0:00

Coming up on today's show. Everyone

0:02

needs to care about this because

0:04

metabolism and metabolic health, it is

0:06

the core foundational layer that all

0:08

health is built upon. That is

0:11

the biggest blind spot in Western

0:13

healthcare is that our drugs and

0:15

our surgeries and our specialists are

0:17

not treating that trunk of the

0:19

tree. They're playing whack-a-mole reactive medicine

0:21

with the downstream symptoms of that

0:23

core process. Step one is

0:26

mitochondrial dysfunction. Step two

0:28

is insulin resistance leading to high

0:30

insulin levels, but glucose stays normal.

0:32

And step three, far down the road of

0:35

metabolic dysfunction, is both insulin levels and glucose

0:37

levels are high in the blood. The reason

0:39

we're eating ourselves to death, literally in the United

0:41

States, in the Western world, is because our

0:43

bodies aren't actually getting what they need. And

0:46

so they're driving us to eat insatiably in

0:48

hopes of the cells getting what they need

0:50

to function properly. We literally 3D

0:52

print a new version of our body every

0:54

single day. The body we had five years

0:56

ago is molecularly completely different than the body

0:58

we have today. We are dynamic processes. And

1:00

the beauty of that is that we can

1:03

constantly improve. Casey,

1:05

for somebody that wants to dive deeper

1:07

into this realm of metabolic health, assessing

1:10

where they're at on that spectrum, and

1:13

then optimizing, how do you

1:15

recommend they begin? You know, Jesse, I

1:17

think the first step is to just to really start

1:19

basic. There are literally six

1:21

biomarkers that we can get for free,

1:25

generally, on our annual physical that our doctors

1:27

will not fight us about, that

1:29

can give us a snapshot of sort of

1:31

the basics of whether we are in the

1:33

right spot on the metabolic spectrum. So

1:36

that's where I would start. Of course, the sky's

1:38

the limit with lab testing and biomarkers, but just

1:40

getting a fasting glucose, triglyceride,

1:42

A1c, HDL cholesterol, blood

1:46

pressure, and waist circumference.

1:50

Those right there can be super,

1:52

super helpful. So

1:55

when you actually look at the data that's come

1:57

out from the American College of

1:59

Cardiology, as of... two years ago,

2:01

2022, if you met

2:03

the optimal criteria for

2:05

those biomarkers, you were

2:08

part of just 6.8% of, this

2:10

was Americans, but of Americans

2:12

who met optimal criteria for

2:14

metabolic health. So what I

2:16

would do for people listening is just like get your, you

2:19

know, results from your last annual physical, look up

2:21

to see if you got these labs and you

2:23

want to look for fasting glucose under 100, triglycerides

2:25

under 150, A1C less than 5.7%, HDL above 40 for

2:34

men or 50 for women, waist circumference less

2:36

than 35 inches for women and 40 inches

2:38

for men and blood pressure less than 120

2:40

over 80. And also they looked

2:42

at total cholesterol over HDL cholesterol of

2:44

a 3.5 to 1 ratio. So

2:46

those are cumulatively maybe $100 of

2:49

tests if you pay out

2:51

of pocket, but often free. And that will tell you

2:53

whether you're in that 6.8%.

2:56

And so every single person should really

2:58

know where they stand just on those

3:00

basics. And then from there, tons more tests

3:02

you can do to get richness, the metabolic health picture,

3:05

but I would have everyone start with those. You

3:07

mentioned that number 6.8%, which

3:09

is just staggering. Do you feel like in

3:11

the last couple of years, that's gotten better

3:13

or worse? It's getting worse. It's

3:16

actually getting worse pretty much every single

3:18

year. And it's especially

3:20

going up in children. The

3:23

worsening rates, we're

3:25

seeing that in the US right now, about

3:27

30% of teens are now pre-diabetic.

3:29

So that is something that probably

3:31

an endocrinologist may have never seen

3:34

50 years ago, like a kid who has

3:36

acquired blood sugar problems. This is

3:38

different than type 1 diabetes. This is

3:40

the road to type 2 diabetes in

3:42

teens. So it's really this is a,

3:45

this constellation of blood sugar problems,

3:47

metabolic problems, mitochondrial dysfunction, insulin resistance,

3:49

all kind of synonyms for the

3:51

same thing. It's absolutely just ravaging our

3:54

population at unprecedented rates. And there's really

3:56

no signs that it's getting better. So

3:58

this is why I've course, the message

4:00

of the book and you know, what

4:03

you're doing and so many other people in this space

4:05

are doing is we got to we got to get

4:07

on top of this for ourselves, because unfortunately, the

4:09

system right now is not incentivized to focus

4:11

on underlying metabolic

4:13

root cause foundational health.

4:16

So we need to really understand for ourselves where we

4:18

stand and then take the steps to really optimize

4:21

it. And actually, just to highlight

4:25

what how it has worsened over the past few years,

4:27

I think COVID of course, took it was a

4:29

big hit because people were at home and you

4:32

know, the gyms were closed and whatnot. But there

4:34

was a study in 2018 from UNC that showed that

4:38

12% of American adults

4:40

were metabolically healthy. And then in

4:43

2022, a study with fairly similar biomarkers

4:45

that we're looking at showed that it

4:47

was 6.8%. So that's a big jump in just

4:50

four years. While now we

4:52

know how to test, we know it's a

4:54

major problem for a lot of people, at

4:56

least in the US. And we're assuming that

4:58

would extrapolate to you know, a lot of

5:01

the Western world. Let's

5:03

get into some of the physiology of why

5:05

that's a problem. Why should people care that

5:08

this is happening? You know, the

5:10

simple way to think about it is

5:12

that everyone needs to care about this

5:14

because metabolism and metabolic health, it is

5:16

the core foundational layer that all

5:18

health is built upon. So it's kind

5:20

of that thing of like, it's like,

5:22

it's the gas in the car. And

5:24

so no matter how fancy your car

5:26

is, how many bells and whistles, if

5:28

there's not gas, it will not run.

5:31

And that's what our metabolic health

5:33

is. So, you know, people

5:35

might think of metabolic health as like

5:37

another issue, you know, another disease that

5:39

we need to think about. But actually, the reframe

5:42

is that it's foundational to pretty much every

5:44

disease we're seeing in the chronic Western world.

5:46

So in our system right now,

5:48

we're very focused on like, each disease is in

5:50

its own little silo, you know, arthritis is in

5:53

a silo. And you see, you know, one doctor

5:55

for that and cancers in a silo and dementia is in

5:57

a silo and fatty liver disease in a silo and obesity is

5:59

in a silo. and type 2 diabetes is an isylo and

6:01

depression is an isylo. And you, of course, would see different

6:03

doctors for all those things. We actually look

6:05

at the true science and the true

6:08

physiology of what is the cellular biology

6:10

that's leading to a lot of these diseases

6:12

we're seeing rise in rates in the Western

6:14

world. The trunk of the tree of all

6:17

of those is this

6:19

metabolic dysfunction, which is fundamentally an

6:21

under-powering of our cells, just

6:23

like any car, any machine, any factory,

6:26

any city that is doing complex

6:28

work, if it doesn't have power, if it

6:30

doesn't have energy, it will malfunction. And

6:33

so because we have 200 plus different

6:35

types of

6:38

cells in our body, we've got our retinal

6:40

cells and our endothelial cells and our liver cells

6:42

and multiple different types of brain cells, under-powering

6:45

a core process, metabolic dysfunction,

6:47

in different cell types can

6:49

look like different things. And

6:52

in our Western system where we style everything, we treat

6:54

them as different things. But the news

6:56

that people really need to understand and

6:59

what I really hope and envision for the future of the healthcare

7:02

system is that we actually start looking

7:04

at these diseases based on their core cellular

7:06

physiology and what's going wrong. And what we'd

7:08

find then is that we actually have much

7:10

less to treat if we treat the true

7:12

root causes, which in many cases, metabolic dysfunction,

7:14

so many of these downstream symptoms,

7:17

which are basically the result of

7:19

under-powering showing up in different cell

7:21

types would melt away. That

7:23

is the biggest blind spot in Western

7:26

healthcare is that our drugs and our

7:28

surgeries and our specialists are not treating

7:30

that trunk of the tree. They're

7:33

playing whack-a-mole reactive medicine

7:35

with the downstream symptoms of that

7:37

core process, which is why, you

7:40

know, we're already spending four trillion dollars per year

7:42

in the US on healthcare and outcomes are just

7:45

getting worse. We could spend 20 trillion dollars

7:47

on this approach of whack-a-mole reactive medicine.

7:49

We're not gonna get healthy as a country.

7:52

We just have to redirect that, those resources

7:54

towards the real problem that's happening

7:57

inside the cells, which is the metabolic dysfunction. That's

7:59

why everyone needs... care because all

8:02

symptoms, all diseases are, they have

8:04

to be the result of cellular dysfunction.

8:07

This is so funny because it's not even something I learned in medical school. It's

8:09

like, it makes sense though. If you

8:11

have a symptom and if you have a disease, we're

8:13

100% made of cells. So it has to

8:16

be the result of some dysfunction in cells. So

8:18

really medicine should be always focused on what

8:20

is causing that dysfunction and what is the

8:22

dysfunction. That's not how we practice medicine. We

8:24

just describe diseases based on their symptoms and

8:26

we try and ameliorate the symptom. So

8:30

necessarily the pain that we're feeling, any

8:32

suffering that we're feeling in our lives is the

8:34

result of cellular dysfunction. Now, what

8:37

I would recommend to people who are, who

8:39

anyone who does not have optimal health, the

8:42

exact health they want, limitless health, feeling incredible

8:44

every single day, any symptoms, I

8:46

would recommend they go down the route

8:48

of examining their metabolic health because now,

8:52

93% of Americans have dysfunction. So

8:55

it's not to say that all depression is caused

8:57

by metabolic dysfunction or all arthritis is

8:59

caused by metabolic dysfunction, but for

9:01

93% of us, that

9:04

is one of the causes of dysfunction

9:06

in our cells. So we have to

9:08

basically all investigate it. And the beautiful

9:10

thing is we can understand it

9:12

with biomarkers and we can improve it

9:14

rapidly. So I just think that

9:17

literally if people are dealing with any symptoms,

9:19

it is a route to investigate

9:22

because it may be something, a knob you can

9:24

turn, which can make your symptoms better. And

9:27

the fact that all this comes down to a

9:29

common route, I would argue is a really good

9:31

thing. Can you imagine if as individuals, we had

9:33

to go to the doctor and have all the

9:36

different, you mentioned the different types of cells investigated

9:38

and then find out what ones are affected

9:41

and then them having different causes, what's affecting

9:43

them. The good news in all of

9:45

this is the fact that it is a

9:48

common route. And there only

9:50

is a handful of really important inputs that

9:53

we're going to get into that impact the

9:55

route that we can get

9:57

in and reverse and prevent all these. diseases?

10:01

Exactly. That is the great news. It is literally

10:03

the great news. It's great news for

10:05

patients, but you know who it's not great

10:07

news for? It's not great

10:09

news for the bottom line of

10:11

the healthcare system. So that's why

10:13

we're not hearing about this because,

10:15

you know, the four trillion dollars

10:17

of spending that's happening is literally

10:20

predicated on us believing that it's

10:22

more complicated than it is and

10:24

that we do need to see

10:26

the neurologist and the rheumatologist and the

10:28

endocrinologist and the obesity medicine doctor and

10:30

the MSK doctor. Like that is to

10:34

make that system continue churning this engine,

10:36

which is the largest

10:38

industry in the United States for

10:40

that to keep returning, you know,

10:43

returns to the shareholders. We

10:45

have to basically not believe that

10:48

it's actually a lot simpler than

10:51

we're led to believe. And so it's

10:53

good news for us. The reason we

10:55

haven't heard about it is because it's

10:57

not good news for a

11:00

huge, huge global industry. And

11:02

so, you know, that's really the message that that, you

11:05

know, we're here to share, which is that, you know,

11:07

you got to kind of figure this out for yourself

11:09

and get on top of it. We

11:12

talked about testing early on in the

11:14

conversation and the importance of using those

11:16

tests to objectively see where we are

11:18

on that metabolic health spectrum. For

11:21

somebody who's tuning in right now and

11:24

they might not have recent blood work done and

11:26

they just want to get started. Obviously

11:29

most of the people are affected by this,

11:32

but other good news is the things

11:34

we're gonna get into are just these

11:36

diet and lifestyle practices that are foundational

11:40

for us as human beings to

11:42

thrive. So you don't necessarily need

11:44

to get the testing done, you can just start applying

11:46

this and then next time you get blood work done

11:48

you can assess where you're at at that point. Absolutely,

11:51

yeah. I mean the lab testing

11:53

is helpful to kind of know

11:56

what our baseline is and I

11:59

think have some of that motor motivation to

12:02

really implement these practices. But

12:04

you're exactly right. The

12:06

lifestyle and dietary principles that

12:08

fundamentally are what nudge these

12:11

core cellular processes towards

12:14

function, those

12:16

really can be applied by all of us no matter

12:19

whether we have the tests or not. And

12:21

the beauty is tests are great

12:24

and we have access to them. And that's

12:26

a really exciting thing and where we're at

12:28

in human history. But we have this other

12:30

incredible wealth of information that we can tap

12:32

into, which is free. It's how

12:34

do we feel? It's our symptoms.

12:37

And so I think something so fascinating about

12:39

our modern world that I think is tied up in some

12:42

of these, you know, poor

12:44

incentives of healthcare is that we

12:46

have been, I think as modern Americans,

12:49

like we're so busy. We're

12:51

just so much of our

12:53

value in our society, our Western

12:55

Capitalistic Society is about like how busy can you

12:57

be? How fast can you be moving? How many

12:59

people can you be in contact with at one

13:02

second? How much are you multitasking? How much of

13:04

a boss babe are you? All these things. It's

13:06

literally like this is your value. And

13:08

so because of that, a side effect

13:10

has been that we literally, I think are in

13:13

some ways can't even hear the signals our bodies are telling

13:15

us. Like I'm bloated. Like

13:17

what does that mean? When do I get bloated? Is

13:19

it after certain meals? Is it after, you know,

13:21

how's my digestion today versus yesterday? How's my sleep?

13:24

How is my joint? How are my joints feeling?

13:26

How does my skin look? Like how's my hair?

13:29

Our body is literally telling us how the cellular

13:31

function is doing 24 hours a day, seven days

13:33

a week. If we

13:35

choose to slow down and actually

13:37

hear it and listen and not just,

13:40

you know, jam over

13:42

the counter medications in our body to try

13:44

and basically tamp down on symptoms. Like you

13:46

think about what is CVS or Walgreens,

13:48

these huge, you know, big box stores.

13:52

All throughout, you know, I'm speaking about America here.

13:54

I know you're in Canada, but probably different brands,

13:56

but these are just giant

13:59

stores. whose basically purpose is to

14:01

take a hammer to all your symptoms. So not

14:03

only are we so busy, we can't hear our

14:05

bodies. We have a symptom

14:07

and our culture is about like symptoms are

14:10

intolerable. Smash it, smash the

14:12

headache, smash the joint pain, smash the

14:15

neck pain, smash the reflux.

14:17

There's a pill for everything. But

14:20

a real different vision is, what

14:23

if we just listen to those and actually

14:25

started to see the patterns and slow down

14:27

a little bit? So yeah, biomarkers are great.

14:29

But our bodies are constantly giving us free

14:31

information. We have to listen. And that means

14:33

actually setting better boundaries in our lives

14:35

and slowing the heck down. Because

14:38

the system is trying to squeeze every ounce of

14:40

profit out of us, both our time and busyness

14:42

and also, of course, our healthcare dollars. And

14:44

it's really our job and only our job as

14:46

individuals to decide whether we're going to say no

14:49

to that. And so symptoms are

14:51

one way to do that. Biomarkers are, of

14:53

course, a higher level. Yeah.

14:57

And I think part of the challenge in all this

14:59

is the fact that so many people are sick. Coming

15:01

back to that six, seven percent, it's

15:04

normalized in society that we're going

15:06

to be sick and feel these different

15:08

symptoms. So not only are

15:10

we busy and probably pushing them aside,

15:13

they've been normalized because when we interact with

15:16

friends and family, they're likely going to

15:18

be experiencing them too. And

15:20

when people normalize these things, it can be easy

15:22

to just push them aside instead of using them

15:24

as a tool to get to the root of

15:26

the problem. Yeah. Mark Hyman

15:29

calls it FLC syndrome. We're all

15:31

walking around with feel like crap syndrome.

15:33

And since everyone's in that boat, we

15:36

just don't even know that it's a thing. And I

15:38

think, you know, really

15:40

what our birthright is as these

15:42

like spectacular bodies is

15:45

actually to feel energetic,

15:47

joyful, fulfilled, happy,

15:50

high on life most days.

15:52

Like that's what we should be striving for.

15:54

And that's almost a vision that I think

15:57

we can barely even talk about today. It

16:00

seems so out of reach, I

16:02

think, like that could never happen.

16:04

It can happen for so many of us.

16:06

And so I think like, that's just a message I want

16:08

to share with people. The body

16:10

is constantly rebuilding itself every

16:13

single day. We literally 3D

16:15

print a new version of our body every single day.

16:17

The body we had five

16:19

years ago is molecularly completely different

16:21

than the body we have today. We

16:24

are a dynamic processes. And the beauty of

16:26

that, the beauty of our true nature as

16:28

humans that are constantly, billions

16:31

of cells are dying every day and being

16:34

reborn, is that we can constantly

16:37

improve. And we can, even if

16:39

we're in a dark spot health wise, the

16:41

body of a year from now can be

16:44

completely different. And that's because of our true

16:46

nature as processes.

16:48

You know, and I think another thing the Western

16:50

system has done has really made us attach this

16:53

idea that we're the static body. Like I'm Casey,

16:55

I'm a thing, I'm alive, and then I die.

16:57

That like couldn't be farther from the

16:59

truth. We are constantly dying and being

17:02

reborn. And we take in 70 metric tons

17:04

of food in our lifetime that is literally,

17:06

we take those atoms

17:08

from the food and just reprint their bodies

17:10

every single day. And you

17:12

know, we shed our entire skin lining every couple of weeks

17:14

and rebuild it, gut lining, etc. So the

17:17

news is hopeful. Like we actually

17:19

really can, even

17:21

if we're in a dark health spot, move

17:24

towards health. And that is such

17:26

a beautiful aspect of our biology that is

17:28

awe inspiring that I think sometimes we

17:31

have blinders on too, because we're very

17:33

attached to this idea that, you know,

17:36

we are what we are. And this is

17:38

the card we've been dealt. And that's not

17:40

true from a biologic perspective. And

17:43

the good news keeps on coming. We're

17:45

saying all these good things other than the fact

17:47

that we've as a society gone to this place

17:49

where most people are sick. Other

17:52

than that, acknowledging where we're at and being open

17:55

and honest that we are in this position.

17:58

That is sad. Other

18:00

than that, it's all good news. Again,

18:02

the fact that we're going to get

18:04

into these levers, and there are things

18:06

that we can apply at home, and

18:08

our body is dynamic, and it's always

18:10

rebuilding. So there's a lot of

18:13

hope in this message, which is great. Also,

18:15

the biggest point of hope, I think, is that we

18:18

literally got ourselves into this mess in like 75

18:20

years. Humans have

18:22

been around for tens of thousands of years,

18:25

behaviorally modern humans, many, many more than

18:27

that, just in terms of homo sapiens.

18:30

And it's like 75

18:32

years, we screwed this up. And two interesting

18:34

things have happened. Life expectancy has gone way

18:36

up in the past hundred years, in

18:39

part because, or mostly because

18:41

of acute interventions, sanitation, hygiene,

18:44

antibiotics. We have figured out a

18:46

way to help with things that are going to

18:48

immediately kill us. Infant mortality

18:51

was like 30% in like 1900. It

18:53

was huge. So that's great. We

18:56

should take that with us in the future.

18:58

That's good. We're not rejecting

19:00

any of that. Acute interventions, yes, amazing.

19:03

But we have screwed up our lifestyle

19:05

and the way that our modern environment

19:07

is affecting ourselves over the past 75

19:10

years, basically since 30s and

19:12

40s onward. So we

19:14

kind of just have to backpedal. This has

19:16

been a big experiment in industrialization and medicalizing

19:19

chronic disease, and the experiment has

19:22

failed. We know that we're

19:24

all sick as hell, but it's not

19:26

like it's been, we know what's happened

19:29

and what has changed in the past 75 years. And

19:32

it's not that complicated. And

19:34

so I think that's also the hopeful news. You're

19:37

going to see the headlines that say, cancer rates are

19:39

going to the roof and no one knows why. Infertility

19:42

is going up and no one knows why. That's

19:44

not true because they're going up rapidly and

19:47

we know how the environment has changed. So

19:49

I think a big

19:51

part of this invitation

19:53

is standing on your own

19:55

two feet and not letting the

19:58

environment and the new cycle make

20:01

you feel like you

20:03

don't have the common sense that you need

20:06

to understand what's going on. Like you do.

20:08

And so that's really a big message of

20:10

the book is, we need

20:12

to all just like kind of look up, pop up and

20:14

look around and see what's been happening and what the trends

20:16

are. And then figure out how to

20:18

backpedal a little bit so we can protect ourselves

20:20

so they can do their best work and give us a

20:22

healthy and happy life. For somebody

20:25

tuning in who wants to take that invitation,

20:27

plant their flag into the ground today and

20:29

start to make the changes. Let's

20:32

start with what the biggest lever is and

20:34

then go down from there and talk about how

20:36

we begin to rebuild. Yeah. So

20:40

the biggest lever is food. You

20:43

know, for me, it's always starts with food

20:46

because we are 100% molecularly made from

20:50

food. That's the reality. You

20:52

know, we transfer food outside of us into

20:54

the atoms that make up our body. And

20:56

so there's just no avoiding the fact that

20:59

since our cells are totally built from food,

21:01

we've got to get it right. To

21:04

just sort of name, I think the other

21:06

pillars that we want to examine and take stock

21:08

of, we've got food, we've got our movement habits,

21:10

we've got our sleep habits, we've got our emotional

21:12

health and stress. We've got

21:15

our exposure to toxins in the food, water,

21:17

air, personal care products, homes. We've

21:19

got our relationship to light, blue light,

21:21

sunlight, and they've got our relationship to

21:23

temperature. And actually, temperature has changed a lot

21:26

in the way we

21:28

interact with temperature as humans

21:30

as we've moved indoors with

21:32

thermostats and heating. And so

21:35

those are kind of the big levers

21:37

that have changed rapidly. And

21:39

of those, I mean, each of them feels like

21:41

a little baby that we could have a whole

21:43

episode about that we can run to the high

21:45

points of all of them. But food, it's

21:48

just really unavoidable that we've got to get

21:50

that right. And right now, our

21:53

food system, and this is one of those things that has changed

21:55

over the past 75 years. 70%

21:58

of our calories are coming from... industrially

22:00

manufactured ultra processed

22:02

foods. This is Frankenfood

22:05

that our body does not understand that

22:07

is unnatural and which is confusing our

22:09

bodies, damaging our bodies and not giving

22:11

our bodies what it actually needs to

22:13

function. So on multiple levels, it's hurting us. So

22:16

this has been a rapid experimental change

22:18

in society. It has failed and

22:21

we know that it's causing disease. We know that

22:23

it's hurting us. We know that it's hurting our

22:25

children. So number one on food is

22:28

moving away from the experiment

22:30

of ultra processed food and saying,

22:32

saying no to it and

22:35

de-normalizing it. If someone from

22:37

1920 or 1900 came into our culture now and looked at our

22:40

grocery stores, they would not know what

22:42

was going on. It is so different

22:45

from what things were. We were eating, you know,

22:48

natural foods, more locally grown

22:50

from good soil that wasn't covered

22:52

in synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. So

22:55

much more nutrient rich, you know,

22:57

that's what we need to get back to. And

22:59

so the big message on food is we

23:01

need to be giving our bodies the

23:04

molecular information to function

23:08

properly and to be built properly. And

23:10

that means moving back towards, uh,

23:13

towards unprocessed, clean food

23:15

from good soil. Um, so

23:17

that's kind of the highest level of the food. Modern

23:21

life is stressful and stress

23:23

silently robs your body of magnesium, which

23:25

is a vital mineral our bodies depend

23:28

on. If you're not careful, you

23:30

can get caught up in the vicious

23:32

stress magnesium deficiency cycle and

23:34

it's simplest form. It starts with modern

23:36

life stress. This depletes your

23:38

body of magnesium. Your sleep

23:40

becomes negatively impacted. So you have

23:43

less energy and productivity and your

23:45

stress level skyrocket. Increased

23:48

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23:51

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23:53

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23:55

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24:33

help of magnesium breakthrough. As

24:35

you give that explanation, it kind of

24:37

jumps out at me the fact that

24:39

when we're looking at food, there's the

24:42

input aspect and feeding ourselves and feeding

24:44

our body what it needs nutrition wise

24:46

and then avoiding the toxins. So

24:50

for somebody you mentioned, ultra processed

24:52

foods for somebody that's a new

24:54

term to talk about

24:56

specifically what that is because there's this

24:58

gray area continuing

25:01

to develop even in the health space

25:03

where there's, you

25:05

know, classic chips, there's

25:07

chips like kind of in a gray area and

25:09

then there's certain brands coming out with better options

25:11

that are fried in avocado oil. And

25:14

we could do this on and on with a

25:16

lot of different products where there's this continuum and

25:19

not necessarily everything in a package is

25:21

bad. So let's talk

25:23

about what that line is for you when

25:26

we're talking about ultra processed foods. Yeah,

25:28

absolutely. Well, I'm going to steal this

25:31

from Dr. Rob Lustig, who

25:33

gives a great, very simplistic

25:35

way of understanding the

25:39

processing of food. So

25:41

first of all, there is a classification system that has

25:44

been created, which it's good to get familiar with,

25:46

which basically is a spectrum of how

25:48

processed a food in food is. And there's

25:50

group one, which is

25:52

unprocessed or minimally processed. And this is what

25:54

we want 100% of our food to

25:56

really come from. There's group two,

25:58

which is processed culinary ingredients. So

26:00

these are like salt, sugars, oils, things

26:02

that get added to unprocessed

26:04

or mentally processed foods to make them a

26:07

group three, which is a processed food. So

26:09

processed food is something that

26:12

has been, you know, in

26:14

some way gone through processing like

26:16

cooking or mixing with other ingredients

26:18

like processed culinary ingredients to create

26:20

something new. And then ultra

26:23

processed is where actually the food has been

26:25

broken down into its constituent parts,

26:27

like a starch, like you take a whole

26:30

grain and you get rid of the bran

26:32

and, you know, the fibrous parts

26:34

and you just get the starchy,

26:36

you know, endosperm. And

26:39

then you take that and you mix

26:41

it with other individual components from foods.

26:43

They've been broken down into these like

26:46

parts and then put back together in

26:48

a Frankenstein like way to create something

26:50

that has never really before

26:52

been seen in nature. So if you take

26:54

this is the Rob Luster example, you take

26:56

an apple. So unprocessed is

26:58

you walk up to an apple tree and you take

27:01

an apple off the tree and you eat it. That's

27:03

unprocessed. Nothing has happened to the apple. Minimally

27:06

processed is that that

27:09

apple was washed and

27:11

cut into slices and

27:13

then, you know, put in a

27:15

little package and sold in the grocery store. That's

27:18

minimally processed. The apple has not been

27:20

changed. Nothing has been added or extracted,

27:22

but it's been modified in some way.

27:25

If the apple was frozen, vacuum

27:27

sealed, you

27:30

know, blanched and then, you

27:32

know, packaged in a can, but

27:35

nothing added, that's minimally processed. Then

27:38

you get to processed, which is

27:40

basically if the apple were turned into applesauce.

27:43

So it was cooked, it was

27:45

macerated, it was, you know, maybe

27:48

some sugar was added to it,

27:50

a little bit of salt and cinnamon, and then

27:53

it was put in a package. So not terrible,

27:55

but still, you know, not the same as minimally

27:57

processed. And then, ultra

27:59

processed. is that apple goes to a

28:01

factory and preservatives,

28:06

colorings,

28:08

flavor enhancers are added and it's turned

28:10

into an apple pie at McDonald's. That's

28:12

the ultra-processed apple. So maybe apple flavoring

28:15

was added as well. So there's a

28:17

tiny bit of highly processed apple in

28:19

there, but very far from the

28:21

tree. And so we know that

28:23

the more of your diet you're eating from

28:25

that ultra-processed category, the more likely you're going

28:27

to get chronic diseases and reduce lifespan. And

28:29

the more you're eating

28:33

from that minimally processed and unprocessed,

28:35

the better you're going to do

28:37

because for several reasons. One is

28:40

that the moment

28:43

a plant is basically taken

28:45

out of the ground or off the tree, removed

28:47

from its life source, it

28:50

starts degrading its nutrients. So

28:52

you start losing nutrients once that piece

28:54

of food is removed from its life

28:56

source. That makes total sense, right? It's

28:58

degrading. There's

29:00

been studies looking at what happens to

29:02

vitamin C concentration in each day after

29:05

various vegetables have been pulled from the

29:07

ground and it just precipitously drops. So

29:09

one of the reasons why unprocessed and

29:11

fresher food is so good for us is

29:13

because it's literally going to have more of the health-promoting

29:16

molecular information that your body needs to both be

29:18

built from and also to function.

29:20

And then the

29:22

second piece is that once you process a

29:24

food, a lot of the nutrients further get

29:26

stripped off. So you're taking a food, keeping

29:29

it away from its source for a long period

29:31

of time, and then stripping more from it through

29:33

processing. And then of course, like you

29:35

said, as you get to ultra-processing,

29:37

you add things to the food that can

29:39

be damaged into our cells and create inflammation

29:41

and oxidative stress and things like that, like

29:44

these colorings and preservatives and flavor enhancers,

29:46

emulsifiers, all these types of things get

29:48

added to ultra-processed foods. So that's

29:51

really why keeping it mentally

29:53

processed for several reasons is

29:56

good. And like you said, there are

29:58

packaged foods that actually fit into to the

30:00

minimally processed category. And there's actually some

30:02

processed foods, which can

30:05

be part of a healthy diet. Ultra-processed,

30:08

never, never part of a healthy diet.

30:10

But one of my

30:12

favorite foods is flackers. So these are flax crackers

30:15

that literally the only, they come in a bag,

30:17

they're made in a factory. But

30:19

the only ingredients are whole organic

30:21

flax seeds, apple cider vinegar, and

30:23

sea salt. So that is a,

30:26

somewhere between minimally processed food

30:29

that I absolutely think is fully conducive with

30:31

super healthy lifestyle. So really,

30:33

I think the name of the game with all of this is if you're

30:35

buying a packaged food, read the labels

30:38

religiously and make sure

30:40

that you understand and know every single ingredient

30:42

in that product. Hopefully it has very

30:44

minimal ingredients, three or

30:46

four, and doesn't

30:48

have additives that we know are not conducive with

30:50

good health, like added refined

30:53

sugar, added industrial seed oils,

30:55

added ultra-processed grains and things like

30:57

that. Those last three you gave

30:59

there, I think are a really good way of

31:01

assessing a product. You mentioned, yeah, sugar, refined

31:04

grains, and seed oils. And

31:06

seed oils seem to be becoming more and more

31:08

of a conversation in the health realm, which is

31:10

great, because they're just so

31:13

prevalent within the processed food realm,

31:15

and they just do so much

31:17

destruction to the body. Yeah,

31:19

I think what's really important for people

31:22

to realize is that I think

31:24

the debate around whether seed oils are a problem right now

31:26

is one of the, honestly,

31:29

it's just a testament to how

31:31

powerful industry is and confusing the

31:33

conversation. These have become the number

31:35

one source of fat for

31:38

Americans, and they are

31:40

not a fat that is helping us. So

31:42

the reason they're not helping us is multi-fold,

31:44

but one is that these

31:47

ultra-processed industrial seed oils like

31:49

never existed throughout human history until

31:52

very recently. Like if you Google, and

31:54

I recommend everyone do this, a YouTube

31:56

video on how canoma oil is made, it

31:58

is one of the most horrifying. discussing processes.

32:01

It's like basically industrial waste

32:03

that we're eating. These things

32:05

have to be chemically... These oils

32:07

have to be chemically extracted with...

32:09

It's often toxic chemicals like hexane,

32:12

dewaxed, bleached, heated to

32:14

super high temperatures. And they're put in a plastic bottle

32:16

that's set on shelves

32:19

for years. So obviously,

32:21

the production process, not

32:23

great. But they're very high in

32:25

omega-6 fats. And we know that

32:28

we need omega-6 fats for our health. But when

32:31

we far overload the body with omega-6 fats

32:35

as a percentage and ratio to the

32:37

other type of fat that's very common in the diet,

32:39

omega-3, what that

32:41

does is it just really overwhelms

32:45

the body with this pro-inflammatory

32:47

fat. And that

32:49

gets debated a lot. But I think one

32:51

piece of information that's helpful for people to

32:54

know that doesn't get talked about a lot

32:56

is that omega-3s, which can

32:58

basically be converted from plant-based

33:00

omega-3s all the way down to EPA

33:03

and DHA, which are the really biologically

33:05

active anti-inflammatory versions of omega-3s

33:07

that we know incorporate into cell membranes and that

33:09

are part of the anti-inflammatory

33:12

resolving chronic inflammation response,

33:15

to convert from these upstream omega-3s like

33:18

ALA down to EPA and DHA in

33:20

the body through a set of chemical

33:22

reactions. It requires them to actually use

33:25

all these enzymes in the body, these

33:27

little protein machines called elongases and desaturases. And

33:30

there's like four or five of them that

33:32

upstream omega-3 from plants,

33:34

alpha-lamonic acid, has to

33:37

basically go through a several-step process to get

33:39

to the EPA and DHA that we

33:41

really want. Well, something fascinating

33:43

is that the omega-6 fats use

33:45

the exact same set of enzymes

33:47

to get to their downstream versions

33:50

that are pro-inflammatory. So you start at

33:52

the top with things like

33:54

linoleic acid, upstream omega-6, and

33:56

it goes to the exact same conversion process

33:58

to make things like arachidonic acid. acid, which

34:00

is pro-inflammatory. So as you

34:02

eat these seed oils, which

34:05

are in everything, literally it's

34:07

almost impossible to find any

34:10

package true to the grocery store without

34:13

soybean oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, corn

34:15

oil, canola oil, vegetable oil, these industrial

34:17

seed oils, you are essentially

34:19

overwhelming the enzyme machinery

34:21

in the body that could be doing

34:24

work for you to create positive

34:26

bioactive omega-3 fatty acids. You are

34:28

blocking the activation site of these

34:31

enzymes. So when I'm reading labels and

34:33

avoiding the seed oils, I'm like, yeah, I'm freeing

34:35

up enzymatic capacity in my

34:37

body to allow all these

34:39

plant-based omega-3s that I'm eating from chia seeds,

34:41

hemp seeds, flax seeds, et cetera,

34:44

walnuts, so they can actually do the work in my

34:46

body that creates health. And so everything

34:51

in the body is kind of a zero-sum game and

34:53

you don't want to compete, you don't want to out-compete

34:55

these enzymes with things that are creating problematic things

34:57

as opposed to letting them have the capacity to

35:00

do the work to help you feel healthier. So

35:02

that's one of the big reasons

35:04

I stay away from seed oils is really just

35:06

creating more capacity in my body to do

35:08

the good work and not block it with

35:10

stuff that's not going to help me. And

35:13

the way I understand it, these oils

35:15

aren't only being toted. Well, they're not

35:17

being toted as neutral, they're being toted

35:19

as heart-healthy. And they get a stamp

35:21

from the higher-ups and encouragement

35:23

that these are good for us and we should be

35:26

eating more of them. Yeah,

35:28

it's shocking. I think in

35:33

my view, food is, like

35:35

I said, food is molecular information and

35:38

we kind of know what our cells are built

35:40

up. We know what our cell membranes are built

35:42

up. We know what types of fats do really

35:44

helpful work in the body and I think

35:48

we want to put more of those in. So I'm always

35:50

going to focus on more Omega-3 fats and really eliminating

35:55

anything that's trans fat, of

35:57

course, and reducing

35:59

Omega-3. omega-6 is as much as humanly possible because

36:01

just living in America today, you're going to be

36:04

exposed to more omega-6s than we've ever

36:06

been before in human history,

36:08

in part because even if we're primarily

36:10

eating an animal-based diet, a

36:14

lot of the animals are now just instead of

36:16

eating grass and the natural foods they're supposed to

36:18

be eating that build omega-3s in their bodies, they're

36:21

eating corn and soy, industrial grains. And

36:25

so even the animals we're eating have higher

36:27

omega-6 content. So we're

36:29

overwhelmed and a lot of it is

36:31

just pulling back the density of that

36:33

by being super thoughtful about reading labels.

36:36

It's just so disproportionate what we're exposing

36:38

our bodies to and I think the

36:40

bodies are very confused. One

36:42

thing you make really clear in the new book

36:44

is that you're diet agnostic and you don't push

36:47

one specific diet over another. Last

36:50

time we talked and it's been quite a while, you

36:53

were heavily into a plant-based diet. In

36:56

writing this book and continuing to learn

36:58

the health from, has that changed over the

37:01

last little bit? It's changed a lot

37:03

for me. About

37:05

four or five years ago, I

37:07

was mostly plant-based and I think

37:10

that as I've learned

37:12

more, I've moved away from personally being

37:14

plant-based. I think there's absolutely a way

37:16

to have a metabolically healthy plant-based diet

37:18

but I think what

37:23

I've come to really understand more

37:25

is that a big

37:28

root, root, root cause of why

37:30

we're chronically ill at this

37:32

point is that our food

37:34

is industrial on every level from

37:36

the way it's grown to the way it's

37:38

actually manufactured. And it's the industrialization

37:41

of our agriculture system that

37:43

is truly not only

37:45

making the food system very fragile and

37:47

not resilient but it's also

37:49

truly depleting the nutrients from

37:51

our food. So just to

37:53

give people a little bit of history, over the

37:56

past hundred years, for the sake

38:00

production, which, you know, sound

38:02

great, but it hasn't really

38:04

worked out. We basically

38:06

took traditional farming methods and said,

38:09

we're going to just mechanize everything.

38:11

We are going to spray the crap

38:13

out of these fields with synthetic pesticides and

38:15

synthetic fertilizers, which by the way,

38:17

these fertilizers that we're spraying come

38:19

from fossil fuels and

38:21

we're spraying them all over the food in the soil.

38:23

So we're killing a lot of the, you know, the

38:25

pests, quote unquote, but also all the

38:27

biodiverse life

38:29

in our soil and a teaspoon of

38:32

soil should have trillions of microorganisms, which

38:34

are literally there to alchemize sun and

38:36

water and soil into nutrient rich plants.

38:39

But we just sterilize it. We killed

38:41

it all for the sake of

38:44

pest control. So now we have food that

38:46

doesn't have the alchemy in the soil to

38:48

create the nutrient rich foods. So our food

38:50

is actually like, even if we're

38:52

eating a whole food diet, if it's grown

38:54

in conventional soil that's using mechanized

38:56

tilling, you know, the fields

39:00

are being used year round to produce as much

39:02

as possible, but not having the sort

39:04

of yin periods in between where the

39:06

soil can replete itself and they're being

39:08

sprayed with synthetic pesticides and fertilizers. The

39:10

food is depleted. And

39:13

because that food is becoming

39:15

our bodies, we

39:17

are basically a lot of the volume that we're

39:19

taking in is actually doing so much less work

39:21

for us. It's doing less in terms of giving

39:23

us the nutrients we need to build the body

39:25

and less of the nutrients for the body to

39:27

function properly. So how

39:30

this comes back to sort of like vegan and more

39:32

omnivorous is that when you really look

39:35

at what creates the healthiest soil possible,

39:37

it's actually merging plants and

39:40

animals into ecosystems together. So

39:42

you have the animals roaming

39:44

the fields that the plants are being

39:46

grown and like, not to be

39:49

too graphic, but like they're pooping on the

39:51

soil. And that is that feces is literally

39:53

filled with microbial life that reinvigorates the life

39:55

of the soil, the nitrogen in their urine

39:58

is super important for the

40:00

nitrogen cycle in the soil, you've

40:02

got their hooves gently agitating the

40:04

soil as opposed to the aggressive

40:06

mechanized tilling. And

40:09

so there's this beautiful interdependency between animals

40:11

and plants that ultimately is both

40:13

really good for the animals and

40:16

it's really good for the plants.

40:18

Because then of course the animals

40:20

are eating around what

40:22

we're growing for food. They're basically

40:24

weeding the fields by eating this. And

40:27

it's just this beautiful ecosystem

40:31

that we've broken with industrial

40:33

agriculture. And when

40:35

you take that sort of down the path,

40:38

you kind of realize that humans are

40:40

a part of that ecosystem too. So

40:42

there's something around animals, plants and humans

40:45

in a beautiful interdependent ecosystem that

40:48

is kind of as natural as it

40:50

gets. And both the animals and the

40:53

plants suffer when you separate. So that's

40:55

kind of really reflecting on what is

40:57

the most natural

40:59

circle of life and

41:02

ecosystem that we could possibly create. And

41:04

what that brings you towards is much

41:06

more of I think an

41:08

omnivorous balanced system that

41:13

is the highest quality

41:15

possible food. So it's

41:17

the essentially organic regenerative

41:20

animals and plants. So I've moved from

41:23

straight vegan to

41:25

obsession with food

41:29

sourcing and food quality and only want to

41:31

eat plants and animals that have been grown

41:33

in a precious,

41:38

pure, interdependent ecosystem that is sustainable

41:40

and resilient. And because I believe

41:43

that the food I'm putting into

41:45

my body, if it's grown in

41:47

a sustainable, resilient way that maximizes

41:50

nutrient per gram,

41:52

that is ultimately going to lead to a better body

41:54

for myself by giving my body what it needs to

41:56

function properly. So that's kind of what's moved me away. And

41:59

I think all. Also, I think I got pretty far down the path

42:01

of animal rights

42:04

and animal cruelty and things like that. Like,

42:07

hey, if I'm doing well on a vegan diet, why would I

42:09

ever want to take the life of an animal? But

42:12

the reality is that 99% of

42:14

our food in the country is grown

42:16

conventionally, meaning with the industrial agriculture, the

42:18

pesticides, the fertilizers, and literally nothing could

42:20

be worse for biodiversity on our planet

42:22

and holistic animal life than

42:24

industrial agriculture. If

42:28

you really back up and

42:30

think about the amount of... We're

42:33

facing a mass extension in terms

42:35

of biodiversity on our planet right

42:37

now between bacteria, fungi, nematodes, small

42:40

animals and birds. A lot

42:42

of that is driven by the conventional agriculture system,

42:44

which is where a lot of our

42:46

vegan food is coming from, especially the processed

42:48

vegan food. And I think a lot less

42:51

animals' lives would be tortured

42:53

and species ended if we actually focused

42:59

on more of a traditional

43:01

scaling, a traditional regenerative sustainable

43:04

food system that involves both animals and

43:06

plants. All right. So to read

43:08

between the lines, it sounds like you've included more

43:11

animal products because of the

43:13

farming, the ecosystem, the holisticness

43:15

of the practice of

43:18

producing the food and for the

43:20

nutrition that you're getting from it. That's

43:22

exactly right. Yeah. And I

43:24

think a big part of the why we're sick right now is

43:26

a disconnection. Our chronic disease

43:28

epidemic is fundamentally rooted in disconnection.

43:31

We've ignored the connection between the root causes of

43:33

why we're sick. We've ignored the

43:35

connection between human health and environmental

43:37

health. And we've

43:40

done a lot for the sake of efficiency, like,

43:42

oh, just drug it. Oh, just eat the packaged

43:44

food. And

43:46

none of that's really working because the reality

43:48

is that we are as humans, we're not

43:50

separate from any of this. We are

43:53

totally interdependent with all of it. The

43:55

food, the water, the air, the animals,

43:57

the bacteria are sick. cells.

44:01

And the way

44:03

forward, I think for for human

44:05

health and planetary health is respecting

44:08

the interconnectedness, which

44:10

fundamentally on a bigger sort of spiritual level is kind of

44:13

like transcending the ego that

44:15

we know is the root of suffering and

44:17

realizing that we're all really interconnected and then

44:19

eating and living in a way that respects

44:21

that rather than tries to outsmart it. A

44:23

lot of why we're sick is because we

44:25

tried to get outsmart these

44:28

perceived inefficiencies, like,

44:30

you know, you know, getting, getting

44:33

sick, having a virus, oh, we just have

44:35

to like manage all those symptoms. Or, you

44:37

know, oh, food takes a while to grow

44:39

and prepare eat processed food. But in trying

44:41

to seek efficiency, and convenience,

44:44

we're actually breaking

44:46

these key cycles that are required for

44:48

our health. So to kind of

44:50

wrap it up, I think anything

44:53

we can do to rebuild connection

44:56

with all these different aspects of our fundamental

44:58

life source, you know, the food, the sun,

45:00

clean air, clean water is going to be

45:03

helpful for our health. So it's really about

45:05

respecting the connections and not ignoring them as

45:07

we've done out of I think

45:09

human hubris over the last hundred years. Last

45:12

time we talked, I think your diet was around 90 95% plant

45:16

based. Are you open to talking

45:18

about where that's at today and how it's how

45:21

it's evolved to where it is? Sure,

45:23

yeah. I mean, I would say I probably eat.

45:26

I still

45:28

love plants and the power of plants are incredible.

45:31

The power of sustainably grown plants. So I'd say I

45:33

eat about probably I aim for

45:37

about, you know, 30 to 50 grams of

45:39

protein per meal. And I'd say probably

45:43

about 75% of that is coming

45:45

from animal protein. I still love to get my

45:47

protein from nuts, seeds, beans,

45:49

legumes. But

45:52

I'm eating essentially my diet right

45:54

now is all regeneratively raised meats.

45:56

So elk, bison, venison,

46:00

pasture-raised meat, pasture-raised

46:02

organic eggs, pasture-raised,

46:05

fully pasture-raised, foraging

46:07

poultry. I

46:10

have relationships with some hunters, so I actually

46:12

have little bags

46:15

of venison that

46:17

have literally, I know the person who has been out there,

46:19

so that feels really, really good.

46:22

And then I get almost all my produce from the

46:24

farmer's market, so relationships with farmers who I

46:26

know are using good soil

46:28

practices, and

46:30

that makes up a huge percentage of my diet,

46:32

so just as many colorful, fresh fruits and vegetables

46:35

I possibly can, and then organic

46:37

nuts, seeds, beans and

46:40

legumes, and as many spices as humanly possible. So

46:42

that's kind of, yeah, just the mix, really

46:45

just thoughtfully sourced, nutrient-rich,

46:48

whole foods that don't have synthetic

46:50

pesticides on them. You

46:53

mentioned the fact that you focus on protein when it

46:55

comes to having your meals. Why

46:58

is that? Protein,

47:00

I think, is such an incredible macronutrient

47:03

because it's highly satiating, and

47:05

it has a high thermic effect, so it takes a lot of

47:07

energy to actually burn the protein when you're

47:09

digesting it, so you get

47:12

kind of a lot of bang for your

47:14

buck. And we know that actually in our

47:16

gut, there's cells that are nutrient-sensing cells that

47:18

have these little cell receptors in the gut

47:20

that can essentially taste and

47:23

pick up different amino acids from

47:25

protein, and when they

47:28

touch those amino acids, they're

47:30

gonna secrete satiety hormones in the body, like

47:33

on your behalf to help you feel

47:35

full. And so protein is really valuable

47:37

because it's actually the stimulant that allows

47:39

your body to make the hormones that

47:41

reduce your cravings and make you feel

47:43

full. And

47:45

one thing that I think is so interesting in the conversation right now

47:47

in the Zite guy is just like we're talking

47:50

so much about Ozempic and these GLP-1

47:52

agonists, and we need to have more

47:54

GLP-1 in the body, but

47:56

I just laugh because our bodies are

47:59

little GLP-1 factories. But the

48:01

way that they become GLP-1 secreting factories to

48:03

make us not hungry is these nutrients something

48:05

cells of the gut like the L cells

48:07

need to be stimulated with the right inputs.

48:09

And one of those inputs, of course, is,

48:12

is protein. And so that's

48:15

how I think about it really is like,

48:17

it's both, you know, this incredible piece

48:20

of communication to my body that I

48:22

have gotten sort of what I need, and

48:24

I can stop, you know, eating. And

48:27

that becomes effortless, right? Because once you have once

48:29

those hormones are secreted, it's not a choice, you're

48:32

just like you just feel full, I don't want

48:34

more food. That's great about protein. The second piece

48:36

is that it's, it's a, you know,

48:38

it's an anabolic stimulus for the body

48:40

to build muscle and,

48:42

you know, store those amino acids and muscle

48:44

cells. And I think being in my late

48:46

30s now, and really

48:48

seeing what's happening with women's health, which is

48:51

just like, really on the decline.

48:53

And a lot of that, I think is because

48:55

women essentially become frail

48:57

because our hormones decline starting in our

48:59

late 30s. And then of

49:01

course, towards menopause. And one of the things that

49:03

does is essentially make us weaker. It makes our

49:06

bones weaker, it makes our muscles weaker. And so

49:08

we have to respond to the natural declines that

49:10

are happening in hormones by giving in other inputs

49:12

that tell our body to stay strong and build.

49:14

And one of those inputs is protein, which is

49:17

going to stimulate some of the pathways to keep

49:19

this metabolic armor of our muscle and our, you

49:21

know, strong and, and, and let us

49:23

be, you know, warriors into our old

49:25

age. And so, so I'm upping my

49:27

protein more as I get older because

49:29

I really want to make sure that

49:31

I'm keeping my muscle mass, you

49:34

know, stable and hopefully building it over the

49:36

years to counteract the natural declines that are

49:38

going to happen. All right.

49:40

So prioritizing protein, mixed

49:42

diet. Let's talk

49:44

about meal timing. When do you

49:46

typically break your fast in the morning or in the

49:48

afternoon? And how do you

49:50

look at that and how has it evolved over the years? Yeah,

49:53

I think about meal timing

49:55

in two dimensions. The

49:58

first is that meal timing is

50:00

one of the three ways that we

50:02

can help our body essentially

50:04

know what time it is. So

50:07

something really interesting about I think our chronic

50:10

disease development over the past hundred years is that a

50:12

lot of it I think is confusion about what

50:15

we would call chronobiology. The body sort of

50:17

knowing what time it is. We're diurnal

50:19

animals, meaning that we have

50:21

certain biologic activities that happen during the

50:23

daytime and certain biologic activities that happen

50:25

during the nighttime. And the body

50:27

basically needs to be on this two phase

50:29

clock for us to be healthy. And

50:32

part of that is natural. The body sort

50:34

of knows due to clock genes and things like

50:37

that what that it's day or night. But actually

50:39

a lot of our external cues help

50:41

in train those internal sort

50:44

of clock pathways to know what time it is.

50:46

The three main ways we can do that is

50:48

when we eat, whether

50:50

we're consistent with our bedtimes

50:52

and wake times. And then if

50:54

we see sunlight, you know, during the day and get

50:56

rid of the light at night, like those are the

50:58

three ways we sort of have to tell the

51:00

body it's daytime or it's nighttime. So

51:02

part of meal timing is just about how

51:05

do I tell my body we're in the

51:07

active phase of the diurnal cycle and we're

51:09

eating. So I try to eat most of

51:11

my meals during the sunlight hours basically, and

51:13

try, but it's hard to

51:17

eat them at fairly consistent times. So my body is

51:19

sort of on a schedule and I'm not creating kind

51:21

of mass confusion. If you think about the modern world,

51:23

think about it. Like we don't go outside

51:25

that much during the day and we have our blue light

51:27

on during the night. The body literally is just like, I'm

51:30

so confused. It's sort of dark during the daytime

51:32

and it's light at nighttime. Like what time is

51:34

it? We eat our meals at

51:36

totally erratic times. The average American is eating

51:39

over a 15 hour window every

51:41

day. So the body's kind of like, it's always

51:43

the eating phase. Wait, I thought I was supposed

51:45

to have a rest phase, but you know,

51:47

we're not giving it that. And then

51:49

our bedtimes are super inconsistent. Especially

51:52

in America where we'll bounce around weekends

51:55

versus weekdays. We don't have sort

51:57

of, we don't like, unlike children, we don't have a

51:59

bedtime. time or a waste time for most of us

52:01

as adults. So our bodies are in

52:03

mass confusion chronobiologically and meal timing is one of

52:06

the ways we can support that. So I would say the way

52:08

I think about it is like, how do

52:10

I give my body a schedule? So usually that means

52:12

eating my first meal around 11am

52:14

or noon. I usually eat kind

52:16

of a midday lunch snack

52:19

around two, three, and we eat dinner around

52:21

six, six, thirty, and then I try and

52:23

wind down the food for the night, so

52:25

kind of a compressed eating window. And then

52:28

the second reason, aside from chronobiology, that

52:30

I think it's helpful to have kind

52:32

of like a set eating window is

52:34

because that gives your body a

52:36

huge amount of time when you're not eating to

52:39

lower the insulin levels, lower the

52:41

glucose levels, and actually use any excess

52:43

stored energy substrates in your body that

52:45

aren't coming in by mouth. So that's

52:47

when you give your body the opportunity

52:49

to like not have to do the

52:51

work to stimulate insulin secretion and you

52:53

get the insulin low, and that's

52:56

when you start actually tapping into your fat burning

52:58

and build the metabolic flexibility. So those are the

53:00

two reasons. And I personally right

53:03

now in my life, I'm choosing to fast.

53:06

I actually fast from Sunday night to Tuesday morning.

53:08

My partner and I have been doing that for

53:10

quite a while. So like a 36 hour fast once a

53:13

week, which I do not recommend to everyone. But

53:16

it's something that we just started as like a

53:18

New Year's challenge. And it's actually something we've continued

53:20

because there's something pretty amazing

53:23

about I prick my finger and

53:25

I check my ketones and they can get up to

53:27

like one, I think

53:29

it's millimole per liter by about that 36

53:31

hour fast. And at

53:34

baseline, I'm more at like point 2.3.

53:36

And I just love knowing that

53:39

I'm bathing my cells in

53:41

more ketones like once per week

53:43

because ketones are very positive biologic

53:46

signal to the brain and the body, anti

53:49

inflammatory and really like a regenerative

53:51

molecule. And so I just for

53:53

me, I'm really enjoying doing

53:57

that to kind of get into that. And

53:59

I find a different mental. clarity by Tuesday

54:01

morning and I feel lighter and

54:03

I know I'm probably have turned through a lot of my

54:06

liver glycogen and it just it's for me

54:08

that's a nice reset that does

54:10

not appear to be causing in-street stress on

54:12

my body. I think I have a my

54:15

lifestyle right now is fairly like

54:17

it's fairly low stress so I can handle that

54:19

but I would I would caution people like fasting

54:22

is a stressor on the

54:24

body so if this is

54:27

why you really need to personally evaluate if this is

54:29

something that's either helping you or hurting you but for

54:31

me right now at this moment in life it's

54:35

helping me. You talked about

54:37

that benefit of the ketones and bathing your

54:39

body in them once a week it gets

54:41

me thinking about hacking that in different ways

54:43

throughout the week. Are you somebody that likes

54:45

to have certain days where you're on a

54:48

ketogenic diet to get there as well or

54:51

hacking that through exogenous ketones, MCT oil

54:53

or is that

54:56

period that you're fasting enough for you in the week?

54:58

Yeah you know I'm always thinking about I

55:03

don't you know eat any refined carbohydrates

55:05

or like added sugars and so I'm my

55:08

body is typically I'm not on a

55:10

low-carb diet but the beauty

55:12

about you know we

55:14

want to expose our body to ketones and they're

55:16

like I think what you're getting at is there's

55:18

lots of different ways to do that and when

55:20

I was vegan and I was on a somewhat

55:22

higher carbohydrate diet I was still able to get

55:24

into ketogenesis because you can use these other tools.

55:28

One of the most beautiful ways you can do it

55:30

is maybe you're eating a slightly higher carbohydrate diet which

55:32

honestly can be really good for many women

55:34

not refined grains but higher you know plant

55:37

carbohydrates and

55:39

then use intermittent fasting so maybe a

55:41

longer fasting window each night to just

55:43

make sure you're kind of churning through

55:45

some of the stored glucose and actually

55:47

tapping into fat burning and creating

55:50

ketones so pairing slightly higher

55:52

carbohydrate with longer fasting intermittent fasting

55:54

windows each night maybe 14 hours

55:56

or 16 hours is a way

55:58

to start building some ketogenesis in

56:00

the body without actually necessarily going

56:02

keto. Similarly,

56:05

an extended fast can do that. So I'm certainly

56:07

not an occasional diet, but can make ketones by

56:09

doing my extended fast once a week. And

56:12

then MCT oil is another

56:15

way that you can kind of give

56:17

the fuel straight to the mitochondria

56:19

to create ketones. There's

56:22

also exogenous ketones that you can take. I

56:24

use the HVMN, Ketone

56:26

IQ shots. I love those on my

56:28

fasts actually because they really cut through

56:31

hunger. But

56:33

the best way to really kind of

56:35

figure it out for yourself, because there's no one size

56:37

fits all, is to just buy a ketone monitor. I

56:39

like the one you can get on Amazon for

56:41

like 40 bucks. It's the keto mojo and

56:44

it tests ketones and you just prick your finger. And

56:46

I think once you start to experiment a little bit, okay,

56:48

like if I fast for 10 hours, what are my ketones

56:50

in the morning? If I fast for 14 hours, what are

56:52

my ketones in the morning? And if you're,

56:54

I think, getting up to like 0.5, 0.7, 0.8, 0.9, your body's

56:56

circulating ketones.

57:01

And that's great, you know, because if I

57:03

eat birthday cake and

57:06

some sugar or something like that, like my

57:08

ketones will be zero the next day. Like

57:10

it is very clear to see how the

57:12

diet and the fasting impacts it. So just

57:15

buying a monitor and testing some of these

57:17

different strategies out can be, I

57:19

think, the best way to find like what

57:22

works for you. So you

57:24

did hit the nail on the head though.

57:26

I was just trying to assess whether you

57:28

use different tools to get to that same state

57:30

as you do in the longer fast. It's

57:33

flexible. Yeah. It's like

57:35

sometimes it's intermittent fasting, sometimes it's extended, sometimes it's

57:37

ketone shots. And then of course it's

57:39

always eliminating the refined

57:42

grains and refined sugars because

57:44

those are just going to

57:46

kick, those are largely going to kick you out

57:48

of ketogenesis and our body just doesn't need them.

57:50

So, so when you do this longer fast, did you

57:52

say 30? 36 hours? Yes. And

57:55

what will you consume during that period? Just water

57:58

or do you have coffee, tea? certain

58:00

supplements to enhance that period of time. I'm

58:02

just curious. I didn't realize you were doing

58:05

this. Yeah, I mean, it's just

58:07

an experiment, you know, for me. I definitely don't

58:09

recommend it for everyone. But what I

58:12

do is just water. Sometimes I'll do a little bit of

58:15

salt and lemon juice in

58:17

the water just for some

58:20

electrolytes. I take all my vitamins except

58:22

for my multivitamin because the multivitamin gives me

58:24

a huge stomach ache if I take it

58:26

not on an empty stomach. But I can

58:28

take my fish oil,

58:31

my curcumin, magnesium,

58:33

zinc, and

58:36

timeline, your erython A. None of those hurt

58:39

my stomach. I think it's the B vitamins

58:41

mostly in the multivitamin that make my stomach

58:43

hurt. So I just take

58:45

all my vitamins except for that and then ketones.

58:49

And then I take ketone IQ. I usually take two

58:51

or three of those throughout the

58:53

day, which totally cut through the hunger.

58:56

And I'll drink some spindrift sometimes,

58:58

which has zero sugar and

59:00

five calories. It's basically sparkling water

59:02

with a tiny, tiny bit of

59:04

fruit juice. So a couple things here and there. And

59:06

I do drink coffee. And I

59:08

put just a tiny bit of coconut oil, very

59:12

little, or maybe a tablespoon of

59:14

milk. So I'm definitely

59:16

taking in some stuff. But for me,

59:18

with the ketone monitoring, I can just

59:21

track whether it's working or not. And

59:23

for me, I can still get up to 0.8 or 1 million

59:25

moles of ketones even

59:28

with those things. Maybe I could get up to

59:30

1.5 if I didn't. And then, of

59:33

course, exercise is a piece of it too. If

59:35

we have a hike behind our house that we

59:37

do almost every day that's about 2.5 miles straight

59:39

uphill. So if I do that during

59:41

a fast, I can probably generate some more

59:43

ketones than if I don't. And

59:47

the one thing I'm probably just not going to do is lift

59:49

weights on that day. So I love to take

59:52

long walks and just

59:54

turn through more of those substrates during the fast.

59:57

But I'm not going to do high intensity interval

59:59

training or... weightlifting

1:00:01

because I'm not repleting the amino acids

1:00:03

or any carbs after that workout. So

1:00:06

I feel like it's just less bang for my buck,

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1:01:07

Property Insurance Company and affiliates Northbrook, Illinois. You

1:01:10

mentioned the average person having a meeting window of, I

1:01:12

think, 15 plus hours, which

1:01:15

is super high. Talk about

1:01:17

what's going to happen when people are

1:01:20

doing that and constantly snacking, constantly spiking

1:01:23

the blood sugar, the insulin, and

1:01:25

what that does to metabolic health. Yeah.

1:01:28

So what that's doing biologically is that each

1:01:30

time you have an eating event, which we

1:01:32

have an average of 11 eating events per

1:01:34

day over 15 hours in the US,

1:01:36

which is a lot, every time

1:01:39

you're doing that, you are going to

1:01:41

be increasing blood sugar levels, most

1:01:43

likely, and asking your

1:01:45

pancreas to basically secrete insulin to

1:01:48

put that glucose into your cells.

1:01:51

So it's really overwhelming the body and

1:01:53

making it have to do a ton

1:01:55

of work just at these

1:01:58

regular intervals without a break. we

1:02:00

keep our insulin and glucose levels going

1:02:02

up in the blood, like we're essentially

1:02:05

increasing our 24-hour exposure to these molecules

1:02:07

in the bloodstream. And two

1:02:09

things can happen with that. One is that

1:02:11

that constant exposure to insulin, insulin is an

1:02:14

anabolic fat storage hormone. That's what it is.

1:02:17

So it's not only shuttling the glucose into the cells,

1:02:19

but it's telling the body we're well-fed, we got to

1:02:21

make some, we got to print some fat. So

1:02:23

that's just pure exposure to a molecule

1:02:25

that's saying, store fat and

1:02:27

don't burn it for energy, which most of

1:02:30

us don't want, right? With 74% of people with

1:02:32

overweight or obesity, that's not a state that

1:02:34

we want in the body. So letting the insulin

1:02:36

actually get low is literally

1:02:38

taking the gas off the

1:02:40

process that stores fat. So that's

1:02:43

one issue. The second issue is that that exposure

1:02:45

to glucose throughout the day, kind of

1:02:47

constantly going up and down, up and down, up and down,

1:02:49

up and down. That is

1:02:51

keeping the concentration of glucose in the

1:02:54

bloodstream higher over a 24-hour period and

1:02:56

glucose can do a lot of different

1:02:58

things. It can independently promote inflammation, it

1:03:00

can independently promote oxidative stress, essentially like

1:03:02

damaging free radicals in the body, and

1:03:04

it can stick to things, which is

1:03:06

glycation. It can stick to proteins, cell

1:03:09

membranes, DNA, blood vessels. We

1:03:12

don't want that. We don't want excess glycation because

1:03:14

that is really what is causing a lot of

1:03:16

dysfunction in the body, just sugar essentially sticking to

1:03:19

things. And one of the

1:03:21

most interesting, you know, relevant, I

1:03:23

think, examples of this

1:03:25

process is when glucose is high in the

1:03:27

bloodstream, it's gonna stick to the

1:03:29

most abundant protein in the body, which is collagen,

1:03:31

and when glucose sticks to our

1:03:33

collagen in our skin, it cross-links the collagen,

1:03:36

and that's really one of the key root

1:03:38

causes of premature wrinkles and aging, which

1:03:40

so many of us are trying to fight with like

1:03:42

creams and Botox, but like one key thing is just

1:03:44

lower the total burden of glucose in

1:03:46

the body. So those are

1:03:48

kind of the reasons why we want to, I

1:03:51

think, have these more discrete

1:03:54

two to three, maybe, eating

1:03:56

periods during the day that Are that

1:03:59

are discrete. And we let

1:04:01

our body respond to the Glucose bike.

1:04:03

And then come back down and then have a

1:04:05

break. And this is really the actually pick

1:04:07

the shown in the research that. Even.

1:04:11

If we eat. Let's. Disease hit other

1:04:13

research. For you have two different groups had one

1:04:15

the both groups are you doing the exact same

1:04:17

foods and exact same amount of calories. One.

1:04:20

Group is eating at over a twelve hour

1:04:22

window and one group is eating at over

1:04:24

like a six hour window says. Been the

1:04:26

long eating window, One the sort, any weed

1:04:28

out the window but the exact. Same food

1:04:31

in calories and the group that eats

1:04:33

those calories and a shorter window. Has

1:04:36

much better. Glucose.

1:04:38

In Plan metabolic. Markers: over twenty

1:04:40

four hours compared to the group eating and

1:04:42

over a longer window so. We.

1:04:45

Talk about like calories is a

1:04:47

calorie. But that's not really true.

1:04:49

Because. Calories. Eating

1:04:51

and eating and different windows are different

1:04:53

times of day have a different biological

1:04:55

facts. Then. If they're spaced

1:04:57

out. so ah, I'm. Similar

1:04:59

eaters actually been done so in that if

1:05:02

you give people the same meal in the

1:05:04

morning vs late at night. They.

1:05:06

Will have actually I'm a lower glucose response

1:05:08

to it Early in the morning. Vs.

1:05:10

Late at night because again or diurnal

1:05:13

animals were not really meant to be

1:05:15

metabolizing. bunch of food late in the

1:05:17

night were meant to be resting. and

1:05:19

to the buys confuse. So I think.

1:05:22

To. Wrap our all kind of front

1:05:24

loading are calories more to. The.

1:05:26

Earlier part of the day. Meanings.

1:05:29

You know, morning, Afternoon or early evening. So not

1:05:31

when I see no late into the evening when

1:05:33

it's been dark for several hours. And

1:05:35

trying to just tighten up the eating

1:05:37

window. On you know to a

1:05:39

reasonable amount. Eight Hours. Ten

1:05:42

Hours. Six Hours. Those. Are both

1:05:44

things that can really help our body?

1:05:46

Ah, I'm from a corner biology level,

1:05:48

but also just like exposure to inflame

1:05:50

glucose. Ah, You

1:05:53

know, throughout the twenty four hour period. and for

1:05:55

a lot of people this will be countered

1:05:57

to what they've been told were conventional wisdom

1:05:59

says we want to be eating throughout the

1:06:01

day to keep our metabolism stoked and we want

1:06:04

to spread out small meals, which

1:06:06

again the further we get

1:06:08

into this we're realizing basically everything we've

1:06:10

been told and the way we've been

1:06:13

doing things is backwards. Hence

1:06:15

93% of us are metabolically unhealthy so

1:06:17

it all adds up but

1:06:20

we need to definitely get the word out on stuff

1:06:22

like this because it's again

1:06:25

not conventional wisdom that's

1:06:27

even neutral on this it's opposed.

1:06:29

Yeah and I would

1:06:32

say that for people who it seems like that's

1:06:34

just too challenging right now, one

1:06:37

gateway towards this I think is to

1:06:39

just if you are gonna be snacking

1:06:41

or snacking later at night just

1:06:44

trying to really make those things more

1:06:46

more on the ketogenic side right so

1:06:48

like if I'm gonna snack I'm

1:06:52

gonna you know try and not spike

1:06:54

my insulin and glucose basically so there's

1:06:56

so many snacks that can do

1:06:58

this like nuts,

1:07:01

seeds,

1:07:05

like a piece of chicken, an

1:07:07

egg, things that are gonna satiate

1:07:09

me and of course

1:07:11

just like drinking water too because a lot of our

1:07:13

hunger is probably just dehydration but something

1:07:15

that's more of like a protein fat

1:07:18

predominant snack so that I still which

1:07:20

is gonna just slightly stimulate

1:07:22

our insulin but isn't gonna kind of give

1:07:24

us one of those little peaks in

1:07:26

glucose that is gonna really have

1:07:28

a big spike in insulin and not to mention

1:07:30

those spikes in glucose every time we spike the

1:07:33

glucose if it's a big spike that

1:07:35

also can make our mood and our energy levels

1:07:37

change as well because we know that when when

1:07:40

you come down from that spike if you crash

1:07:42

if you have a big spike in a big

1:07:44

crash that's when people often feel that post meal

1:07:46

slump and maybe even jittery

1:07:50

anxious brain fog and

1:07:53

actually have more craving so just getting off

1:07:55

the glucose roller coaster with lots of snacks

1:07:57

throughout the day and keeping things more stable

1:07:59

it's just The actually just a great way to

1:08:01

like feel better during the day, but if I'm going

1:08:03

to have a snack, which, of course, sometimes I. It'll

1:08:06

be more of like a protein fat. So.

1:08:08

Guess. You know, Snack.

1:08:11

As opposed to let's say. A banana.

1:08:14

On his own which is gonna be a

1:08:17

different very different biological response that snack than

1:08:19

from the more protein forward. And.

1:08:21

To tie this back to the

1:08:23

beginning of our conversation we talked

1:08:25

about the different metabolic test we

1:08:27

talked about testing blood sugar and

1:08:29

and important piece we can bring

1:08:31

into this is insulin resistance. And

1:08:34

adding to that started test

1:08:36

we talked about before fasting

1:08:38

insulin to search your metabolic

1:08:40

health starting to decline. Up.

1:08:42

To a decade or more, even. Of.

1:08:45

For you'd catch that if you're

1:08:47

just looking at you're fasting glucose

1:08:50

So. Talk. More about that

1:08:52

piece, the fact that influence gonna

1:08:54

be increased in the body over

1:08:56

time masking. The. Effects of

1:08:58

blood glucose. Yeah. So.

1:09:02

This gets into really like sort of the

1:09:04

next layer of metabolic test saying which. You

1:09:06

know, we talked about the first six or so tas

1:09:08

in the very beginning of the episode, which I just

1:09:10

feel like. From inaccessibility

1:09:12

cost, And. Importance out

1:09:14

like level we. Should all

1:09:16

know where we stand on those glucose

1:09:19

trade outside these Dl extra. But.

1:09:21

You're bringing up fasting and flame which I

1:09:23

in the book sort of say that's the

1:09:25

next level that is the most simple. I

1:09:27

think that is the most important tasks we

1:09:29

can each. Get for ourselves to understand our

1:09:32

foundational house right now. I think it's. As.

1:09:34

If. We had one tests to get. It

1:09:36

would be.one. The. Reason

1:09:38

it's not in my first six that I mention

1:09:40

is because it's harder to get because a lot.

1:09:43

Of doctors are just like no we're not going order that

1:09:45

for you. You're young and healthy. We to that's not done.

1:09:47

In standard practice which is just one of

1:09:49

the biggest problem and healthcare. So. But.

1:09:52

If you can't get it through direct

1:09:54

to consumer company Lab Testing company. Or

1:09:56

your doctoral Order it. Get it? The.

1:09:58

Reason is because of what you. say, it

1:10:01

can tell us about our level

1:10:03

of metabolic dysfunction, insulin resistance, mitochondrial

1:10:06

dysfunction, blood sugar dysfunction, all

1:10:08

synonymous a

1:10:10

decade or more before those standard

1:10:13

biomarkers are going to change. And

1:10:16

so the reason for this is because when

1:10:18

the body and the cells start to become

1:10:21

dysfunctional from metabolic dysfunction, which is generally

1:10:23

because our mitochondria, the cells that actually

1:10:25

are the part of the cell that

1:10:27

actually makes energy and converts that glucose

1:10:30

to energy when those become damaged

1:10:32

by our modern lifestyle. So

1:10:34

the mitochondria can be damaged from so

1:10:36

many different things, the toxins, the

1:10:39

not moving enough, the not sleepy enough, the ultra

1:10:41

processed food, any of those things

1:10:43

that are hurting the mitochondria, basically stop it

1:10:45

from being able to convert that glucose to energy

1:10:48

effectively. And when that happens,

1:10:50

the cell is going to be like, hey, the

1:10:53

mitochondria is not working great. So

1:10:55

we can't really take in more glucose to process

1:10:58

to energy because the mitochondria is hurt by this

1:11:00

modern environment we're living in. So

1:11:02

it blocks glucose from coming into the cell and

1:11:04

it does that through insulin resistance. So the cell

1:11:06

says we're going to block the pathway that allows

1:11:08

the insulin signal to come in and tell the

1:11:10

glucose to basically be allowed into the cell because

1:11:12

we can't process it. So you

1:11:14

get insulin resistance because

1:11:17

of the mitochondrial dysfunction. And

1:11:19

then the body's like, yeah, okay, we understand that

1:11:21

you can't take in the glucose, but we can't

1:11:23

have this glucose just floating around in the bloodstream

1:11:25

all the time because that's damaging too. So we're

1:11:28

going to secrete more insulin to try and force

1:11:30

the glucose into the cell. And

1:11:32

that's essentially the high insulin levels that

1:11:34

result from a problem

1:11:36

inside the cell with mitochondrial dysfunction.

1:11:40

So these insulin levels rise very

1:11:43

early in this process, which

1:11:45

are essentially a sign that the cell is

1:11:47

overwhelmed and capacity is low to make energy.

1:11:50

And it actually works for a while.

1:11:52

That high insulin drives glucose into the

1:11:55

cell. And so the blood glucose levels

1:11:57

can look fairly normal for like a

1:11:59

day. decade before

1:12:01

the whole thing totally goes off the rails

1:12:03

and the body

1:12:05

can't overcompensate with high insulin levels

1:12:07

anymore. And then you see both

1:12:09

glucose and insulin levels high. So

1:12:12

basically, step one is

1:12:15

mitochondrial dysfunction. Step two

1:12:17

is insulin resistance leading to

1:12:19

high insulin levels, but glucose stays

1:12:21

normal. And step three, far

1:12:24

down the road of metabolic dysfunction is both

1:12:26

insulin levels and glucose levels are high in

1:12:28

the blood. So you want to catch this

1:12:30

at level two, which is why

1:12:32

you need to get a fasting insulin test. And

1:12:36

in the book, I talk about how the range for fasting

1:12:39

insulin that we really want to shoot for is about between

1:12:41

like two and five, two and six milliIus

1:12:43

per milliliter. But what's crazy is

1:12:45

that on the lab slip, it will

1:12:47

often say that like less than 25

1:12:50

is normal for insulin. But when you actually

1:12:52

look at the research, we want

1:12:54

to be much lower than that. If your

1:12:56

insulin levels are already up to 25, that's

1:12:58

actually a sign that your body's pushing out

1:13:00

a lot of insulin, which may indicate essentially

1:13:03

a problem with metabolic dysfunction already brewing.

1:13:05

So we want that number low and tight.

1:13:07

We want a low and healthy amount of

1:13:10

insulin, which is a clear

1:13:12

sign to us that our cells are

1:13:14

not putting up an insulin resistant

1:13:16

block. And so an

1:13:19

example I give in the book that I think

1:13:21

really illustrates this is like if you and I

1:13:23

Jesse both went in and got our blood sugar

1:13:25

taken and both of us came back with a

1:13:27

blood sugar level of 85 milligrams for us leader,

1:13:30

both of our doctors would look at us in the eye and

1:13:32

say, you're doing great. Your

1:13:34

blood sugar is in a great range. Congratulations.

1:13:36

And you go home. But if

1:13:39

my insulin level, which wasn't checked, is

1:13:41

30 and yours is two,

1:13:45

we are basically very biologically different. But

1:13:47

we don't know that because we didn't

1:13:49

test the fasting insulin. So if my

1:13:52

fasting insulin is 30, that means my

1:13:54

body is having to pump out 30

1:13:56

milli use per milliliter of insulin to

1:13:58

drive glucose into the cell. to keep

1:14:00

it at 85. But you're super metabolically

1:14:02

healthy, your body's only asking, having to

1:14:04

turn out a small amount of insulin

1:14:06

to keep that glucose at 85. So

1:14:09

without this additional test, it's really hard

1:14:11

to truly know where

1:14:13

we stand. Now, just circling back

1:14:15

to the beginning of the episode, let's say

1:14:17

you're not able to get this test and your doctor is not

1:14:19

going to order it for you. We

1:14:22

can look at in

1:14:24

those biomarkers, the basic biomarkers we

1:14:26

talked about, the triglycerides, HDL, waist

1:14:28

circumference, blood pressure, fasting glucose. What

1:14:32

we'll often see with insulin

1:14:35

resistance brewing is that triglycerides start

1:14:37

to rise and HDL starts

1:14:39

to go down and blood pressure starts to go

1:14:41

up. So even if you

1:14:43

don't have access to a fasting insulin test, if

1:14:46

your triglycerides are creeping up, let's say you're

1:14:48

fasting glucose, like we

1:14:50

were just talking about, is 85. But you're

1:14:52

like, oh, I really want to know if I'm on that

1:14:54

early, if there's early dysfunction.

1:14:57

Well, look at your triglycerides and HDL

1:14:59

and blood pressure and waist circumference, because those

1:15:01

are all going to give you a

1:15:03

clue about how your insulin levels are as well. Because

1:15:05

if insulin resistance is at play, our

1:15:07

blood pressure goes up. If

1:15:09

insulin resistance is at play, our triglycerides go up.

1:15:12

So you

1:15:15

can kind of squint and get a clue of this with

1:15:18

those basic biomarkers. But what's

1:15:20

best is to get

1:15:23

a fasting insulin. And just in terms of ranges,

1:15:25

I mentioned in the beginning of the episode that

1:15:28

what the criteria says for quote unquote

1:15:31

optimal triglycerides is less than 150 milligrams

1:15:33

of rest leader. I would

1:15:35

actually argue that we really want

1:15:38

our triglycerides to be more like 40, 50, 60, 70, under

1:15:40

100, ideally. And so if your fasting

1:15:45

glucose is 85, and your

1:15:47

triglycerides are very low end of normal,

1:15:49

like 40s, 50s, 60s, that's

1:15:51

a really good sign that your insulin

1:15:53

levels are probably pretty low.

1:15:56

So yeah, so that's

1:15:59

kind of the over review of fasting

1:16:01

insulin and why it's

1:16:03

so important. As you're sharing

1:16:05

a lot, it gets me curious if they were

1:16:08

to add fasting insulin to those five tests we

1:16:10

talked about early on. We're already

1:16:12

talking about, again, that

1:16:14

93% range of people that are metabolically

1:16:16

unhealthy. Imagine if we added that

1:16:18

in and we're able to catch all these early

1:16:20

cases. Like I

1:16:22

can only imagine what the number would be. It'd

1:16:25

be so low. I

1:16:27

think if the ranges were actually what they

1:16:29

should be. And

1:16:32

what I reported on this podcast is what

1:16:34

the American College of Cardiology put

1:16:37

in their paper. But if we

1:16:39

actually looked at what all the research

1:16:41

together shows for truly optimal levels, so

1:16:44

they say fasting glucose is less than 100. I

1:16:47

would say fasting glucose is between 70 and 85. They

1:16:50

say triglycerides less than 150. I'd say

1:16:52

optimal is less than 100. They

1:16:55

say HDL above 50 for women. I'd say we

1:16:57

should be shooting for 60 to 90. So

1:17:00

if we actually looked at optimal, optimal ranges,

1:17:02

I bet that number would be 1% of

1:17:06

people who are optimally metabolically healthy. And if we added

1:17:08

fasting insulin, I think we'd be getting down to the

1:17:10

1% level. Which is

1:17:12

just a testament to how

1:17:17

much our cells are struggling in

1:17:19

this modern environment. Where everything about

1:17:21

our lifestyle on every pillar has

1:17:24

just changed so, so, so rapidly.

1:17:26

This insulin resistance, this metabolic issue,

1:17:28

it is literally the cells saying

1:17:32

we cannot handle the

1:17:34

modern Western environment. It's

1:17:37

not working. So it's

1:17:40

pretty scary. It is. And

1:17:42

you mentioned the fact that when we get to

1:17:44

one end of the continuum, insulin

1:17:46

is gonna rise in blood glucose. That's

1:17:49

when we're all the way at the end and

1:17:51

we're type two diabetic. We

1:17:54

can look at this like insulin

1:17:57

resistance is starting, pre-diabetes, diabetes.

1:18:00

and unfortunately conventional medicine is only going

1:18:02

to catch things more than

1:18:04

at the far end of that type 2 diabetes

1:18:07

spectrum. Again, because the testing

1:18:09

isn't done in a way to catch it

1:18:11

early on. That's exactly

1:18:13

right. Yeah, and I think in

1:18:15

some ways the system has kind of enfantalized

1:18:18

us as individuals saying like, oh, you know,

1:18:20

this is complicated. It's hard to

1:18:22

understand these lab tests. And one of

1:18:24

the big points, like one of the reasons

1:18:26

I love podcasts like this and one of

1:18:28

the points I really try and make in

1:18:30

my work in the book is that it's

1:18:32

actually not that complicated. It's pretty basic biochemistry.

1:18:35

And I actually think that everyone, including teens, can

1:18:37

like understand what we're talking about right

1:18:39

now, you know, and like, you

1:18:43

know, and it's like, we kind of

1:18:45

have the responsibility now to understand 10, 15

1:18:49

biomarkers and what they actually mean about

1:18:51

our cellular health because we

1:18:53

kind of just have to like, it's like the

1:18:55

system's not reading the tea leaves of our tests

1:18:57

for us. The way our doctors, unfortunately, like, and

1:19:00

I'm speaking as a doctor, are trained is

1:19:03

you see a list of lab results and

1:19:06

they're either in the, they either, they're either

1:19:08

red or green. It's like very algorithmic. This

1:19:11

one's off. This one's not. This one's off.

1:19:13

This one's not. And it's very much

1:19:15

like, okay, if LDL is high, we need to bring LDL

1:19:17

down, you know, and if glucose is high, we need to

1:19:20

bring glucose down. And if magnesium is low,

1:19:22

we need to bring magnesium up. And it's like very

1:19:24

kind of robotic. And like what I

1:19:26

really, the vision I have for

1:19:28

how we would train doctors is like, how do you

1:19:30

look at all of these together as a

1:19:33

reading the tea leaves of it's

1:19:36

a tapestry of biomarkers

1:19:38

that can tell us about how the cell

1:19:41

is doing, which is ultimately all we care about.

1:19:43

How is the cell doing? How can we make

1:19:45

the cell happier? Because if the cells are happy

1:19:47

in our body, we're healthy. And

1:19:50

I think that every single person, basically

1:19:53

high school biology or above can

1:19:56

understand that. And so that's, that's really

1:19:58

the message that I want to empower people with is like. Like we

1:20:01

got to understand these basic biomarkers for ourselves

1:20:03

and then track them every few months until

1:20:05

they're in the right range. And

1:20:07

they can change rapidly. You

1:20:09

know, I've seen triglycerides drop 100 points in

1:20:12

two months. I've seen glucose drop 30 points

1:20:14

in two months. Simple, simple

1:20:16

diet and lifestyle changes that

1:20:18

improve mitochondrial health will improve almost

1:20:21

all of these biomarkers. So

1:20:23

you shared quite a bit about your

1:20:25

diet now and you're somebody that's metabolically

1:20:27

healthy, somebody that's on

1:20:29

the end of the continuum, say type

1:20:32

2 diabetic or prediabetes. How

1:20:34

do you feel about them doing

1:20:36

something more drastic like a ketogenic

1:20:39

diet, carnivore diet, really cutting the

1:20:41

carbs down even temporarily

1:20:43

to get that metabolic health back

1:20:46

as a tool or a longer term? There

1:20:49

are many people for whom that

1:20:51

works really, really well. An

1:20:53

entire organization in the US, Virta Health,

1:20:56

which has reversed a lot of type 2 diabetes

1:20:58

is focused on a ketogenic diet. The

1:21:01

diet doctor organization, which has great content

1:21:03

is doing that, Ken Berry, carnivore

1:21:06

MD. There's a lot of

1:21:08

people focused on that and it can

1:21:11

be a tool. But you know,

1:21:13

a big message that I have is like, I am not here

1:21:15

to tell people what strategy is the right

1:21:18

strategy for them because everyone's

1:21:21

biology is different. There's

1:21:23

two things that I think we

1:21:26

know for sure. One is

1:21:28

that we need to be eating ultra-processed,

1:21:32

sorry, unprocessed, real

1:21:35

nutrient dense food. Like step

1:21:38

one for anyone, whether you're vegan

1:21:40

or carnivore is eat unprocessed food,

1:21:43

ideally grown in good soil

1:21:45

without the toxic stuff sprayed all over it. That's

1:21:48

step one. Really don't care if

1:21:50

you're vegan or carnivore, eat high quality, real food.

1:21:53

Two, track your biomarkers every few

1:21:55

months and see if you're moving

1:21:57

in the right direction. Is your insulin dropping? trilicerides

1:22:00

dropping? Is

1:22:03

your HDL going up? Is your blood

1:22:05

pressure going down? And if the answer is yes, I

1:22:08

would recommend probably continuing that strategy until they're in

1:22:10

the right range. But I can't tell people keto

1:22:12

is the right diet for them. I

1:22:14

can tell them that real food is the right diet for

1:22:16

them and to track their biomarkers. And frankly,

1:22:19

I don't think we should trust anyone

1:22:21

who tells us a particular diet strategy to do, because

1:22:23

there are people who are not doing keto, who are

1:22:25

doing 100% whole food plant-based and

1:22:27

flashing their insulin levels. So

1:22:30

I'd say out of

1:22:32

all this research and writing a four-headed page book

1:22:34

on this topic, those are the things I can

1:22:36

tell you. Eat real food, not covered in toxic

1:22:38

crap, and measure your biomarkers every

1:22:40

few months, and track your symptoms to

1:22:42

know if it's working and make

1:22:45

adjustments if it's not. And you

1:22:47

will know. If

1:22:49

you commit, things will change, and

1:22:51

you will have a sense. So that's kind of

1:22:53

the main things I think. Yes,

1:22:55

absolutely, there are people for whom a

1:22:57

hardcore keto diet is working wonders on

1:23:00

their health. I don't think that's a

1:23:02

strategy for everyone. And yeah,

1:23:05

the commonality is moving to a higher quality

1:23:07

and processed diet. All right, what I was

1:23:09

getting at specifically though is just the

1:23:12

urgency. Like somebody who has

1:23:14

a chronic disease and they really need

1:23:16

to kick things into high gear

1:23:18

and they might not necessarily have the time to

1:23:20

do it in a slower fashion. Whether

1:23:23

it be their

1:23:25

metabolic health as a whole or

1:23:28

a specific disease, cancer, yada, yada.

1:23:32

What I was getting at is just

1:23:34

specific tools such as going really low

1:23:36

carb. We could bring fasting in. We

1:23:38

could bring different tools in that somebody

1:23:40

who's really trying to radically bring themselves

1:23:42

down quickly because

1:23:44

their metabolic health is so out

1:23:47

in left field. Yeah. Just trying

1:23:49

to give them some different ideas that might

1:23:51

help me and you

1:23:53

are in a different category where we're tweaking and

1:23:55

our metabolic health is good by somebody who is

1:23:57

like 600 pounds. type

1:24:00

2 diabetic. To me,

1:24:02

it's a different scenario

1:24:05

where if I'm in their shoes, I'm

1:24:08

going to be looking at things like fasting

1:24:10

keto, maybe carnivore, to jump back

1:24:12

at least to get to a baseline aware

1:24:15

they're in a maintenance mode. So

1:24:17

just curious on, again, keto or

1:24:19

other tools if somebody wants

1:24:21

to do this quicker because they're feeling like they're

1:24:24

in crisis mode. It's

1:24:26

so interesting having been on both

1:24:29

in the keto community through my work at

1:24:31

levels, there's a lot of people who are

1:24:33

keto in that, but also having been really

1:24:35

deep in the whole food plant-based movement. I've

1:24:38

actually seen massive changes in both.

1:24:40

I think even though it

1:24:47

might not sound so radical, moving

1:24:49

just to saying, today, I'm never

1:24:51

going to buy ultra processed

1:24:55

food again. I'm literally going to eat

1:24:57

only things that are like whole foods

1:24:59

that came from the earth, chicken, broccoli,

1:25:02

steak, whatever it is. The

1:25:06

reason that's actually so radical is

1:25:08

because real food, and

1:25:10

the reason I focus on quality is because it's going

1:25:13

to have more nutrients in it to actually stimulate the

1:25:15

nutrient sensing cells of the gut, they

1:25:17

will trigger satiety mechanisms that

1:25:19

basically get you to eat so much less.

1:25:21

The more you put... The reason we're

1:25:24

eating ourselves to death, literally in the

1:25:26

United States, eating ourselves

1:25:28

to death in the Western world is

1:25:30

because our bodies aren't actually getting what they

1:25:32

need, and so they're driving us to eat

1:25:35

insatiably to basically give

1:25:37

in hopes of the cells getting

1:25:40

what they need to function properly. If

1:25:43

we can just kind of... It is actually quite

1:25:45

extreme and radical to just give the

1:25:47

body the cleanest, highest quality

1:25:50

food possible because it will essentially get you to

1:25:52

radical dramatically change your hunger cues, I think, and

1:25:54

change your microbiome, which then over the long term

1:25:56

changes the way we interact with food. You

1:26:00

know, I would say for someone, they

1:26:02

could go whole food plant based, they could

1:26:05

go carnivore. It's really, I think where their

1:26:07

inclination is, like, or somewhere in between, you know,

1:26:09

like, I've heard of people eating

1:26:11

literally, they were hundreds

1:26:13

of pounds overweight, and they're like, I'm

1:26:15

going to eat chicken breast and broccoli

1:26:19

for every single meal for the next two to three

1:26:21

months, and like, you know, lose a bunch

1:26:23

of weight, because it's real food. I

1:26:25

would not recommend that necessarily, but it's not like it

1:26:27

has to be one extreme. I think that tightening

1:26:30

the eating window for most of us, it's,

1:26:32

you know, it's like 15 hours. So like,

1:26:35

finding a way to tighten that, but one key thing there

1:26:37

is it's going to be easier to tighten that eating window

1:26:39

if you're eating real food, because you're going to be less

1:26:41

hungry, right? And so, and getting

1:26:43

the insulin down and so getting rid of all the

1:26:46

processed sugar, all the processed grain, it's going to bring

1:26:48

the insulin down. And that's going to let us tap

1:26:50

into the fat stores that make it that makes fasting

1:26:52

much less difficult. So, so yeah,

1:26:55

I think some combination of

1:26:57

time restricted feeding, maybe some extended

1:26:59

fast, eating real food, a

1:27:01

really any dietary dogma, and

1:27:04

checking biomarkers every

1:27:07

few months for the first, you know, as you're doing

1:27:09

the initial entry point, like that's great. And if there

1:27:12

are what's really nice is that there's a lot

1:27:14

of services now that will deliver a lot of

1:27:16

this food to you, you know, if it's just

1:27:18

too hard to think about preparing all this food

1:27:20

for yourself, like, if you're plant based,

1:27:22

you could buy all your food for

1:27:25

a month from Daily Harvest, which is all

1:27:27

organic plant based food, and

1:27:30

put, you know, a can of salmon

1:27:32

on top of it. And like that, that's one way

1:27:34

to do it. And then there's a lot of more

1:27:36

like ketogenic meal plans that can deliver to your house

1:27:38

and things like that. So there's ways to do it

1:27:41

that kind of make it easier. But

1:27:44

yeah, and then just trying

1:27:46

to think, I think the other important

1:27:48

thing to do in conjunction with that if

1:27:50

you can, is to think

1:27:52

about the other aspects of your life that could be hurting the

1:27:55

mitochondrial function and trying to pick

1:27:57

a few of the highest leverage ones you can change because there's

1:27:59

a lot of things that can hurt our mitochondria

1:28:01

aside from the food. It's

1:28:03

not moving enough, environmental toxins

1:28:06

in our lotion, shampoos, deodorants,

1:28:08

cleaning products at home, the

1:28:10

artificial light or

1:28:12

not getting enough sunlight during the day. So really

1:28:15

thinking about, okay, what else is blocking

1:28:17

my mitochondria's capacity to make the energy

1:28:19

I need to be metabolically healthy and

1:28:22

then chip away at those? So

1:28:26

some of those can actually feel all I

1:28:28

think a lot easier than changing the food

1:28:30

at first and make you feel a lot

1:28:33

better. So just like one that costs money

1:28:35

but doesn't necessarily take any real effort is

1:28:37

just like clean out all the products in

1:28:39

your home that we know are

1:28:41

endocrine disruptors, the scented candles, the

1:28:43

air fresheners, the scented lotions, the

1:28:45

scented shampoos, the makeup that's not

1:28:47

non-toxic, the bleach, the cleaning supplies

1:28:49

that are scented. Just change all

1:28:51

those out. That will immediately help

1:28:54

your mitochondria be freed

1:28:56

up to do better work. So one

1:29:00

of the things in the book that I give to people

1:29:02

is like quizzes at the end of the book to basically

1:29:04

take stock of each of the factors of our lives

1:29:06

that we know impacts the mitochondria, see

1:29:09

where there's the highest leverage room to improve

1:29:11

and then just start to pick a few things that

1:29:13

are doable and accessible and easy to you to

1:29:15

start cleaning up the environment for the mitochondria. And

1:29:18

for many of those, it's a lot

1:29:20

easier than changing our whole diet but can

1:29:22

have really, really positive impacts on our metabolic

1:29:24

health. That's a good point. And

1:29:27

sticking with the toxin piece, I

1:29:29

think we both agree the first step would be

1:29:32

to go through the house and switch the products

1:29:34

up like you mentioned. But

1:29:36

for somebody that's been living that way with conventional

1:29:38

products for say 20, 40 years,

1:29:41

and they've built up all these toxins in their body,

1:29:43

do you feel like

1:29:46

there's another step there in assessing

1:29:48

what's going on in the body and

1:29:50

then detoxing or just getting cleaner options

1:29:52

in the house, switching the

1:29:54

diet to a cleaner diet will be enough

1:29:57

for the body to clear those out

1:29:59

over time. I mean, testing

1:30:01

is always, I think, interesting. And there's,

1:30:03

again, there's like the small, medium, large

1:30:05

level of testing that you can do to start

1:30:07

to assess. There

1:30:10

are functional medicine panels where

1:30:12

you can really look at actually heavy

1:30:14

metal exposure and

1:30:16

various pesticide exposure in the body.

1:30:18

And I think that can be valuable. But

1:30:21

I actually take a somewhat simpler approach, I think,

1:30:23

to some of this, which is the

1:30:26

metabolic tests that we have talked about already

1:30:29

are essentially readouts. They're like an

1:30:31

MRI looking at all the things

1:30:33

that impact mitochondrial health, like

1:30:36

fasting, insulin, and glucose. These are kind of like the

1:30:38

readout of how

1:30:40

all the factors in our diet and lifestyle

1:30:42

are affecting our mitochondrial health. So

1:30:44

if those are off, I think we are going

1:30:49

to want to do everything we can to clean

1:30:51

up the environment for our mitochondria. So that's just

1:30:53

kind of step one. I

1:30:56

try and not major in the minors. We

1:30:58

know that our liver and our gut and

1:31:00

our skin are like two ways that we

1:31:03

can excrete a lot of

1:31:05

the toxins and the damaging things in

1:31:07

our body. So step one, what

1:31:09

can you do to support your liver health? And

1:31:12

what can you do to support your gut

1:31:14

health so that you can truly just start

1:31:16

eliminating more of the toxins? And

1:31:19

so that would be for liver

1:31:21

support. I think some of the best things

1:31:23

we can do that are so basic is, I

1:31:26

mean, I hate to say it, but it's just like stop drinking alcohol.

1:31:29

We're drinking so much in

1:31:31

the US right now, and drinking rates increase

1:31:35

during COVID. And that's a liver toxin.

1:31:38

And the liver is where we do a lot of our excretion

1:31:40

of toxins. So

1:31:43

that's one. And then step two is

1:31:46

eliminating the added

1:31:49

sugar, especially fructose, which

1:31:51

comes in table sugar. It comes in

1:31:53

liquid sugars like in sodas and hyperdose

1:31:55

corn syrup, because that is directly going

1:31:57

to lay down fat in your body.

1:32:00

liver and then look

1:32:03

at your liver function test. Very

1:32:05

cheap test to do. AST ALT

1:32:08

GGT, very cheap and

1:32:10

we want the liver to be super pristine as

1:32:12

a way to eliminate toxins. And so in the

1:32:14

book I talk about how like even on the

1:32:16

standard ranges say like below 40s and 50s is

1:32:18

good for AST and

1:32:20

ALT, we actually probably want it less

1:32:23

than like 17, like quite low,

1:32:25

these liver enzymes, which is a sign that

1:32:27

our liver cells are healthy. And

1:32:29

for GGT, which is another protein that's made in

1:32:31

the liver, we want

1:32:34

that probably like lower, like lower than

1:32:37

14, some studies say lower than eight. So

1:32:39

that's a really good just like snapshot of

1:32:41

how things are going with your liver. And

1:32:44

then for gut function, you know, it's just

1:32:46

all the things we can do to protect the gut so

1:32:48

that it can excrete a lot of these, these

1:32:50

toxic chemicals. And so it's

1:32:52

eating enough fiber, it's making sure that we're,

1:32:54

you know, getting

1:32:56

rid of things that hurt the gut, like overuse

1:33:00

of anti inflammatory medications like

1:33:02

Advil and NSAIDs, overuse of antibiotics,

1:33:05

refined sugar hurts the gut, fructose hurts the

1:33:07

gut lining, and just, you

1:33:09

know, supporting, supporting gut function with with

1:33:11

real food. So those

1:33:14

are really basic, like, but basically, it's just like

1:33:16

taking out the big things that are hurting the

1:33:19

main organs that help us get rid of the

1:33:21

toxins and then cleaning up the environment, such

1:33:24

that we're like, reducing the

1:33:27

burden. And yeah, against

1:33:29

skin is largest organ in our body. So just making

1:33:31

sure that the stuff we're putting on our skin is

1:33:34

as clean as humanly possible.

1:33:37

So the future is

1:33:39

a hefty responsibility and not one that we

1:33:41

take lightly. But then taking things lightly has

1:33:43

never been what has these about. That's why

1:33:46

we've created the happy renew program that turns

1:33:48

hard to recycle plastics into valuable resources

1:33:50

like our functions and building

1:33:52

materials to participate simply fill up an

1:33:54

orange hefty renew bag of accepted items, tie it

1:33:56

up and drop it in with your regular

1:33:58

recycling. That's it It's that

1:34:00

easy. It's time to rethink recycling with

1:34:02

renew. A particular value of

1:34:04

resources may vary by GIS and for available, have

1:34:07

to renew.com. Earlier when

1:34:09

I talked about nutrition, I said we could look at

1:34:11

it through getting

1:34:13

micronutrients and

1:34:15

different vitamins, minerals in, and

1:34:18

avoiding the toxicants. We've

1:34:20

added another piece since then talking

1:34:22

about the blood sugar. So

1:34:25

I wanna make sure that's clear. That's another

1:34:27

whole dimension here where we wanna

1:34:29

get the nutrition the body needs,

1:34:31

avoid toxins, and we

1:34:33

wanna do it in a way that's keeping our blood sugar

1:34:35

in a healthy range. So there's three

1:34:37

different layers. Yeah, those

1:34:39

are the three layers. That's exactly

1:34:42

right. And I think, yeah, it's

1:34:44

really like matching the inputs, matching

1:34:48

the cellular needs with the stuff we're putting in our

1:34:50

mouth. That's step one, getting rid of the stuff that's

1:34:53

overburdening and toxifying the body. That's step two, and then

1:34:55

doing it in a way that keeps our blood sugar

1:34:57

hopefully more stable, because that's just gonna make us feel

1:34:59

better day to day, but also be good for our

1:35:01

long-term health. And when

1:35:04

we think about blood sugar, that

1:35:06

actually gets broken down into a two-part thing

1:35:09

as well, which is that there are things we can do to control

1:35:11

our blood sugar day to day, which is

1:35:13

like walking after meals and

1:35:15

making sure we're pairing our carbohydrates with

1:35:18

fiber and protein appropriately, really balancing

1:35:20

our meals. It can be things

1:35:22

like adjuncts, like taking apple cider vinegar before our

1:35:24

meals, which can lower our glucose spike. It's

1:35:27

those types of strategies for balancing

1:35:29

our blood sugar. That's

1:35:31

kind of step one. And then the

1:35:34

step two is actually building capacity of

1:35:36

the mitochondria to process glucose better over

1:35:38

time, which then will keep

1:35:40

blood sugar levels stable over the

1:35:42

long run. So the blood sugar balancing piece

1:35:45

has both the day to day and then

1:35:47

the long-term building of capacity, which that is

1:35:49

done through the multimodal, holistic dietary

1:35:52

and lifestyle strategies that we've been talking

1:35:54

about across all the different spectrums that

1:35:56

essentially build the mitochondria's capacity.

1:36:00

to process glucose. So it's both the day

1:36:02

to day and then the long term of

1:36:04

sort of a building a healthier mitochondria. So

1:36:08

the nesting dolls of food, which is

1:36:10

of course, explained in detail in the

1:36:12

book, but yeah, it's like we've kind

1:36:14

of been, you know, given

1:36:17

this framework of like food is calories,

1:36:19

and it is just so, so, so

1:36:21

much more than that. And I think

1:36:23

we have to remember that anything that's kind of been drilled

1:36:26

into our head of like food, you know, calories, a calorie

1:36:28

and it's sort of calories in calories out. That

1:36:30

is a strategy that really like serves the

1:36:33

food industry's interests over our own interests,

1:36:35

like knowing a little bit more and

1:36:37

appreciating the magic of food for

1:36:39

impacting all aspects of our

1:36:41

cellular health helps

1:36:44

us realize why it is so

1:36:46

much more than calories. It's really

1:36:48

it's molecular building blocks, it's molecular

1:36:50

information that directs our genetics and our cell

1:36:52

signaling pathways. And then it's of course, also the

1:36:55

glucose level, which has an impact on our day to

1:36:57

day function and our long term health. All

1:36:59

right, Kay, so we've gotten big into the food

1:37:01

piece, we've covered toxicants. Let's

1:37:03

move into some of these other high

1:37:06

level areas that we want to make

1:37:08

sure we're looking at and addressing when it comes to

1:37:10

metabolic health. Yeah, well, I think

1:37:12

one of I mean, so there's, there's, there's so

1:37:14

many here, there's the movement, there's the

1:37:16

sleep, there's the emotional health, there's temperature,

1:37:19

there's light. I think if there's, you

1:37:21

know, there's one that I

1:37:23

think that I would say

1:37:25

feels really accessible and very

1:37:28

high leverage, it's, it's the movement piece.

1:37:30

And I think one of the things

1:37:32

that surprised me in doing the research

1:37:34

for this book was actually the power of

1:37:37

reframing movement from

1:37:40

the concept of exercise to the

1:37:42

concept of, you know, kind

1:37:45

of just creating a life that's in motion.

1:37:47

So right now we're very much subscribe this

1:37:49

idea that like exercise the thing that we

1:37:51

have on our to do list, we schedule

1:37:54

into our calendar, and we

1:37:56

check it off. And great, like we've

1:37:58

done it. That.

1:38:01

Kind of. I think the mindset N N. Even.

1:38:04

With that, less than twenty. Percent of Americans

1:38:06

are getting the recommended amount of exercise. Per.

1:38:09

Week that we're supposed to. Fit.

1:38:11

There's actually think an issue with that

1:38:13

perspective, which is that it. it solidifies

1:38:15

in our head that exercises it's discrete

1:38:17

bout of activity that we'd that we

1:38:19

do and them were done. When.

1:38:21

You look at the biology's. As.

1:38:24

Yell Human life. Or

1:38:26

cells actually do their best work when

1:38:29

the body is kind of and motion

1:38:31

like all throughout the day. Like.

1:38:33

When. You look at. Tribal. Cultures

1:38:36

that are still live in today, that living

1:38:38

very indigenous sort of more traditional life. The.

1:38:41

Walking twenty thousand steps a day, the

1:38:43

average Americans walking thirty five hundred steps

1:38:45

per day, we are really not moving.

1:38:48

It. Something really astonishing is

1:38:50

that we spend about eighty

1:38:52

percent of our waking time

1:38:54

just sitting, does not moving,

1:38:56

and. That. A profound

1:38:58

impact on how our cells are functioning because