Carb Myths Exposed: Weight Loss, Insulin Resistance, Blood Sugar, Metabolism, Stress & Mitochondrial Health | Keto & Carnivore Diet Lies with Jay Feldman Wellness

0:04 This is the Fitness Wisdom podcast.

0:09 If you've been brainwashed that carbs are the enemy, this podcast episode is for you. Today we've got Jay Feldman on the show, and we're going to be dismantling every single carbohydrate myth that I'm aware of. And if there's something that I'm unaware of, Jay is going to enlighten us today. So thank you for being on the show, brother. Yeah. Thanks so much for having me. Looking forward to. It before we dive in, do you want to maybe like introduce yourself who you are? What you do for the audience?

0:31 Sure. So I'm a health coach and independent health researcher. So I help people, you know, around the world with everything from weight loss to improving chronic health conditions, you know, autoimmune conditions, insulin resistance, chronic fatigue, insomnia, you know, lifelong issues. And I do that using what's called a bioenergetic approach, which is an approach that's centered around improving the ability for every single cell in our body to produce energy. And you know, one of the main factors they're being supporting mitochondrial function and looking at the relationship between energy production and all sorts of different disease processes.

1:07 The energy that all of our cells produce, the ATP that's produced in every single cell is what drives health. And the lack of that or inefficiencies in producing energy is what drives dysfunction and what causes disease. And we see this when we drill into any health condition, everything from fatty liver disease to Alzheimer's, insulin resistance, you know, pretty much any health condition comes back to this inefficiency and energy production. And when we fix that, when we address what's going wrong in the mitochondria and what's going wrong systemically that's driving some of these energy production issues, we can then see improvement reversal in these different conditions and symptoms.

1:44 And that's what I do as a health coach and and health researcher. Yeah, that's fantastic. And so it sounds like you're really going after the root and the foundation of what health is really. And that's basically cellular energy. And I talk about this all the time on my show because here this show is really dedicated to circadian health optimization, quantum biology, and also nutrition truths and the banking and nutrition myths. So obviously the nutrition plays a massive role into the energy part of the equation, right?

2:12 Because and the cell obviously knows what to do with that nutrition based on its environment, but then the nutrition that's coming in also can program metabolism. So let's maybe start off with the most obvious argument that people have online, which is carbohydrates make us fat. Do you want to debunk that for us? Sure. And I mean honestly don't pack it. There's there's kind of a lot going on there. And so I think I'll try to keep it a little bit more on, on the surface of what people are thinking and what people are sharing here.

2:40 There's a couple of different routes that people might go. One is the is going the route of the carb insulin hypothesis, which is basically this idea that insulin is a fat storage hormone. And so anything that increases insulin on a chronic basis will then lead to increased fat storage. So considering that carbohydrates tend to increase insulin when we eat them, if someone's eating higher carbohydrate diet, they'll have higher insulin levels and they'll be storing more food as body fat. There's a number of problems there, one of which is that we don't actually see that play out when we look at the Physiology and when we look at the research.

3:16 There are a number of studies that compare low carb diets to low fat diets. And what they actually find is on the higher carb, lower fat or even moderate fat diets, insulin levels tend to be higher, and on the low carb, higher fat diets, insulin levels tend to be lower. But in these studies, they tend to find that either there's no difference between those two groups in terms of weight or fat gain or loss. Or if anything on the higher carb, lower fat diets, you tend to see a little bit more in terms of the fat loss, despite this idea that there's higher insulin.

3:48 And so you should be a storing more food as fat. And the reason for that is because fat storage has a lot more to do with just the levels of insulin. There are other hormones that also drive fat storage, cortisol being one of the biggest ones, and other stress hormones, which in the short term will liberate fuel from the fat stores, but also increase uptake at the fat stores. Specifically of fat, which tends to be, you know, if we're eating a mixed diet with carbs and fats, it's actually the fat that would tend to be stored as body fat, not the carbs, since the conversion of carbs into fats is relatively inefficient.

4:18 And, you know, you lose energy in in in that process. So that's one kind of angle that people will touch on. Another one I think is they'll talk about fructose specifically being something that induces fat production, especially at the liver. And this is again, one where people are miss extrapolating from some pretty poorly designed research where a lot of the research looking at fat and what happens at the liver is done in rodents. And what they do is they provide pure fructose on its own in extremely high amounts, normally far higher than we would get in in a regular diet.

4:54 And they find that it increases inflammation in the liver, increases fat production in the liver. But they find that if they provide antibiotics to those same rodents that are getting the fatty liver and inflamed liver, it actually doesn't have this effect. The reason is because this has very little to do with the fructose itself, but rather the fact that they're providing fructose on its own, which we don't absorb very well. We don't absorb well, rodents don't absorb well because in nature we always get fructose alongside glucose.

5:20 When we're looking at pretty much any fruit or honey, any fructose source, that always comes paired with glucose and the transporters and the intestines require that glucose there to help bring the fructose in efficiently. We can absorb a little bit of fructose without glucose, but when we're talking about larger amounts, we really need that glucose there. When the fructose doesn't get absorbed, it then feeds bacteria, which increases the production of endotoxin, which is a component of bacteria that's universally toxic and harmful to the body.

5:50 This is something that's implicated in pretty much every chronic health condition. And there's a ton, a ton of research on it in terms of its ability to interfere with mitochondrial function, in terms of its role in cardiovascular disease and insulin resistance, diabetes, obesity, on from there, neurodegenerative conditions. And so this increase in endotoxin is actually what's causing the issues at the liver when they're providing fructose, but it it's not actually because of the fructose itself, it's because of this endotoxin.

6:18 And that's why the antibiotics prevent the effect. What we actually find is that when fructose is given in a normal context, meaning alongside glucose, even in large amounts, rodents do much better than they do with pure fructose. When rodents and humans are given fructose in a normal context where they get glucose alongside it, even in pretty large amounts, they do remarkably well. Rodents don't do as well as as humans, but they still don't have the same effects that are pointed to when it comes to fructose.

6:45 But when it comes to humans, we find that we're given extremely large amounts of carbohydrates and extremely large amounts of fructose. The amount that actually gets converted to fat is typically considered to be around 1% or less because our bodies and especially our livers use fructose incredibly well. We convert it to glycogen, we convert it to energy, we convert it to other substrate like glucose and lactate that the liver sends out to the rest of the body. So this idea that fructose is in and of itself driving fat production is is a not only oversimplification, but it's an extrapolation from some pretty misguided research.

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7:53 I love to use methylene blue, especially in times of high stress. It keeps my brain clear and energy sharp so I can perform my best no matter what life throws at me. So if you want to explore the methylene blue that I use, head over to the description below and make sure to use the promo code attached to get a nice discount on your entire order. Let's let's dissect a little bit the first part where you said there where you mentioned about how the fat conversion is more efficiently stored as body fat and the carbohydrates are more inefficiently stored the fat.

8:20 I think that's a really important statement to re emphasize because you're basically explaining that the body preferentially burns glucose as a fuel and it would rather store the body fat. You know, if we're especially eating in excess, like more energy than our body is actually needing, is is basically that what you're saying? Yeah. So if we are in a state where, and this could be for many different reasons, but where there's excess substrate there, normally the main driver of this is that we're not using fuel well, our mitochondria aren't working well.

8:52 There's certain things inhibiting that conversion of fuel to energy. And so there's excess fuel that the body wants to store is body fat. When that's happening, any substrate can be stored as body fat. But typically what we see is that it's the fat that tends to be converted toward body fat, tends to be used to produce body fat because it's already fat, it's already there. Whereas for carbohydrates, there's some limitations in the process where you have to actually convert the carbohydrates into into body fat.

9:18 Not that that can't happen, you know, in the case where someone's eating way more than they need because there are mitochondrial problems. Of course, carbohydrates can be stored as body fat, but it's generally disfavored relative to fat, and neither of those are really getting at what's causing the issue anyway. It's not a fat or carbohydrate problem to begin with. It's like an energy mishandling problem. Yeah, it's, it's in interference with energy production. If we can't convert the fuel to energy effectively, then we store the fuel.

9:49 That's that's really what it comes down to. And there's a lot of branches off of that because when that happens, we don't have the ATP we need. So our hunger signals stay on because our hunger signals are dependent and on energy. There's ATP sensors in the liver and in the brain that determine if we have enough energy there. And if we don't, our body says, let's keep eating. And so then you end up getting more and more fuel to try to quench the energy needs. But because that process of, you know, this conversion is really inefficient in in someone in this state, then they're left with all this excess fuel that gets stored as body fat.

10:18 So for what I understood from what you just said there is that actually someone who is gaining body fat excessively is actually something else going on beyond just the energy excess. It's sort of like because when we're taking taking more fuel than our body needs, it starts to up regulate metabolism, I would assume, and it starts to expend or waste more energy, right as a form of heat put in an in a system which is more dysfunctional or there is some kind of underlying health issue that would drive fat gain aggressively.

10:49 That's that's basically what you're saying. It's not actually the only the only driver is not just the excess food itself. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I would say, I mean, for one, excess is circularly defined, right? We can only define access by how much we need. And we can, that amount changes, right, depending on how efficient efficiently we're producing energy. But if we're producing energy, well, when we have enough ATP, the hunger signals turn off. When we don't overeat like that, overeating, people say, oh, well, overeating is the problem and you're getting excess fuel, you're getting access food, and that's the problem.

11:21 But the reality is that's the effect of poor mitochondrial function, poor ATP production that causes dysregulated hunger signals and causes us to keep to then want to keep eating to fix. So we get enough ATP to survive. But in the process that there's there's weight gain going on. The problem isn't that someone in that case is eating too much. The problem is their hunger signals are dysregulated as a result of an underlying energy production problem. Love this. I love this so much. Yeah, this is fantastic because this also ties into the concept of leptin.

11:51 I have read some very interesting research about carbohydrates restoring leptin sensitivity and chronically doing like restrictive, you know, keto, carnivore and low carb diets tends to sabotage, you know, leptin sensitivity. So it drives, you know, your hunger up more because your body is constantly searching for that fuel, especially if you are performing many anaerobic type of activities where your body is actually requiring that instant glucose availability. Do you want to maybe explain to the audience how, if you are aware of how it works, the mechanism behind how eating carbohydrates helps to restore leptin?

12:29 Well, I haven't seen that research specifically. It sounds interesting, but some of what I'm alluding to with the hunger signals, ATP production and leptin basically shows that leptin signaling is ATP dependent. And specifically in these areas like in the hypothalamus of the brain, if there's not enough HEP there, then that overrides the leptin signaling. So that basically causes insensitivity to leptin. And that's not because it's not like that's random, it's because that's the more important signal.

12:55 If there's non ATP there, our brain doesn't have enough energy. Of course our body should try to eat more. Like that's the normal response, even though there's enough leptin being produced. So that leptin insensitivity is an adaptive response to a poor energetic state. Let's talk a little bit about the difference between different macronutrients, specifically the energy substrates like the fats and the carbs. Do they both have the same response on metabolism or are they both the same? Yeah, so there are.

13:22 Are inherent differences between them, which again is adaptive it's it's a situation where our body has learned to use different fuels in different contexts, which has allowed us to survive through all sorts of environments. When it comes to fat as a fuel is one that we tend to rely on when we don't have fuel available because we're really good at storing fuel as body fat. You know if we look at how much fuel is stored in our bodies, we have way more in terms of calories and in body fat than we do in glycogen storage and carbohydrate storage.

13:49 So it's a really good reserve fuel to have when we're we don't have fuel coming in if there is a famine if there's a lack of food for some other reason if there's you know excess demands placed on ourselves, we can dip into these fat reserves these fat stores. And in a situation like that this is a case where we don't want to maintain a high metabolic rate because our body our bodies are trying to survive in a suboptimal environment. So they. This is a case where we want to have a lower metabolic rate so that we can survive for longer without getting more food, let's say.

14:20 And so these situations where we see a natural reliance on more fat tends to come with a lower metabolic rate. And this is built into how we metabolize fat as a fuel versus how we metabolize carbs as fuel. There's to biochemical differences that shift the efficiency of ATP production, where the efficiency of ATP production is lower with fatty acid oxidation versus glucose oxidation, which allows us to have like natural brakes on the system. So we use the fuel slower and we produce less ATP. Another context where this is really helpful is in our muscles at rest, right?

14:54 This is a situation where we don't have very high energy demands. We just need a little bit to kind of get by, and fat is a great fuel for that. When we're talking about situations when we have high energy demands or if we want to have a high metabolic rate, we require something that's used more efficiently than fatty acids. This is why the brain can't use fatty acids as a fuel. It can only use glucose or ketones since those can be metabolized much more efficiently for ATP production. And this can, you know, sustain an organ like the brain, which has really high ATP demands and very low tolerance for oxidative damage.

15:28 But of course, when we're talking about ketones in this context, if someone's on a low carb, a ketogenic diet, there are a couple of tissues that will mostly be using ketones, like the brain, although it still uses quite a bit of glucose as well. But the rest of the body is mostly using fat as a fuel. It's mostly relying on this lower and slower burn, less efficient ATP production, which again, is great for subsistence. It's great for starvation and famine and extreme stressful environments, but it's not ideal when it comes to trying to maintain a high metabolic rate for high ATP output and optimal function.

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17:13 Also, they have been taught that they can eat as much as they want without them gaining weight. But that's certainly not the case because I see this all the time. People start, you know, they shift diets, they may lose weight at the beginning because they're losing a ton of glycogen from their body. They're losing a lot of water weight in the process, right? Their cells are becoming more dehydrated. And then basically, you know, everything sort of like plateaus and basically everything that you'd be just saying there that the body goes into this survival like state.

17:40 So metabolic rate slows down, thyroid output slows down because it thinks that we're in a state of like energy scarcity, thinks that we are in a perpetual winter time because that would mimic a time, you know, in nature where you have like just ice everywhere, frost, there's no fruits, no vegetables to be found. So you all you're eating is kind of like animals, if you can catch an animal or you're fasting, right? And so then you're obviously it would make sense for your metabolism to adapt to that situation, to the environmental signal, food being one of those environmental signals alongside temperature, light intensity, darkness, you know, seasonality, all this kind of stuff.

18:19 So if we want to like up regulate metabolic rate, it would make sense that we signal a Bunda to our metabolism. And we can safely say that summertime in most countries of the world that we are, you know, accompanied by a lot of like high sugary, like fruits, vegetables, you know, things like this. And that's going to give the signal of abundance. And obviously then your body says, OK, now I should burn freely. Like, am I on the right track with this? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And you know, you touched on some of the hormonal signals that kind of overlay all this.

18:51 You know, it starts at what's going on in the mitochondria, what's going on with the efficiency of energy production. But then downstream of that, when we're relying on fat as a fuel over carbs, we have to up regulate stress hormones like Glucagon, adrenaline and cortisol, which then lower thyroid hormone production and conversion and which then lowers reproductive hormones. You know, there's a number of sequential things that happened that help to slow the metabolic rate down, right? And slow down the like reduce the production of of the active T3, the active thyroid hormone that regulates our metabolic rate and those per metabolic hormones that also help to keep our metabolic rate high.

19:26 And again, that's adaptive, right? You know, winter or famine or you know, long term scarcity is not a time when we want to be focusing on reproduction or we want to be kind of running on all cylinders. We want to be, you know, kind of more in that slower hibernation sort of state. Yeah. And I think it would be important to highlight to the audience that if we were to think about like fat loss in general, which because so many people are striving to lose body fat right now, right? Is there a single person that you don't know like in the world right now who is always aiming to lose body fat?

19:59 Because people are not understanding the fundamental principles. They haven't understand stood their body. They haven't understood how their lifestyle is influencing their metabolism and that includes their diet. And I would safely say that you know, higher total daily energy expenditure obviously and being naturally in a color. Deficit because of that, whether you're eating less food or you're expending more energy than you're eating, then that is going to result in more fat loss, right? So again, like if you have a tanked metabolism, a tanked basic metabolic rate, then whatever you do, any activity that you do like your performance output, even just your general activities throughout the day, they then tend to decrease.

20:39 So all of your fidgeting slows down, like all of your activities, which are higher because of a higher metabolic diabolic rate, higher burning energy is going to slow down naturally, even if people are thinking about it or not. And I know, I know this for myself because I also did quite a long period of time when I transitioned off a vegan diet to more animal based approach. I then went into more of a low carb approach for a very long time before I did carnivore. And because, you know, you're always taught that, you know, this is the only way to be healthy, you have to restrict carbs because carbs are the the enemy and they are the the source of all of our health problems, you know, high high blood sugar, high insulin.

21:18 But, you know, they leave the context out of the discussion. And I feel that if you're not like bringing like energy balance into the discussion, like every single argument that you're talking about is completely flawed. Yeah. I mean, in what context is that thing that you're saying like, harmful? If someone is eating 600 grams, you know, of sugar, like, you know, in one sitting, is that beneficial compared to eating, you know, just a couple of fruits? You know, is that the same thing? Obviously, like the impact on your, the inflammatory response, the gut response like you talked about at the beginning.

21:50 Do you know that I interviewed Joel Green? Do you know him? Yeah, he's a he's a really awesome guy. And he wrote the book Immunity Code. And he was mentioning on our episode that there are three metabolisms in the human body. And he was he, he really blew my mind because he said that you have a gut metabolism and immune immune response metabolism and you've got cellular metabolism. And he was saying to me that how the gut metabolism governs the immune system, the metabolism and the immune system metabolism governs the cellular metabolism.

22:20 And that was absolutely mind blowing to me. But it made total sense because everything that happens in the gut, if the gut is for some reason disrupted because of these endotoxins that you talked about, because of chronic stress, because of some leaky gut, all these different types of things. That's going to obviously impact our immune system. And our immune system is going to signal to our mitochondria whether it should be up regulating energy or down regulating energy, whether it needs to, you know, focus more on healing, regeneration, survival rather than thriving because we can.

22:49 I think you and me both agree that when you're thriving, your metabolism can burn high and freely, but your metabolism doesn't burn like, strong when there's something wrong. And that's kind of like what you mentioned at the beginning, right? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And there's a number of ways through which our gut health directly impacts our metabolic state, endotoxin being one of the biggest ones, right. Metabolic endotoxiemia is something that's seen in any pretty much like throughout metabolic syndrome, pretty much any chronic health issue.

23:19 And, and that's direct, right? That's endotoxin being absorbed through the gut from increased bacterial activity and that directly interfering with mitochondrial function, driving fat gain, driving inflammation in a number of ways. It's also a reason why I think a lot of people do have benefits when they go on low carb diets. And I think it's worth mentioning that, and you had touched on it a little bit, but yeah, a lot of people when they go on to a low carb diet, they will lose weight. They might feel better, they might have improvements in autoimmune issues, they might have improvements in joint pain and brain fog.

23:48 And so much of that, I would say the vast majority of that comes down to relief in the gut, where prior they're probably eating a lot of harder to digest carbohydrates, there's probably some bacterial overgrowth, and they were not doing the things that allow for proper gut health. And so when they just cut all that out to stop feeding the microbiome, there's a lot of relief there. And that can lead to, you know, even longer term weight loss and other longer term benefits, typically until the stress catches up with them, until the the kind of innate stress of a low carb diet starts to down regulate their metabolism.

24:23 They start to see issues with sleep and anxiety and energy and, you know, thyroid and, and all of that, you know, hair, skin and nails those kinds of things. But, but I, I think that the gut is the the primary reason why people do get benefits on a low carb diet. And our goal would be to get those same benefits without just cutting all the carbohydrates. But while, you know, paying some extra attention to what's going on in terms of gut health. Exactly. And if you were to think about it, if you grab a carnivore like I was, and then I when I ate my first meal, which was non carnivorous, like I ate tomatoes and some other stuff, you know, in the beef, I had a huge immune system response to that.

25:01 And that just basically showed me that, yeah, like actually doesn't fix anything. You're just actually just suppressing the symptoms until you reintroduce things back. And not only that, your immune system gets unused eating a massive variety of foods, which human beings are meant to be exposed to. We're meant to be in connection with all different species on the planet, all kinds of plants, fruits, animals. And, you know, narrowing it down to only just two, three types of foods. I feel like it's very dangerous for your immune system and makes you more susceptible to issues down the line, even though the immune system response is dampened.

25:36 I know many people who do keto carnivore, they rarely get sick, right? I feel like sickness is kind of like a blessing at the same time, because it's kind of like your body that it shows you that your immune system is actually functioning. It's alert, it's able to detect like things that are wrong. It's able to detoxify your body. But then when you are not able to mount an immune system response to something because your body simply doesn't have the energy to do so, I think that's extremely concerning.

26:03 And things can go like, you know, under the radar of the immune system, and then we can manifest some deeper issues down the line. So what I was trying to say there, based on what you said, is that, yeah, like, are you actually addressing the the root of the problem or are you just putting a patch on the problem and just pretending that everything is OK? So when you add something back in, then you can say, oh, look, I ate this vegetable. Now I feel like crap. Yeah. You feel like crap because you haven't restored your gut integrity.

26:29 You haven't restored your gut lining, your gut health, your gut bacteria, the relationship that your body has supposed to have with the natural environment. And so, yeah, there are many no layers to this onion. And I think it's so important, like what you said, you can't fix the gut without eliminating the carbs. There are so many different ways that you can do that. Do you maybe want to talk about how actually carbohydrates maybe you already you already talked about this, where how they improve thyroid function?

26:59 Did you talk about this already? Well, I talked about it really briefly on the other side, right, how low carb diet up regulates the stress hormones, which down regulates thyroid hormone production and conversion. And you really have the opposite effect with with carbohydrates. And there's a pretty direct correlation. You can see this in the research world where they'll have people on different levels of carbs in their diet and it correlates pretty linearly with the amount of T3 and reverse T3. And what that basically means or represents is the fact that carbohydrates are the part of our environment that our body is sensing to determine whether it should have a higher metabolic rate or lower metabolic rate.

27:35 And the main way, one of the main ways that it does that is by determining how much active thyroid hormone we have. Are we converting the inactive T4 to active T3 or to the inactive anti thyroid reverse T3? And when you have enough carbohydrates that conversion to T4 to T3 is much more efficient. When you don't, that conversion reduces and you convert a lot more to reverse T3. And so the carbohydrates are pretty vital there. The other piece is there's actual down regulation at the thyroid gland when we don't have enough carbohydrates because we're much more prone to stress and cortisol especially down regulates thyroid hormone production.

28:12 And this is a more unique one because people will often look at their thyroid labs and they might look at a TSH value and the TSH is normal or low and they say Oh well, I'm fine. But actually a hormone like cortisol will down regulate TSH and cause lower thyroid hormone production, even though you're not in an in AU thyroid state. So normally if TSH is low, it means your body's producing enough thyroid hormone so you don't need to increase TSH. But in the case of chronically high cortisol, you actually see low TSH and low thyroid hormones.

28:42 So it's something that can happen a lot as well when we're not eating enough carbohydrates or even just enough food in general, enough calories in general. So those are kind of the most direct effects are in terms of the thyroid hormone conversion and an actual production at the thyroid gland. Imagine a tablet that doesn't blast artificial blue light into your eyes, disrupt your sleep, or sabotage your health, but actually uses sunlight to power the display. If you've been listening to this podcast, you already know how damaging constant artificial blue light can be on your circadian rhythm, your sleep, and your overall health.

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31:15 So. There's different versions of the deiodinase enzyme. That's the enzyme that converts T4 to T3, and there's one version that produces that, converts the T4 to T3 and then tends to send that out to the rest of the body. So that's something that happens in the liver, where the liver is one of the central locations that determines how well are we converting T4 to T3 and then giving that to the rest of the body. There's a different form of deiodinase that happens locally in the tissues where the tissue just takes up the T4, converts it to T3 and uses it in the tissue.

31:45 So that's, you know, in the muscle and then the brain in certain areas. Cool, awesome, awesome. Thank you for that. So you talked about insulin resistance previously. I want to dive a little bit deeper into that. You said that carbs don't actually cause the insulin resistance, but only in certain context. But so then what's the main driver of insulin resistance if it's not carbs? Yeah, it's a great question. I think we have to start with what insulin resistance is because I don't, you know, I think a lot of people do it.

32:12 You know, there's a lot of misunderstandings around it. But essentially insulin resistance is a situation where the cells aren't using glucose effectively, they're not using carbohydrates effectively, and so they don't take up glucose very well. And so you can have the same level of insulin as maybe you did before, but the glucose levels are higher. And what the body does is then it produces more insulin to try to help increase the glucose uptake and utilization inside the cells. And over time, you end up with higher levels of glucose in the blood, higher levels of insulin, and that's what we characterize as this resistant state.

32:43 But the underlying drivers, what's going on inside the cells where they're not effectively using the carbohydrates that are coming in. So there's poor energy production, a lot of inflammatory things going on. There's a shift toward using more fats as a fuel since glucose isn't being used efficiently. And then you have this whole, it's on resistance kind of cascade as a result. It's a situation where the fuel itself has been blamed for the problem, right? The fuel being the carbohydrates instead of the engine, right?

33:12 The the fact that the body is not using the fuel well, which is actually the the central issue because we see in numerous context, but we can even see in people like in native cultures that eat high carb diets for their entire lives. They tend to have the best insulin sensitivity. They use glucose incredibly efficiently. They have very low fasting insulin levels. They give them glucose tolerance tests and their numbers are way, way better than anyone, you know, in the Western world. And so it's not the carbohydrates causing the problem, it's issues inside of the engine, right?

33:42 It's it's not being able to use those carbs well. And when we talk about some of those real causes, we come back to things like Endotox and then we touched on, but also nutrient deficiencies, which are incredibly common because we need micronutrients for converting that fuel energy. The polyunsaturated fats are another huge driver of insulin resistance because they interfere with the efficiency of mitochondrial function in a number of different ways. So when we're eating a lot of the polyunsaturated fats, which especially are getting a lot of lip service now in terms of people criticizing the seed oils, and the reason why the seed oils are bad is because they're very high in these polyunsaturated fats.

34:18 And that's a huge, huge driver of insulin resistance in the long term, physiological stress of any form, which could be psychological stress or under eating, over exercising, those kinds of things will actually drive in some resistance. And when we look at the whole answer in resistance pathology, it's, you know, we were talking about fat storage before. And this is, this fits right in with what we were talking about where we're not converting that fuel to energy well, but the body is continuing, continuing to ask for more fuel so we can get enough energy.

34:46 And then we have all this spillover, all this fuel that's not being used to convert energy, we end up storing in his body fat. And that's why we have weight gain and insulin resistance that go hand in hand. But really comes down to that mitochondrial function. And there's a ton of other things that can inhibit mitochondrial function, things like heavy metals and pesticides that are drivers here. You know, you're talking a little bit about light earlier, and light is really important for stimulating mitochondrial function like stimuli stimulating energy.

35:14 So there's a number of factors here that all come into play that determine whether we're going to use fuel. Well, but the problem isn't the fuel. That's that's for sure. Yeah, I think that's so such an important statement for people to realize that, you know, it's kind of like your lifestyle, which is the main driver of your, you know, cellular energy and your cellular health. Everything in your life is affecting your cellular energy. I talk about this all the time on the show, your light, you know, your environment, even the way that you breathe, your sleep, your social connections, as you mentioned, like all these kind of things are going to influence your metabolism and how your nervous system state is like.

35:48 Whether you are in a parasympathetic state or in constantly in a fight and flight state is going to massively determine also the type of fuel that your nervous system is choosing to use. But also if the you know, the cell is also stressed out or not, whether it's like in a survival state or it can just, you know, freely burn. Are you living in alignment with the light and dark cycles or are you using your phone like all night? Like laying in bed and spiking your insulin and your blood sugar without actually eating any carbs?

36:15 Which actually shows you that there are many environmental factors which can influence your blood sugar and your insulin without even putting a single thing in your mouth. So that should already make you realize that this is not a sort of like a biochemistry story, like the biophysics of life govern the cellular metabolism and the, it just takes the energy that we are using dictating what we are supposed to do. So I think again, this hammers home the air, everything that which I'm constantly sharing on the show over and over.

36:45 And so the, the most important thing is to not fear the fuel, but to actually understand why is my body not able to utilize the fuel in the in the 1st place. That's actually the more important question that we should be asked. And I feel like it's so easy for people to put their responsibility outside of themselves and say that it's this thing that caused my problems. That's the white bread, it's the pasta, it's the sugar. You know, it's all these things outside of me. But what if you why is it so that some people can freely enjoy those foods and never get fat, but then some people can get very obese.

37:19 And you just explained it perfectly there that basically all these different drivers of insulin resistance when your body can't use the energy, it's going to store the excess as body. That makes total sense. Your body doesn't like floating blood sugar in your, you know, going around for a long period of time because that is in inherently in itself as well pro inflammatory, right? So we want to like spike our blood sugar, but then we also want to put it away efficiently. And that's what happens when the cells are actually healthy.

37:46 But when we have chronically elevated blood glucose, that's when we have issues. But that doesn't mean that, you know, the sugar that we're eating or the carbs that we're eating is what caused that chronically elevated blood glucose. Why is the body not able to clear that efficiently? So I guess you can answer this next one, which I'm about to ask you, but maybe we can go a bit deeper if you want, which is like, carbs are not essential. So why would I eat carbs if you know, if they're not essential and I can make them, you know, from my body?

38:13 Yeah, it's a, you know, that it's an argument that we hear a lot. I don't think it's very well thought through by the people who are describing it because essentiality when it comes to nutrients in, in terms of like dietary essentiality is a question of whether it's a nutrient we can produce or whether we have to consume it. So there are a number of macro nutrients that are not essential. Carbohydrates are not essential, monounsaturated fats are not essential, saturated fats are not essential. And that's because we can produce all of those are, you know, endogenously even if we don't eat any of them.

38:45 Most protein is not essential as well. There's a number of there's a handful of essential amino essential amino acids and then there's non essential amino acids. So we can produce a lot of the amino acids ourselves as well. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't consume any non essential amino acids or that we should only consume, you know, 1015 grams of protein headaches. That's all that's essential or that we should only be consuming the polyunsaturated fats, all Omega sixes, since those are the non essential ones.

39:10 It's just that we don't produce them ourselves. So if we're going to get them, we have to get them from our diet. The reality is that the nutrients that are not essential are some of the most important ones because our body has extensive biological processes to produce them. Even if we can't get them right, even if we're not consuming any saturated fats, our body can produce them because we need them for, you know, a number of different reasons. And the same goes for carbohydrates. You know, carbohydrates are essential to our Physiology.

39:36 We need quite a bit of carbohydrates on a daily basis, whether we're producing them ourselves or getting them from our diet. But the fact that they're not dietarily essential doesn't mean that they're good or bad to consume. The same way that doesn't mean anything like that when it comes to monounsaturated or saturated fats. And the reality is that in both of those cases, we want to make sure we're consuming enough of them to get to optimal function, right? We don't want to have to rely on just the just getting the basic, like just the lowest amount possible for survival.

40:05 But whether we're talking carbs or fats, we want to talk about how much can we get for optimal function. Like how much? Can we take in so that our body has everything it needs, as opposed to undergoing various endogenous processes to just produce enough so that we can survive? And so when it comes to carbohydrates, you know, yes, we can survive without them, but there's an inherent cost to it in terms of the up regulation of stress hormones, which then down regulates thyroid reproductive hormones.

40:31 And that's again because carbohydrates are incredibly efficient in terms of energy production. And as a result, their availability in our environment tells our body, is this a good environment? Is this abundance? Is this when we want to have a high metabolism or is this scarcity? And in many ways the same goes for fat as well. If we're in a very low fat environment, if we have very little fat coming in, our body will also down regulate like it also upregulates stress and it also will down regulate the production of of steroid hormones, for example.

40:59 So both come at a cost, and whether or not the nutrient is essential doesn't really have anything to do with how much should we be eating for optimal function. Your blue light blockers. They're a scam. No, seriously, use this RGB test on the screen to see if your red lens blue light blocking glasses actually work. If you can see any of the green or blue light on the screen, that means your blue light blocking glasses are not protecting your melatonin. Most people know about the harms of artificial blue light, and so people go and buy blue light blocking glasses thinking they're all blue light blocking glasses are created equally.

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42:20 So if you wish to explore the blue light blocking glasses which I just talked about, over to the description below and make sure to use the promo code attached to get a nice discount on your entire order. Wow, Really good nuanced perspective. That was really, really nice. Well said. So basically these things that you just talked about, these nutrients, they are so essential that the body actually produces them itself in times that we actually are not able to have them basically available. That's, that's basically what you just said there, that they're so vital for your system in order to have all the time.

42:53 And it's so much better for your body to not be stressed, to have to convert or produce these compounds, these molecules, these nutrients. Why would we stress the body out when we can actually provide the body, especially in a world where we're living right now where everything is a bundle, right? We have everything at our fingertips. It doesn't take much much to nourish our body, right and take care of it. We have all the nutrient density that we want. It doesn't take much nutrition, but it's just that I think we've been so programmed and there's a lot of dogmatic beliefs out there that like what's good and what's bad, but everything is context dependent.

43:29 Like my personal view about nutrition, there is no such thing inherently as good or bad. Of course there are some things which are pro inflammatory and things which are anti-inflammatory. Of course, we want to opt for the anti-inflammatory things. But in terms of macros, it's all about context, You know, like, you know, when do you want to consume higher protein? When do you want to consume lower protein? When do you want to consume higher carbs? When do you want to consume like lower fat? And it's not like we need to choose a camp that this is the way that we're going to live forever.

43:56 But how, how do we adapt our diet and our lifestyle so it can suit our needs? Because as you said, metabolism is adaptive and it adapts to the stuff that we do every day, including the types of macro nutrients that we take in, not only the amounts of fuel. I think that's a really big deal for people to understand that it's, it's not the same thing. So for example, you can eat 3000 calories eating just proteins and fat. So you can eat 3000 calories eating majority carbohydrates, some moderate protein and lower fat.

44:25 And guess which one is going to have a higher metabolic rate? We already answered that for you earlier in the in the podcast episode. So this should make you realize that if you have a certain goal to achieve or if you want to have a higher energetic state, choose your diet wisely. And also make sure that you are not insulin resistant because of all of the other things that we talked about. And don't blame the carbs. If you are having a negative reaction to the carbs, the same thing. I know a lot of people don't respond very well to very high protein diets or just in general protein.

44:56 So that means, OK, there's something wrong with the body. Why is the body not able to deal with the protein? Or some people can't tolerate high amounts of fat. OK, maybe your bile production is off. Maybe something's, you know, going wrong there. So again, it's not like the macros, but like, why is your body not functioning as it should? So let's move into the next one now, which is glycation. Do carbs cause glycation? Yeah, it's a great question there. The short answer is yes. Like sugar is 1 potential cause of glycation and there are a number of causes through a lot of different things that can cause glycation.

45:33 Glycation is basically damage to protein or DNA. Like it's, it's like a structural damage that occurs. There's a number of different substrates that can cause this. Glucose and fructose can cause this, but so can ketones, for example, so can fats, lipids. There's a, there's a number of different processes that could go on that can cause this sort of damage to structure essentially. And a lot of times people will point to concerns regarding glucose and fructose. And I think part of this comes back to conflation with diabetes and insulin resistance where they say, Oh, well, this is a, you see hyperglycemia here and you see, you know, increased glycation in these circumstances.

46:19 So it must be the sugars that are causing it. But what we find in in those contexts is there's higher lipid peroxidation. Yes, there's high hyperglycemia, but it's not even the glucose itself that's the main driver of the glycation in that case. It's the glycolytic intermediates, the trials phosphates that are precursors, precursors to early and intermediate glycation products that are much more concerning. These come from, can come from any substrate, can come from amino acids undergoing gluconeogenesis.

46:48 It can come from glucose or fructose, it can come from ketones. So it's a much more nuanced and, and complex picture than what we're normally told. The actual process of converting of like glycation, let's say from from glucose is an extremely slow process. It's something that takes, you know, days to weeks before we're actually creating even intermediate glycation products. That's why when we're looking at something like hemoglobin A1C, you know, it takes time for glucose interaction with hemoglobin to see those effects, but you do have glycation that can be driven from other substrates as well.

47:23 And the bigger concern when it comes to glycation is not, again, what fuel is available because all of these fuels are available all the time. When you're in a state of diabetes, you have elevated fatty acids, you have elevated glucose, you obviously have a lot of lipid peroxidation going on. Like if you're on a low carb diet, you still have glucose available. You know, we're talking about gluconeogenesis that goes on where your body's producing its own glucose and of course you have a lot of fat and then ketones available, which is the ketones can drive glycation as well.

47:50 So this isn't purely a fuel question. It's a question of how efficiently we're, we're using fuel and the state of like the metabolic state in terms of oxidative stress. Because when we don't use fuel efficiently, we get a backup of the intermediates and you get a backup of the fuel as well. That's what we're talking about with insulin resistance. Like you have a backup of this glucose, we actually have fatty acids as well. The intermediates there, when the the engine is not working well and you can't convert the fuel all the way to energy, you get stuck with these like kind of partially converted fuels and those are where are really driving the glycation.

48:26 So when you're actually looking at a state where metabolically were compromised, that's where you're going to get a lot of the precursors to glycation. A lot of the dicarbonyls, which are actually 20,000 times more glycating than something like glucose, those are going to be produced in a context where we're not using the fuel well. And then the other side is a high oxidative stress environment, which actually interferes with the clearance of glycation products and the detoxification of glycation products and also drives the production of a glycation product.

48:53 So it's one of those things that's been like way oversimplified to be pointed to as as a fuel problem, but it's not really a fuel problem at all. It's a problem of the metabolic state. Yeah, yeah, you're constantly hammering home the foundational message throughout this entire episode, which is that if your mitochondrial function is not optimal, if your, you know, your body is just simply not working as it should, then the fuel source is not able to efficiently convert from its form into the form that your body can actually utilize, which is ATP, which is the.

49:26 You also have the exclusion zone water with the negative charge, which is produced in the mitochondria. So you can't produce these very two important forms of energy and therefore you have these metabolites which are floating around converting kind of like halfway like you mentioned. And they're not going fully all the way through the process to the end stage. And then that's also further damaging, you know, causing more oxidative stress, more damage to the mitochondria they're unable to repair.

49:52 And then that's when the advanced glycation products take place. And it's not inherently limited to carbohydrates like you mentioned, like you know, all of these different things, substrates can be used like amino acids, ketones like you mentioned. So it's just so convenient for people because it somehow fits the narrative that carbohydrates are the biggest problem. Even like AI is so biased about the subject about carbohydrates. It's absolutely insane. Like if you ask it any question about diet, it will always tell you keto, low carb, carnivore is like, is significantly better.

50:25 It's like really, really interesting. I feel that there is some underlying hidden agenda going on in the world that they want to sabotage the, you know, the entire carb, you know, idea that is actually beneficial for you because it will destroy their kind of like their big game that they have been creating all along. You know that sugar is bad, fats are bad. I think they want the world to be a conflict with each other. They want these different camps to exist and these wars to exist online. But you, what you and me are trying to do here right now is try to educate, educate the audience that we're bringing you a scientific nuance, context, perspective to how the body should be working.

51:05 It's not like we're sharing our personal opinion. Of course, we have our personal experience and I'm sharing my experience and I'm sure that Jay has personal experience with this subject as well. I'm sure that's probably how you ended up here, where you are right now. Do you want to maybe tell us a bit about your story, how you ended up down this road and researching this bioenergetic approach? Sure. Yeah, I mean, I went through all of the different dietary iterations, you know, much, much like you did.

51:33 I mean, you shared some of that. But yeah, I mean, I was oriented toward health and fitness and, you know, wanting to kind of get, you know, become optimal in in those domains. And, you know, initially I followed the mainstream advice and was doing, you know, low fat and then vegetarian and whole grains and all of that. And, you know, didn't get the results that I was hoping for there had had some issues. Wasn't, you know, what wasn't the, what it, what it was made out to be. And also, you know, I began learning about all of the, you know, the food pyramid lies at the time and you know, all of the, the agendas within the health industry.

52:08 And so I started shifting into Paleo, you know, we're talking 15 years ago when that was really popular. And then the national progression toward low carb Aikido and intermittent fasting and went through all those and, you know, continued learning, continued experimenting for myself. And then also, you know, working with people and, and seeing what was falling short and, you know, always trying to put that full picture together. And then came across some of the, the perspectives within the bioenergetic view and started learning, you know, hearing things that I've never heard discussed before, like the relevance of carbon dioxide production when it comes to carbohydrate metabolism and the involvement of various like like stress hormones and serotonin and other things like that when it came to diet lifestyle.

52:54 And, you know, began to learn about the, the actual impact of carbs rather than the things that were parroted by, you know, the people on the podcast about how they all just drive insulin resistance and they drive fatty liver disease and all of that. So, yeah, so then I started slowly, very carefully, you know, experimenting with carbs myself and learning more about it, digging into the research. And the more I dug into the research and and became acquainted with the Physiology and I was pre Med at the time, the more I began to recognize how much I was missing in my prior worldview when I was thinking that low carb was just the answer to everything.

53:31 And Yep. And so things kind of opened up from from there, and I began to see the benefits of including carbs in the diet, both in terms of the Physiology, in terms of how I was feeling, and then in terms of, you know, the people I was working with. So that's the short story. Yeah. When people think about energy, sleep and hormones, I think in terms of fats and carbs. But your metabolism doesn't run on macros. Minerals are the foundation for your metabolism and a healthy and well functioning metabolism starts from your mitochondria.

54:01 Every single biological process inside your body requires minerals. When your body is lacking the minerals to run cellular metabolism, guess how that is going to show up in your body? I'll let you figure that one out. One of my favorite ways to ensure that I get all the minerals that I need on a daily basis is through Shilajit, A herbal mineral substance which is made from the decomposition of plants and bacteria. This process taking place over thousands of years. It is primarily harvested from the Altai and the Himalayan mountains, some of the most pristine locations on the planet.

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55:21 I feel like you have a frazzled person who is losing their hair, like overweight, like hypothyroid. That's kind of like, you know, when you're doing chronically low carb fasting, drinking coffee, stressing your body out for many years to try and be fit and healthy, and then you've got another person who is just enjoying life, life, you know, taking it easy, like eating all the fruits and the vegetables and everything that nature offers you as it as it does. And you know, respecting that. I feel like it's a form of respect as well to embrace nature to its fullest.

55:51 It's like, I feel like it's a disrespect when you think that plants are trying to kill you. Yes, some plants may kill you. That's true, But like most edible plants are not going to kill you and especially like if you know how to prepare them correctly and you're not overdoing it in certain contexts. And it just depends like it's so by your individual right and not everybody needs to eat vegetables, but you know you can eat fruits, for example. And it's just that you need to really embrace nature because everything in nature, what it teaches you that everything eats everything and everything is up for grabs and you're human would naturally consume anything available.

56:29 It's in its the environment. If you're not able to hunt and gather, hunt your food, you will most likely gather your food. You'd gather like fruits, honey, you know, root vegetables or whatever like this until you did manage to catch your meat and your fat. But most of the times you were operating on these independent sorts of metabolisms in a way. So you would over consume carbs at the time and then maybe you would go for a long period of time without food and then you would manage to catch your food and then you would eat that.

56:59 And then when you would find honey and stuff like that and you overate that, that would probably make you fat, which would be beneficial until you manage to find your next like animal. You know, So everything in nature is like so intelligently designed for survival and reproduction, but we have lost our intuition as as human beings. I did want to ask you a question about eating carbs equals cancer. Like I feel like this is literally the most insane statement. Do you want to break that down for us?

57:30 Yeah, and very similar to the, you know, glycation arguments too. It's like focusing on this one particular pathway and, and like almost with intentional ignorance, the rest. What a lot of people point to with cancer is that a lot of cancer cells rely on anaerobic glycolytic metabolism, which is whereas glucose is converted into lactate, it's not used efficiently at all. It's not used oxidatively in the mitochondria. Instead it's converted to lactate. And this can provide some some quick energy.

57:56 This is what our muscles will do, like when we're sprinting or doing really high intensity, like short bursts of movement. This is not normal glucose metabolism, by the way. This is when we're talking about eating carbs and using them efficiently. This is a totally different metabolic use of this glucose. This is actually what we want to avoid. We want to be converting that glucose all the way through oxidatively in the mitochondria to produce lots of ATP. We don't want to be relying on this aerobic or anaerobic glycolytic state.

58:23 And so there's basically like an impaired metabolic state in cancer where it's not using glucose well. And a lot of people will point to this and say, oh, well, glucose is the problem. Glucose is the fuel of cancer and there are a few issues with this. One is that even if it was the case that cancer cells only used glucose in this context, it doesn't mean that glucose is causing the cancer. It just, you know, those are two kind of, there's like a huge assumption there's or two independent points where the body can be using glucose efficiently and you can have a cancer cell that's using it inefficiently, but that didn't mean that the glucose caused the cancer to exist.

59:01 So that's kind of 1 point, but the other is that the reality is a little bit more complex, a little bit more technical. And cancer cells, for the most part, and there's different variations between different types of cancer, but the vast majority of cancer cells don't use only glucose as a fuel. They use amino acids as a fuel. They use fatty acids as a fuel. They use ketones as a fuel. And even if you were able to fully starve them of glucose, meaning you took all the glucose in your body out, which is entirely impossible because even if you don't eat carbs, we still have gluconeogenesis, we still produce carbohydrates.

59:34 So there's no taking out the glucose entirely. But even if you were able to, cancer cells are incredibly adaptive and tend to do a pretty good job at utilizing other fuels. There's many cancer cells where they increase uptake of fatty acids. If they're start of of glucose and they start to use more fatty acids in this actually can drive metastasis and cause spreading of cancer and growth of of tumors. The same can be true for ketones as well, where ketones can actually Dr. tumor growth in certain contexts.

1:00:01 So yeah, I think it's again one of those things where someone again, there's kind of an agenda, as you were saying, and there's an isolation of this one pathway without kind of really looking at the broader context. But in general, I would say starvation is not the solution when it comes to cancer cells. There's I think it's important to recognize the metabolic state of cancer cells and, and address that and kind of prevent the. The kind of malfunctioning metabolic see that's going on in cancer cells, and there's a lot of ways we can do that, but generally trying to just starve it of 1 fuel and force it to use others is not a good solution.

1:00:37 Even if it was able to be done, which often times it can't be done anyway because again, there's no entirely starving your body of glucose because it is an essential nutrient physiologically, so you're always producing it. Yeah, we have fantastic breakdown. And when you mentioned their aerobic and anaerobic, another question did pop into my mind because a lot of people think that fats produce significantly more ATP compared to compared to carbs, right? And then it's just that they are under the assumption that when you eat carbs automatically, that puts you into a Warburg metabolism, which is basically cancer metabolism or anaerobic metabolism.

1:01:15 And I'm kind of like, yeah, you also have aerobic glycolysis. And then at the same time, like if you account for the calories for example 1g of carbs is formed calories and 1g of fat is 9 calories. What does the calories actually tell us of each gram? It tells us that that is more yes, energy dense and more packed with ATPI guess or electrons, and then therefore you're able to produce more energy. But if you were to match for calories, you I think you would produce almost the same amount of cellular energy.

1:01:49 So it's kind of insane to think that eating, you know, like fats is superior to energy production just because it contains more calories. Yeah, a lot of times they'll compare like 1 molecule of fat to 1 molecule of of glucose. But it's not like in which, yes, if you compare molecule for molecule, you'll produce more ATP with one molecule fat. But it's like the most irrelevant way of comparing the two because it's not an equivalent comparison. And it would take much longer like to get that amount of ATP from the fat than it would from the glucose.

1:02:21 During that time, you could metabolize multiple molecules of glucose and end up with the same amount of ATP. But the the question that actually determines how well we're using a substrate for ATP production is the efficiency in terms of reactive oxygen, reactive oxygen species production relative to ATP production. That's really in the vast majority of context, the things that will determine how how well we're producing energy, how quickly we produce energy because the Ros act as a natural brake on an ATP production by inducing, uncoupling or slowing the enzymes of the citric acid cycle.

1:02:54 And so when we're metabolizing fat for fuel, we have a much lower efficiency that we produce much more Ros per ATP. So we end up with the slowing of the electron transport chain, slowing the citric acid cycle. So if we're looking to, you know, at ATP production per minute, let's say, or if we're looking at ATP production per Ros, like those things are much higher and you know, happening much more efficiently with carbohydrates. And I think as you said, a lot of people conflate this kind of Warburg glycolytic metabolic state with carb metabolism, not realizing that you can use carbohydrates oxidatively and it's incredibly efficient.

1:03:27 And the reality actually is that the state of of the kind of poor glycolytic metabolism where you're converting glucose to lactate tends to also involve high fatty acid metabolism because the mitochondria are using the fats in that case. So that you're getting some ATP production while the glucose is being used inefficiently. And driving fat metabolism is actually something that causes that circumstance. Like that's what you see in fatty liver and it's on resistance is you see the Warburg metabolism driven by fatty acid oxidation, not glucose oxidation.

1:03:56 So there's a lot of kind of backward thinking going on. There the official community of the Fitness Wisdom Podcast is over on patreon.com/fitness Wisdom Podcast. This is a space where you can get to connect with a like minded community and tribe. Get ad free episodes of the show. Submit your questions, guests and topics that you would like to see on the show. Read my latest health optimization protocols and blogs. Get my guided workouts and mobility routines and the good discount on my group and one-on-one coaching programs.

1:04:22 The link is in the description below. I look forward to connecting with you. So if things are going wrong, you know, with the the glucose metabolism or we're getting signals or signs of that, then maybe it's like a deeper underlying issue with our ability just in general to process energy. And yeah, as you said, like the body's using the fats as an energy. And then that can be like a very clear sign to us that something is fundamentally off, especially if we're taking it in from outside or even if the body is producing and it's not able to utilize it efficiently, right.

1:04:51 So you see that especially in people who do like you have what your carnivores call this physiological insulin resistance. Like do you think that that's that's healthy just because it's normal in that state? Yeah, Yeah, it's a great question. And just because it leads into it just touching on the fatty acid metabolism driving insulin resistance, fatty liver disease, cancer metabolism. Blocking fatty acid metabolism or lowering fatty acid metabolism by lowering free fatty acids, lowering stress hormones or using medications or like pharmaceutical compounds to block fatty acid metabolism reverses its own resistance.

1:05:25 It it prevents fatty liver. And actually there's a ton of these that are being studied in cancer and have a ton of benefits, and they block fatty acid metabolism that's going on in the cancer and that's a major driver of tumor growth. So I think it's just, again, people with a set of beliefs that are intentionally or unintentionally ignoring the other side of the equation. But yeah, when it comes to physiological and some resistance, I would say that's a part of the adaptive system that helps us slower metabolic rate and survive in a suboptimal environment, right?

1:05:57 It helps us conserve glucose because this is a case where we don't have the carbs coming in, we have to produce it through stress pathways. And so our body wants to minimize that. This is why if you're eating a high carb diet, you use way more carbs, right? We have that optimal level of carbs available. If we're on a low carb diet, we're getting just the subsistence level of carbohydrates, just the amount that our body is willing to produce at a cost. And one of the ways that it lowers that cost or lowers the need for production is with physiological insulin resistance where it basically tells the cells stop using glucose.

1:06:28 Any tissue that doesn't need the glucose, like absolutely need it, you start to use fats and create an insulin resistant state that prevents glucose from being taken up. And let's conserve that glucose for the areas that absolutely need it, like, you know, parts of the brain and kidneys and, and areas like that. So it's a conservation mechanism. It's a way to slow the metabolic rate and rely more on fat. It's beneficial in the context of wanting to survive on very little fuel and without carbs, because otherwise you would have a, you know, major stress induction to try to maintain the same level of carbohydrates at the same level of metabolic rate.

1:07:01 So from a survival standpoint, it's great. From an optimal function standpoint and a high metabolic rate standpoint, it's directly at odds with it, right? It's it's a part of the system that helps to maintain a low metabolic rate when we're in this famine state, when we're in the scarcity state, and has inherent costs to it as a result. Yeah, I think it's important for people to realize that survival is not the same as thriving because, yeah, if you're just constantly in this survival state, like your metabolism is just trying to keep up with these processes and you're just because of your choices, your dietary choices that you're making, you're shifting your body more into survival Then like, yeah, don't expect that your body can, you know, lose fat efficiently, grow hair efficiently, like build muscle efficiently, have good performance, good cognitive function.

1:07:48 Of course, you can possibly get away with doing things for a short period of time. The body is very intelligent and it's meant to be able to be flexible. But if you do things chronically, that's where we start to see issues. You know, I only did the carnivore diet for four months. And even in such a short period of time, I encountered so many different health issues, like anxiety, which I couldn't necessarily control my breath. Like I kind of felt like my autonomic nervous system was not able to regulate when I'm breathing in and when I'm breathing out.

1:08:19 And I'm very much aware about how I breathe. I'm always very conscious. I'm always nasal breathing and most of the times it's happening passively in the background. And when I was doing the carnivore diet, especially towards the end I think as well, because I was drinking a lot of caffeine to kind of keep my, you know, energy levels going because I didn't have the carbs then. I was experiencing a lot of this anxiety and it didn't feel good at all, you know, because I understand the anxiety is a byproductive, a malfunctioning system.

1:08:48 It's not something in your head. It's actually something physiologically going on. It's the same thing in my opinion, as depression as well. Something is fundamentally going off inside of your inside of your body. So yeah, like there are just so many things costs, as you said, like to not consuming carbohydrates. And are we, are you willing to, you know, accept those costs or do you want to, you know, maybe use another route to get to like optimal health? Maybe what you have been conditioned to believe about low carb veto and carnivore is maybe not the full truth.

1:09:21 And as we know that half truths lead to full lies, right? Because again, it's it's leaving a lot of stuff like out of context without the nuance and based on the circumstance and the individual. So if we take all of those things into consideration, like there are many factors, you know, which can influence our health. It's not just the diet itself, but the diet is a very important piece. OK, one of my last questions before I ask you because I want to be all of your time because I don't know if you do you have to dash.

1:09:50 I've got 15 minutes, I'm fine 1520. Minutes. Okay, okay, all right, let's do it. So last question before we offer the audience maybe some practical tips at the end is about protein restriction and fat loss. I personally did the sugar diet last year and just because of Mark Bell, he brought it to my awareness and I thought that was fascinating. I kind of tweaked it a little. I didn't like the original version fully. So I kind of like been tweaking and testing and I've been doing it now sustainably for a long period of time by, for example, doing some days deliberately like skipping my lunch altogether and just eating only carbs.

1:10:31 So I don't eat protein. So that in that day I may be eating 60 grams of protein or something like that. And on my regular days, I'm eating 140 grams of protein and I'm 176 lbs. So in general, I'm eating quite low protein for I'm not aiming for 1g per pound of body weight because I feel like too much protein sabotages your health. That's just my personal view. And so eating on the lower limits, you know, 0.7g per pound of lean body weight, I found extreme benefits in terms of energy levels, clarity, fat loss.

1:11:05 Do you want to maybe tell me like the mechanism behind why all of this is happening? Why is it so beneficial when we actually restrict protein sometimes but not all the time? Because we don't want to become vegans, right? Yeah, there's a few things to consider. I definitely agree that 1g per pound, you know, obviously it's thrown around in the fitness circles and maybe for someone who's on, you know, anabolic steroids and things like that, they could use that extra amount, you know, because they have such a massive amount of, of muscle protein synthesis going on.

1:11:32 But in in the research, they find that really there's no benefit beyond about .6g per pound when it comes to building muscle, even if people who are trained like people who are doing resistance training and they've been trained and athletes and things like that. So normally I recommend up to about .8g per pound of protein. And when we go above that, there is a cost where protein is incredibly filling, right, increases satiety. And so it tends to mean that this isn't just coming at a 1 to 1 cost where you're not getting as much carbs or fat as you need.

1:12:02 But often times because of the filling effect, people get considerably less of that fuel and they end up with excess protein, which we don't use efficiently as as a fuel for energy production. We use it well structurally, but we don't use it well for energy. And so we don't want to be displacing our carbs or fats with protein. We want to make sure we're getting enough carbs and fats and that's what's going to maintain the lowest stress hormone environment, the high reproductive hormones, high thyroid hormones.

1:12:28 And we do see that pretty consistently where excessively high protein relative to carbs or fats actually Don regulates testosterone as an example. So it is it is something that that we want to be aware of and I do think especially people coming from paleo carnivore fitness communities like there tends to be a lot of overeating of protein. So yeah, .6 to .8g per pound covers us pretty if it effectively there without overdoing it. Obviously there could be some exceptions, but that's the general range that I recommend as a starting place.

1:13:03 So that being said, when it comes to the restriction of important nutrients, whether we're talking carbs, fat or protein, there tends to be induction of stress in the short term that increases energy expenditure and could lead to some weight loss. Normally, I would say there's a long term cost to that. And honestly, I see protein restriction as a similar effect. Like when we're talking to sugar diet, basically in order to induce the metabolism increasing effect from the lack of protein, the body has to be sensing a protein deficiency.

1:13:34 There has to there's actually like a lack of of amino acids that get sense. And then as a result, the body says, let's upregulate our metabolic rate so we can burn off the excess fuel and get more protein in. And that increase metabolic rate comes from basically just burning fuel without ATP, right? It's there's like a coupling being driven and some stress systems being induced to kind of just burn off extra excess fuel, kind of like throwing the a car into neutral and, and hitting the gas pedal.

1:14:08 And yeah, it can have a a stimulating effect, but normally it's not my recommendation when it comes to like a in like a long term fat loss solution. But if it's working for you, that's great. Yeah, yeah, I know. I just wanted your thoughts on that because it has been working for me beautifully. I did do it like full on at the beginning where I was doing, you know, no protein during the day and just eating carbs on the breakfast, carbs on the lunch. And then in the dinner I was eating mainly veggies and protein, just as they recommended during the sugar diet phase.

1:14:43 And when I was doing this, I was extremely hungry the entire day. I did feel like my metabolic rate was super high. I always feel like hunger, especially because you're not eating other macros, you know, to say to you, it is like a sign that your metabolic crate is burning like very, very strong. And so when, every time when I eat the protein, I was at the night time, I felt like I totally wanted to go to sleep instantly. It was crazy. And then it was a sort of like my body got this relief. They are like finally I have the protein.

1:15:10 I like, I can calm down now, you know, and it sort of had this metabolism dampening effect, but I didn't like the aspect of it because I felt like my brain was sort of like a Mashed potato. So I've, I just kind of like adapted it right now and I just made it so that I'm only replacing one of the meals, primarily my lunchtime meal, not my breakfast. So it's more stable for my energy levels. And I found that it really boosts my metabolism that day that I do it. I always like without fail every time the next day my weight has dropped down on the scale like every single time.

1:15:41 So it does work, you just have to do it strategically. Of course, right now as well, I'm more in a calorie deficit because I'm trying to lose body fat as well. So I feel that when I do the lower protein, higher carb days, I feel like it's also boosting my metabolism because I'm replacing. I'm not going overboard with my calories. I'm replacing the protein calories to carb calories. So let's assume that, you know, I normally consume 2000 calories. If my lunchtime meal is 600 calories combining proteins, you know, fats and carbs, I would just replace all those calories with only carbs.

1:16:16 So then my total carbs for the day would be greater than a regular day. But even on a regular day, I still eat carbs, right? And so, yeah. Do you think that that could also be a contributor to the increasing the total daily energy expenditure? Yeah, yeah, definitely. The, you know, in the recent research looking at the protein restriction, they really point to the stress pathways induced by the lack of protein as the main drivers of the increase in the metabolic rate. You know, a lot of people point to that after you have 21 and if that's not there, if that's blocked, if there's a knockout of that, you don't tend to get that same increase in metabolic rate.

1:16:52 But I'm sure a portion of it would also be due to, you know, bumping up the the carbon intake for sure. Yeah, because I think I would imagine if someone is eating like myself on a regular day, 2, 170 grams carbs to 600 grams of carbs, I can imagine that there is a massive upregulation in the thyroid hormone. You've got like everything is burning more like expensively, I mean freely. And yeah, your body is going to produce more of that heat as well. So there's going to be a lot of energy wastage.

1:17:24 Yeah. So then in a way, like anyway, it's working for me. I use that approach with my clients as well. It's working for them. But as you mentioned, I do think that it's not something to do all the time. This is why I only do it two times a week and I just replace like 2 of my lunches per week. So if you think about it, the majority of my diet is not really like I'm not trying to stress my body out, but definitely the days that I do it, like you say, I do feel like it's extremely hard to fall asleep at night because my body is way more stressed.

1:17:53 Even though I eat my last meal with protein and vegetables, I still feel like my metabolism is so high that the next day as well, like I'm significantly more hungry, like for the breakfast, like I'm so ready. But I feel that's also what's driving the the weight loss as well. So I guess, you know, there is always a cost to weight loss. I feel that the body doesn't necessarily want to lose body fat because, you know, body fat is this kind of organ that your body uses for survival, right? And it's very resistant to burning it.

1:18:23 And This is why, like, I feel like so many people are having issues with weight. Do you think that's the case because the body understands that this is like a survival organ? Definitely. And if there are survival signals, then I think there's a drive to want to maintain body fat. And I think the goal is to remove those survival signals by lowering physiological stress, getting enough sleep, getting, you know, enough sunlight, eating high nutrient diet, removing endotoxin and bringing the body to a state where as the thyroid increases, as the reproductive hormones decrease, as the stress hormones decrease.

1:19:03 Those are the signals that shift us away from that those kind of survival mechanisms and lead to a state where we should be less likely to be storing food as body fat or that desire to store it in case of famine and stress should should reduce. But it can definitely take time. And it's much slower process compared to someone who's trying to go on a diet to lose weight. And they're saying, like, yeah, I want to lose 10 lbs in the next three months or, you know, I, I need to make sure that I'm like, I need to lose weight by this point.

1:19:33 So I'm going to go on this diet like that's not the orientation that I take, You know, my, my goal is health first. And, and weight loss is a byproduct of that health. And sometimes it's a much slower process, but it's also ideally the only, like the only time for the rest of your life that you even need to worry about losing the weight because after that it's, it's fully sustained. Like your body's not in a, in a context where it wants to be storing food is body fat. And so you never have to really worry about it.

1:20:00 And you get to feel better in the process and have, you know, better energy and sleep and. Digestion and hormones and as you said, you know, hair and and all of that. Fantastic. That was kind of like the practical tips in a nutshell. So people need to rewind that to to kind of get them all. Is there any any last words of wisdom you'd like to leave the audience with before we close out the show? Well, as far as maybe a slightly more practical starting place, I do have a one page infographic, a Food Guide that people can use to get started, determine which foods they want to incorporate in their diet and which foods to avoid to increase their metabolism and have those benefits we talked about.

1:20:35 Listeners can download that for free at jfeldmanwellness.com/guide. And I think, you know, in line with something we were talking about here, I think the health oriented approach as opposed as opposed to like a weight oriented approach is something that leads to like, I think that that's required for the long term solution. I think that if anybody who's who's aiming for weight loss as the goal, when they look back over their lives, that's what they've done the entire time, right? They, and there's the yoyo, right?

1:21:02 They they've gained weight and then they realize, Oh, I want to lose weight and I just need to stick to this lower calorie diet or lower carb diet or fasting or whatever the protocol is. They lose the weight and inevitably they regain it and more. And then they say, Oh, well, I need to go back on that diet. I have to lose this weight by this period of time. And we just, it's just that classic cycle. So that classic yo-yo and, and the, you know, the weight just keeps trending up and up. And if we keep doing that, we're not going to get a different result.

1:21:27 We're going to keep getting that same result. So putting health first and allowing the weight to come as a, as a byproduct of that, I think is the solution. It's the way that we get out of that, that vicious circle. Fantastic, brother. I really enjoyed this discussion. I'm sure the audience has gotten gotten a lot of value from our conversation today. So if you guys enjoyed the episode, make sure that you smash the like button and subscribe to the channel. And if you have any questions, make sure that you drop them below.

1:21:50 I'm sure that Jay, he's going to help me answer you guys if there are any complex questions and where can people find you, Jay, connect with you and work with you if they wish to do. Sure. Yeah, my websites, Jay Feldman wellness.com, tons of free resources there, articles, podcast episodes, all of that. And my services page as well if people are interested in getting some help with their, you know, along their health journey. And yeah, YouTube, Instagram, you know, social media, Jay Feldman Wellness.

1:22:17 If you search for me there, you'll be able to find my podcasts, videos, social media posts, all of them. Fantastic, I will make sure to put your links in the description below so people can find you efficiently. Thank you so much for doing this. I really appreciate your time, and of course I'd love to have you back on the show again in the future. Sounds good. Thanks so much for having. Me if you guys enjoy the topics and guests I bring on the show, I would really appreciate if you left me a five star review on Spotify and subscribe to Fitness Wisdom podcast on YouTube as well.

1:22:41 This helps us spread the knowledge and wisdom with the world. Till next time.