decent food on the table. We all want shelter above our heads in a place that's heated. And almost all, if not all, of us want a little health care and a little education. Those are the basics that we all agree on. All the rest is sort of fluff. That's what we got to get around to understanding, that we are one people, and not let the politicians keep us fighting, fighting, fighting amongst ourselves so we don't look at what they're doing.

And what are they doing? They're having a party. That's what they're doing. And we're paying for it big time. And there's stealing and there's corruption and there's really bad stuff going on, both sides of the aisle. We need something different in this country. We need something very different. We need to get back to — to what's called real virtue, where people are honest because it's a good thing to be honest, because it's normal. That's what we've done — instead of making honesty normal, we have normalized criminal behavior. We've normalized cheating and stealing as if it's normal. We've normalized aberrant behavior. That's not good. That's not good.

And we've even done it with our health. We've even done it with our health. And I'm going to go on now, if I — if I may, to a sidebar topic that's a very tender topic. Over 70% of the United States are overweight or obese. This is a very tender topic. I feel like, as much as anybody, I can talk about it, because as I sit here in front of you, Jock, I'm about 203 pounds. There was a time when I was 300, so I feel like I can talk about it. I'm not pointing a finger or trying to shame anybody, but I know what it's like to be 100 pounds overweight.

When you suffer from drug addiction, chemical dependence, you can have a heroin addict hide his addiction for years, particularly if he's financially well off. The famous heroin addict William Burroughs — he went his whole life as a heroin addict. And by the way, it doesn't kill you early. There's nothing lethal about heroin. That's another whole story. But you can hide it. And you can hide cocaine addiction to a certain extent. You can. And many people hide alcoholism. You know where it falls down in those three: eventually your family and your business. But very often you can get away with it personally. The wife who puts up with the alcoholic husband for 26 years and stuff like that and covers with the kids. Or the couple who raise kids while they're both alcoholic, and they end up with kids who sit at the dinner table and fork — and hold a fork like this, and fork their food and take it like that. My patient. And I said, "How'd you learn to do that?" And he said, "Well, my parents were drunk all the time. They never taught me how to eat. And so I learned how to eat watching Western movies and sitting in the campfire. They always went like that and grabbed them, eat like that. So that's what I do." That's a true story. He was an adult.

You can't hide overweight like the heroin and the alcoholic and the — and the, uh, cocaine addict. The gambling addict, they can hide it to a certain extent, although being so broke all the time, it's difficult. The person who overspends can hide it, depending on how much money they have, they can hide. You can't hide overweight. When I was 300 pounds, I was 300 pounds from the morning I woke up until the after the night when I went to sleep. And everywhere I went, I was advertising: I'm a big fat guy and I weigh — I weigh 300 pounds. You can't stop it.

So no matter how happy those models on TV look that are now this big and advertising how happy they are as they're selling this — "Oh, look at me, I'm a big fat person and I'm happy" — they're not happy. They're not happy. They're happy they're getting paid to do the advertisement.

No question.

So we've got this problem of how do we deal with the problem to help these people when just discussing the problem brings attention to them, which they don't want, because they're already bringing attention just walking around in the world. And so they think that if we start talking about it, they'll be shamed, or maybe they'll be blamed. Why do you eat so much? Or it's your fault, or any one of a number of things. Those kind of things happen to the cocaine addicts and the alcoholics and — and the heroin addicts too. It's your fault, and blame, and so on. And they — even those people get treated like criminals rather than people with an emotional, psychological problem, right? They get thrown in jail. If we started throwing people in jail who are overweight, that 70% of the country would be in jail.

So the issue is, how do we create a positive conversation? How do we create a positive con— conversation locally, statewide, in the country, to help these people, over 70%, who are destined to have body part problems? There is no way you're going to go 10, 20, 30, 40 years, if you live that long, significantly overweight or obese without having body problems. Something — your kidney, your heart, your vascular, cancer, something, or more than one thing. And usually it's more than one thing is going to go. So this entire group, 70%, are headed for demise. They're headed for body part problems like there's no tomorrow. And we do not have local, statewide, or federal concerted program to do something about our fellow citizens who are suffering so greatly. And it is desperately needed.

My colleagues, Jock, tell me that one out of every three children born this year will need dialysis sometime in their lifetime.

Wow.

My colleagues, Jock, tell me that we're reaching a point where doctors are going to have to fight for dialysis machines, knowing that if they win and the other doctor loses, that guy's patient's going to die, because we're not going to have enough dialysis machines. I'm not saying I'm positive this is accurate, but that's what I've heard about through lectures in medical schools. But we know, without going into those gory details, that what I said a moment ago about body parts failing is accurate and it's going to happen.

So we have something else to deal with. You and I are looking at — at that which ails us. The socioeconomics, the overweight and obesity, the alienation, isolation, and loneliness. And by the way, the isolation, alienation, and loneliness and the obesity are symptoms. They are not causes. They are symptoms. They are us as a people expressing ourselves. We are expressing ourselves through this. This is — here's where we're hurting, everybody. We're isolated, alienated, we're lonely. Here's where we're hurting, everybody. We're using food to deal with our emotions as if the food is a medicine, and we're stuffing it down our throats in order to feel better because we're hurting so much. That's what that — that's about. That's what that's about. Overeating is a medicine.

I got a little carried away, but I'm passionate about these topics and I allow — thank you for allowing me to be so.

Well, speaking of being healthy, uh, one of the things we know that's a real problem is sugar. And one of the things that's interesting about this, the ketones that we took, is they, uh, fend off sugar cravings. Now, not everyone's going to be able to afford these, and I hope at some point in time that they're able to produce them at a level where they are more affordable. This is cutting edge stuff. It's like the Ferrari of this stuff. So it's not a viable solution, I say. But my point to you is, now that we've gone, uh, the 30 minutes, do you feel anything from them?

Jock, I get so excited working with you and working together that my base level of excitement was already so high that, in all honesty, I cannot tell any different, because you ask great questions. You keep me going. You don't try to suppress my enthusiasm and my excitement. And, um, so I'm — I wish I could say that I did notice something, but that was the reason that I wanted to take my, um, my heart rate before and after, so that I would have a way of knowing. I — I missed it. I missed the opportunity. You know what we should do, and might do it again sometime, is I take my blood oximeter — I'll bring it — and we take my blood oxygen, we take my heart rate, we take my vital signs before and after, and then do the measurements and see if there's any change.

That would be fun. Definitely. Definitely. Well, you know what I — what I love, the best part of — of spending time with you is that I can just listen. So oftentimes I have to do a lot of talking, and it's not always stuff that I want to do. So it's really great.

I — I want to go — the obesity thing is something I think about all the time. I think about people who are trapped, and now we have these GLP-1s. And I was yesterday, uh, someplace and there was — they had a radio playing and they were talking about these oral GLP-1s versus the GLP-1s that were designed to control insulin levels. So the oral GLP-1 now is being marketed as the one that you use to lose weight, when in fact the injectable GLP-1, the side effect of that insulin control is actually losing weight.

So we all know that the GLP-1s work, uh, and there's sort of an epidemic of use around those. But what's not happening is that people need to understand that when you use drugs like that, you have to actually maintain a level of protein, you have to exercise. And the other thing — one of the things that's beautiful about you: you get hydration. You understand the power of hydration. You drink 32 ounces of water three times per day. You're 203 pounds, which means that you are hydrating appropriately for your body, uh, and giving yourself what you need to function. Because your cells can't function — you know, your mitochondria cannot produce ATP if, in the absence of, there — you know, there's not — they're not hydrated.

Now we've got all these people who are just using a quick fix. But you have to strength train. You have to do cardio. You have to put stress on the bones in order to make — otherwise you're going to have, uh, you know, osteoporosis. You're going to have, uh, issues with bone density, right? You're going to have muscle wasting. And as we get older, as you know, we have what's called anabolic resistance. It means that we now start to lose muscle over time. And if we don't maintain it, you lose it when you — when you don't use it. So we have to actually — what you're — what you're leading into is we need a national program of exercise. When kids were young and they go out and they play — now they play Xbox and they hang out. There was a time when I was a kid, I was just out. We come home when it was, you know, starting to get dark, and that's when you come home. And now it's just a lot different. So you want to talk about the ge—

I'd like to comment a little bit.

I'd love to hear it.

The reason that AA is a failure in many ways is that AA and NA — Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, with due respect to all the good they do, which I'll talk about — but the reason it's a failure in terms of its primary mission, which is to cut back or cease the dependence on a substance, is that they have all their focus on cutting out the particular substance. And traditionally they've had zero focus on lifestyle change, with the exception of being honest, which is very important. They've had zero focus on exercise, on nutrition, on emotional connectedness, with many of the things — with getting the — an adequate amount of rest. Which — many of the things that you do just as part of your lifestyle, that I do as part of my lifestyle. You never go to an AA meeting and hear them talking about the, uh, imperative of hydration. Other modalities.

The same is true with these weight loss medicines that you're talking about. They're selling the medicines to the people as if the medicine itself is all you need and that's it. You'll lose the weight. They're wrong. The people will lose the weight for a certain amount of time. But over time — first of all, if they stop the medicine, is A, and B, even if they continue the medicine, B. I'm going to talk about both A and B.

If they stop the medicine, they're going to gain the weight right back, because nothing has changed in their lives except this medicine which reduced their hunger, that got them to eat less. They're trapped. They are set now to give an annuity to that pharmaceutical company for the rest of their lives if they're going to continue. So keep that in mind, folks. Yes, it may be helpful for a certain period of time, but you're also part of a program where you're going to have millions, tens of millions — they'd love hundreds of millions — sending that money to the pharmacy every single month, because it's not a cure, it's a pill.

The people who don't quit are also not changing their lifestyle. So what you have are these people getting thinner with the old lifestyle. So therefore the things that you referenced are going to hit them like bricks in the side of the head. What? Loss of muscle mass. The bones are going to start to get weaker because they're not doing exercise and activity to maintain bone strength, which comes from a combination of nutrition and exercise of a certain kind where you pound a bit, like walking.

If you think in a way that the body is a biochemical me— a biochemical mechanical system, and you compare it to another biochemical or — or any other mechanical system, everything requires maintenance. Maintenance. Your furnace in your house requires m— your car requires maintenance. If you don't do the maintenance on your car, no preventive maintenance, you're going to break down at some point where it's going to be a pain in the ass, inconvenient. So people learn to check their tires before they get down to bald. People learn to check — to have the cylinders checked. People learn to put ga— the right gas in. If you drive a car that calls for high octane and you put low octane in, you're going to create knocks and bumps and stuff. If you drive a car that requires diesel and you put gasoline in there, it's not going to work. So here we are, human beings driving something equivalent, each of us, to a Rolls-Royce, and we're pissing in the tank. No wonder we're getting all these problems and symptoms.

Back to those medicines. If the folks don't get a manual with those pills, plus maybe some reference to go to YouTube or to go somewhere or to go to a class to learn about lifestyle changes, it ain't going to work. And what's going to make it even less work is something else that you referenced, which is true and most of the public does not know: that at a certain chronological age — 45 to 50 in there, roughly — we start to lose muscle mass. That's just part of the human condition. And my colleagues tell me that we lose somewhere between one and 3% every year.

So if you happen to be a person where you started to lose the muscle mass at 50 instead of 45, bless your heart, you're lucky. You start to lose it at 50. Let's say you're in the 1% loss per year group. 20 years later, you're now 70 years old. You — you're retired. You're starting — you want to do things you never could do before. You've just lost 20% of your muscle mass. 20% of your muscle mass. How about you're in the 3% group? Somebody's got to be there. 3% over 20 years, you've lost 60% of your muscle mass. So let's say you're just average, the 2% group, right in the middle. Age 50 to 70, you've lost 40% of your muscle mass.

Folks, can you imagine what it's like walking around? Imagine if it was overnight. One day you wake up and you've lost 40% of your muscle mass. I mean, some people have that. It's called serious, you know, medical conditions. 40% of your muscle mass. Is it any wonder that older people are walking like this, bent forward? Is it any wonder that they're walking slow? Why? You lose 40% of your muscle mass. You can't keep your skeletal system up and it's hard to walk.

That's a big percentage to lose. But you don't have to lose it. Have you seen that slice? There's an MRI slice of a 70-year-old man, uh, who exercises, does strength training, and then they took a — a slice of a man that's 70 years old that does no exercise. The 70-year-old man had some muscle with some intramuscular fat, some striations of fat going down and some intramuscular fat. Um, and the 70-year-old man that didn't exercise had all fat with some muscles going down almost like tendons. It was — it was dramatic.

I mean, I think — remember, do you remember the old American Cancer Society posters? There was the anti-smoke, stop smoking campaigns. They had picture of the lady who'd been smoking for all those years and she just looked like terrible. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I wonder what would happen along the lines of what you're talking about, trying to get people to understand that exercise is so important. I wonder what would happen if they actually used that "this is your brain on drugs," you know, the egg in the pan, right? Uh, so that notion of, this is what exercise looks like, this is what exercise doesn't look like — or what exercise — this is what life looks like without exercise.

It's a real serious problem. And then we think about older people, as you know, uh, develop, uh, those conditions, they fall, and it's the beginning of a cascade of things that can happen to them and cause all sorts of issues. One of the leading causes of death in older people is falling. So we have to — we have to really emphasize exercise as part of — of — of what we do.

And the big fear around the GLP-1s is that people will just take them and, uh, and then doctors who are, uh — the typical primary care doctor who says, "Oh, you have high, uh, HDL, LDL," or LDL, HDL, "take a statin," right, without looking at the, uh, ApoB and all of the other markers, right, to understand what — what are we really working with. We had Dr. Abbid Hussein on the program, uh, was a phenomenal episode talking about the things that you really need to do for cardiac health. And it's — it's fascinating to think about what — what can happen to people when they don't exercise.

And yet there's this weird thing, and maybe you understand this probably better than anyone else, having seen so many patients. I think I have a hypothesis. Maybe we can discuss this and you can tell me if you think I'm right or wrong. And believe me, if you think I'm wrong, I want to hear it. I believe that once people start to get into a pattern, once they're out of the gym — you know that feeling when, if you stayed out of the gym or stayed out — stopped working out, about 2 days into it, you'd have almost like a thirst signal for exercise. Correct? You have this feeling of, ah, something's not quite right. I need to exercise. But when we go past that, we get into that rut and we start eating crappy food, and then that's starting to replace the dopamine that we get from the exercise, the endorphins and — and dopamine. That whole piece is replaced by, you know, uh, not so great food, and we start to head down — that we get into a rut and we can't get out.

The reason why I wanted to bring this up and I wanted to ask you is, number one, do you believe that that is true? And then I have a follow-up question for you.

First of all, I want to do a shout out before we get into that. And the shout out is, there are millions of people around the country who are hearing you and me and a lot of other experts talking about the benefits of exercise. And I don't want those millions of people to feel bad for not exercising. And here's why. Because those millions of people work in jobs that create exercise, and those people do not need to exercise the way you and I do and all these others do that we're advocating.

Let everybody hear this. We are advocating the essential necessity for exercise amongst sedentary workers. People like Jock and myself that work at desks with computers. But the guy who works with me, who's a contractor, who's on his feet all day and working machinery, he doesn't need to exercise. My patient who's a building man, he's got muscles like this and he's building and climbing and moving around with things, he doesn't need to. So please don't feel shamed or bad. If you're in one of those occupations where you're moving around all the time, that counts. Walking. If you're in a big building and you got to walk six hours a day all the time giving papers, doing this, that counts. All that kind of stuff counts. So let's just be respectful to all those people.

I don't want — I've thought about this this week. I'm so glad we're talking about it, because I don't want to be shaming all these people. You know, their wives are coming home: "You got to exercise." What are you talking about? I just spent eight hours on a forklift and I was sitting there going like this all day long. Well, he was sitting. He may need some squats, but his certain upper body is getting plenty of exercise. So that — that's an important thing for everybody to know. And, you know, in all fairness, the same with postal delivery people, they're walking all the time. That's a great job. Therapists around the country sitting on our butts in an office not getting exercise — we've got to go out and exercise.

So I — number one, I agree with you 100%. And what I wanted to get to, this place where the thing that I love about you is the way that you worked with your patients. And you said, "You're not exercising." "I can — you — I I can't exercise." "Well, can you go out and can you walk for five minutes?" "Yeah, I could do five minutes." And you said, "Terrific. Now, next week" — or whatever the — you remember what I said. Yeah. "Let's go another five minutes."

It's easier than that, Jock. If you can do five minutes, you do five minutes for a week. The next week, you don't need to do 10, you can do six. Just one more minute. And then the following week, seven. But what that means is at the end of the year, you're doing an hour. But you're doing an hour so gently that you never feel it. You never feel a press. "Oh, do I have to do that? Oh, it's so long." Oh, the excuses. It's one little minute. One little minute. It goes — it goes with my slogan: a little something over time is a lot of something. A little something over time is a lot of something. Warren Buffett: a little interest compounded over time is a lot of something. He knew it in money. I know it about the human condition.

Yeah. He played the long game.

The long game. A little something over time. But a little something over time cuts both ways. True. It cuts both ways, because if you keep everything steady — your exercise, your nutrition, your rest, everything's the same — and you add one bottle of a soft drink every day, one little bottle, at the end of three years you've gained 45 pounds. And I kid you not, and you can do the math, because I've done it. One drink, 45 pounds. Warren Buffett. See, it adds up. It adds up. It adds up. 45 pounds in three.

And people don't realize that. And they say, "Oh, one time it's not going to kill you. One time." And then they do this one time. They do that one time. They do this. And each of those little one times, in 3 years then they're 45 pounds overweight and they wonder, how the hell, how did I get there? I don't eat out of control. I eat normal food. I'm not a big drinker. What happened? What happened? And it happens so gradually that you hardly even notice it. Just like the walking five minutes, six — all of a sudden you turn around like, holy cow, I'm at 29 minutes. How did that happen? How did I get to 38 minutes and it's just so easy now? How did I get to 45 pounds? A little something over time.

And that's why the awareness of what kind of fuel we put in the tank is so important. And that's what I meant before about, don't pee in your — in your Rolls-Royce. Because basically we have three foodstuffs, not counting the ketone — that's a different topic. We have air, which has oxygen. We have water. And we have ingestible food. That's our fuel. That's what makes this thing go. Air, water, and food.

And if you don't put the right kind of air in there, you put dirty air in, you're going to know it. Lungs. And the — and the car, your carburetor's going to go. If you keep putting a bunch of dirty air in there, you're going to get it all chopped up, right? Water. You better put water in the radiator of your car or it's going to overheat. It's not going to work. You better put plenty of water into this thing. It's going to overheat or dry out and it's not going to work. And you better put the right kind of fuel in there, because if you put low octane in a high octane vehicle, it's not going to work. And this is the highest octane vehicle we got available. This baby wants the best — the best nutrition, air, water, and food. You got to cover the bases. Nobody teaches us that.

If we just go back to Maslow's hierarchy of needs. So, air, water, food, shelter at the base layer.

At the base layer. And so much of what we talked about today is really just that — that there are a number of people that are getting closer and closer. I mean, they'll have air to breathe, probably can find water to drink. Whether or not it's good water or not, that's questionable though. There's certainly food insecurity, uh, for many people. They may not be able to get the right kind of food. There are places that are food deserts where they're unable to.

And this is why I think there's incredible opportunity for the grow your own food movement. Yes. Uh, where seeds are available that — that aren't GMO, fertilized with, um — there's a product out, a friend who has been on the show, uh, Dennis Amoroso, Bio Rock. This is mine waste that when you put this on top, it's real top— it creates real topsoil. It has all the minerals in it. They did a test on almond trees just over in Oakdale, just in the Central Valley. Yeah. They took these almond trees, they were knee high when they planted them. Within a year, they were at full height. So that was without chemical fertilizers, which are poisoning people. They're ruining the kelp forest off the coast. Uh, it's just — it's, you know, we know now that these chemical fertilizers are causing all sorts of neurocognitive diseases, cancer. People are moving away from acidosaturated with them.

So we covered a lot today. So one of the things — I just wanted to get the key takeaways from all of the things that we discussed. And what — what occurs to me, and I certainly don't want to put words in your mouth or summarize anything for you, but what I — my kind of key takeaways from this today are: we need to care more about everyone. We need to make the right decisions. And we need to stop letting people divide us, uh, and our ability to actually communicate with one another. Whether we agree or not, we can have respect for an individual as a human being.

Beautifully said. Couldn't have summarized it better.

You know, Richard, um, one of the things I respect most about you is — well, there's so many things. Oh. Uh, you touch my heart while you talk. There's such a wealth of knowledge. You know, I think one of the greatest things I find in speaking with you and just listening to you is, number one, you're so passionate. We live in a world where, I feel sorry to say this, but mediocrity is becoming the new standard of excellence. And — and there's a — there's a need to actually kind of focus in on trying to, like, hey, let's take it a step further. The one minute, one a minute, one a minute. Yeah.

You have an incredible passion for what you do. And, you know, you continue to see patients. You continue to write books. You continue to put, uh, your radio show out. You continue to — to educate people and be a great member of your community. You genuinely care about people. And that is just a phenomenal thing. And I'm just so grateful we had this time to spend together today.

Well, thank you so much, Jock. That's — I'm just touched to the core with your level of appreciation. Uh, there are two topics that we did not get to today that I want to put on the agenda for next time. One of them is mind control.

I mean, that's great.

Dealing with mind intrusions. Dealing with mind intrusions is one big topic. We have to, as far as the cognitive processor, the brain, and controlling it. That's a topic that we want to talk about, because skill training in how to take control of the mind rather than have it control us is essential for graceful living.

And the second thing I want us to talk about next time is the imperative of everyone learning, maybe in grammar school, what I call conscious breathing. And the reason that's so important, Jock, is because conscious breathing is the antidote to a dysregulated nervous system. And a dysregulated nervous system is when people let their, quote, emotions run away and they lose their reason and they act in ways that are difficult for all of us. But conscious breathing, which is also free — no money, no box tops, don't mail anything in — everybody can learn how to do conscious breathing. And everybody can learn how to do mind control without a big f— bill, without bills. We want to talk about those two in the future.

Jock, let's make the next episode focused on those two topics, because I think at the end of the day, they're — they're completely tied together. There's the — there's the diagnosis and the antidote right there. And I — one of the things on the mind control piece that I really want — want to ask you about in the future is, um, dealing with intense disappointment. When something happens that you're so disappointed about — how I want to learn how to overcome that as a part of me. The mind control.

Yes, it's connected. And the breathing.

Yes, we will.

That's connected, right? Disappointment, right? Yeah. Thank you, my friend.

Thank you, Jock.