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