Doctors Miss THIS! – Do It for 7 Days to Strip Fat, Sleep Deep & Reverse Aging FAST
By Ben Azadi
Summary
## Key takeaways - **Lower Insulin for Fat Burning**: Insulin is the 'bully hormone' that signals fat storage. Lowering insulin by reducing carbohydrate intake and increasing healthy fats and proteins allows your body to burn fat. [00:39], [01:44] - **Avoid Inflammatory Seed Oils**: Industrial seed oils like canola, corn, and soybean oil are highly inflammatory and can remain in your body for years, blocking fat-burning hormones from entering cells. Swap them for healthy fats like butter, ghee, avocado, and olive oil. [06:47], [08:13] - **Close the Kitchen 3 Hours Before Bed**: Eating too close to bedtime raises body temperature, disrupts deep sleep, and signals the body to store fat instead of burning it. This also leads to increased hunger hormones and decreased satiety hormones the next day. [12:33], [13:04] - **Walk After Meals to Blunt Glucose Spikes**: A 30-minute walk after your largest meal can significantly reduce post-meal glucose spikes, which in turn lowers insulin response and promotes fat burning. [17:16], [17:42] - **Cold Exposure Builds Mitochondria**: Cold exposure, like cold showers or plunges, stresses mitochondria in a beneficial way, promoting the creation of new mitochondria and turning 'bad' white fat into 'good' brown fat. [18:08], [18:40]
Topics Covered
- Only one hormone signals fat storage. Do you know it?
- These 'healthy' oils are more inflammatory than smoking.
- Why calorie deficits fail: Insulin blocks fat burning.
- Food processing: more impactful than calories or carbs?
- Melatonin: a secret weapon for mitochondrial repair and cancer?
Full Transcript
If you're looking to lose weight without
feeling restricted or starving yourself
or counting calories, then I have an
easy step-by-step protocol for you. In
this lesson, I'll be sharing a 7-day
protocol for you to follow these easy
steps. And you can follow it week after
week until you achieve your ideal body
weight. The first step in your protocol
is to emphasize the hormone insulin. And
when I say emphasize, we actually want
to lower that hormone insulin. When we
think about the metabolism in the human
body, there are over 600 hormones inside
of your body. Hormones are simply
chemical messengers. Out of those 600
plus hormones in your body, only one of
those hormones signal fat storage. And
this is the energy sensor, also the
hormone insulin. If you have high levels
of insulin, you're going to be storing
fat. When you have low levels of
insulin, you're going to be burning fat.
There are certain foods that elicit an
insulin response. And when you elicit
that insulin response, your fat burning
hormones, they go into hiding because
insulin is the bully of the block. So
you might be asking and wondering, "How
do I lower insulin, Ben?" That's a great
question. Let's look at the three
macronutrients out there. We have
protein, carbohydrates, and fat. It is
the carbohydrates that will give you the
biggest insulin response. And yes,
processed carbohydrates will give you a
bigger insulin response than whole foods
carbohydrates, but they will all give
you an insulin response. Protein on the
other hand gives a small insulin
response and fat does not touch the dial
on insulin. As you can see here on this
chart by Verta Health, when you eat
different macronutrients, carbohydrates,
protein, and fat, you can see the
carbohydrates give you the biggest
insulin response. Protein is a fair
response, but nothing major. And then
fat keeps your insulin steady. So your
first step is to lower the carbohydrates
that spike insulin and eat the fats and
proteins that keep your insulin low,
allowing you to burn fat. So here's a
list of the carbohydrates that spike
insulin that you want to limit as much
as possible. Oats, including oatmeal,
cereal, all breads, grains, fruit, and
fruit juices, quinoa, white rice, brown
rice, white potatoes, and sweet
potatoes, and all legumes including
beans, peanuts, lentils, and chickpeas.
What you're going to want to do is swap
those out for better insulin friendly
foods. These include cauliflower rice
instead of regular rice. Squash rice and
cabbage rice is also a good option as
well. Eggs and red meat are terrific to
put your body in a fat burning
anti-inflammatory state. And seafood,
but it has to be the right seafood.
There's the smash acronym that I
recommend you follow. That acronym
stands for sardines, mackerel,
anchovies, salmon, and herring. What
these fatty fish all have in common is
that they are smaller fish. Keep in
mind, the bigger the fish, the more
toxins it stores and the more toxins you
absorb. So, you don't want to eat big
fish like tuna and swordfish and others
out there. The smash acronym is what you
want to follow if you're going to
consume seafood. And then we have
poultry like chicken and uh turkey as
well. It is important to source the
right types of proteins and carbs. Make
sure it's organic, non-GMO as much as
possible. In terms of how many
carbohydrates to consume to keep insulin
low, a good rule of thumb to follow is
no more than 100 grams of total
carbohydrates per day. Now, if you could
drop that under 50 gram of total carbs
per day, you'll see even faster results
because you'll allow your body to switch
into a ketogenic state, which is perfect
for burning fat and producing a ton of
energy. Protein should also be a staple
here. We don't want to forget about
that. So, I recommend to get at least 30
g of protein at all of your meals.
Protein is going to activate different
hormones and chemicals such as
choicyinine, peptide y, and leptin. And
all this means is it helps your brain,
your stomach, your body feel full and
satiated and prevents you from
overeating, especially overeating
processed junk food. I personally get my
highquality meats and seafood from a
company called Wild Pastures. They
deliver it right to my door every month.
They are hands down the cleanest meats
and seafood you'll find out there. They
taste delicious and they support
regenerative farms. I'm a big fan of
them. If you head over to
ketoampmeat.com,
you get a special deal off of Wild
Pastures Meats and Seafood. And I'll
drop that link down below. Part of this
first step here in your protocol is to
eliminate the snacking. You're going to
have your three meals per day. Again, I
mentioned we're not going to do much
fasting unless you want to and have
already been doing it. But we do want to
eliminate snacks because every time you
snack, whether it's a healthy snack or
an unhealthy snack, it will produce
insulin unless it's 100% fat, which is
rare these days. And whenever you
produce insulin, as I mentioned, your
fat burning hormones are going into
hiding. So, if you keep snacking in
between your meals, you're not going to
allow your body to go into a fat burning
state. It disrupts your metabolism. It's
like somebody knocking on your door
every 3 hours when you're trying to get
work done in focus, and they're banging
on your door, interrupting your flow. in
this case, interrupting your
metabolism's flow to burn fat. So, if
you have three meals a day, what that
would look like, let's say 8:00 a.m.,
12:00 p.m., and 6 pm will be the three
meals, giving you some time in between
those meals and overnight to lower
insulin and burn fat. The second step in
your protocol is to lower cell
inflammation. There are different types
of inflammation. You've heard of
inflammation. It was on the cover of
Time magazine. Inflammation, the root
cause of all disease. And there are two
primary types of inflammation. You have
acute inflammation from an injury or a
sore shoulder from a workout or a
sprained ankle. I'm not talking about
that type of inflammation. I'm referring
to cellular membrane inflammation, which
is chronic inflammation. You see, you
have 30 to 70 trillion cells in your
body. Every cell has a lipid billayer
around it called the cell membrane. And
those membranes have important
functions. They have these receptor
sites, about 30,000 on one cell. And
these receptor sites act as cell phone
antennas. They're also called integral
membrane proteins. So think of a cell
phone antenna. If you have a cell phone
antenna, the job of that cell phone
antenna is to receive a signal to
produce a job. So your fat burning
hormones, for example, are sending
signals to your cells, telling your
cells and your mitochondria to produce
the job of burning fat and producing
energy. When there's too much cell
inflammation, that communication is
blocked and instead of burning fat,
you're storing fat. Meaning, good things
cannot get into the cell, bad things
cannot get out of the cell and it leads
to weight gain and weight loss
resistance. Another term for this is
hormone resistance. So, there are some
foods I'm going to identify for you
right now. You want to write them down.
Make sure you do not consume these foods
during your protocol so you can lower
inflammation and allow those fat burning
hormones to get into your cells. The
first classification of foods are called
vegetable oils. Other names for them
include linoleic acid, seed oils, and
omega-6 fats. These oils are so
inflammatory, arguably more inflammatory
than processed sugar and smoking
cigarettes because they stay in your
body around your cells for years. the
half-life, meaning if you stopped eating
them today, half of them will remain in
your body fat 680
days later. That's why they are so
inflammatory and so problematic. So,
here's the list that you want to avoid.
Read the ingredients. Ask the server at
the restaurant about these oils. Avoid
them as much as possible. We have canola
oil, which is called rape seed oil in
the UK, corn oil, cottonseed oil,
soybean oil, safflower oil, sunflower
oil, rice brand oil, grape seed oil,
refined peanut oil, and fish oil. These
are all unstable inflammatory fats, and
they're everywhere. It's estimated
they're in 80% of our food supply. They
are carcinogenic, meaning a study by Dr.
Martin Grufeld showed that these oils
create as much carcinogens in your body
as smoking cigarettes. They did a study
analyzing 20 to 25 French fries fried in
these bad fats, canola oil, and it
created as much aldahhides, which are
carcinogenic, as smoking 20 to 25
cigarettes. Yikes. So, what I suggest is
to swap those bad fats for healthy fats
that support that cell membrane
integrity and allow those fat burning
hormones to get into your cells. These
are called saturated fats and
monounsaturated fats. The list of
saturated fats that I recommend you cook
your foods in will be butter, ghee, beef
tallow, duck fat, lard from healthy
pigs, non-hydrogenized. The other
healthy set of fats that are
monounsaturated fats are great for salad
dressings and dips. That includes
avocado oil and olive oil. Coconut oil
is also a good saturated fat for cooking
as well. And just a quick pro tip for
you, when you're at the restaurants,
they're going to serve these bad fats.
And what I do is I show them my seed oil
allergy card and it shows the bad fats,
it shows that you're allergic to them
and it shows the healthier swaps and you
just show it to the server and they will
accommodate. And you can get this for
free, my gift to you, by heading to seed
oilcard.com or clicking the link in the
notes down below. The next set of foods
you want to replace is artificial
sweeteners and processed sugar. We know
that artificial sweeteners wreck the gut
microbiome and some people it causes
them to produce insulin and it also
causes people to overeat. That means
drinking diet soda is just as bad as
regular soda. It's not a healthy swap.
Diet Snapple, all these diet drinks,
they contain these inflammatory
artificial ingredients. So, here's a
list of the ones you want to avoid. Raw
sugar, processed sugar, fruit juices,
and smoothies, evaporated cane juice,
agave nectar, sucralose, which is in
Splenda, and aspartane. Replace them
with healthier swaps. These include
stevia, monk fruit, iulose, xylitol,
arythrtol, and even raw honey in small
amounts. If you're looking for a more
comprehensive grocery list for your
protocol, I put together this keto camp
blueprint for you, which is a free
stepbystep aisle by aisle document of
the right foods to eat when you go to
the grocery store. So, you can get this
for free if you go over to ketoacampb
blueprint.com. I'll drop that link for
you to get this download for free. The
next ingredient to avoid is high
fructose corn syrup. And you might be
thinking, I already know that's bad for
me, but I'm going to share some
surprising names that high fructose corn
syrup hides under with your healthy
foods out there. And of course, I'm
putting that in quotation marks. First,
let's understand this. Every cell in
your body have mitochondria with the
exception of red blood cells. And the
mitochondria are important for producing
energy. So, you have energy and feel
good. But as it relates to fat loss, the
more energy you produce, the more it
raises your basil metabolic rate, your
metabolism, and the more fat you burn.
High fructose corn syrup is
mitochondrial poison. When you consume
it, it destroys your metabolism and its
ability to produce energy. Not only does
this slow down your metabolism, it also
raises inflammation at that cell level,
preventing your fat burning hormones
from getting into the cell and burning
fat. High fructose corn syrup does not
trigger the same feelings of fullness as
other nutrients, leading to increased
food intake. The lack of satiety can
cause individuals to eat more than
necessary, which obviously contributes
to weight gain. High fructose corn syrup
leads to hyperinsulinemia. In other
words, insulin resistance, a condition
where your body cells become less
responsive to insulin. This can result
in higher blood sugar levels, increased
fat storage, particularly around the
stomach. Another issue with high
fructose corn syrup is that it's
primarily metabolized by the liver. 90%
of it is metabolized by your liver. And
excessive fructose consumption can lead
the conversion of fructose to fat,
contributing to liver fat accumulation
and overall body fat. High fructose corn
syrup leads to higher levels of
triglycerides in the bloodstream, which
are a type of fat. Elevated
triglycerides can promote fat storage
and weight gain, particularly again
around the stomach. Here are the other
hidden ingredients with different names
that contain high fructose corn syrup.
Make sure you read the ingredients label
and make sure it does not have any of
the items I'm about to list. corn syrup,
glucose fructose syrup, isoglucose, mice
syrup, fructose, glucose syrup, tapioca
syrup, fruit fructose glucose syrup, and
high fructose mice syrup. One of the
companies that I use that do not use
these artificial ingredients I mentioned
is a company called Thrive Market. And
you could actually check out their
products and get 30% off your first
order and a free gift when you click the
link in the notes down below. They
deliver it right to your door. It's kind
of like Whole Foods meets Costco. It's a
membership and they have most of their
items are pretty clean. The third step
in your protocol is to close the kitchen
three hours before bed. At least three
hours before bed, meaning no food at
least three hours before you go to bed.
The closer you eat to bed, the less deep
sleep and fat burning you'll get. It's
actually one of the biggest mistakes
people make when they're trying to lose
weight. Not to mention, it's a fast way
to raise inflammation in your body and
accelerate the aging process. When you
give your body energy by eating food and
then go to bed, there is no activity
expenditure on the energy you just
consumed. So, your metabolism just
stores it as fat. Eating before bed also
raises your body temperature, which is
the opposite of what you want in order
to achieve deep delta sleep where your
fat burning hormones are activated and
ramping up fat burning during that stage
of sleep. When you eat and go to bed, it
could also lead to acid reflux and gird
and also waking up in the morning
feeling groggy and hungry. This is
because the research shows when you
don't get enough deep sleep, you'll wake
up the next morning with higher levels
of cortisol, the stress hormone, higher
levels of blood sugar, glucose, higher
levels of the hunger hormone, ghrein,
and lower levels of the satiety hormone
called leptin. So, the rule is no food
at least 3 hours before bed. For
example, if you go to bed at 11:00 p.m.
at night, the kitchen should be closed
by 8:00 p.m. at the latest. The fourth
step in your protocol is to consume one
tablespoon of the following ingredients
every day to enhance fat burning. The
first ingredient is mediumchain
triglycerides, MCT oil or MCT powder.
There are different types of MCTs out
there. There is C6, C8, C10, C12. Then
there are longchain fats and short chain
fats. The one that has the best research
in terms of fat burning and ketone
production is C8 MCT oil called
cryrillic acid. As you can see here,
this study showed that C8 capillic acid
alone increases plasma ketone response
more than coconut oil or other
mediumchain triglycerides. That's
important because ketones actually help
your mitochondria produce more energy
and it raises your basil metabolic rate.
So, I would recommend one tablespoon of
MCT oil per day. I personally put it in
my coffee. You could also put it in your
tea or just have a tablespoon straight
up. I'll put the company that I use in
the notes down below. The next
ingredient is rveratrol powder.
Rveratrol, a polyphenolic compound found
in grapes and wines, has notable health
benefits, particularly for mitochondrial
health and fat loss. It enhances
mitochondrial function by activating
your certuin genes and creating a
process called mitochondrial uncoupling.
To keep things short, all that means it
helps to extend your lifespan.
anti-aging by protecting your DNA and it
creates a process called the uncoupling
of mitochondria which gets rid of free
radicals that are built up when your
cells produce energy. It's a win-win and
I'll drop a study on what resveratrol
does for inflammation and weight loss
down below. I personally recommend it
from Japanese notweed powder tablespoon
per day and I'll put a link for the one
that I recommend and use in the notes
down below. The third ingredient is
apple cider vinegar. I know you've heard
of apple cider vinegar. There's a ton of
information about it out there and for
good reason. And it really helps with
fat loss and postprandial glucose and
insulin resistance. But it has to be the
right type of apple cider vinegar.
Before I talk about that, here are the
three major reasons why apple cider
vinegar works. Number one, it contains
acetic acid, which is a short- chain
fatty acid, which helps to ramp up the
metabolism and curb appetite by 600
calories per day. Number two, it aids in
digestion. Your liver, which is one of
the most important detoxification and
fat loss organs in your body, loves
apple cider vinegar because it
stimulates the liver to produce bile,
which is a detergent to break down fat.
And that's important for your metabolism
because your metabolism loves the
vitamins's A, D, E, and K, these fats
soluble vitamins, to use it for cell
energy. And healthy bile helps to
accomplish that. Apple cider vinegar
helps to signal to the liver to produce
that healthy bile. It also helps with
acid reflux and gird. Apple cider
vinegar also helps with postprandial
glucose. That is your glucose response
after eating a meal. When you eat a
meal, the higher your blood sugars go,
the more insulin is produced and the
more you store body fat. And if you can
blunt that post prenial glucose
response, you'll go back to burning fat
faster. Apple cider vinegar helps
accomplish this. So, the best time to
take your apple cider vinegar is 15 to
20 minutes before all of your meals. If
you choose the liquid form, get an
organic, good company. Take a
tablespoon, 15 to 20 minutes before your
meals. I don't recommend the gummies. I
personally use the apple cider vinegar
complex from Paleo Valley, which
contains not just apple cider vinegar,
but four other superfoods, and it really
helps with that postprandial glucose. I
take two to three capsules before my
meals. And you could find that with the
coupon code automatically applied by
going to the notes down below. The
fourth step in your protocol is to go
for a walk after your biggest meal of
the day. The meal that has the most
carbs is ideal. Timing your walks after
your meals has tremendous fat loss
benefits. We just spoke about that
postprandial glucose response. Walking
after a meal is another great way along
with apple cider vinegar to blunt that
postrandial glucose response. You can
see here with the study the effects of
postrandial walking on the glucose
response after meals with different
characteristics. This study showed that
postpranial brisk walking substantially
reduced the glucose peak in both
studies. And they looked at people
eating a high carb meal, a low carb
meal, and a mixed meal. And in all the
participants, they saw a better
postprandial glucose response with a 30
minute walk after the meal. If you could
walk after all your meals, that is
wonderful. I would recommend that.
That's not realistic for a lot of
people. So, just choose the biggest meal
of the day to go for that walk. The
fifth step in your protocol is cold
exposure. You've heard of cold plunging.
It's getting popular these days in the
biohacking space. There are several ways
to achieve cold exposure. You could take
a cold shower. You could jump into a
cold plunge, a cold body of water. You
could do cryotherapy.
All of them are beneficial. You want to
make sure the water is at least 60°
Fahrenheit or less. And you want to get
about 11 minutes total per week. I'll
explain more about that in a second, but
let me explain how this works for fat
loss. When you jump into a cold body of
water, it's a shock to your system. Your
liver produces these cold shock
proteins. And it also stresses your
mitochondria in a good way to create
mitochondrial biogenesis, the creation
of new mitochondria. That's important
for energy production and the raising of
your metabolism. It also has been shown
to turn white fat, which is the fat
around your visceral fat, your organs,
the bad fat, and convert it to beige.
And then the browning of that fat
because of the mitochondrial load that
becomes increased with cold exposure.
Cold exposure also gives you a 250%
dopamine increase without a dramatic
crash like cocaine might give you. And
the cool thing about that dopamine
increase, it actually helps you make
better decisions the rest of your day.
Because a lot of people who are eating
processed carbohydrates, they're doing
it because of that dopamine hit they
get. And when you do cold plunging,
you'll get that dopamine hit but in a
healthy manner. So you're not having to
get it from ice cream. Pretty cool. It
also develops mental resilience which
transfers to other decisions that you
make the rest of your day. So I'm a big
fan of cold exposure. More is not
better. And the sweet spot as I
mentioned according to the research is
to get 11 minutes total per week. So
that's about 90 seconds every day of
cold exposure. You want it to be 60°
Fahrenheit or less the temperature. And
I would recommend easing your way into
the cold exposure starting very low and
slow and then ramping things up. I
personally use the cold plunge from
plunge.com. You can see an image of me
enjoying my plunge in my backyard, the
ketoamp plunge. And if you go to
plunge.com and use the code keto camp,
you can get a few hundred off your
plunge if you want to get their plunge.
So, the biggest difference here that I'm
hearing when it comes to caloric
restriction versus intermittent fasting
as it relates to weight loss and the
metabolism is that, for example, if
somebody's total daily energy
expenditure is 2,000 and they say, "I'm
going to go and consume,500 calories to
be in a 500 calorie deficit." If they
did that with, let's say, fasting, they
get the benefit of lowering insulin and
raising the counter um sympathetic tone,
the counterregulatory hormones, and
there's benefits there. If they did that
without the fasting and snacked all day,
they get the insulin spikes and they
don't benefit from that those counter
regulatory hormones.
>> Yeah, there's the counter regulatory
hormones, but there's also the fact that
so say you start out at 2,000 and 2,000.
So we'll take you know suppose you go
down now to 1500 with you know you're
eating you know 15 meals a day you're
eating lowfat super high carb as we told
people in the sort of 90s
>> what happens is that if your insulin
levels are very high we know that
insulin turns off lipolysis right it
that's what it does that's its job right
insulin is a is a hormone that goes up
when you eat and it tells your body to
store calories and don't burn calories
Okay. So, if you're taking 1,500
calories going in um and your body is
now burning 2,000, well, you've got a
deficit of 500. So, you want that
deficit to come out of body fat, right?
That's the whole point.
>> But you can't because insulin is high.
So, you can't burn body fat. So, I don't
again I don't understand why people
can't see it so clearly because it's
like okay well insulin is there blocking
your body from burning those 500 from
taking those 500 calories out of your
body fat because that's its job. So
therefore the problem is that your
insulin levels are too high. Well, how
are you going to balance the 1500 going
in and the 2,000 you're coming out?
Right? Your insulin levels you're
keeping them high. So therefore you
can't get it from your stores. you're
not taking any more in. So, at first
you're going to be hungry, but you're
going to be iron willed, and you're only
going to take 1500. The only thing that
can happen is that the 2,000 calories
goes down to 15. So, all of a sudden,
your metabolic rate goes from 2,000 to
1500 in order to balance because people
always think about this caloric deficit.
A caloric deficit never ever happens.
The energy balance equation is a
balanced equation. You have three
variables: body fat as a store, calories
in, and calories out. And those three
variables have to
net out, right? They have to balance. So
if you can't take it out of storage, so
say your storage is you can't take it,
you're not putting it in, you're not
taking it out because insulin's high.
You're not taking it out. So you can't
take the energy out of there. You got
1500 going in, you got 2,000 going out.
That has to balance. That's not, you
know, optional. So therefore to balance
your body has to reduce its its
metabolic rate to 1500. And that's
exactly what happens. We know this. We
know this for 50 years. We known this.
On the other hand, if you allow insulin
to fall, right? Now you have 1500 going
out coming in, right? 2,000 going out.
And because insulin is low, you can take
as much as you want from their fat
stores. So 500 comes out. Well, why do
you have to burn less? Why do you have
to reduce your metabolic rate? And the
answer is you don't because you allowed
insulin to fall. And the the problem is
there's there's a um you know there's a
it gets mixed up because the the amount
of calories you eat is does have a
relationship to how much insulin you you
do, right? Because insulin is a nutrient
sensor. If you eat a lot of calories in
general, your insulin levels will go up
higher, right? for the same food. If you
eat, you know, one muffin versus two
muffins, you're going to get double the
insulin effect, right? Because that's
just the way it is. And then you say,
well, you also get double the calories.
So, so there's a there's a there, you
know, they are mixed up,
>> but they're different, right? So, it's
the insulin effect can be is is not the
same as the number of calories. Um, but
it's if your insulin levels are are too
high, then you can't um you can't you
can't take it out. So, that's where the
metabolic rate comes in, right? Because
if you're not um turning down, you know,
the insulin, then how are you going to
get the um the the the body fat out? You
can't. That's just physiology. Makes
sense to me. Dr. Fun, um here's what I
want to do for the audience watching and
listening. Can you share a 30-day
fasting protocol for people to try out
to help them burn fat, starve diseases
like cancer, and reverse also diabetes?
And if they have that
>> a 30-day protocol.
>> Yeah. If you map out like a 30 a general
30-day protocol.
>> Yeah. For, you know, it depends on what
you're doing it for. For diabetes, it's
probably much more established. In fact,
there's a lot of there's actually um
just in the last couple of years,
there's been four studies, I think, that
looked at diabetes remission. Um, some
of them are fantastic, like almost 50%
drug-free remission, like fantastic. And
they all had different
>> um they all had different protocols.
>> Um, but um you know, a lot of them were
uh not full fasts. So there's fasting
variations that can also be very
successful. So, a lot of the studies um
use sort of low calorie days as opposed
to full fasting days. Uh which is not
much different than if you do a 24-hour
fast, right? You go dinner to dinner,
that one that day is not a a zerocalorie
day. Um so, I what I would generally do
is depends on where people are starting
from. if they're starting at a very low
like they don't know how to fast and
stuff then I generally would start the
first few days uh you know one cutting
down the carbohydrates because again
it's easier to transition to fasting if
you're in a low carb state already
because again there's two fuels there's
glucose and there's fat. If you're using
glucose all the time then your body is
just not used to burning fat. If you're
eating a low carb diet then you're going
to already be using a lot of fat as a
fuel. So when you f when you switch to
fasting when there's nothing to eat and
you're using body fat, well that
transition is not so hard. So I'd spend
the first few days uh you know cutting
down the carbohydrates then then for the
first week cutting out the snacks and
then gradually increasing. So I usually
use sort of a uh alternate day in my
clinic anyway. I usually do an alternate
day fasting sort of one meal a day for
um three days of the week. And that way
that that allows people to still have
that one meal
and then and then uh go um in case they
need to take medications or anything.
>> So one one day you'll have one meal, the
next day you have three meals, the next
day one meal, but then gradually also uh
introduce the 16-hour uh 168 on the non
um non-fasting days.
>> Got it. Okay.
>> And that should be sort of a baseline.
So, first, you know, again, if it was a
complete beginner, you'd start the first
week cutting down carbs, cutting down
snacks, you know, making sure you're
down to three meals. Then in the second
week, try to introduce sort of uh 168 on
most days with a 24-hour fast, say once
a week, and then build it up to sort of
three times a week. And then if if
you're still not getting the results,
then to go to sort of monthly longer
fast, which can be sort of 3 to 5 days.
And they don't have to be a full fast.
As I said, if you look at the protocols,
so there is four four different studies,
all randomized control trials. And the
most recent one, um there's two actually
in 2024. One on the 5 to2 which was
published in JAMAMA. And they used I
think uh on the two days that so 5 to2
is five days of sort of a regular diet
and two days of very low calorie, not
zero. So Michael Mosley used 500
calories, they use 5 to 600 calories.
And then um but that longer fast uh is
also effective. There's a couple there's
one from the fasting mimicking diet
which is again a five days a month you
do this sort of uh follow the set meal
plan and it's um it's got like um about
750 calories. So a little higher but
again they had very good results. Um, so
you know I if you're if you're showing
the results then you know there you know
there's you can't argue with that,
right?
>> Yeah, you can't. And I know that you're
currently doing a water fast right now.
What what day are you on?
>> I'm on day four.
>> How long are you going?
>> I can take some bone broth with it. So
it's not a full water fast. I actually
kind of
>> How long are you going the fast? How
long are you going to do it for?
>> It'll be five days. I'll finish.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah. And somebody like me, somebody
like you who has we both have done these
fiveday water fasts, doing something
like a fasting mimicking diet or a
partial fast is a step backwards for us,
but for a lot of people it's a step
forward. So that's what you're saying
here. It's it's a tool in the shed that
could be valuable to some people.
>> Exactly. So people get sort of freaked
out with the idea and I'm sure you've
you know when you tell people, oh, I
haven't eat in since Sunday.
>> Oh yeah. My my mom still freaks out when
I do it. by the way,
>> people freak out like seriously. So, so
the thought of it is very daunting for
them and in those cases something like
the fasting mimicking diet can be
advantageous. Now, first it, you know,
as you said, it's expensive and uh it's
not necessary. So, you could do it with
nothing um or just some you know, some
some relatively easy thing like chicken
broth or something like that. Yeah,
>> this is surprising to a lot of people,
but I hate to cook. It's time consuming
and when I see a recipe with a whole
bunch of ingredients that take a whole
bunch of time, I just tend to not do it.
So, I decided to put together a program
for you. This is a keto recipe of the
week program. I personally handpicked
every recipe and I made it very easy to
follow, quick to make. These are fat
burning, delicious, tasty recipes that I
actually make in the kitchen even though
I don't enjoy cooking. Every week in
this program, you'll be sent a
newsletter with why I chose this recipe
and how to make this recipe so you could
master this keto lifestyle. This is the
easiest way to adopt the keto lifestyle.
And even if you're not doing keto, it's
a great way to incorporate some fat
burning meals. You'll get breakfast,
lunch, and dinner items. And we're
throwing in hundreds of dollars in free
bonuses if you join us. It's only $9.97
per month. You could cancel anytime and
you get those free bonuses. So head over
to ketoamp recipes.com to learn more
about the keto recipe of the week and
the free bonuses. Remember camp is
spelled with a K and go check it out. If
you're anything like me and you just
want quick, easy, and fat burning
delicious recipes, this is for you.
Um but on the other hand it it it
they've done a lot of studies showing
how uh how you can use it because what
what it's done from a psychological
standpoint is actually very interesting
because you've taken this model where
you know for medicines and stuff or say
chemotherapy. It's like this is your
chemotherapy regimen, right? On day, you
know, one and to five, you're going to
get this chemo and then that's it,
right? So people do it because that's
the regimen. So it's the same idea if
you give them exactly what to do,
you know, it's like eat this, which is
comes in a pack and it's all it's this
sort of a low calorie plant-based
highfat diet. So, it's it's got
carbohydrates, but it's relatively low
in protein, and so it's designed to
lower insulin and IGF-1. That's that's
how it was designed is a plant-based uh
sort of low protein diet. Um, but it's
it's very low in calories as well. So,
it's about 750 calories a day. So, not
as low as Michael Mosley's 5 to2, which
is 500 calories on those days. But on
the other hand, you're left up to your
own devices when you have, you know,
those instructions. you're left up to
your own devices as to what to eat. So
you have to somehow come up with those
500 calories. So the other study I
mentioned which was a 5 to2 diet in
JAMAMA which was published I think a
week or two ago um they wound up using
meal replacement bars. So again high fat
so that you don't have so much insulin
effect and they said wow instead of
telling you eat 500 calories which you
know when you get into the real world
it's sometimes 500 and sometimes a
thousand right?
>> It depends on the person.
>> Sure. Um so by using this meal
replacement bar which is what that study
did and um the the fasting mimicking
diet which just says just eat this
you've taken that and completely
structured it for people.
>> So is it difficult like is it fun? No
it's not fun but on the other hand
neither is taking you know uh your
colonoscopy prep and stuff right but
people do it because you've set out
exactly what you need to do. So, I think
that that, you know, is for for people
who can do it themselves, why like why?
There's no point. But for people who
can't, who want everything sort of
spelled out exactly, it can really be
beneficial. Um, and I think that's
that's the whole point is that there's
there's very there's variations on
fasting that can still be extremely
effective for even serious disease
states um like uh like d type two
diabetes. And there's actually data and
and this is because the the the company
um the the the prolong company
>> they've actually invested in a huge
amount of studies. So there's like 15 or
20 studies that they've they've um
looked at and there's there's benefits
ranging from longevity markers to like
uh cancer to type 2 diabetes to
neurologic diseases to even kidney
disease which was the first data I had
ever seen on kidney disease. I did a did
a YouTube video on can fasting reverse
kidney disease and it actually did have
some uh benefits probably because of of
that. But again, I think it benefits
from two things. One is that it's it it
makes it very explicit as to what you're
supposed to be doing because most of the
time when you give dietary advice, it's
not that explicit. It's like eat more
broccoli and eat less white bread,
right?
>> Sure, but how much less and how many
days a week and how often am I doing
this? Right? So there's there's room for
interpretation and some people will do
amazing, but others will will just not
understand and they'll just eat
whatever, right? I mean, I remember
people I would tell to eat low carb and
they're all like, you know, you look at
their food journals and it's all full of
rice and noodles. I'm like, and they
didn't understand obviously what what I
was trying to say. Whereas this has sort
of taken that and made it sort of like,
okay, forget your regular food. This is
your meals for the next five days. Um
and I think some people might need that
right and and and clearly uh there is a
place for that uh you know in the whole
scheme of things right it's better than
following a diet and not understanding
it it's better than trying to do it
yourself because some people just don't
know and some people just want to be
told what to do which is fine that's
fine then if if if it works for you then
do it and because they have the science
behind it It it is very beneficial.
>> Well said. What are what are some of the
things devices that we could use during
a fast to see our progress? I I
personally I've used glucose and ketones
as a measurement. I want to see my
ketones rise and glucose dropout along
fast. What What other devices can we use
to measure our success with fasting?
>> Yeah. So, those are probably the most
important. So, it depends on what you're
looking for. If it's glucose, then of
course a continuous glucose monitor. if
you're looking to get into ketosis,
which again, you don't have to be in
ketosis to lose weight. You don't have
to be in ketosis for anything, but it's
a nice marker, right? So, what we're
talking about is the the whole idea of
BOF feedback, which is really important
because BOF feedback means that you can
tell what's happening in your body and
you couldn't normally. So, if you want
to know if you're in ketosis, you can't
tell unless you measure it, right? Uh
same as your blood glucose. You can't
just feel like, oh, I feel like my blood
glucose is this. Like, you can't do
that.
to measure it. But when you measure it,
you get information and then you can
change your behavior. So the other um
one that's quite interesting, I think
because it's relatively unique is the
Lumen device, which is um a breath
device that measures expired uh carbon
dioxide. So it actually measures
something called the Reer, which is the
respiratory exchange ratio. So it's this
little handheld device. You take a big
breath, you hold it, and then you blow
out. And it measures how much carbon
dioxide. And why is that important?
Because depending on, remember I said
there's two um forms of fuel. There's
glucose, which is carbs, and there's
fat.
When you burn glucose, you uh create a
lot more carbon dioxide just because of
the structure of it as opposed to fat,
which is triglycerides. So carbon you
know uh carbs are a lot of carbon so you
get more carbon dioxide. So you the re
which is the respiratory exchange ratio
estimates the RQ which is the
respiratory quotient which varies from
sort of 0.8 to 1.0. So if you have a
higher carbon dioxide it means you're
burning carbs. So this is great because
now you can actually track what's
happening in your body. So, if you're
eating um you know, you're you're eating
your regular meals and you're not
getting into a regular period of burning
fat, well, then you know it now. You can
do something about it. You can start
cutting your carbs down or so on because
honestly, like if you're not burning
fat, then you're not losing fat. If
you're just burning glucose constantly,
say you measure and every single day,
every hour of the day, you're just
burning glucose. Well, how are you going
to lose your fat stores? you can't.
You're burning glucose. So, you've got
too much glucose floating around and
that's what you're using as a fuel. You
can see it on your breath again, but you
don't know that because you haven't
measured it. So, there's a device which
is um you know, so it's again not cheap,
but it's it gives you information that
you can't get from other places. So,
they've actually done a lot of studies
looking at um this this device. And
again, you have to give them props
because they're actually trying to
measure how it can be useful. And one of
their latest studies is they're trying
to measure metabolic flexibility, which
is this idea that your body should be
able to move between glucose and fat as
a fuel. But some people have a real
problem doing that. Most do.
>> Yeah, a lot of people because they're
not used to it. So, it's interesting
because say you do a fast and you
haven't done one before. So, your body's
burning glucose. Well, after a day or
so, it stops burning glucose, but your
body doesn't really know how to burn fat
because you never did a longer fast
before. So, then you're in this extended
period of gluconogenesis where you're
just getting low glucose. Well, you
might actually not be doing too well
because you're feeling that real low
energy because you got no glucose and
your fat burning hasn't burn
ramped up yet. So in that case now if
you measure it you can see that you're
still burning a lot of glucose. You're
not burning fat. So therefore you might
actually have to back off a little bit
on the fasting and do more longer
fasting so you build up just like in a
marathon you wouldn't go from couch
potato to like oh I'm going to go out
and run 26 miles like no you should do
like you know couple miles then a couple
more miles then a couple more miles.
Same thing if your body simply can't
make that transition. If it has that
metabolic inflexibility, then it's nice
to know about it so that you can guide
your fasting to say, "Okay, well, what I
need to do is a lot of these shorter
fasts I want to start getting into the
fat burn and sort of bring your body
along slowly because again, it's it's
the same as anything else. It takes
time." So, that's that's a really
interesting device that that's been on
the market. It's relatively recent. it's
relatively um you know it's still trying
to find this place. Um not everybody
needs it. So I don't I don't think
everybody needs it, but if you're having
difficulties, it's always better to have
more information um than less because
then you can actually do something about
it.
>> Um so I think it's it's worth looking
at.
>> I do too. I think it's valuable resource
especially if this is something that
you're going to get into fasting and you
want to use it as a gauge like you said.
Is this fast working for me or against
me? Kind of give you some clues to dial
it back or to keep going. I think that's
very valuable. One of the things I want
to ask you, you mentioned Ozmpic, and I
know, you know, Ompic is really, really
popular these days. Um, when I looked up
some of the stats, I saw that one in
eight US adults have taken Ompic or a
similar uh GLP uh antagonist. Uh, and
it's about $1,500 a month on average for
Ozmpic, which makes it like a 60 billion
dollar industry per month. So, it's it's
a cash cow. But we know the body could
also kind of manufacture this ompic
effect. Could you explain how we could
naturally get this osmpic effect?
>> Yeah. So, there's certain things that
will turn up your GLP1s. It it's the
same effect, but not at the same
magnitude. Okay.
>> Um, so if you look at uh certain foods,
they're going to be much higher in GLP1.
So protein containing foods for example
are going to stimulate GLP1 more than
others. What it means is that when you
eat that protein uh it's going to fill
you up. And of course people have known
this forever, right? I mean you know you
go uh eat a bunch of whole bunch of
chicken breast it fills you up pretty
fast, right? You don't really want to
keep eating those chicken breasts. Um so
people have known this forever but the
ma the the actual way it it it manifests
is different and then you can also look
at certain um foods like bitter foods
for example also have that effect. So
bitter melon and you know bitter uh
substances like coffee uh like um
>> uh
>> arugula dandelion greens ginger y
>> kale. Yeah. So there are certain foods
that are bitter like the kale for
example it's got that bitterness and
it's not that it's necessarily
unpleasant but again it's going to turn
down your appetite afterwards. Um
certain certain herbs and spices do
that. So turmeric which is found in
curries and also fenugreek
um and cinnamon actually can can turn it
down. So, so some some some of those are
are going to be valuable because if you
can sort of, you know, uh prioritize
them, you know, make them part of a
regular part of your diet, then you're
going to have more of that effect where
it's going to increase that sort of
ompic effect by affecting the GLP1s. But
again, ompic is going to have like, you
know, a much higher like it's just a
it's a pharmaceutical grade sort of
intervention, not a food grade
intervention, right? But you don't
necessarily want to do that. uh like not
everybody wants to take ompic. There's
there's downsides to it. I mean
obviously it's a good drug uh in the
right situation but uh you know it's not
for everybody. That's that's where the
big divide is happening right if it was
restricted to type 2 diabetics with
kidney disease well there not be that
much debate about it but because of the
weight loss effect a lot of people are
sort of uh taking it um you know and and
I don't think I don't have anything
against it. It's just that um it's
if you don't learn the proper dietary
habits
like then you're going to lo like you
can you'll lose weight as long as you're
taking it then when you get off you're
going to go back to your usual weight.
Well that was a very temporary thing.
So, it's fine if you're an actor or
actress in Hollywood where your looks
matter, but like you think about it,
like they're advising it for kids even,
which was I thought was like the
American Associated Pediatrics was
saying, "Oh, you should think about
this." So, it's like what, like an
18year-old,
you're going to have them take it for
the next 60 years, then if they stop,
they're going to regain all this weight.
Like, what? Like, why why would you
think that? Like, it doesn't make any
sense. But people are jumping on it like
>> Yeah.
>> And the average person takes it for
about six months because they just don't
feel they feel nauseous, they feel
awful. So they end up getting off of it.
Now what about the muscle loss with
Ompeic? Um because I've read some
studies and I want to know if this is
different than what we what you
explained with the fasting. I read some
studies that about 40 to 60% of the
weight that is lost is is from muscle.
But is it scenario as you mentioned like
with fasting where it's more of the
glycogen and volume versus the
because some people are going to be not
eating very much. Um, but it's always
possible like in these uh situ like
because because it's a drug, you don't
actually know what the effect is going
to be.
>> But it's always I always think well you
know this muscle when you're just
measuring it like that is full of
errors. You're better off measuring like
strength because then if they actually
lose strength then you know something's
going on. Um, but yeah, the muscle loss
thing, it could be important, it could
not be important. I don't know. There's
also, um, I saw this study, uh, from the
Blue Cross. Um, I don't know if that's
the one you're mentioning about how many
people actually stay on it.
>> Yeah, I think that was the one.
>> Yeah. So, it was it was I I I don't even
think it was 60%. I think it was less
than that. Um, it was shocking how few
people continued to take Ozmpic. And
this is from Blue Cross, which is a huge
uh insurance database. So they're not
looking to do anything. They're just
saying this is what happens in our
patients, which is the real world. And
it was like 160,000 patients or
something like that. Some massive
number. And there's they're looking at
when it was prescribed and when they
stopped. And it was I think it was like
closer to like 30% were on it at one
year or something like that.
>> Yeah.
>> It was a very very low number. And I'll
tell you from having prescribed it
because it's useful in kidney disease
and advanced diabetes and so on and a
lot of people don't take a lot of people
don't take it after a while and it's not
that hard to understand because the the
side effects are huge because basically
it takes away all your enjoyment of food
right
>> well you know if you think about life
enjoyment of food is like huge it's huge
in almost every single culture you talk
about whether you're talking about
Italians or Spanish or Americans or
everybody celebrates by having food.
Everybody's like, "Oh, let's go out for
a nice meal. Oh, let's do this." Well,
you go out for a nice meal, but you're
nauseated. You can't enjoy yourself.
>> So, all of a sudden, you know, and you
think about what we do for fun, like you
socialize. That's one of life's great
things, right? Socialization. Food is a
huge part of socialization. Now all of a
sudden you're you're not looking forward
to getting together because there's all
this food that's going to make you
nauseated. And so it's great while
you're losing weight, everybody's like,
"Oh, you look great. You look great. You
look great." After a while, they stop
saying that, but you're still nauseated.
You're still not enjoying yourself.
>> So yeah, and you're not an actor or
actress where people are looking at you
all the time and saying, "Oh, he's
gained three lbs." You know? Um so then
after a while, it's like, "Why am I
doing this again?" like it's all vanity
because right that's that that's why you
did it but you're you're not having fun
anymore. So a lot of people and like I
said what the the Blue Cross study
showed I would have to say is pretty
close to what I think happens in real
life from my experience of having
prescribed
at least hundreds. I' I've prescribed a
lot of it because in the last 5 years
I've prescribed a lot of it. Why?
because I'm a kidney specialist and it's
actually one of the very useful drugs in
kidney disease.
>> Yeah. Very different than the
perspective that most people look at it
when it when it comes to. Uh I want to
close the conversation or end it um in
the next few minutes talking about some
of the some of the foods and lifestyle
behaviors that people have that actually
feed diabetes and feed cancer. Obviously
you have the diabetes code, the cancer
code, and other wonderful books and
we'll reference all those down below.
But what are some of the foods specific
foods and lifestyle behaviors that feed
both diabetes and cancer?
>> So I think the main thing is the
hyperinsulinemia is a big driver. So
again some foods are going to drive
insulin more than other foods. So
refined carbohydrates is clearly one of
them. And you know people talk about
carbohydrates as if you you know as if
they're like
all evil. They're not all evil. They're
they're natural foods.
There's plenty of foods that we've eaten
over centuries that are carbohydrates,
right? Um so it's not that carbohydrates
are necessarily evil. What's probably
the biggest thing is the processing uh
that goes on. So these days if you think
about um you know carbohydrates you can
take carbohydrates and then you can
process them and get a completely
different
hormonal response to that food. So I
remember there's a study done by David
Lewig which I thought was really
interesting because he had sort of a low
glycemic is a is a study where he had
breakfast. He had low glycemic index uh
breakfast which was a vegetable
omelette. Then he had medium, which was
steel cut oats. And then he had high,
which was instant oats. So in other
words, the exact same food, the the
exact same calories, the exact same
carbohydrates, fiber, but changing the
physical structure of the food from
steel cut to instant, that's the
processing part of it,
>> meant that the glycemic index just shot
right up. Wow.
>> You could see the effect of it because
those people who were in eating the
instant oats ate more later on. Uh they
had less satiety. They had this huge
insulin spike. The glycemic index was
high. Obviously, that's how they chose
it. But it's the same food. And I
thought that's really interesting
because it's not about the calories and
carbs or fiber or whatever else protein
because that's exactly the same. It's
the processing that because the
processing is in some ways a
predigestion, right? So if you take
steel cut oats which still have a lot of
the structure of the oat
then you just grind everything to a fine
powder so that you can make it
instantly. Well that's changed it now
because you've sort of predigested this
food. The absorption is much faster. So
you're you're you can absorb all this
all the carbohydrates that are contained
within the oats instantly as opposed to
slowly as as you see with the steel cut
oats. So, I thought that was very
interesting because what it means is
that one of the things we really have to
focus on um is ultrarocessed foods. So,
cutting down not just the carbohydrates,
which I think is still a good step,
right? Because if you don't eat the
carbohydrates, well, they're not going
to have that insulin effect. So, cutting
down the sort of overall carbohydrates,
but the other thing, and I mentioned
this in the obesity code, um it's not
just about carbohydrates, it's also
about the processing. So that's getting
a lot more attention these days, this
sort of idea that we have to move away
from ultrarocessed foods and that's
going to make a huge difference to our
health and and that applies I think not
just to uh carbohydrates but some of the
the processing you see people talking
about the um seed oils for example
because that's a very highly processed
process that's a very highly processed
food as well. So you don't you don't
just if you think about olive oil, you
squeeze the olive and you get oil,
right?
>> Right.
>> That's not process. That's not that's
not ultrarocessed. That's not very that
is processed. That's not very much
processed.
>> Um as opposed to I don't know cotton
seed oil or
>> canola. There's a there's a video on on
YouTube how canola oil was made. It's
this whole industrial process just
>> industrial process man. It's a whole
thing. You got bleaching, you got
deodorization. Nobody even eats canola,
right? It's like it's not a real food.
It's like, but somehow you turned it
into a food. It was like cotton seed
oil. That's not so popular anymore. But
it's like, you know, cotton seeds were
just garbage, right? They used to just
throw it in the garbage.
>> Then they turned it into Crisco and then
sold it as food. Not because it was
healthy. It's because you could take
garbage and turn it and sell it, right?
Process it, then sell it to people as
food because it looked like food. But
that's the whole idea is that it's not
simply about the carbohydrates, but if
you want to feed all these cancers and
diabetes and so on, I think it's it
really is important to look at the um
the ultrarocessed foods because I think
that there's a lot there. I think
there's a lot of interesting science
that can be done. And I think there's a
there's a lot that's uh interesting like
these chemicals that we put in our
foods, you know, the the the
flavoring, the artificial flavorings,
dyes, do they have an effect?
Everybody's like, "No, because they have
no calories, all these bro science
calorie people." I'm like,
>> I think it's a lot more complicated than
that. You know, I think there's a lot
more going on with these chemicals than
just, oh, there's no calories, so it's
fine. It's like these people who say
about artificial sweeteners, it's fine,
right? It's like obviously you've never
treated somebody who drinks 20 diet
Pepsis a day because I'll tell you it
was not fine for that person when they
cut out the Diet Pepsis.
>> The weight just melted right off. Why?
Because I think the Diet Pepsi was
driving the sweetness, which was driving
the addiction, which was making her eat
and eat and eat and never feel full. I
think that's what was happening because
when she stopped everything went away.
It's like, "Oh, okay. You lost like 80
pounds doing nothing like except cutting
that out, right?" But people are like,
you know, people get so and this whole
artificial sweetener thing always drives
me crazy because it's like, yeah, most
people will be fine. Like, but it
doesn't mean it's okay, right?
>> Right. And and a lot of people talking
about it are these fitness guys who are
very active versus the average person
who's not active and metabolically
unhealthy. I I wanted to ask you
something real quick because you
reminded me to ask you this before we
wrap this up. What are your thoughts on
Italy for example having a longer they
have a longer average lifespan, less
diabetes. Um I think they eat 30% more
carbs than we do here. They have a
quarter of the amount of the gyms we
have in the United States. They've
banned glyphosate and these artificial
ingredients. Do you think that's the
biggest reason why they don't see this
the diabetes epidemic we see here in the
US?
>> I actually think it plays a big role.
Like if you look at like the way that
they make food in Italy, it's completely
different. It's it's actually stunning.
Uh they don't have this artificial like
these fruits for example. You go there
and all the watermelons have seeds and
all the grapes have seeds. So my kids
hated it, right? But it's like this is
but it actually tastes better and it's
actually more natural. So we have these
genetically modified things so that
things are sweeter and things are this
but the you know they're also somehow
not right. Um so it's not just about the
carbohydrates. There is something I
think in that whole idea of the
processing and you know this is what
always drives me crazy about these
longevity gurus and stuff right it's
like okay let's think about this for a
second I have tons of patients who are
like 90 years old 100 years old okay so
there are these just from my areas these
little Chinese people who are like very
old because we know that China Hong Kong
for example Japan they have very long
life expecties and it's like I'll tell
you what they're doing. They're eating
natural foods. They're socializing.
They're, you know, having, you know,
trying to balance their life with
movement, like not necessarily gyms and
stuff, but movement, right? So, they'll
do Tai Chi, they'll go out with their
friends and so on. And I think that's
very healthy. On the other hand, you
look at these longevity gurus and
they're like, "Take your rapamy and your
metformin, do an ice bath, breathe." And
like what the hell? Like my 95year-old,
you know, little Chinese person who's
completely healthy and looks like he's
60, right? He's not taking ice baths. He
hates ice baths. He doesn't want to be
cold. Like he's not going to the gym.
He's not doing all this grip strength
stuff. And he's not taking rapamy either
or metformin.
So all this stuff about longevity is
like okay but like you extrapolate out
from this but you got to get back to the
basics like you were talking about for
Italy it's like good food enjoyment
other thing you know have other things
going on in your life socialization you
know where does gratitude personal life
>> where does gratitude fall with that
>> oh oh huge because it's like if you're
happy with your life then you're going
to you're going to enjoy it and you're
going to be able to, you know, I think
it changes a lot of things like these
soft things that we talk about. I think
they're important, but the problem is
they're hard to measure, right? So, uh,
but I think they're so important like
community very important and in in the
United States, we we lose it a bit
because, you know, people move around
and you're not with your family, you
know, um, even people want to have their
giant 5,000 square foot house and
there's living alone, right? as opposed
to before people would have like three
generations
all living in the same house. Is it
crowded? Yes, it's crowded, but you have
a family, right? They get together
there. There's always somebody there.
You're not lonely all the time, right?
So, it's like, okay, well, maybe they
did something a little smarter
um in Europe, in Japan, and these places
than we did uh you know, here. And then
we rely on chemicals like this
ultrarocessing as opposed to sort of
natural foods. Like you go to Italy and
you eat these foods and there's like the
three ingredients in this meal, right?
It's delicious but it's like, you know,
it's like there's not that it's very
simple, right? And that's the way they
do things. And it's like maybe that's
good. Like we want all this complex
stuff, so we throw in all these
chemicals.
I don't know. I don't I think I think
there is something there. Like obviously
it has to be there there's a lot of
research that needs to be done into this
but you know I think we're sort of going
a little bit down the wrong path which
is like let's try to isolate resveratrol
and this is the whole thing because it's
in red wine. It's like well you know the
French people are socializing with like
they're getting together they're having
a good time they're enjoying life and
having red wine. It wasn't the red wine
that made them you know live longer.
Maybe it was the social interaction and
the your satisfaction with life that
really improved it, right? As opposed
to, oh, take your resveratrol and then
you're fine or take rapamy and
>> and they're watching the news and
they're angry with their taking their
res respirrol supplement. Very different
process there.
>> And the top five ways to improve
mitochondrial health with a bonus tip at
the end. The word mitochondria derived
from the Greek term mitos and condrian.
They mean thread and little granle and
together they refer to the shape of the
organel as grain-like. One of the
biggest jobs for the mitochondria is
energy production. The mitochondria
create energy inside of your body via
oxidative phosphorilation where a series
of chemical reactions take place inside
of your cells using a co-enzyme called
NAD which stands for nicotinomide
adinine ducleotide. And how this works
is you eat food and it extracts energy
from that food to create energy and burn
fat. Once loaded up with energy, NAD
reacts with proteins in the inner
mitochondrial membrane to derive the
production of something called ATP,
which is a denosine triphosphate, the
gasoline of your cell, if you will, the
energy currency of your cells. And ATP
is the rockar that help you produce
energy. I know that was a mouthful and
for some of you it may have gone over
your head. So, let me unpack that and
explain it in a very simpler way. We
receive the metabolism. This is how our
metabolism works. We use different
energy sources. They're called
substrates. The main ones in terms of
the food you eat are amino acids from
protein, carbohydrates with glucose, and
fatty acids from fats. The mitochondria
receive that produce energy. You feel
good. You burn fat. You live a long
healthy life. However, many people have
mitochondrial
dysfunction. And take a look here on the
screen all of the diseases and symptoms
that are a manifestation of poor
mitochondrial function. So, I'll list a
few of them, but you can read them for
yourself. ADD and learning issues
especially in children, diabetes,
epilepsy, cancer, heart disease,
Alzheimer's Parkinson's cerebral
pausy, psychiatric disorders. As a
matter of fact, we just had Dr. Chris
Palmer on this channel to talk all about
the link between mitochondrial
dysfunction and mental illness,
unexplained kidney disease, hearing
loss, leaky gut, gastrointestinal
disorders, and I can go on and on and
on. I think we could agree to this. A
lot of health experts out there are are
arguing about eating plant-based, no
eating keto, eating carnivore, high
protein, low protein, keto, no keto,
calories in versus calories out. There's
a lot of debate. One thing I believe all
health experts could agree about, is
that the mitochondria are the name of
the game. If you could get your
mitochondria healthier and reproducing,
which I'm going to show you how to do so
on today's lesson, you're going to feel
better regardless of your age,
regardless of what symptoms you're
dealing with, and regardless of if
you're doing keto or not. So, you can
see on the screen here what a healthy
mitochondria looks like. It produces
energy and less free radicals, less
inflammation. But when the mitochondria
is inflamed and dysfunctional, it
actually increases inflammation and
produces less energy. This is because
there is a dual role to the
mitochondria. It is not just the
mindless energy factory dumping energy,
producing energy. Oh, there's an
intelligence to your mitochondria. And
Dr. Robert Navio has amazing research on
the cell danger response. So, here's a
recent study showing the cell danger
response in biology, the new science
that connects environmental health with
mitochondria and the rising tide of
chronic illness. What this means, I'll
show you another illustration here, a
little graphic from my friend Dr.
Jockers, the mitochondria are well known
for its energy production. We just made
that case. But the CDR, the cellular
danger response, is a dual role of the
mitochondria as energy sensors and cell
defense agents. When the mitochondria is
in this cell danger response, also
called wartime metabolism, it lowers
energy production and increases
oxidative capacity. When you feel
fatigued and inflamed, it's actually a
purposeful response from the
intelligence of your mitochondria to
protect the cells and tissues from the
body due to infections, toxins,
chemicals, and trauma. All right, let's
unpack that. This means when there's too
much stress going on in your body from
the food you eat, the thoughts you
think, maybe your environment, the
mitochondria purposefully, all for the
sake of survival because survival is the
number one priority for the innate
intelligence. The mitochondria
purposefully lower energy production to
handle that threat, that stress. And
then when the threat is gone, it should
ramp back up into energy production and
go into this what's called peace time
metabolism. Perfect example of the CDR
is longcoid symptoms. And I might get
flagged here by even mentioning that
word, but think about this. If you've
ever had COVID and you got sick from it
and you still have symptoms from it,
they're called long haulers. You
probably know somebody who does. This is
exactly what's happening. It's a cell
danger response. The threat was the
virus. Your body maybe had that virus
for a week or two. the virus left, but
your body was already so toxic, so
inflamed, your stress bucket was already
so high that even though the stress is
gone, it triggered this cell danger
response and the mitochondria get locked
into the cell danger response, aka the
wartime metabolism. So, what we want to
do is remind it it's okay, you're safe.
Let's get back to energy production, to
helping you feel amazing, helping you
burn fat. And that's what this video is
about. I'm going to share with you five
methods to do so and a bonus. Digging
into the research on the mitochondria,
I'm just so fascinated by it. These are
amazing little bacteria in your cells.
And here are some really interesting
facts on the mitochondria that you
probably have never heard of before.
First fact is that you get your
mitochondria exclusively from your
mother. Unlike your DNA, where you share
your genes of your mom and your dad, not
the case for the mitochondria. You get
them all from your mother. So ask your
mother or look at your mother and see
how healthy she is and that'll determine
if you were born with healthier
mitochondria or not. Another interesting
fact is that the cells inside of your
body that are the most important for
survival and energy production that are
metabolically active are the cells that
have the most mitochondria. And I
believe God designed this really
magnificently. And I always say you are
a masterpiece because you're a piece of
the master. Here's a perfect example of
such. Most cells inside of your body
that are not important for survival,
that are not metabolically active, maybe
have a few hundred mitochondria in a
single cell. But then we have the cells
that are so important for survival that
have a high concentration of
mitochondria. For example, there are
regions in your brain that have about 2
million mitochondria in a single cell.
Eyeballs are also the eyeball cells are
loaded with mitochondria. The heart
loaded with mitochondria, the ovaries,
the testicles loaded with mitochondria,
hundreds of thousands, tens of thousands
of mitochondria in a single cell. Why?
Those are the cells that are most
important for survival. The brain, you
got to be able to focus and think to
catch your predator or your prey, I
should say, or run away from your
predator. Your eyes, you need to be able
to see them. Ovaries and testicles,
reproduction, survival is the name of
the game. That's how important the
mitochondria are. Another fact is that
the mitochondria fuse together. This is
where the intelligent comes into play
and communicate with different organs in
your body. For example, your adrenal
glands could talk to the brain and vice
versa. That's how sophisticated these
mitochondria are. They are magnificent.
The mitochondria produce 95% of your
body's energy. And studies show that 56
to 70% of the mitochondria is lost and
damaged by age 70. Every cell inside of
your body has mitochondria except the
red blood cells. In one aspect, the
mitochondria are technically alien
organisms inside of our bodies. The
mitochondria possess their own DNA
called MTDNA, giving them an independent
genome. They operate much like bacteria,
but the kind of bacteria working in
harmony with your cells in a mutual
symbiotic beneficial relationship. In
addition, you have a cell membrane. You
also have an inner mitochondria and an
outer mitochondria membrane as well. And
the inner membrane contains a high
amount of amino acids about 70% amino
acids. These are the proteins that are
involved in oxidative phosphorilation as
well as the transport and certain
metabolites. And I'm about to share with
you the five best ways to enhance
mitochondrial function. But I think it's
important to talk about the things that
are disrupting and killing our
mitochondria. So here's a list of the
things that destroy your mitochondrial
health. Number one, heavy metals. Lead,
aluminum, mercury. You want to make sure
you live a low toxin-free life and your
detox pathways are open, eliminating
these heavy metals that are all over the
place. Number two, a high sugar, high
processed carbohydrate diet. The average
American is consuming about 300 gram of
carbs per day that will destroy your
mitochondrial function. Number three,
pesticides like glyphosate. These are
mitochondrial poisons. And in studies,
they give cells and mitochondria
glyphosate and it poisons them and kills
them right away. You'll commonly find
glyphosate on crops such as corn, soy,
coffee, and wheat. Next, we have
industrialized seed oils, aka vegetable
oils, aka linoleic acid, aka
polyunsaturated fatty acids. There are
nine of them that are really
inflammatory and the mitochondria have a
hard time using them as an energy source
and they actually create a lot of
inflammation around the mitochondria
membrane and the cell membrane. So,
those are going to include canola, corn,
and cotton seed oil, soybean, safflower,
sunflower oil, rice brand oil, grape
seed oil, and refined peanut oil. And I
would throw in a tenth, which is fish
oil. Then we have alcohol. Yes, alcohol
is a toxin to the body. I don't care if
it's the healthiest alcohol in the
world. It will kill brain cells. It will
disturb the mitochondria. So, limit or
avoid alcohol intake. Then we have
antibiotics. These are also poison to
the mitochondria. Antibiotics kill
bacteria, right? Bad bacteria. We just
made the case that your mitochondria are
bacteria, really important bacteria. And
studies show that antibiotics mess up
the mitochondria. And keep in mind,
you're not only getting exposed to
antibiotics by the prescription you
take. It's by also eating these feed lot
animals, beef, pork, chicken that are
not organic, that are not treated well.
They're pumpful antibiotics. It's stored
in their meat. We consume them, and then
it goes into our bodies as well. Okay,
now let's get to the juicy stuff. The
five ways to enhance mitochondrial
function. What they all have in common
is something called mitoormesis.
That means they're all going to stress
your mitochondria. That might sound like
a bad thing, but there's a principle
called hormesis. And hormesis means
essentially what doesn't kill you makes
you stronger as long as you adapt to it.
And I'll explain how you know if you
adapt to these stressors. Now, if I had
two glasses of water in front of me. As
a matter of fact, let's do that. I'm
going to just snap my fingers and I'm
going to return with two glasses of
water. Check this out. Boom. There you
go. Okay, so two glasses of water. This
one right here, the water is full to the
top. Meaning, if your stress bucket is
full and you have trillions of stress
buckets, they're called your cells,
which the mitochondria live in. Then
there's so much shaking we can do before
this over overflows and starts spilling.
But this cup, you can see the water's
towards the bottom. So this person has a
low stress bucket, meaning we can shake
this even more and shake it and it's not
going to spill. We're not going to get
symptoms. We're going to feel great. So
depending on how much stress you have in
your bucket will determine how many of
these tips you could follow and how
aggressive you could follow it. We want
to stress the body, but if you're
already stressed, we got to go low and
slow until we start depleting this and
then we can start doing more stressors.
So just keep that in mind. And how you
know is as you follow these tips, you
should feel better. You should have more
energy, better sleep. If you feel like
if the opposite is happening, then
you're probably this guy right here who
has a lot of stress and you want to just
slow it down a little bit. So when I
refer to mitoormesis, that is hormesis
as it pertains to the mitochondria. When
you stress the mitochondria in a healthy
way and then recover and adapt, it's one
of the best ways to create healthier
mitochondria and it creates a process
called mitochondrial biogenesis where
the mitochondria duplicate and duplicate
so you have more energy and you feel
good. The first way to enhance
mitochondrial function is movement. And
there are specific exercises and yes
exercises a stress but again you do the
right amount and recover you benefit you
do too much you lose that benefit. The
three exercises that I want you to do
that stress the mitochondria and create
an adaptation for healthier mitochondria
here's something I want you to write
down in your notes or put it in the
comment section down below. When you
stress your body and stress your
mitochondria good cells they get
stronger and bad cells bad mitochondria
they do not adapt. The body gets rid of
them. So the three exercises that create
a healthy stress are sprints, compound
movements, and walking. So sprinting,
this is not something you want to do
every day. Maybe twice per week max. All
out sprint. 20 to 30 seconds of a
sprint. You could also be on your
bicycle and that could be your form of
sprinting in case you have bad knees. 20
to 30 seconds allout sprint, one minute
recovery. Do that about five rounds.
That's one workout session. And then do
that one more time throughout the week.
That'll cover that part. That also helps
with burning visceral fat, belly fat,
love handles, etc. Now, compound
movements are the second tip. Compound
movements recruit multiple joints and
muscles at the same time versus isolated
movements. Isolated movements would be
like a bicep curl or a leg extension.
Yeah, you're going to, you know, really
um fine-tune those biceps or different
parts of your legs, but it's not going
to give you the biggest bang for your
buck. Compound movements recruit
multiple joints at the same time. So, my
three favorite are push-ups or bench
press, squats, either body weight or
weighted squats, and shoulder press.
Those will give you some really good
mitochondria. And the third I mentioned
is movement. That means walking. Aim to
get 10,000 steps per day. If you hit
that marker on a consistent basis,
you'll create healthier mitochondria.
The second way to enhance mitochondrial
function is ketosis. Ben, you're going
to talk to me about the keto diet.
That's such a fat diet. Well, here's the
thing. Keto is not a fad diet. It's not
even a diet. It's a metabolic process.
So, it's not a fad. This is a fact.
There's nothing new about keto. It's
just nuanced or new to some people. But
ketosis is a metabolic process that your
mitochondria love to use. You have two
main options for fuel in terms of your
energy systems. Either you're burning
sugar and glucose or fat and ketones.
Studies suggest that 93% of adults here
in the United States are metabolically
unhealthy. Their mitochondria are
dysfunctional. they're essentially in a
keto deficiency. And here's the
difference between your mitochondria and
the energy it produces when it's burning
sugar or ketones. When it's burning
sugar, also called glucose, it creates
about 32 to 36 of those ATP molecules.
That's the energy currency, which is
okay. But compare that to the
mitochondria that's using ketones. It
produces over 130 ATP molecules. That's
400% more energy when you're in ketosis
versus when you're not. That's because
ketones signal and communicate to your
mitochondria to create mitochondrial
biogenesis, the creation of new
mitochondria. And it does this by
stressing your mitochondria. There's a
huge benefit here. And I have a whole
bunch of videos here on my channel about
keto. We teach going in and out of
ketosis called ketolexing. I wrote an
entire book about that called Ketolex.
It's a bestselling book which you can
get over at ketolexbook.com.
The goal is to use this metabolic
process from time to time with the
benefit of more energy. It raises your
basil metabolic rate as well, meaning
you burn more calories without having to
count a single calorie. So, ketosis is
amazing for the mitochondria. The third
tip is fasting. And I know when I talk
about fasting and you if you haven't
practiced fasting, it sounds like I'm
asking you to hold your breath for 10
minutes. The way I share how to do it
and when you pair it with keto, you feel
amazing during your fast. Fasting is
another stress to your body, another
stress to your mitochondria. When you
are not fasting, like the average
American who eats frequently throughout
the day, I don't know if you knew this,
but the average American eats 17 to 23
times per day. Uh, Ben, you sound like
you're making that up. That's a madeup
stat. Well, here's my definition of
eating. Every time you raise glucose and
insulin, every time you start the
digestive process. So, that could be a
full meal or it could be a snack. So,
the average person is not sitting down
at a table and eating a full meal 17 to
23 times per day, but what are they
doing? They're grazing. Even if it's a
healthy snack, it creates glucose and
insulin spikes. It creates digestive
process. And I would argue that it's not
that we're eating too much, it's that
we're eating too frequently. So, when
you eat too frequently, when you're not
practicing fasting, there's too much
energy supply for what the cell needs.
And this breaks up the communication
between the mitochondria. This is called
mitochondria fragmentation. High blood
sugar levels and high insulin levels are
damaging your mitochondria. It's a fast
way to age yourself. What's the
solution? Fasting. And I'm going to give
you a schedule that really achieves
healthy mitochondria. There are three
ways to practice fasting the right way
that I'll outline for you in a second.
But here's what happens. There's a
process called mphagy. You might have
heard of this process called autophagy.
The Greeks call that eat thyself, a
self-eing process. This sounds wicked,
but the body does go through this
process. When you don't have food
energy, your body needs to get energy
from somewhere. So, it turns on
autophagy to look for damaged cells and
damaged mitochondria for that energy.
This analogy is going to make a lot of
sense for how this works. Imagine a
refrigerator. You open up this
refrigerator. What do you see? You have
groceries inside of that refrigerator
that all have an expiration date on
them. But let's say instead of using
those groceries, you let them expire and
you just push them towards the back of
the fridge and you go to the grocery
store and buy new groceries with newer
expiration dates and put them in front
of the old groceries and close that
door. That's going to be a disgusting
environment. Disease will manifest in
that environment. Guess what? Your cells
and your mitochondria also have
expiration dates just like the
groceries. And when you fast, you
activate a process called autophagy and
mphagy, which is the metabolism and the
innate intelligence's way of looking for
those expired groceries and getting rid
of them. Super powerful. So, the three
ways to practice fasting to achieve
healthy mitochondria are the following.
A daily 186 schedule with that eating
window being earlier in the day. What
does all this mean? That means out of a
24-hour period, for 18 hours, you're in
a fasted state. no food. You're having
water electrolytes coffee tea no
food. Then you have a six-hour eating
window where you have your two to three
meals, lower carbohydrate, insulin
friendly meals. It could be keto meals
or just low carb meals. And you do that
on a daily basis. And if you had your
eating window between 8 a.m. and 2 p.m.
and then fasted outside of that, you'll
get the biggest bang for your buck. Now,
what you want to incorporate once a week
or once every other week is a 24-hour
fast where you just go one day out of
the week in a fasted state for 24 hours.
So, that could mean Sunday you're done
eating at 2 p.m. and then you fast all
the way until Monday at 2 p.m. until you
break that fast and have your first
meal. 24 hours of fasting, you just get
more of this mphagy process. Now, the
third method is more extreme, and you
want to probably do this if you're more
of an advanced faster, but it's a 48
hour monthly fast. So that means you go
two days without food. So let's say that
same Sunday example, you're done eating
at 2 p.m. Sunday. You go all the way
until Tuesday at 2 p.m. to break the
fast. That's 48 hours of fasting. A lot
of mphagy. So those are the three ways
to practice it. Use it with caution
because fasting is a powerful tool. Just
like a chainsaw is a powerful tool. You
got to know how to use the chainsaw. You
have to read the user manual. So I have
a lot of videos here on my YouTube
channel on fasting. Just search for it
on my channel and you'll learn more
about how to do fasting the right way.
Or even better, you could get my
best-selling fasting book. You could see
it right there, called the fasting
intermittent fasting cheat sheet for
free. I answer the top 20 questions on
fasting and give you different methods
for fasting. I answer all the questions
and back it up with science. And you can
get this for free by heading over to
fasting cheat.com. I will drop a link
for that in the notes down below as
well. And yes, I did I did notice my
chain was uh mixed up with the mic. So
we we fixed it, so no need to comment.
Okay, the fourth method for enhancing
mitochondrial function are two specific
antioxidants that the mitochondria love
and certain vitamins and minerals that
really enhance mitochondrial function.
So let's start with the vitamins and
minerals. Your mitochondria love
copperrich foods. This is needed for
cellular respiration. Where do you get
copper rich foods? My favorite organ
meats and B-pollen. Organic B-pollen.
What depletes copper? Non-organic foods
that are loaded with glyphosate. Like we
mentioned before, corn, soy, wheat
products, coffee, and alcohol,
especially wine in the United States,
vitamin A is also important for the use
of copper. And you could get uh high
quality sources of vitamin A through
organ meat as well, beef, liver, and
also parsley and chibives. And then
magnesium is also important for this
synergy of copper and mitochondrial
cellular respiration. So you want to aim
to uh supplement with 400 to 600 milligs
of magnesium on a daily basis. And then
I mentioned the those two antioxidants.
As a matter of fact, there are only two
antioxidants the mitochondria could use.
And those are glutathione and melatonin.
Huh, I thought melatonin was for sleep.
Yeah, it can be, but it's way more than
that. It's really powerful for the
mitochondria. So, you might want to
consider supplementing with melatonin
and a high quality glutathione. Most of
them are not good and don't even work.
The one I use for glutathione is called
GCEL from systemic formulas and you can
get theirs over at
ketoampsupplements.com.
And for melatonin, I use a product
called Sandman, which is a suppository
of highdose melatonin by my friend Dr.
John Laurance. And we'll drop a link for
that you to get that down below as well.
And then lastly on this tip here is that
the mitochondria use two main sources
for energy and that's going to be amino
acids, of course, ketosis, ketones, we
spoke about that, but also minerals.
Now, you could get high quality amino
acids by eating high quality meat. We
already discussed that. Minerals is a
challenge because the body doesn't make
minerals and our crops are depleted in
minerals. So, I personally supplement
with bee minerals that have high quality
fobic and hemic acids. Really, really
healthy for the mitochondria. They also
could help remove and chilate glyphosate
from your cells. And we'll drop a link
for Bmin Minerals. Uh the link is
bminerals.com/toamp.
And our coupon code with them is keto to
get a nice discount. All right, tip
number five. This is my favorite tip by
the way. How you feel, your thoughts,
emotions, and feelings, they change the
state of your mitochondria. It is so
important to find out what is important
to you, your purpose, and to live on
purpose with that purpose. There was a
book that came out in the late '8s
called Recovering the Soul by a medical
doctor named Dr. Larry Dossi. In this
book, they determined, there was a study
in this book that showed that Americans
suffer their first heart attack 85% of
the time Monday morning between 8 and
9:00 a.m. What's the significance of
that? That's when they are in a stressed
mental state going to a job they hate.
That's how important it is to do what
you love, to live on purpose with your
purpose. So, how else does our
psychological state influence our
mitochondria? This is a very fascinating
study by Dr. Martin Pequard alongside
Alyssa Epel from UCSF. I'll drop the
study down below, but here's what the
study showed. They asked the question,
"Do people who feel more positive and
grateful have healthier mitochondria
versus those who feel negative and don't
practice gratitude?" Isn't the
mitochondria health driving how we feel?
Or is it how we feel driving the
mitochondria health? This study used
something called MHI, which was a
mitochondrial index, a health
measurement for how healthy people's
mitochondria were or how unhealthy it
was. And it showed, check this out,
elevated positive mood at night was
associated with higher MHI, healthier
mitochondria. And nightly positive mood
was also a mediator of the association
between caregiving and MHI. So the study
was done on caregivers. And if you ever
saw a caregiver or have been a
caregiver, you know how challenging it
is mentally draining to care for
somebody who's sick and essentially on
their deathbed. So it showed that those
who practice gratitude put themselves in
a positive state the night before had
healthier mitochondria the next day
during their caregiving. Suggesting for
the first time in humans that
mitochondria may respond to proximate
emotional states within days. This is
why I call gratitude the practice of
gratitude vitamin G the strongest most
powerful vitamin in the world. There are
so many studies showing what it does for
your health but this is showing you what
it does for your mitochondrial health.
Vitamin G is so important. Gratitude is
so important. You want to feel that
gratitude and take a healthy dose of it
every day. There's no upper limit. It's
free. And when you're in a stressful
state, an angry state, a stressful
thought makes your heart beat faster.
When your heart beats faster, there's
more energy consumed by the
mitochondria. You stay there in a
chronic state, chronic fatigue happens.
You feel wiped out and fatigued and
tired. That's how important it is to
control those thoughts and feelings and
actions. And Dr. Bruce Lipton, who's a
worldrenowned cell biologist, I've
interviewed him on my metabolic freedom
podcast. He's proven that your thoughts
are a frequency that have the ability to
communicate with your DNA and your
mitochondria DNA, by the way, to signal
to them to produce certain proteins. If
it's a hateful, angry, resentful
thought, the proteins that are produced
are inflammatory, depleting your energy
production, shortening your tieumirs,
which damages your DNA, damages your
mitochondria. But if it's a vitamin G
thought, a grateful thought, a loving
thought, an abundant thought, same
signal is sent, but now it's an
anti-inflammatory protein. you feel good
and you look good. So, if you have
60,000 thoughts per day, which by the
way, the average person does have 60,000
thoughts per day, that means you have
60,000 opportunities to put your body in
a healing state every single day. The
greatest health tip you will ever learn.
Let's discuss the bonus tips. There are
two of my favorite bio hacks that create
mitosis and healthy mitochondria, fat
loss, something called brown fat, heat
shock proteins, cold shock proteins. And
so the first one is cold exposure. And
you could do cold exposure through
different methods and modalities. You
could simply walk outside on a cold day
without a coat on. You could take a cold
shower, a cold bath, cryotherapy, cold
jump into a cold body of water, or my
favorite way, jump into a cold plunge. I
actually have a cold plunge. When you
jump into a cold plunge, the
mitochondria have to adapt to that
stress. It creates vaso constriction
short term. And that stress forces the
healthy mitochondria to adapt and
duplicate, create brown fat, which is
great. It's fat that is loaded with
mitochondria. And then when you get out
of that tub, the cold exposure, now you
vasoddilate and you get the amazing
benefits of a dopamine uh increase. You
get the amazing benefits of growth
hormone surge. But what it does for your
mitochondria is so powerful. And what's
the optimal range for cold exposure to
harness your mitochondria? 11 minutes
per week seems to be the ideal total
time. And the temperatures should be
anywhere between 39 and 60° Fahrenheit.
Aim to get 11 minutes total each week to
get the benefits from cold exposure. I
personally use the plunge from
plunge.com.
You can check them out and use my coupon
code ketoamp to get a few hundred off
your plunge. Head to plunge.com and use
the coupon code keto camp. I'll drop it
down below. Then we have heat therapy.
Different ways to do heat therapy. Hot
shower. Sauna is what I'm referring to
here. There's dry sauna, steam sauna. I
personally use a an infrared sauna. That
just means it has different infrared
spectrums. Uh infrared, far infrared,
near infrared, mid- infrared. And what
heat therapy does, it's a stress again,
but it's a it's a vaso dilation versus a
vaso constriction from the cold. And it
creates heat shock proteins which
actually help your mitochondria adapt
and get stronger. What did I say
earlier? Good cells get stronger, good
mitochondria get stronger, and the bad
ones don't adapt. And heat therapy is a
great way to do that. So with sauna,
what is the optimal time for that? And
the length and the temperature. Well,
the temperature could range between 130
degrees Fahrenheit to up to 200°
Fahrenheit. The cool thing about an
infrared sauna, it doesn't have to be as
hot and you still get a lot of the
benefits and it's actually comfortable.
So you want to get about 20 to 30
minutes each session, three to four
times a week of hot therapy. If you want
to check out the infrared sauna I have,
it is badass. Head to the link in the
notes down below and use the coupon code
keto camp to get o up to $600 off your
products from Sunlighten.
>> Everybody knows that the best way to
extend lifespan and health span is
calorie restriction. And almost
everybody knows that calorie restriction
is a non-starter
um as a as a useful method. Even my
friend Walter Longo knows that calorie
restriction isn't going to work. Mhm.
>> Uh, nobody will do it. It's miserable.
>> Yeah. Yeah. You'll feel miserable. I
mean, the Biosphere 2 project showed
that right?
>> Yeah. Yeah. And actually, his mentor was
Ray Walford, um, who, uh, was a
pathologist from UCLA. And Ry thought
this was the greatest thing that ever
happened to his research because these
guys literally starved to death. Uh,
they lost uh, 30% of their body weight
in their first six months and
>> their organs shrunk as well, right?
everything everything went bad. U but
and sadly Ray Walford who was really the
father of calorie restriction uh died as
what I consider a young man in his 70s
and since I'm now in my 70s I consider
that a young man.
>> So that that's not a good idea. But Dapo
said you know I think we've got this all
wrong. calorierestricted animals are
profoundly hungry and for obvious
reasons and in experiments we control
when their food is put out. And I have a
feeling that when you're really hungry
and somebody puts your bowl of food in
your cage, you're going to eat it really
quickly and then you have to wait till
the next day for the next bowl of food.
So he designed an experiment that took
the Reese's monkey studies from the
University of Wisconsin and the National
Institutes of Aging and designed a study
to see if it was really the calorie
restriction or it was the time of
feeding that made the difference. And
what he found, I'll really summarize it
quickly. If you take animals and give
them a full day's calories, but put it
out at 3:00 in the afternoon, they'll
eat it actually fairly quickly, and
they'll go a very long time, about 12
hours without eating, which for a rat is
a very long time.
>> Yeah.
>> If you give animals kind of food
throughout the 24 hours, the same amount
of food, they'll kind of nibble on it
all day and all night. So when he looked
at metabolic flexibility, which kind of
started our conversation,
only the animals that were given their
food at 3:00 in the afternoon and ate it
fairly quickly had metabolic
flexibility. They could change from
glucose to free fatty acids. The animals
that ate all day at night didn't have
any metabolic flexibility.
Point number one. Number two, the
animals that had their timerestricted
eating um lived 11% longer than the
animals who ate the same amount of food
but ate it throughout the day. For
humans, that's a 10year benefit.
>> Amazing.
>> And the really cool thing is the animals
with the timerestricted eating didn't
develop amaloid plaques in their organs
or the brain. And these animals tend to
die of liver cancer, interestingly
enough. and they had far less liver
cancer. So that's now been proven in
humans with the Italian athlete study
which I profile in this book which I
think is you know humans want to know
about humans and what's really yeah
what's what's really exciting is you
take Italian cyclists and you put them
on a training table where everybody has
to eat the exact same food and you do a
three-month study and all you do is
change time of eating. So, one group
they eat breakfast at 8 o'clock in the
morning. They eat lunch at uh four
o'clock in the afternoon and they have
dinner at uh 8 o'clock at night. Sorry,
lunch at 1:00 in the afternoon.
>> 818
>> 818 12-hour eating window sounds normal.
The other group eats break fast
breakfast at 1:00 in the afternoon, has
lunch 4:00 in the afternoon, has to
finish dinner at 8:00. 7-hour eating
window followed for three months. The
punchline is only the athletes in a
7-hour eating window lost weight. They
actually lost a lot of weight. The
12-hour guys didn't change their weight.
>> They had identical athletic performance.
And here's the best part. The athletes
on the 12hour eating window had a normal
insulin-like growth factor one, IGF-1.
the athletes on the seven-hour window
plummeted their insulin like growth
factor one. And if you follow me and
other research, IGF-1 is probably our
only decent measurement of mTor
activation. And people, super old people
in my practice and other practices have
really low IGF-1s.
And people with really high IGF-1s,
number one, don't live very long.
>> Yeah, bodybuilders. Thanks for and they
get a lot of cancer folks
>> and we see that in my practice all the
time. In fact, it's amazing the number
of people with cancer who have elevated
insulin levels and elevated insulin like
growth factors. These are growth
hormones and there's nothing in us we
want to grow once we're grown.
>> Yeah.
>> Nothing.
So, I mean, that's so exciting that
here's a human study that actually, you
know, proves uh Dicapo's research that
son of a gun, it's restricting the time
of eating. So, now let's get back to
ketones. So, what's happening? So, a
normal person, and these athletes are
normal people, they, you know, they've
got metabolic flexibility,
they would start making ketones 8 hours
after they stopped eating. and they'd
ramp up their ketone production at about
12 hours.
But the athletes who were waiting till
1:00 in the afternoon, they've got
another five hours of ketone production
compared to the athletes that broke
their fast at 8:00 in the morning.
>> So, five more hours of mitochondrial
compl.
now explains why those guys got what got
weight loss and it now explains why
their insulin like growth factor is
actually improved.
>> Interesting.
>> Yeah. And so it it all when you start
looking at this go son of a gun that's
how this works. That's I always want to
find out the mechanism you know I can
for instance when we started this years
ago we all knew that hormesis was really
good for you. That which doesn't kill me
makes me stronger. We had no idea why
that was. We knew it existed. Uh I
suspect Hypocrates had no idea why all
disease begins in the gut. Maybe he
knew. We now know why he was right. But
it's the same thing with hormesis. It
turns out and the book talks about this.
All these things that are hormetic foods
or hormetic practices
all come together in just one thing.
They all uncouple mitochondria. And
that's actually what's so cool and
>> so cool. Yeah. So fascinating. We and I
talk a lot about hormesis, but now I'm
viewing it from an entirely different
lens thanks to you. Um, so that is so
just the awareness for those listening
and watching right now like this might
be the reason why you can't lose weight
on keto. This might be the reason why
you don't feel great on keto and why
you're struggling. It's it's all about
the mitochondrial uncoupling. So let's
talk about I know your book has several
ways to do this, but I want to I want to
talk about a few of them, right? So I
have a few of my notes here. My favorite
is the MCTs, right? And I love and I
didn't realize this. I learned this from
your book, but it's funny because I've
been telling all my students to add more
sheep and goat dairy and get rid of the
cow dairy. And I found out through your
book that 30% of sheep and cow and goat
dairy is MCT. So explain that how that
helps.
>> Yeah. So it it turns out, you know, so
MCTs are this really cool fat that
aren't absorbed in the way normal fats
are. They go directly through the wall
of our intestine to our liver where they
are automatically converted into
ketones. So number one, you could have
insulin resistance. You could have
metabolic inflexibility. You could take
four weeks to generate ketones by
following a ketogenic diet
>> or
>> or you could take MCTs
and generate ketones. And it's been
shown in humans, and I document the
studies, that a tablespoon of MCT oil
will have you within a half an hour
generating adequate amounts of ketones
to begin uncoupling mitochondria. So,
what better way than, you know, if MCTs
are easy to take, you can mix it in
salad dressing, folks. Uh, some women
really, you got to go slow. Quite
frankly, a lot of my female patients
liquid MCT stomach.
>> Yeah.
>> And and diarrhea. Yeah.
>> Interestingly enough, in my practice, I
see that the powdered MCTs work better
for women. And there's a number of MCT
powders out there. Uh we put them in the
women's coffee and that seems to work
well. But you can get a lot of MCTs by
having goat or sheep yogurt or goat and
sheep cheese. Now, here's one. It didn't
make it into the book, and I I wish I
fought for it. Um,
>> let's share it now.
>> Well, we all know about blue zones
thanks to Dan Butner. And quite frankly,
I'm the only nutritionist who spent most
of my career living in a blue zone,
Lolinda, California. So,
>> that's right.
>> I don't know what I'm talking about, but
So, two of the blue zones are quite
interesting. Sardinia and the Nagoyan
Peninsula of Costa Rica. And Dan makes a
big point that they eat a lot of bread
and grains. The the Ngoyan Peninsula
eats a lot of corn and beans. And he
makes a case that it's the beans and
corn. Well, not so fast. It turns out
Sardinia has two regions, the
mountainous region and down by the coast
and kind of nothing in between. It's
only the folks who live in the
mountainous region that have extended
longevity. So what do those guys do up
there? Turns out they're goat and sheep
herders.
>> The folks down by the Mediterranean Sea
are not goat and sheep herders and they
don't eat goat sheep cheese. They eat
fish. So when there's papers published
that the longevity benefit is from the
MCTs from the goat and sheep cheese
uncoupling their mitochondria and they
don't get it in the in the in the sea.
Let's go to the Nagoyan Peninsula.
All of Costa Ricans eat a lot of beans
and corn. That's their diet. What's so
unique about the Nagoyan Peninsula?
Want to guess?
>> They're they're goat and sheep herders.
And there's a beautiful paper showing
that the benefit of the goat and sheep
cheeses and yogurts offset the bad part
of the corn and beans. So here we have
two blue zones that actually we can
attribute their longevity to the goat
and sheep cheese. Other fun fact when I
moved to Linda I was shocked that the
Adventist diet is 50% fat and most of
the fat comes from cheeses. Uh fun fact,
who knew? So
but at least two of them are goat and
sheep cheese. um that are the they're
actually causing the benefit.
>> That's so interesting. Oh man, I mean we
have just like seven minutes to go. I
could talk to you for hours. In your
book, you also talk about other MCTs or
I should say um other ways
>> uncoupling.
>> Uncoupling. Yeah. Which is interesting.
The book title is great and it is about
keto, but it could essentially be
called, you know, uncoupling and
learning all about the mitochondria. You
could have like changed the title and
talked about that.
>> True. True story. I really wanted this
title to be u the title was going to be
the key to life comes down to just one
thing and it's not what you think
>> and it's uncoupling.
>> Yeah.
>> And you're right. Um
>> this this is a longevity book hidden in
a keto book. And I think that's why you
and me probably are so excited about the
benefits of ketones and a ketogenic
diet. But I think this book takes it to
the next level because
what I want for people and what I've
base my career is, I want you to have a
diet you can live with literally and
figuratively. And I think you and I know
that for so many people particularly I
take care of a lot of vegetarians and
vegans and a ketogenic diet is basically
a non-starter for all of them. But you
can get all the benefits that ketones
bring you with lots of other ways to
accomplish the same thing. For instance,
I'm uncoupling my mitochondria right
now. Now I have a big glass of tea and
tea is actually a great mitochondrial
and coupler. Coffee is a great
mitochondrial and coupler. Uh extra dark
chocolate great mitochondrial coupler.
In fact, so many of the things that we
think of as healthy uh when you actually
look at the literature, their mechanism
of action is uncoupling mitochondria.
>> Yeah. Yeah. And you have an entire list
of your book of other I'm not going to
give I'm not going to give it away, but
>> I know there's there's plenty.
>> Um, before we wrap up the conversation,
I want to touch upon melatonin real
quick and then I want to talk about why
we see insulin resistance with long-term
ketosis. So melatonin is another way you
said it's one of the two antioxidants
that have the ability to actually
penetrate the mitochondria membrane. Are
you putting glutathione in the same
category of as superoxide dismutase?
>> Uh, yeah. It's it's in the same
category.
>> Got it. Okay. So melatonin, you also
have a list of melatonin foods that you
could eat and and what about
supplementation with melatonin? What are
your thoughts on that?
>> That's a great question. Uh first of
all, pistachios actually have the
highest melatonin content of any food.
There's actually some interesting
research that I cite that the
Mediterranean diet and the French
paradox actually get their benefit by
the melatonin content of olive oil and
red wine and also actually mushrooms are
full of melatonin
>> and vitamin D. Yeah.
>> Yeah. And I Yeah. And I argue in the
book that we've um we've associated
melatonin with a sleep hormone, but in
fact melatonin comes out at night
because it is the major mitochondrial
repair hormone, antioxidant. And so it's
there at night not to put you to sleep,
but to actually repair mitochondria.
I'll give you a personal example that I
talk about in the book. Uh well, a
family example. We have a a very old
large female Labradoodleal whose name is
Pearl. And a year and a half ago, Pearl
couldn't pee. She had to strain to pee.
And she doesn't have a prostate, folks.
Um, and I mean, she literally could not
urinate. And we took her to the vet, and
the vet does an ultrasound. And she
said, "I got horrible news. Um, she's
got inoperable
stage four bladder cancer. It's blocking
her ability to pee.
uh we'll get you in touch with a
veterary oncologist, but the other
option is we just put her to sleep. And
I said, "Oh, geez, I know all about
treating cancer. Thank you very much for
this information." So, I put her on my
uncoupling program with supplements,
>> which includes this dog takes 48
milligrams of melatonin a day.
>> 48 milligrams. She doesn't go to sleep,
folks. Turns out that uh Pearl within a
couple weeks started peeing. By the time
we met the oncologist two months later,
she was peeing fine. The oncologist
says, "Oh my gosh, you know, that's
that's a placebo effect." I said, "The
dogs do not suffer a placebo effect."
They don't.
>> And she said, "I want to start IV
chemotherapy today." I said, "No, thank
you. She's peeing fine." That was a year
and a half ago.
>> Wow. Pearl walks two and a half miles
every day, plays with the other dogs.
Um, she pees like a racehorse. So,
quite frankly, uncoupling I've been
uncoupling her mitochondria. And I make
an argument in the book that melatonin
may be one of the secrets of cancer
therapy. And I have a lot of my cancer
patients on up to a 100 milligrams a day
of of melatonin in divided doses.
>> That is interesting. Uh so my my
colleague Dr. John Laurance wrote a book
called The Miracle Molecule Melatonin
and he's presented me so much research.
He makes actually a product a
suppository called Sandman with 200
milligrams of melatonin and one called
Super Sandman with 300 milligrams and
I've been taking that um and I've been
doing 50 milligrams oral sometimes but
oral is not as highly as absorbed as a
suppository. Now my question to you
regarding that is according to his
research and I haven't found anything to
disprove it. Is there if you're taking
too much exogenous melatonin, will it
shut down the indogenous production? I
haven't seen any kind of negative
feedback loop with that.
>> Yeah, that's interesting. And people
argue with this. You're right. I have
not found any evidence that that's true.
It's conjecture. Certainly, if you take
exogenous testosterone, your testicles
will shrink to babies, folks. Um, that's
true,
>> but I've not seen that that's true in
the case of melatonin. And again, I
think we've gotten melatonin all wrong.
And I make the argument association does
not mean causation. And I think
melatonin coming out right before the
sleep cycle may have nothing to do with
sleep. It has to do with the sleeping is
when you're repairing mitochondria, when
you're cleaning up the mid club. And
when you view melatonin in that way,
yeah, I I think this may be an untapped
uh hormone very much like vitamin D. Uh
that we should vitamin D is a hormone,
folks. It's not a vitamin. That's right.
Yeah.
>> Um that we should we should understand,
you know, what these things are actually
doing. So, yeah, I'm a
>> I've come around to view melatonin as
just a remarkable mitochondrial cleanup
agent. Do you have um three more minutes
or do you have to run?
>> Yeah. Until the door, you know, pounds
and they say next patient.
>> Isn't melatonin majority of it also
produced in the gut?
>> Yes, that's true. Um yeah, the pineal
gland is just one source. And again, I
think when you look at the Mediterranean
diet in particular, there are multiple
sources of of melatonin in that diet.
And I and I think, you know, we just
have to come at this a whole different
way and say, gee, you know, maybe the
benefit of the Mediterranean diet
besides all the great polyphenols.
>> Yeah.
>> Is that you know, a lot of these foods
and beverages are melatonin containing
foods and beverages.
>> Last thing before we wrap this up, um,
we both align with going in and out of
ketosis. This is my book. Um, here it's
called Keoflex. I I think it's important
to have that and not stay in ketosis
long term. There's a lot of reasons why
long-term keto is not good. Thyroid
health buildup of 4 H& sex hormone
binding globulin, but you explained why
we see insulin resistance. If you could
just explain quickly why we see insulin
resistance and it's a different type of
insulin resistance with long-term
ketosis.
>> Yeah. Again, if ketones are actually
doing their job by uncoupling
mitochondria, by signaling mitochondria,
that times are rough. And to protect
yourself at all costs, there's some
really cool research that I show in the
book that mitochondria will shift
protein production to stop making muscle
protein and start making more
mitochondrial proteins to make more of
themselves. Save your cells. Who cares
about those muscle cells? They just eat
food. You know, the hungry little
devils. And as part of that, we know
that long-term ketosis, I think because
of this effect, produces insulin
resistance because you want to cut off
muscles from getting calories because
they're expendable. For instance, in in
my first book, you could take trained
athletes and put them at bed rest for 48
hours and they will become insulin
resistance
insulin resistant in their muscles. Why?
Because if you're not moving for 48
hours, there's only one reason you're
not moving and that's you're injured and
you probably can't get food. So, you got
to cut off these, you know, hungry
muscles from getting food. And the same
way with mitochondria and long-term
ketosis. I have a very good friend who
stayed in ketosis for a year, measured
himself every day, and the guy got
profound muscle wasting, sarcopenia, and
you go, "What'd you expect?" And he
said, "Well, I didn't expect this, but
if but and good for him. He's like me,
you know, we'll experiment on ourselves
sometimes to to our disadvantage."
But yeah, so and you and I agree. We're
designed to have a circadian rhythm of
ketones and no ketones. And one of the
reasons we've survived, you know,
multiple millions of years is we can go
an extremely long time uh living on free
fatty acids and producing some glucose
from cleaving free fatty acids,
triglycerides, getting glycerol, and
using some protein stores. But we're not
designed to do that 247, 365 days a
year. It it makes no sense. V was wrong.
Our natural condition is not the star.
>> At the moment,
uh about twothirds of of dementia cases
are of the Alzheimer and we don't have
effective medications to treat them.
There are thankfully a couple of uh
drugs that have come on the market in in
just in the last year or two uh that
appear effective but uh they slow the
progression
probably by maybe
up to a third over about a year to an
18month period. Uh which isn't great.
you're better off if if you can avoid it
in in the in the first place. And I I I
think we are, you know, so I I I don't
want to be too down on on the lack of
effectiveness of medication. You know,
the the there have been 120 drug trials.
Um
prior to the last year or two, there
were really only two or three compounds
available that slowed progression in any
way at all. And they only did it over a
period of a few weeks to a few months.
So we're we're now in a place where uh
the best drugs are are starting to push
that envelope out. So I would say in
another 10 or 15 years, we'll be in a
much better place where treatment is
concerned, but we would be much better
off uh thinking of dementia in a way
like smoking. Um it's hard to treat lung
cancer. Uh you're much better off not
taking up smoking in the first place and
not getting lung cancer. Um, so you
know, keep yourself active. Uh, and that
will be a cardoprotective thing to do,
but it will also be a neuroprotective
uh, thing to do. What what I love about
your work, Shane, in your book is
walking fits right into any any dietary
philosophy you follow, whether it's a
plant-based diet or a carnivore diet or
a keto diet or whatever it is. It just
if you just include it with whatever
nutrition pro uh, profile or whatever
you're following, you're going to
benefit and you're being proactive. And
Einstein used to always say,
"Intellectuals solve problems. Geniuses
prevent them." So, I love this this
genius proactive approach versus a
reactive approach.
>> We we don't want to be diagnosed with
Alzheimer's or Parkinson's or dementia
or cancer. All these diseases that are
on the rise, unfortunately, here in the
United States, I mean, cancer, one in
three men uh one in three women are
diagnosed with cancer within their
lifetime according to the CDC. And for
men, it's one in two. And diabetes is on
the rise. All these brain disorders are
on the rise. So, and I'm not saying just
walking is going to prevent all of that,
but what I am saying the theme of the
conversation is that it's not going to
hurt you and it could only help prevent
uh any of these serious conditions down
the line.
>> Yeah, an active lifestyle uh you know,
the the kind of lifestyle that the Hadza
lead where you're up and about and
moving uh is going to be very good for
you on average and an inactive lifestyle
is not going to be good for you on
average. And you know you've brought up
the issue of cancer.
>> Uh we know that people who exercise
regularly uh tend to have lower rates of
cancer particularly bowel uh cancers. Uh
so you know
again they're they're kind of spillover
effects in slightly unpredicted areas uh
that uh uh arise as a result of of
getting regular exercise in. Um, and you
know, I I think it what we don't want to
do is engage in a kind of a message of
despair here. Um, the likelihood of
having heart disease, the likelihood of
having cancer, these things rise as you
get older. Um, you know, there's only so
many cell divisions the cell can go
through before maybe one will go ary.
Um, but the healthier you can keep your
body, the better those cell divisions
will be and the less likelihood as as
the jargon has it, you'll have a uh
fewer quote renegade cells that will
result in in uh in cancers. Um, and you
know, there's a positive way of looking
at this is that um I'll give data from
this country because I know it better.
Uh in the 1960s uh the average male got
to around about 68 or 69 years of age.
So that's about 60 years ago. And today
Ireland leads the uh uh European uh
longevity league. We're uh pushing the
mid 80s 83 84 that kind of age. Uh so
you know there's been this absolutely
marvelous extension of of lifespan. And
what we really need to try and do is is
uh uh have an increased health span as
well. So, you know, the obvious thing is
don't smoke. That's a really bad idea.
Don't vape. That's not a good idea
either. Don't drink to excess. Uh and
then as as we've been talking about, get
your body moving. That's a a really
really good thing for you to do.
You know what I think is underrated uh
and I'd love for more people to research
this is is the value the health benefits
the health span and lifespan benefits of
also living a life on purpose with your
purpose like finding what's important to
you and the health benefits that come
along with with seeking goals and
progressing towards goals and when
you're living a a life of passion and
purpose all the amazing health benefits
that occur which I believe uh will
extend your lifespan and help you have
health span and lifespan at the same
time.
>> Yeah, no doubt. Uh finding a purpose in
life is is uh really really important.
Uh and one would hope that that purpose
will be one devoted to good rather than
bad ends. But that's a maybe a
philosophical question for another
another uh interview with somebody else.
>> Yeah, for sure. Um, besides uh a
sedentary lifestyle, what what are some
other habits that are damaging our
health and our brains?
>> Um, well, I I think the obvious one is
is diet as as we've been we've been
talking about that uh uh really you you
know, you want to try to be avoiding uh
ultrarocessed foods that spike sugar in
your bloodstream very very quickly. um
you really want to try and avoid uh uh
saturated fats. Uh we don't metabolize
them terribly well and they tend to
accumulate in in uh the blood uh in the
vascule you know. So diet really is very
very important. Um and uh obviously
other things you know we we
underestimate or underweight the degree
to which being socially engaged and
engaged with other people uh is
important for us in terms of of uh uh
our mood but also the mood of people
around us. Um you know humans are an
ultraocial species. Uh so just this is a
contrast I I use in my new book actually
which we we haven't talked about. Yeah,
and it's part of the your abstract that
you're presenting on in in a few months.
Yeah, let's talk about it.
>> Well, it just Well, I'll try and keep
the focus on on on the walking, but just
think about chimpanzees for a moment. Uh
um chimpanzees compared to humans are an
ultraviolent species. Um they they live
in complex social uh environments as
well, but they they fight a hell of a
lot. They're about 25 30 times as
violent toward each other as as humans
are. And chimpanzeee skeletons
>> uh will typically have bite marks and uh
scratches. And you know, life for a
young male chimp is is a really horrible
life uh because they're always trying to
avoid the alpha uh whacking them around
the place and they they typically are
expelled from their their primate
troops. They have to go off and try and
join another troop. But the point that I
want that I want to get to there really
is is that um humans are in this kind of
interesting sweet spot where sociality
is concerned. Um you know we we I've
never met you before, you've never met
me before, but we've invested each other
in a very very high degree of trust. Um
this is an unusual thing uh for any
other species. uh you know, if we were
fire ants, we'd be uh immediately taking
on each other's colonies, um if we were
orangutans, we wouldn't talk at all
because we'd be actually very very
solitary and uh we would keep away uh
from each other. But humans have this
very uh gregarious uh trusting social
nature where we learn from each other.
uh we work together to solve problems
together and uh as I I mentioned earlier
on uh we are social walkers um you know
so the the the image I like to to think
of here is uh one guy marching off into
the wilderness with a spear isn't going
to conquer the world uh but human
families human groups human tribes
together looking after each other did
and that's how we made the uh the big
journey out of the great rift valley
that took us to the tip of South America
and all the way across uh Eurasia and
down into uh Australia and New Zealand
and Polynesia and all of these other
places that humans have found
themselves. Uh it's because we we do it
together. We learn from each other and
uh we did that journey at that time not
in cars because cars didn't exist. We
did it walking together. Um and and we
did it uh because humans have also this
interesting capacity which we don't
think other species have. Uh we can uh
engage in what's called mental time
travel. We can think about next week and
we can and figure out together how we
can make the horrible life we're living
in this groy place today better by
getting all our stuff together and
walking uh to the horizon where we think
there will be a better life available
for us. And uh that's one of our
humanity's great secrets in terms of how
uh we've managed to populate the world.
Now there are downsides to that but uh
let's let's celebrate ourselves for a
moment instead.
>> Yeah, that's it's a beautiful thing. It
really is.
>> So fascinating. Go ahead. Continue. It's
just so fascinating.
>> Yeah. No, I was just going to say that
it really is remarkable. And uh um you
know there there there have been other
multiple uh homminid species you know
Neanderthalss spread all over uh Europe
as well um and there there's homo
floriansis in uh and other species but
uh homo sapiens the the thinking man or
the thinking human is the one that uh
managed to for whatever reason succeed
because we've got this amazing general
purpose intelligence but also people
worry are focused too much on the
intelligence and they don't focus enough
on the social. Uh you know, we we
problem solve together. We learn from
each other together. You know, you you
can easily imagine this conversation
because you you'll have had it with your
own kids. Uh don't eat those yellow
berries. Uh they're poisonous. Uh you
don't eat the berries. They might not be
poisonous, but you don't eat them. And
that's a really good example of social
learning. Uh so we we pick up things
from each other all the time and we use
that to guide our behavior in the
present and our behavior in the future.
And uh dolphins don't do this. As I've
said, chimpanzees don't do it. They're
all locked into this continual present.
And just to to bring the conversation
back to movement for a moment, I've
mentioned the hippocample formation uh
already and how it's affected by
movement. What we also know, which I I I
really think is one of these astonishing
findings that you just wouldn't have
predicted, is that people who have
damage to the hippocample formation uh
are unable to imagine alternative
futures. Uh they're locked in a present
as well. They're not able to engage in
mental time travel. Uh so it turns out
and also they get lost in the world very
very easily. They're unable to navigate
spatially. So you you have this one part
of the brain that's involved in memory
uh thinking about the future or
imagining the future and which is also
involved in mapping or creating
cognitive maps uh of our world and uh if
you damage that part of the brain as is
as is the case in dementia all of those
things are lost or it can happen from
stroke or from from infection. Uh so the
brain
from stroke or from from infection
Oh, that is that is wild. What about
some
>> what about somebody living in fear?
Somebody who's who's they don't have
dementia. I'm not saying they have
dementia or brain disorder, but you
know, the last few years have been
crazy. Let's face it, with COVID
>> here in the US, we're having elections
coming up. It's like if you watch the
news, it's a really fearful state to be
in. What is what is living in fear doing
to our brain and our bodies?
>> Yes. So uh again happily we've got we've
got a fantastic understanding of of
what's going on here as well. So uh fear
and stress uh are related to each other.
So fear uh is an anticipatory emotion.
It's an emotion that tells you that
something terrible might happen. Uh it
might happen now or it might happen in a
week or it might happen in a month. But
you're living in this constant state of
anticipation and and the um what we now
know is that people who live with these
kind of chronic disorders uh where
they're living in in in a state of very
very high fearfulness show depressed
hippocample function um uh which is
really quite remarkable. Uh it's also
the case that people who have for
medical reasons very high levels of
circulating stress hormones tend to have
shrunken hippocample formations.
>> And it is also appears to be the case
that an a a nucleus adjacent to the
hippocampus called the amygdala uh which
is involved in interpreting uh fear and
stressful states tends to grow. Uh it's
hypertrophic as the as the language or
as the jargon goes. uh it gets worse
unfortunately. Um we also know that um
the uh directed recall uh from memory is
blunted uh because you get a step down
in activity in the frontal loes. So
you've got this kind of uh uh triple uh
set of effects going on where
hippocample function is is is
downregulated, frontal lobe function is
downregulated and this uh important
nucleus the amydala its activity is
upregulated. So what you see in that
case is that people startle responses
for example uh their thresholds suddenly
drop. So they hear a loud noise and they
start uh for example or uh if they look
at angry faces they process that
information very very quickly. Um or
they misinterpret neutral faces as being
angry or anger eliciting. So there's a
lot of things going on in in in that
case. Um and you know so the question is
how do you uh deal with this? So what I
did myself, so I end of one as as we've
mentioned already. Uh during the worst
of the pandemic, I just stopped
listening to the news. Just boom,
>> that was it.
>> Well done. Smart.
>> Cut it out. Uh you know, uh there was
lots and lots of horrible things
happening during lockdown. Um we we had
three lockdowns uh here. I I I don't
recall exactly what you had in the US
because it was a bit out of lock step
with us, but we we had uh uh
>> yeah, different states were diff
different had different lockdowns. Yeah.
>> Um and uh so I just just stopped
listening to the news. It was uh and
that was one of the best fear and
anxiety reducing things I could possibly
do cuz uh what you're doing is feeding
yourself uh information which is
fearinducing uh and reasonably so but
you're doing it in a context where you
can't control the outcomes. M
>> uh so your ability to control what's
happening to you uh during this or
during that particular time in our in
our collective lives was very limited.
Uh you know you might have been required
to stay in your home or you might have
been required to stay within a certain
distance of your home or whatever the
the the lockdown variable happens to be.
um and we were put in a situation where
our social uh bonds with each other were
sundered because we had to maintain this
degree of social distancing. So I I
think we're going to be paying uh some
degree of of uh a price for this at
least in certain fractions of the
population for some years to come. Like
I know there's data in the US showing
that um uh children's academic progress
uh was affected quite badly. uh and I I
know it happened here as well. Um and I
think a lot of that has been has been uh
uh overcome in the last few years, but I
I will guess that there's a a long tale
of people who uh
>> uh continue to be affected. Uh and then
on on the other hand, you know, you've
you've got these poor unfortunates, the
the so-called COVID uh long haulers uh
who are suffering from long COVID and uh
um you know uh they I I happen to know
some of the literature on this because I
we did some studies ourselves and some
colleagues of mine have been involved in
studies. Um those people uh you know are
are suffering from chronic fatigue.
they've got uh very commonly memory
problems and these are are kind of
phasic you know that they tend to be
less prevalent in the morning if they've
had a good night's sleep they're worse
during the course of the day and that
sleep is a a might act as a as a certain
reset and at least some data show that
uh one of the horrible effects of COVID
was to uh cause damage to the bloodb
brain barrier so that uh you're getting
a leak into the brain of blood which is
not something that happens. Most people
don't know this but uh blood and brain
tissue are kept apart
um for all sorts of physiological
reasons uh which we we we don't need to
talk about here but it it looks like at
least in some long COVID sufferers uh
that they have a leaky bloodb brain
barrier. Uh and this is seen in in
people with concussion sometimes and
it's sometimes seen in people with
dementia as well. was that's interesting
and I think what you did with turning
off the the news uh was really wise and
I think we could all uh benefit by doing
that because that fear that stress
>> it it could be from the TV screen the
the social media feed the actual
predator in front of us
>> and the the brain is responding the same
way the hippocampus is shrinking the
amygdala that fight orflight uh is is
growing is is there like a blood flow
when that happens Is there blood flow
being redirected from the hippocampus to
the amydala? Is that's what's hap is
that what's happening or what's what's
>> No, that that's not what's happening.
That's called the the vascular shunt
hypothesis. And uh that's that that's
not what's happening. Uh what's happens
is that uh you have all of these
different circuits uh being affected in
different ways by the presence of of
these stress hormones. And uh one of the
the prevalent hypotheses is that uh uh
uh uh uh cortisol which is the the the
primary human stress hormone uh uh
causes a high degree of excitability in
uh hippocample neurons and causes them
to burn out. Um and uh it it has the
contrary effect on the amygdala that it
uh also causes them to excite but it
causes them to grow rather than
interesting
>> to to burn out. So you you have these
differing effects on differing uh brain
circuits depending on the circuit and on
uh the hormone and the the problem is
that you have this feedback loop. So the
uh you often hear this thing about the
HPA axis, the hypothalamic, pituitary,
adrenal axis. That's only half the axis.
The other half is from the uh uh frontal
loes, the amydala and the hippocample
formation. And uh these drive activity
in the HPA axis. So you know
relieving your stress one good way is
actually physical activity. um you know
engaging in in in regular physical
activity, self-care clearly avoid uh
these inputs from the outside world over
which uh you have no control. Um I never
got back into the habit of watching the
the the evening news and guess what my
life has not disapproved.
um uh and I don't think I'm any less
informed but uh the way we we consume
these things uh can have a a big effect
on us as well. So I I think you know
leaving the 24hour news feed on uh on
the television or or whatever don't do
that.
I don't think the stations will
appreciate me saying that. But uh I
think as an individual you have you can
exercise the right to to turn it off.
>> Yeah. Well said. I agree. Even if you're
not some people might be thinking,
"Yeah, but I just have it on in the
background, but it's still going into
your subconscious mind."
>> Yeah. No, no. Yeah. You just don't need
like what you have is a low-level
stimulus there present all the time. And
something that's again just you know
we've been talking a bit around the
issue of stress something that's not
widely appreciated is that noise itself
is a stressor you know so um you have
this phenomenon where
uh if you're you're continually exposed
to variable levels of noise in the
environment that drives
a stress response even though you're not
quite aware uh that that might be
happening to you. So taking the noise
out is is a good thing. And there's also
something else uh to do with with sound
which people aren't terribly aware of.
But when I say it out loud, you'll know
exactly what I mean. And this is the
so-called cocktail party phenomenon. So
you're standing in a room with lots of
other people and there's a hub in the
background and somebody whispers your
name a few feet away. You hear the name.
you're you're you don't know what the
sounds are, but this stimulus, you've
got a super prime uh for that stimulus.
And it it's the so-called cocktail party
effect. Um the interesting thing is the
cocktail party effect is is a learned
phenomenon. You have to learn your own
name. Um and you have to learn to
respond to it. But uh it it also is very
effective for other super primed uh
stimuli. So, uh, you know, if you're
pretending to yourself in the
background, you're not hearing what's
going on, but actually, um, there's
processing going on all the time. And
certain names, I'm not going to get
political here, uh, might cause like and
that causes in turn an orienting
response, you know. So, when you hear
your name whispered, you turn to it. You
pay attention to it. M
>> so uh and then you realize that somebody
didn't say your name or whatever it
happens to be. So you have to turn
yourself back to the conversation again.
So uh the effect of having this on in
the background all the time is that uh
uh you're not able to pay deep attention
to what you're doing at the moment
because of course we're primed to pay
attention to these important stimuli uh
in our environment. her name is a good
one, but other uh names, other sounds
are are ones as well. So, cut that stuff
out if you can.
>> Yeah, well said.
>> The the cocktail party uh example, is
that is that the reticular activation
system part of that that they're able to
recognize?
>> It's certainly it's certainly a part of
it. Uh but the there's different ways
people have thought about this. Um and
one is is a very very simple one which
is that um uh you have uh these hubbhub
of sounds um but that you have lowered
thresholds for the detection of
particular learn stimuli. You hear your
name and then uh all these other
activations kick in and you orient
toward it. You you take attention away
from the thing uh that that you're
supposed to be doing. So, you know, if
you want to distract somebody, a good
way is to is to whisper their name just
as they're about to play a golf stroke
or whatever.
>> Pick because I play basketball with my
friends and if there's like a crucial
shot that they're going to shoot,
>> somebody calls your name, you're going
to go, "Oh, damn it. I missed that hoop.
>> I'm going to use that. I'm going to use
that. Thank you for that, Shane."
>> The no BS guide to burning fat rapidly.
This works so well that you can see
results within days. The first step in
your protocol is to get fat adapted.
What does that mean? That means we are
teaching your metabolism to burn fat
instead of sugar. There are two easy
ways to do this within a matter of
Loading video analysis...