Crushing the “American Culture Crisis”: Sleep, Food, and Habits with Scott Pectol!

[00:00:00] Hey everybody, this is Dr. Laurie Schmick. And I’m Omar Cumberbatch. You’re listening to this podcast, burns Fat.
[00:00:24] Hey Lori, how are you today? Hi Omar. I am doing wonderful, surviving a hundred degree weather. How about you? Yeah, no, it’s definitely not a hundred in New York, which is kind of, um, I wanna say unusual, but we’ve had, you know, August usually tra I should say traditionally is, you know, hidden nineties and we’re actually just at 80, so, um, wow.
[00:00:47] That is nice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, so it’s not too humid. Uh, I’m definitely enjoying it. I just can’t believe it’s August and the summer is wrapping up, which is unfortunate. But, you know, here comes a new season. Yeah, I know, I hear you Here. We, well, you know, we have one good month left of summer, so Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:01:08] Gotta take advantage. Gotta take advantage. So, yeah. Um, so today we have, uh, a man on our show who has written a wonderful book called The American Culture Crisis. And, um, he, he was a wonderful guest. And he talks about, you know, simple lifestyle changes. Like we all know we need better sleep and diet and mindset.
[00:01:36] And he talks about how you can really transform your health and overall wellbeing with his tips in there. And um, you know, he covers a lot of territory outside of health generally, but in this book, he actually focuses a lot on wellness. So anyway, uh, Scott Pectal is his name and we really enjoyed having him.
[00:02:01] Yeah, he was fantastic. Like you said, real actionable tips that can get our health on track and mm-hmm. Like I said, some things that obviously we overlooked just because of some of his laziness and just often neglect. But yeah, he really hook, hooks us up with some actionable tips and I know the audience is gonna really enjoy ’em.
[00:02:22] Oh, I think so too. And I, yeah, you hit it. You hit the nails on the head. Yes. Yes. All right, so let’s jump into the show. Okay. Thank. Hey, Scott, welcome to the show. How are you today? Great, Omar. Thank you so much for having me. Hey Scott. So happy you’re here. We’re looking forward to hearing all your wonderful treasure gems you’re gonna deliver.
[00:02:45] Excellent. Well, thank you Lori. I’m gonna start by saying I’m a listener and for your listeners, I appreciate the good energy you always have, Lori, in your podcast and your social media, in your books. You just have great energy, so thank you. Course. So thank Omar. You always seem to ask the perfect question.
[00:03:05] I the most recent podcast with the Poop Doctor. I was like, I hope he asked this and you dropped it at the right time. So I appreciate you guys. Thank you. I you, I love, I love Omar’s authenticity is humanness. You know, definitely both of you. I appreciate it for us. So Scott, yeah, we’re really excited to have you and we want to just jump into your origin story ’cause you have a great one and I know that you, um, could help a lot of our listeners out there.
[00:03:34] So yeah, we just want to hand it over to you to get us started. Thank you. Yeah, so about 12 years ago, someone I was really close with, retired from a lifetime in education. Within a year he had a stroke and he ended up in a rehabilitation center and he had every intention of getting out, but illnesses compounded.
[00:03:57] And sadly, after seven years he passed, I would visit him regularly and. When he passed, after seeing how terrible those living conditions were and finding out how much it cost, like 10 to $14,000 a month, our insurance doesn’t really cover it. He had long-term healthcare that pitched in a little bit. Um, Medicaid and Medicare didn’t kick in until you drain all your family’s money.
[00:04:26] So when he passed. I decided I didn’t have a defined purpose in life and my purpose was gonna be, I’m gonna do everything I can to make sure I don’t end my days laying in a bed at a financial, emotional, and economical burden to my family. Wasn’t sure how I was gonna do that, so I made an appointment with my doctor to get a physical, make sure everything was cool.
[00:04:50] I guess I hadn’t done that for a while. ’cause when I got to the doctor, they let me know my lifetime doctor had retired. I had a new doctor. He was a six foot, 220 pound European guy. Looked at my file, looked at me and said, you’re overweight, you have high blood pressure and you’re an alcoholic. Do you care?
[00:05:11] And I said, first, where’s Dr. Newhart? I miss him already. And second. Um, yeah, that’s why I’m here. I need to make some changes when I’m in the car. Um. I drive all the time listening to two TED Talks, and I think I have the solutions. The first one is Matthew Walker’s Superpower of Sleep. The second one is Dan Buettner’s, how to Live to a hundred.
[00:05:37] If you and I come up with plan to plan to fix my sleep, I can fix my diet, and so we came up with a plan. I let him know I wasn’t an alcoholic. I just drank because everyone else did and I drank to help me sleep. So, um, we came up with a plan. I ordered Matthew Walker’s book, why We Sleep? Raphael Paleos book, how to Sleep.
[00:06:00] I downloaded Ariana Huffington’s Sleep Revolution and I just became a sleep scientist. And then I ordered the Blue Zones book and I was fascinated how these people in five other places around the world. Live to a hundred in higher numbers in the US and have a longer life expectancy. So I started, um, getting their cook cookbook and cooking their recipes.
[00:06:26] Um, and everything’s going great. I’m sleeping better, I’m losing weight. Then the COVID lockdown hits and my wife texts me saying, Hey, we’re gonna be stuck in our houses for a few weeks. Um. This disease is coming from China. I don’t know if. You need anything from the store? My subconscious autopilot just texted her, get me a 30 pack of Modelo.
[00:06:52] Then I caught that and I said, this is my chance. You and everybody else. Yeah. So I text her right back in all caps, don’t get the modelos. She’s like, really? Am like, really? Get me a 30 pack of sparkling water. That same day, March 15th, 2020, I went into. My daughter’s room who was a freshman in high school and I said, look, this is gonna be hard, this lockdown, you’re at a socially vulnerable age.
[00:07:21] You had a bout of anxiety when you were in fifth grade, and we found out that that was cured when we walked the neighborhood dogs. So I printed up 50 trails within a half hour of our house. We’re gonna walk one of these trails every day. We have a dog now, Baxter. He’ll walk with us whether it’s rainy, windy, hot, cold, we’re going.
[00:07:43] Um, and then to make it even easier, I looked up this disease. It’s getting people with underlying conditions, people that are old, or neither of those. I’m trying hard to be neither of those. So we’re not gonna watch the news. We won’t even watch regular TV because we don’t want to worry about this. We’re gonna take care of ourself.
[00:08:04] We’re gonna embrace Marcus Aurelius’s quote, when anything tempts you to feel better, don’t think this is misfortune, but this would be fortunate to bear worthily. So we’re coming out of this thing better than we went in. That’s our plan. So everything’s cool and I’m sleeping eight hours. I’m not drinking.
[00:08:23] I don’t wake up to pee in the night. I have more energy than I did when I was 12. I’m eating food that my body wants rather than food. I’ve been told to eat and I lose weight. My blood pressure’s down. I don’t need to go to the doctor and have him tell me. I know it’s ’cause I’m not all stressed out and worried.
[00:08:43] So everything’s great. Then June. Um, the lockdowns loosen up a little bit and I feel great. Then back to back days. Two of my favorite people I’ve ever known on this earth passed away. One from pancreatic cancer, the other from prostate cancer, and it hit me hard and I was crying more than I wanted to, and I would see a hawk flying over and start crying.
[00:09:09] You know, anything, got my emotions. And what I realized is I’m no longer giving up my emotions to my television, to my food, to alcohol, that they’re all back with me and this is great, but I need to steer them. I can’t run around crying like Dick for meal. So I realized now I have such clarity and retention, I’m going to.
[00:09:33] Put that same studies that made me learn how to be a sleep expert into happiness, and I’m gonna steer these emotions that way. So I read Gretchen’s Ruben’s, the Happiness Project, and in there she says the number one thing we need for happiness is energy. So I’m like, great. Um, because the number one way to get energy is from sleep.
[00:09:57] And I’ve just improved my sleep immensely. Um, and I kept thinking like, how ironic in this country we think what happiness comes from is our junk food and alcohol and drugs, and. In reality, we get happiness from energy, which comes from sleep. And my sleep book said those three things are sleep’s biggest enemy.
[00:10:22] We sure got that wrong. She also says, we can raise a baseline happiness by 20%. So I’m like, sweet, I’m doing that. Then I Google who’s the world’s expert on happiness, and they say, you’re talking about Arthur Brooks, the Harvard professor. He teaches a course on happiness. He’s wrote many books, he’s done many studies.
[00:10:45] So I read his book, build A Better Life, and in there I got what I was looking for. He breaks happiness down into three macronutrients, and the first one is enjoyment. The second one is fat satisfaction. The third one is purpose. And then he goes on to say, in America, we tend to get all of our happiness from that first third of the happiness.
[00:11:11] Quadrant and that is enjoyment. And that could be anything for instant gratification, going, wine tasting, going to a Taylor Swift concert. Lori, in your book, having pink Twinkies that match your pink wine. Omar, in your poop doctor interview, you talked, the poop doctor kind of went off and said she was microdosing mushrooms.
[00:11:33] That would all categorize as enjoyment. Mm-hmm. However, the monks get their happiness from satisfaction and purpose. They don’t get any enjoyment as we see in America yet. They test happy in us all the time. So I was like, those silly monks, how are they doing this? So I paused my happiness studies to become a monk study expert.
[00:11:59] And I read the 5:00 AM Club and the Monk who sold the Ferrari breakfast with Buddha, think Like a monk, and I realized what they’re doing. They wake up at five 30 in the morning and they have this hardcore morning routine where they do workouts and stretches. Then they walk to clear their mind. Then they meditate to get control of their emotions and their thoughts and direct those to intention and resilience and gratitude and happiness for the day.
[00:12:32] So I’m like, sweet, I’m gonna lock in a monk-like routine. So I do that and I’m feeling great and it works. Monks are kind of smart in that regard. Um, then I continue my happiness studies. And I’m reading Ija, the Japanese Art of Living, a Long, happy Life. And in there it says if we. Find a job that aligns with our ikeja, which combines four things.
[00:13:00] These four things are what the world needs, what you’re good at, what you like to do, and what you can get paid for. If you can combine those four things in your job, you won’t work a day in your life. You won’t care how much money you’re making, you’ll have a purpose. You’ll just be happy. So I’m like, I gotta figure that out while I’m reading that I hike with a buddy.
[00:13:21] And he’s telling me he’s a tech guy. So he is like, dude, chat GT’s coming out tomorrow. It’s gonna change the world and you need to buy Nvidia stock and here’s how you’re going to use it, and you need to get on it tomorrow morning. So I hop on it. First day it came out and I said, look, I made a lot of changes in my life from.
[00:13:40] I don’t love my work. What is my ija? Here’s what I’m good at or had success at. Here’s what I like to do. Here’s my resume. So it says, you would like this job, and I click on it and I’m like, I love that job. So I go back to chat GPT, and I said, rewrite my cover letter and resume. So I get that interview. So they do.
[00:14:03] That’s where I work today and I’ve worked ever since and I love it and I love every minute of it. Um. So yeah, everything’s going awesome. Fast forward, um, I’m noticing around me, people are struggling, my friends, my peers, my colleagues, and I’m going to a lot of funerals for people who were social drinkers like me who became addicted to something else or alcohol and I’m going to their funerals or have friends diagnosed in ridiculous numbers with colon cancer.
[00:14:37] Pancreatic cancer, liver cancer. And I have friends going to AA and fighting with their sobriety and I’m trying to help ’em, but I don’t know how exactly. Um, and then my daughter comes home with 200 books. She needs to donate to libraries. She’s handling the affairs. Our neighbor. So I’m like, let me take those to local bookstores, see if they can make a buck off it.
[00:15:06] So they’re going through the books and I grab one while I’m waiting and it’s the Nordic Theory of Everything by Annu Parkman. And in there she’s a writer from Norway who attends Bill Clinton conference, meets a writer from New York, falls in love, and decides to move to American within a year. She realizes she has terrible anxiety and she can’t figure out why, and she realizes it’s because in Norway they pay 50% of their taxes upfront.
[00:15:42] But they get their healthcare and education paid for and they have a month of mandatory vacation. But in America, we pay less taxes up front, but they bleed us out so it costs more. And then we have to take care of our education. So our kids need to be perfect and they’re on our payroll till they’re like 25 and the second they’re off our payroll and we can breathe, we turn around.
[00:16:07] Our parents are unhealthy ’cause we eat and drink so much. That we need to take care of them because healthcare isn’t waiting for ’em. We really don’t get a break. So I was like, man, she really makes a good point, but she’s missing more than half of what is the problem in our culture and why we all have anxiety, why we eat so terribly, why we drink so terribly.
[00:16:31] So I go back to chat GPT, and I said, I want to find books about how our culture programs us to eat and drink terribly. It’s like there’s not one. I said, what do you mean there’s a billion bucks in the world? This is a huge topic. So I realized that. In the monks and all my training by doing hard things that we don’t want to do to benefit our future self.
[00:16:57] We really, that’s how we get happy. So I’m like, that sounds super hard and I don’t want to do it. I’d rather read it. That was my intention. So in my job where I travel 75 nights from six to nine at night in my hotel where I usually have free time, I’m gonna just write this book and maybe it’ll help someone.
[00:17:17] That’s why I wrote the American Culture Crisis and it’s helping people. That’s why I’m here. Wow. That is, uh, really a extremely interesting story and powerful one. Scott. Thanks. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, so basically the point of the book is it’s. For the average American written by the most average American there’s ever been.
[00:17:44] And my point is, if I can make all these changes, anyone can. And once you see how conditioned we are as a society, it’s so easy to make the changes. Yes. And you know, and if it’s, you know, it has a powerful message as well because you, the name of your book, the American Culture Crisis that has made us sick, tired, depressed, and broke, and the simple solutions to crush the crisis is.
[00:18:12] Aimed at, uh, providing solutions for the reader. And I find that really important and how your personal experiences really shaped, uh, the book in and of itself. And, um, you say that. Though the American culture is making us sick, tired and depressed. Yep. And you, can you summarize, uh, in a few points, key cultural factors that you believe is driving this crisis?
[00:18:42] Yeah, and I think where it all came together for me was reading Matthew Perry’s book, the Star of Friends, and, um, he was making a million dollars in episode. We all think money and success, um, are the key to happiness. Read his book and tell me what page he was happy. I don’t think I, I would never have thought to pick up his book.
[00:19:01] I would, I would recommend it. For everyone. And the reason is not only, it’s an interesting story and we can learn from his troubles. So he spent $6 million in rehab visits and he went to 6,000 AA meetings. And think about this, Lori. No. Omar, when he was going to aa, the writer of this show, um, who, no shame on them.
[00:19:27] Um, they wrote an episode where Monica had a boyfriend named Fun Bobby, and he was fun because he was an alcoholic and during the episode, he has to stop drinking. So now Matthew Perry, who’s playing Chandler and getting a million dollars in episode has to make a perfect joke for the 13 million viewers.
[00:19:48] And that joke is, he is ridiculously dull Bobby, and he is telling America. That if you don’t drink, you are ridiculously dull. And he’s telling himself that while he’s going to rehab. So it tells you why he spent 6 million in rehab visits. He went to 6,000 AA meetings. Wow. And he couldn’t get the message because in our culture, if you don’t drink, you are ridiculously dull.
[00:20:16] That’s the point. That’s why it’s funny. ’cause we all know that. Fast forward, Lori. He’s 50. He’s a millionaire. He’s the success. His colon explodes, so he’s airlifted to UCLA. He’s put on life support. There’s eight people on life support. The other seven die. He lives, so they induce him in a coma so his colon can heal when he wakes up from that coma.
[00:20:43] Lori, I’m gonna ask you to cover your ears for this part. When he wakes up from his coma, he asks for three things. He asks for a Diet, Coke, cigarettes, and to watch a prison movie. So as a PhD in nutrition, Lori, who has four bestselling books on the subject, how does that break your heart? It breaks my heart.
[00:21:08] And it shows you how, uh, powerful our gut health is because our gut health directly contributes to mental wellbeing. Absolutely. And what it told me was our rehab industry and our food industry. And our sleep industry need to all come together. And my book tries to tie all of these categories that I had to fix with myself together.
[00:21:38] So we can see like, look, Matthew, the reason you don’t have the power to beat your addiction is because you have been doing the easy thing. And if we learned anything from the monks, and this is something that. Huberman Lab podcast. Uh, the recent interview with David Goggins talks about that the interior mid cingulate portion of our brain.
[00:22:05] They did this huge study and they found out that people who lived the longest have the biggest part of this brain. And overweight people have the smallest part of this brain, and we can grow this part of brain by doing hard things that we don’t want to do that will benefit our future self. So now we know this.
[00:22:27] Matthew Perry didn’t know that then. Exactly. The monks figured out somehow and they’ve never watched a Huberman Lab podcast, I’m sure. So. If Matthew Perry could have said, look, you need to start doing hard things that you don’t want to do that benefit your future self. So rather than getting a Diet Coke and cigarettes and watching prison movies, you’re going to eat food that will heal your colon and you’re gonna read a book that you don’t want to do that is going to teach you how to live more intentionally.
[00:23:01] So what I find fascinating, and I think you’re on the money with all that you’ve spoken about so far, I just, it’s just, I know Laura and I do this show because. There’s a lot of misinformation out there. Right, right. I mean, and one of the things that I find is that this American society, and I’m sure you’ve uncovered this in your book too, they normalize all bad behavior, but, but from the medical associations to, and our education system, we don’t know how to do anything for ourselves that benefits ourself.
[00:23:33] At all. So can you talk about that as well? And like, like I said, that I, I feel for him too because I’ve, in some part of his, his mind, there was nothing wrong with what he was doing. Yeah, totally. So what it is, our culture, like we learned from Arthur Brooks, build a better life is based on instant gratification.
[00:23:56] So all of those things that we do for enjoyment, for happiness, our instant gratification, um. Those examples I gave you, but none of those benefit our future selves. So yes, we’re having fun in the moment by eating pink Twinkies that match our pink wine, but they’re gonna hurt us a little bit going forward.
[00:24:21] And if we say, I’m not gonna drink. Wine tonight. I’m not gonna have pink Twinkies tonight. What Lori knows is when you bite into that pink twine, the reason you don’t want to do it, the reason it won’t help your future self is because some evil scientist, nutty professor, came up with the perfect concoction to hijack your taste buds.
[00:24:46] You’re gonna bite into that moist frosting, into that spongy cake, and you’re gonna get a dopamine sensation that says, hooray, Omar’s biting into a twine. Omar, you need to do this more. This is great. But what Omar knows is those chemicals are ca cause cancer. They will raise your blood sugar and glucose level, so when you go to sleep.
[00:25:12] After you ate those pink Twinkies and you had that wine at three in the morning, your blood sugar and glucose levels are gonna drop. Your body’s gonna fill you with cortisol to let you know something’s wrong, and you’re gonna wake up and then you’re gonna wake up groggy and tired and judgmental and grumpy and, and some people get up and eat at that point.
[00:25:33] That’s it. And then you’re gonna crave those crappy foods and be stuck in this cycle. But if you can say. I’m not gonna have pink twinkies and I’m not gonna have that. I’m gonna have a water with lemon to help my metabolism, to help my gut microbiome. Then I’m gonna sleep eight hours soundly. I’m gonna wake up full of energy.
[00:25:54] I’m gonna do workouts and go for a walk to get the vitamin D and set my circadian rhythm. Then your future self is all set up. And that’s why the monks are happiers without doing any of that wearing robes. They don’t even know how to shop for sweet clothes on Amazon. But when they wake up, they’re getting high fives from their former self saying, dude, we hooked you up.
[00:26:18] We got you an eight hour sleep. You’re gonna have a full bowel movement at the same time you do every day. ’cause we just ate. Food that was fuel for your body. We didn’t get drunk either. And we read for an hour to feed our brains. You’re a little bit smarter than you were yesterday. So they wake up already happy ’cause their future self hooked them up.
[00:26:39] That is really great. Yeah. I think it’s so important and, and it kind of, uh, connects with my question I was gonna ask you next, which is in your book you talk about simple actionable steps. Yep. Reclaim your health and happiness, and I think you shared some of those just now, but can you share, uh, if there are any others, your favorite solutions, and tell us why they might be effective?
[00:27:04] Yeah, I think doing, like this morning I woke up at five 30. You know, I do this whole routine that, you know, I just kind of implemented myself, but it’s involves pushups and leg lifts that I did in popcorn or football. Um, and it is funny, I mean, at 5 31, when I look at the ground and say, drop down and give me 80, my brain is like, bro, you don’t have to do this today.
[00:27:30] You’re going on. This podcast burns fat and you know, you can take the day off and I’m like silly brain. I’m running the show today and I drop down and do the pushups and I do the really important point, I’m sorry to interrupt, but that is no problem. Yeah. Telling our brain what to do is, uh, extremely important.
[00:27:49] Definitely. So, you know, by doing all that, then when the shower’s over, I turn on 80 seconds of ice cold. And I never ever, ever, ever, ever want to do that, ever, especially in the winter. But what’s funny is I know right around 10 seconds in it will be unbearable, and then at 11 seconds my body will adapt to the pain and by 40 seconds I don’t mind it.
[00:28:19] And by 80 seconds I’m proud of myself for doing that. So I’ve already got, you know, 10 wind in and it’s five 50 and I’m combining my hair. You know, and that’s to me a great way to start every day. So that way when problems come up, which they will, ’cause they have, every day in my life, I have the power to know, I, I got this, I can do hard things, and whatever this problem is, I’ll find a solution, I’ll solve it, and I don’t have to sit and stress.
[00:28:49] And when I go see my healthy doctor, he’s gonna gimme high fives instead of saying harsh things like he did. Yeah. No, that’s, that’s great. So I, I, I will definitely want to ask you about your diet, what have you re well, uh, let go of, I should say, over the years that just helps you with this new lifestyle.
[00:29:07] Well, yeah, I think, you know, just training my brain to eat. Instead of instant gratification, eat to improve my diet. So I’m, I’m pretty blue zones ish where, um, you know, I cook a lot with beans and legumes, um, as my primary source of protein. And you were talking before about misinformation and what I was mentioning at the beginning was, um.
[00:29:36] Your question with the poop doctor, and I think that’s such a gray area, is we all know the carnivore diet has so many great benefits, but we also know red meat and processed meat have been associated with, um, colon cancer. And so you asked that tough question during that interview, and I think that helps us all where we need to get, um.
[00:30:03] The carnivore diet and the colon cancer people could together to tell us what is our best way, you know, right here. Do you know what I’m saying there, Omar? Yeah, definitely. Definitely. It, it, it’s a tough proposition because, uh, you know, me and Lori have had carnivore folks on the show. Yeah. And. Uh, again, the results are amazing, but it completely flies into like I, I guess, our belief system.
[00:30:30] So I always, I’m fascinated and that’s why I guess I ask those questions just because I, it doesn’t seem logical, like on his face, especially. A as grow as a human being, it’s not easy to hunt, right? So yeah, you have to eat other things, right? So just to have strictly meat is, I, I don’t know. I, it, it, I don’t know exactly why it works so well, but yeah, I’m always curious to ask those questions as you can say.
[00:30:57] No, I agree. And like, my son is 22, so I’m like, dude, do what you do. I’m in my fifties and colon cancer is the number one killer, killer of men in their fifties. So our needs are different, you know, where, um, you want to get strength and be strong. I want to hope to circle the sun a few more times. You know, so we’re just, um, our objective, uh, our objectives are different and to going back to my diet changes.
[00:31:28] So I tried so many things to let my body tell me what is best for me. And I think that’s the solution, is we all know what’s the healthier way, um, eliminating sugar and processed foods. So when I. Went for a blue zones diet, cut meat out for a month just to see how it went. I felt amazing and beans were my primary source of protein.
[00:31:52] Then I went and ate two double, double in and out burgers because the real scientists I trust more than anything is my gut, and they were great. Spit into those juicy burgers. They were phenomenal. And then I needed to nap about two hours later, and then my bowel movement that hits at the same time every day.
[00:32:13] Didn’t happen. Then I felt super sluggish, like a big rig with two flat tires was merging onto a freeway that was flowing at 70 miles per hour. That’s what it felt like. So I’m like, all right, what a good thing to know. I’m gonna cut back on eating that type of food. Yeah, and I think it’s important to underscore that.
[00:32:38] You know, every diet has benefit for somebody, and it’s not just one way of eating, you know, it’s, um, so adding plants encourages, uh, the production of healthy bacteria, short chain fatty acids. But then again, the carnivore diet has its benefits and if you do it properly, um, with all sorts of nutrients that you get and.
[00:33:04] Uh, those who have gut health issues seems to, uh, tamp down on those very effectively. And the Mediterranean diet has research that shows that those who choose that tend to live longer. Um, and, but there’s some, there are some issues with the research on that. And so I think, you know, when you look at it overall, I think it’s.
[00:33:33] There’s something for everybody, but long term is what we need to look at. Yes. Long term on carnivore, who knows? Right? I think there’s one person, um, Dr. Sean Baker. He’s been on it for over 10 years now and he’s doing phenomenally well. Okay. Uh, vegetarian diets, lots of examples of that. Not going well long-term.
[00:33:56] Mediterranean diet seems to be, uh, a balance of that. Yeah. Yeah, I think you’re right. And Lori, one where I mentioned you in the book, um, you had a nice post about, um, thank you. I didn’t know that. Yeah. You had a post about, um, the lack of deep sleep. Ken increase the chance of Alzheimer’s by 40% and. When you had that post I had commented, but I had, you know, recently read Matthew Walker’s, um, why We Sleep books.
[00:34:33] So I brought him into the conversation saying, Hey, in your book you’re saying we don’t get to deep sleep with alcohol. Lori’s findings is showing that that’s a 40% increase in Alzheimer’s. Can you connect the dots and. He went on to say, uh, you know, yes, it seems like a direct correlation. I’m not ready to do that yet.
[00:34:56] And in my book I mention, um, there was an interview with Vivek Murphy, the Surgeon General of the United States, and he was saying he had wrote an article. About all of the harmful effects of alcohol and it cause addiction and mm-hmm. Could lead to cancer. And that people came in from the government and said, we don’t want you to write that article.
[00:35:21] And this is the 51 minute mark of that podcast if wants to go listen to it. Um. That there’s some he’ll upset a lot of people and he might lose his job if he writes this article. So it starts making sense. Mm-hmm. How our culture is able to program us to not see the harmful effects of a lot of these things out there.
[00:35:44] And embraces the message of your book as well. Yeah. Yeah. And I think my whole point of my book. To the average American from the most average American ever was. If I can make these changes, anyone can, and I learned how to reprogram myself rather than having our culture program me who they want us all to be.
[00:36:11] Yeah, no, I listen, I, I, I think just from what we’ve been through the last five years, uh, we can easily say whatever the culture’s telling us to do. Most likely wrong. So yeah, no, isn’t that the truth? Perfect timing, Scott. Yeah, no, it, it felt timely and you know, once I saw it was helping people, um, you know.
[00:36:35] It, it felt good ’cause that that was the main purpose of it. Um, I didn’t expect to be Mark Twain or become a bestseller, read those too many monk books to care too much about money or anything like that anymore. Um, but yeah, and it’s just seeing it help, it’s helping people. Feels amazing. I, I guess to wrap, because I, I, in a way, the, this show I think took a turn.
[00:36:59] And I don’t know, maybe because I have my own struggles with this that I, it, it kept being a highlight. Uh, alcohol is the one thing that you seem to be very, very, uh, I, I don’t say against it this point, but you, you are recommending, avoiding, um, how did you eventually stop. And I think that will help a lot of listeners, including myself.
[00:37:22] Definitely. So I had a huge advantage. I was able to hide behind the COVID lockdown. I was not influenced by our culture, and that’s what I discovered was I didn’t see my bros calling me names or, you know, for not drinking. I didn’t have to explain to anyone. I was stuck in this lockdown going for walks every day, sleeping eight hours.
[00:37:44] So eventually when I quit for, from March 15th to June 7th. I woke up every day with such energy that I just didn’t want to give it back like there was, knowing I’m gonna wake up feeling amazing, feeling more energy than I did since I was 12. I just, that was more important to me than going out and getting drunk or having a beer here and there.
[00:38:12] Just knowing, yeah, the key to my happiness, that eight hours of sleep, I know how to get it and I get it every night. Oh, that, that, that’s awesome. So Scott, you’ve been fantastic. We’re so happy to have you on the show. Can you just tell the audience how to get in touch with you, how to get this book and just, uh, keep up with all the great stuff that you’re doing going forward.
[00:38:37] Oh, thank you. Thank you both so much. It’s an honor to be on here. Yeah. So on Instagram, I’m Scott Pectal, Instagram. And at Pectal Scott is my Twitter handle. So yeah, I’m coming out with a audio book and that should be available on Apple and everywhere. Audio books are, it’ll be a week or two. And I did, um, use AI to memorize my voice and then.
[00:39:03] Read the book as Robot Scott. So that’s kind of weird. Kind of cool. So cool to know. I didn’t know they could do that. Yeah, I know. So once I have it up, I’ll let you guys know. And then, um, yeah, my book’s on Amazon. Um, just search the American culture crisis and yeah, I sure appreciate being here. You guys.
[00:39:24] I’ll keep listening ’cause you guys do a great job. Thank you Scott. It’s really, truly been an honor to have you on our show and appreciate it. Thank you so much. Have a great one. All right, you too, Scott. Take care.
[00:39:42] Thank you so much for listening to this episode of this podcast, burns Fat. We’re so excited to have you as a listener, and we’re hoping that you’ve really enjoyed the content as well. And if you did, please run over to iTunes and provide a rating and or review. We’ll go a long way in helping us continuously build our listenership up so that we can provide you with excellent content regarding fat loss.
[00:40:04] Weight management and just an overall healthy lifestyle. Thanks so much. Have a great night.