Speaker 1 (00:00:00):
Welcome to the Dr. Gundry Podcast, the weekly podcast where Dr. G gives you the tools you need to boost your health and live your healthiest life.
Dr. Gundry (00:00:16):
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Welcome to the Dr. Gundry Podcast. Well, you’ve probably seen it in the movies, the hero flips through a book at lightening speed and then recalls details only a careful reader could have discovered. Now, most people think that’s all fiction, Hollywood fantasy. But my guest today says it’s not only possible to optimize the human brain to read faster, remember better, and accelerate learning, it’s actually something everyone can do. Holy cow. So Jim Kwik is the world renowned brain and memory coach consulted by Fortune 500 companies, billionaire CEOs, celebrities, and even Harvard University. He’s also the CEO of Kwik Learning, the host of the Kwik Brain Podcast and now the New York Times’ bestselling author of Limitless: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life.
So on today’s episode, Jim and I are going to talk about what makes a better brain, how technology may actually be holding back our minds and Jim’s number one technique for learning more effectively today. So Jim, it’s so exciting to have you on the podcast. Thanks for being here. This is great.
Jim Kwik (00:03:05):
Dr. Gundry, it’s a real pleasure and thank you everybody who’s tuning in for this God brainy conversation.
Dr. Gundry (00:03:10):
All right. So, I know everybody knows you, but there might be one human being listening who is not familiar with you or your work. Tell me a little bit about your story. I really enjoyed reading about it. How did you become so obsessed with optimized learning?
Jim Kwik (00:03:28):
Well, my inspiration really was my desperation. When people see me on stages do these memory feeds where I’ll memorize 50 people’s names in an audience or a hundred numbers or a hundred words randomly gets selected in an audience forwards and backwards, I always tell people I don’t do this to impress you, I do this more to express to you what’s possible. Because the truth is, every single person who’s listening could do that and even more. And I know that’s a very big claim, yet we just weren’t taught how to do that.
School is a wonderful place to learn what to learn, math, history, science, Spanish, but there weren’t a lot of classes on how to learn those things, how to focus, how to remember. And I know this is possible because my mess became my message. I grew up with some severe learning challenges. When I was five years old in kindergarten, I had a very bad fall in class. I was rushed to the emergency room, traumatic brain injury. I had actually three of them before the age of 12. I had very slow processing issues. Teachers would repeat themselves numerous times, I would pretend to understand, but I didn’t really understand. Yeah. And after my accident, my parents said I was not quite the same. Whereas before I was very energized, very curious, playful, I became very shutdown.
I had poor focus, poor memory. It took me an extra few years just to learn how to read. I remember a defining moment when I was nine years old, I was really struggling in class holding the rest of the students back, didn’t understand the lessons. And I was being teased for it, almost borderline bullied. And a teacher came to my defense and said, “That’s the boy with the broken brain.” I think she had good intentions, meaning I had some challenges that she was pointing out, but all I remembered was that phrase broken brain. Adults have to be very careful with their external words because they become a student’s internal words. So every single time I did badly on an exam, which was all the time, every time I wasn’t picked for sports, which was all the time, I would always say, “Oh. It’s because I have the broken brain.”
So, that label became my limit. And I struggled all through school, elementary school, middle school, junior high and high school. And eventually around age 18, I hit a wall. I just couldn’t work any harder and I ended up being hospitalized because I was just living in the library and passed out and I fell down a flight of stairs, hit my head again and I thought I died. I was wasting away and I just started to put my mind towards another way. And I started to study this idea of meta-learning, learning how to learn. I started studying ancient mnemonics, memory tools and techniques, speed reading. I wanted to understand how the brain works so I could work my brain better. I wanted to understand how my memory works so I could work my memory better.
I started studying adult learning theory, multiple intelligence theory, how [inaudible 00:06:23] work out of Harvard and these different things. And about 60 days into it, I hit a tipping point where a light switch flipped on and I started to really understand things for the first time in my life. I started to have this deep level of concentration, this ability to recall and process information better. And my grades shot up, but also my life just shot up also.
And because I couldn’t help but help other people, because I didn’t want other people to struggle the way I did, I remember I got to tutor a young student, she was a freshman in college. And she read 30 books in 30 days. And I wanted to find out not how I taught her how to read and understand those books, but I wanted to know why. And I found out her mother was actually diagnosed with terminal cancer, was only given a couple of months to live and the books she was reading were books to save her mom’s life and books on health and wellness and diet. And she ended up doing so. And when I found that out months later, it just ignited a spark in me.
I realized that if knowledge is power, then learning is our superpower. And it’s a superpower we all have inside of us, it’s just that we weren’t necessarily shown how. And so I dedicated my life… this was over 28 years ago, every single day since then to help people to unlock the genius that they have inside of them, to show people how to have a better brain so they can have a brighter life.
Dr. Gundry (00:07:53):
So let’s go back for a second. So you’re spending 60 days deciphering all of this wisdom, if you will, and then something clicked. What clicked? You got a bad brain, you’re a slow learner. What clicked in those 60 days that was the aha moment for you?
Jim Kwik (00:08:20):
There was a moment in class that I recall I was in a lecture center. And back then they had overhead projectors. Right? Not the fancy equipment that are in classrooms right now and where teachers and professors would draw markers on there. And they put up something in the lecture center. And just as a backstory, my two biggest challenges growing up were learning, and my superpower really was being invisible. Because I had these challenges with learning, I would always find a way to sit behind the tall kid in class or sit all the way in the back and really shrink. And my superpower was being invisible. Because when you don’t have the answers, you don’t want to be called on, you don’t want to give a book report, you don’t want the spotlight.
Which is interesting, because my two biggest challenges were learning and public speaking. So the universe has a sense of humor because that’s what I do for a living is public speak on this thing called learning. But in class, in an auditorium, a lecture center full of hundreds of people, I was very… Sit in the back and very, very quiet, never raised my hand. But they put on something on the overhead and I started laughing out loud. And I would never do that. I would never emote. I was very introverted, but beyond introvert, I was very shy. And I started laughing and everyone turned around to look at me and I became self-conscious because it was just a knee-jerk reaction.
And then about 10 or 15 seconds into it, other people started to laugh and there was this wave of laughter because of what I had read on the overhead faster than other people in the class. And now that’s where I realized that things were clicking. Over those 60 days, I was learning studying technique, note-taking techniques like memory tools to be able to… So it was a gradual change. But I shifted my focus… I found out that school is a wonderful place to learn what to learn, math, history, science, Spanish, but there weren’t a lot of classes on how to learn those things, how to focus, how to study it, how to read it better, how to critically think, how to remember. They teach you three Rs in school, writing, reading, rithmetic. Spelling obviously is not one of those Rs.
But what about remembering? What about retention? What about recall? Socrates said learning is remembering. And so I started studying those things because I wasn’t making much progress with my traditional studies. But after I sharpened the saw and learned how to learn, then I went back to my studies, and it was a totally different experience. So I think the big gap in school… And it’s not a slight against teachers. Teachers are some of the most committed, compassionate, caring individuals out there. They’re maybe not compensated as well as they maybe should be. My mother became a school teacher to help me with my learning difficulties. It’s just the system hasn’t changed. Much like a lot of systems haven’t evolved as much.
We live in an age of autonomous electric cars, we have rockets that are going to Mars, but sometimes when it comes to traditional education, it’s more like a horse and carriage, and it hasn’t advanced as much as the world has advanced. And so my mission is to be able to fill in those gaps. I feel like more people upgrade their phones and their apps on their phones than they do the most important technology, which is their mind. And so I wrote Limitless as an owner’s manual for our brain to be able to learn and be able to accomplish the things that are important to us.
Dr. Gundry (00:12:01):
Okay. So in the book, you talk about having a better brain. So I mean, come on, how do I get one? Okay. Oh. Okay. I just got it. Help me through that. What the heck? How do you get a better brain?
Jim Kwik (00:12:18):
So, I mean, part of it is the software. So I teach people in the… The half of the book is on methodology, how to read faster, how to remember names, how to be able to focus and concentrate to those things. But then also it’s the hardware, taking care of the hardware. And so when I do lectures at places like the Cleveland Clinic or institutions working with doctors or caregivers or researchers or patients themselves, we find that we could have a considerable impact… that certain things aren’t fixed. Like our memory is not fixed like our shoe size. And in the book, I kind of dissolve some of the prominent lies, if you will, when it comes to learning. And a lie for me stands for a limited idea entertained.
Like one of those lies would be that genius is born. I make a case that genius is actually built. That if somebody is extraordinary in a certain area, it comes through training and it could come through discipline and effort and using the right strategies. And part of that is just maintaining optimal brain health. And so things that we focus on that we talk about in the book about how to have a better brain, things that are just common sense, but not often common practice, things like a good brain diet, eating those foods that are good for your brain, because I do believe we are what we eat, and you write a lot about this in depth, and the foods that are harmful so as well to our brain. Things like also optimizing our sleep.
We know especially for our brains, if people have long-term memory issues, I would check your sleep because… I didn’t realize this until 10 years ago when I had my first sleep study, but I was averaging only a couple hours of sleep a night. And about 10 years ago, after an overnight sleep study in a clinic, I was diagnosed with severe sleep apnea where I stopped breathing over 200 and almost 20 times a night. And each episode was more than 10 seconds. And the doctor at UCLA was saying, “No wonder you’re not sleeping. It’s like somebody coming in every night and putting a pillow over your face 200 times.” And I had this obstructive apnea.
And so sleep though can interfere with your long-term memory when we’re consolidating short to long-term memory. It could have an effect on… When you’re sleeping, you could potentially clean out the beta-amyloid plaque that could lead to brain aging challenges. I’m very passionate about that because I lost my grandmother when I was going through my broken brain phase in elementary school. I lost my grandmother to Alzheimer’s. And so we’re donating actually a hundred percent of the proceeds of the book to build schools for children in need for schools, teachers, school books, healthcare, clean water, and also Alzheimer’s research. And especially women’s Alzheimer’s in memory of my grandmother where females are twice as likely to experience Alzheimer’s as men.
But going back to sleep, that’s kind of like when the sewage system kind of kicks in when we’re sleeping. And also dreaming also. Getting good sleep is important for dreaming. Meaning that we find that it’s a myth that your brain shuts off at night, in some ways it’s more active. And what is it doing? It’s not only consolidating short to long-term memory and integrating, but it’s through… We’ll probably spend about 20 years of our life sleeping, maybe three to five years dreaming. And, some people might know this, but amazing inventions and works of art and literature came from dream states. Mary Shelley came up with Frankenstein in her dream. Paul McCartney came up with the song Yesterday in his dream. A chemist came up with the framework of the periodic table in his dream.
And so what are we dreaming about? So I have processes for remembering our dreams and doing those things. But good brain diet, sleep, stress management. We know that chronic stress has the potential of actually shrinking our brains. And then not only that, but the chronic fear that’s going on with everything in the world. Chronic fear actually makes us more susceptible and compromises our immune systems. Susceptible to colds, flus, to viruses. A whole area of science psychoneuroimmunology. And I think it’s very important for people to stay on guard to what’s going in their brain, in their mind, because there’s an algorithm just like there’s an algorithm to social media.
If you engage with all… If you’re going on Instagram and engaging with all the cat posts, watching all the cat videos, commenting all the cat videos, sharing all the cat videos, then Instagram shows you a whole lot more cats. Right? And you feel like your whole feed is cats because it’s giving you what you’re engaging with. I find that metaphor is same with our mind. That our mind has an algorithm, and if we’re always just focusing on what’s dark and scary and threatening… Which our minds are being hijacked by the media because you have to, as a survival mechanism, pay attention to what could be threatening to you. But if people are overindulging in what’s dark, primarily our brains are deletion devices, meaning that at any given time, we could be paying attention to a billion stimuli, and we can’t let all that in. It would be way too much overload.
So primarily we’re deleting and generalizing, keeping information out. And what do we let in? It’s the things that we’re engaging with. That part of our reticular activating system. We’re activating our focus on the things that we care about. And if we just start engaging with all the darkness, then just like that algorithm with cats, we just start seeing more of that darkness, the challenges. We have a finite conscious mind. According to the George Miller at Harvard, seven plus or minus two bits of conscious information. And if you’re paying attention to all that’s threatening, then you don’t have bandwidth to pay attention to opportunity, to gratitude, what you could be grateful to, to possibility.
And so control that input and have stress management coping tools, whether it’s meditation, whatever people subscribe to. And so those are just a handful of things. We talk about brain nutrients because the brain has… While it’s 2% of our body mass, it requires approximately 20% of the nutrients. And there’s an area of study I mentioned in the book called neuronutrition. Potentially the brain has slightly different requirements than the rest of the body. And so are we supplementing in things like omega-3s, DHA? We talk about clean environment and how that’s important to your brain, whether it’s the quality of the air, whether it also… The brain loves a clean environment. We know this. When we make our bed or we clean our desk off, or we clean off the screen and put everything in file folders. Our external world is a reflection of our internal world.
And we made a reminder to [inaudible 00:19:21] our minds. What also affects our brains are the people we spend time with. There’s this phrase that we are the average of the five people we spend the most time with. And when you study the nervous system, we have these things called mirror neurons where it creates empathy, where we imitate our surroundings, and we start adapting to and adopting the attitudes, the language patterns, the habits of the people around us. So it’s not just our biological networks and our neurological networks, it has a lot to do with our social networks. In terms of what they’re eating, if our friend’s friend is smoking, it’s going to have a greater influence on us also as well. Also protecting our brain. If you want your better brain… Having had a number of head traumas, protect your brain and avoid those extreme sports.
I wish I was better supervised when I was a child, that wear a helmet. Another thing that’s great for our brain is new learnings. We’ve discovered so much about the human brain in the past couple of decades, more than the previous couple of centuries. When we’re looking at things like neuroplasticity, one of the ways that… The brain loves novelty. It helps us create new connections. Just like if you want to build a muscle, you give it novelty and nutrition. Well, same thing with your mental muscles. You stimulate it with new ideas, it makes new connections. You feed it the right nutrition, you give it the right rest. And so I guess what I do is kind of like a personal trainer would make your physical muscles stronger, more energized, more pliable, more flexible, I want people’s mental muscles, their focus, their memory, and so on to be stronger, to be more energized, more agile and flexible.
Dr. Gundry (00:20:59):
So in the book you talk about the three Ms.
Jim Kwik (00:21:03):
Yes.
Dr. Gundry (00:21:07):
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Jim Kwik (00:22:27):
Oh. I love this. This is really the heart of the book. The last M are the methodologies. And it’s interesting. You’ve gone through this process repeatedly. This is my first book in 28 years of teaching. And when I first wrote it, the first draft, it was a hundred percent on the last M, which are methods. It was purely a self-help book on how to do these things. How to read faster, how to remember what you read, how to give a TED talk from recall, how to critically think and how to focus. And before I hit send to my publisher, I asked myself this question. Because I was nervous about… I was like, “I’ve waited three decades to put this out there.” And I said, “Will a hundred percent of the people who will read this book get results?” And my honest answer was no.
And that was kind of like looking in the mirror and just be honest with myself. I was like, “No. Because a lot of people know what to do. They know the methods, but they don’t do what they know.” And I realized that I had to incorporate the successes I’ve had over the past three decades with programs in over 195 countries and our own podcast with tens of millions of downloads. I get these feedback that it’s not just methodology, there’s two Ms that have to come before that. And there are these three Ms and I call it the limitless model. So to make this interactive, we can make actually this a masterclass for everyone who’s listening. I want everyone who’s listening to think about one area, just one specific area where you feel like you’re held back, where you feel limited.
Maybe it is in a relationship, maybe it’s in your personal health and wellbeing, maybe it’s in your income, maybe it’s in your impact, maybe you feel limited in your learning, you just use your memory or you feel like you’re slow in some area and you’re not making progress. Because Limitless is not about being perfect. Limitless I wrote it to help people progress and advance beyond what they believe is possible. And so it starts with the limitless model. Because if you feel like you’re in a box in some area… And I think most people could identify with an area of their life where it’s not their desired state, that box is three-dimensional. Right? By definition. And the three dimensions that keep us stuck in that box, from making progress, are the same three forces that will liberate you. And how I want people to imagine it is three intersecting circles.
So they call it the Venn diagram. It kind of looks like Mickey Mouse, two ears that crossover and a face, so three intersecting circles. And these are the three Ms. The last M as I mentioned are the methods. But if you could have the methods and still be stuck in that box and what’s missing? The first M is your mindset. And your mindset I am defining as your set of assumptions and attitudes about something. Your attitudes and assumptions about the world and how it works, your attitudes, assumptions about health and wellness, your attitudes, assumptions about dieting, your attitudes, assumption about education, about business, attitudes, assumptions about yourself. What would fall in this circle would be things like what you believe is possible. Another thing that would fall in this circle is what you believe you’re capable of.
So you might think it’s possible for somebody else to be super healthy or to reverse this condition, but you might believe you’re not capable of it, and that will keep you in that box. Another thing that would fall in there is what you believe you deserve. And so I could teach somebody a method on how to remember names, a common issue for a lot of people. Three steps on how to remember everyone’s name. But if their mindset is, “I’m not smart enough,” or “I have a horrible memory,” they’re still going to be stuck in that box. Because all behavior is belief-driven. And people come to me all the time and they say, “Jim, I’m just getting too old. I’m not smart enough.” And I say, “Stop.” If you fight for your limits, you get to keep them. If you fight for your limitations, you get to keep them. And we always have to monitor our self-talk, because our brains are like super computers, and our self-talk is a program it will run.
So if you tell yourself you’re not good at remembering people’s names, you won’t remember the name of the next person you meet because you’ve programmed your supercomputer not to. So that’s our mindset. Now, the second M, you could have a limitless mindset and believe everything is possible, you’re capable of it, you even deserve to be healthier, you deserve to make that money, you deserve to have a great memory and you can have the methods, but you could still be stuck in that box because you lack the motivation. And that’s the second M. It’s motivation. Now with motivation, it’s kind of a loaded word, and words have effects on how we process information. And some people think motivation is just about getting hyped up and pumping yourself up, or maybe exerting willpower to be motivated to eat that right diet or to exercise that day or to prioritize your sleep.
But for most people, motivation is the equivalent of a warm bath that just cools down. Right? And I discovered after three decades of teaching this, not only is it based on the latest neuroscience towards accelerated learning and cognitive performance, it’s just me working with everyone, from children with severe learning challenges like I had to seniors that are very concerned about these senior moments and early-stage brain-aging challenges and everyone in between, that I believe that genius leaves clues. And the people that have sustainable motivation there are three elements in common. And let’s do this thought experiment everybody. Think about, let’s say we’re going to build the ultimate motivated human being. What are the three things that are necessary? The formula for sustained motivation, limitless motivation is this P x E x S3. P x E x S3.
And what do these things mean? The first thing that person needs, let’s say it is to exercise. Right? It’s pretty conclusive that we have brains to be able to control our movement primarily, and as your body moves your brain grooves. The challenge is we live very sedentary lives. We’re behind screens all the time nowadays. And so moving is great. When we move, we create brain-derived neurotrophic factors, it’s BDNF. It’s like fertilizer for our brain. Yet people aren’t doing the exercise. And I’m not talking about doing SoulCycle three times a week. I’m talking about just moving each day, going for a hike, going for a walk. And even there are studies that show that people, when they’re doing something rhythmic, like an elliptical or a light walk, and they’re listening to your audio book or podcast, then they’re actually assimilating it and retaining it actually better.
So, as you move, what’s good for your heart is going to be generally good for your head. More blood flow, more oxygen. And yet not everybody does that. So they’re not motivated. So the P stands for purpose. And I would remind everybody, purpose is not just intellectually knowing the reasons why to do stuff. A lot of people can name all the reasons why they should eat well or prioritize, sleep, or meditate or exercise, but they don’t feel the benefits. Right? Or they don’t feel the consequences of not doing so. So for example… And there might be a little bit background noise. I’m cocooning in New York city, and this is an opportunity for people to build and flex their focus muscles right now as a mental exercise, so it’s very real and it’s very raw. I remember having an acquaintance that just was not healthy.
They did everything opposite of what you would recommend somebody do to be healthy and well. And he ends up having a heart attack, almost dies, has triple bypass surgery. Very, very painful for him and the people around them. But even afterwards, he still didn’t change his lifestyle. Much to the dismay of his family and his friends giving him suggestions. And then years later I see him on the street and he is the picture perfect of health. He just looks years younger. And I just had to know… I was like… I know what he did. Right? He was explaining to me all the… I want to know why? Just like this young woman that read 30 books in 30 days, she found purpose in her mom. Right? Well, he one day comes home to his daughter who’s crying and crying uncontrollably.
And she had this dream that she lost her dad and he wasn’t there to walk her down the aisle and see her children… This whole story. Right? But that was purpose, and all of a sudden the lifestyle just fell into place because he found a purpose that he felt. Success really goes from your head to your heart, to your hands. Three Hs. But you can visualize a goal in your head, but not act with your hands, i.e. you procrastinate. And a lot of times you’re not allowing yourself to have the second H, which is the feelings, the heart. Because we are not, as much as we like to think we are, we are not logical. Right? We are biological. And you think about dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, endorphin. We are these feelings soups and if you don’t feel something, we’re not going to do those things.
And so even remembering someone’s name, a lot of people won’t remember names simply because they don’t have a purpose for it. Or the names they will remember, they do have a purpose. They have feelings, they are attracted to the person, or they could be good for their business. Right? So the key to a long-term memory is this, information by itself is forgettable, but information combined with emotion becomes unforgettable. Right? So we don’t remember the periodic table, most people back in high school, because the state that they learned it in was that of boredom. And if information times emotion is a long-term memory and the boredom is on a scale of zero to 10, zero, anything times zero is zero.
But we remember things like… I bet that people listening that there’s a song that could take you back to when you were in high school or a fragrance or a food that could take you back to when you were a child because you’re… That’s where you take something that’s ordinary and make it extraordinary using those feelings. And so going back, Maya Angelou said, people will forget what you say, they’ll forget what you did, but they’ll always remember how you made them feel. That’s why I think remembering names is so important. But going back to this equation, in terms of motivation, feelings. We are feeling creatures. First thing in order to be motivated, tap into that feeling of the benefits that will come from doing this activity or the consequences that you’ll pay for not doing it.
And if you don’t feel it, you won’t sustain that motivation. Now, the second part of that I said was that… We’re building this ultimate motivated human being. If someone just has a big enough purpose will they always be motivated? And I said to myself, “No.” They could be missing the E in the equation. P x E x S3. The E stands for energy. Because somebody… Going back to working out, it’s universal, we know that exercise and movement is good for people, and yet you can have the purpose, but maybe you have a newborn child and you haven’t slept in three days and you’re just exhausted. You’re not going to be very motivated to follow through and exercise. Because the evidence that somebody is motivated is not what you say, it’s not how you feel, it’s not how your employees say they’re motivated, it’s not how your children say they feel, it’s if they’re doing the thing consistently. Motive for action. There’s action that’s there.
Or let’s say people want to read. I think that leaders are readers. When people do see me on Instagram and Facebook photos with Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey and Elon Musk, we bonded over books. Right? And I think it’s so amazing that if someone like yourself has decades of experience and you put it into a book… I happen to have one of your books right here.
Dr. Gundry (00:34:14):
Oh. Bless your heart. The Longevity Paradox he’s holding up.
Jim Kwik (00:34:17):
Yes. But if you have decades of experience and you put it into a book and one of your listeners could read that book in a handful of days, they could download decades into days. That’s the biggest advantage people have. So it actually takes about 45 minutes a day for the average reader to finish one book a week. 52 books a year where the average person only reads two or three or four books a year. Imagine reading 52 books a year. And there’s 64,000 words in the average book, and the average person reads about 200 words per minute. That means it takes about 320 minutes to get through a book divided by seven days in a week, about 45 minutes a day. But if somebody can’t read 45 minutes in maybe it’s because they ate a big meal full of just processed… It’s just junk food. That’s not… Junk and food don’t really go together, there’s just junk and there’s food.
But they eat this meal and their in food coma, and they’re not going to study. They’re not going to be motivated to read that day because they lack the energy. And so that’s why energy is so important. That’s why in the book we talk about sleep and other things like energy vampires and mitigating stress which takes a lot of energy. And then my mind said, “Okay. If somebody just has purpose, they feel it, and they have limitless energy, will they always follow through and be motivated?” And I said, “No. One more exception. If they’re missing S3, three Ss, small, simple steps.” Often I find with working with clients, especially high achievers, they have a purpose of building this big vision, but it’s so big it’s intimidating. And something that’s confusing, people don’t know what to do.
And a confused mind, whether it’s your patients or your potential customers, they don’t do anything. And often what you need to do is break it down into small, simple steps. So as an example, maybe for someone who doesn’t work out regularly, an hour a day of exercise is just too much. It’s too intimidating. A small, simple step is putting on your running shoes. Maybe reading 45 minutes a day for someone who doesn’t read 45 minutes in a month is too intimidating. Maybe a small, simple step is opening up the book or reading one line. Right? And so how do you find your small, simple step? Simple question. What is the tiniest action you could take that will give you progress towards this goal where you can’t fail? What is the tiniest action you could take right now to give you progress towards this goal where you can’t fail because it requires very little energy and very little effort?
So that’s my limitless formula for motivation, purpose, energy, and small, simple steps. And then finally you have mindset, motivation, the third M as we mentioned are the methods. Now here’s the aha for a lot of people. The methods are speed reading, focus, but it could be methods for being healthy, methods for marketing. You have to upgrade those methods for our current time or based on the current research. And here’s the thing. When you’re looking at this Venn diagram, there are three Ms, but there are also three Is. And the three Is are the intersecting points of these Ms. Where mindset and motivation crossover, that shared space is inspiration. Now you have mindset experts, you have mindset books, a great book by Dr. Carol Dweck called Mindset. You have motivational speakers, motivational books. Where they cross over, you have inspiration.
And you have inspiring speakers, inspiring books, inspiring movies. What does an inspiring movie do? It changes your mindset of what’s possible, and it gives you some energy and some drive. But you’re inspired, but you lack the methods. You don’t know what to do. So an inspiring speaker will inspire you, but like, “What do I eat now?” or, “How do I move?” or, “How do I do my sleep?” They want the methods. Now, the second I is where mindset and methods crossover, where mindset, you believe everything is possible in your mind and methods, you know exactly what to do based on latest research, the processes. That shared space is ideation. Ideation, because it just stays an idea. Because what’s missing? The motivation to do anything. So you’re still stuck in that box. And then finally, where motivation and methods crossover, you have implementation.
Somebody is motivated. They have purpose, they feel it, they have limitless energy, they broke things down to small, simple steps, they know the actual full strategy and processes to be well and, or to learn faster or to build their business, but they could still be stuck in that box while they’re implementing, because they’re only going to be able to achieve what their mindset allows them to. What they believe is possible, what they believe they’re capable of, or even what they believe they deserve. Maybe they don’t think they deserve to be healthy or deserve to be in that relationship. And so the fourth I, where all three Is and all three Ms converge right in the middle, the fourth I is integration. Integration like integer or integral means you’re whole. And that’s just who you are and that’s the limitless state.
And I create this framework for accelerated learning, but really it’s a framework, a lens for human potential because it takes the angst out of the judgment where you… If you feel like you’re not making progress and you beat yourself up, studies done on self-compassion show that when you beat yourself up, you’re less likely to actually follow through. But when you’re kind to yourself, you’re more likely to follow through. Where you say, “Okay. I’m only human. I’m doing the best I can. We’re living in a very chaotic world right now,” and you add kindness to it, you’re more likely to follow through.
But going into this, now you have a lens to look at saying, “Where’s my bottleneck here? Is it in my mindset? Do I not believe I’m worthy of this or it’s possible for me or I’m capable of it? Or do I not feel purpose? Or do I need to spend some time on my energy? Or do I need to… This is overwhelming. Do I need to break it down into small, simple steps? Or do I need to listen to a podcast or read a book on the best methods for being healthy or the best methods for learning or the best methods for investing.” And so that’s why I created this framework to be an explanatory schema for why we get stuck and also because then you can pinpoint the area that limits you. Because Limitless is about redrawing the borders and boundaries of really what’s possible.
Dr. Gundry (00:40:34):
I tell you what, let’s do a fun thing for everybody who’s listening. Okay. I can’t learn a foreign language. Boy, have I tried? I am horrible at it. I spend a lot of time normally traveling to foreign countries and do interact with lots of people, would love to speak fluent French like my wife, would love to speak fluent Italian. I’ve gotten the books on tape, I listen to it in the car and then I go to put it into practice and it’s just an unmitigated disaster. Now, part of my excuse is I’ve told myself from day one I can’t learn a foreign language. And my wife speaks fluent French. And so every time we’re in France, I may start speaking and of course fracture it and the waiter glares at you and my wife says, “Shut up. I’ll take over.” Okay. Help me out. All the listeners want to know. How am I going to learn French?
Jim Kwik (00:41:34):
Right. And so language is interesting because the largest chapter in the book is the chapter on memory. I wrote it in Greece. I found out that the… Again, the God is a memory. Her children were the Nine Muses of art, literature and science. And so we know the power of that. And so if someone wants to learn another language, there are a number of methods that you could use outside of just rote repetition. Because that’s how most people study. In medical school or whatever people have made their focus, they would just do rote repetition and force that information and repeat it over and over again. And in physics just like… There are these five variables, frequency, duration, and intensity.
And think about that for working out your body. You could go to the gym many times frequently, or do many reps frequency or you could do a duration. You could spend more time in that workout, Zumba class or more time in that Pilates class, or more time on that treadmill. Or you could do something so intense that you get results also. Same thing with marketing. It could be frequency of sales calls, frequency of ads or longer duration ads or something so intense it creates a change. And so same thing with our memories. And when it comes to memory, memory is often… I teach people in the book that memory is as easy as P.I.E, P-I-E. And these are the three elements I focus on when you want to enhance your memory. And the P stands for place where we realize that the ancient Greeks… Because I didn’t just want to study the latest neuroscience applied to memory, I wanted to know what ancient cultures did before there were printing presses.
And I found out that Simonides, an ancient poet and author, he gave a talk and afterwards he left the building. Something tragic happened. The building collapsed. And he was the only lone survivor. And because he was the lone survivor, he had the responsibility of helping family members identify their loved ones. And he was able to, because he remembered where they were all sitting. And it’s kind of human nature as a hunter-gatherer, we didn’t need to memorize a hundred digit numbers, we needed to remember where things work. Where’s the fertile soil, where’s the clean water, where’s the enemy tribe, where’s the food. And that was our survival. So P is the place where we store information. The I in P.I.E stands for imagine. And we remember things better that we could visualize in our mind.
Often people are better with faces than they are with names. You go to somebody and say, “I remember your face, but I forgot your name.” You never go to someone and say the opposite. You never go to someone and say, “I remember your name, but I forgot your face.” That wouldn’t make a lot of-
Dr. Gundry (00:44:10):
True.
Jim Kwik (00:44:10):
… sense.
Dr. Gundry (00:44:11):
That’s very true. Yeah.
Jim Kwik (00:44:11):
But there’s a proverb that says what I hear I forget, what I see I remember, what I do I understand. I heard the name, I forgot the name, I saw the face, I remember the face and what I do going back to practice, I understand because practice makes progress. So visualizing helps you to remember. So that’s the I. You imagine it. And the E in P.I.E stands for Entwine. Entwine. What does that mean? It means you put or associate two things together. Because ultimately all learning is that. All learning is associating something you don’t know to something you know. So you’re associating a name to a face or a word to its definition, or a foreign language to its translation or a capital to it’s country.
There’s always two bits of information that you’re associating. In this case what you’re entwining is the place and the image. And that’s a simple formula for remembering names and faces and even languages. Let me give you an example. All right. So when we’re talking about languages, one of the keys is beyond repetition and frequency is go for intensity. As you could see it, and you could feel it and hear it, the more of your nervous system you use, the more intense it becomes, the more unforgettable it is. As an example… Actually, let’s do this. Okay.
This is will be interesting. I want people listening to do what I’m explaining right now. I’ll give a couple of French examples, but let’s learn how to count to 10 in Japanese. All right? In two minutes. That’s the promise. Two minutes.
Dr. Gundry (00:45:47):
Wow.
Jim Kwik (00:45:48):
All right? Count to 10 in Japanese. And most people say, “Oh. Just repetition.” [Japanese 00:45:52] and just repeat it a hundred times. So your mind gets bored and just gives up. Well here if we could see, if there’s a place and there’s an image and we’re associating, we’re going to remember better. So, maybe you could do this with me and just play along if you’re listening or if you’re watching this. So one and two is [Japanese 00:46:13]. So itch your knee right now. Scratch your knee. [Japanese 00:46:16].
Dr. Gundry (00:46:16):
[Japanese 00:46:16]. Got it. [Japanese 00:46:16].
Jim Kwik (00:46:16):
That’s one and two. [Japanese 00:46:20].
Dr. Gundry (00:46:16):
One and…
Jim Kwik (00:46:21):
Three is [Japanese 00:46:22]. And it sounds to me like sun. So point to the light or sun and say [Japanese 00:46:28]. And four-
Dr. Gundry (00:46:32):
[Japanese 00:46:32].
Jim Kwik (00:46:31):
… is [Japanese 00:46:32]. So point to a female. A female or a photo of female. Good.
Dr. Gundry (00:46:38):
[Japanese 00:46:38].
Jim Kwik (00:46:38):
So that’s one through four. [Japanese 00:46:40]…
Dr. Gundry (00:46:40):
[Japanese 00:46:40]-
Jim Kwik (00:46:43):
[Japanese 00:46:43].
Dr. Gundry (00:46:43):
… [Japanese 00:46:43].
Jim Kwik (00:46:44):
Five and-
Dr. Gundry (00:46:45):
I almost said female.
Jim Kwik (00:46:46):
Exactly. But your true memory knows the difference. Right? So five is [Japanese 00:46:52], like you’re going. So I’m just moving my arms and my legs as if I’m going for a walk. So [Japanese 00:46:57]. So what’s five?
Dr. Gundry (00:46:58):
[Japanese 00:46:58].
Jim Kwik (00:46:58):
[Japanese 00:46:58].
Dr. Gundry (00:46:59):
[Japanese 00:46:59].
Jim Kwik (00:47:00):
Six is [Japanese 00:47:02]. And for me, it reminds me, if I could visualize, rowing a canoe. So imagine just kind of rowing a canoe. So again. [Japanese 00:47:12]-
Dr. Gundry (00:47:12):
[Japanese 00:47:12].
Jim Kwik (00:47:12):
… [Japanese 00:47:12].
Dr. Gundry (00:47:13):
[Japanese 00:47:13].
Jim Kwik (00:47:14):
[Japanese 00:47:14].
Dr. Gundry (00:47:14):
[Japanese 00:47:14].
Jim Kwik (00:47:15):
[Japanese 00:47:15].
Dr. Gundry (00:47:16):
[Japanese 00:47:16].
Jim Kwik (00:47:17):
And then you [Japanese 00:47:18].
Dr. Gundry (00:47:18):
[Japanese 00:47:18].
Jim Kwik (00:47:18):
[Japanese 00:47:18].
Dr. Gundry (00:47:18):
[Japanese 00:47:18].
Jim Kwik (00:47:18):
And that’s one through six. And then if you keep on going, seven is actually [Japanese 00:47:26], and it sounds like I’m sitting, [Japanese 00:47:28] and then eight is [Japanese 00:47:30], and it’s a hot seat. So you’re [Japanese 00:47:33] and then you stand [Japanese 00:47:34]. And finally nine is [Japanese 00:47:37]. What coos? Like a baby. So you just move your arms around like you’re holding a baby [Japanese 00:47:42] and then 10 is [Japanese 00:47:45], like a jewel, like you’re putting on a ring, [Japanese 00:47:48]. All right. [Japanese 00:47:49]. And that’s a simple way in two minutes to explain it, but what we’re doing again is replacing it, we’re imagining it, and we’re entwining it. An example of taking something like a foreign language. If you wanted to say like… Real basic for people listening that don’t speak French, if you wanted to say something like, thank you in French, we know that it is [French 00:48:15].
And now here’s the thing. For people, most times they do a flashcard. Right? They’ll have the word and it’s translation on the other side. But if you use your imagination, sound it out like you’re playing Pictionary, [French 00:48:28], like a mare seeing. What’s a mare? A female horse. And seeing maybe it has glasses on. Or maybe the mare is in the sea and you’re helping the mare out of the sea, the water and then he says or she says, “Thank you.” Or you’re putting the glasses back on the mare, mare see, and she says, “Thank you.” And people will say, “That’s so childish.” But who are the fast [inaudible 00:48:53] learners? They’re children. And they’re so-
Dr. Gundry (00:48:54):
Children.
Jim Kwik (00:48:55):
… playful. They use their creativity, they use their imagination. When I say Limitless, the limitless resource we have on planet earth is human potential. It’s not the sky’s the limit, our mind is the limit. There’s no limit to our creativity, there is no limit to our imagination, there’s no limit to our ability to solve problems. And the reason why I bring these exercises up is, in a world where jobs are going to machines, they’re being automated, they are going to artificial intelligence, what’s not going to be as easily outsourced to a device are what makes us human.
Our creativity, our imagination, things like strategy. So what we’re doing is we’re actually building and flexing, we’re working out those muscles, those creativity muscles, those imagination muscles, the strategy muscles. Take something like, how do you say something like… How do you say please instead of thank you? How do you say please? You know this.
Dr. Gundry (00:49:48):
What [crosstalk 00:49:49]-
Jim Kwik (00:49:49):
In French.
Dr. Gundry (00:49:50):
Oh. In French. Actually, I was thinking of a joke so now I’m completely off.
Jim Kwik (00:49:55):
Now, if somebody says [French 00:49:57], for me it’s like, “What does it sound like if we’re playing Pictionary?” Silver plate. So imagine you’re building please into a story, you’re entwining it with a silver plate. And your true memory knows the difference you just need a prompt to remind you. Right? And then once… You see what people really need, especially with names, they need something to overcome what I call the six-second syndrome. Somebody tells you their name and you have six seconds to do something with it, otherwise it’s gone. And so when you pick a place on their face, like they have a great head of hair or a great pair of glasses, and you find out that’s the place P in P.I.E, and the I is imagine, maybe their name is David… And for me, I imagine a slingshot. Why? Because David and Goliath. And the E is entwined. And so what am I entwining? Their glasses with the slingshot?
And I’m just imagining myself hitting them in the glasses with the slingshot. It’s so ludicrous, would never, ever happen in reality, but I’ll never forget it. Because when I say goodbye to him 20 minutes later, what’s his place? Oh, his glasses. What was I doing? Hitting with a slingshot. What’s his name? David. And here’s the thing. Even when it doesn’t work, it still works, because it gets you to focus on the person and it gets you to focus on the name. Right? And then, even when… So even when it doesn’t work, it still works, and when I know the person’s name is David long-term, then the picture disappears just like the silver plate disappears, or the mare with the glasses. How do you ask, “How are you?” in French? So, if you want to say something like let’s say [French 00:51:36]-
Dr. Gundry (00:51:36):
[French 00:51:36]… Yeah.
Jim Kwik (00:51:37):
So for me, [French 00:51:39] sounds like, come on to this alley, see this view. So I might imagine myself in France, I see the Eiffel Tower, and then I’m going… I’m just having a conversation with some [French 00:51:48] asking them how they are, and then all of a sudden they say, “Come on to this alley, see this view.” Because if you did the work and you studied it, you know it’s [French 00:51:55], but you need something to prompt you, just like that David and Goliath image. And then once you know what it is, your true memory… Because what it does, it makes it so intense you don’t have to do the frequency and the duration. Now change it and you want to learn it in Chinese. Take out the Eiffel Tower, put in the Great Wall of China. And you have, “How are you?”
And it’s [Chinese 00:52:16]. And I just think of going up and saying, “How are you?” and somebody takes a garden… Someone’s ma takes a garden hoe and then just hits me on the knee. And it sounds so silly and ludicrous, but remember, information combined with emotion, humor, violence becomes more memorable. And other ways we talk about in the book on how to do this, on how to study, we talk about the best music to have in the background, certain Baroque classical music, Vivaldi, the Handel harmonizes with the resting heartbeat which helps you to go into this alpha state, a brainwave state to help you learn content better, facts, figures, foreign languages, we talk about space review and retention, all different kinds of strategies to stack onto it, to make learning not only fast but enjoyable.
Dr. Gundry (00:53:07):
Oh. But come on Jim. I can just pull up my app on my iPhone and translate everything. I don’t need your tricks. Come on.
Jim Kwik (00:53:15):
And here’s the thing [inaudible 00:53:16], because I get this comment a lot. I train at Google and Facebook and they’re like, “Jim. I don’t have to remember this. I have a search engine. We organize the world’s information.” Here’s my answer for this. I’ll give you a couple of answers. Number one, our life… In the book, I have a quote from a French philosopher that says, “Life is the sea between B and D.” B is birth, D is death, C is choice. And we always can make these choices. And part of the things is, our life is a reflection of all the choices we’ve made up to this point of our existence. Right? What are we going to eat? Where are we going to live? Who are we going to spend time with? What are we going to do for a living? All these things. Right? But we can only make good decisions based on the information we know, and that presupposes we remember it.
And so that’s why memory is so important. But the other reason why, it’s not just about mental intelligence, it’s about mental fitness. There’s these things that are happening like digital dementia, we’re outsourcing our memories to our smart devices. And it keeps our to-dos, it keeps our calendars, it keeps our phone… How many phone numbers did you know growing up? How many? Like-
Dr. Gundry (00:54:19):
A lot.
Jim Kwik (00:54:20):
… all of them. Yeah. A lot. How many phone numbers do you know or whoever’s listening, how many phone numbers do you know right now? One, two, three, maybe. And there could be somebody you text and call every day, but if your battery is dead or you don’t have your phone with you, you honestly don’t know what their number is, and not that I want to memorize 200 numbers, I mean, I certainly could teach somebody how to do that, but we’ve lost the ability… It should be concerning we’ve lost the ability to remember one, or a pin number or a passcode or a conversation we just had or something we were going to say, or why we went to the store. We go to a store to buy one thing, we come back with two bags full of things except for that one thing that we went… [inaudible 00:54:58] someone’s name. And that’s why I believe memory is a muscle.
And there’s no such thing as a good or bad memory. There’s a trained memory and an untrained memory. And this also goes to not only digital dementia, but also what I talk about in the book, digital deduction, where if you don’t have to think anymore, and then there’s a technology that tells you where and when to turn or what’s recommended for you… Because there’s an algorithm for finding… Children when they’re tested, they don’t have the same analytical ability of previous generations because the technology is doing all the thinking for them. So they don’t have to develop these kinds of thinking fitness like the critical thinking, divergent thinking, rationalization and so on.
So technology is wonderful. It allows us to have this conversation right now and everyone to listen for it. But technology is a tool for you to use. But your brain is like a muscle. It’s obviously not a muscle, but it acts like a muscle. But if I use a technology like Lyft or Uber to go five blocks when I could have walked, or I use an elevator when I could’ve walked up three flights of stairs, there’s a physical toll to my body. And if I put my arm in a sling for 12 months, it wouldn’t stay the same. It wouldn’t even grow. It would grow worse, it would atrophy. And that’s what digital dementia and digital deduction is, the high reliance on technology where we don’t have to maintain a set level of mental fitness. And so I would encourage people to be able to exercise their brain like they exercise the rest of their body.
Dr. Gundry (00:56:27):
Wow. That’s a pretty good way to end all this. So all right. I ask everybody who comes on the program, give our listeners one thing they can do today to get a better brain. Just one thing. How do we start? Just one.
Jim Kwik (00:56:43):
Absolutely. I would say this. I would say first… Oh God. I want to [inaudible 00:56:48] like 10 things.
Dr. Gundry (00:56:50):
I only want one.
Jim Kwik (00:56:51):
One thing. One thing. I would say this, I would say, sit down and design your morning routine. Everybody has their morning routine or the things they do to win that day. Because if you want to win the day, you have to win that first hour of the day. First you create your habits and your habits create you. My morning routine, and people google it or we did a whole podcast episode on it, millions of downloads and views on this, Jim Kwik’s morning routine focuses on the brain. The 10 things I do every morning to jumpstart my brain. And I would just say, find something in the morning for you instead of picking up the phone because that’s rewiring your brain to be distracted and it’s rewiring your brain to be reactive. Two things that will hurt your peace of mind, your positivity, your productivity or performance.
I would say replace picking up your phone with one thing that’s good for your brain, whether it’s eating a good brain food, taking deep diaphragmatic breaths. Some fun thing I teach people to do is brush their teeth with the opposite hand, because it engages the opposite side of your brain because as your body moves your brain grooves, but what it really does is it forces you to focus first thing in the morning. Because you can’t be doing that and be distracted. So it trains your focus and your presence muscles. And that’s how you’re going to achieve the most. Because the most important thing is to keep the most important thing the most important thing. So my challenge with everybody, look at your morning routine and replace picking up your phone with something else that’s more brain-friendly.
Dr. Gundry (00:58:19):
All right. Now, can everybody remember that please? You got to brush your teeth with the other hand. And actually I’m going to add something. While you’re brushing your teeth, you have to do deep knee bends. You got to-
Jim Kwik (00:58:19):
Uh-oh.
Dr. Gundry (00:58:31):
… do squats. You’re just sitting there anyhow, just standing there-
Jim Kwik (00:58:35):
I like.
Dr. Gundry (00:58:35):
… do some… Yeah. Do some deep knee bends and brush your teeth with the opposite hand. Okay. That’s the lesson today. Jim, thanks so much for being here. Where do people find you? They probably already know, but just tell us how to figure you out.
Jim Kwik (00:58:52):
We have a podcast. You can search Jim Kwik, you just have to spell it right, K-W-I-K, in your podcast app. Every episode’s only 15 minutes on how to remember names, learn languages, change your habits, all of that great stuff. You can find that at kwikbrain.com and the book. limitlessbook.com is where you’ll get all the links around the world, because I know your audience is global. So we have put all the links conveniently there for you to find the book. And we are gifting on that page a free book club where we spend one week per section of the book to help you read, remember and apply it and two bonus chapters there, Limitless for Kids and Limitless for Your Team, how to apply the limitless model to those areas. And that’s at limitlessbook.com.
And I would actually challenge everybody right now is to take a screenshot of this episode… The fastest… My last tip for everybody, the fastest way to learn something is to learn with the intention of teaching somebody else. So I would say one of the ways you could do that, take a screenshot of this episode right now, tag Dr. Gundry, tag myself @jimkwik, post it on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and share the one aha from this conversation. What is one small, simple step that you could take to better your brain? The same question that I was asked here, what’s one simple tip that people could do, what’s one simple thing that you’re going to do to better your brain? Post that in the description, or take a picture of your notes and post and tag us both in it. And I’ll actually repost my favorites because that way I could see it if you’re following and tagging me. And I’ll actually send a copy of Limitless to a couple of my favorite answers, just as a fun [inaudible 01:00:28].
Dr. Gundry (01:00:29):
Great idea. Great idea. And maybe we’ll send off Longevity Paradox to the first few folks that we like as well.
Jim Kwik (01:00:40):
[inaudible 01:00:40].
Dr. Gundry (01:00:40):
We’ve done that. That’d be fun. All right. Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you. Big fan. And please enjoy the Longevity Paradox. And I’ve certainly thoroughly enjoyed Limitless. And I’m going to… Doggone. And I’m going to learn French and I’ll call you in French.
Jim Kwik (01:01:00):
All right [inaudible 01:01:01].
Dr. Gundry (01:01:01):
All right. Thanks for being here today.
Jim Kwik (01:01:04):
[foreign language 01:01:04].
Dr. Gundry (01:01:06):
All right. So it’s time for the audience question. Elton Haye asks on drgundry.com, “I have been on the Plant Paradox diet for approximately one year, but still have knee and hip and lower back stiffness and pains. Anything in particular that can be done to address these issues. I am 79 years old and in reasonably good health.” Well, I read this actually earlier and I had a chuckle and of course my first chuckle was, well, if I could turn back the hands of time and make you 30, that would be a start. But in all seriousness, recently my wife and I… I’ll turn 70 in a month. My wife just turned 70 a couple months ago, and injured her knee skiing this year. And she’s an avid tennis player and now her knee hurts when she plays tennis. And we’ve tried actually all of my wonderful tricks, the supplements that we use and I could name them, but I’m going to give you another trick that is actually really working right now.
I have mentioned on a previous podcast that I’ve been fascinated with the red and near-infrared light therapy for a variety of things. And you’re going to learn a lot about it in the next book, The Energy Paradox. And I have used this device on a shoulder that I injured, I’ve used this device on my knee and my wife understandably chuckles and says, “Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, I’m so happy that it’s working for you.” But she’s been kind of frustrated.
So for the last week and a half, I said, “Look. You got nothing to lose, why don’t you get out buy a little box of red light therapy…” And I have no relationship with this company, but it’s a Joovv, J-O-O-V-V. “And put it on your knee for 10 minutes a day.” And she’s been doing that now for a week and a half, almost two weeks. And I got to tell you, her knee pain is pretty much gone. It flares a little bit when she plays tennis, but she puts the light on it, she doesn’t need ice, she doesn’t need anything else. And she said, “What the heck is this doing?” You’re going to have to get The Energy Paradox to find out. But that’s one thing. Get yourself a light box or alternatively get yourself a sauna. And I think there’s some really important things happening at the mitochondrial level that can really help you with this. So great question. So give it a thought.
Okay. Review of the week. Luke Adrian on YouTube [inaudible 01:04:02]. “Dr. Gundry’s ability to carefully listen to his guests without interrupting them ever is truly an ability most people have lost these days.” Well, thanks for saying that. I really like our podcasts to be a forum where people can have different opinions, present their ideas, I really like to hear them. Many of you have requested that I slice some of my guests into small thin ribbons and spit them out and throw them on the floor. But that’s not what this is here for. This is to get differing opinions and listen to them. And I think I’ve talked about this before. Surgeons in general don’t listen. We actually really enjoy having people asleep and cutting them open by… Just joking.
But one of the things that I learned when I transitioned into what I do 20 odd years ago now is to listen to people. And so that’s what you’re going to find here. You’re going to find us listening to people. And thanks for noticing that. I’m doing it on purpose. Now, thanks a lot. Okay. That’s it for this week’s Dr. Gundry Podcast. We’ll see you next week.
On the Dr. Gundry Podcast, we provide a venue for discussion, and the views expressed by my guests do not necessarily reflect my own. Thanks for joining me on this episode of the Dr. Gundry Podcast. Before you go, I just wanted to remind you that you can find the show on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you want to watch each episode of the Dr Gundry Podcast, you can always find me on YouTube, @youtube.com/drgundry. Because I’m Dr. Gundry and I’m always looking out for you.
