Rita Black: Toxins, gut biome, light exposure, and hormesis are just a few things that impact our aging process, both negatively and positively. Let’s face it, getting older isn’t a process a lot of us go into with great enthusiasm, but if we have some levers that we can control, that will help us slow down the biological clock, even though the birthdays keep coming, wouldn’t you be interested? That is why I am excited to introduce to you my special guest on the Thin Thinking Podcast this week, Dr. Jeremiah Jimerson. He is an expert in the process of aging and steps that we can take today to put us more in power of holding onto health and youthfulness. So please join me for a chance to throw some lucky pennies in the Fountain of Youth and come on in.

New Speaker: Did you know that our struggle with weight doesn’t start with the food on your plate or get fixed in the gym? 80% of our weight struggle is mental. That’s right. The key to unlocking long-term weight release and management begins in your mind. Hi there, I’m Rita Black. I’m a clinical hypnotherapist weight loss expert, bestselling author, and the creator of the Shift Weight Mastery Process. And not only have I helped thousands of people over the past 20 years achieve long-term weight mastery. I am also a former weight struggler, carb addict and binge eater. And after two decades of failed diets and fad weight loss programs, I lost 40 pounds with the help of hypnosis. Not only did I release all that weight, I have kept it off for 25 years. Enter the Thin Thinking Podcast where you too will learn how to remove the mental roadblocks that keep you struggling. I’ll give you the thin thinking tools, skills, and insights to help you develop the mindset you need, not only to achieve your ideal weight, but to stay there long term and live your best life.

Rita Black: Hello and happy mayday. Are you gathering around the Maypole? For those of you listening on the day, we send this out, I was thinking about mayday, and I remember as a kid there was a maypole tradition my mom used to speak about, and then when I lived in England, I heard about it as an old custom. So I decided to look it up on my favorite friend chat GPT, and share this with you. One of the most well-known traditions associated with mayday is the custom of maypole dancing, particularly in European countries like England, Germany, and Scandinavia. Maypole dancing involves weaving ribbons around a tall pole adorned with flowers and greenery. The flowers used to decorate the maypole symbolize the renewal of nature and the blossoming of flowers and plants during the spring season. Huh, nice. It’s too bad that most of those flowers are now dead here in California by May 1st.

Rita Black: Not all of them, not all of them, but many of them. So if you don’t have a maypole or if you do, I’m excited to shift into spring and the idea of being a spring chicken and explore some things that we can do to manage the aging process with my special guest, Dr. Jeremiah Jimerson. Dr. Jeremiah Jimerson is a trailblazer in the field of longevity and anti-aging. His journey began with a deep commitment to health and wellness, and over the years, he has emerged as a leading figure in innovative health technologies and holistic wellness strategies. An early adopter of whole body cryotherapy, Dr. Jimerson has demonstrated a keen insight into revolutionary health modalities, pioneering their use for enhanced health, wellbeing, and recovery. His innovative spirit didn’t stop there. He also developed his own whole body photobiomodulation bed, utilizing the power of light therapy to promote cellular health and rejuvenation. As the creator of the Younger You Blueprint, Dr. Jimerson has built a substantial online presence with nearly a million followers across social media. His platforms offer a comprehensive approach to health, integrating diet, lifestyle changes and advanced wellness practices to combat aging and chronic inflammation, as well as promote vitality.

Rita Black: Welcome, Dr. Jimerson. Well, hello Jeremiah, and welcome to the Thin Thinking Podcast. We are excited to have you. I am excited to have you and talk about how to Grow Younger. I love that idea, .

Dr. Jeremiah Jimerson: Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me.

Rita Black: It’s it’s really great. I wanna hear all about what you have to say about aging and our health. But tell us first, I always like to hear about like how you personally got into longevity and anti-aging. Like what was the pull for you?

Dr. Jeremiah Jimerson: The pull for me was was I hit rock bottom early on in my twenties. You know, I did all of the, the wrong things, you know, throughout school. You know, school was just high stress you know, becoming a doctor, incredibly stressful, eating terrible food back then. Drinking too much alcohol. Lot of wear and tear on my body. I sadly to say, I was a pack a day cigarette smoker, so I mean, I really trounce my body being honored.

Rita Black: Okay. I get it. I was a pack and a half, so I beat you up on that one, but I love that you were studying medicine and smoking and drinking that, that says a lot for our, our, our medical system right there.

Dr. Jeremiah Jimerson: Really?

Rita Black: Yeah.

Dr. Jeremiah Jimerson: And anything to stop stress. Exactly. By the time I graduated I was developing, you know, a joint autoimmune type issue. So my joints would start getting inflamed. I had IBSI, was starting to develop a brain fog. I was having a lot of, you know, symptoms and a lot of issues. And it was kind of the birth of my son that, you know, kind of started kind of like hit me in the face and I’m like, oh my God. Like, this isn’t just about me. This is about him and his kids, and I wanna be around for all of that. And that’s kind of where it, it started. I realized that I had to start kind of pulling myself out of that. And as I kind of went along a lot of the traditional medical therapies, a lot of things that I was starting to do wasn’t necessarily fixing it. So I had to continue to learn.

Rita Black: So was that, so you, in your medical school trajectory, you were not finding the answers for something, you know, as basic as what you were needing?

Dr. Jeremiah Jimerson: No. No. Not, not at all. I mean, I, I tried, I, I suffered a bit and and I tried. I probably spent several hundred thousand dollars in anything from therapies to tools and toys and all that stuff felt good. It didn’t necessarily fix it though.

Rita Black: Interesting. So, well, let’s, let’s dive into, I think what one of the things that we were talking about before I turned on record was like gut bacteria and gut health’s role in our health and aging and longevity. I’m hearing this more and more like gut microbiome is, you know, a big word out in the zeitgeist but anti-aging, like how is are those two sort of paired together is like, how does the quality of our microbiome impact our aging or longevity?

Dr. Jeremiah Jimerson: So we’ve got, we’ve got microbiomes all over the place. You know, they’re in our gut, in our skin, in our mouth, our lungs, you know, they’re, they’re we’re absolutely just teeming in bacteria, but our gut particularly that’s 80 to 90% of your immune system. And so that’s your body’s ability to fight off bacteria, viruses, and even cancers, you know? So and they say, they say that if your gut is inflamed, your brain’s gonna be inflamed. And so a lot of scientists, they, they say that like neurodegenerative diseases, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, that stuff starts in the gut, or that’s one of the starting places of it.

Rita Black: Interesting.

Dr. Jeremiah Jimerson: You know, so it’s, it’s pretty, pretty tremendous. And, and most of us, you know our diets are so filled with processed foods today. The gut bacteria can’t really do a lot with a lot of those processed foods.

Rita Black: Hmm. So they don’t respond at all. Or they are actually negatively impacted by processed foods.

Dr. Jeremiah Jimerson: They’re negative impacted. You’re, you’re feeding, feeding a lot more of the bad guys. You’re kind of starving off some of the good guys, and it’s this whole kind of kind of war that’s being won and lost.

Rita Black: Wow. All of that going on in my gut as I’m talking to you here. It’s amazing. It’s a whole saga down there in my gut. So tell me, I, I have just a quick question, and maybe some of my listeners are curious about this, but so there’s anti-aging and then there’s longevity. How are the two, are they different? Are they same? You know, ’cause one you know, for longevity to me means longer life, and I guess anti-aging means that life that I’m gonna live is gonna be a better quality life. Is that kind of the idea?

Dr. Jeremiah Jimerson: That’s exactly how, how I look at it. It’s kind of like you’re, you’re shooting for both of them. But you know, there’s, there’s some people that they live long, but they, they’re very poor quality. Right. They, when they get to that end of the finish line, it’s not a pretty site. And so I think that’s where the anti-aging comes along is, is trying to maintain that, that youthful vigor and and getting to really enjoy and have greater quality of those years. Absolutely.

Rita Black: Right. So if you also mentioned mitochondria in tell me what those are. ’cause I hear them spoken about quite often. And how do they contribute to anti-aging?

Dr. Jeremiah Jimerson: The mitochondria, it’s basically like the nuclear power plant of your, of your cells. Like, it’s kind of like, like their, like their battery. And so as we age our batteries or those mitochondria just don’t function as well. So, you know, by the time you hit 70, they’re pretty much operating at maybe 30% capacity. You know? But everybody’s a little bit different. You know, we have biological aging and we have chronological aging, so everybody knows chronological aging. I’m 45. My biological age can be a little bit different. So my numbers, my, my years that I’ve been alive might be 45. My biological age is probably about 35. So my cells look and operate and and act more like a 35-year-old.

Rita Black: Wow. How do you test for that? Like how do you find that out?

Dr. Jeremiah Jimerson: There’s different tests called a horvath clock that you can send out some blood samples and it’ll give you an idea of your aging.

Rita Black: Wow.

Dr. Jeremiah Jimerson: That’s H-O-R-V-A-T-H.

Rita Black: I think I’ve heard of that before. That’s, that’s fascinating. So it’s primarily they test through blood and looking at the just different, what’s functioning well, what’s not functioning well in your system. Yeah. When they’re looking, looking at

Dr. Jeremiah Jimerson: That, they look, yeah. They look at things they look at methylation.

Rita Black: And that methylation, I’ve heard of that as well. That’s how your, your cells are processing the stuff

Dr. Jeremiah Jimerson: That’s in some, in, in so many words.

Rita Black: So many words. I’m gonna sound very dumb, huh?

Dr. Jeremiah Jimerson: I said in, in so many words. That works.

Rita Black: Okay. you were also mentioning before turning on record, we had a very fascinating conversation before we turned on record, but circadian rhythms how do they factor into aging and you know, the, how overall health and wellbeing?

Dr. Jeremiah Jimerson: So the circadian rhythms are, are a huge piece of the, the puzzle. I mean, you could be eating right, you could be exercising, but if you are not sleeping and, and it’s not just necessarily going to sleep because you know, you can, you know, you can drink a bunch of alcohol and sleep pretty hard, but you’re missing out on some of that sleep quality. But every single cell on this planet is, is all kind of tied into circadian rhythms, or it’s kind of like the rising in the setting of, of the sun. And and it’s so much a, a huge portion of our health that the 2017 Nobel Prize was all about circadian rhythm circadian rhythms and human biology. And it controls everything from like gene expression to metabolism, hormone balance, digestion, sleep quality, your immune system. I mean, it’s, it’s all controlled by circadian rhythms.

Rita Black: Hmm. And, and so how would how would you factor, like if somebody was working with you, how would you predict or know whether or not their circadian rhythms were like, operating well or not operating well, or they’re, you know, is it just that I’m not, like, for instance I’m a if I’m not getting quality sleep, how do you test for that? Or how do you know from, you know, speaking to somebody?

Dr. Jeremiah Jimerson: You know, one of, one of the first and easiest things that I I ask people is, is do you wake up feeling like a million dollars? Hmm. You know?

Rita Black: Well, that’s a good question’s.

Dr. Jeremiah Jimerson: Yeah. Do you wake up and, and feel great? Like, are you ready to jump out of bed or you know, sometimes we’ll take a look at we’ll do a hormone test on people. And so we’re taking a look at, at a lot of times cortisol. So cortisol is your stress hormone. It’s not always necessarily bad. But cortisol should be nice and high in the morning, and then it should slowly kind of taper on throughout the day. And you know, cortisol eventually gets converted into cortisone. That’s your, your body’s anti-inflammatory. But first thing in the morning, that’s what gets you up out of bed and it makes you feel like a million dollars and ready to kind of conquer the world. And and so we’ll do somebody’s hormone test and we’ll take a look and we’ll see their cortisol spike. You know, maybe doesn’t, doesn’t start rising until like, you know, 12 o’clock. And I’ll look at the test and I’ll look at the patient. I’ll say, you are not a morning person, are you? Like, no. How did you know that? I’m like, you’re probably don’t start feeling like yourself until about 12 o’clock. Yeah. How did you know? And you can see that little cortisol spike on their, their test. Right, right there.

Rita Black: Do you, so with that, that’s fascinating. How, so if they were gonna try to change that, would it be changing their sleep pattern? Would it be going to bed earlier? Would it be going, you know, how do you change where your cortisol is spiking?

Dr. Jeremiah Jimerson: It typically comes down to light.

Rita Black: Oh, because you were talk, so light therapy, is that what you’re talking about?

Dr. Jeremiah Jimerson: Well, this is is different wavelengths of light. Right. You know, so during the middle of the day, there’s a lot of blue light in the sun. And during first thing in the morning, like you imagine you get up, you go outside and you’re looking at, at the sunrise, there’s a lot more red and oranges, you know, first thing in the morning at nighttime there’s a lot more reds and oranges. And so blue light, you know if you are gonna be walking around in the middle of the day, you shouldn’t be producing a lot of melatonin. And so blue light basically turns off melatonin. Now what’s happening is, is in our modern day and age, we’ve got LEDs everywhere. We’ve got our LED light bulbs over us. We’ve got our, our cell phones, our computer screens, all that stuff. And those guys have a really, really high blue peak to it like really skyrocketed. And it’s not very, very, very natural. And you’re not typically gonna see something like that unless it’s gonna be like the, the middle of the day. So what happens is, is we’re all, you know, sitting at home watching Netflix and on our cell phones and we’ve got our lights and stuff like that, and we’ve got all of this blue light that’s kind of going through these screens and it’s hitting our eyes and it’s hitting our brain, and it’s saying, yo, it’s in the middle of the day. Don’t make any melatonin.

Rita Black: Oh, I never knew that. That’s so fascinating. So is that why people wear those glasses that like block out the blue blue line? Okay.

Dr. Jeremiah Jimerson: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. That you know, and just, just even, even dialing back the intensity of the lights, you know, at least, you know, and I, I’ve done experiments where, you know, I completely restricted any artificial light at night and stuff like that. And it’s, it’s a, a little intense, I don’t think you have to go too, too crazy, but, you know, at least, you know, an hour and a half, two hours before you go to bed, just, you know, that’s when you really wanna start putting the, the screens down when you wanna kind of start like kind of turning your, your lights down and just kind of making it kind of more like a, like a cave.

Rita Black: Okay. So, so Netflix off an hour at least before you go to bed at least. Yeah. And, and not, and not scrolling on your phone before you go to bed.

Dr. Jeremiah Jimerson: None of that stuff. Exactly. Exactly. Okay.

Rita Black: Got it. Okay.

Dr. Jeremiah Jimerson: And then trying to get that, that blue light exposure first thing in the morning, you know, go outside, you know, I tell every single one of my clients, you know, that should be one of your highest priorities. Go outside very first thing in the morning and just get some light exposure in your eyes.

Rita Black: And sorry, why is that? That’s just to get that blue light going in your eyes.

Dr. Jeremiah Jimerson: So it’s that morning, it’s that, that morning light exposure starts kind of increasing your cortisol.

Rita Black: Got it. Okay. So that’s,

Dr. Jeremiah Jimerson: That starts, it’s, it’s almost kinda like, like a big orchestra, kind of like a, like a song. And so, so this kind of starts, starts getting the song in a in place so that it sounds a little bit more balanced. So it sounds like a beautiful song as opposed to you can, you can imagine just a poorly performing orchard. Yeah.

Rita Black: So and is it important that you physically go outside or can you look through a window at the light? Or is it, is there something about like looking at it with your bare eye through no glass? No, nothing.

Dr. Jeremiah Jimerson: There is unfortunately something about, you, you don’t necessarily wanna get it through the window. It would take about 70 to 80 times the amount of exposure which means that you probably wouldn’t get it if you’re trying to go through a window. So you actually want to go outside because the window is filtering some of the wavelengths.

Rita Black: Wow. That is so fascinating. I was wondering why. ’cause I’ve, I’ve heard of that. Like, go outside, you know, look at the, like, obviously not stare directly into the sun. Just get some light. That is so interesting. Okay. I’m learning so much. Thank you. So talk, let’s talk about inflammation, because you hear like inflammation is sort of the root of all diseases, so to speak. I mean, how do you see that playing a role in anti-aging? Other I mean, is it just disease or is it other factors as well?

Dr. Jeremiah Jimerson: It’s kind of, kind of everything. You know, like, like, you know, all of these things you’ll, you’ll kind of notice kind of blend together, you know, so like, you know, poor gut health or, you know, poor circadian rhythms, all that stuff, you know, poor diet all leads to, to chronic inflammation. And it’s not that inflammation’s bad. Like, you know, if you stub your toe or you know, you hurt yourself, you want that, that, that inflammation to come there. That’s basically what starting the healing process. The issue comes is that when we start getting chronic inflammation for, for periods of time, it’s kind of like fire across all of your, your cells. And so it actua lly accelerates the aging. You know, it’s almost kind of like like getting repeated sunburns. You know, you keep getting burns and burns and burns and your cells keep dividing, dividing, dividing, and you can only, your cells can only divide so many times. And then you start hitting mutations, that’s when you start hitting cancers. So the same thing happens with all the cells across the body. They keep getting that fire, they keep getting that, that chronic inflammation and that causes them to divide, divide, divide. You can only do that so many times before you start hitting those mutations.

Rita Black: Okay. That makes sense. And, and I understand that now. That’s, that’s, I mean, I understand it. I, I understood about inflammation, but I didn’t understand, I had just heard about that our cells will only regenerate so many times, you know? And that is part of the aging process. And I know that they’re working on that. They’re actually doing studies and trying to get cells to do it more to like, with stem cell research and tr trying to regenerate. But I didn’t understand that about if you get to a certain point of regeneration or, or what you’re talking about, like rebooting themselves, basically. They’ll only do that so many times before they start to mutate and That’s the root of cancer for a lot of things.

Dr. Jeremiah Jimerson: Yeah. Yeah. You know, they say, okay, they say chronic inflammation, you know, is causes seven of the top 10, or I’m sorry eight, eight of the top 10 killers of mankind.

Rita Black: Hmm. Okay. You guys heard it here. What is the so when people are coming to you to, you know, upgrade their lifestyle, ’cause you, you’re in order to impact their aging what are some common misconceptions that you see people have about aging?

Dr. Jeremiah Jimerson: A lot of, a lot of things with, with aging is, you know, people are always just, you know, they say it’s, it’s all about my genes. You know, they’re like, if, if grandma had, you know, breast cancer, that that means that I’m gonna have breast cancer. And, you know, I always tell them that they’re not, you’re not married to your genetics, you know? So, so genetics or your genes, they basically load the gun, but it’s your diet and your lifestyle and even your mindset that pull the trigger. You know, so it’s, it’s, we might have, we might have the genetic predisposition for let’s say breast cancer, but then you know, but then maybe your heart on your liver and you know, you drink a bunch and eat some processed foods and that puts pressure on your liver. You’re gonna have a harder time detoxifying your estrogens. And it’s, you know, this this huge web.

Rita Black: Right. Oh, okay. So people it, it, so the biggest misconception is they think they’re, that it’s already, the cast is already di you know, there, they’re not.

Dr. Jeremiah Jimerson: Exactly. Exactly.

Rita Black: But they can, through diet, through exercise, through lifestyle, they can override those negative factors and and getting,

Dr. Jeremiah Jimerson: Yeah, the circadian rhythms, the gut health, like all of that stuff kind of, kind of ties together.

Rita Black: Hmm. Interesting. what would be some ways to hum combat, like inflammation? What would, you know, from your standpoint, how if somebody wanted to start to work on, on lessening their inflammation, what, what would you recommend?

Dr. Jeremiah Jimerson: The, I mean, the, I’d say the easiest thing is just, just really start dialing back on the processed foods. You know, it’s one of your easiest, easiest things. I mean, for, for me you know, for me, one of my biggest like, in terms of like inflammation, one of my, the things that like really hit me hard was you know, I tried everything. You know, I bought a, you know, a $20,000 laser. I bought a hundred thousand dollars whole body cryotherapy system to try to get myself out of pain. Initially in the beginning, cutting gluten out was one of the first, like, wow. You know, and it was, it was a hard thing to, to kind of come to terms with, you know, nobody wants to kinda get rid of gluten. It was in pretty much all of my, my absolute most favorite foods.

Dr. Jeremiah Jimerson: And, you know, in the beginning when I had heard about it, I, you know, I kind of went after it a little, a little half ask, you know, I would cut it out during the during the weekdays, but then I would have all my favorite stuff on the weekends and then really see any difference in terms of like my joint pain. And over a period of time I came across this researcher and this researcher was talking about gluten intolerance, and he was saying, if you’re intolerant, you know, it’s not necessarily like celiac, but if you’re intolerant to, to gluten just the amount found in a communion wafer is enough to cause an inflammatory reaction for nine to 12 weeks afterwards. And I was like, get out of dodge. Like I am, I’m shooting myself in the foot like every single time here. And that’s, that’s kind of what led me to kind of do a Hail Mary and cut it out and just see what happened.

Rita Black: Right. No more communion wafers for you. Cut that out. But yeah, no, I, I can totally, I know when I eat gluten and I don’t think I am intolerant, but I just feel so much better. I, I can tell in my joints. And would you say the same is true for sugar? Like, I mean, maybe different, because obviously gluten has a different impact on the body than sugar does. Oh yeah. But would you say, like, when you say processed foods, because there are a lot of people perhaps in this audience that are eating processed foods that are quote unquote healthy, you know what I mean? Like, we see it as like, like a lot of vegetarian products, right? Like that are, you know, processed because they want to seem like meat, but they’re not, there’s a lot of processing going on. So is it processing in general or is it processed foods that have the trans fats, have the sugar have, you know lots of gluten.

Dr. Jeremiah Jimerson: I’d, I’d say that, that processing in general you know, so even like your organic, healthier, you know, processed foods or whatever, there’s still garbage for you. They might be lesser garbage, they might not have, you know, quite as much of the artificial dyes or pesticides, you know, in it, but it’s still processed. A lot of ’em are still have like, you know, at our, you know, local Whole Foods and, and Earth air, you know, here you know, it’s an entire supermarket devoted to, you know, like health foods and you take a look and, and there’s often canola oil in them, or there’s inflammatory seed oils or there’s, there’s still junk like, you know, gure gum and, and some of these things that, you know, just disrupt your gut bacteria.

Rita Black: Okay. So things like, what are, what are some disruptors that you would say, if we were looking at labels and wanting to avoid the things that would be disruptive to our gut health? What would be some of the bigger things that we would avoid?

Dr. Jeremiah Jimerson: Honestly, avoid the, the biggest stuff that, you know, like if, if I’m looking at, you know, more natural foods and stuff like that, the big things that I’m typically looking at is aside from, you know, gluten and it’s not that I never eat gluten, I just, I really minimize it. But the biggest thing would be seed oils. You know, I really, you know, find canola oil stuff that’s loaded with extra sugars in it and stuff like that. You know, like a lot of times that’s what we also see with, you know, some of the healthier, you know, processed foods is that they’re still adding sugar as well. So I’d say sugar and your inflammatory oils, like any, any type of like seed oil, vegetable oils stuff like that. Cotton seed oil.

Rita Black: Right. Okay. Gotcha. It’s primarily the seed oil, so yeah. And that would be canola, cotton seed. What are some other ones? So like soy, even soy, soy oil. Okay. Well, that’s, that’s very, very helpful because I, I think, yeah, my, my husband, we were, you know, trying to get meat out of our diet not all meat, but just put back, and he went to this special vegetarian store in la which is great. Like, there were a lot of really interesting things there. And I mean, it’s amazing what they’re doing as far as like vegan cheeses that are really, but you do look at the labels and you’re like, wow, there are a lot of ingredients here. And yeah, you know, some of them are fine, but some of them are like, I don’t even know what that ingredient is. So you wonder, is this really, you know, a healthier alternative?

Rita Black: I mean, obviously we don’t want as many animal products in our diet either, because that’s not I mean, you know, it’s just like everybody’s got their own world that they live in and choices that they make. I, but it is, it is interesting to look at those lists of what is in there and go, huh, that’s interesting. I wonder how good that is for me. So when you, when you’re working with people, are you looking at you know, if somebody was coming to you for, or I know you work in groups with people and online do you start with testing first or do you start with, you know, looking at diet? Are you looking at exercise? You know, you know, the whole person.

Dr. Jeremiah Jimerson: We, we did the whole, you know, functional medicine testing stuff for, for a while, for a couple of years. And so functional medicine is typically, you know, like somebody’s gonna come in, they’re gonna pay like, you know, three to $5,000 upfront, you know, to work with somebody for about, you know, six months. And you’re typically running like a thousand dollars in lab tests, you know, after that, that typically aren’t gonna be covered by your in insurance, you know? Right. So we’re taking a look at your gut microbiome, we’re looking at those hormones, all of those other things, you know, so we, we did this stuff and, and, you know, I found myself kind of giving people, you know, tons of supplements. It’s like, you know, another thousands of dollars of supplements. And it just felt like the it just felt like the traditional medical model.

Dr. Jeremiah Jimerson: And so, you know, what I realized was that that everybody needed the same foundational things to start with. They needed to change up their diet, get a rid of a lot of the inflammatory foods they needed to start adding in things like intermittent fasting stress control. They needed to change up their lighting, you know, pretty much all of these, these things. And foundationally, everybody needed this stuff regardless of the testing, regardless of all the different supplements. So we decided to bag all of the supplements. We decided to bag all of the testing and start running people through this kind of group program where we kind of take them through just diet and lifestyle. And it’s, it’s amazing. I mean, you’ll, we have, you know, people that have gotten off their immunosuppressants I mean, yeah. Without adding anything

Rita Black: That’s, that’s, I know, I know functional medicine can be very costly, and it’s, and it is very prohibitive for people who don’t have a lot of money. So it’s great to hear that you’re like looking at basics. It was something we didn’t talk about that I am fascinated in that you mentioned here is hor hormesis, you know, stressing your body out. And, and intermittent fasting does a bit of that, right? Like when you’re fasting, right? That’s putting your body into a stress mode. And I know a lot of people in our audience are intermittent fasts or interested in intermittent fasting but I’m assuming that’s not the only way that you can create hormesis in the body. Like why is hormesis good first, let’s start, start with that. And then you can talk about fasting or, or exercising or

Dr. Jeremiah Jimerson: It, it all, you know, to like really oversimplify like health, it comes down to something called like allostatic load. And it’s just that there has to be balance and, and it comes down to a lot in terms of like balance of stressors. You know, so hormesis is a mild stressor that basically kind of unlocks your body’s physiology, or its pharmaceutical, you know its own pharmaceutical clinic. And and it kind of lets a lot of these chemicals kind of kind of go and all of these are anti-inflammatory and they help your immune system, you know, so like, think of just even exercise, exercise is a hormetic stress, so it’s a mild stress, and if you don’t do enough of it, you’re not gonna see any benefit. And if you do the right amount, you’re gonna see some amazing benefits. And then if you do too much, it’s gonna go the other way. You’re gonna see some pretty bad benefits.. Or, or no negative benefits.

Rita Black: So like, too much exercise or too intensive exercise becomes toxic, whereas like, just the right amount is going to be. Very beneficial. But if you’re just kind of like, not doing so much, it’s not gonna really engage your body.

Dr. Jeremiah Jimerson: Yeah. Or like, like light exposure, you know? If you get, you know even UV, UVB light, you know, if you get no UVB you’re not gonna get any benefit. If you get right the perfect amount of UVB, you’re gonna produce you’re gonna produce more vitamin D we, our skin is actually a huge endocrine organ, so we get the right amount of UVB, it actually helps our hormones if we get too much UVB now we’re gonna get our sunburn, and now we’re gonna start increasing our risk for, for cancer. Or heat stress, you know, that’s, that’s another huge one, you know, so getting, getting into a sauna or cold plunges and kind of getting adapted to, to the cold all of those things are just mild stressors holding your breath, you know free divers all of those mild, mild stresses that, you know, again, if you don’t, you know, if you don’t breathe at all, it’s gonna, things are gonna go south. If you breathe a certain certain amount, you’re gonna get a lot of really good benefits. If you breathe too much now, you actually go the opposite way and you don’t absorb oxygen the same.

Rita Black: Interesting. So we gotta find the balance in everything. Right?

Dr. Jeremiah Jimerson: Always.

Rita Black: What do you see with fasting? Does it, does fasting then for longer spans of time then increase, like, or just keep hormesis going and so that becomes beneficial? Or is that the same? There’s like a balance where you can create too much stress from fasting for too long?

Dr. Jeremiah Jimerson: You can definitely you can definitely push intermittent fasting too, too long. So I’ve been intermittent fasting. I intermittent fasted probably for about 16 years way before it had had gotten popular. And I thought it was amazing. I was like, oh my gosh. Like I, I had always wanted to see like, you know, six pack abs and tried all this stuff, and then I started intermittent fasting and it was in a couple of weeks. I’m like, this is, is amazing. And so I did that for, you know, maybe about 14 years. And then I started kind of playing around with some 24 hour fasting. So like, maybe once a week on top of my 16 hour fast, I would do like a 24 hour fast. Mm-Hmm. And that was hard, you know, I, I felt like I, I hit the wall a little bit with that.

Dr. Jeremiah Jimerson: And due to circumstances I ended up doing twice a week just for, for out of convenience 2 24 hour fasts. And and I was good. I was, I was lean, I was, you know, amped up on, on coffee, but I started noticing that it started interfering with my sleep. And so, you know, again, we, we, it has to be that balance. We start kind of getting too much of a good thing. You know, you’re looking at this like, oh wow, if this is good, if I really do it, you know, that’s gonna be even better. And right. And that is always what, you know, that’s always what, what bites me in the butt. But, you know, again, it’s, it’s has to be, everything always comes down to balance.

Rita Black: Right. Got it. Yeah. I mean, I think our brain just our dopamine center just pushes, like, if we get something going that feels good, we just want more. Oh, then I, I need more of that. And then I need more of that no matter what the thing is. So, very interesting. Well, this has been, so if somebody was gonna take step one, I always ask people, like, if they were just gonna take the first step towards, you know, feeling better, looking better, aging better or aging backwards what would be that first step?

Dr. Jeremiah Jimerson: The very first step? Honestly, I’m gonna say, you know, just focus on your, on your easy stuff. You know, low hanging fruit, I would, would focus on better sleep, you know, eating better, better blood sugar, you know, just little, little things like that. And it’s always, you know, we’re always looking for, for, you know, the most, you know, sexiest, you know, thing, you know, the, these days. But honestly, kind of going back to a lot of the, the basics that, that you just don’t, don’t think of are typically the most powerful.

Rita Black: Right. when you say blood sugar, you mean keeping your blood sugar balanced throughout the day, or making your getting your blood sugar in a good place if it’s all over the place.

Dr. Jeremiah Jimerson: Just keeping it balanced, you know, throughout the day. Yeah. You know, we, we, we wanna be like a, you know, we wanna be like a hybrid car, you know, we want to we want to be able to get into ketosis, you know, so that’s the absence of sugars and carbohydrates, and we wanna be able to kind of you know, basically burn our own body fat for fuel. We want to be able to burn glucose we wanna be able to fast, we wanna be able to, you know, any one of those scenarios, we wanna be able to be strong. So, you know, you want to be metabolically flexible is is typically what they refer to it as.

Rita Black: Hmm. And that, and, and that looks like using fasting as a tool, using blood sugar regulation as a tool, all of those things.

Dr. Jeremiah Jimerson: Yeah. You know, it’s you know, same, same thing, like I was saying, you know, in terms of like too much of good thing, like even ketosis, I, you know, I tried ketosis for, you know, a couple of years and, you know, so as you, as you avoid carbohydrates and as you avoid sugars completely, then you’re gonna see still a little bit more insulin resistance. It’s almost like your body kind of has a harder time kind of processing sugar. So, you know, again, it always has to be, you know, that that balance,

Rita Black: Right? Yeah. I feel like if people get, especially people when they have a history of struggling with weight really get into like that I’m doing it right and I’m doing it wrong. And so if you’re in ketosis, great. But then if you get out, then it’s like it has that booming effect.

Dr. Jeremiah Jimerson: Right. Yeah.

Rita Black: So better to be sort of mindful, balanced and, and find what feels right for you at the time, because you can be, if you are all, if your blood sugar is all over the place, right? If it’s, you know inflexible and you have maybe metabolic syndrome, then, but you can heal that, but then you’re gonna have more sensitivity towards sugar and carbs, right? The more healed you become or more balanced you become. You, you become also more sensitive. Is that, is that right?

Dr. Jeremiah Jimerson: Sensitive? Yeah. Like you’ll, you’ll be able to, a better way to look at it would be you’ll be able to tolerate it more, right? The more sensitive you can, the more sensitive you can kind of get, get your, your insulin. You can eat a, a, an entire cake, all in one sitting, and you’re not gonna gain like, you know, 10 pounds because it was just that one kind of like high blood sugar, you know, event. Or hopefully you’re doing great things like you do, you eat a, an entire cake at one sitting and then, and then you go for a long walk afterwards, which will mitigate a lot of that blood sugar spike. Or make sure you’re making sure that you’re getting appropriate sleep around that, you know, because again, poor sleep is also gonna cause insulin resistance.

Rita Black: Right. Interesting. Well, this has been fantastic. Thank you. You’re incredibly knowledgeable. How do we I’m gonna definitely put all of your information in the show notes, but tell us about your, gonna offer our wonderful Thin Thinking audience a seven day, tell us about your seven day event, or not event, but, tell us about the seven day, I don’t know what to call it, but tell, tell me about the seven day thing.

Dr. Jeremiah Jimerson: I have a, I have a, a free Seven Day Younger You Blueprint Class for you guys. And it should be on my on my bio. I, I’ll give you guys the, the link for below, but it’s a free seven day class and we kind of get a bit deeper into all of these these topics. And then I was I was also telling Rita, I’ll, I’ll put a code in there for you as well. I have a a, a cravings class and it kind of gets down into the physiology and some of the mindset of why people have a lot of food cravings. So I’ll leave that there for you guys as well. That’s a really good class.

Rita Black: Oh, fantastic. I think everybody would love that. All right, well thank you so much Jeremiah, for coming on the Thin Thinking podcast and sharing your knowledge. And this has been really helpful, and we’ll look forward to having you back sometime soon. But good luck with everything and good luck with your health.

Dr. Jeremiah Jimerson: I appreciate it. Thanks for having me.

Rita Black: Okay, terrific. Thank you so much.

Dr. Jeremiah Jimerson: All right, bye now.

Rita Black: Thank you, Dr. Jimerson. And if you would like to connect with Dr. Jimerson or learn more about how he helps people age more gracefully, please check out all the details in the show notes. Have a great week. And remember that the key and probably the only key to unlocking the door of the weight struggle is inside you. So keep listening and find it, and I will be here with you next week.

Rita Black: You wanna dive deeper into the mindset of long-term weight release, head on over to www.shiftweightmastery.com. That’s www.shiftweightmastery.com, where you’ll find numerous tools and resources to help you unlock your mind for permanent weight release tips, strategies, and more. And be sure to check the show notes to learn more about my book From Fat to Thin Thinking. Unlock Your Mind for Permanent Weight Loss.