The Game Changers

And he's down at the line of scrimmage, 693 00:30:45,609 --> 00:30:47,493 in the arms of Derrick Morgan. 694 00:30:47,495 --> 00:30:50,029 <i>Derrick Morgan had been on a similar journey.</i> 695 00:30:50,031 --> 00:30:52,955 In the NFL, the injury rate is a 100 percent. 696 00:30:53,916 --> 00:30:55,438 It's a violent game. 697 00:30:55,463 --> 00:30:57,524 He's hit hard and goes down there. 698 00:30:57,549 --> 00:30:58,536 And so, how you respond 699 00:30:58,561 --> 00:30:59,305 to injury 700 00:30:59,307 --> 00:31:00,171 and how quickly you heal 701 00:31:00,196 --> 00:31:01,240 from injury 702 00:31:01,242 --> 00:31:04,210 is important because if you're not on the field, 703 00:31:04,212 --> 00:31:07,012 you're not helping the team. I was reading the research 704 00:31:07,014 --> 00:31:08,514 and seeing that a plant-based diet 705 00:31:08,516 --> 00:31:11,183 could be beneficial, specifically for recovery. 706 00:31:11,185 --> 00:31:13,018 And so I started incorporating it 707 00:31:13,237 --> 00:31:15,370 and I started seeing really good results with it. 708 00:31:15,489 --> 00:31:19,024 I was recovering better. I wasn't getting as sore. 709 00:31:19,026 --> 00:31:20,826 I was a lot less swollen. 710 00:31:21,329 --> 00:31:24,296 Basically, to confirm what I was feeling, 711 00:31:24,632 --> 00:31:25,764 I got my blood tested. 712 00:31:26,500 --> 00:31:28,834 Six months after being on the diet, 713 00:31:28,836 --> 00:31:30,236 all of my markers were down, 714 00:31:30,238 --> 00:31:32,204 My blood pressure, my cholesterol. 715 00:31:32,206 --> 00:31:33,772 But the main thing I was looking at 716 00:31:33,774 --> 00:31:37,009 was the inflammation marker in your blood and mine was... 717 00:31:37,411 --> 00:31:39,845 almost obsolete. It wasn't there anymore. 718 00:31:40,948 --> 00:31:42,248 A whole food, plant-based diet 719 00:31:42,250 --> 00:31:44,583 is gonna optimize the growth of blood vessels 720 00:31:44,585 --> 00:31:45,584 into damaged tissue. 721 00:31:45,586 --> 00:31:48,988 It's gonna lay down new tissue in tendons and muscles. 722 00:31:49,190 --> 00:31:51,156 It's gonna stimulate their immune system 723 00:31:51,158 --> 00:31:54,560 to fight off infections. So almost at every level, 724 00:31:54,929 --> 00:31:56,228 eating the right foods 725 00:31:56,230 --> 00:31:59,102 is going to accelerate the healing process. 726 00:32:00,368 --> 00:32:01,934 <i>Six weeks into my personal</i> 727 00:32:01,936 --> 00:32:03,068 <i>plant based experiment,</i> 728 00:32:03,070 --> 00:32:05,771 <i>I went to the gym to see if I could notice a difference.</i> 729 00:32:06,173 --> 00:32:08,407 <i>I wasn't able to spar or wrestle yet,</i> 730 00:32:08,409 --> 00:32:10,676 <i>so I decided to hit the battling ropes.</i> 731 00:32:11,312 --> 00:32:13,879 <i>At my gym, lasting ten minutes on the ropes,</i> 732 00:32:13,881 --> 00:32:15,324 <i>gets your name on the wall.</i> 733 00:32:15,349 --> 00:32:17,983 <i>Only a few people had ever hit 20 minutes.</i> 734 00:32:18,352 --> 00:32:20,185 <i>Even at the peak of my conditioning,</i> 735 00:32:20,187 --> 00:32:22,354 <i>the most I'd ever got was eight minutes.</i> 736 00:32:22,356 --> 00:32:25,157 - James, keep it going. <i>- but on this day,</i> 737 00:32:25,159 --> 00:32:26,925 <i>I hit ten minutes easily.</i> 738 00:32:27,728 --> 00:32:28,927 <i>Then I hit 20...</i> 739 00:32:29,497 --> 00:32:32,865 <i>- Thirty.</i> - You're at 45 minutes. 740 00:32:33,434 --> 00:32:36,568 <i>I thought, "Holy shit, I'm gonna do an hour."</i> 741 00:32:37,238 --> 00:32:38,504 <i>I went past the hour mark</i> 742 00:32:38,529 --> 00:32:40,495 <i>by about one minute and just thought,</i> 743 00:32:41,008 --> 00:32:42,808 <i>"All right, that'll do."</i> 744 00:32:43,477 --> 00:32:45,277 I can't believe you just did that, man. 745 00:32:45,680 --> 00:32:48,614 <i>The only thing that had changed was my diet.</i> 746 00:32:49,650 --> 00:32:51,517 I could have kept going. 747 00:32:51,519 --> 00:32:53,118 That's way over the record right? 748 00:32:53,120 --> 00:32:55,287 Yeah. A freaking hour. 749 00:32:58,459 --> 00:32:59,758 <i>When I was growing up,</i> 750 00:32:59,760 --> 00:33:03,329 <i>the toughest guy in the world to me was my Dad.</i> 751 00:33:04,198 --> 00:33:06,332 <i>He taught me the value of self-defense</i> 752 00:33:06,834 --> 00:33:09,768 <i>and was always there to help me when I got into trouble.</i> 753 00:33:12,506 --> 00:33:16,041 <i>But now, he was the one who needed help.</i> 754 00:33:18,312 --> 00:33:20,546 <i>- You had a heart attack? - Correct.</i> 755 00:33:20,748 --> 00:33:22,781 <i>Had you had much in the way of symptoms prior</i> 756 00:33:22,783 --> 00:33:25,517 <i>- to this episode? - No, never before, the first..