The Thermo Diet Podcast: Recent Episodes
UMZU LLC
This podcast is an educational podcast over the Thermo Diet and everything that it encompasses. From health to mindset to life in general, we talk about it!
In this episode Tyler brings back on the Thermo Warrior himself, Jake Miner to discuss Jake's health journey and the new UMZUfit Coaching Program. In the episode Jake & Tyler dive into the some of the downfalls associated with some of the popular extreme diets, what you get out of each coaching program, what got us into fitness, nutrition & the Ray Peat world and much more! Work With Us ———————————— 1- Month Free Trial Group Coaching: https://www.umzu.com/pages/umzu-t2c-program 1x1 Coaching With Tyler: https://coach.everfit.io/package/EL223777 Nutrition Coaching With Jake Miner: https://coach.everfit.io/package/IY165181 ———————————— Follow US On ———————————— INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/thermodiet/?hl=en FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/thermodiet TIKTOK: https://www.tiktok.com/@umzuhealth?lang=en ———————————— Subscribe To The Thermo Diet Podcast ———————————— Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-thermo-diet-podcast/id1483367466 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6rZgTRCKNr5SnawDPQ1WnD?si=k6vjONdrSZq817IfXiy14Q
In this episode Tyler interviews Kitty Blomfield & Craig Mcdonald, the founders of NuStrength and Saturee official, on all the pervasive myths surrounding women's health & fitness.
Follow Kitty & Craig INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/kittyblomfield/ https: www.instagram.com/iamcraigmcdonald/ WEBSITE: https://www.nustrength.com.au/ TIKTOK: https://www.tiktok.com/@kittyblomfield SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/3mAIgHOyxzSnemk6OfqWhP?si=ebb326b49d2d4850
Follow US On ———————————— INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/thermodiet/... FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/thermodiet TIKTOK: https://www.tiktok.com/@umzuhealth?la... ———————————— Subscribe To The Thermo Diet Podcast ———————————— Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6rZg...
In this episode Tyler interviews Matt Cooper, a fellow Peater, Professional NBA trainer and much more. In the episode Tyler & Matt dig into the pitfalls of many of the fad diets in sport, the role of nutrition and metabolism in athleticism, and the root cause of the injury epidemic.
In this episode Tyler dives into Fat Loss with Registered Nurse & independent health researcher Mike Fave.
0:00 Introduction To Fat Loss
Follow Mike ———————————— INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/mikefavenp YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@mfave16 WEBSITE: https://www.mikefavenp.com/
Follow US On ———————————— INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/thermodiet/?hl=en FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/thermodiet TIKTOK: https://www.tiktok.com/@umzuhealth?lang=en ———————————— Subscribe To The Thermo Diet Podcast ———————————— Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-thermo-diet-podcast/id1483367466 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6rZgTRCKNr5SnawDPQ1WnD?si=k6vjONdrSZq817IfXiy14Q
In this episode of the Thermo Diet Podcast Tyler interviews UMZU product expert Matt Hayes about everything related to Nutrition, fat loss & the Thermo Diet.
Timestamps0:00 Typical Eye Doctor Vs. Taylor's Holistic Approach10:55 What's Fueling The Myopia EpidemicFollow US On ———————————— INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/thermodiet/?hl=en FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/thermodietTIKTOK: https://www.tiktok.com/@umzuhealth?lang=en———————————— Subscribe To The Thermo Diet Podcast ———————————— Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-thermo-diet-podcast/id1483367466Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6rZgTRCKNr5SnawDPQ1WnD?si=k6vjONdrSZq817IfXiy14Q
In this episode Tyler interviews Ben Yanes also known as the Modern Meathead. Ben is an expert in biomechanics and Tyler asks him about everything related to biomechanics, muscle building and much more!
Follow Us On ———————————— INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/thermodiet/?hl=en FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/thermodietTIKTOK: https://www.tiktok.com/@umzuhealth?lang=en———————————— Subscribe To The Thermo Diet Podcast ———————————— Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-thermo-diet-podcast/id1483367466Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6rZgTRCKNr5SnawDPQ1WnD?si=k6vjONdrSZq817IfXiy14QFollow Ben:———————————— YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@The_Modern_MeatheadINSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/ben_yanes/?hl=enTIKTOK: https://www.tiktok.com/@ben_yanesWEBSITE: https://www.benyanes.com/
In this episode Tyler reviews fellow Peater, Kyle Mamounis. Kyle has a PhD in Nutritional Sciences from Rutgers and is currently performing biochemical research. Tyler asks Kyle:Why you don't want to be a fat burnerThe problems with modern research & interpretationsThe application of mice & animal research and much more!'Check Out Kyle's Work:
———————————— https://www.instagram.com/geniusbits/
https://www.youtube.com/@NutricrinologyFollow US On ———————————— INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/thermodiet/?hl=en FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/thermodietTIKTOK: https://www.tiktok.com/@umzuhealth?lang=en———————————— Subscribe To The Thermo Diet Podcast ———————————— Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-thermo-diet-podcast/id1483367466Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6rZgTRCKNr5SnawDPQ1WnD?si=k6vjONdrSZq817IfXiy14Q
In this episode Tyler interviews fellow Tyler, Dr. Tyler. Panzner on everything geneticsDr. Tyler Panzer has a PhD in in Molecular & Cellular Pharmacology and is real wealth of knowledge in everything geneticsFollow US On ———————————— INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/thermodiet/?hl=en FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/thermodietTIKTOK: https://www.tiktok.com/@umzuhealth?lang=en———————————— Subscribe To The Thermo Diet Podcast ———————————— Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-thermo-diet-podcast/id1483367466Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6rZgTRCKNr5SnawDPQ1WnD?si=k6vjONdrSZq817IfXiy14Q———————————— Find Dr. Panzer ———————————— Website: https://www.drtylerpanzner.com/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dr.tylerpanzner?mibextid=LQQJ4dTiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@drtylerpanzner?_t=8b6p58O8Avq&_r=1Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrTylerPanznerInstagram: https://instagram.com/drtylerpanzner?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=
In the episode of the Thermo Diet podcast Tyler interviews Thyroid researcher & health coach Keith Littlewood aka Tommo on everything thyroid. Don't miss out!
Follow US On
———————————— INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/thermodiet/?hl=en FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/thermodietTIKTOK: https://www.tiktok.com/@umzuhealth?lang=en
In this episode Tyler interviews his fellow UMZU Employee Zachary Stephens. Zach is currently studying nutrition here in Colorado and is a product expert here at UMZU. In this episode Tyler interviews Zach on his experience working in customer service and his schooling in nutrition and much more!
Follow US On ———————————— INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/thermodiet/?hl=en FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/thermodietTIKTOK: https://www.tiktok.com/@umzuhealth?lang=en———————————— Subscribe To The Thermo Diet Podcast ———————————— Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-thermo-diet-podcast/id1483367466Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6rZgTRCKNr5SnawDPQ1WnD?si=k6vjONdrSZq817IfXiy14Q
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Tyler interviews Georgi about everything related to serotonin, histamine, and endotoxin and how this relates to our gut.
In this episode Tyler reviews Pedro Do Amaral AKA Thucydides and they go into how to properly prepare your food and the chemistry behind it . Pedro has a bachelors of science in Biomedical Sciences and is currently pursuing a degree in Chemistry and Mathematics and minoring in Physics,
Website: https://thermodiet.com/
Thermo Diet IG: https://www.instagram.com/thermodiet/?hl=en
Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@umzuhealth?lang=en
You can find Pedro at: Website: https://www.pedrodoamaral.com/about
IG: https://www.instagram.com/thucydides__/?hl=en
In this episode Tyler & Jayton interview Jay Feldman & Mike Fave on their thoughts on the science behind bodybuilding and how building muscle fits into the bioenergetic view.
In this episode Tyler & Jayton catch up and talk about avoiding the holiday weight-gain and how to lose the holiday weight
In this episode Jayton & Tyler go through questions submitted through the Thermo Diet facebook group
In this episode Tyler interviews Chris about his journey through building UMZU, Ray Peat and much more
In this episode Chris interviews the UMZU 2022 Contest Winner, Andrew Kayes about his experience losing 20 pounds throughout the challenge
In this episode Jayton & Tyler go through their topics of the month including: Supplement Movement Practice Book And much more!
In this episode of the Thermo Diet podcast Jayton & Tyler answer questions submitted from the Thermo Diet group
In this episode Tyler & Jayton interview Georgi Dinkov AKA Haidut and pick his brain about everything related to PUFAs (Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids ), Essential Fatty Acids & Bioenergetics. Where you can find Georgi:
In this episode Jayton & Tyler go through their monthly updates including:
- Supplement Of The Month
- Activity Of The Month
- Book Of The Month
- Food Of The Month
In this episode Tyler & Jayton answer questions submitted from the Thermo Diet facebook group including: Dental treatment/prevention on the ThermoDiet due to high sugar/high acidity of some of foods? Dry vs infrared saunas? What's better? Tips for concentration and memory for studying? How to improve thyroid production during winter months? Favorite supplement to boost energy? Best tip for grounding? How much collagen is too much? Why should gums (such as guar gum) and other thickening agents be avoided? Is Xanthan gum an exception?
In this episode Jayton & Tyler talk to registered dietitian and UMZU's head of product development Sloan Osborn. Jayton, Tyler & Sloan go into Sloan's experiencing working as an RD in and out of hospitals and his biggest takeaways. Sloan also goes into what he's learned since entering the supplement industry and gives his recommendations for what to look when buying a supplement.
In this episode Jayton & Tyler go into how to successfully lose weight and keep it off without destroying your metabolism. Tyler & Jayton also give insights into their personal experience with losing weight and their best practices
Instagram: -
@UMZU Health
@researchcowboy
@tylerwoodward_fit
In this episode Jayton & Tyler go into how to successfully lose weight and keep it off without destroying your metabolism. Tyler & Jayton also give insights into their personal experience with losing weight and their best practices
Instagram: -
@UMZU Health
@researchcowboy
@tylerwoodward_fit
In this episode Jayton & Tyler provide you with a look into their lives including their:
Struggle of the month
Book of the month
Food of the month
Video of the month
Supplement of the month
In this episode Jayton & Tyler provide you with a look into their lives including their:
Struggle of the month
Book of the month
Food of the month
Video of the month
Supplement of the month
In this episode Jayton & Tyler answer questions fielded from the Thermo Diet Community Group. Topics discussed include:
- Whitening Your Teeth
- Improving Your Blood Flow
- Managing Thyroid Health
- Cod Liver Oil
Instagram -
@umzu
@researchcowboy
@tylerwoodward_fit
In this episode Jayton & Tyler answer questions fielded from the Thermo Diet Community Group. Topics discussed include:
- Whitening Your Teeth
- Improving Your Blood Flow
- Managing Thyroid Health
- Cod Liver Oil
Instagram -
@umzu
@researchcowboy
@tylerwoodward_fit
In this episode of the Thermo Diet Podcast, Jayton & Tyler sit down with the Thermo Warrior, Jake Miner, to talk about parenting with the Thermo Diet and how perspectives have changed throughout our journey.
Instagram -
@umzu
@researchcowboy
@tylerwoodward_fit
In this episode of the Thermo Diet Podcast, Jayton & Tyler sit down with the Thermo Warrior, Jake Miner, to talk about parenting with the Thermo Diet and how perspectives have changed throughout our journey.
Instagram -
@umzu
@researchcowboy
@tylerwoodward_fit
In this episode of the Thermo Diet Podcast, Jayton Miller and Tyler Woodward sit down to discuss how to safely and effectively experiment on yourself with different supplements, diets and lifestyle approaches to find out what works best for you!
Instagram -
@umzu
@researchcowboy
@tylerwoodward_fit
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast, Jayton Miller and Tyler Woodward sit down and talk about how to get back on track with the Thermo Diet when you have gotten derailed. From the psychology behind getting back on track to steps to take in order to get back on track easily you can find it all in this episode.
Instagram: -
@UMZU Health
@researchcowboy
@tylerwoodward_fit
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast, Tyler Woodward and Jayton Miller sit down and answer questions from our friends in the Thermo Diet Facebook Group. They talk about everything from hydration to estrogen methylation. Check it out and let us know what you think!
Instagram:
@UMZUHealth
@researchcowboy
@tylerwoodward_fit
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast, Tyler Woodward and Jayton Miller sit down and talk about different ways that stress can manifest itself and show up in the mind and body. Check it out and let us know what you think!
Instagram:
@UMZU Health
@researchcowboy
@tylerwoodward_fit
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast, Tyler Woodward and Jayton Miller sit down and discuss all things related to tanning, sunburn, and what to actually wear when trying not to sunburn too much. Check it out and let us know what you think!
Instagram: -
@UMZU Health
@researchcowboy
@tylerwoodward_fit
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast, Jayton Miller and Tyler Woodward sit down and talk about what it means to be healthy. They talk about what defines health, what health means to them, and more. Check it out and let us know what you think!
Instagram:
@UMZUHealth
@researchcowboy
@tylerwoodward_fit
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast, Jayton Miller and Tyler Woodward sit down and discuss all things bioenergetics when it comes to health. If you want to learn the basics of what bioenergetics is, and how it relates to the health of your body then this is the podcast episode you need to listen to!
Instagram:
@UMZU Health
@researchcowboy
@tylerwoodward_fit
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast, Jayton Miller and Tyler Woodward sit down and talk about tips and tricks that they have learned over the years to make their Thermo Diet journeys easier and more enjoyable. Find out what tips and tricks they use and let them know any you might have in the Thermo Diet Facebook group!
Instagram: -
@UMZU Health
@researchcowboy
@tylerwoodward_fit
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast, Jayton Miller and Tyler Woodward talk about how to navigate through different phases of your life to stay on track when it comes to your health journey. Learn what tactics Jayton uses to stay on track as he has gone through different phases of his life, how to think about change, and more... Instagram: -
@UMZU Health
@researchcowboy
@tylerwoodward_fit
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast, Jayton Miller and Tyler Woodward sit down and talk about what it takes to design your own program for resistance training. Learn how to prioritize exercises, how to implement exercises in your workout, and more...
Instagram: -
@UMZU Health
@researchcowboy
@tylerwoodward_fit
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast, Jayton Miller and Tyler Woodward sit down and discuss the possible detriments of exercise, how to mitigate the negative effects of exercise, and how to recover to get the most out of your exercise regime. Check it out and let us know what you think!
Instagram: -
@UMZU Health
@researchcowboy
@tylerwoodward_fit
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast, Jayton Miller and Tyer Woodward sit down and answer questions from the Thermo Diet Facebook community. Learn why certain foods are harder on your digestion, how to create positive momentum with your thoughts, how to be more productive, and more... Instagram: - @UMZU Health
@researchcowboy
@tylerwoodward_fit
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast JAyton Miller and Tyler Woodward sit down and talk about protein and how it fits into a Thermo lifestyle. Learn exactly how much protein you should be eating, what types of protein are the best, and more in this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast!
Instagram: -
@UMZU Health
@researchcowboy
@tylerwoodward_fit
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast, Jayton Miller and Tyler Woodward sit down to talk about how to achieve balance while living a Thermo life. From being able to choose the best options presented to you, to the psychological benefits of loosening up and just living life every once in a while. Check it out and let us know what you think! Instagram: -
@UMZU Health
@researchcowboy
@tylerwoodward_fit
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Jayton Miller and Tyler Woodward sit down and talk about all things minerals. Learn what the main minerals are in the body, their importance, how to get more, and a whole lot more. Check it out and let us know what you think! Instagram: -
@UMZU Health
@researchcowboy
@tylerwoodward_fit
In this episode of The Thermo Diet, Jayton Miller and Tyler Woodward sit down and talk about why people commonly gain weight when switching to a pro metabolic diet, how to prevent it from happening depending on your background, and more. Check it out and let us know what you think!
Instagram: -
@UMZU Health
@researchcowboy
@tylerwoodward_fit
In this episode of the Thermo diet Podcast, Jayton Miller and Tyler Woodward sit down and talk about all things alcohol. Learn exactly what alcohol does to the body, what you can do to prevent damage, and why moderate consumption of alcohol might be beneficial for some people. Instagram: -
@researchcowboy
@tylerwoodward_fit
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast. Jayton Miller and Tyler Woodward sit down to talk about what bodybuilding is, where people go wrong when bodybuilding, and how to do bodybuilding in a pro metabolic way. Check it out and let us know what you think!
Instagram: -
@researchcowboy
@tylerwoodward_fit
Facebook Group and Fanpage: -
Thermo Diet Community Group ( https://www.facebook.com/groups/16721... ) - Thermo Diet Fan Page ( https://www.facebook.com/thermodiet/ )
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast, Jayton Miller sits down with Libby Wescombe. Libby is a former crossfit athlete, nutrition and fitness coach, and an all around awesome human being. They talk about nutrition, fitness, and much more. Check it out and let us know what you think!
Instagram: -
@researchcowboy
@libbywescombe
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Jayton Miller sits down with Tyler Woodward to talk about the stress adaptation cycle and how t relates to training. Check it out and let us know what you think!
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Jayton Miller sits down with Jay Feldman, fellow researcher and health coach. Jay has a very thorough understanding of the intricacies that go into why the metabolic theory is ideal, and walks through the details of CO2 and its role in the body. Check it out and let us know what you think!
Instagram:
@researchcowboy
@jfwellness
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast, Jayton Miller sits down with author, independent researcher, and health coach Kate Deering. In this episode they talk about all aspects of serotonin, why it is necessary, why you should not have too much serotonin in the body, and more. Check it out and let us know what you think!
@researchcowboy
@katedeeringfitness
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast, Jayton Miller sits down with Theresa Piela. Theresa is a health coach and serves people who are trying to enhance their health using metabolic principles. In this episode we talk about the healing journey, things to think about when on your journey towards better health, and more. Check it out and let us know what you think! Instragram @researchcowboy @livingrootswellness
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast, Jayton Miller sits down with Vital Strength and Physiology Strength and Conditioning coach Nicholas Simpson. They talk about all things from nutrition, training, and supplement strategies to increase exercise capacity without hurting the metabolic rate. Check it out and let us know what your think!
Instagram -
@researchcowboy
@nicholassiimpson_
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Jayton Miller sits down with Thyroid specialist, biochemist, and metabolic expert Benedicte Lerche. Benedicte is from Denmark and has worked with Ray Peat for quite some time. In this episode, they talk about all things from nutrition to supplementation. Check it out and let us know what you think!
Instagram: -
@_christopherwalker
@researchcowboy
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast, Jayton Miller sits down and talks about his current Thermo strategies to eliminate stress and inflammation while maximizing his results from working out at home and training in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. He goes over supplementation, sleep, nutrition, and extra tips and tricks o help you recover like Wolverine. Check it out and let us know what you think!
Instagram: -
@_christopherwalker
@researchcowboy
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Jayton Miller sits down with Kitty Blomfield and Kate Deering. Kitty is an entrepreneur and coaches women on how to heal their bodies and balance their hormones naturally using pro-metabolic nutrition and lifestyle choices. Kate is the author of the fantastic book "How To Heal Your Metabolism" as well as a personal health coach for many people. they talk about a wide array of topics in this episode, including their stories, challenges they face, and things they did to overcome them. Check it out and let us know what you think!
Instagram: -
@_christopherwalker
@researchcowboy
Kate's book - https://amzn.to/3vLm5FV
Kate's Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/katedeeringfitness/
Kitty's Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/kittyblomfield/
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast, Jayton Miller sits down with Theresa Piela and Meg Langston, two women who are very knowledgeable in the realm of metabolic health, and talks about kitchen hacks. They talk about everything from their favorite tools, snack, supplements, etc.. Check it out and let us know what you think!
Instagram: -
Chris - @_christopherwalker
Jayton - @researchcowboy
Meg's Instagram - @meg_langston
Theresa's Instagram - @livingrootswellness
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast, Jayton Miller sits down with health coach and researcher Danny Roddy. Danny has been in the metabolic health sphere for around a decade and has become extremely familiar with and knowledgeable on most of the metabolic principles. In this episode they talk about life, liver health, and so much more. Check it out and let us know what you think!
Instagram: -
@_christopherwalker
@researchcowboy
Danny's Instagram - @thedannyroddyweblog
Danny's Website - https://www.dannyroddy.com/
Danny's Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/dannyroddy
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast, Jayton Miller sits down with Keith Littlewood, a coach, independent researcher, and just one hell of a guy. They talk about all things metabolism, longevity, and more. Check it out and let us know what you think!
Instagram: -
@_christopherwalker
@researchcowboy
Keith's Instagram - @tommolittlewood
Keith's Website - https://balancedbodymind.com/
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast, Jayton Miller sits down with Hans Amato an independent health researcher and self-experimenter. They talk about DHT, life optimizations, and so much more. Make sure to check it out and let us know what you think!
Instagram: -
@_christopherwalker
@researchcowboy
Hans's Instagram - @hansamato_menelite
Hans's Website - https://men-elite.com/
https://umzu.com/
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast, Jayton Miller sits down with one of the OG's in the metabolic health sphere and talks about some of the mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects of the healing journey. What can we do to get out of the sympathetic/stressed state and get back to the present moment.
Thermo Diet Community Group ( https://www.facebook.com/groups/16721... )
Instagram: -
@_christopherwalker
@researchcowboy
Josh's Instagram - @realfoodgangstas
Josh's Website - https://eastwesthealing.com/
UMZU Blog: Psychosomaticism: The Mind And Body Connection
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast, Jayton Miller sits down with Georgi Dinkov. They talk about all of the hormonal aspects of sex, why things can go wrong, what to do when things go wrong, and more. Check it out and let us know what you think!
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Jayton Miller sits down with Loren and Theresa to talk about bone health! They talk about how Theresa injured her arm, the basis of bone health, and tactics to heal it as fast as possible. Check it out and let us know what you think!
Facebook Group and Fanpage -
Thermo Diet Community Group ( https://www.facebook.com/groups/16721... ) - Thermo Diet Fan Page ( https://www.facebook.com/thermodiet/ )
Instagram: -
@_christopherwalker
@researchcowboy
Theresa Instagram - @livingrootswellness
Loren's Instagram - @innatefunctionalnutriition
https://umzu.com/
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Jayton Miller sits down with 3 of the OG Thermo Diet enthusiasts. Jake Miner, Colin Ricco, and Gina Lopez have transformed their lives using the principles found within the Thermo Diet and by following Christopher Walker and some of Jayton Miller's work throughout the years. In this episode, they talk about how their journeys started, things that have made the biggest impact on their journeys, and so much more. Check it out and let us know what you think!
Instagram: -
@_christopherwalker
@researchcowboy
In this episode of The Thermo diet Podcast Jayton Miller sits down with functional nutrition therapy practitioner and fellow metabolic theory lover Travis Harris. They talk about the individualization of eating and listening to your body, the rate of living theory vs the bioenergetic theory, and the first thousand days of life and proper child nutrition among other things. Check it out and let us know what you think!
@researchcowboy
@travisharrisfntp
Travis's website - https://www.travisharrisnutritionaltherapy.com
https://umzu.com/
Full Transcript:
Jayton Miller:
Welcome back to the Thermo Diet Podcast. I'm your host, Jayton Miller. And today I have on the podcast, functional nutritional therapy practitioner, Travis Harris. So Travis, I found originally on Instagram and he has a great Instagram page. He has a really cool website. He does one-on-one coaching. So if you're interested, make sure to give him a look. In this episode, we talk about the individualization of eating and listening to your body, the rate of living theory versus the bio-energetic theory of health. We talk a little bit about the first thousand days of life and proper child nutrition. And then towards the end of it, we also talk a little bit about psychology and some different strategies that are out there in terms of helping you align your psychological health with your physical health. So I look forward to you listening to this episode and let's dive into it. How's it going today, guys. Today, I'm here with Travis Harris. How you doing today, Travis?
Travis Harris:
I'm doing well. How are you doing Jayton?
Jayton Miller:
I'm doing very well. So for the listeners out there who might not know who you are, do you mind giving them a background?
Travis Harris:
Yeah, so I guess my official working title is functional nutritional therapy practitioner. I got certified through the Nutritional Therapy Association and went a little my own direction through the discovering the work of Ray Peat and bioenergetics. And I work with clients one-on-one and we work on restoring flow of energy through the body, and that looks different for everyone.
Jayton Miller:
Awesome. How long have you been doing that?
Travis Harris:
I've been working one-on-one with clients for about a year now.
Jayton Miller:
Sweet. And you said that you'd been in the realm of bioenergetics for almost a decade now?
Travis Harris:
Not bioenergetics, working on my health for about that long. I don't know. I've probably been into Ray Peat's stuff for about three years now.
Jayton Miller:
Okay. Awesome. So what part of it do you enjoy the most, I would say?
Travis Harris:
There's so much variation and it's a combination of a lot of things I'm interested in. I like the understanding of metabolism and bioenergetics, how that kind of plays out as like a fundamental layer of reality, like the whole interplay of structure and function. It's just a fun thought experiment, but then, it's also super rewarding to be able to work one-on-one with people and then help them understand their bodies, understand what they need, understand that they can live a life free of a lot of restricted diets that keep them down to a certain way of living and yeah, just enjoy helping people find a new way that's sustainable, a new way of eating that they can just continue forever and not have to binge or fall off the wagon and hate themselves.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. You talk about the individualization of eating and listening to your body. Do you mind going into that and why certain things might be different for other people?
Travis Harris:
Yeah. I think everyone I see is usually caught in some kind of cycle of stress, and where we intersect that cycle of stress is going to be different for everyone. Some people are severely allergic to certain foods. Some people have major microbial imbalance in the small intestine. Some people have severe, a lot of people have severe thyroid hypofunction. I can't diagnose anyone with hypothyroid, but I call it thyroid hypofunction. And then some people are just not eating enough and I help people understand, okay, well when your hands and feet are freezing, that's an adrenaline response. You probably need to eat something, something with protein, something with salt, something with a carbohydrate.
Travis Harris:
And because everyone's coming at it from a different set point, I can usually help people find foods that are safe and probably because I know what it's like to not have any safe foods and dug myself out of that hole on my own. So I know, okay, marshmallows, gummies, that may be the only thing you can eat for a little bit with gelatin and the anti-inflammatory protein glycine within the gelatin and simple carbohydrate, whether that's sugar, whether it's honey, whether it's juice to help restore metabolism.
Jayton Miller:
Awesome. What are some of the highest leverage factors that you see pretty consistently whenever you're working with people?
Travis Harris:
Biggest levers, sleep is obviously huge. But then once you go down into looking at sleep, you got to figure out, okay, why is this person not sleeping? Is it because there's some kind of mineral imbalance or is it because they're just not eating enough calories throughout the day, or do they need a bedtime snack or do they have a bunch of other stressors in their life that are contributing to them not being able to calm down and get into a parasympathetic state? So yeah, sleep is huge.
Travis Harris:
A lot of people are eating foods that are hurting them. I used to, I was very much like gluten intolerant, but didn't want to be one of those gluten-free people. So I was continuing to, I used to work in a wood shop and they had free bagels and a beer at the end of the day. So I was every day eating two or three bagels, having two or three beers after work and then always in pain and then just pound an Advil. So I see a lot of people that are just kind of stuck and that they're like, "I don't know what to eat. Everything hurts me." So yes, sleep, eating foods that really support you and not tear you down. And then a lot of people come into it with different ideas, like "I need to do intermittent fasting, or I need to do keto." So yeah, just understanding it helps to have a balance of macronutrients. You actually need all three of them. So yeah, I think those would probably be the top three levers.
Jayton Miller:
Nice. So one of the things you talk about is the rate of living theory versus the bioenergetic theory. Can you go into what those two are and how they're differentiated?
Travis Harris:
Yeah. Well, it's kind of funny. I guess the rate of living theory was popularized by a guy named Raymond Pearl. And then the bioenergetic theory is popularized by a guy named Raymond Peat. So the rate of living theory is what a lot of people in the fitness world or the biohacking world, or most diets, and even probably the allopathic medical system is based on, like you only have a certain amount of heartbeats. So a lower heart rate is good. You need to be like athlete. Look at athletes, they have a heart rate that's 40 beats per minute.
Travis Harris:
And then they of had this idea that will lead to a colder body and they think, "Okay, well, that's fine. 96, maybe we should make 96 degrees Fahrenheit the new average body temperature, maybe the less calories we eat the longer we'll live," because there's all these studies that are like caloric restriction leads to longevity. And again, you probably know this as well, but for the listeners, any study that shows even methionine restriction or even caloric restriction as increasing health or longevity, all of that, if you just add in glycine from gelatin and bone broth and collagen, and those kinds of products, you'll see the same effects that you were seeing from muscle meat restriction or caloric restriction. So that's the rate of living theory, you only have a certain amount of heartbeats, you need to be in a cold body. You got to preserve, preserve, preserve.
Travis Harris:
And then the bio-energetic theory is, in a lot of ways, the opposite of that. So it's we're focusing on a high rate of metabolism and we're focusing on a heartbeat between 70 and 90 and a warm body that's like flowing. I guess the technical definition of bioenergetics would be the study of the transformation of energy in living organisms and then how that energy changes. Yeah, so focusing on higher body temps, higher metabolism. And what that will do in the body, you can rest your gut all day long by fasting or eating a low residue diet. But without the flow of energy to the cells in your gut, you're not going to heal your gut. And that's what I had to realize the hard way is that I could eat all the raw meat and oysters and easily digestible animal foods without carbohydrates and raising that metabolic rate, there wasn't a whole lot of healing happening. I was removing all the challenges, but not actually getting stronger and moving towards a direction where I could eat more food. Does that answer the bioenergetic and?
Jayton Miller:
Definitely, yeah. For me, the rate of living theory is kind of like the reason that it is unappealing, because whenever I'm old and wrinkly, the last thing that I want to be is freezing to death and barely able to move.
Travis Harris:
Exactly. Yeah.
Jayton Miller:
It also reminds me of the abundance mindset versus the mindset of scarcity, and you're kind of looking at that from an energetic perspective, like you can either produce a bunch of energy and have an abundance of it, or you can not produce that much energy and slowly degrade the amount that you're producing.
Travis Harris:
Yeah, exactly. Did you see, I haven't watched all of it, but the latest, long, seven hour interview with Ray Peat?
Jayton Miller:
I was watching it last night. I got halfway through the first one.
Travis Harris:
Yeah. Yeah. That's about where I'm at. But he was talking about how, and I'm also reading The Body Electric, which is a really interesting book, but he was talking about how there's a electromagnetic field coming out a few inches from all your tissues, so like your skin. And the resonance of that electromagnetic field reflects the metabolic rate. There's definitely something to being an energetic person, having the proper flow of energy through the body. I don't know. It's super fascinating, just the whole interplay of structure and energy. I think it was Peat that said structure and energy are interdependent that every level of organization. So you can take that from organelles, cell, tissue, organ, organ system, organism, and then I'm sure it plays beyond the individual organism, because we're all emitting some kind of frequency. I don't want to sound like a total quack, but it's happening whether we realize it or not.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. I can't remember if, I want to say it's Dr. Joe Dispenza who is taking measurements of these, but it could be somebody completely different. It's where whenever you have high stress hormones in the body, the amount of space that that electric field takes up will shrink and it'll come in towards the body. And then whenever you have more protective hormones, it will expand and give you like a wider breadth of energy that you're emitting, which is kind of interesting. That's what reminded me whenever he was talking about that.
Travis Harris:
Yeah. That's super fascinating.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. So another thing that you talk really well on is the first 1,000 days of life, whenever it comes to conception of a child, and then possibly up to where they're two, three years old. Can you talk about that and maybe some ways that we can properly feed our children?
Travis Harris:
Yeah, yeah, totally. Well, the first 1,000 days I think is from conception to around two and a half or something, if that makes sense. Yeah. Two, two years old, something like that. And obviously, preconception is hugely important. And I think there's a girl on Instagram, I think you had her on your podcast before, Miranda?
Jayton Miller:
Yeah, Lauren.
Travis Harris:
Yeah. So she amazing at understanding the preconception and fertility and all that. For men, it's not going to get much better than liver and oysters and improving the metabolic rate through easily digestible carbohydrates and getting enough protein and all that. So I think it's just as important for the man to be in a good spot, preconception. That was one thing that really led me towards diving fully into the world of nutrition is my wife got pregnant a few years ago and I was like, "Okay, well, how do we make a decent baby?" I wanted to make a super baby. But I was like, "Okay, how do we just make a kid that's just not sick all the time," because I'm looking around and seeing all these kids that are just so sick.
Travis Harris:
So I think it's critically important to understand that a baby is made of the nutrients that the mom has. And so you have to make sure that the mom is getting everything she needs and keeping the flow of energy through the placenta. And yeah, really, it's like 10% of the minerals that the baby takes from the mom and then the last trimester, there's a massive transfer of nutrients and energy from the mom to the baby. And so, yeah, critically important to have easily digestible carbohydrates, I'd say at least 100 grams of protein, and that should be animal protein because some of the vegetable proteins are not as bioavailable. You're not going to get what you need from almond flour and pea protein.
Travis Harris:
Yeah. And nutrient dense foods like liver and oysters, I think are great for that time. I like raw milk. I don't think it's necessary for it to be raw for everyone, but I'm a big fan of it. So you have the baby and then ideally the mom has been supported enough to where she can breastfeed for at least a year or so. And obviously no shame on anyone that can't do that. But ideally that's where you'd be, you'd be supported enough to do that. Even breastfeeding through two years and beyond I think is good. And then obviously, when you start to introduce solid foods to your kid, I think the Weston A. Price Foundation has some decent stuff. I don't recommend Cod liver oil or anything like that, but I think eggs, like runny egg yolks are usually great. And this is not medical advice for anyone listening. But yeah, runny egg yolks, a little bit of liver if you can, and whatever is a easily digestible carbohydrate for them.
Travis Harris:
So it could look like stewed apples or mashed potatoes. Kids love this way of eating. They'll only eat what you put in front of them. If they've never had goldfish, they're not going to be screaming for goldfish. So yeah, we always just sat the food in front of our kid and he gets to decide how much of it he eats, but we decide what he's eating. But yeah, those first 1,000 days, that sets the tone for the rest of your life. I think you have like a few different times throughout your life where, like pre-puberty is also important because that's when some real epigenetic switches are being turned on or off. In that first 1,000 days is you're kind of going to flipping different epigenetic switches for your kid. And you want the best expression of the genes for your kid to set them up for a life of health and function.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. Yeah. I think that's one thing that is very important and I think it's one thing that people don't really take enough time to really investigate whenever it comes down to it. So I really appreciate you putting that information out there. What other kind of things are you diving into right now? What are you interested in?
Travis Harris:
Oh man. I've been exploring a little bit more of what, because we talked about the bioenergetic theory being a fundamental layer of reality, been exploring different ideas of how that plays out in relationships or how it plays out in communities. Even, I just went down a rabbit hole of bioenergetic architecture. I don't know anything about Egypt or anything, besides a few Joe Rogan podcasts. But even the pyramids, I think it was pretty well established that they were conduits of energy and there's some electrical currents and fields going on just based on the structure and then the materials that made it. So that interplay of energy and structure, it's really fun and there's a lot of different areas you could take. It's just so fascinating.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. What was the book that you mentioned earlier?
Travis Harris:
The Body Electric.
Jayton Miller:
Okay. Another one that I really recommend, kind of along that field, is Healing is Voltage.
Travis Harris:
I haven't read that yet.
Jayton Miller:
Yeah, that one's another really good one that highly recommend.
Travis Harris:
I'll write it down.
Jayton Miller:
Awesome.
Travis Harris:
So if we want to go down that route, that's why stuff like acupuncture, people find a lot of benefit in that. People find a lot of benefit and all kinds of different healing modalities because at the end of the day, it is a matter of improving the flow of energy through the body. So I focus on doing that nutritionally. I think that's a pretty good foundation, but for some people, it's going to be releasing trauma, it's going to be doing, well I didn't watch that episode, but you had Lauren and Theresa on there and Meg Langston. But Theresa does a lot of good stuff with the EFT, like the tapping thing. I think whatever strategies you can implement to get into a parasympathetic state are going to improve that flow of energy through the body. It's just cool that there is so many different ways that people have found to really heal and feel good.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. The more that I tend to look into the somatic experience of the body and the health of the body, the more that I tend to hold weight to psychology and just the wellbeing of the mental state of the individual. One thing that I find really interesting is suppression and repression of certain experiences. So whenever something is suppressed, it's at the conscious level, so you can actively suppress it. Whenever something is repressed, it's subconsciously buried.
Travis Harris:
Yeah.
Jayton Miller:
So you're not aware of it. That's kind of where my interest is right now is how do we uncover those states that are stressing us out without us even knowing about it?
Travis Harris:
Yeah.
Jayton Miller:
And then how can we overcome that as quickly as possible?
Travis Harris:
Yeah. That's great. There's a lot of different strategies people use and they're called different things in different communities. I know some people are really into NLP and then there's different Christian communities that do something kind of similar to where you go back and you get in a really relaxed state and view some traumatic memories and reframe them or see yourself moving through that. Or let's say you have basically a movie playing on repeat in your subconscious, and it's some traumatic memory. And trauma can be anything super serious, like our bodies and our minds will place different emphasis on different things based on who we are. So a trauma for one person could be baby games for another person, but you go back and you look at some of those memories and reframe them and see, "I had support then. That wasn't that bad."
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. Do you have any tips for where someone would start with that?
Travis Harris:
Oh, man. I'm not like a master at meditating or anything like that, but taking some time to ask yourself those questions of "Okay, what is something that always brings itself out of nowhere?" And, "What are my trigger? What causes me anxiety? What are conversations that I tend to shut down? Yeah, basically just exploring your triggers and leaning into them. And then if you can get into somewhat of a meditative state, it doesn't have to be super crazy, but just relaxing and closing your eyes and then thinking about, "Okay, what are my triggers? How did they start? When was the first time I was triggered in this way?" And then seeing if you can just talk yourself through it or if you have a friend that you can express those things with, that's always going to be good too.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. I think the biggest thing in my experience is making sure that I nurture humility. So to know that those things that are triggering me are most likely myself, not exactly the other person.
Travis Harris:
Exactly, yeah.
Jayton Miller:
And then journaling is always good. And I always like to do handwritten journaling versus typing it. I think the interaction with matter makes it a very novel experience. And sometimes it will be half a page, sometimes it'll be three, four or five pages. And depending on the state that you're in, it could come very quickly or it could just take a minute, but something will come out. So that's been very beneficial in my experience.
Travis Harris:
Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
Jayton Miller:
Sweet. So where can people find your work and stuff that you're doing right now?
Travis Harris:
Well I'm on Instagram, TravisHarrisfntp. And my website is TravisHarrisnutritionaltherapy.com. That's pretty much it. I'm on Facebook, but I don't use it.
Jayton Miller:
Sounds good. Well, I really appreciate your time. Thank you for hopping on here. And everybody listening, make sure to go give him a follow and check out his website.
Travis Harris:
Yeah, it was great talking to you, Jayton.
Jayton Miller:
Have a good one.
Travis Harris:
You too.
Jayton Miller:
Thanks for listening to the podcast. If you haven't already, make sure to hit the like button, subscribe and leave a comment down below if you want us to cover a different topic.
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Jayton Miller sits down and answers questions from The Thermo Diet Community Facebook Group. He goes over a wide range of topics from supplementation, resistance training, and much more. Check it out and let us know what you think!
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In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Jayton Miller sits down with 3 of the hard-charging women in the realm of metabolic health - Meg Langston, Theresa Piela, and Loren Delacruz. In this episode, they talk about the importance of putting yourself first, keeping things simple in order to be more successful in your healing journey, and the importance of setting boundaries and prioritizing your health. Check it out and let us know what you think!
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Theresa's Website - https://www.livingrootswellness.com/
Theresa's Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/livingrootswellness/
Loren's Website - https://www.innate-nutrition.com/
Loren's Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/innatefunctionalnutrition/
Meg's Website - https://www.meglangston.com/
Meg's Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/meg_langston/
https://umzu.com/
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Jayton Miller sits down with independent researcher, entrepreneur, and fellow metabolism fanatic Gerogi Dinkov. In this episode they talk about an average day in the life of Georgi Dinkov, vitamin D + vitamin K supplementation, new products Georgi has in the works, ways to increase brain performance, and so much more. Check it out and let us know what you think!
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Thermo Diet Community Group ( https://www.facebook.com/groups/16721... ) - Thermo Diet Fan Page ( https://www.facebook.com/thermodiet/ )
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Georgi's Website - http://haidut.me/
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Full Transcript:
Jayton Miller:
Welcome back to the Thermo Diet Podcast. I'm your host Jayton Miller, and today I have on the podcast none other than Georgi Dinkov. This episode is absolutely amazing, so we actually go through a day in the life of what Georgi actually does from day-to-day. We talk about some of the new products that he's working on.
Jayton Miller:
We talk about vitamin D and some of its possible benefits in regards to not only protective hormones, but to cancer and other kinds of therapies. And then we also talk a little bit about some of the best ways to increase brain performance outside of increasing metabolic rate, lowering serotonin, and stress hormones. So, I'm super excited for you all to be able to listen to this one. Let's dive in.
Jayton Miller:
Welcome back, guys. Today I have on the podcast Mr. Georgi Dinkov. How are you doing today Georgi?
Georgi Dinkov:
Doing fine. Thank you for asking. Thanks for inviting me again.
Jayton Miller:
Yes, sir. I really appreciate your time and thank you for hopping on here.
Georgi Dinkov:
Thanks. Hopefully, we can provide some value to your listeners.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. So, I got a handful of questions from people in our community group on Facebook, and the first one that was on there was what does a day in the life of Georgi actually look like? Do you have any kinds of routines or habits or supplement protocols that you like to follow?
Georgi Dinkov:
So, I mean, I wouldn't call it routine because it changes all the time, but there are certain things that happening on a daily basis. Some of them because I have two children and a wife, so that's basically this given, right? And then there's also things that are related to the business because I have two jobs. I have a day job and also the supplement business. And also, now I'm involved with a research group in Bulgaria. So, we're now starting to do studies.
Georgi Dinkov:
So, because of these three things that more or less don't change, they're there every day, there is some routine, but things get shifted back and forth all the time depending on what takes priority. So, when I wake up, basically, I drink coffee. One cup. I'm not really a big coffee drinker. I actually prefer tea, but I find that one cup in the morning is really good for stimulating digestion, and for basically giving me some energy throughout the day without stressing me out. If I start drinking it too often, I do get the higher energy, but also it starts to interfere with my sleep. And if it-
Jayton Miller:
Is that black?
Georgi Dinkov:
Yeah, black. Basically, I drink black coffee. Sometimes I add milk. Sometimes if I don't have time to make it, I go to the local CVS store and I buy these... There's a outfit called Peet's Coffee. It's originally from California, and they sell these cans of vanilla latte. Then also sometimes I drink the double espresso shots that are also in a can by Starbucks. There are also a number of different varieties at this point we can get that's basically iced coffee, right?
Georgi Dinkov:
So, sometimes I drink those, but basically, one of those a day is usually what I do in the morning because anything more than that then basically I start getting... Not manic, but I get hyper, and then if I drink it after five o'clock, it tends to keep me awake after midnight, which I don't want. I realized the value of sleep. So, that's pretty much it.
Georgi Dinkov:
In the morning with the coffee, I also take aspirin, and I take either vitamin K or methylene blue because those are... I take them mostly for their quinone properties, in other words, oxidizing agents. And because caffeine combined with pretty much any other substance increases the bioavailability. And also, for some reason unknown to this point, increases the effects of... And this was first discovered back in... I think it was in the 1970s when bodybuilders in Europe basically discovered that they can... Because at the time the steroids they were getting were very expensive. Everything was bootleg and there weren't that many labs producing them. So, if you get your hands on some steroids, you want to make them last for as long as possible, and of course, be as powerful as possible.
Georgi Dinkov:
So, they discovered that if you drink a cup of coffee and then you take any of the steroids, you can get away with a dosage that's two to five times lower and still get the same effects. And this has since been confirmed to be true of caffeine and other xanthine derivatives such as theacrine and even uric acid. So, if you coingest or coadminister any component with one of those chemicals, the xanthine derivatives, basically you can get much stronger effects and they will last longer for as long as caffeine stays in your body, which is a few hours. And also, the effects will be more potent.
Georgi Dinkov:
So, that's why I usually take one of the quinones, either methylene blue or vitamin K in the morning. And then, if it's vitamin K, I also take a little bit of vitamin B with it because they have a highly synergistic effect. And then-
Jayton Miller:
Do you know about vitamin C enhancing the bioavailability of certain supplements as well?
Georgi Dinkov:
Yes, mostly of iron and mostly metals, but especially iron. So, recently, I discovered several studies say that vitamin C can also enhance the bioavailability of magnesium as well. I don't know about the effects though, right? Caffeine is unique that it not only enhances the bioavailability but also somehow makes the cell more permeable to that specific chemical. And it may also somehow enhance the genomic effects if this chemical is acting on receptors. It's a steroid, right? Most steroids are active with either androgen, estrogen, progesterone receptors, or cortisol receptors.
Georgi Dinkov:
So, maybe the caffeine enhances the association of those steroids with the respective receptor and prevents the dissociation, which is when they stop acting, right? But in terms of vitamin C, I know that it enhances the bioavailability of most metals that it is coadministered with, especially iron. And I think that's one reason why I think Peat has been saying that people with anemia, he recommends eating liver. But if they feel like they need the extra oomph like raising the hemoglobin or the ferritin or the [inaudible 00:05:59] saturation index, he's saying drink a glass of orange juice after you eat that liver portion. And then you'll be getting a much stronger kick out of the iron than if you only ingest it on its own.
Georgi Dinkov:
And then after that, basically for breakfast I try to eat eggs on a daily basis. Depending on how I feel PUFA-wise, which is pretty easy because if you're ingesting a lot of PUFA it gives you the estrogenic histaminic serotonergic effect. So, if I feel fine, then I will usually eat two eggs, and there is Safeway. I don't know if they have Safeway in Texas or in Colorado, but they sell it... They're one of the few stores if not the only store at this point which sells organic boiled peeled eggs.
Georgi Dinkov:
And since time is of the essence, I don't really have time to boil the eggs and peel them myself every morning, I buy... They have these packs. I think it's like six or eight eggs in a pack. So, I have a few of those in my fridge. I take one or two out, slice it up, and then I eat that egg with some cheese and some orange juice, and that's pretty much my breakfast.
Georgi Dinkov:
I try to get about 50 grams of protein in the morning because I found out that if you don't get your protein in the morning or lunch meal, if you try to eat a lot of protein at night, it also keeps you awake mostly because it lowers serotonin and increases dopamine because of the basically... Protein has that effect. It outcompetes tryptophan for absorption into the brain. And then if that protein contains tyrosine or phenylalanine, which most of them do if they're complete proteins, then you're going to get these are the precursors to dopamine and thyroid hormone. So, you're going to get that energetic effect kick in, and you don't want that after midnight.
Georgi Dinkov:
So, I try to eat most of my protein in the first and second meal, and then at night, I try to eat mostly carbs. Some protein as well, but usually casein. Cheese is a good one, yogurt. Greek yogurt is a great one. So, eating a little bit of sweet Greek yogurt or Greek yogurt unsweetened with some honey, things like that is usually good as a night snack.
Georgi Dinkov:
But I try not to eat more than 20 grams of protein for the night. Basically, for my night meal, for my evening meal. So, if I have to ingest about 100 grams of protein daily, that leaves about 80 grams remaining throughout the day. And so, I try in the morning and lunch to eat them about equally. So, 40, 50 each.
Georgi Dinkov:
I eat the cheese; I eat the eggs. I've already drank the coffee, and then basically depending on how I feel, sometimes I don't feel the need to eat lunch, but I continue to drink sweetened beverages. Try to do mostly orange juice. If that's not available, and if I don't have... I mean, I buy them from Whole Foods and Safeway. They have a freshly squeezed one, but if that runs out. If my kids and my wife drank it up, then basically I go to CVS and buy something from there. It's really poor-quality orange juice, but it's better than just drinking plain sugar water, which lacks a lot of the nutrients that are necessary to metabolize the carbohydrates.
Georgi Dinkov:
If there's no orange juice then I drink apple juice, that's second best, or grape juice. Because those two, apple and grape juice are mostly fructose. So, you will not need as many of the cofactors to metabolize it because it doesn't raise insulin as much as a Coke would do or an orange juice would do. But orange has potassium and some of the bioflavonoids like naringenin, and those help process the sugar as well, without raising insulin too much.
Georgi Dinkov:
So, I prefer orange juice. If that's not available, then there's several other options, several juices. And if none of that's available, then I fall back onto Coke or Pepsi or whatever is available in that local store. Preferably with sugar, but sometimes if there's nothing else suitable, I will take the high fructose corn syrup option because it's better to keep your energy levels up and keep you going than going to hypoglycemia and trigger cortisol/insulin/adrenaline stress response.
Georgi Dinkov:
So, if I eat at lunch, I try to eat mostly lean protein and something sweet. Ray mentioned that sometimes he eats steak and marmalade or jam. I found that pretty easy option to obtain in the local stores or grocery stores or even cafeterias, which have started to reopen, but they don't allow you now to take your own food from the buffet. You go there and you tell them what you want. They go and scoop it up for you. I don't know how this is any better or less risky, but that's how it is right now.
Georgi Dinkov:
And then in the afternoon, I eat a carrot salad. I try to make that a daily routine. Basically, there's local grocery stores. All of them are selling... They sell shredded carrots, so I dump a little bit of carrots, maybe about a cup into a glass container, put salt on top of it, let the salt absorb. And actually, it softens up the carrot, because sometimes the sticks are really hard, they're not very pleasant to chew on.
Georgi Dinkov:
And you're not supposed to be chewing them up completely. You're supposed to be getting that elongated piece of carrot into your digestive tract so you can actually literally scrub it and get rid of the biofilm, which is what the bacteria creates to protect itself from antibiotics and digestive juices and all kinds of other mechanisms the body has for getting rid of it. The bacteria forms biofilm, and it attaches to the wall of the intestine, and basically, these elongated pieces of carrot that you're ingesting undigested, they help to literally scrub the biofilm off and basically excrete it later on.
Georgi Dinkov:
So, I eat that, and I try to eat it with regular... I shouldn't say regular. Organic, either apple cider or regular vinegar. And then for oil, I use the coconut oil even though Ray has said that it irritates his GI tract when he uses it orally. Not for me, so I use that because coconut oil itself has a very potent antibacterial effect. Especially the lauric and the caprylic acids, fatty acids that are inside the coconut oil.
Georgi Dinkov:
So, I sprinkle a little bit on the carrots. First, the salt, then the vinegar, stir it up and then you put the oil last. And I eat that, and after that basically, that's maybe around 4:00 or 5:00 in the afternoon. And then in the evening, which is like I said, try to eat mostly sweet stuff. A little bit of protein to basically keep that serotonin as low as possible because that's what protein does. And because casein is a slow-digesting protein, it keeps you fed and satisfied throughout the night.
Georgi Dinkov:
I've noticed that if I try to drink just regular milk or I've tried in the past to also do protein supplements. When I take whey, basically, it makes me very hot and sweaty for maybe two or three hours and I sleep very deeply. Then I wake up in the middle of the night at 3:00 AM and I feel exhausted. And I feel the need to eat or drink, which means it triggered that insulin response, right?
Georgi Dinkov:
It raised metabolism, but whey is very insulinogenic, and then at some point, it triggered a insulin/cortisol response, and it wakes me up because the body says, "I'm out of fuel. Got to give me something else." If you don't want to continue with the adrenaline/lipolysis/fatty acid oxidation, which I really don't.
Georgi Dinkov:
Yeah, so Greek yogurt is great. They have at least 40 flavors. Different ones available in the local store. I usually go with a vanilla flavor because it has the least amount of additives. I make sure that the label says that it doesn't contain things like... Not that it's a guarantee, but at least if the label says that it contains things like carrageenan and the various gums like xanthan gum, acacia gum, carob bean gum, whatnot, then you're guaranteed that they've put a lot of those in there.
Georgi Dinkov:
If it doesn't say, then you may have traces of it, and they actually warn you. It says, "This product has been produced in a facility that also packages, processes the following things like peanuts." They do this for allergy reasons, right? Some people are allergic to peanuts. But they also say it may contain trace amounts of... And then they list all these gums, right?
Georgi Dinkov:
So, trace amounts fine, right? But at least it's not being put there deliberately as an emulsifier, which is what the ones that when the label says it contains them, then you know they're there, and they're there in significant amounts. Usually, up to 5% of the total contents, and that's a lot. I don't know if you've seen some of the studies that I've posted lately on the forum showing that despite the reassurances that all of these gums are safe, actually, these gums are capable of causing bleeding disorders in the brain. And if that doesn't sound serious enough to you, then I don't know what will, right? So, I avoid these things as much as I can.
Georgi Dinkov:
That's about it. I mean, in terms of other supplements, so sometimes I take niacinamide if I feel like I'm getting a lipolysis response if I forgot to eat or if I'm under extra stress. Usually, a little bit of niacinamide with aspirin stops it right in its tracks. But I don't do this every day. It's basically like I try to not use supplements on a daily basis except for the quinones because of their oxidizing power, and vitamin D, which has a number of different effects. The most important probably of which is, and I just recently discovered it, which may explain why Peat has been recommending so often, is that vitamin D turns out to be the most potent endogenous pro-differentiation factor.
Georgi Dinkov:
And there are several studies which I'm going to post on my blog in the next few days that show that slightly higher dosage than what is usually recommended by doctors. Most doctors will tell you don't take more than 5,000 units per day. Well, these animal studies with the equivalent of about 10,000 units per day show that vitamin D, specifically the cholecalciferol, which is the vitamin D3 is capable of turning really aggressive and metastatic cancer cells back to normal.
Georgi Dinkov:
And I was completely taken aback. I said, "Wow, we've been told by medicine that cancer cells cannot revert back to normal after they're cancerous. You either have to kill them or they kill you." It's kind of like the us versus them. It's the whole war idea. The war on cancer. And now these studies are saying, "No, actually, if you raise the concentration of vitamin D inside those cancer cells, something happens." And they don't know exactly what, but these cells revert back to normal.
Georgi Dinkov:
And one of the most defining characteristics of reverting back to normal is that the [inaudible 00:16:23] effect disappears. So, these cells stop overproducing lactate, and they start behaving like normal cells. Now, the studies didn't last that long, so I guess you can always have the option of, "Well, as soon as you stop administering vitamin D maybe they will revert back to cancerous." But that's actually besides the point, right?
Georgi Dinkov:
If you have something like vitamin D that can keep the cancer into permanent remission, which to me is the same as cure. Yeah, I mean, you may have to take it for as long as you live, but isn't that infinitely better than the kind of treatments that we're currently having on the market for cancer? So, anyways, very interesting, and these studies also mention in passing that progesterone is another such chemical. And to the listeners that don't know, vitamin D may be called a vitamin, but it's actually a steroid. More specifically a sickle steroid, which sickle means broken up or parted apart.
Georgi Dinkov:
So, if you look at the structure of vitamin D, the core is almost the same as steroids such as progesterone and testosterone, but a portion of one of the rings is missing. But it's still capable of binding and interacting with all of the receptors that steroids like progesterone and testosterone and [inaudible 00:17:31] are interacting with. And these studies that dealt with vitamin D said, "Oh, by the way, yeah, vitamin D is the most potent pro-differentiation factor we've seen so for. And other ones include things like progesterone, and potentially some of the androgens." They didn't name testosterone specifically, but there aren't that many androgens to choose from.
Georgi Dinkov:
Basically, it's testosterone, dihydrotestosterone, and a few other metabolites of them, right? So, I thought it was three or four studies that were pretty neat, and they all... They didn't cite each other, which means these discoveries were arrived at independently by different groups, which to me is usually a very strong indication that whatever they found out tends to be the case. Because when people start citing each other's work, you never know what's the political game there. Maybe one group is working with the other. They're trying to prop up each other's research, et cetera, et cetera, compete for funding. Help each other with funding because they work together.
Georgi Dinkov:
Whenever several groups independently over several years discover the same thing, usually in science, that's considered a pretty reliable signal that things are on the right path.
Jayton Miller:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Do you think that is because it's taking away electrons from the cancer cells?
Georgi Dinkov:
I think it's mostly because of its effect as a cortisol and estrogen antagonist, and progesterone agonist. And also, there are several studies that show that when you administer vitamin D with androgens, just like caffeine, it potentiates their effects. It doesn't increase the bioavailability, but it potentiates the effects several times while also protecting from their side effects.
Georgi Dinkov:
And they're not exactly sure how exactly that works. Is it something in the receptor that vitamin D does? But there's actually a company in the Netherlands which filed for patent in 2008 and was granted one, and basically, now they're trying to commercialize a combination of the anabolic steroid nandrolone, which bodybuilders love to inject with. A combination with basically... I think it's like 100 milligrams of nandrolone with 4,000 units of vitamin D3 and cholecalciferol.
Georgi Dinkov:
And they're citing multiple studies showing the exact same thing, and also their own studies with humans showing that when they administered the nandrolone to people... First, they try animals. They show that if you abuse nandrolone, it starts to cause fibrosis especially of the kidneys, of the heart, and often of the lungs and liver as well. But when you add that high dosage of vitamin D, all of these side effects disappear while the steroid maintaining its anabolic effect.
Georgi Dinkov:
And that's the Holy Grail in steroid chemistry. You want to develop something that gives you the anti-catabolic and pro-anabolic effects without any side effects. If you come up with a molecule like that, you're God. You'll be very, very rich person and highly respected. And this company's saying, "Well, maybe we don't need to when we can use one of the existing steroids and administer with vitamin D and all the side effects disappear."
Georgi Dinkov:
But my guess because why vitamin D has these effects on cancerous cells proliferation, I believe it's mostly because it blocks. It acts as an antagonist of both the cortisol and the estrogen receptor. Now, the fact that estrogen receptor antagonists they're already known to be pro-differentiating. This is something that's been used in breast cancer medicine for a long time. At least five decades.
Georgi Dinkov:
We have the toxic, but still effective drugs such as tamoxifen, clomiphene, raloxifene. They're all synthetic estrogens, but the way they work is their estrogenic effect is tissue specific. In the breast, they act as antiestrogens, but unfortunately, in the uterus and the ovaries and cervix, they act as pro-estrogens. So, when they treat women with breast cancer, with estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer with these drugs, these drugs block the estrogen receptor, cure the breast cancer, but cause other cancer as a side effect.
Georgi Dinkov:
Now, vitamin D blocks the estrogen receptor without causing any of these side effects. So, that's part of the benefit. We already know that estrogen receptor antagonists are highly beneficial. The opinion in medicine was that "Well, estrogen is only important for breast cancer." It turned out that it's not the case. Now, it's already confirmed as a causative factor in all of the female reproductive tract cancers, including the ovarian, endometrial, uterine, and cervical, right?
Georgi Dinkov:
So, now they're trying to repurpose things like tamoxifen and clomiphene as treatments for those cancers as well, right? And they're also doing the same thing for aromatase inhibitors, which lower the synthesis of estrogen.
Georgi Dinkov:
Anyway, so vitamin D, estrogen receptor antagonist. Good thing, right? But also, it acts as an antagonist of the cortisol receptor, and a few recent studies show that the so-called abortion pill known as RU-486 and also mifepristone, which to most people they know it as the abortion pill because that's how it's been marketed, and that has been its most common usage.
Georgi Dinkov:
But when the French company Uclaf developed it in the '80s, they actually developed it as a glucocorticoid receptor antagonist. They actually were developing specifically for treating issues such as Cushing disease, which is the disease of excess cortisol. However, they realized that tree isn't that much of a market. It tends to be a very rare condition.
Georgi Dinkov:
So, then this drug they developed, the marketing agency and the company said, "Hold on a second. Is it only a cortisol receptor antagonist or does it have other effects as well?" They said, "Oh, it also blocks the progesterone receptor." "Excellent. We're going to use it as an abortion pill," because if you block the progesterone receptors, you're causing an abortion if the woman is already having one because the progesterone is the hormone that maintains the pregnancy.
Georgi Dinkov:
So, this became known as the abortion pill, while in reality, by design, it was actually a cortisol antagonist. So, this drug now has been granted by the FDA. I think it's like an orphan drug status or something very unique. And now, because they found that this can cure terminal cancers of the lung, of the prostate, of the brain. And these individual case studies published were in humans.
Georgi Dinkov:
So, basically, by blocking cortisol, this drug is capable of essentially curing a number of different lethal cancers, and they're already at the metastatic stage four condition, where basically you have one last shot at taming it down with chemotherapy or radiation because at this point it's already inoperable because the metastasis are everywhere, right? And after that, you get declared terminal, and you get sent away to a hospice.
Georgi Dinkov:
So, this was found that this cortisol blocker can cure... I'll send you the link. It was in a popular press. I think this was either in The Atlantic or The Wall Street Journal where the doctor who worked with these patients, he's the one who applied and said, "Wow, we may have a cancer cure in this one drug." Just in the very advanced cancers that we don't know how to treat at all.
Georgi Dinkov:
So, if vitamin D can do both of these things, that alone is enough to potentially explain most of its pro-differentiating and anticancer effect. But it's got other effects as well. It tends to potentiate the effects of thyroid, the thyroid hormone T3, and the thyroid receptor. It also tends to lower prolactin. It's known to lower parathyroid hormone, and almost every person with cancer is known to have an elevation of what is called PTHRP, Parathyroid Hormone-Related Peptide.
Georgi Dinkov:
So, it's something very similar to the parathyroid hormone, but it's produced by cancer cells, and it has the same pro-inflammatory, pro-serotonin, pro-prolactin, pro-estrogenic antimetabolic effects. And because vitamin D is known to suppress the synthesis of parathyroid hormone, several researchers tried about 20 years ago to see if vitamin D has the same suppressive effects on PTHRP. It turns out this does.
Georgi Dinkov:
So, if this PTHRP is produced by most cancer cells, and it's a very potent dedifferentiating factor, vitamin D suppressing it, that explains a good portion of its anticancer pro-differentiating effects. I think I mentioned it synergize with thyroid hormone. It also tends to suppress directly the synthesis of TRH, which is the initial cascade of the thyroid hormone synthesis, which is the thyrotropin-releasing hormone, which is produced by the hypothalamus.
Georgi Dinkov:
It's similar to the CRH, which is basically the first step of the adrenal/cortisol cascade. So, the TRH is the first step in the thyroid cascade, but it's known that TRH and TSH, which is a pituitary hormone are both themselves highly inflammatory, and increase the growth of cancers. So, if you can suppress the levels of either one of these or both, it's known to have a very strong therapeutic effect in cancers, and virtually any chronic inflammatory condition, which cancer is.
Georgi Dinkov:
So, if vitamin D has suppressing effect on those peptides, the TRH, and the TSH, that's yet another explanation of why you would expect it to have a pro-differentiating anticancer effect.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. Wow. How recent are some of these studies done on vitamin D?
Georgi Dinkov:
The three or four that I'm going to post, I think the latest one is from 2006, and the oldest one is from the mid-'90s.
Jayton Miller:
Wow, so we've known this for a while.
Georgi Dinkov:
We've known this for a while, yes. And there was something that you may have noticed in the news. Of course, it was immediately labeled a conspiracy. A Japanese group wrote about something called GcMAF, G-C-M-A-F. If you're typing, google GcMAF, and then space cancer. You will immediately find their studies, and of course, a number of articles in the popular press saying, "Oh, this is so experimental. We shouldn't get our hopes high," et cetera, et cetera.
Georgi Dinkov:
Well, this is actually... I think it's another peptide that its synthesis is promoted by vitamin D. The Japanese basically demonstrated that raising... There we go. It is a protein that basically is produced by modification of vitamin D binding proteins. So, when vitamin D binds with one of the proteins in the body, which is specific for vitamin D, a cascade is triggered, and ultimately, the body produces this thing called GcMAF, which stands for GC protein-derived macrophage activating factor.
Georgi Dinkov:
And it basically makes the immune system start to recognize the cancer cells as cells that shouldn't be alive. They should be killed, and the immune system starts to attack them. Now, immunotherapy for cancer is really hot right now. There's a drug called Opdivo, that's the trade name. If you type Opdivo in google you'll see, and it tries to do the exact same thing, but in a very, very toxic way.
Georgi Dinkov:
It's got a number of different nasty side effects, some of which are secondary cancers. So, basically, now it's been promoted for treating metastatic melanoma, and metastatic lung cancer, which both of them are highly lethal. Former President Jimmy Carter was discovered three or four years ago you may have had on the news that he had melanoma spread to his brain. So, he was given Opdivo, and the metastasis disappeared.
Georgi Dinkov:
But basically, Opdivo is the more toxic version of GcMAF. So, vitamin D can trigger the increase in GcMAF, and as the Japanese studies showed, it can actually trigger immediate and full permanent remission, and I think they tried four different cancers, but all of them lethal. Pancreatic, brain, neuro glioblastoma is one of them. I think they also tried melanoma, and I think they also tried lung cancer.
Georgi Dinkov:
So, the Japanese studies said, "Look, by raising GcMAF," and I'm not sure if they did it with vitamin D or by injecting it directly into the animals, they were able to cure a number of these cancers. The studies are out there. They have not been retracted. If you type GcMAF in google, at this point you'll even find links from WebMD and American Cancer Society, which are the bastion of mainstream medicine, and they're saying, "Yeah, looks very promising. Tremendous work. Great, great, great. It's experimental. There's no evidence that it would work in humans."
Georgi Dinkov:
Okay, but it's yet another piece of the puzzle, which points to vitamin D, and again, pro-differentiating factors having to do with metabolism. Having to do with blocking the stress cascade such as estrogen, cortisol, prolactin, serotonin, et cetera. And vitamin D participates in every single one of these. So, to me, it's really not surprising that vitamin D had these pro-differentiating effects in highly aggressive cancer cells that are really not known to be tamable by anything in the lab except directly killing them through cytotoxic therapy.
Georgi Dinkov:
And that's really where most of medicine is still at. You have advanced cancer; you go to the doctor. First thing they will try is surgery, right? If it's a single tumor. If it's already metastatic, they're not going to touch it. They're going to immediately recommend chemotherapy and radiation, and that's about it. And it turns out that mostly suggesting other substance like vitamin that's also chemotherapy, but it looks like there are options out there that are yet to be explored. The knowledge is out there. Has been out there for decades, and hopefully, we'll see more come out of this because the results are very promising.
Georgi Dinkov:
If this was done by a pharmaceutical company... And I actually, I noticed a few studies over the last two, three years. They're trying to develop synthetic versions of vitamin D, and they claim they're doing it because they want to get you the benefits of vitamin D, but without the possible side effects. And they're saying, "Oh, vitamin D can lead to renal calcinosis, accumulation of calcium in the soft tissues, hyperglycemia in the blood," right?
Georgi Dinkov:
But none of these are actually true. It's been shown that the hyperglycemia in the blood especially in blood cancer patients is not due to vitamin D or them ingesting a lot of calcium. It's due to the PTHRP. The rogue PTH-like peptide, which by the way has the same pro-inflammatory effects as PTH, but it's not produced by the parathyroid glands. It's produced by the cancer cell themselves.
Georgi Dinkov:
So, these companies are saying, "Oh, we're going to develop something like vitamin D, but better." And they're saying, "Oh, look. We're doing studies with GcMAF. This thing also raises levels of GcMAF, but without the side effects of vitamin D." So, to me, that is a great sign that medicine is taking this discovery seriously, but they're just trying to cash in on it. They're saying, "We're not going to use the regular vitamin D. That's beneath us," right? "What kind of doctors and researchers are we if we cannot come up with a nice patented drug that will cost $100,000 a month?"
Jayton Miller:
Speaking of new products, do you have any in the works that you're excited about?
Georgi Dinkov:
Two. At least two actually, and one is I already mentioned on the forum. It's called 10-methoxy-harmalan. Basically, you can google it. It will come up, then if you type 10-methoxy-harmalan, harmalan is spelled as H as in Harry, A, R as in right, M as in Mark, A, L as in Larry, A, N as in Nancy. And then 10-methoxy, M-E-T-H-O-X-Y. 10-methoxy-harmalan, right? 10-methoxy-harmalan is one word, and then after it type serotonin, and you'll get a study from the '60s which says that 10-methoxy-harmalan is an extremely potent serotonin antagonist naturally produced in our bodies as a metabolite of melatonin.
Georgi Dinkov:
These early studies opine that the role of methoxy-harmalan is to restrain the effects of elevated serotonin and melatonin, which happens at night, and also happens in a number of psychiatric diseases, especially schizophrenia. So, as you can see, as early as the '60s medicine was already saying, "Hmm, serotonin is not such a good thing." We know it's elevated in schizophrenia. We know it's elevated in depression. We know it's elevated in a number of neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson and Alzheimer's.
Georgi Dinkov:
It doesn't seem to be a good thing. We don't know yet, but it doesn't seem to be a good thing, and the body seems to have endogenous mechanisms to counteract excessive serotonin, and synthesis of 10-methoxy-harmalan is one of those. And this chemical is also found in the hallucinogenic herbs consumed in Latin America similar to ayahuasca, I think it's called like that... But in itself, it's only hallucinogenic in extremely high quantities when taken in the isolated form.
Georgi Dinkov:
So, I'm going to try working with that same group in Bulgaria that does the studies. They're also chemists. So, we're going to try to synthesize it, and if it's commercially feasible, I'll try to release it. In the meantime, for you listeners who want to try it themselves before that, Sigma-Aldrich which is the largest chemical company in the world, in America, but also, they're international as well, and a number of different other vendors within the United States sell it.
Georgi Dinkov:
It's not a restricted chemical. It doesn't require any special licenses. So, presumably, if people go to these sites and make an account and buy it, there shouldn't be a problem. There's no special requirement to buy, possess, and/or use it. Now, I'm not encouraging that because I'm not a doctor. All I'm saying is that it is a non-schedule, non-controlled chemical that people who want to experiment with can go out there and buy it openly without any restrictions and do whatever they want with it. So, that will be one of the products. The second one is... Oh, do you have a question?
Jayton Miller:
Do you think that would be more effective than cipro for-
Georgi Dinkov:
It should be much more effective because that study in the '60s compared it to LSD and found 10-methoxy-harmalan to be almost as potent as LSD, and LSD is used in microgram quantities while cyproheptadine is used in milligram quantities. And aside from that, cyproheptadine is sedating, sedative because of its histamine blocking effects as well. While 10-methoxy-harmalan seems to be a pure serotonin antagonist.
Georgi Dinkov:
So, in theory, you should be getting, and I'm sure you've seen Ray has written about the antiserotonin beneficial effects of LSD, and the other derivatives such as bromocriptine, lisuride, metergoline, nicergoline. There are at least 20 different derivatives of LSD, non-hallucinogenic ones, and they're in clinic use. Some of them are in clinical use today, but the most potent ones such as LSD and lisuride are used in microgram amounts, and it looks like 10-methoxy-harmalan should be active in those dose ranges as well.
Georgi Dinkov:
I already tried it myself. I bought it from Sigma, and it really does have that potent antiserotonin effect, which includes... If you're under stress and you're retaining water, which is mostly due to estrogen, but also because of prolactin, cortisol, and serotonin. And by the way, serotonin controls the synthesis of all these three hormones. You take an antiserotonic chemical... They were used back in the day. Cyproheptadine was used for edema. It was used for hyper estrogenic conditions.
Georgi Dinkov:
So, I took 200 micrograms, which is a fifth of a milligram, and I immediately felt relaxed. Not sleepy. Relaxed. Basically, the intrusive thoughts like repetitive thoughts which is a very good sign that you've been under a lot of stress, that's what serotonin and cortisol do. It's one of the very early stages of deliriums, and the final stage of psychosis. I'm not saying I have that. I'm saying that everybody who's under a lot of stress has probably found themselves in a situation where they have these intrusive thoughts that they can't fight off, right?
Georgi Dinkov:
You keep coming back to that same thing, which usually is whatever it is that annoyed you or traumatized you or got on your nerves. So, those things are immediately gone. I immediately got hungry, which is a sign of blood sugar dropping. Blood sugar rises when you're under stress under influence of cortisol. That's an adaptive effect. It tries to keep your brain alive. The brain consumes mostly sugar, right?
Georgi Dinkov:
So, what else? The edema disappeared. Other things, basically, whenever I am under stress, I tend to retain water, especially on the trunk. That thing was gone. Other things, so sometimes when I'm under stress and I raise my hand like that, it'll tremble. As you can see now it doesn't. That thing did that as well, removed the tremors, which those tremors are a sign of elevated adrenalin.
Georgi Dinkov:
And so, really a number of different... Oh, my blood pressure also dropped. My normal blood pressure is around 128 to about 78, and when I took that, the 200 micrograms, basically it dropped to 110 to 60. Now that may be a bit too low, but that's actually what the study from the '60s did. That's one of the ways they actually test for antiserotonin effects. They administer serotonin, which is known to raise blood pressure, which should tell you something about the epidemic of blood pressure we're seeing right now given just how many people are under stress and abusing or using SSRI drugs, right?
Georgi Dinkov:
So, one of the core tests of testing for antiserotonin effects is they administer serotonin, it raises the blood pressure. Then they administer this other chemical, the one that they want to test, and they see if it potentiates the blood pressure effects of serotonin, or if it negates it, right? And there are several others. The serotonin also causes a contraction of the blood vessels, and antiserotonin drugs relax the blood vessels, which also immediately shows you that the whole thing about consuming nitric oxide to do vasodilation, that's really not how it should work.
Georgi Dinkov:
It's actually, if your vessels are constricting and your blood pressure is rising, chances are that serotonin and cortisol or really the stress system are involved. So, you should be fighting that, instead of providing things like nitric oxide, which yes, it will vasodilate you, but it will also cause a systemic inflammatory reaction, which ultimately is known to contribute to a cardiovascular event like ischemic stroke or a heart attack.
Jayton Miller:
Wow. So, do you think that you have to cycle that similar to cyproheptadine or can you take it for a longer amount of time?
Georgi Dinkov:
That I don't know, to be honest with you. The most I've taken is two weeks, but like anything else, I try not to use things on a daily basis just so that you don't get... You don't build your life around a chemical because sometimes the stress and the adaptation to stress is actually good because it's a sign that things need to change in your life, right? But it's only when the stress becomes chronic and inescapable, that's when you need to take care of yourself because then it becomes depression, and it suppresses your thyroid function, suppresses metabolism, and then the actual stress itself at this point... The actual adaptation to the stress becomes pathological when it's chronic and inescapable.
Georgi Dinkov:
So, I try to prevent that step from going into the inescapable stress. But stress by itself, if something is stressing you out, if something is annoying you, then the natural state of affairs for the body is to find out why this thing is annoying you, stressing you, pushing your life in the wrong direction, and try to take corrective measures, right?
Georgi Dinkov:
So, you shouldn't be reaching for the anti-serotonin chemical at the first sign of stress. You should let stress run its course until you start feeling it over the years. I think most people know intuitively when the stress is starting to really wear them down, and when it's still in the stage where it's just stimulating for them to do something. If you're in the stage of the stress stimulating you to do something about it, that's a good sign, you don't want to block that because you take this antiserotonin at that time, then you'll be relaxed again. Then the whole signal from the environment that things are not going in the right direction will be lost.
Georgi Dinkov:
So, I think that if you only use it when the stress is about to become chronic and inescapable, which probably shouldn't be... I don't know. Some people have very stressful lives. If you're on average I found that for most people, this doesn't need to be used more than maybe, say twice a week. In that case, I don't think it needs to be cycled.
Georgi Dinkov:
But if you're using it on a daily basis, if your life is in the shambles and it's in such a bad state, if you feel the need to use it daily, then I think adaptation is one of the lower concerns. The bigger concern is what exactly is messing up your life to the point that you need to take something on a daily basis. For those people, I think they should be taken on a daily basis. That or something else that stops the stress, the learned helplessness, to allow them to fight back.
Georgi Dinkov:
And once they've learned to fight back, once they've found an escape, then I think naturally they'll probably just forget about taking if they won't feel the need to take it. You see the whole thing about taking a drug on a chronic basis, that's just something that came out of the drug industry. Of course, they want you as a client for life, and I think so far, I have not seen a person, even when they were using something that made them feel good. I did not see a person who felt the need that they should have taken this on a daily basis forever.
Georgi Dinkov:
One experiment with chronic alcoholics found out... Actually, it wasn't just alcoholics. People with addiction, and that's a study I posted on the forum at least five years ago if not more. It showed that 80% of those people overcome their addiction on their own without the requirement of a pharmacological intervention and/or counseling or other kinds of medical interventions. It's just that if people are able to take control of their own lives, and it sometimes may take a long time, eventually they will overcome it. Whether that's through faith. Whether that's through doing the right things. Changing their environment. Changing maybe the people they associate with. Changing a number of different things.
Georgi Dinkov:
Eventually, they find this... I don't want to call it a balance. They find a new mixture of factors that basically is starting to move their life in the right direction. And at that point, they don't even feel the need to take it. The whole thing about addiction, whether it's to bad things or even good things like... Because medicine says, "Look, you can get addicted both to good and bad things like alcohol or drugs," right? But you can also get addicted to things that make you feel good because it's the dopamine hypothesis.
Georgi Dinkov:
It's been shown that the dopamine hypothesis, yes, you reach out for things that make you feel good, but it's only because your dopamine is low because of high cortisol and high estrogen, and you're looking for ways to raise it. Once dopamine is restored to normal, multiple studies have shown that giving animals or people drugs that increase dopamine further or act like other dopamine agonists, the animals and the people did not want that.
Georgi Dinkov:
Basically, they refused to take it unless you forced them, right? But they have this thing called the preference test in animal studies. They give the animals something that they like, and then they give them free access to it and see if the animals keep abusing it. And that's one of the tests for addiction, right? Well, they found out when the animals are not stressed, when the cortisol goes back to normal, their life goes back to normal, it's called the Rat Park experiment.
Georgi Dinkov:
Basically, the rats stop abusing things, including the highly addictive heroin, which medicine tells you, "Oh, it's a disease. You cannot wean off yourself by yourself. You have to go to a clinic. You have to get these drugs administered. Your life is a complete mess. You need to go to psychiatrist," right? Almost none of that is true. The only part that's true is yes, your life is falling apart and is a mess. But if you find a way to break the learned helplessness cycle, maybe with a bit of an antiserotonin intervention, most people seem to be capable. At least 80% seem to be capable of restoring life's normal balance and moving on with their lives as if nothing happened, right?
Georgi Dinkov:
So, that automatically means 80% of the drug addiction industry can go right out the window, and life will be better without it, right? Yes, maybe 20% are really in a bad situation, and it usually turns out to be because whatever is contributing to their addiction is still there, right? And some things, unfortunately, cannot be removed in terms of reality such as the death of a loved one, right? Or a loss of a very valuable... I don't want to call it possession, but there's something of very high sentimental value, right?
Georgi Dinkov:
The falling a part of a relationship, things like that, a divorce. Some things, but even those, it turns out that over time, people are able to overcome. If the environment is right for them. If they have a social support. If they're eating a good diet, and if they're not stressed continuously by fearmongering on television and by fearmongering by everything really because life right now is just... If you turn on the TV, it will be very difficult to find the two extremes, which is either, "Oh, the world is falling apart." Or, "Everything's fine. Keep watching this nice show. Things will be good."
Georgi Dinkov:
I don't think either one of these is accurate, but unfortunately, we seem to be more on the side of things are bad right now, and I think basically if people find a way to break out of that somehow remove themselves from this negative environment with a little bit of help of a serotonin antagonist. But even without it, in 80% of the cases, their life should be able to get back to normal.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. Wow. I want to be respectful of your time, so I'll ask one more question if that's all right.
Georgi Dinkov:
Yeah, sure.
Jayton Miller:
What are some of the best ways other than decreasing stress hormones and serotonin that you've done research on or have experienced for brain enhancement or nootropic effects, I guess?
Georgi Dinkov:
Yes, the single most important thing is avoiding routine. It shouldn't become pathological, in other words, that some routine is okay simply because it keeps your life together, right? You wake up in the morning, you eat, right? You interact with your loved ones. You maybe go to the store, maybe take a shower, right? Some of these things are good because at least they give your life structure, right?
Georgi Dinkov:
Now, I don't know of any experiments that have tried to put adults in a completely unstructured environment like kids, right? I mean, think about small kids one or two years old, they pretty much do whatever they want all day, and the adults are just sitting there and trying to prevent them from causing harm, right? From harming themselves. But in terms of structure, there isn't much. The children are free to run around and play and fall and hurt themselves and experiment, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Georgi Dinkov:
Now, I don't know if this experience has been done with adults, but I think most adults would find that exhausting simply because it requires so much energy to be constantly dealing with new things. But constantly dealing with the same things is actually already known to be highly pathological. The more routinized your life is, the smaller the prefrontal cortex becomes. And it's been shown that even people with Alzheimer's disease, if they got them out of the hospice or they got them out of the retirement home and start taking them to new places, something as simple as putting them in a bus and taking them outside of the city and taking them to a place they've never been before.
Georgi Dinkov:
That alone was enough to restore a good part of the cognition even though temporarily. They slipped right back into it as soon as they put them back in the retirement home. They will lose it for a few hours, and it was treatment for people that were extremely demented. They didn't recognize their own relatives. They had forgotten their own names. They don't know who they were anymore, and these people suddenly woke up as if waking up from a dream and saying, "Oh my God, where I am? Hi, I haven't seen you in a few months."
Georgi Dinkov:
It was really emotional. I think there was a video about it on National Geographic. They show them basically like the relatives that kept showing up for years waiting and hoping to hear their loved ones say their name, none of that happened. And some of these people wake up as if from a dream and say, "Hey, where have you been this whole time?" It was a very emotional episode.
Georgi Dinkov:
So, breaking routine, and often if you see even in a highly routinized life because life is always new, always unpredictable, you will find yourself that if you pay attention, you are exposed to opportunities for novelty all the time. Unfortunately, the culture is such in modern life that we thought that this is a distraction, that we should stay focused. That we should keep pursuing those specific goals, right?
Georgi Dinkov:
Now, there's nothing wrong with goals, but it shouldn't be to the point where you basically... You're like a horse with these covers on the eyes and ears, and basically, that's what the racehorses do so that they're really not distracted. They just keep racing towards the end, and that's all they do, right? That's highly detrimental, and by the way, racehorses have a lifespan of about 40% shorter than horses that are free-roaming and they're allowed to do whatever the heck they want with their lives.
Georgi Dinkov:
That should tell us something because the racehorses, they have the best care... Best care in quotes because it turns out it's really not the best. They get the best veterinary care. They get the best food. They get the best environment, right? But it turns out that something in their life is such that they live about 40% shorter... They have a 40% shorter lifespan than the wild roaming horses. Even horses that are simply used for agricultural work because they tend to have a more free life. They live in the barn, right? Most of the day they walk around, they graze. If they have to do some work, they do, but most of their life is free.
Georgi Dinkov:
So, break in routine, and art is very good for that. Recent studies found out that typing on a keyboard and writing by hand has drastically different effects on the brain. Writing on the keyboard actually did not have any nootropic effects, while writing by hand was similar to the nootropic effects seen in artists that draw. So, there's something about writing by hand. There's something about physical interaction with matter, and I think some of that is also... You're not staring at a screen with blue light all day, right? Because blue light has a very detrimental effect on the brain.
Georgi Dinkov:
But the researchers thought that it was something about the handwriting itself that made this very nootropic. There's a private school in the United States called Montessori, which actually the entire curriculum is based on tactile learning. So, in other words, they want kids to always be touching things and learning by touch, and also by looking. Of course, you're not walking around blindfolded, right? But tactile learning is a core of their curriculum, and it was apparently something that was known as early as 150 years ago when this whole program was being started, the Montessori one.
Georgi Dinkov:
That person without much access to medicine figured out that when people interact with the world directly, physically, it's very good for their brains. It's very good for learning. It's very good for their movement, right? Again, tactile learning, which means drawing. Listening to music is fine, but you should be careful because a lot of the songs now at this point are... I don't want to call it propaganda, but they're very repetitive. Almost everything is being created by machine. The singer just shows up in the studio and maybe sings some of the lyrics, but even that is getting replaced by computer-synthesized voice, right?
Georgi Dinkov:
So, maybe some of the older songs from the '60s and '70s and maybe even the '80s seem to be pretty good. Painting. Playing a musical instrument yourself is also great. And in general, interacting with people who have an affinity for novelty, which most people do until they get conditioned to be in this hyper-focused target-oriented moment.
Georgi Dinkov:
So, yeah, even without any drugs. Now, of course, raising metabolism in any way is also very, very nootropic, and the example that I always like to give is that there was several large human studies showed that administering people creatine raised their IQ, which was thought to be impossible to raise their IQ. Raised their IQ by I think maybe 12 to 15 points. And keep in mind that the scale for IQ is logarithmic. In other words, increase by 10 to 15 points is actually... You're not just let's say 10 to 15% smarter than the person that doesn't have that increase, you're actually two to three, four times more intelligent because, towards the high end of the scale, a small change in IQ is huge.
Georgi Dinkov:
In other words, Einstein had reportedly an IQ of 145. And then most people that get PhDs have a IQ of about 135 on average, and that doesn't sound like a big difference, 10 points, right? But it's actually huge in terms of absolutely raw intelligence because the scale is logarithmic. So, if creatine, which is known to raise ATP levels or at least serve as a buffer for ATP, in other words, the energy storage molecule. If that can raise your IQ by 10 to 12 points, then to me directly it demonstrates that improving brain metabolism is highly beneficial as a nootropic.
Georgi Dinkov:
So, if you don't want to do drugs, the second-best thing is make sure your brain has sufficient supply of glucose and fructose. Make sure you're not under tremendous stress, right? Because cortisol really shreds your brain similar to what it does to the muscles. It's no different. And then make sure you expose yourself to novelty preferably on a daily basis. Even if it's something as benign as, "Oh, I'm always taking this walk home. I'm walking on this four or five blocks road." Well, take a different route.
Georgi Dinkov:
Something that you haven't seen or haven't done before. Even if it's very minute, it triggers the intuitive mechanism inside the brain, which is what really is responsible for the high intelligence of children, and relatively low intelligence of adults because we lose that sense of intuition as we get older. We think that the analytical knowledge that we've accumulated can replace that, but actually, it cannot.
Georgi Dinkov:
To a degree. So, I'm not saying knowledge is entirely useless, but I think it's very, very overvalued in terms of what it really can do for us. We tend to rely on it too much, and when something that conflicts with our knowledge, something new comes along, we tend to discard it instead of what children do, fully embrace it, and then reconfigure all the knowledge that they have and basically reincorporate it and change their model of the world.
Georgi Dinkov:
Now, that's how really you should be operating, but maybe because of lack of energy primarily as we get older, we're saying, "Oh, all of these things that I learn, and now you're telling me they're not true or they need to be significantly changed. I don't have time for that. I'm not going to do it. I'm just going to ignore what you just told me."
Jayton Miller:
Wow, that's awesome. Do you have some examples in your everyday life where you've sparked novelty?
Georgi Dinkov:
So, first of all, I stopped watching news because I found that the news channels are highly scripted and they don't hide it. They have like every second in broadcasting if it's a very highly watched channel costs millions of dollars. Of course, every second will be fulfilled. Everything will be planned down to the second because they try to squeeze in as much information that are beaming out to you, as much information as possible.
Georgi Dinkov:
So, try to limit TV exposure. You cannot be a complete hermit if you live in the city because it just becomes the other side. The unnatural extreme. You cannot be orthorexic with food right, but also you cannot be indiscriminate either. And I don't want to say the golden mean because that's been overused and I don't believe in that. It's context-specific, but it tends to sit on the side of selectively choosing what you eat every day versus either say, "Oh, I'm not going to eat any of that because all of it is bad or don't worry about it. We've been eating it for 100 years, nothing happened, right? I'm going to be completely indiscriminate."
Georgi Dinkov:
It's more like I have these 10 options. Some of them are not very good, and I know they're not very good. Some of them are less bad. Some of them are maybe even good, right? So, forcing yourself [inaudible 00:56:10] recognizing that you can and you should make an intelligent choice is what actually keeps intelligence going. Being completely shut off from the world saying, "It's all bad, I just can't deal with it." Or saying, "No, everything's fine." Neither one of these seems to lead to good outcomes mostly because I think both behaviors promote routine.
Georgi Dinkov:
So, it's whenever you have to make choices, which leads you to question things and evaluate, that's actually... So, making intelligent choices about food on a daily basis is very, very important. And so, even though eating is routine, in other words, you have to eat two or three times a day, what you eat every day shouldn't be a routine, and if you pay attention to your surroundings, you'll see that every single day you'll probably have different options to choose from. So, trying to take those choices, make those choices, and keep things novel, [novelle 00:57:00], novel, new every day, it's one of the aspects.
Georgi Dinkov:
Another one is just like I said, I walk around town all the time. I don't have a car. It makes no sense to have a car in DC. It's a small town, it's walkable. You have a car you pay a ton for insurance and parking and tickets and whatnot, and you don't even get to use it that much, right? So, I walk around all the time, and I try to take a new path every day. So, when I go to the store, they're like at this point I'm starting to actually... My commute is increasing because I've already walked around all the possible different combinations, right?
Georgi Dinkov:
So, now what I do is I try to find a new store, right? There's a Whole Foods right next to where I live. Well, it's very convenient, but convenience is not always good for you. So, if it's not too much of a hassle, it doesn't mean you have to break your back and walk 10 miles across the city. But if there's another Whole Foods which is let's say a mile away, and then it gives you all of these different blocks and combinations. It gives you an opportunity to take a lot of different routes. And now because of the pandemic and the shutdown, the city's changing a lot.
Georgi Dinkov:
So, even though I may go down the same route, but two buildings are gone. Now they're building something new. So, it's like stay outside. The world is always new. If you're staying too much at home, which I think is the most detrimental part really of the lockdowns through social isolation and routinizing everything about your life. Simply because when you're at home what can you do? There aren't that many things to do in between four walls.
Georgi Dinkov:
So, being outside, making conscious choices about food. Basically, making conscious choices about what you watch and consume on TV and for how long, right? Try to limit screen time as well. If you start feeling... And again, it's not a formula. It doesn't say, "Oh, I'm going to spend two hours in front of the computer every day." That's already a routine. Do your work if you have to do it on the computer. If you start feeling overwhelmed, start feeling bland like things are not interesting anymore, or people around you start to annoy you for no good reason. Behaving the same way as yesterday, but start getting on your nerves. That's a sign you're stressed. You need to break out of that routine and go find and do something new.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. Well, Georgi, I really do appreciate your time on this episode. Where can people find you as far as website, social media, stuff like that?
Georgi Dinkov:
So, I have a blog. Online, I'm known under the moniker Haidut. So, I have a blog called haidut.me. H as in Harry, A-I, D as in dog, U, T as in Tom, don't M-E. So, you go to the blog, and basically, I'm also on Twitter under the same alias Haidut, and it's twitter.com/haidut. And everything I post on the blog, the system is set up in such a way that this takes a little snippet of what I post, the title and a few tags and keywords and dumps it right on Twitter.
Georgi Dinkov:
So, basically, by subscribing to Twitter or following me on Twitter, you also get to see everything that I post on that blog. And I also post on something called the raypeteforum.com. One word, raypeteforum.com, and everything I post on the blog also gets transferred to the forum. And sometimes I participate in discussions on the forum as well, but lately, considering that now I have two jobs and I started to publish studies as well and do actual experimental science, there just isn't much time for me to engage in those discussions.
Georgi Dinkov:
So, it's mostly posting things on my blog and answering emails. If people know my email, they email me, and basically, that's about it. And I post on my blog the studies that I've read other people do, and also lately, the studies that we also do. And if there are any new product announcements, they will also be on the blog. So, that's it. And I also have a supplement company. The company is called IdeaLabs and the website for the supplements is IdeaLabs. It's basically labs for ideas, right? But it's singular idealabsdc as in the state I am, dc.com. And that's about it. That's pretty much my online presence.
Jayton Miller:
Heck, yeah. Well, Georgi, I love your supplements and I love your blog. So, everybody listening, make sure to go check it out. And Georgi, thanks again for coming on, and we'll talk. Until next time.
Georgi Dinkov:
Appreciate it. Thanks for inviting me. Hopefully, it was useful to your listeners.
Jayton Miller:
Yes, sir. Thanks for listening to the podcast. If you haven't already, make sure to hit the like button, subscribe, and leave a comment down below if you want us to cover a different topic.
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast, Jayton Miller sits down with independent health researcher and coach Jay Feldman. Jay has been in the metabolic health realm for years now and has a very comprehensive knowledge of various aspects of metabolic theory and the human body. In this episode, they go over
- misconceptions around adaptation and hormesis
- why our adaptation to something doesn't make it beneficial
- Adapting to something to survive or thrive
- why adaptations to stress are harmful and aren't responsible for the benefits from things like exercise
- Epigenetic factors
- the problems with being a "fat-burner" and low-carb diets
- Why we don’t want to use fatty acids as fuel
- Beta oxidation vs glycolysis
- Hormones associated with this type of energy utilization
Instagram: -
@_christopherwalker
@researchcowboy
Jay's Website - https://jayfeldmanwellness.com/
Jay's Podcast - The Energy Balance Podcast
https://umzu.com/
Full Transcript:
Jayton Miller:
Welcome back to Thermo Diet Podcast. I'm your host, Jayton Miller. And today I have on the podcast, Mr. Jay Feldman. I'm super excited for this episode. Some of the things that we talk about are the misconceptions and some of the misunderstandings around adaptation and hormesis, why our adaptation to something doesn't necessarily make it beneficial, adapting to something for survival versus thriving. Why adaptations to stress are harmful and aren't responsible for some of the benefits from things like exercise. We talk a little bit about the epigenetic factors. We talk a little bit about being a fat burner versus using the oxidative and glucose metabolism. So this is a very dense episode filled with information. I love talking to Jay, so I'm super excited for y'all to dive into this one. So let's get into it.
Jayton Miller:
How's it going today, guys? Welcome back to Thermo Diet Podcast. Today I have on the podcast, again, Mr. Jay Feldman. How are you doing today, Jay?
Jay Feldman:
I'm great, Jayton. How are you?
Jayton Miller:
Doing very well. For anybody who might not know who you are out there, you mind giving on a quick background story?
Jay Feldman:
Yeah. I, like many other people who end up trying to share a lot of health information and trying to help other people get better, I started with myself. Health became a real focus for me, starting basically with fitness where I was trying to improve my athletic performance, I want it to look good. And that took me down the dieting rabbit hole and nutrition rabbit hole. And I ended up making a lot of mistakes along the way, falling into low carb and a lot of caloric restriction trying to stay lean. After finding a lot of things that didn't work and ended up making me feel a lot worse, through that exploration and trying to figure out what was wrong, I ended up coming across what a lot of people call the bioenergetic view of health, and changed everything for me.
Jay Feldman:
And now I watch how much it changes the lives of other people, and I think it's a much better approach, of course, as we'll talk about today.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. So for those who might not know the general perspective of the bioenergetic view, do you mind given your quick definition of that?
Jay Feldman:
Yeah. It's basically the view that our health is dependent on energy. Basically, the energy is the center of our health. And when I say energy, I'm not talking about some spiritual energy or anything like that, but rather energy on a physiological level, the actual energy that's produced in what everyone says is the powerhouse of ourselves, the mitochondria. A lot of times we'll talk about it in of ATP, but there's other... ATP is a good a barometer for energy, but energy can be held in all sorts of molecules and structural compounds. And so, it's looking at how, basically, all of our health, whether tissues or our ability to thrive, all depends on how much energy we have on that cellular level and how everything in our environment affects us on that level.
Jay Feldman:
That's basically, it's a lens through which we can view everything from nutrition to exercise and sleep and medications and learn from there.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. So whenever we're categorizing things as far as healthy versus not healthy, anything that is not healthy would be interfering with the production or utilization of that energy, correct?
Jay Feldman:
Yeah. Yep, exactly. And of course, that gets a little complex. It's not always that easy to determine. And as we'll talk about today, there's a lot of things that might cause a reaction that leads to increased energy in the short term, that doesn't necessarily mean it's helping it in the longterm. It can get a little bit complicated, but it's normally the immediate effect on that energetic level will, as you said, determine whether something's helping us or harming us.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. One of the things that I really wanted to talk about was the misconception around adaptation and hormesis. So can you give us a brief overview of some of the misconceptions that you've seen and experienced?
Jay Feldman:
Yeah. And just to define hormesis to start, which is a little bit tricky because there are a few different definitions that's morphed over the years to fit whatever narrative is being pushed. But initially, it was just this idea that giving a small amount of something that's very toxic, something like mercury or cadmium or radiation would lead to a defensive reaction in an organism, and that would lead to some health benefits. And this actually came about with a lot of industrial influence and trying to show that maybe radiation isn't as harmful as everyone's saying it is, and maybe polluting the environment or having these toxins in our food isn't such a big deal, maybe these things are actually helping us a bit.
Jay Feldman:
I don't think that's the case, but anyway, from there, it's morphed into this idea that anything, even if it's something that's not necessarily poisonous anything, that causes any amount of stress leads to that same kind of defensive reaction and adaptation, and that that's beneficial in the longterm. From there, it's even more further to become a very generic term that just means anything that can be good in small doses and bad in big doses or vice versa. And again, I think that's another way that this definition is morphed to make it sound like this is a very viable idea.
Jay Feldman:
But anyway, that second definition that anything that causes stress, a small amount of stress, is beneficial, is very commonly known and is applied to a lot of the low carb-dieting, it's applied to certain supplements like resveratrol and certain compounds like nitric oxide. And it's also applied to things like fasting and caloric restriction, where there's a lot of research and a lot of people in the health spaces saying that... Or another one is cold thermogenesis, dropping in some cold water, where there's this idea that giving your body a small amount of stress leads to some beneficial adaptations and makes our bodies stronger. And while there is some validity to it, I'll explain why I don't think it's really an accurate way of looking at things, and actually leads us down this path of thinking that, again, anything that causes some amount of stress is beneficial because it causes stress.
Jay Feldman:
And I think it's a relatively dangerous idea because obviously a lot of very harmful things because stress. And so I think there's some important clarifications to make there as far as why something might be helping us and also be causing stress at the same time.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. I had Billy Craig on an interview yesterday, and I was talking to him about how they've seen older people who have lower metabolic rates and less energy utilization are able to live a little bit longer. But he was saying that if you actually look at the amount of calories they're using per unit of mass, their metabolic rate is actually phenomenally high. So whenever you're looking at those studies, it's usually a little bit jaded, I guess, a little bit in its perspective. So it's interesting that you touch on that. But in terms of hormesis, I've always seen it in the context of adapting to things as far as a performance perspective, so being able to run a mile and then adapting to that, being able to run two miles and things like that, which obviously endurance training is the opposite of what we want.
Jayton Miller:
But I've also seen a lot of benefits in the realm of the hormetic response to exercise, specifically resistance training. So I would definitely like to dive into that a little bit further as far as why that might not be favorable, and then some of the things that we can do in place of that.
Jay Feldman:
Yeah. And just to clarify too, adaptation is a part of what's considered to be hormesis or the hormetic response, but we can also adapt to things that are not hormetic or adapt to aspects of things that are not the stress. So just for the definition sake, I would say hormesis is adapting to the stress itself, whereas we can also adapt to other aspects of any stimulus. Exercise is a good example there where I do think that there are benefits to exercise, and those do come from adapting to that stimulus. But what I'll be arguing is that the adaptation is to certain effects that are not distress.
Jay Feldman:
When it comes to exercise, for example, you mentioned resistance training, when we're resistance training, we're putting tension on our musculoskeletal system on our musculofascial system, and that causes all sorts of adaptations. And I think you can argue that in the right dose, that's beneficial, but what people are arguing instead, and sometimes will change the training programs around this idea that it's the stress that's actually beneficial and causing those adaptations. And so we need to work out to failure or longer is better. There's some other details there, but there's this important delineation between why it's beneficial. And again, maybe we'll dig into a little bit, I would argue that the stress is not the reason.
Jayton Miller:
What do you think that reason is?
Jay Feldman:
Yeah. I think in the case of exercise, I think it is those specific effects. And I think this is a helpful delineation to make. This started with Hans Selye. He was one of the preliminary researchers talking about stress and our response to it, our adaptation to it. And so when he evaluated a stimulus, basically everybody at this time was aware of this idea that any stimulus would have effects that are specific to the stimulus. So exercise causes the certain tension that leads to muscle building, whereas sunlight is going to because increased melanin production in the skin, and on from there.
Jay Feldman:
Basically, anything that we are exposed to in our environment has unique effects to that stimulus, one of the many things that he researched and discovered, but this is in regard to stress, one of the things that was most noteworthy is he determined that there was a general effect, a universal effect that all stimuli have, and this is what he called the stressor effect. And so he basically said, "Yes, there's unique things to exercise as far as our response to it and there's unique things to sunlight and toxins and infections, but there's also a universal component," which he called the stressor effect, which basically came down to the usage of energy.
Jay Feldman:
His terms here were adaptation energy and I think evolving on that. I think it comes down to that physiological energy we were talking about earlier. I think that's this delineation we need to make is, between specific effects and stressor effects or the usage of energy. And what he found was that when we have too much of those stressors, it causes all sorts of degeneration, and that degeneration is universal, whether it's too much like exposure to an infection or excessive amounts of exercise, or too little nutrition, all of those things, they have specific effects, but they have the stressor effect, and when we have too much of that stress compared to the energy we have available to handle it, it causes all of this degeneration, all of these chronic health conditions that he did a pretty good job of mapping out.
Jay Feldman:
And again, with this idea of hormesis, people have taken this to say that that stress, the stressor effect, is actually what's beneficial. And you'll hear this pretty often, which is that we're looking for certain end points like autophagy or mitochondrial biogenesis, or some sort of stimulation of mitochondrial respiration that these increases in lifespan, that these are all things that happened in response to small amounts of stress and that they're beneficial. And the way that this has done has to do, basically on the physiological level, with... The stress comes down to a lack of energy and the production of reactive oxygen species. So any time that we're lacking in energy or energy-producing systems are disrupted, we have this increase in reactive oxygen species.
Jay Feldman:
And again, from that view of hormesis, that's why exercise is beneficial, or that's why cold thermogenesis is beneficial. In the case of cold thermogenesis, you're activating stress that's somewhat unique to temperature, you've got the heat shock proteins and all of that. But it all travels through this same generalized pathway that Selye was referring to, which has to do with the production of reactive oxygen species and the activation of all of these signals that are saying that our body doesn't have energy. AMPK is one of the main ones there as well. You've got the whole Nrfs and JNKs, all these basically inflammatory pathways, all of these pathways that are activated when we're starving or when we're under considerable stress.
Jay Feldman:
And again, from this hormetic view, small amounts of those things lead to all these supposed that benefits, it leads to autophagy, it leads to mitochondrial biogenesis, meaning you're producing more mitochondria so you should be able to produce more energy. And with autophagy, is the idea that you're clearing out like damaged cells or debris. So these are supposed to be good things. And I'm not necessarily saying that those are bad things, but I think that there are better ways to achieve them that don't require this depletion of energy, even in the short term and the stress that's caused.
Jayton Miller:
So do you think that there's a threshold that we can meet? And do you usually differentiate what would be under that threshold as eustress and then above that being distress?
Jay Feldman:
Yeah. I'm glad you brought that up. I don't think it's a threshold problem, but I think it's an important thing to bring up. So there is this idea of eustress and distress, and this was these word terms that Hans Selye used. And eustress was something that was stressful, but was still beneficial, and distress was something that was stressful, but was overall harmful. And those are important distinctions to make, but my problem with that language is that it makes us think that it's just the amount of stress that matters, and that's what you're saying with this threshold, where it's eustress if it's below a certain threshold and it's distress if it's above a certain threshold.
Jay Feldman:
And I think a better way to look at it is that it's eustress or it's something that's beneficial if the specific effects of that stimulus outweigh the stressful effects. So what I would say is that the stress is always going to be harmful. Basically, you never want to be doing something that's going to disrupt our ability to produce energy or deplete excessive amounts of energy, drive this excessive reactive oxygen species production without enough energy. I'm going to say that those things are never ideal, there's always a cost there, there's always some harm there.
Jay Feldman:
And I think that makes sense that when we zoom out a bit and think about our adaptation to that, where an adaptation to something that's harmful, it does tend to improve our ability to handle things that are harmful, but it also comes at the cost of degrading ourselves where more used to that. So this idea, I guess I would say, as far as the threshold is not related to how much stress, but rather whether these other effects of these stimuli are beneficial enough to outweigh the stressful effects. So reduced fasting as an example, a lot of people find benefits on fasting, and we also know that that's universally stressful, it's basically a short term starvation.
Jay Feldman:
And what I would say is that the people who are finding benefits from fasting are finding benefits from those specific effects, and those specific effects would be, you're no longer getting any food in your digestive tract so you're not producing any endotoxin or feeding any pathogens in your gut so you've found a lot of relief there. Or maybe if somebody is eating a lot of foods that are relatively toxic, whether they've got a bunch of additives and preservatives in there, or a bunch of anti-nutrients or whatever it is, they're not eating those anymore, so that's going to bring some relief. So those things might lead to somebody's feeling better in that case and at the same time they're still having that stress from the short-term starvation.
Jay Feldman:
But I would say if you're noticing benefits from fasting, it's most likely because those specific effects outweigh the stressful effects. And so I would say that that's a better way to look at something like eustress, although, again, I don't like the definition because it's not about the stress necessarily. But what's important about that delineation is that we don't always have to make that choice.... We don't always have to take the bad with the good, we can have those beneficial, specific effects of not irritating our gut and of not taking in toxins without the stressful side of fasting.
Jay Feldman:
So that's some of the application of this anti-hormesis idea, is that you can still have a lot of those benefits from these interventions without the excessive stress. And that's what you mentioned too, as far as exercise goes, where you could have resistance training versus like long-distance cardio, and that both of those, you're going to have some beneficial effects or are going to have some stimulation of the muscles. And they're not the same, it's a crude example, but in one, you're going to have excessive amounts of stress and the other, you have much less, you have much less of an energy drain.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. What are some of the things that people can pay attention to to know whether or not the benefits that they think that they're experiencing are actually beneficial to the organism?
Jay Feldman:
Yeah, that's a good question, and maybe this is what you're getting at, is that sometimes when we're doing things that are really stressful, they might feel good because we've got a lot of adrenaline coursing through our veins and that feels pretty good, it feels like we've got a lot of energy, even though it is coming at a pretty major long-term cost. It's not always really that easy to determine. In the long-term, we always find out, but of course it's helpful to know in the short term.
Jay Feldman:
There are some indicators that I think can be helpful, and the biggest one is how you feel, but it's not only if you have energy, but are you able to sleep? For example. So a lot of people who go to low carb and know that they have a lot of that, well, they don't know that they have adrenaline, but they feel like they've got good energy, but at the same time, they can't sleep at night, they can't stay asleep, they can't sleep through the night, they can't fall asleep. So, that's a good sign of excess adrenaline. Of course it's not always quite that clear cut either where things are improving, everything is automatically better.
Jay Feldman:
But in general, using any symptom that would see is helpful, how well is your brain functioning? Do you have a calm energy or more of a manic energy? Again, are you able to rest and relax and go to sleep? Do you have any digestive symptoms? Temperature can be another good indicator where if our temperatures are elevated due to stress hormones and then we eat some carbohydrates and our temperatures go down, that's what we would see. Whereas, if you don't have high stress amounts and you need some carbohydrates, your temperature should stay the same or go up. So, that can be a good indicator too.
Jay Feldman:
But part of the other side of this, as much as experience is really helpful, also understanding, I think, the physiology is helpful too. So you have that combination there of an idea of where we should be going and what we should be looking for to make sure that we are not just feeling good because of these short-term stress hormones.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. I noticed that for me personally, whenever I cross that line, I guess, to a little bit too much stress, my digestion is the first thing to go. As soon as my digestion starts to mess up, I know that I need to take a step back, examine what I'm doing, slow down, rest. And then I also find that my fingers and my toes will freeze up almost immediately on a daily basis. So I also watch that very closely.
Jay Feldman:
Yeah, that's a perfect indicator, hands and feet being cold, which can happen even if your temperature is relatively normal, but that's a really good sign of stress hormones. Yeah.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. So do you ever take into consideration the possible epigenetic factors that come into play with hormesis as well?
Jay Feldman:
Yeah. As you were saying earlier, hormesis and adaptation go hand in hand a bit, and I think that there are some important misconceptions with adaptation too. It's the same idea where it's like if we adapt to something that's harmful, we'll become stronger, we'll become better at dealing with it. And again, that does tend to happen, we become, you could also say less sensitive to it. And this is very clear when you look at some of the organisms that they do these studies on. One of the most common ones is C elegans, which is a worm, a very, very small worm. And what they find is that when they put it under a lot of stress or small amounts of "hormetic stress", it does live longer and it has this lifespan extension.
Jay Feldman:
And that's cited all the time as a support for caloric restriction or support for any other sort of hormesis. And one of the really important components there that's not normally acknowledged is that C elegans, when it's under stress, enters basically a hibernation state called douer. And in that hibernation state, it's not functioning like it normally would, instead, its entire body switches towards the stress system, it starts to run on fats instead of glucose, it starts to down-regulate the amount of energy it's producing very significantly. And I don't think it moves around in the same way. It's basically not even viable where it would be very hard for it to survive in the wild, but because it's in a lab, it can survive longer.
Jay Feldman:
So you have this adaptation to stress and it's allowing for extended life and it's better able to deal with all these stresses, but it's because it's not really living, I mean, it's function is so degraded. I think that's a good picture to consider when we're talking about adaptation, whether that adaptation is happening within a lifetime or down hereditarily and to future generations. And again, you mentioned epigenetics, and that is where that's coming into play. I mean, we're turning on and off different genes and activating all these various proteins. And I think the biggest factor to consider here is that big picture, where when we are adapting to things that are harmful, we become better at handling harmful things at the cost of higher structure and greater complexity.
Jay Feldman:
And so there are a lot of epigenetic adaptations to that, and we see that in humans, when we look at what's happened in populations that had significant starvation and then you look down the line and they're more prone to obesity, the children are. And beyond rat and cat studies where they've put them under some stress and then they look a couple of generations down and they see that there's degeneration going on. So there are epigenetic effects too when we're adapting to anything, whether it's bad or good, but when we are adapting to this harmful things, I would say that they're generally negative.
Jay Feldman:
And part of the problem here is that, I know I talked about autophagy and mitochondrial biogenesis as a couple of those main things. I don't see those as harmful. It is seen that in chronic health conditions and diseases, there are defects in autophagy and it is seen that... But at the same time, what's important to consider too, is that in those diseases, there's also excessive stress, there's also excessive reactive oxygen species production. So if we're under this idea that a small amount of stress is good and leads to these benefits yet excessive stress leads to defects and these sorts of autophagy and adaptations, I look at that as a good example for the fact that we want those adaptations to be working properly.
Jay Feldman:
We want to be able to increase autophagy when we're exposed to stress. And if we drive too far in that route, we lose our ability to adapt. But rather than wanting to stimulate autophagy directly by causing stress, we can actually do it through alternative means. And again, it comes down to some of the biochemistry here and some of the details, but we also end up seeing reactive oxygen species production when we're producing a lot of energy as like a breaking mechanism. That's normally why it's down in the first place, is that when we're under stress and we're not able to produce energy efficiently, we turn off that system because if we produce too many of these reactive oxygen species, we end up with a ton of damage and destruction, so it's like this alarm signal.
Jay Feldman:
But the signal also happens if we're producing a lot of energy and we have enough where we have this excess of end product of ATP that's stopping everything up earlier in the line, and that also leads to reactive oxygen species production and stops or slows down respiration, switches it over to fat oxidation and slows it down with all these braking systems. But in this case, there's a major difference, which is that we're protected by the higher levels of ATP and higher levels of carbon dioxide and the higher energy state of the cell. And that protects us against any damage from the reactive oxygen species and allows us to still have things like mitochondrial biogenesis and autophagy and improve our ability to not adapt to harm, but actually improve our capacity for greater energy and greater structural complexity, but without any of these other signals that often come in the form of stress hormones.
Jay Feldman:
When you have the high reactive oxygen species and low energy, you have the AMPK signals going on, you eventually have adrenaline and cortisol going on. And those all lead to long-term depression of thyroid and prometabolic hormones. Whereas when you have high energy and elevated reactive oxygen species, you don't have all those stress signals. You just have those adaptations that we're looking for that are defective in these chronic diseases, but without the harmful effects that lead to all those partially epigenetic adaptations and also non-epigenetic adaptations, but it's a major difference just that the presence of energy and the lack of presence of those stress signals.
Jay Feldman:
And I would say that that's really where we see the major difference physiologically between something that we're adapting to that's stressful and harmful and requires us to conserve energy and decrease our structure so we can handle whatever's there as opposed to something that supports us energetically, allows our bodies to say, "Hey, I don't need to conserve energy right now, my environment's great. I can kick up all of my functions, my thyroid function, my reproductive function, my digestive function. I can send blood out to my hands and feet so that they can stay warm as opposed to needing to keep them in our internal areas or internal organs, so that way they can stay warm." All those things that go together and support that higher energy state as opposed to driving towards the lower one.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. Do you think that that is responsible for the association that people see between calorie surpluses and inflammation?
Jay Feldman:
Meaning the high energy, but also some reactive oxygen species production?
Jayton Miller:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jay Feldman:
I don't know about that. One other factor when it comes to caloric restriction and caloric surplus is what are the foods. And I think that's a major issue when it comes to all a lot of the caloric restriction researches, they found that, yeah, there's all these benefits there, but you also get those benefits when you just restrict the inflammatory amino acids. You also get those benefits when you reduce endotoxin, and you also get those benefits when you reduce PUFA. And all of those things are shown to be correlated with lifespan and disease. So I guess you could flip that too with the caloric surplus where the question is, is it the caloric surplus, or is it what those calories are made up of?
Jay Feldman:
I think that that's more of what it is, we have a defective metabolism and you add in more fuel to that fire as opposed to a well-functioning metabolism, or when you add more fuel, it just keeps it running, it keeps it running at a higher level. I don't know what if there was something specific you were referring to as far as caloric surplus and inflammation, but I think when it comes to like the rat research and stuff like that, I think that's more of how I would see it.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. No, that answers my question perfectly. One other thing that I'm curious about is, what if somebody is trying to strengthen the buffer that they have to the stress over time, whether it's increasing work capacity for a certain amount of exercise to take place, or just increasing their buffer on a daily basis to the stress that they face?
Jay Feldman:
We have, again, these two paths here around, one path it's getting used to the stress more and getting more acquainted with it, versus on the other side, when we're supporting the energy producing systems, we also end up with a greater energy pool, a greater energy availability, which means that we have more to pull from before we're causing stress. So I would prefer to go that latter route. And as far as how that looks, some of this does come down to specific effects too where you are strengthening your muscular fascial system, those connections and the strength there.
Jay Feldman:
And there's actually a couple different types of muscular building, and one in particular tends to go more of a stress, and the other tends to go more with lower stress. And that one with the less stress has to do with more protein building whereas the other one has to do with more swelling and increased resources, more fuel in the muscle cells. And so that protein moments is the mild fibrillar. I would say that those adaptations are going to happen due to the specific effects, for example, if you're lifting weights, because you are adapting to that stimulus, you are going to have improved, increased protein concentration in those areas, building up that protein of the muscle cells.
Jay Feldman:
You're also going to have increased neuromuscular tone and ability to contract, contractility there, which is actually one of the main factors responsible for increases in strength when people first start working out. When you watch someone work out and they go from only being able to bench 20 pounds to 60 in six weeks, that's not because they put on all this muscle, of course, they might be putting on some, but most of it, it's a neuromuscular connection. So those things are all strengthening and those are independent of stress, they're just specific to the stimulation.
Jay Feldman:
So I would say that that's really what we want to be going forward when you would want to be improving work capacity as opposed to improving capacity towards stress. So I guess another way I would say it is that, I think it's more ideal health wise to be trying to improve our capacity for something like strength than to be able to handle something like excessive stress. So I think that the only way you're going to improve your ability to run super long distances is to create adaptations to that stress. I just think that there's a cost there. If somebody wants to do it, that's fine, but I think we want to recognize that cost there too.
Jay Feldman:
And you can minimize that cost by improving your resilience distress, making sure you're getting a lot of fuel, all of that, but there is a cost just by wanting to adapt to that. If we wanted to adapt to living in the Tundra, we can, people do it and they have epigenetic adaptations, genetic adaptations, all sorts of really interesting things, but it also, I would argue, comes at the cost of less structural complexity in the long term. So it depends on what we're trying to adapt to, but in the case of specifically work capacity, it depends on if it's more dependent on strengthen and function as opposed to needing to deal with stress and resilience.
Jay Feldman:
One other factor there too is economy. So with runners, for example, they become more economic with the way they run as they continue to practice, so they end up having less stress and requiring less energy to do the same amount of work. So that's another factor there too that will improve just by continuing to adapt to those things.
Jayton Miller:
Interesting. Whenever it comes to resistance training specifically, do you tend to see a difference between eccentric and concentric muscle contractions? Because I believe within the concentric part of the contraction, there's an anabolic effect with a testosterone response and then the eccentric effect is a catabolic response to the cortisol response. Do you have any tips there?
Jay Feldman:
Yeah. And of course, you can't always minimize one or the other. A lot of movements have aspects of both, but I do think that the eccentric leads to more of that stress response and adaptation which can lead to big muscles, but it doesn't mean they're necessarily functional muscles, it doesn't mean it's overall as healthy. So I do think to whatever extent you can, I guess, you could say favoring the concentric another way to put it would just be not doing focused eccentric work where you're going super slow for four seconds down or whatever. So I do think probably just not focusing on the eccentric is better for health.
Jayton Miller:
Yeah. What about the ability to increase mental capacity or the ability to work more with the mind rather than physical?
Jay Feldman:
There's this funny study when I was looking for all the hormesis research where they were saying that, "Hey, this applies to the brain too. When the brain is under stress, it responds and improves its capacity." And one of the studies they cited was looking at elderly people in some retirement home or nursing home or something. And it was saying that when they're reading books and playing cards, their neurological capacity is increased. And they were saying that was a sign of hormesis that these things were causing stress. It just goes to show how much they've morphed this definition and how convoluted it's become. But that I don't think that those things are quite all that stressful.
Jay Feldman:
And I think that to attribute those benefits to the stress caused by playing cards, even the physiological stress, I think is ridiculous, but I think it applies in the way where stimulating those neurological connections in whatever capacity, I think, leads to adaptations that leads to improvement there. Some people have the same idea where if you don't use it, you lose it, and I don't necessarily agree with that. I think that having improved brain capacity is a part of improved complexity. And considering that, I think, that it should be something that improves, I guess, even if you weren't stimulating it, but I don't know how that would work, it's not like something you could see in practice.
Jay Feldman:
But I do think having stimulation is good. For example, if we're under a lot of psychological stress, I don't think that's going to be leading to us becoming smarter, for example, I think it will lead to you maybe getting more "resilience." Sometimes that, again, comes at the cost of being able to tap into your emotions or being able to think real clearly or think about higher level things. We will adapt to that stress, I don't think that's what we really want to be going for though. I don't know if that answered your question.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. Yeah. I think this was also one of the things that I talked about in my conversation with Billy, he said that during starvation periods, the brain can shrink up to 2%. So if you're in Kellogg restriction, the brain actually shrinks to where you only have the capabilities of the more primordial parts of the brain and the complexity and abstraction diminishes as the brain shrinks in size, which makes a lot of sense. It's also interesting. Have you seen any of the research in regards to the brain taking up 80% of the metabolism whenever it's in states of basically like a flow state?
Jay Feldman:
I haven't seen that. Interestingly, I was looking into that and then some of the research that I've found, which there's an all that much was actually saying that whether our brains active or not it ends up using about the same amount of fuel or the same percentage of fuel, I don't know if that's... I'd be interested to see something that shows otherwise for sure, but I haven't seen that, but it wouldn't surprise me if there was some uptake in activity, even without any increase, our brain already uses, I think around 20 to 25% our total caloric needs, if you want to think of it that way, but just our total fuel, which is of course, a massive amount proportionately. I think proportionately, it's only about 2% of our total body.
Jay Feldman:
So as far as caloric restriction and brain health, that definitely doesn't surprise me, that it would shrink and capacity would shrink. If you look at the Minnesota starvation experiment and what happened to their mental capacity when they were eating 1,800 calories a day as opposed to the regular 3,300, maybe 1,600 calories, they were not the same people at all. A lot of them were failing their classes or weren't even able to go, they couldn't hold up relationships. They had no sense of humor, they had no interest in sex, they had no libido. And it went beyond that too, some of them had psychotic breaks.
Jay Feldman:
When you talked about more primordial things, some of them ended up stealing food from trash cans. It completely changes our mental capacity, that's for sure.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. I guess taking another direction for a second, one of the things that I would like to get your opinion on is the adaptation that we have to becoming a fat burner versus utilizing glucose as fuel. Can you take us through that transition and why it might not be favorable?
Jay Feldman:
Yeah. In line with that bioenergetic lens, I think it always makes the most sense to start on that energetic level and what's actually happening there. Basically, I would say that fat is much less efficient as a fuel, and there's biochemical reasons for that that I'll mention. And also, there's other evidence to support this, just the idea that our brains can't use fat, they have to rely on glucose or ketones, which we'll get to ketones. But the short of it just looking at sugar versus fat, fat will cause way too much reactive oxygen, species production, and it cause too many breaks in mitochondrial respiration to be supportive of our brain energy needs, which as we said, those energy needs are pretty high, and so it's a good model to look at as far as what things look like when they need to function well.
Jay Feldman:
Whereas other areas of our body can deal with lower energy. When we're looking on that biochemical level and that physiological level of what's actually happening when we use one versus the other for fuel, when we use glucose for fuel, assuming that we've got the nutrients we need, there's no brakes on the system from polyunsaturated fats or endotoxin or anything else, everything runs very smoothly, quickly, there's nothing stopping that process unless we produce so much ATP that we don't need any more. We produce a lot of NAD, which keeps our NAD to NADH ratio high, which keeps the electron transport chain functioning well.
Jay Feldman:
We also produce a lot of CO2, which helps to increase oxygen offloading into the cell, which allows for further increased respiration. So it's a very cohesive system that basically allows us to produce a lot of energy. And when we have fat metabolism, we basically have the opposite. And there's very good reasons for that, you mentioned adaptation where basically we need to have some system that allows us to put on the brakes, for example, if we're not eating. If we're not eating carbs, that's one thing, but low carb metabolism is the same as starvation metabolism. And when that happens, when we're starving, if we adapted to starvation by increasing the amount of energy we use, we will not last very long when we starved.
Jay Feldman:
So because of that instead, anytime we're in a suboptimal environment, but starvation is a pretty rough one, we have to slow down how much energy we're using, stop our thyroid from functioning as much, stop our reproductive hormones, slow everything down. We can deal with the cold hands and feet, so that way we can survive. And so fat metabolism is basically the perfect picture of that, where there are a couple of differences. One is that there's less carbon dioxide being produced, which means less oxygenation, which is one way that there's this break on the system. The other one is that we have a lot more, FADH2 being produced.
Jay Feldman:
Basically there's some competition in the electron transport chain between the donation of electrons from NADH and the donation of electrons between FADH2 where they both use the same... They basically both rely on ubiquinone availability, and so when you have a lot of FADH2 donating electrons, it slows down the drop-off of electrons from NADH and leads to a buildup of NADH, which decreases the NAD to NADH ratio. And that then has effects all throughout, like higher up in the energy producing processes to slow things down because the availability of NAD helps to drive, basically speed things up.
Jay Feldman:
And so when you have this excess NADH, it puts all of these other breaks on the system which happens during fat metabolism. And that's another way that things are slowed down on that immediate energy level. And it also increases the production of reactive oxygen species at the same time, which leads to some of those adaptations we talked about earlier. It does lead to autophagy, it does lead to mitochondrial biogenesis, these kinds of backup pathways that are there to help us survive these, in this case, they're there to help us survive these rough times. So starting from that energetic level.
Jay Feldman:
And it's important to note here too, whenever we look at something like fat metabolism in the short term, you see those breaks, you see the slowing down of respiration, then there's always an adaptive effect, I mean, it is an adaptation, but there's always a rebound effect where if your body is still needing to function, at first, it's like, "Hey, I still need energy." And it basically has all these backup pathways, and one of them is through sirtuins or SIRT search. But sirtuins are known as like longevity promoting proteins, but it's basically a backup pathway to fix the low NAD to NADH ratio from fat metabolism and any other stress.
Jay Feldman:
So you have the activation of all these backup pathways to bring that NAD to NADH ratio back up so you can still produce energy, especially in the short term our body's like, it might be a little bit of stress, but we can get through it. And so initially, you see this dampening effect and then a rebound effect, and then in the long term you just see the dampening effect, it just has that long-term cost. But again, that short-term rebound is why some people say it's beneficial, but again, I would argue that, you still have the long-term effect too which is just smaller. And if you continue for longer period of time, it's going to show, even if you're doing it for a short period of time, you're not going to have a benefit, you're just going to have that stress hormone response.
Jay Feldman:
And that's another part of it too, that's why people sometimes will feel good when they switched to fat metabolism, they've got that adrenaline going. That's where all those kinds of adaptations start, and then again, big picture we have the increased stress hormone production, which is the mediator that tells our bodies things are not good right now, if this continues for any longer, we have to start shutting everything down. And so that's eventually what you get when you're adapting to fat metabolism and fat burning.
Jayton Miller:
Yeah. We tend to call that the catecholamine honeymoon, that first like 30 to 60 days where people feel really good, and then after that, it's usually pretty downhill. Can you go through some of the similarities that fat burning state has with caloric restriction?
Jay Feldman:
Yeah. Basically, they really mimic each other where if we don't have any food, we start to shift in the same way. So anytime that we see energy depletion starting on that cellular level, we have the activation of all of these signal, AMP kinase, which is saying there's no ATP around. You've typically got reactive oxygen, species production, which says that there's some kind of stress or damage. And it activates all these pathways that activate stress hormones, and those stress hormones lead to a couple of things. For one they decrease....
Jay Feldman:
In the short term, some days they'll increase... The first thing will try to do is increase glucose release from the liver. So that way we can still maintain some glucose metabolism. If that is not enough to immediately solve what's going on, then they'd say, "All right, we've got to start increasing fat metabolism." You start to pull fat from our body fat stores. If that's still going on and that's not enough to deal with that immediate energy problem, which is nonstop, if you're starving or caloric restriction, like just minor starvation, it's going to keep happening.
Jay Feldman:
And then if it's so much to the point that there's still not enough food available, especially for the brain, if there's not enough glucose, they'll start to lead to ketone production and liver, which again, is driven by stress hormones just as part of that backup system. So you basically have the same response, it's just a matter of to what extent. Sometimes it can be to a much greater extent with low carb versus just a small amount of caloric restriction, it depends, but in both cases, you're having the same stress responses that are happening due to the low energy on that cellular level, leading to those stress signals, leading to the bigger mediators being the stress hormones, glucagon, epinephrine, cortisol, and then eventually, it continues branching out from there.
Jayton Miller:
Interesting. One of the things that I was curious about is how people tend to see an increase in insulin sensitivity whenever they're in a caloric deficit, but at the same time, from a logical perspective, to me, the increase in the amount of free fatty acids in the blood would lead to more of the Randle cycle happening. So do you know what's going on in that pathway right there?
Jay Feldman:
Yeah. There's a couple of things. One is that insulin drives down the stress hormones and drives down free fatty acids, and so glucose partially by stimulating insulin production. So if you're starving and then you take in some carbohydrates, that's going to increase insulin, drop all those stress hormones, stop gluconeogenesis, stop all that fat release and drive down free fatty acids and allow for the uptake of the glucose. So it's basically like, because you're in that low fuel-stress state, you're more ready to take up the carbs.
Jay Feldman:
And the same thing happens, even if we're just fasting overnight, which we all do when we sleep, it's much less stressful because our demands are much lower, but that's why when we wake up, we tend to be pretty insulin sensitive too and we tend to have a lot of carb cravings. And the same thing is after we exercise, basically when our carbs are depleted, we're very sensitive to our need for more carbs. And it's still mediated through those same stress hormones, but basically, you have this dropping of stress hormones very quickly and dropping of free fatty acids. The other thing too is that free fatty acids are part of it, but it also has to do with the ability to uptake glucose.
Jay Feldman:
I think in some situations, high free fatty acids are more correlated with insulin resistance rather than being causative. It is true that with the Randle cycle, you only have basically one choice, you're either using fat or carbs and both prevent the other from functioning at the same time in one cell, not necessarily throughout the body, but it can switch back and forth very easily. And if the cell is basically very low on glucose and able to metabolize, it's going to be taking it up and switching right back over if it has it available. Normally, the problem in insulin resistance is not high free fatty acids first, normally there's something else blocking its ability to use carbs.
Jay Feldman:
So then we have to increase free fatty acids as that backup pathway. And yes, then it's just focusing on free fatty acids as its fuel, but once our carb metabolism is somewhat fixed and you've got those carbs available, it's going to switch it back.
Jayton Miller:
Okay. Interesting. What is your perspective on being fat adapted? So the ability to flirt with that line and jump back and forth across it.
Jay Feldman:
It's funny just because there's this idea, being fat adapted and metabolic flexibility too where... The thing that I think is funny there is the idea that you have to do something in order to be able to metabolize fats, but that's our default backup state. Nobody is just running on carbs because they can't run on fat, if anything, it's the other way around, they would be just running on fat because they can't run on carbs. Carbs, there's a lot more factors that can be limiting it and if you're low on energy, you're always going to be tending towards the fat side anyway due to all those stress signals.
Jay Feldman:
So I would say that fat metabolism is that default backup state. And again, that doesn't mean that we can't be using any fat at any time and that that's always a bad thing. For example, our muscles don't need a lot of energy when they're just hanging out when we're just at rest, and so they're fine using the decent amount of fat. And fat is used for various other things too, so I'm not anti-fat, I just think it's just not as good at producing high levels of energy in short period of time. I think normally when people are talking about that, it more really has to do with impaired carbon metabolism and often there's some gut issues there, but we should always be able to use either fuel, but as we've talked about, we don't really want to adapt to using fat as our main fuel, there's a big cost there.
Jay Feldman:
And just because we can do it, it doesn't mean it's good for us in our long run or good for our descendants and the human species in the long run. I think that that's going to lead to a lot of adaptations to basically having less energy, and those don't tend to go in the direction that we want them to.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. I completely agree. Well, Jay, I won't take up too much more of your time today. I really appreciate you hopping on here and talking to everybody. Where can people find you and follow you and stuff like that?
Jay Feldman:
Yeah, yeah, Thanks for having me. That's fun. My website is Jayfeldmanwellness.com. I've got a bunch of articles like free things on there. And a couple of those articles are dealing with hormesis. They're pretty long and really digging into all the research for anyone who's interested. And then I also have a podcast called The Energy Balance Podcast. You can find it from my website or you can just search it anywhere that you listen to podcasts. And yeah, check it out.
Jayton Miller:
Heck yeah. Sweet. Well, for all those who listen, make sure to check out his podcast because I personally do listen to it consistently on Spotify, so make sure to check it out. I enjoy it and I know you all will too. You have a good one.
Jayton Miller:
Thanks for listening to the podcast, if you haven't already, make sure to hit the Like button, subscribe and leave comment down below if you want us to cover a different topic.
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Jayton Miller sits down with one of the original gangsters of metabolic nutrition Billy Craig. Billy Craig is a UK based Independent Health & Nutrition Researcher. The focus of his work and research is currently on the Psychology of Dieting and Metabolism amongst other related topics. In this episode they talk about Billy’s story, The no diet -diet, why diet and exercise might not be what you need to slim up and feel good, why you should not cut calories, and how to deal with some of the psychological barriers that come our way when adopting the "eat more and exercise less" approach. Check it out and let us know what you think!
Instagram: -
@_christopherwalker ( https://www.instagram.com/_christophe... ) - @researchcowboy ( https://www.instagram.com/researchcow... )
Billy's Website - http://www.billycraig.co.uk/
https://umzu.com/
Full Transcript:
Jayton Miller:
Welcome back to the Thermo Diet Podcast. I'm your host, Jayton Miller, and today I have on podcast one of the OGs, Billy Craig. Billy Craig is the author of Consistent Eating. He is a UK-based independent health and nutrition researcher with a focus around the psychology of dieting and metabolism, among other related topics.
Jayton Miller:
In this episode, we talk about Billy's story. We talk about the no-diet diet, why diet and exercise might not be what you need to slim up and feel good, why you really shouldn't count calories in most cases and be cutting calories whenever you're trying to heal your body. And why this is a common misconception in some cases. So there's a lot of golden nuggets in this episode and I'm really excited for you all to be able to listen to it. Every once in a while the audio is a bit funky, but he is in the UK. So outside of that, it is relatively decent. So I hope you all enjoy this episode. Let's get into it.
Jayton Miller:
How's it going today, guys? I am here with none other than Billy Craig. How you doing today, Billy?
Billy Craig:
Very well, thank you. You?
Jayton Miller:
I'm doing very well. So for the listeners out there who might not know who you are, do you mind telling them a little bit of your background and where you came from?
Billy Craig:
I started off as a cyclist, so riding for Team Great Britain. Got injured, ended up working for Rolls-Royce, which I think most people think is the car company, but it's the aero engines. Wasn't massively interested in it, so I was looking for a way back into sport or some sort of health thing. And then fell into, like most people, personal training. And then my background in engineering never really made dieting make much sense to me. I could never understand why people were trying to eat less.
Billy Craig:
It was very mechanistic at the time and it just didn't make any sense. So, I probably should have gone straight to uni. But I ended up in a gym and pretty much got in arguments with everyone because I didn't do what I was supposed to do. So, yeah. That was where the "What would Billy say?" tagline, because I was always doing everything different to anyone. And then if anyone got a problem, any of the trainers got a problem they didn't want to deal with, like somebody who couldn't walk like a 70 year old man with a double hip replacement, and someone that got cancer, they'd all just get sent to me, because they knew that I'd be quite interested in them.
Jayton Miller:
That's awesome. What did you do after personal training?
Billy Craig:
I worked for a massive big gym, and they just starved me out of work, to be honest. They asked me to dumb down my programs, and I was more interested in teaching people, so I did decide to go and be a teacher. And then I realized that wasn't much better, because you couldn't adapt the curriculum when I wasn't happy teaching some of the things. Then went to university and did a degree, an undergraduate degree in some really weird stuff, like neuroscience and biochemistry. And then some stuff that was completely off at a tangent. I wasn't aiming for any specialization. I think I was basically just looking for a way through uni without doing anything that had got a typical examination. I was looking at things where I could argue and debate, rather than having to sit tests where there was structured answers.
Billy Craig:
I was quite happy getting Cs. A couple of times I got As, I was quite proud of it. And then I think it, was it [Michael Passenger 00:03:40], who said the better students were like C grades? I just was aware that everyone was looking at outcomes, what was expected, and they were just doing anything to meet that. And I just wasn't happy doing it. I was quite happy getting into arguments with the dean about all sorts of random stuff. It was mainly just me dissenting really.
Billy Craig:
Then moved onto a master's degree in psychology. By that time I got a wife, so she kept me on track for that and I came out with a distinction. They probably were like, "Why did he get that, and then he suddenly toed the line on this?" Probably because I got married. I ended switching to psychology because of this fascination with the brain. And wanting to understand more. And them my next thing was going to be a PhD, looking at caloric intake. And they'd got 20,000 participants for me to draw the data out from. And then right at the last minute, it turned out that it was a diet company called Slimming World, which is big in the UK. I think, is it in the US now?
Jayton Miller:
I haven't heard of it personally.
Billy Craig:
Yeah. It's quite local to me, but they put a £1 million into the local university. The guy who was going to be senior advisor then said to me, I can't remember what his name is, and then it was @slimmingworld.co.uk. And then he was started, "Well, we need you to change this hypothesis. We need you to start looking at ways to create adherence to the diet." They wanted me to build, they wanted me to work on app. It looked like what I was going to do, was probably going to make it look like their diet didn't work. I'll say, there was just a clash so I walked away and started doing like a PhD by publication where I was just writing lots to [inaudible 00:05:29], send it, and [inaudible 00:05:31] by someone, and do it by more deceptive means.
Jayton Miller:
Okay. Interesting. One of the things that you are well known for, is the 6,000 calorie diet. We were talking a bit before the podcast about it. What is your approach to nutrition on a general basis? And why do you support the no-diet diet approach?
Billy Craig:
Well, that's what we spoke about before. I think I'd probably maybe not classify it as a no-diet, because then people maybe think it's a massive refeed. When I did my 6,000 calories, I wasn't diagnosed with Asperger's at that point. But if I knew anything about psychology at that point, I would've probably guessed. I'm not sure that I'd get that diagnosis anymore, because of certain things I've done. I'd still be obsessive about doing things, but not to that degree. But at that current point, if I was going to do something I would do it well. I was quite interested to do a little bit of a study, more of an engineer's idea of studying something. I did a year at the gym, four hours a day because I was injured from my sport. I did two hours of cardio, two hours of weights.
Billy Craig:
I checked out on my personal training course, which one is the best way to go? Do you do cardio first? They didn't know. So I set that all out. I got to about 290 days of doing it every day. And I was splitting it around, so it wasn't that I was overtraining in certain things. I was working hard. And I think I lost four pounds in a year. There was a point where one of the trainers in the gym offered me a free personal training session. And I couldn't work out what he was going to do, it was an hour's personal training session, but he said he could do something. He underestimated my abilities as a former professional mountain biker. And it's not mountain biking as in loads of distances, and motor cycles as well. So it's, whilst I was tiny, I could lift more than most people, because I'm used to throwing a motorbike around.
Billy Craig:
So he couldn't do anything, and so I carried on. Even did Christmas day, because it was a hotel gym. I think I did 395 days and I got it all recorded, lost four pounds. And just happen to be in the change room, and there was a really in-shape guy and he was, "Oh, it's all about nutrition." And then he just walked out. Then, I switched onto, it's all about nutrition, so I tracked and logged and recorded everything, just out of interest, for a period just to see what I was doing. And kind of looked at it, everything's upside down. And having a big dinner, and no breakfast, and a little lunch. So I started switching things around. And then just started playing with calories.
Billy Craig:
Then struck upon a guy at Loughborough uni, which is where my wife's just finished her PhD. He was also hated by everyone else. And he was looking at caloric intake and resting metabolic rate equation, just a standardized formula. And he got three teachers that were in this book, I think it was a YMCA manual he was teaching from, and all three gave a different figure. And nobody else on the course, there were 30 people who were undergraduate students, none of them, they all wanted to know which one the correct one was. And there was only me that could get it, as an engineer. They just guessed it really, they just thought it was based on different formulas. So he got various ones. And they all went away, having passed, but they didn't understand it.
Billy Craig:
And that threw me into the, "Does it really matter what the figure is? Will your body just adapt to what it is?" So therefor if you're in a gym starving yourself, you're making yourself more efficient, which is the exact opposite of what most people want. They want to burn that fuel. They want to be inefficient. That threw me down to playing with different figures, which eventually ended up being 6,000 calories a day, which was slightly insane.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. What did that look like on a daily basis as far as what you were eating and your frequency and stuff like that?
Billy Craig:
I used to get up in the night to eat. I've referred to it recently as being like a baby's diet, like an infant's diet. If you've got small children, you know that they wake up in the night. Maybe not if you bottle feed them because you can get a bit more in, but if they're breastfed, it's repetition. They've not got the ability to store food, they've been used to being in the womb and just taking glucose whenever they want. I've referred to it recently as the infant diet. And then if you look at the metabolic rate per unit mass, so per kilogram, that's the closest I've ever been in terms of metabolic rate to the metabolic rate in the womb, so probably pretty much that.
Billy Craig:
But I was eating at about, I think it was 03:00. So I'll get up and have a massive bowl of bran flakes and I think, from memory, I've not got all the data. I did record it all, but I think it's probably up in the loft somewhere. I think it was something like half a box of bran flakes. And then I'd get up before I went to work, and I'd have another breakfast. And then I couldn't go longer than, I struggled to have a client for an hour. And I've still got one of those clients now and again. And she would confirm that at 45 minutes, and I was thinking about eating. Because I still used to ride my bike and do shows for various people in like night clubs, the bag of food that I would take with me just to go from say 09:00 till 01:00 in the morning, was insane. I couldn't go anywhere without food.
Billy Craig:
And that's not going to work for most people, because if you've got to sit in an office and a boardroom, you can't be, you can't have a [inaudible 00:11:29] of food next to you. It was too far, but as an experiment it was good. Nobody believed it. Everyone thought I got an eating disorder and was starving myself. My mom kept making comments now, "Come on. You need to start eating." And I don't think it would work that quick for most people, because I've got no background in real dieting. I'd put weight on just through drinking. I'd never drank in my life, and when I got injured I kind of thought, well why not? I've not been drinking because I wanted to be world champion. I haven't got a reason anymore, so I kind of got into that. I just got fatter through, I don't know, maybe inactivity and depression, and just turning to drink.
Billy Craig:
For most people if you've got, I don't know if you're in your forties and you've got a history of dieting, it's not your metabolism that's going to repair that problem. It's going to be a longer term project. I think the stage one, and I wouldn't want anyone to get up to 6,000 calories, it just ruled your life. It's upside, the opposite. It's still a disordered eating, you can't survive without food. And I think that's why metabolism has to decrease. So you're in the womb, pure glucose. And then you're born. And you cry and you get fed. And I think there's a problem around four. So around four, we typically go to school, and then you can't get fed whenever you want anymore. And maybe around four as well, if you start crying and you're hungry you get told to stop being naughty. Whereas when you're younger, you either get taken to the toilet, you get your nappy changed, get put to bed, or get fed. It's like an ideal world.
Billy Craig:
Once you get that little bit older and getting to school age, it becomes a behavioral problem. As you've got to get more physically active, you've got to slow down the metabolic rate a little bit. Make sure there's protein to grow muscles and fat to have a little bit of a buffer, so the growth in the brain dips a little bit, so the cognitive ability. There is some research I've been doing for a new book that, sort of like four or five is your peak of intelligence. You obviously do learn more things, but the size and for what you know, and that's where you peak. And then you actually never really get any cleverer than that after that.
Jayton Miller:
Wow.
Billy Craig:
And if you look at four and five, you ask loads of questions and they'll do stuff. And then by the time they're teenagers, they'll just, "Just tell me what I need to do, and I'll do it." Four or five year old kids are intuitive. They know they're hungry, they know what they want. They'll ask questions. They want to know the answer to why. Why does this happen? Why does that happen? Little bit older and it's, just do whatever they have to.
Jayton Miller:
Wow. That's interesting. One of the things that I've heard before is that, before the age of two, one of the reasons that people can't remember that part of the beginning stages of their life, is because their metabolic rate is so high, that they're almost in a psychedelic-like trance for their first two years of life. Just because the energy flow through the system is at such a high rate that their experiences, it's not really memorable because they get kind of pulled back down after those first two years.
Billy Craig:
I think that's definitely potential. Because if you look at dopamine and... say dopamine, if you've like a baseline dopamine and then a peak dopamine. If you look at that in children, that's why they've got no, they literally I look at that. And like my son, he's five now, and because of the way we feed him, and just like, "Just go for it. Just eat," he's still so passionate about something for 20 seconds and then he's like, another thing over there.
Billy Craig:
And then as things change and diet change and serotonin comes up, and then you narrow down, you become a little bit more fixated on stuff, which is good because you see that thing more clearly, but you miss out on all the things before. And then you'd go too far, and you become OCD. And this is, "I'm fat. I'm fat. And this is all I can think of." If it was a kid, you'd the see the bigger picture and you're not fat. So yeah, I'd say that's definitely plausible. Not something I particularly... You've probably given me another chapter. I'm on 75 chapters already. That will be something, if I go and have another one. I keep not finishing, and I keep having more chapters to the biggest book in the world.
Jayton Miller:
You should definitely send me a link to where I can pre-order the book after the podcast. I'm super interested in that.
Billy Craig:
I did that with my first book. I put a pre-order thing on there, and then it just like... I'd never even thought about the stresses of publishing it. And it changed so much from the start. It was just literally going to be a diet book to start, about why you shouldn't diet. And then it ended up being about Alzheimer's and about how the brain tries to protect itself, so the fat is just an energy buffer. I very much view it, and still do now which is useful to people, that if you're overweight, it's just protecting you. It's protecting you from whatever you're showing it. If you want to show that things are safer over a progressive period of time, do everything safely. Dump in 6,000 calories then, when you've been on 1,500 isn't safe. That just says, our organs, my pancreas isn't big enough to deal with that. We've not had this for 20 years. What's going on? That's more stress.
Billy Craig:
If you do things progressively, understand where you are, build a scientific experiment. An old style scientific experiment. Not this new modern, "This is what we want. What are we going to do?" If you sit there, observe and hopefully measure, you could do it with a calorie formula. You could say, "This is where I am. This I how big I am. And I'm not happy with that. This is what that formula gives me. This is where I want to be. I want to be this weight. That's the difference between them. That's a massive gap. I'm not going to do that, because that would be a massive jump." I'm going to slow it down. That's why need [inaudible 00:17:30] metabolic carts to use, and before I knew they existed, I just used that formula and said, "Well, it's telling me this, this formula. This common theory says that I should have a deficit. I'm not going. I'm going to have 200 calories extra. It's not much. It's nothing [inaudible 00:17:48] really. And then after a period of time, I'll take it up another 200."
Billy Craig:
I just kept doing that. And then when I got metabolic carts, I'd get the reading off that. And I said, "Right, I'm going to do the same thing. And I'm going to take it up by 200. I'll test again in a month. And then go up, and go up, and go up." I think if people start with an objective measure of where they are, so they actually do old school science and observe nature, then perform the hypotheses. And it could still be, "I'm going to eat less, move more." It could be the opposite way around, but if you can't say what you're going to do, you can't measure it at the end. You can't objectively know whether you're going anywhere.
Jayton Miller:
Yeah. Now, whenever you're doing an approach like this, do you take into consideration nutrient density? Or to what degree do you think that that matters?
Billy Craig:
I did think it mattered quite a lot, but I've also seen a lot of people eating a lot of junk food. I think it matters where you are. And I think, like we were saying before, I think for most people if they start something, and they understand where they are and they've not just jumped onto some clean eating, fasting... if they understand where they are, and they start progressively trying to bring it back, by the time they've got there, their energy's increased, their ability to absorb nutrients has increased, their gastrointestinal tract is better. They don't really have to worry about getting particular things. Things just start improving. For, I don't know, 90% of people that do do the thing they want to when they come to me, we end up where everything's all right. We've done it progressively.
Billy Craig:
I think one of the problems in most worlds, in the refeed world is that people suddenly jump in, find out there's this orange juice and milk diet, dump it in, and then can't absorb it. They can't do anything with it, because their gastrointestinal tract has shrunken a little bit through starvation. The pancreas isn't good, so they can't use the sugar that well. They can't get things to the brain, so they end up with brain fog. It's just rushed. For most of the people I work with, when they do it slower over, even years some people, they say, "I understand I have dug a massive hole. I'm going to progressively get myself out of it." They don't really have to worry about it.
Billy Craig:
In some of my athletes, we look at all sorts of things. Well, some of the athletes that I did have. And the one that I'm working with now, we're not at that stage yet because we're looking at performance for him. Then yeah, but we'll be manipulating things and trying to change things around. At the moment we're just looking at baseline and getting that ready. But when he's in the car racing, we'll be manipulating all sorts of things to try and improve it and get things better.
Billy Craig:
I think for your average person on the street, just increasing energy generation, as Ray would say, is enough to get them to where they are. There are people with specific things where we can look and say, "You need some more of this." And then it's like when you use in America, Cronometer. It's great to getting a good, it's horrible and clunky to use and it's painful. It's even worse than tracking calories normally, but as an occasional, "Every two months I'm going to drop into this and see where I am. Do any of those deficiencies link with what I am doing? Do I need to supplement them? Can I adjust things around? Is it because my gastrointestinal tract's not great? Are there reasons for it?" So, another good measure. I'm not keen on just dumping things in unknown.
Billy Craig:
And the same with carbohydrates. I'm more interested in... I had a lady come see me, was diabetic and everything looked good. And she was saying she [inaudible 00:21:43], so she drove to see me, which I think it was like 50 miles, which is nothing to American people, but it's quite a big journey for someone in Britain sometimes to come and see someone like me. And 50% of her intake was fat. And it had just slipped. She'd done stuff before, I'd met her before. And she was saying, "No. No, I'm still doing the same." And the butcher had just slipped up, which is great and there's nothing wrong with it. But she'd not been diabetic for several years.
Billy Craig:
And just over time, she progressively, the macronutrients had just changed. And she was suddenly eating work a high fat diet. Just swapped it round again just by using Cronometer. I think I had to fill it in for her, because she was a certain age and was afraid of the technology. That literal session we just filled in a [inaudible 00:22:30] she was eating a lot of fat, [inaudible 00:22:32] work, so she was missing that meal. Changed it around. The next time she saw the diabetic nurse, everything was fine.
Jayton Miller:
Wow. Now with this progressive approach, how fast do you usually progress? Is that independent to the person?
Billy Craig:
Yeah. That's where psychology would come in for me. And I try and get an idea of, which is a bit woo, of where they are. And everyone will come in and say, "No, this is really what I want to do." I've had someone who comes back every year at the same sort of point. And I'm like, there's got to be something that's kicking this in their life. I don't know, I've always told myself is I'm not bothered if someone came and told me they're a murderer, and they wanted to sort their diet out, I'm literally not bothered as long as you've not murdered any of my family.
Billy Craig:
People do tend to tell me some weird stuff, but I've [inaudible 00:23:30] into the psychology for that reason, not to counsel people, but I try and get an understanding of where they are. And most people tend to tell me the truth, or they're telling me some pretty outlandish stuff. And then from that, I will let them decide. And I will try educate them and say, "Are you sure?" There's people that come in and say, "Right. Now, I want to have one session with you." I'm not the best business person. "I want to have one session with you, and then I'll go it alone." And I'm like, "I'd rather you... I'll have one session with you. And can I have it in five minutes? And when you're on your way to your office, can you just call me and I'll just run some ideas past?" And it will be drip feeding in, because they just go off on their own.
Billy Craig:
And partly because they get back into their old world with their old friends. I suppose it's like packing up smoking. If you keep going to the pub and hanging around with smokers, they're going to drag you back down. In that sort of world, you get people back doing stuff. It's always staged. I don't think anyone's going to come to me having just dieted for a couple of months. I think most people are right there, they're going to do all the other options before they find out about me. Though typically, I'm not the best advertiser. Even through lockdown, "I should this. And I should that."
Billy Craig:
I just sit here writing controversial things and not even pacing it. Because I've just literally built up, I think about 350,000 words in a book, that's going. And really, I could've been posting on the internet and getting customers. And I've just been sitting typing away earning no money, obsessively. And no one sees it. And then seeing that, I'm thinking no one's even going to understand any of this. Sent it out to some people to proofread, and I don't even know if it's finished. Don't even know what some of it says, because it's that long ago. But I still like writing it.
Billy Craig:
By the time people come to see me, they're going to have, they've got to have some sort of history of long-term disordered eating. I just think, having admitted that I rushed into it, because I'm desperate for change but I suffered, I always encourage people to just be in contact with someone. It doesn't have to be me, it can be you, it can be anyone. But get some sort of support network, because it's a different viewpoint really. The whole world's talking about starvation. And not just, they talk about longevity and fasting being good. Like that guy that lived in the biosphere, I wrote about him at one point, where he starved himself. And he was still adamant at his death, his arms were in slings to continue his work, because he's brain was suffering that bad, he was still adamant that he would've lived to 120. It was living in the biosphere that killed him, the nitric oxide or whatever. It was nothing to do with starving himself.
Billy Craig:
The world's full of theories about eating less and doing all sorts of dietary things. I think it's a strange world and I think people are better doing things slowly, admitting that it's taken them 30 years to get that environmental problem. That the fat that got on them as a buffer, so if you loose it quickly, that just signals more stress. If you go and have that all chopped off, that's just going to send a message to your brain saying, "That energy buffer that we've created over 20 years because the environment's not great, has just been taken." So, slow things down even more.
Billy Craig:
In some people I've measured, they've got a very low metabolic rate per unit mass, but they're not fat. They're not overweight. They tend to be the ones in my research, that tend to have the brain degeneration. We've got like family histories of Alzheimer's, and dementia and things like that. And that is one of the things that happens in dementia. People might be plump or overweight which we know is protective in old age. It's good to have a little bit of fat, or some fat. And then prior to Alzheimer's being diagnosed, they seem to lose weight. And that happens in a lot of cachexia and muscle loss.
Billy Craig:
Almost when I see somebody's who's overweight, it's almost to say, that no your body is protecting you. It's protecting your brain. It's creating this energy buffer. Yes, it's fine to lose the weight. We all want to do it, because we all want to look like the pictures we see in magazines or Instagram. But realize that it's an energy buffer, it's an emergency store. Do it properly. Take your time. The longer the better. And most people have messed up diets and on-and-off, and on-and-off. Generally people are there saying, "Well, this is the one I want to do properly. I'm past it." And everyone's always saying, "Oh, I dieted at 20. If I could look like I did at 20 now, it would be great." And then it's, "Oh, well. You're 50 now. You'll probably be saying this when you're 70, 'I wish I could look like I was when I was 50.'" It's a fine line between physiology and psychology really. Calming someone down a lot of the time. They're mad to come do 6,000 calories. I'm like, "No. No. You don't know where you are. It will be... you'll hate me. You'll go in the internet and slay me."
Billy Craig:
There was some guy who did it. I think he tried to get me on his radio show. And luckily I said no, because he was a vegan. I can't remember what his name was now. But literally, "Ah yeah, come on my show," and I was just nervous about it, for some reason. It was on YouTube I think. And then he'd done a water fast, I think four weeks. And then the next thing he'd done was 6,000 calories, because he'd read it on the internet about me. And he wanted to debate that he'd put weight on. I'm like, "You're going to." It's not a fair scientific trial, is it? And it's not comparable. I did it for a year. Whereas, day two and everything. And I'd not done a water fast. Yeah, you'd not be able to repeat the results, you did it for a week. And you just cheated it beforehand.
Billy Craig:
Yeah, there's some bizarre ideas out there. I've got people come in, "I've read this thing. This seems like me." And I know, I did some stuff with Matt Stone before, and he did this Eat for Heat. And it's fine, it's right, but if it's going to cause that panic, then people are going to jump back off and go straight back to their old habits, aren't they?
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. Now, do you notice that whenever you're taking an approach like this and you begin refeeding, is there a significant difference between males and females whenever you're working with them?
Billy Craig:
Psychologically, yes. Some of the males are terrible. I shouldn't say that. Some of the males that have visited me in the past are terrible. I've had family members. Some of them, I don't know. But no, equally, I've had some males are great and are like, "I don't understand it. But I want to. And I need to see more." But yeah, there's been some women that have very low metabolic rates, like a history of severe eating disorder. And I have lied to a few, because I'm literally not telling you that number. I've done it, whereas I said I refed mine up by eating slightly higher. I've done with them, just like, "Ah yeah. It's this figure." But I've had businessmen, really intelligent people who you've said, "This is your metabolic rate. Here's all the data." "No. No. It's not. I'm not eating that much."
Billy Craig:
One must've been about six foot four, and like, "You're a big guy." And. "No. No, I'm going to eat 2,000 because that's what..." there a doctor in the UK, "... Dr, Michael Mosley says." And I don't know, I think it depends on the person. I suppose sometimes if people have been sent by the partner to sort themself out and do it properly, they're not always that willing to do it. I think by the time most people come to me, they've read something about Ray Peat and then just family. And occasionally you get people who've read about metabolic carps, so they're obviously searching for it. And they find that I've got one. And then they find out I'm going to do it completely different to everyone else. I'm not going to give them a massive calorie deficit.
Billy Craig:
I think the people I meet have already got an idea what I'm going to say. Most people are quite ready to do something. And generally if they're not, then I don't work with them. Particularly now, I haven't got the time. I'm far more interested in writing bits for a book that I've not published yet. And I think I've always had that, like I said, I'm not the best business person in the world. I'm not that driven to do it. I've got someone trying to make me a bit more passionate about it, so that I can live and survive and eat. And try and set something up online so that you can help more people. I always have that goal of, I use Patreon, and it was always a goal to get to where I could just survive on every one paying me a dollar, and I got a lot of people. And I could just do whatever, and speak to anyone whenever they needed it. And everyone only paid a dollar. I don't know, I suppose I wanted to be some healthcare socialist.
Billy Craig:
But in reality, if people have got this far then I think they're willing to do something. And I think particularly in the UK, there's just no help anywhere for anyone. I've got someone whose family member is suffering, theoretically suffering with anaemia, and managed to get the basic thyroid test that they've got. And everything looks way off. And it's the first thing they'd ever heard about it. They're not in a position to pay me. I haven't really got the time. And I'm sitting back looking at it, and thinking this is a severe problem, because they have got no awareness that there is anything other than our health service. That's the way to do it. They don't know, they're of a [inaudible 00:33:18], they've got no awareness of anything, any discussion on the internet about thyroid health, they've got no awareness of anything. They're just literally sat there doing that.
Billy Craig:
Typically, if you found someone like myself, or you on the internet, if you listened to your podcast, you're aware that things aren't quite right. And you want to do something. In both men and women, normally, if they've made it here by normal means it's generally slowing them down and saying, "Back off that. Stop [inaudible 00:33:48] down thyroid. And get off all those vitamins. Let's slow it down and see where you are. And then choose what strategy you're going to do." Measure it, because a lot of people throwing a lot of things in. And like, how do you know what's working? How do you know what's not working? So, it's back off, do it one at a time, make it... basically teach people to be a scientist and do it on their own.
Billy Craig:
And then, I think if you do that, and if you can actually measure something, and you know you're testing it, then you're a bit more keen to stick with it. Because well, let's see what the outcome it. And then measure it and then change it, and do it again. And change things, put it up, it becomes a bit more exciting for people.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. What do you think are some of the most significant psychological tools that you've given people that are struggling to make that first step? They're struggling with the amount of calories that they're eating. They don't want to go above and beyond, because they're afraid of the physical repercussions from gaining fat. Or this image that they have in their head. What are some of the things that you give them to overcome those things?
Billy Craig:
Just science to be honest. Just tests. We've got a massive problem at the moment in the UK with behaviorists. And a lot of psychologists, I'm not actually a psychologist, because I didn't do a doctorate in it, but people like myself who are graduate psychologists and actual psychologists, a lot of high ones have wrote to the government and said, "Behaviorists shouldn't be handling a pandemic." We've done behavioral things.
Billy Craig:
Every year I have to take out a subscription to be a member of the British Psychological Society. One year I think they're going to strike me off and say, "You're not coming in," because I had an interview for a psychology doctorate, to be a doctor of psychology, and then the interviewer was, what was my favorite bit of psychology? And I described psychology from years ago where physics was involved and chemistry was involved. It was more like bio-psychology. And they said what don't you like? And I said behaviorism. And this five year doctorate would basically have been behaviorism, on how to turn me around.
Billy Craig:
I prefer to not use psychology. My only use of psychology is to try to understand where that person is now, and the impact it's having on their mental health, and the fear and the lack of glucose in the brain that's driving them towards that fear, so that they're literally acting through fear. I try to put evidence in the way, and then I'll debate them.
Billy Craig:
I worked with someone just before Christmas I think it was. And I gave her all the answers to the tests we'd done. And said, "These are the things that are cropping up, what do you think they mean?" That person wrote back and said, "Well, I think that means that." Because if I would've gone in and said, "Right, this is all this. And then Ray Peat says this, and this thing said that," she would've just nodded her head and said, "Ah, yeah great." I literally just lay it on like, "You tell me what you think this means, and then we'll debate. And I'll probably win. But you give me hell. You fight for what you do, and I'll disprove everything. And then at the end of it, if you win, I'll bow down and then you can teach me some stuff. But you just debate it with me, and question me and challenge me, I'll fight it with everything I've got, and then at the end of it, you tell me what you think you should so."
Billy Craig:
At the end of it we'd have this hour long debate. And then she was like, "Oh, I need to get rid of that and do that." She understood it. Then she might have a little bit of a wobble, because, "I've done 20 years of this," but then she comes back and it's easier to then point her in a direction. I suppose it is behaviorism, but it's more the, "Let's have an argument about it. I'm going to win, because it's what I do. You don't do it, but we need to know what you know."
Billy Craig:
And that's what, you go to see someone sometimes and it's, "I read this. It's great." And I'm just going to nod my head every time you say no, because I know you're good. And so it's a lot better to say, "Well, this is where this thing is cropping up to do with essential fatty acids. What do you think it means?" So they come back, "Well, I need more essential fatty acids than this." "Well actually, it's saying the other thing around. And it's also suggesting to me, given your lactate level and your metabolic rate, and the fact that we know you've got an eating disorder, that you're actually burning fat as a fuel, so that's not great." It gives a good basis for a good argument really, which I quite like.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. What do you think are some of the most common things that people come to you with as far as like their confusion?
Billy Craig:
Obesity is the main one. People seem to think obesity, in the UK we've got this thing, that there's an obesity epidemic in children. And I literally stood in the playground at my child's school, and I can't remember what they said the figures were. And like, "Where are they?" And they were like, "Ah but, well they are here." And I'm, "Where?" In the playground there are some kids that are plump, and that could be the stress of academia pushing the brain and they're not being fed, like the kids at our school don't get an afternoon snack anymore, apart from my daughter because I argued, so she can have one.
Billy Craig:
There's various things, but they come in with this idea that obesity exists and that it's going to kill you. Then you can kill that argument by saying, "Well, here are..." They said, the papers in this country paint it as, "It's a burden on society, it's a burden on the NHS, it's a burden on this." And I'm like, "Hang on a minute, you said they die earlier. How are they a burden on the economy? You say they're eating all the food, and they die earlier, so why are they a burden on the NHS?" And I did a graph with the actual figures of obesity's cost on primary care. And then when you put it in which like drunks on a Friday night, you couldn't even see the obesity. Why are you not picking on them?
Billy Craig:
That's the biggest thing. They come in with this idea that they are obese. And then my idea is that they're not, they're just creating this safety energy buffer, therefor I quite often send them away to read, Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers. I've had quite a few clients that's like, "You can't book in with me. Go and read this book, because it's great. Then come back and then see if your perspective's changed." And they're like, "Oh, yeah. I get that." It's kind of like whatever they come in with. And they always think they're fat and they need to lose weight. And it's like a battle, "I know you're saying to eat more, but I need to limit fat," kind of checking where they are, which again I suppose is psychology. And then getting them to go away and do some work, which is probably because I'm lazy. And then they come back with a slightly changed perspective and, "I get where you're coming from now."
Billy Craig:
It's about getting people to do their own work, which is one of the things that comes out in Ray's thing. Like people send him an email and, "He's not really answered it." And like, "Because he wants you to go and found the answer out. He'd pointed you in the right direction, and he's given you some things to kick your brain into gear. Get a little bit of sugar and it might work." I don't think there's any one... because I spread myself a bit thin. I've had cancer patients. And I get calls of people saying, "Do you do endometriosis?" I'm like, "It's not what I sit here doing, but you give me the problem and I'll do it." I'm quite happy to give my clients a way to get somewhere, because a lot of my clients end up [inaudible 00:41:30], or did do.
Billy Craig:
It's quite a lot of people I've worked with. I'd quite happily send someone too, to do their baseline work. And then I'd rather just have someone new with something challenging that I've not worked with, because it makes me go and read. There's diseases and things I've had, and I've got no idea what this is, and they paid. They're like, "I've paid you because I think you can figure this out." And like, "I'll be back with you in a couple of hours, and then I'll go and read this, do that, and we'll both learn together." But obesity is the big one that people come in with this idea that they are obese, and they are a burden on society, and they're not as good as somebody else. That's the biggest one to dispatch normally.
Jayton Miller:
If you're trying to help someone who has, or who is, or under the impression that they are obese and they want to lose weight, what are some of the tactics that you do in order to allow that to happen?
Billy Craig:
It really depends on the individual, but there was a good example of a guy, I can't remember what weight he was, but fairly large by normal means. His sister was a dealer in diet shakes. She was quite hard onto him to become a customer. And then we tested his metabolic rate per unit mass, and it was something like 11 calories per kilogram. So just sat with him and said, "You literally can't afford to become more efficient." Mine's at 26. And there was some study done on people who live over a 100, and they concluded that they've got low metabolic rates, because they were tiny. And I think Matt Stone's done a sort of... Like an advert for Matt Stone, isn't it? He's done some work on the fact that small people live longer. These people had got what looked like a low metabolic rate, I can't remember the actual figures, but when you actually got it by their average weight, it worked out their metabolic rate was 26 calories per kilogram.
Billy Craig:
They've got a metabolic rate, when you looked at it just per kilogram. If you looked at it... My mate is 130 kilograms, like big guy, you can't compare him against that and say, "Oh, he's got a high metabolic rate, they've got a low metabolic rate." My mate that I measured, who's a big rugby player, hell of a guy, he looks like, I don't know, he ends up having 3,300 calories and everyone's, "Oh, he's got a high metabolic rate." When you actually divide it by that and work out his unit mass, he's fairly efficient, whereas the little guys they're not eating a massive amount of calories, because they're tiny and they're a 100 years old, but they're getting through some energy at a rapid rate.
Billy Craig:
Kids, it's like in the womb, it's a 100 calories per kilogram. It's accepted that the standard norm for an adult is 25. And you never see those. I don't know who worked that out. I don't even know where they worked it out from, whether it was elite athletes or something, but it takes me a lot of effort to keep mine at 26. And if I start working hard, working long hours, doing things for people abroad, and at both ends of the day then that gets knocked on the head quite quick and it drops.
Billy Craig:
My daughter was at 52 last time I tested her when she was six. I've just not gone around to testing them recently, but you're getting more efficient, where it's like, you're born. You're in the womb, it's a 100, and then it's down to 75, then 50. Then all of a sudden, it's like 18. And it's like 25, all the way through till you die 25. And like, you'd never see that. And obviously people who've come to see me aren't in a great state, but I've tested people in uni, and I've tested athletes. You don't see 25 very often. Mainly just me, and that's a lot of effort to be there.
Billy Craig:
And I'm not suggesting you need to be 25. You don't have to be 26, not everyone wants to live to a 100. It's not a guarantee that you'll live to a 100, if you're 26. You just could get run over by a bus or anything. But if you're heading towards the higher end of that metabolic rate per unit mass, things start working better. You've got to be efficient, because you've got to have enough energy for muscles and movement and the brain's got to make sure it can survive. I do believe you have to get some level of efficiency, but if it keeps dropping like a stone, then things don't seem to go really nice. And life seems to get shorter.
Billy Craig:
And particularly, and my thinking was if I can have a high metabolic rate, I may not live to be a 100, if you see how I crash motorcycles in competitions, I probably won't do. But I would like to be pleasant and not riddled with disease, dementia and basically just surviving. That was always my goal, not that there's any longevity guarantee, just that end of life can be pleasant and just off you pop, and that's it.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. I completely agree. Well, you are filled with information and I know you could probably sit here and talk to us for hours on end about, probably just about anything. But where can people find your work and all the stuff that you're up to currently?
Billy Craig:
Not been updating billycraig.co.uk for quite a while, mainly due to time. Try to go on to Patreon, to the link on my website to Patreon, because the goal was to just get to the point where it could just be a dollar each and everyone could just read stuff. I do tend to get to update that. Four books due, so one on coronavirus, one on the psychology of pandemics. One on CO2. And then one that's currently, the big one, which is 350,000 words and 75 chapters, which no one's ever going to read. I'll probably give an award if anyone reads it. That's currently a working title of Controlling Intuitive Appetite, which happens to be CIA as well, so will probably get banned on Amazon. That's due.
Billy Craig:
There was some debate about whether I should just release it as chapters, which may happen just due to time to supply that book. Sections of that keep getting put on Patreon. Myself and Sarah Kennard do the podcast. All the coronavirus things we try to do for free, just to make it accessible for people. Facebook, I tend to get into debates, because I think it's good practice for if I ever have to do a viva to defend things, and I enjoy defending it. Probably not in real life, because I might get punched. But on the internet, it's all good.
Billy Craig:
And then if anyone's got any question, then I try to get back. I'm a bit busy now, because I've got this new project on, that's someone's taken me onto. But where I can, I don't know, I've always had this desire that if people can be helped, they should be. I try to get back to all the questions I can. If someone's polite and got a good question, and [inaudible 00:48:58] it spikes my inquisitive thing.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. Well Billy, I really appreciate your time. For all those who listened, make sure to go check out his website. He has a really good Instagram and Facebook page as well, so make sure to check those out. And we'll talk again soon. Have a good one.
Billy Craig:
Great. Thank you. See you later.
Jayton Miller:
Thanks for listening to the podcast. If you haven't already, make sure to hit the like button, subscribe and leave a comment down below if you want us to cover a different topic.
In this episode of the Thermo Diet Podcast Jayton Miller sits down with Tyler Woodward, a biology student at the University of Maryland. They talk about a lot of the different myths that are floating around the fitness space, from how to lose weight to how to build muscle in the best way possible. Check it out and let us know what you think!
Instagram: -
@_christopherwalker ( https://www.instagram.com/_christophe... ) - @researchcowboy ( https://www.instagram.com/researchcow... )
Tyler's Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/tylerwoodward__/
https://umzu.com/
Full Transcript:
Jayton Miller:
Welcome back to the Thermo Diet Podcast. I'm your host, Jayton Miller, and today I have on the podcast, Mr. Tyler Woodward. Tyler Woodward has been working for UMZU for over a year now. He is a biology student at the University of Maryland and he has absolutely been killing it for us whenever it comes to writing scientifically backed articles and talking about principle and logical based ways to obtain certain health goals. One of the things that he's written on recently is weight loss versus fat loss, fat loss myths, weight gain and muscle gain, optimal versus efficient muscle gain, weightlifting myths, nutrition myths. He's also written a bunch of different articles over blood flow, supplements for blood flow, foods for blood flow, things like that, so he is very knowledgeable and I am super excited for you all to listen to this one. So, without further ado, let's get into it.
Jayton Miller:
Welcome back to the Thermo Diet Podcast. I am your host, Jayton Miller, and today I have back on the podcast, Tyler Woodward. How are you doing today, Tyler?
Tyler Woodward:
I'm great, Jayton. How are you?
Jayton Miller:
I'm doing very well. For the people who might not know who Tyler Woodward is yet, do you mind kind of giving them a brief overview of who you are and what you do?
Tyler Woodward:
Yeah. I'm currently a student at the University of Maryland. I'm studying a degree in physiology and neurobiology. Basically, just a fancy word for a biology major. I've been working for UMZU the last year. Since it started last summer, really. I was working a little bit online before that. I just really started going down fitness journey, like with [Kinobody 00:01:33], when I was a sophomore in high school or freshman in high school, and just kind of dug deeper and deeper into it. Started getting more into supplements, nutrition, found UMZU, and eventually reached out to Christopher Walker. Like, yo, I love what you guys are doing. I really see... I really believe in this company and I see myself being a part of it. And, now, the rest of history.
Jayton Miller:
Heck yeah. It's almost mind boggling how close our stories are whenever it comes to how we got involved.
Tyler Woodward:
It is. I literally said... When I describe you to anyone, I'm like, dude, it's literally like if I had just not went to college and started working there, pretty much. Except you ski, which is... you know.
Jayton Miller:
Yeah, I know. And I have a beard, so that helps, too.
Tyler Woodward:
Well, I shaved... You're supposed to shave after November. You obviously didn't follow the rules.
Jayton Miller:
I mean, I cleaned it up, for sure.
Tyler Woodward:
Mine wouldn't be looking so nice right now.
Jayton Miller:
Something that you've been looking into recently is going into the new year and trying to figure out different kinds of prioritization and body composition goals and stuff like that. Do you mind going into some of that stuff?
Tyler Woodward:
Yeah. So, I think New Year's resolutions at the end of the day are kind of like a marketing scheme, right? It's the gyms and everyone pushing all these sales and nutritional supplements so that you are this year... and it's a great time to start with a resolution or a goal in general. It's the start of a new year. May as well start new. But I think it's just as much of marketing scheme at this point to push people to join the gyms. Everyone knows a January gym surge where everyone's going to gym. And so my goal in writing this article was to simplify it down. To make it more principle and logical based and help you guys, and help anyone, weed through all the complications that we see in mainstream, how many myths there are, and just allow you... provide you guys with the education to make your own decisions. Whether or not you believe what I say, that's completely up to you. I would love for you to respectfully disagree with me. That's part of the scientific process, right? I hope my principles were logically based in that it's hard to disagree with. That was my goal, but if you don't trust what I'm telling you, that's perfectly fine. I have a degree in biology. I'm perfectly fine. That's about it. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. Whenever it comes to goals around the new year, especially whenever it comes to physical goals, it's usually revolved around body composition of some sort. People usually want to lose weight or gain muscle. Can you kind of give us the differentiating factors of weight loss versus fat loss and maybe some of the myths that are around those things?
Tyler Woodward:
The first step in any body re-composition goal is, really, to decide whether or not you want to lose weight and fat or gain muscle and gain weight. The two are not synonymous and they're going to go together for the most part. A lot of times. Especially fat loss and weight loss. But the difference really is in terms of energy. It's being in a calorie deficit. Our metabolism is a sum of your chemical reaction at the end of the day. Let's say I burn about 2500 calories in the day. That is my maintenance calories. If I want to lose weight, I need to be consuming less calories than I'm burning on daily basis so that my body has less energy than it's using. So, we need to pull from... Typically, it's going to go into fat stores, fat cells. That's the body's perfect method to pull... to get energy from. Multi gains, a little bit different. Because if you eat in a calorie surplus... which is obviously more energy than your maintenance, so let's say 2,600 calories for me... you're not necessarily going to gain muscle unless you're producing some sort of stimulus in those muscles, which we get from some form of resistance training.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. Whenever it comes to the difference between weight loss and fat loss specifically, you want to make sure that you retain as much as possible as much muscle as possible, correct?
Tyler Woodward:
Correct. And that's really... The same principle is going to apply for both. The current research has shown about 0.82 grams per pound of body weight. Some say lean body weight, which is a little bit less, but I think 0.82 pounds per body weight. I'm 200 pounds. 0.82 is going to be about 165 grams of protein daily. That will ensure that I'm going to keep as much muscle as possible or most of my muscle when in deficit. And I think... With muscle loss, when you're in a calorie deficit, when you're trying to lose weight, it's probably over-hyped and people worry about a little too much. As long as you're getting adequate protein, your body does not want to take it from the muscle. It's typically going to come from fat or [inaudible 00:06:16]. Would you agree, Jayton?
Jayton Miller:
Yeah, I would agree. A long as the calorie deficit is not too big. Because if you're going extremely aggressive in that calorie deficit, then I do see that there is a high affinity for the protein... the amino acids within the muscles to go through... what is it... like gluconeogenesis.
Tyler Woodward:
Yeah. I believe so.
Jayton Miller:
So, I would just say... Just make sure it's not too aggressive. Take a moderate, balanced approach for sure.
Tyler Woodward:
And that's just going to help in general. I mean, just sticking to it long-term. Weight loss in general. And even weight gain. They're long-term things. It's not going to happen overnight. You can definitely take a more aggressive approach sometimes if you want to do it fast, but obviously it's going to have those consequences where you might lose muscle. You're probably not having any fun because you're only eating 1500 calories a day. If you want to do that, that's on you. It's all about balance, right? Between what you want to do in life and what you want to do with your physical goals.
Jayton Miller:
If somebody is in the position to here they could either go down the route of gaining muscle or go down the route of losing fat, which one do you typically steer towards most often?
Tyler Woodward:
I'm probably going to say gain muscle. If you're that skinny fat physique... and I've definitely been there. I 100% can tell you, I went for weight loss. I wanted to be ripped. When I get out there, no one cares when you're a hundred... I was probably what? 155, 165 pounds. Six foot tall. Yeah, I had a six pack. My arms are twigs. It doesn't really look good. It just looks like you're a skinny kid that has a six pack. So, I would always push towards gaining muscle. If you personally feel like you have a good amount of fat to lose and that's where you're more self-conscious, then definitely go for fat loss. When you're gaining muscle and you're in that caloric surplus, you're going to gain some fat. That's just a reality. You can't gain all muscle. It would great if you could. The smaller your surplus, the more muscle you gain relative to fat, how long you extenuate it, but if you're really insecure about the fat, then by all means, go ahead and lose the fat. You can always gain muscle later.
Tyler Woodward:
We can take the approach whether to go for fat loss or weight loss or go for muscle gain and weight gain. It doesn't mean that we can't gain muscle while losing fat, but it's not our target. We need to have one priority. Like what I said in the article. Maintenance is great and it's probably where we want to shoot for optimal health, being at your maintenance calories consistently and being pretty much in balance with your body, but it's the least efficient way to make long-term changes. You can gain muscle and you can lose fat while at maintenance, but it's going to be the slowest and least... Yeah, the slowest route way to do so. Least efficient.
Jayton Miller:
Yeah, definitely. I completely agree. I would also say that if somebody is metabolically compromised... like if they have extremely low thyroid function or, in general, they're just relatively stressed out... try to go with a maintenance phase and just increase your activity on a daily basis a little bit. Specifically whenever it comes to walking because I think that allows for the least amount of stress to happen on the body while also allowing you to take steps towards your goal. So, if you're struggling with something like that, I would definitely recommend not dropping the calories too low, make sure that you're fueling your body properly, making sure that you're getting all the correct micronutrients in that you need, get a good balance of macronutrients in, and then just up that activity level on a daily basis with getting more steps and walking and good sunshine and all that good stuff.
Tyler Woodward:
Yeah, for sure. Now, I've actually heard coach [inaudible 00:09:54]. He's talked about this briefly. He talked about... One of the best things you can do before trying to lose weight is to make sure you're in that hormonal balance, but you don't have any micronutrient deficiencies. That's really the only way you can increase your metabolism without exercising more. Because that's [inaudible 00:10:09] more calories. So, if you have a micronutrient deficiency, your metabolism is lacking certain ingredients and therefore can't do those chemical reactions. So you're going to increase your metabolism, increase the number of calories you burn. That's just gonna make that loss easier. The maintenance phase can definitely be great, too. And, honestly, a maintenance phase just really comes down... Like I said, it comes down to the calories, right? Your caloric intake. Either getting more calories than you're eating, or burning, or less. A maintenance phase just to see where you're at. See how many calories you're at. A practice run where you're not emotionally attached to losing weight is probably a good thing for almost anyone. Where you don't really care what the scale is saying or what you look like in the mirror, but you're just learning about yourself a little bit.
Jayton Miller:
Yeah, definitely. I would definitely say that the times that I've had the most success whenever it comes to nutrition and getting to know my body and running these different experiments was times where I didn't step on the scale for months at a time and I really didn't care what I looked like in the mirror. It wasn't a priority of mine. It wasn't something that really mattered to my day-to-day life, so I completely ignored it. Because of that, my health was able to basically keep up with where I was going, which was really nice. There was one point when I was eating anywhere from 3500 to 4000 calories a day and I didn't gain an ounce of weight. Not an ounce the entire time.
Tyler Woodward:
That's crazy.
Jayton Miller:
I wasn't even getting 10000 steps a day. I was getting maybe like 5000 steps a day and working out four times a week.
Tyler Woodward:
My story is kind of the opposite. I was always this really skinny kid and I wanted to be ripped and shredded. And then I started pledging. Basically, I started stress eating. The first week, I lost like 10 pounds. Didn't eat anything. I don't recommend this in any way, but it basically helped me to get over my mental body issues. Because I was afraid to gain weight. Because I loved having that six pack. Even though, like I said, it didn't really look it. Just because of this, I gained so much more muscle. Like I said, being in a caloric surplus is so pivotal to efficient muscle growth.
Tyler Woodward:
But back to the story. First week, probably lost like 10 pounds. Just didn't eat. Was so stressed out. Running all over the place on campus. Second week was like, all right, I need to start eating. I would just run to the dining hall every chance I could. Just stuffed in the most cookies I could in my face. Put a bunch of stuff in my face for the rest of the five weeks. Ended up 190. Obviously, I was an egotistical freshman. [inaudible 00:12:30] huge, but I was really just fat and hadn't really been lifting all semester because I was pledging. From that point on, though, I was like, all right. I do need to lose this weight. Obviously, I don't really look good. It especially goes to my face, which drives me absolutely nuts. But from that point on, I realized the value of a caloric surplus.
Tyler Woodward:
Like I said, you can gain muscle and lose fat and maintenance, but when you are supplying your body with that extra energy and then you're producing the stimulus in the gym, it has the extra energy to allocate towards muscle growth. That is so pivotal if you want to gain muscle efficiently. If you don't care, then by all means. There's no reason to rush it. There's no reason to be in a surplus, honestly. But if you want to gain muscle fast and efficiently, the way to do it is being in a surplus. Especially after you're a beginner. It's pretty much impossible to gain muscle.
Jayton Miller:
Yeah, I completely agree. I also think that... In my opinion, if you're going for performance and you're looking for the best possible results whenever it comes to lifting weights and being to being able to adequately perform, get a lot of those extra calories from carbohydrates. It's going to make a huge difference. Carbohydrates are also protein sparing, so you can get away with a little less protein if you want to. Because it frees up those amino acids to get to the muscle.
Tyler Woodward:
Yeah, that's awesome. Also, when you think about... One of the main mechanisms for muscle growth is sarcoplasmic hypertrophy, which is like cellular swelling, which is really just more glucose and then more water being [inaudible 00:13:57]. So, you're just directly... and glycogen as well. You're really just supplying your body with more fuel.
Jayton Miller:
Heck yeah. Definitely.
Tyler Woodward:
And carbs just make you feel great.
Jayton Miller:
Yeah. What are some of the myths that you've heard surrounding fat loss specifically? For me, it's always this supplement's gonna make you burn this many pounds of fat off of your body or you can just eat this one simple food and all the fat is just going to melt off your body. What are some of the things that you've heard?
Tyler Woodward:
Those are definitely all true. For sure. No. My favorite thing is... James Smith talks about this all the time. He doesn't say this specifically, but exercise... and I say this in the article. Exercise and weight loss are correlated, not causated. No matter how much you exercise, if you are not in a caloric deficit, you will not lose weight. There's no fat burning exercises. There's no ways to really... or get fat loss to a specific area of the body. Like I said, people that exercise are more likely to lose weight and are more likely to be healthier, but that's also... That's a mental thing too, right? They're more likely to make conscious decisions that are better for their health in general. But you do not need to exercise to lose weight. There's no fat burn exercises are special. The same thing with fat burning shakes, fat burning supplements, and even the keto diet.
Tyler Woodward:
We talk about this a lot in the thermo diet program. There's two main metabolisms. There's the glucose metabolism, which we say is our optimal or, I'd say, primary metabolism, and then the fatty acid metabolism, which is like the backup metabolism. So, these supplements, they can work in a sense... and let's say they do work... to burn more fat. They change your body to use more of the lipid metabolism. But the problem with this is that if you are not in a caloric deficit and then use all these fat burning supplements... or let's say the keto diet or whatever you want to say... and you are not a caloric deficit, you're just going to replace the fat that you just burned with the fat that you just ate. As we know, the lipid metabolism, the fatty acid metabolism, also has a number of, let's say, suboptimal side effects that... You're going to be [inaudible 00:16:04] more stress and all of that stuff. So, in general, I'm going to favor glucose metabolism just because it's more efficient. You get more energy from it. Less harmful to the body. I mean, we need the fatty acid metabolism as well at the end. When you're in that caloric deficit, if you didn't have that fatty acid metabolism, you would never [inaudible 00:16:20]
Jayton Miller:
Absolutely. Yeah, for sure. I completely agree. I would also say that if you are freeing up or mobilizing fatty acids in your body while you're also in a calorie surplus, that is one of the most... I would say it's one of the best ways to create insulin resistance if that's something that can happen via the Randle cycle because there's going to be more free fatty acids in the blood to compete with the glucose to get into the cell. So, that's something that... Just use glucose. I mean, that's all there is to it.
Tyler Woodward:
Yeah, that makes sense. That's really interesting to think about. I mean, I am not honestly... I need to do some more research on insulin resistance and insulin sensitivity, but a lot of it has to do with how your body processes carbs and sugars. And obviously fats. Like, the more fats that are in the bloodstream, it's going to be competing with the insulin and carbs [inaudible 00:17:14]
Jayton Miller:
Yeah, definitely. So, whenever it comes to gaining muscle specifically, what do you see that is optimal? And then what do you see as efficient?
Tyler Woodward:
Okay, so... and this comes to health in general, too. There are times that we're chasing optimal, right? We want something that's basically perfect. And efficient, in general, in muscle building is going to be more optimal in general. The way muscles work, how they contract, basically when... The bicep is a really good example. One joint is getting closer to the other. As the two joints get closer together, it becomes shorter, the muscle, and that is when your muscle is the weakest. In that fully shortened position. Whenever you flex a muscle, you're putting it in pretty much fully shortened position. And then, in the mid range, when your bicep is like 90 degrees, you're going to be strongest. You're going to be a little bit weaker in the length and range when you're stretching the arm, but not nearly as much as in the shortened range. The more we can align an exercise profile... so like where the exercise is difficult... with how our arm or how our muscle works, the better... the more efficient that exercise will be.
Tyler Woodward:
So, we can produce a lot more stimulus by forming exercises that align with that. One example I like to give is the dumbbell lateral raise. The dumbbell lateral raise is a very inefficient exercise for hypertrophy by itself. Because it taxes only the top portion of the movement. The shortened position, right? At the top of the movement of the dumbbell lateral raise, it is the hardest because your arms are now farthest apart from your body. So, you're now doubling down. You're taxing the weakest portion of the muscle and it's with the hardest portion of the exercise. But I like to bring out... [inaudible 00:19:06] very common question. Partial range of motion versus full range of motion.
Tyler Woodward:
So, this inefficient exercise, which I just took, the dumbbell lateral raise... Let's say I divide it into thirds. I have the top third, the middle third, and bottom third. If I take the lightest dumbbell I'm going to do... let's say the normal 10 pounds, 15 pounds, whatever you do for a lateral raise... and I stick to that top third. And then when I can't do any more reps, I grab the twenties and I go to the middle third, which is now... I'm going to be a little bit stronger and there's a little bit less torque because your arms a little bit closer. So, I'm able to do more reps. Then, I go to the bottom third, grab the 20 to the 30s. Even though I'm not moving... I only move my arm probably a couple of inches, I've now tripled the amount of stimulus that I placed in the muscle. I still don't think the dumbbell lateral raise, even if you do that, is the best option, but it's going to be way better than just doing the 15 pounds because you're not taxing half of the range of motion. If we want to grow muscle, you want to tax as much in the range of motion as possible.
Jayton Miller:
One of the things that I like to think about whenever it comes to that is the stimulus to fatigue ratio that Mike Isreatel talks about. What can you get the most stimulus out of with the least amount of fatigue so you can come back to the gym quicker and more often? So you can create that muscle protein synthesis... trigger that muscle protein synthesis as often as possible. Something like the deadlift is going to be very, very fatiguing, but it's not going to create much targeted stimulus to a certain muscle, whereas if you do a bicep curl or leg raises for the abs or something like that, it's not going to be that fatiguing, but it's going to be high in the stimulus that it creates for that muscle.
Tyler Woodward:
That's a very good point to answer... You've probably heard the saying. Muscles are slave to positions. That's true in an aspect, but I would really say muscles are slaves to biomechanics. The muscle that is most... in the best position to contract or to operate is going to. If I do a bicep curl all the way up top, in the short position, and I just hold it here... I can take a dumbbell, sure. If I [inaudible 00:21:09], that's great and it will work. But if I have a dumbbell right here, I'm really just doing a shoulder isometric. Even though my bicep is the one moving. So, that's an interesting point. And the same thing I talk about a little bit is the compound or isolation exercises or free weights [inaudible 00:21:26] or calisthenics. Like I said, it's really going to come down to your intent. None of them are inherently better than the other. A compound lift, as you said, is very fatiguing and... I think a lot of compound lifts are more fatiguing because the balance aspect. There's so much stabilization required. But if your limiting factor, let's say on the bench press, is your... I don't know... your triceps or your rear delts for some reason, your lats, which [inaudible 00:21:50] that's another point, then you're not going to be able to maximize the stimulus place on your chest. That's because it's not the one failing.
Jayton Miller:
Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I would say that you should just... You just have to prioritize what your goal is. If your goal is strength, then these high stimulus exercises are going to be completely fine because that's what you need to train in order to get strong, but if you're looking for optimal for hypertrophy specifically, whenever you're looking to gain muscle, then I would definitely say that... Find the highest amount of stimulus for the least amount of fatigue that you can.
Tyler Woodward:
100%. That's also going to be thing... I would consider... Most strength trainers are strength athletes, right? Power lifters don't necessarily want to be strong. They want to be strong within squat, bench, and deadlift if that is their goal. They don't necessarily... It doesn't matter how much they can bicep curl or... I don't know... leg raise or calf raise. It doesn't really matter. And it's going to be very different is your goal is to chase a position. To be optimal in that position. I gave the example in the article. When have you ever seen an athlete do a quarter squat in a game? I mean, sorry. An ass to grass squat. No athlete is getting in the athletic position and going ass to grass. So, I don't think the quarter squat is a good move for muscle growth or, really, strength, but it might be a great move for becoming more efficient in that position. Just practicing that and getting that neurological response. Let's say you might be able to squat 315. He might be able to quarter squat 500 pounds. If he doesn't practice that, he might never realize his full capacity. It really comes down to intent. All the time. Like I said, it's really not black... It's hard. We like to paint it as black and white, but it's really... It's pretty complicated sometimes.
Jayton Miller:
It is. Definitely. So, what are some common nutrition myths that you usually see all over during the new year?
Tyler Woodward:
My favorite has got to be that all calories are not created equal. I saw this post... Someone posted on Instagram that said calories don't even enter cellular respiration, which is the process which glucose gets broken down, your glucose metabolism... which is true. They don't enter. But glucose has a certain number of calories. ATP, which is the end product, has a certain number of calories. Saying all calories are not created equal is like saying a mile... If you and I both run a mile, if yours is all uphill and mine is all downhill, we still ran a mile, correct? It's a unit of measurement. When you're talking about the composition of those calories, that's a very different story, but when I tell you that these cheeseburger has 1000 calories and this bag of kale has 1000 calories, the amount of energy... basically. I'm not going to get into the thermogenic effect of food. It's a little complicated. It basically is the exact same amount of energy used for your body.
Tyler Woodward:
Like I said, when it comes down to calorie deficit, if you want to sit on your couch and eat Cheetos all day, as long as you are burning more energy than you are consuming, you will lose weight. Will you feel good? Absolutely not. But it's a numbers game. That's a big one. And I think... The whole idea of... I was yelling at my mom last night for it. She was like, "Oh, well, those athletes, they're not drinking or eating fatty foods." I was like, "Mom, fat... It just has a number of calories. You need a portion of fat." Fats don't make you fat. Carbs don't make you fat. Protein doesn't make you fat. Alcohol doesn't make you fat. It's just any of those in excess will put you in a caloric surplus, which can lead to fat gain. Just the number game, I think people just don't emphasize enough.
Jayton Miller:
I also think that people just want to be told what to do. They don't want to have to keep up with something. So, whenever it comes down to putting in the work to track your calories, actually look at what you're eating and stuff like that, a lot of people are very hesitant about it because it requires effort and it requires work. That's really what all of this comes down to. There are no shortcuts. If there was one, we would have found it by now and we would be telling it to y'all right now. Because there's no reason to keep it to yourself, number one. And then, number two, it's like... I mean, it just doesn't exist. There's not any shortcuts. Work and effort are going to get you to where you want to go.
Tyler Woodward:
Yeah, and that's why I love writing these principle based articles. That allows you, the reader, to debate for themselves what they believe in. When they see a post, they can make those educated decisions thereafter. I mean, if those fat burner supplements worked, we would be selling a lot of them and everyone would be skinny and ripped. The same thing with those weight gainer protein shakes. You need to consume a certain amount of protein every day. If you get that from a protein shake or you get that from a steak, that's... It's all just a numbers game at the end of the day. The same thing goes for micronutrients, which we don't really talk about as much in the article, but it's so important. That's why the chicken and broccoli diet, although it might help you lose weight because it's really easy to lose weight when you're only eating chicken and broccoli, but you're not going to be getting a lot of micronutrients because you're not eating a very diverse array of food. And so that can eventually contribute to micronutrient deficiencies.
Jayton Miller:
Absolutely. Plus, all the fiber in the broccoli and the glycogenic properties. You'll just be walking around probably constipated, farting a lot, and you're not helping your thyroid out either with those glycogens.
Tyler Woodward:
I was thinking about this last night. It's kind of ridiculous that everyone says, oh, you have to eat some more fiber, which is really just... most of the time, it's just from plants and the cellulose that we can't break down. They say, "Oh, you have to eat some more fiber to poop," so you're just literally eating stuff that pretty much... I mean, cellulose can't get broken down. Correct me if I'm wrong. Because we don't have that enzyme, so it just goes in one end and literally comes out the other end. For the most part. It's just kind of ridiculous to think about. It's all about perspective.
Jayton Miller:
Plus, if you're constipated, adding fiber to your diet is going to add bulk to the stool. You're just bulking up the waste even more inside of your digestive tract, so you're just worsening the issue in most cases. So, that is not good. And then whenever you have too much fiber, things like SHBG and aromatase tend to go through the roof, which is going to be antagonistic to protective hormones in most cases.
Tyler Woodward:
That makes a lot of sense. Again, it really just comes down to being in balance. Having the... I always say the yin and yang of your body. The homeostasis. If you feed your body exactly what it wants at the right times, then it's going to operate as efficiently as possible. Really, [inaudible 00:28:53] any time, whether or not you're in balance, your body is going to try to operate as efficiently as possible. Sometimes you just don't supply the correct ingredients.
Jayton Miller:
Yeah, exactly. I would say that would definitely be something to differentiate is what your body wants and what your mind is telling you that you want. That also requires a little bit of self-awareness to know the difference there, too.
Tyler Woodward:
Which brings us to a great point. Cheat meals and cheat days. These things kind of drive me absolutely nuts because the whole idea... the whole premise that you can basically delete a day, you can stuff whatever you want in your face and the calories don't matter, it's just not true. You can easily eat in a cheat day enough calories to completely pull you out of a calorie deficit for the week or for the month. That fully ruins the point. Why would you suffer through those calorie deficit? Because realistically, it's not fun. I mean, you can make it as easy as possible if you really plan it out, but food is awesome. I'd love to eat more. And weight loss stinks. If you just went and eat 3000 calories in that... or let's say 5000 calories in that one cheat day, you just ruined all that progress.
Tyler Woodward:
So, instead, do a plan refeed or a diet break. Put the things you want, the treats, the alcohol, whatever. Plan it into your diet and count for it in those calories. You can eat whatever you want when you're dieting. Obviously, you probably don't want to eat chocolate cake every day because it's going to be really hard to maintain a calorie deficit. But if you love chocolate cake more than anything and that mentally gives you that satisfaction, then by all means, program it in. Program in that ice cream. Whatever it be. Maybe you have a smaller portion. Maybe you don't. It's really up to you. Especially refeeds... and you were talking about that a little bit... can be great for your metabolism as well. Getting those nutrients back in the system.
Jayton Miller:
Absolutely. Yeah. I 100% believe that whenever you implement refeeds into your dieting that it is going to allow you to have more metabolic resiliency. You're not going to take as much as a toll on your metabolism during that time whenever you do incorporate those refeeds.
Tyler Woodward:
Yeah. Even if you want to have basically a cheat day, really just recognize the damage you're doing. It's not free. Or just say, you know what? I have been dieting for the last two months. I need to let loose a little bit and [inaudible 00:31:11] at the bar. That's perfectly fine. But just recognize that it has a cost. Like everything we do.
Jayton Miller:
Yeah, absolutely. 100%. Losing weight freaking sucks. Being in a calorie deficit sucks so much. I don't care what anybody says. For me personally, in my subjective experience, losing weight absolutely is the worst thing on earth. But if it's something that you're doing and it's something that you need to do for your health or for your own perspective of yourself, or if it's just a challenge that you want to overcome, do it in a way that is going to be most friendly to you and avoid all of the BS that is out there. There's just so much bad information that's out there that you have to ignore.
Tyler Woodward:
It really becomes hard. Especially on a social thing. I make sure one of the big things I do when I'm trying to lose weight and a calorie deficit is I do not drink... what's the word... alcohol for pleasure. If I'm going out, we're all drinking, that's when I'll do it, but I won't just have a beer on a Tuesday, Monday night because, to me, that's a waste of calories. If I was in a surplus, I think alcohol can kind of be your best friend because it's free, cheap calories. I don't really do sodas or anything like that. I don't really drink a lot of high calorie drinks. But having a beer at night or... Well, not with thermo. But having a cider at night, it can be... No? Cider's thermo.
Jayton Miller:
Cider's thermo, but you have to watch out for that beer. None of that.
Tyler Woodward:
Watch out for the beer. That's not going to help a calorie deficit. But that's personally my rule. I personally love chocolate and ice cream, so I pretty much have a cookie almost every night, whether or not I'm in a calorie deficit or calorie surplus... or some kind of ice cream. I actually perfected a thermo Frappucino recipe last night. Keep an eye out for that in the Facebook group.
Jayton Miller:
Heck yeah. I'm actually looking forward to that. I have Haagen-Dazs pretty much every single day, though, at this point, but I'm also not trying to lose weight. So, if you're going for a calorie deficit, that's definitely not what you want to do. I would say... Some of the tips that I've used for fat loss in the past is utilize the food that has the highest amount of volume for the least amount of calories. For the amount of volume that you're going to get, try and get as little calories as you can. For instance, watermelon is a really good example. That is very volumous, but it's relatively low in calories.
Tyler Woodward:
I think that might be the only reason I've been able to lose weight. I just pound watermelon. I love a bowl of watermelon. You can get a huge bowl of watermelon. It's like 300 calories and just fills you right up.
Jayton Miller:
Yeah, absolutely. Let's see. What's another one that I've done? Coffee helps a lot. Coffee actually really helps blunt hunger. Let's see. What are some... Berries are another good one. Shrimp is another good one. What are some of the things that you've utilized?
Tyler Woodward:
Definitely watermelon. I've been really getting into potatoes. Not that they're the least calorically dense, but I feel like they're very filling. Especially if you have a little bit on the side with your dinner. I find ice cream... Even though it's not filling probably, I find it very mentally satisfying. Honestly... and we talked about this a little bit in the article. Intermittent fasting, although you should be in a good health place metabolically to do it, I think proportioning your calories towards a later portion of the day, even if it's just four hours and then you break it with a coffee or a smoothie or whatever, has helped me a lot and just made weight loss easier. Because you have the option to eat a huge meal and eat some ice cream at night, which you might not otherwise.
Jayton Miller:
Yeah, for sure. What about tips to gain weight? What are some of the most effective ways, from a nutritional standpoint that you've seen, to gain muscle specifically?
Tyler Woodward:
Probably the same thing. You obviously want to make sure you get enough protein. That's going to be 0.82. But if you want, you can go a little bit higher if you're trying to gain weight. Plus, you have the [inaudible 00:35:19] surplus. Alcohol can be friendly. It also might have some impact on muscle protein synthesis, so you have to be careful with that. If you're going to drink alcohol, try and lift as early as possible. In the morning. Again, it really comes down to just eating calories. I would definitely not fast and try to be in a surplus. I'd probably start my meal off with eggs and a calorie dense meal. Definitely have lunch. Maybe try to have a snack or two throughout the day. And a big dinner. And dessert, for sure. Definitely get your sweet tooth on. Ice cream. Cookies if you want. What else do you like?
Jayton Miller:
The ice cream is the biggest thing for me. Let's see. Yeah, I don't really have too much of a sweet tooth outside of ice cream. I do enjoy cookies, but I usually stay away from them because of the gluten and the polyunsaturated fatty acids. And they're usually not that good in general. So, yeah. I'm still on the lookout for easily accessible thermo cookies. So, if anyone's found those, please let me know.
Tyler Woodward:
Please let us know. That would be a game changer for the world. Hopefully, this Frappucino will be a slight game changer for some of us. But I think more thermo foods... I think we'll see that a lot in the next coming years. I mean, I don't see why... I keep joking about I'm going to make a thermo bagel and pizza place. It's just going to be healthy bagels and pizza and I'm going to be a billionaire. If I can figure it out.
Jayton Miller:
Sourdough. That's the way to go. Sourdough bagels.
Tyler Woodward:
Exactly. I mean, it's definitely possible. Right now, is it plausible? Maybe. We'll see. Hopefully, in the next coming years, as the thermo diet gets more and more popular, we'll see some chefs step up.
Jayton Miller:
Oh yeah. For sure. What are some tips that you have for people to actually set these goals? They have all this information that we just laid out for them. Do you have some examples of goals that they could be setting and ways to actually set those goals?
Tyler Woodward:
I talked a little bit about this in the article and I honestly kind of think numerical based goals are overrated. Especially for weight loss and fat loss. Let's say I want to lose 10 pounds. How do I know when I'm going to look like 10 pounds? Is that enough? Is that too much? Same thing with muscle gain. Those are perfectly fine goals to set. If you've never been goal setting, numerical based goals are by far the easiest to do. Because you can just look at your scale and check it off the list. That's great. But, instead, what I would really tell you to focus on is... I say this in the article. As cliché as it is, life is about the journey, not the destination. Maybe it's time to stop focusing on the endgame and instead focus on the steps that will bring us there. Maybe it's time to focus on the day to day actions.
Tyler Woodward:
Like I said, you're going to lose sometimes. Some days, you're going to eat in a caloric surplus no matter how much your day sucked. Those days that you're eating in a caloric surplus when you're trying to lose weight will probably be the worst days for you. It's mentally taxing. But it happens. It's a long journey. It's a war. As long as you're winning more days than you're not, you're going to lose weight over time. It's about chasing those little steps that add up to those big end results. I like to say this and I've really been focusing on this in the gym. It's not about the big picture. Yeah, it is, but it's the sum of those little movements that end up in the big picture. It's about focusing on that one rep within that set each single time that you're doing it. Those little accumulations of those small things are going to add up to those big pictures.
Tyler Woodward:
I read an awesome book. It was by Joshua Waitzkin. I forget what the book is called. Oh, The Art of Learning. He talks about the difference between me and you and LeBron James. Obviously, LeBron James is probably the best basketball player of all time. Or MJ. I'm not going to get into that right now. I can shoot a basketball. I can't dunk. One day, I'm going to be able to. [inaudible 00:39:21] I can dribble. I can do all this. The difference... I probably have close... Let's say I have 75% of the form that he does. Which is [inaudible 00:39:30] It's those little things that he doesn't have to think about because his form is perfect. Pretty much everything that he does. Because he has perfected those little things to a tee. Now, he doesn't have to think about those. He can look all around him and absorb so much more information at such a faster rate that he's seeing the game at a different level than we all are. It's like he's watching it in slow motion. It's the same thing. It's those little things that add up to big changes in the long run.
Jayton Miller:
Absolutely. For sure. I completely agree. I'd also say... I think one of the things that holds people back from getting to a lot of the goals that they set for themselves is worrying about external factors. Whether it is other people or the circumstances that you're in. You really only have control over yourself, how you react, and the things that you do. And so take ownership of those, take responsibility for those, and then move forward in a way that is productive to yourself. Don't worry about anybody else or what might happen tomorrow. Worry about right now and do the thing that is going to allow you to be most progressive and successful right now.
Tyler Woodward:
100%. Hypertrophy coach, Joe Bennett, talks about this a little bit. He says if you're a single father and you have two infants at home that aren't sleeping through the night, your priority probably should not be muscle growth realistically or fat loss. You have two kids and you need to take care of them. That doesn't mean you let your goals slip under the table or you push them away, but it means you do as much as you can right now to accomplish those. If that's only going to gym twice a week or once a week, at least you're doing that and you're putting in the effort. What you can allocate at this time. It's all going to be... Like I said, it's all about intent. It's about perspective. It's all about context. How we fare in a different situation is how we make life. And that is life, right? Just making the best of your situation.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. 100%. Well, Tyler, I'm going to go ahead and wrap it up here. Where can people find you? Connect with you? Talk to you?
Tyler Woodward:
You can find me on the Thermo Diet Facebook group or on Instagram @TylerWoodward__. Wood as a W-O-O-D-W-A-R-D. That's about it. Thanks for having me, Jayton.
Jayton Miller:
Heck yeah. For those of you listening, make sure to hit him up. He's in there all the time. Even if it's 1:00 in the morning, feel free to send him a message. I'm sure he'll message you back. But yeah. We touched on a lot of topics during this episode. I hope you find it helpful and we'll talk to y'all next time.
Jayton Miller:
Thanks for listening to the podcast. If you haven't already, make sure to hit the like button, subscribe, and leave a comment down below if you want us to cover a different topic.
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Jayton Miller sits down with Tiffany Williams, a Functional Nutrition Therapy Practitioner and Fertility Awareness Method Coach. They talk about what fertility awareness is, why you should avoid hormonal contraception, and what some perks of this method are outside of being a natural birth control method. Check it out and let us know what you think!
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Full Transcript:
Jayton Miller:
Welcome back to the ThermoDiet Podcast. I'm your host, Jayton Miller. Today, I have on the podcast with me, Miss Tiffany Williams.
Jayton Miller:
Tiffany Williams is a functional nutritional therapy practitioner and she actually coaches women with fertility awareness. So in this episode, we talk about natural birth control methods. She actually taught me a lot that I hadn't looked into myself, and I'm really excited for y'all to be able to dive into today. So without further ado, this is Tiffany Williams. Let's get into it.
Jayton Miller:
Welcome back to the ThermoDiet Podcast. I'm your host, Jayton Miller. Today, I have Tiffany Williams on the podcast with me. How are you doing today, Tiffany?
Tiffany Williams:
I'm doing well. Thank you. How are you?
Jayton Miller:
I'm doing very well. So for those of you who don't know Tiffany, she is currently doing her own coaching program for women who ... Now, is it just fertility awareness or is it kind of like a breadth of things?
Tiffany Williams:
It's a bunch of things, so if you have period pain, if you have PCOS, endometriosis. I'm a functional nutritional therapy practitioner, as well, through the NTA. I'm currently working towards my fertility awareness educator certification.
Tiffany Williams:
I'm kind of blending those two things together, because they do really marry each other. Nutrition and fertility really go hand-in-hand. So, putting those two together to help women heal their cycle issues.
Jayton Miller:
That's awesome. Do you mind telling listeners how you kind of came into this sphere?
Tiffany Williams:
Yeah, sure. I started dating my boyfriend about three years ago, and I decided that we did need some sort of birth control. So, I went to my gynecologist. I decided to go with an IUD because I have tried many different types of birth controls through the year.
Tiffany Williams:
I've been on the pill, several different types of pill. I've been on the ring. I decided in IUD might be better, for some reason. So, I got the IUD inserted. A couple months later, I found out that it was dislodged, so I had to get it removed.
Tiffany Williams:
I had decided before I got it removed, that I really wanted to look into natural birth control. I went to Google and I was like, "Is there such a thing?" And then I found out about fertility awareness method, particularly the book called Taking Charge of Your Fertility.
Tiffany Williams:
I immediately jumped on that. I brought that with me to my appointment, when I was going to get my IUD removed. My doctor removed the IUD and he was like, "All right, so we should put another one in" I was like, "No, I think I'm actually going to try this thing called the fertility awareness method." I showed him my book and he was like, "Okay. Well, I'll see you back here in three months, when you're pregnant."
Tiffany Williams:
I was just like, I can't believe that he was just so passive and not helpful at all. I did feel really discouraged by that, but I decided to keep going and keep learning about it.
Tiffany Williams:
Unfortunately, I feel like fertility awareness is so niche, that I didn't have any friends that were doing it. So that, I feel like also kind of deters you when you don't know anyone else who knows about it.
Tiffany Williams:
Everyone's like, "Oh, you're just going to track your temperatures? Is that really going to help you avoid pregnancy?" But it does.
Tiffany Williams:
I've been doing that for around three years now. No pregnancy scares, none at all. And I finally decided that I was going to become a fertility awareness educator.
Tiffany Williams:
I'm going through FEMM, which stands for Fertility Education and Medical Management, their program. Which is a little different from what Taking Charge of Your Fertility teaches because it teaches you want to track your BBT at your cervical mucus and your cervix height, but FEMM teaches cervical mucus and LH testing. So, it's a little bit different.
Tiffany Williams:
There are many different forms of fertility awareness-based methods, but it's important to know that they are all really effective. It just takes some work to learn and understand how to track your biomarkers, which would be that BBT or basal body temperature, cervical mucus, which across the board, pretty much every fertility awareness-based method is going to track cervical mucus. It's one of the most important biomarkers. And then things like LH, cervical height, progesterone strips, et cetera. It really depends on the method, but across the board, everyone's tracking their cervical mucus.
Jayton Miller:
Okay. So generally speaking, what is fertility awareness?
Tiffany Williams:
Okay. It's the tracking of the biomarkers. Those biomarkers tell you where you're at in your cycle. So at the beginning of our cycle, FSH from our pituitary ... There's like a feedback loop that happens. So FSH communicates with our ovaries. I'm forgetting words. Communicates with our ovaries and it stimulates a follicle to start maturing. And as this follicle starts maturing, it produces increasing amounts of estrogen.
Tiffany Williams:
In increasing amounts of estrogen, you'll start to see cervical mucus. The cervical mucus, there's two different types taught in the method that I teach. Something called EL mucus, which could be described as a moist type mucus, where that stretches less than half an inch and ES mucus, which would be described as egg white mucus. That stretches way more than an inch. It's very slippery. It's very lubricative, very stretchy.
Tiffany Williams:
The ES mucus is the mucus where ovulation is about to occur. So, when we have that increasing amount of estrogen, that feeds back to our pituitary and the pituitary releases LH or luteinizing hormone. It's the luteinizing hormone that makes ovulation happen and the corpus luteum to form.
Tiffany Williams:
We really want the corpus luteum to form because that's where we make progesterone for the rest of our cycle. And so progesterone, when it dominates in that luteal phase or the phase that's right after ovulation, you're going to have very little to no mucus because progesterone actually produces a very thick, dense mucus. It's almost like a plug that happens in the cervix.
Tiffany Williams:
That mucus is anti-microbial, it's thick. Sperm can't make it through. And even if it did, there's no egg to fertilize at that point because after an egg ovulates, it's only alive for around 24 hours.
Jayton Miller:
Interesting. How long does that last phase usually last?
Tiffany Williams:
A healthy luteal phase will be anywhere from nine to 18 days. It's funny, because it just depends on the methods. Because if you are following Taking Charge of Your Fertility and based on BBT rules, an 18 day luteal phase, if it's characterized by 18 high temperatures, that could indicate pregnancy, if you have those 18 consistent high temperatures.
Tiffany Williams:
However, if you are not following Taking Charge of Your Fertility rules, an 18 day luteal phase is okay, but if you're having longer than that, that might be cause for concern.
Tiffany Williams:
If you're having shorter than nine days, that is considered a short luteal phase. That could signal that there's a progesterone insufficiency happening or ovulation maybe didn't occur or there's something called a luteinized unruptured follicle.
Tiffany Williams:
I don't feel like many people talk about this, but that's where the egg is kind of stuck in between ovulating and not ovulating. A little bit of progesterone will be produced, but it'll be a low grade amount and it won't be enough to support a healthy luteal phase. So, between nine and 18 days is a healthy length for a luteal phase.
Jayton Miller:
Okay. So what are the fertility rules that you mentioned?
Tiffany Williams:
Yeah. For BBT, you'd want take your temperature or basal body thermometer, basal body temperature in the morning. This is your waking temperature. This is before you get out of bed to use the bathroom, before you take a drink of water. You want to take your temperature every morning.
Tiffany Williams:
In your follicular phase, which is that first half of your cycle, which would be menstruation up until ovulation, your temperature is going to be on the lower side. It generally should be in the high 97 range. I've heard people say 96. I've heard people say 97 ... sorry, 97.6 or 97.8. In that range is okay.
Tiffany Williams:
But then in your luteal phase, you should be in the 98 range. Up around 98.6 is where you should be in the morning.
Tiffany Williams:
If in your follicular phase, you're in the 96 range. And then in your follicular phase, you're in the 97 range, there could be something else going on, like low thyroid issues or low metabolism happening.
Tiffany Williams:
As far as the other rules, that could be happening with cervical mucus, you have to track it every day. Also, you always record the most estrogenic sign of the day.
Tiffany Williams:
I was describing EL mucus just being moist or ES mucus being super stretchy and lubricative. If you have EL mucus in the morning and you have ES mucus at night, you're going to record ES mucus. You're going to record the most estrogenic sign.
Tiffany Williams:
Once you start seeing that moist or that egg white type mucus, you are in your ovulatory phase. So, until you're out of that ovulatory phase, if you're avoiding pregnancy, you should be either avoiding sex or relying on another contraceptive method, like a barrier method.
Tiffany Williams:
There's also something called a peak day. That would be the last day you see egg white cervical mucus. This is something that's brought up in, I'm pretty sure ... I want to say all, but I don't know every fertility awareness-based method. I just know a couple and the one that I practice in particular.
Tiffany Williams:
But for peak day, you always have to do a count of three days of possible fertility after that last day of estrogenic mucus, because ovulation can happen. It can happen either three days before that peak day or three days after. It might be dryness for three days after that peak day, but ovulation could occur in those three days.
Tiffany Williams:
There's also LH. Sorry. I'm talking a lot, but it's just all of these biomarkers have to be used together because I think there's a lot of misinformation out there.
Tiffany Williams:
I think there's a lot of people that do natural cycles and just do their BBT, but it really doesn't account for ... If you're seeing estrogenic cervical mucus, but your thermometer is telling you that it's okay to have intercourse and you're avoiding pregnancy, there's a chance that you could get pregnant.
Tiffany Williams:
So, it's important, if you're doing BBT, also tracking your cervical mucus. And then on top of that, there's something called LH, which is luteinizing hormone and testing that during your ovulatory phase, to see if you get a positive. Because then that's letting you know that there's an LH surge about to happen, which means that you may be ovulating in the next 24 to 48 hours.
Tiffany Williams:
There are lots of women that like to rely on LH testing. I don't think LH testing alone is reliable by itself. It also doesn't tell you if you've ovulated and it's not a guarantee that you will ovulate, so yeah. You just have to use them all together. You can't just do one. So yeah, that's my two cents.
Jayton Miller:
Yeah. That's a lot of information. It's kind of interesting. So why do you think that this is more advantageous than something such as regular contraception, like the pill or something like that?
Tiffany Williams:
Because it increases bodily autonomy. When I was telling you that I went to my doctor and told him that I wanted to do fertility awareness, it's just like, it gets brushed off, but it's a chance for you to learn about how hormones are affecting you and what your hormones are doing throughout your cycle. That's not something that your gynecologist is going to teach you about.
Tiffany Williams:
I'm not going to say it's for whatever reason. I honestly don't think that doctors have enough time to sit you down and talk about that stuff, because they're trained in medical school that they only have about 10 minutes with patients. So it's like, I don't think that we can really expect our doctors to educate us like that and we need to do it ourselves, honestly.
Tiffany Williams:
Fertility awareness is also the perfect, off-the-grid birth control, I always like to say, because it can be as expensive or as cheap as you want it. Like cervical mucus, it's going to happen. It's your body. It's for free. It's happening. It's going to tell you if you're fertile or not.
Tiffany Williams:
And then if you want to do added LH strips or a BBT thermometer, BBT thermometers aren't that expensive. Mine was, I want to say $3 from a Rite Aid, but you can find them for cheap on Amazon if you shop at Amazon. You can find them for $15. It's really cheap. LH strips can be a little pricey, but it's really up to you.
Tiffany Williams:
It's not something where you have to spend $30 every month, on a patch or a pill or whatever. It's not something where you have to make an appointment with your doctor to get an IUD removed or get a shot or a patch removed.
Tiffany Williams:
It doesn't take that long either. Because I think a lot of people think that, "Oh, I have to take my temperature every morning. That's so annoying," but if you take a pill every morning, how different is that? It's not that hard. It might take one minute longer, because then you need to chart it. Either you put it in an app or you put it on your paper chart.
Tiffany Williams:
I think that women need to know how their bodies work, and fertility awareness is a great way for women to start learning about their bodies.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. You had mentioned earlier, progesterone and the role that, that plays. Can you kind of go into the difference between progesterone and progestins and how they play a role in this as well?
Tiffany Williams:
Yeah. Progesterone is actually really wonderful. Progesterone maintains the uterine lining. It's a hormone of relaxation. It helps normalize blood sugar levels. It's a natural diuretic. And of course, like I was saying before, it thickens cervical mucus, which that's how it prevents ... that's one of the many ways that it can prevent pregnancy.
Tiffany Williams:
But then, when we're talking about progestins, they were originally made by biochemists, because there was an issue that progesterone can't be given orally. So, yeah. So they were invented because it can't be given orally, but then progestins can.
Tiffany Williams:
Unfortunately, progestins have properties of estrogen, progesterone and testosterone. So, you're not just getting progesterone. You're getting those other effects that testosterone and estrogen would also give you.
Jayton Miller:
So it works on those receptors?
Tiffany Williams:
It's interesting that you say that because progestins actually don't bind to those receptors. They can't bind to progesterone receptors. So, it's weird that it's promoted as something that would relieve cycle issues like PMS, when it literally can't bind to progesterone receptors.
Tiffany Williams:
So it's just like, looking at the research on that, I'm just so curious why it was presented as this kind of cure-all for female hormone issues.
Tiffany Williams:
As far as testosterone, I'm not sure if it links to testosterone and estrogen receptors. I'd have to do a little bit more research on that. But for sure, it doesn't for progesterone.
Jayton Miller:
Wow. That's really interesting.
Tiffany Williams:
Yeah. But yeah, so progestin can raise blood pressure, while progesterone doesn't. Like I was saying before, it lowers it. Progestins do not have the ability to convert into other steroid hormones, where progesterone can be used as a precursor to those other steroid hormones. So progestins overall, they don't have the same effects that progesterone has. If you can't even link to the progesterone receptor, how would it?
Jayton Miller:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Tiffany Williams:
Yeah.
Jayton Miller:
Interesting. So what are the risks that are usually associated with using something that's progestin rich, like a hormonal contraception, I guess.
Tiffany Williams:
Yeah. Pretty much a lot of the complaints that you hear from people who take hormonal contraceptives. So, the high blood pressure, the high risk of blood clots, moodiness. Sometimes women will even get ... If you didn't have PMS symptoms before, and then you go on the pill, you'll start to get PMS symptoms. So, it's just the complete opposite of what you would want from actual progesterone.
Tiffany Williams:
While I don't necessarily encourage progesterone or hormonal replacement therapy, unless it's necessary ... I don't know where I was going with that. If you were to do it, doing a progestin is not the way to go. A natural progesterone is where you want to go.
Tiffany Williams:
There are plenty of women who have PCOS or extremely heavy periods and their doctors will be like, "Oh, take progesterone."
Tiffany Williams:
And while they're being told it's progesterone, it's actually progestin that they're given. And they're usually not told to only do it in the second half of their cycle, which is where you would want progesterone to be. They're told to take it the whole time.
Tiffany Williams:
So, they're getting these crazy symptoms while they're trying to solve their PCOS or their heavy bleeding or their PMS and they don't understand why it's not working. And then they're just being blamed for not trying hard enough on their diet or whatever.
Tiffany Williams:
So, natural progesterone is the way to go, if you do decide to do hormonal replacement therapy. But it's really, really important that you keep your blood sugar balanced, because if your blood sugar dips too low progesterone can't ... adrenaline keeps progesterone from being able to attach to a progesterone receptor. And even if it does attach, it can't reach the nucleus of the cell like it's supposed to.
Tiffany Williams:
So, it's really important that you get that blood sugar balance and your stress in order, before you even attempt doing any type of hormone replacement therapy.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. Yeah. I mean, the more that I learn about the human body, the more that blood sugar stabilization and regulating blood sugar throughout the day becomes more and more prevalent and more and more important. So, it's kind of fascinating that it's important even for fertility awareness too. What are some of the benefits that you've kind of experienced from doing this method?
Tiffany Williams:
Well, I no longer get crazy, horrible moods. I feel like when I was on the IUD or the pill, yeah, I had a lot of mood issues.
Tiffany Williams:
Yaz was the first pill that I ever tried, which I don't know if you've heard of Yaz. I feel like many people have, but I think it was taken off the market at some point because there were so many horrible side effects that were happening. Honestly, I thought I was going crazy when I was on that pill. It was so bad.
Tiffany Williams:
I no longer have to take a pill every day. I don't have to check my IUD string. I don't have to wonder if my IUD is going to dislodge.
Tiffany Williams:
This is just a side note. Around the time that my IUD dislodged, two of my other friends who got IUDs, the same thing happened to them. What are the chances that something like that would happen?
Tiffany Williams:
But yeah, it's hormone-free and my periods have been way better than they have been in the past. I just think that's so wonderful because I know my body way more than what I did before.
Tiffany Williams:
So yeah, if you're experiencing symptoms with hormonal birth control, fertility awareness is a great option if you want a natural birth control.
Tiffany Williams:
Because I think a lot of people are told that they could do a copper IUD and it'll be fine, but copper IUDs are full of biounavailable copper, which can bring other minerals out of balance. Copper IUDs are also known to cause very heavy, painful periods.
Tiffany Williams:
Do you really want that? If you've never had painful periods, if your periods have always been a regular flow, why would you opt into something that would give you just excruciating periods?
Tiffany Williams:
Why not go for something where there's no hormones involved? Well, aside from the ones that are already happening in your body. You don't have to have a foreign object in your uterus. That's why I love fertility awareness.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. I think those are all very valid reasons. Do you have any other kind of resources or information that people can utilize if they want to learn more about this?
Tiffany Williams:
Yeah, definitely Taking Charge of Your Fertility by Toni Weschler, I believe her name is. I think that's a wonderful place to start.
Tiffany Williams:
But if you start reading it and you're like, "I don't feel comfortable yet. I'm kind of confused with what I'm seeing ..." Because cervical mucus tends to be kind of a stopping point for a lot of people, because they're not sure if the mucus that they're seeing is a white mucus or if it's just the building up of estrogen or whatever. Work with a practitioner. It honestly doesn't cost too much. Most practitioners have fairly low prices, as far as fertility awareness is concerned, because it's something that they really want to teach to women.
Tiffany Williams:
I'm also fertility awareness educator, if anyone's interested, but yeah, that's pretty much the best place to start. That's the book that everyone starts with.
Jayton Miller:
Sounds good. And then also follow you on Instagram as well, correct?
Tiffany Williams:
Oh, yeah. Yeah, at Sage Flow Holistic. Or sorry, Tiffany Williams FNTP, and then SageFlowHolistic.com is my website.
Jayton Miller:
Heck yeah. Well, for all those of you listening, make sure to give her a follow, check out her website. Tiffany, I really appreciate your time on here today. Thank you for the abundance of information. I look forward to having you on again sometime.
Tiffany Williams:
Yeah. Thank you so much for having me on here. It was wonderful.
Jayton Miller:
Thanks for listening to the podcast. If you haven't already, make sure to hit the like button, subscribe and leave a comment down below if you want us to cover a different topic.
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Jayton Miller sits down with Theresa Piela. In this episode, Jayton and Theresa talk about a wide variety of topics concerning the mental aspects of healing the body, how the gut impacts our thoughts, Theresa's journey towards healing her body, eft tapping, and more! Check it out and let us know what you think!
Facebook Group and Fanpage -
Thermo Diet Community Group ( https://www.facebook.com/groups/16721... ) - Thermo Diet Fan Page ( https://www.facebook.com/thermodiet/ ) Youtube
Channels: - Christopher Walker ( https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTA1... ) - UMZU Health ( https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2IE... )
Instagram: -
@_christopherwalker ( https://www.instagram.com/_christophe... ) - @researchcowboy ( https://www.instagram.com/researchcow... )
Theresa's Website - https://www.livingrootswellness.com/
https://umzu.com/
Full Transcript:
Jayton Miller:
Welcome back to The Thermo Diet Podcast. I'm your host, Jayton Miller, and today I have a guest on the podcast by the name of Theresa Piela, otherwise known as Living Roots Wellness on Instagram. She has a phenomenal story and we go into some of the details around the mental aspects of healing and some of the challenges that she's faced and some of the things that she's learned along the way of healing herself. So I'm really excited for you guys to be able to listen to this podcast. There's a ton of golden information inside of this podcast. So without further ado, let's get into it.
Jayton Miller:
How's it going today, guys? I'm here with Theresa ... Okay. Can you say your last name for me?
Theresa Piela:
Piela.
Jayton Miller:
Piela. How are you doing today?
Theresa Piela:
I'm doing well. How are you?
Jayton Miller:
I'm doing very well. So for the listeners out there, do you mind kind of telling them your background and how you came into this area of health?
Theresa Piela:
Yeah, so I guess I didn't realize I was even in the health field because I was so in the mud of trying to figure out what was going on with my own body, and for so long, I thought it was normal. I remember feeling pretty off, as early as second grade was when I started to feel like something wasn't right. But I assumed that everyone kind of felt that weight of fatigue and just low energy, low moods, and it kind of snowballed from there. The older I got, the worse I fell and I kind of just kept going, like most people. They just kind of put their head down and I was just focusing on school and kind of surviving. I think, yeah, just over the years it really started to worsen, and what I thought was my first way out was getting into things like Prozac to help with my depression and my anxiety, and that was the only option that was presented to me from my Western doctors and kind of blindly fell into that.
Theresa Piela:
That was, I think, kind of the first challenge on this journey where I blindly took something and then started to feel even more off and started to feel not myself, kind of numb. All of a sudden I was sleeping well and I was feeling a little bit better, but not entirely alive and things from there got a little bit more intense. In college I had a stress fracture, that was interesting. Started to get testing, found out I had severe osteoporosis and all sorts of other issues. Then that opened up the door to testing in general, and luckily I had a really supportive mom that had already been starting to dive into the world of chronic illness because there had been some Lyme cases in my family. That's when that portal opened up. We started doing Lyme testing. I came with a bunch of infections like Bartonella, Babesia, Chlamydia pneumoniae, I think, is what they call it, all sorts of tick infections, parasites, the classic heavy metal, really high levels of heavy metal, mold in the urine, the classic hypothyroidism.
Theresa Piela:
All of these crazy things. Food sensitivities to everything, and when I started collecting those binders of lab tests and, again, feeling my body almost breaking down, it was at this point where it wasn't a matter of just pushing through it anymore. I was barely able to make it through the day because my energy was just non-existent and my food reactions had become so intense. So I had weaned off of the Prozac ... and cut me off at any point. I find myself not really telling the story often, so it's not as succinct as I'd like, but anyways. I weaned myself off of Prozac and that's when I stopped sleeping. As you know, sleep is where the body repairs, you rejuvenate, all those wonderful systems kick back in and kind of enter this state of delirium. But that's when I started really diving into the research myself. So both a curse and a blessing, I guess. From that time, really, it's been kind of trying to figure out what's been leading to what, and I've spent many, many years going down rabbit holes where I thought I'd find the answer.
Theresa Piela:
First I thought it was ... it's a Lyme, great. We'll kill the Lyme with really high dose antibiotics and all of these antiparasitic drugs and dah, dah, dah, dah. At a certain point, the body breaks down even more so then I'd take another route and say, "Oh yes, it's the candida and it's the mold. Let's do some culation, let's do some sauna therapy, let's take care of that." So long story short, it really got to a sensitive point when I just was getting so, so sick. My body dropped to 79 pounds. I was just emaciated and barely able to function. I would spend the day in the bathtub just kind of surviving, and this is a little graphic, but I had lost complete gut motility. So I would basically spend my entire day doing rounds of enemas just to get the matter out of me that I wasn't assimilating, I wasn't absorbing. And then ... Wow, the Carnivore Diet is what kind of led me to Ray Peat and Danny Roddy's work.
Theresa Piela:
I met another fellow carnivore that had very similar health issues, kind of hitting a point where the body just started breaking down and Carnivore served as a stabilizing factor for both of us. Then he started telling me a little bit about Danny Roddy's work and Ray Peat, and my sister on the side had also found huge benefit from Kate Darien's work and Ray Peat in general. So I was a little behind in starting to see that as a possibility, because again, I was so reactive to every food. Even when I was just eating beef and egg yolks and butter, I was still having huge histamine reactions to that where I'd kind of have to lay down and be out for the count for the day. But something about the inspiration of Ray's work and starting to realize that I had this kind of invisible community of other people that were starting to sort out their own health journeys, something about that gave me hope.
Theresa Piela:
I started really focusing more on the brain rewiring aspect, knowing that yeah, my body was breaking down, but what did I have control over of pulling in the stoic wisdom at the same time to really give myself something to latch onto where I didn't take my suffering personally. Yeah, I think it kind of snowballed from there. Just starting to really experiment still, quite sick still, pretty disabled, but slowly crawling out. Yeah, that kind of brings me to now. I, last year, dove into colon hydrotherapy, training to get certified because I really, really think that the function of the gut is so intricately tied with our ability to feel healthy and to have a normal and functioning immune system and everything in between and just our moods in general. So yeah, I really firmly believe in that. Also credit a lot of my life to that simple tool for really helping kind of the sickest cases at least stabilize so they're not completely sick. So hopefully that answered your question in a kind of circular way.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. So what was kind of the first high leverage factor that you utilized and then how did that kind of go into the metabolic nutrition and stuff like that?
Theresa Piela:
Yeah, so the carnivore approach, I think the high protein diet, all of a sudden ... I remember waking up, it was two days in of switching cold turkey to 100% meat. Two days in my brain fog had gone away and the extreme bloating I had been experiencing for the last 12 years of my life started to go down. So that gave me a little kind of spark of inspiration and started to dive more into liver function and how important protein is and just different amino acids and the effect on the body. Honestly, then I started to research the effects of caffeine. Again, I had been told by my doctors and all of my healers and specialists to absolutely stay away from caffeine. It's the devil, it's poisonous. If you have any kind of autoimmune condition or Lyme's disease, anything you could ... Never have this. But Ray's work really opened up the idea to using it as a pro-metabolic tool.
Theresa Piela:
I think starting to have very, very small micro doses of coffee actually allowed my body to have a leg up and not have such an intense immune reaction and allow my body to actually utilize the glucose as I started to add it back in very, very slowly. Because as I transitioned off of carnivore, I started with small amounts of maple and just ... At first, again, I was having extreme reactions to carbs. My body did not know how to handle it, but coffee really started to help. So that, I think, opened up the portal. I'm trying to think if there ... It felt like an exciting time because all of a sudden I was like, "Whoa, I feel like I'm having a second chance." I started to feel energy come back into this body that had felt so just kind of lifeless. I felt like an empty sock and my world was so sepia tinted because I just, again, did not have ... I wasn't absorbing my nutrition and then the brain kind of shuts down with everything else.
Theresa Piela:
So from there, I mean, I'd always been into experimenting, but I just kind of started to play around with the different pro metabolic and Ray Peat inspired meals and added in the carrots and I think, as funny as that sounds, the carrots were game-changing. Again, my sister was the first one to bring this up to me and I kind of wrote it off because I didn't really believe something as simple as carrot fibers could be so helpful because I've been trying for years to help my gut. It was ravaged from all the parasites and the treatments and the antibiotics and all these toxic supplements I had been taking. Then lo and behold, adding in the carrots started to normalize my gut functions, that I wasn't just in the bathtub all day, I could suddenly be out and about and start thinking, "Wow, what do I want to do with this life?"
Jayton Miller:
That's awesome. So one of the things you mentioned is that the cloud kind of went away. Can you kind of elaborate on that and talk about that experience?
Theresa Piela:
Yeah. I guess anyone that's experienced kind of constipation or brain fog in general, you start to realize that if you're not releasing all this endotoxin, all of the bacterial byproducts, just fermenting food in your gut, if that sits for one, two, three, four, five, six, seven days, you start to feel like a different person. Again, I sort of took that for granted as a kid. I didn't think about my gut health at all, just carried on with the day what I wanted. But as an adult, when my health was really at a sensitive point, when I was having reactions to everything, it felt like I couldn't win. I'd eat something very simple and the next morning wake up with the most intense flu-like reactions, like living in this crazy cloud where I couldn't even think clearly. It literally feels like you're kind of clawing through mashed potatoes and I would always get relief through the enemas or the colonics.
Theresa Piela:
But again, it didn't feel like a sustainable way to live a life. I didn't want to live in a bathtub. But when I started to regain that gut motility and not have such intense [inaudible 00:12:18] reactions on Carnivore, that again gave me another kind of blossom of hope where I realized, "Wow, okay, yes, this diet is not ideal, but I have evidence that things can improve. I have a stable ground where I can start to research and figure out what are the safest foods I can start to add back in right now while my gut is kind of leaky."
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. You also mentioned the things that you can control within your mind. Can you kind of go into how that played a role in your healing journey and kind of some of the tools that you utilized?
Theresa Piela:
Okay. So I think, and maybe you can relate to this and maybe some people listening can relate to this, but when you've been sick for a while, your brain rewires, and part of that is kind of the impact of trauma, where your brain is looking out for you. It doesn't want to experience pain so it almost starts to package up and close off the world, trying to avoid danger. Maybe the brain gets stuck in these loops of thinking about worst case scenarios and how I'll never be healthy, how it's always going to be this way. Again, when you wake up or spend your entire day sick, it's so hard to even imagine a possibility where that isn't the case. So you sort of get stuck in this catch 22 of seeing the world as you are.
Theresa Piela:
When I realized how intolerable that was to me and that I could start to change my perspective, even the slightest bit, it's almost like I had to think in a pro-metabolic way, even though my body was so sick, just to get out of that learned helplessness. Because so much of that, too, is realizing that, yes, the brain is responding to the toxic body, the body will heal with time, but if you were repeating these same old patterns of thinking and living with that same kind of, "Woe is me, dah, dah, dah, dah, how come everyone else is sick?" My thought patterns were so, of course, toxic, and those completely impact the way we digest and function. Sending off the stress response just with our thoughts, I think is something to really pay attention to. So it was really kind of taking charge of that and realizing, "Wow, I want to enjoy my life. If my body's not going to be healthy, at least I can start to train my brain to think healthy."
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. What are some of the practices that you implemented in order to kind of break those loops that you had going on?
Theresa Piela:
Yeah. So one of the first things I started practicing with someone I still work with today was EFT tapping. Again, have you heard of this?
Jayton Miller:
I've heard of it, but I've never talked to anybody who's actually utilized it.
Theresa Piela:
Yeah, okay. It's one of my favorite tools and I kind of rolled my eyes at it at first. I'm like, "What? You want me to tap on my head while I say things to myself?" But I think with kind of traumatic loops and dysfunctional thinking, we logically know that it doesn't feel good to feel anxious or to feel depressed or to think in these kind of rigid and dark ways. But the brain can't get out of that if that's all it knows. So when we can kind of sneakily get in there in ways that aren't really utilizing the normal entry points in, more of just any way that you can. It's more of like a sematic approach. That's when I noticed things starting to change. So the tapping and I can tell you more about this after, was, I guess, another one of those sneaky ways to start to challenge these beliefs and these conditionings that we've accumulated over the years.
Theresa Piela:
Maybe because of our sickness, maybe because of traumatic events in our past, or even just the way that trauma is passed down from generation to generation and find ourselves maybe hypervigilant for a reason that isn't related to our experience. All of those factors. But that's my favorite tool. And then something called DNRs. Have you heard of that?
Jayton Miller:
No, I have not.
Theresa Piela:
That inspires a lot of my work too, but it's really, again, honoring the fact that so much of disease is due to the kind of limbic system getting stuck in these faulty pathways where the body might be reacting to things wisely. Because say you had a mold exposure in the past, every time you smell something slightly moldy, your whole nervous system is going to send off alarm bells because it doesn't want you to be in danger. But with any kind of chronic sickness or chronic illness, those patterns really get amplified and they get stuck. So it's more of these tools of shifting the brain to be less reactive and almost teaching the brain that it has an option again. It can choose to suffer and freak out, or it can start to visualize and really imagine different stories and feeds into the neuroscience approach of realizing that the brain doesn't really know the difference between reality and imagination.
Theresa Piela:
So it's kind of like taking the brain and tricking it ... Yeah, really fooling it into thinking that there's a possibility. Then all of a sudden it realizes, "Whoa, it feels good to feel good. It feels good to think that something good could happen in the future," because you could spend your time planning for the worst and really imagining a future where everything is terrible and we're all just sick and lonely and not doing anything very interesting or, "Wow. What if we're kind of collaborating and having fun and exploring and skiing and spending time with loved ones?" That's a very available story that I think a lot of people who are really sick and disabled at home forget that is a possibility too.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. How does that actually work?
Theresa Piela:
So there's a lot of different techniques within the DNRs or the tapping communities, but I'd say the essence of it is really just reminding the brain to shift its perspective. Noticing those faulty loops of the past that might assume the worst, that might kind of be hypervigilant, that might be down, all of the pathways that ... You can think of the qualities that just don't feel good in life. Say you wake up and you don't feel very energized, a kind of dysfunctional brain might say, "Oh my gosh, it's always going to be this way. I'm not going to have energy to do what I need to do. Oh, I'm supposed to be on a podcast today. How am I going to do this? My life sucks. I've always been sick." Versus, "Oh, okay, great. What can I do to feel better right now? Oh, wow. This caffeine paired with some grass fed milk will really help my thyroid function and then I'll be able to think better and, oh, wow, what a great opportunity to interact with someone new."
Theresa Piela:
It's sort of subtle, but it really is starting to shift the brain continually over and over and over again until the new default mode is something positive and kind of rooted in the sense of possibility and not in doom and gloom and rigid thinking.
Jayton Miller:
That's awesome. So it's kind of rooted in the potential that the being has.
Theresa Piela:
Yes. Even just seeing kind of the black and white of sick versus healthy, when you imagine that healthy state, anything's possible. It's so much about play and spontaneity and interacting with the environment in a way that novelty just fits right in. There's that desire to see, "Wow, what can I experience there?" And that is exactly it. I think in terms of getting out of that really sick state, if the body is going to take the time healing, because sometimes with toxicity and just really chronic issues, that does take time to reverse if we've been living in a really dysfunctional way. But if we can start to really get the brain almost a couple of steps ahead of us, it's like the body wants to follow. It's like, "Wow, I'm thinking that I'm going to be out skiing these mountains. Oh, I better start to rev up the engines on those cells and start to dump all of these gunky toxins out and let the body start to catch up with that."
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. So in your journey, was that kind of the case where you had to put the mind in a place that was kind of better than your current circumstances?
Theresa Piela:
Exactly. Yeah, because I was still noticing how almost the majority of my thoughts were so toxic and it wasn't surprising because I had so little energy, especially still in the beginning stages of Carnivore, I felt better, but I knew that wasn't the life I wanted to live. I knew I still had very little energy and I was an athlete when I was younger and being so fatigued that just walking outside was all I could do for the day and seeing 80 year olds on their jogs and young people smiling and laughing, it felt like I was living in this bubble of doom. But it's like I really made that choice where I realized I need ... This is almost the last straw here. I hadn't found any help really with any of the Western medical or even kind of the fringe medical approaches, so this felt like my best option. I had heard of other people that had started to make changes with more of the brain rewiring aspects. So, yeah, it felt like a little nugget of hope that I latched onto and it turned out to be really promising.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. Did you notice that with your mind here and your body here, every time that your body kind of took a little bump up, it pushed the mood even further up than what it was?
Theresa Piela:
Yeah. It's like when you get some evidence that, "Whoa, maybe you do have a little bit of control here and that maybe life can open up and you can start to see those possibilities feel bright and feel beautiful, absolutely." I think it's kind of that catch 22 state where sometimes you just need the smallest bit of ... not false hope, but evidence-based hope that yes, you can heal, these success stories could be you too, and that was part of the game changer for me when I started to really practice that. Notice when I would start to lose hope in my brain and say, "Wait a second, why can't I believe that this is possible for me? Hundreds of other people have healed. I'm nothing too special."
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. So whenever you are interacting with other people, what are some of the biggest things that you see them struggle with in order to get to that point?
Theresa Piela:
Yeah. That's a really interesting question. I'm sure you think about this too, but when someone is such a low metabolic state, they are in that catch 22, where they can't even think better than their environment because they are so in it. It's like that fish tank analogy where the fish just knows the water they're in. I think that's where it's helpful to ... When people do really actually hit rock bottom there and they've tried everything and they realize, "Well, I've tried all these rigid healing diets. I've seen all these specialists and I'm still not better. I'm going to take a leap of faith." But I think it's kind of also the willingness to let go of who someone thinks they are. Like, "I have this disorder, I have that. I've always been this way," and stepping into, again, that possibility that, "Huh, maybe I can change."
Theresa Piela:
Part of the tapping and the brain rewiring that I find so helpful is that it gives the brain a little essence of, "Whoa. I feel like a different person. Interesting. Can I follow that for a second? What would happen if I keep practicing the more energized, more vital, more fertile, more creative version of myself? What will happen if I can sustain that?" And not a bright siding way. We can't pretend that we're healthy and that we can just get on with life when the body is completely toxic, but we can start to imagine and see that evidence start to build on its own. So yeah, really, I think the biggest roadblock is when people are so stuck in who they think they are or the idea that aesthetic is the most important thing.
Theresa Piela:
I sometimes think that some people will be so overly focused on how they want their body to look and forgetting to listen to what their body actually needs, and not really listening to the cues that, yeah, if your body is really sick, it might be the best option to rest even though your brain wants to keep pushing. That's something that I definitely dealt with as more of a Type A competitive person that liked to do things. I liked the kind of endorphin rush of feeling like I could be out and about adventuring, but letting that go and just saying, "Whoa, okay, my body is dictating a slower speed," and kind of making friends with that. That was a huge, huge paradigm shift for me.
Theresa Piela:
So I think that can definitely relate to a lot of people that want to kind of hurry up and heal versus, "Okay, let's slow this down. What can we enjoy in this moment? Even if you're stuck in bed all day and disabled, what can we start to enjoy right now? Wow. These sheets are really soft. Whoa. I get to read all my favorite books," and kind of build from there.
Jayton Miller:
Or listen to your favorite podcast.
Theresa Piela:
Or listen to your favorite podcasts. Exactly. Even better.
Jayton Miller:
Have you heard of Eckhart Tolle?
Theresa Piela:
Oh my goodness. I'm so glad you brought him up. So that was one of the first books that someone gave me back in college. That, again, started to open up my brain a little bit and that was again right when I wasn't sleeping so it did start to imprint in a very curious way. What makes you think of that right now?
Jayton Miller:
So in The Power of Now he talks about, and within the stoic philosophy as well, they talk about the dis-identification from the egoic mind and being able to step back and observe our mind for what it is and tapping into that present moment. I think that that is very important.
Theresa Piela:
Yes, and I'm really happy you brought that up too, because when I started to really get to know the nature of my own mind and realizing that I could watch these really dysfunctional doom-based, anxiety-based, panic-based thoughts and say, "Oh wow, the observer of that is actually kind of relaxed and peaceful and doesn't really care what's happening in my life." That opened up this sense of peacefulness and almost a sense of ... sort of a sense of humor with it all. It could be a really terrible day where I was so brain fogged that even finding words felt impossible and just getting to the kitchen to make some coffee and breakfast was like ... that was the triumph of the day. When I could just watch what my brain was doing exactly like Eckhart Tolle mentions, it's almost like it opened up, again, another sense of possibility in the way I could interact and perceive in my world and notice that I could find some fun, even just in my very small world of trying to just get a little bit better.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. So whenever you are trying to ... So for me personally, I'm an over analyzer. I overanalyze everything constantly and it helps with a lot of things, but for most things it's not very beneficial. So how do you tend to get out of your mind and back into your body?
Theresa Piela:
That's so interesting. Well, it depends what I'm over analyzing and where it's taking me. So I can also relate and I think with an overactive brain, if it's going more down the path of anxiety and future forecasting, like, "Oh, this is going to happen. This might happen. I better dah, dah, dah, dah, dah," stopping that, literally just watching those thoughts as if I'm watching a movie of those thoughts, literally watching them stop and finding something in the present moment to come back to. At first, when I was in a very, very dysfunctional state, sometimes it was something as simple as, wow, noticing the texture of the counter and kind of zooming in on some very, very basic detail of life. I think sometimes the breadth is something that's ... It's talked about so much and not in a meditative way, but really bringing that overactive mind and letting it focus on something that's already happening and seeing how much you can expand the awareness of that.
Theresa Piela:
So it comes back to that brain shifting again and tricking the brain saying, "Whoa, okay, I see what you're doing. Oh, wow. This is a very familiar habit. Oh, yes. The over-analyzing again. Oh, let me use that same kind of hyper-focus of thinking and put it on something else that is either neutral or pleasurable." So also just finding something in nature to start to hyper-focus on. This is something I would notice. I'd be out on my little walks, trying to think about the next step, kind of feeling like, "Wow, my body was shutting down. What am I doing with this life? What is the point of this? What do I need to learn from this?" Those kind of cycles. Then I'd say, "Whoa, stop that. That's not helpful." Literally watching those thoughts stop and refocus on the crows. They became some of my biggest allies in this healing process.
Theresa Piela:
Just watching the crows and letting myself get so consumed in their funny behavior, picking up trash and flying around with their families and doing sort of goofy things. And using that, again, as a reminder to see the brain's potential that it can sort of get out of control, but we can also use it as a tool. We can harness that and place it somewhere else and let it grow from there, because it doesn't have to be just placing it on something neutral or beautiful. You can say, "Okay, I'm clearly suffering in this over analyzation of whatever topic the brain has decided to be important. What is truly important to me? Wow. My partner is really important to me. I am going to think more about that and kind of let the brain over analyze how wonderful of a person he is," dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. Yeah. That's, I think, the biggest tools I still use daily.
Theresa Piela:
I mean, it's a never ending process really of realizing ... It's that ceiling analogy you used. It's like you make some progress, you're like, "Whoa, what's next? Oh, I still have this slightly dysfunctional kind of anxiety based loop? Okay. Let me see if I can tweak that and use it in a more productive or peaceful way," whatever feels like it would enhance your experience of being you, being a human.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. So were there any kind of external or environmental factors that you noticed kind of elevated your way of thinking or just you took it out and it made a significant impact?
Theresa Piela:
Yeah. So the sun has always made a huge difference for me. I feel so much better in the sun and now we know why. Wow, it has so many different factors, aside from just the immune boost and the vitamin D, but the body works better with that kind of heat source. It's like, "Your thyroid isn't working well? Great sit in the sun and you'll feel a whole lot better." So that made a big difference, and when I first moved out west to California, I noticed I felt better. It was easier to keep my thoughts in places that felt good with the sunshine, versus classic New England weather, where it's dark and gray and cold and rainy and kind of humid and moist and moldy.
Theresa Piela:
And also a sense of peace and quiet in nature. Again, huge difference and people always talk about nature therapy and forest healing, but for someone that maybe has a bunch of disorders and diseases and their nervous system is kind of frazzled and fried, it is so beneficial to get out somewhere where stimuli and then the literal noise can soften and letting the body almost calm down by removing something.
Theresa Piela:
Then I'd say the biggest one that I am so grateful for is moving to high altitude and feeling literally like a different person. I know that air quality back where I was living in California was pretty dismal. Our whole town was on fire so most of the time we were inside with a HEPA filter, but we'd go outside and come back and kind of brain fogged. I was having trouble discerning, "Whoa, what's a symptom and what's being caused by this dismal air quality?" Then when we moved to Colorado, it's like, "Whoa, the world opened up." What I thought were these kind of old, lingering symptoms, maybe a Lyme flare up, something that I didn't really have control over, got so much better.
Theresa Piela:
So I think if anyone's really, really struggling to heal and they're doing all the brain work, they're doing all the pro-metabolic tools and really changing their lifestyle, if they're still not at a point where the body feels like it's really making progress, that might be something, if they're fortunate enough, to look into. Because I think the high altitude just allows everything to work better. A lot of bacterial infections can't survive at high altitude. It's amazing to me. Mountains are such a gift,
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. One of the theories that I've had previously about that, because I noticed that, and you'll probably see this in Colorado, is that most of the hobbies that people have outside has to do with reaching a peak of some sort. So whether it's rock climbing or skiing or hiking, they're always trying to get to the highest point of elevation that they can. I think that it has to do with the electromagnetic frequency of the earth and the way that it has the ability to physically pull down the reductive stress hormones in the body. So the actual electrical charge that the stress hormones have, they're in a reductive state and I think that the magnetism of the earth literally begins to pull them down-
Theresa Piela:
At a faster rate or a more significant force than if we were at sea level?
Jayton Miller:
I would say so, yeah.
Theresa Piela:
That's so interesting. I have not thought about that. Wow. Then pairing that with just the ability of the thyroid to work better at higher altitude and then the bacteria not being able to survive and then the carbon dioxide retention, it's like you have these beautiful snowball effects where ... Yeah, and now I'm imagining someone at the top of a peak feeling so grateful, but also just feeling good and of course that has synergy. So yeah, I love that. I want to look more into that.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. I would say a good place to kind of take examples from is Tibetan monks or the monks in the Himalayas, because they're always at the peak and you hear stories of them living to 150 years old, just these outstanding numbers. I think that's one of the things that it has to do just because they're relatively stress-free, both from a psychological perspective and a physical perspective.
Theresa Piela:
Yeah, and that ties back into what we were talking about. If physically your body's under significant stress, start to harness the psychological stress, see if you can kind of smush that and compost it and let the body catch up. It's all about, "Okay, we know the world is stressful, we know our bodies are having to process things that are significant, but if we can lessen that load even the slightest bit, wonderful."
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. Well, I think that is the extent of the questions that I have. Is there anything else that you'd like to tell the audience?
Theresa Piela:
You know, I don't have any messages.
Jayton Miller:
Where can they find you on social media and your website and stuff like that?
Theresa Piela:
Yeah. I'm at Living Roots Wellness and livingrootswellness.com, trying to always bring in something interesting. So whether it's a recipe or just kind of a blind spot in healing, that's been my approach, to see, again, the ... Really wanting to help the people that feel like they're doing everything. They feel like they've tried everything in the body, body or the brain, anything in between isn't shifting, time to start getting creative and really the idea of becoming your own expert and having a little bit of fun in the process, I think, is a huge thing that's so easy to forget as you get kind of hyper-focused in wanting to feel better. It's so hard to feel fun and playful when you're super sick, but that's almost part of the way out too. So it's, again, with that brain rewiring, start doing the things you'd be doing when you're healthy, within reason, start thinking in ways that a healthy version of you would be thinking and really let that integrate with time. Yeah. Do you have any thoughts on that?
Jayton Miller:
I would say one tip that I've noticed is try to game-ify everything. Just gamification of your entire life helps tremendously.
Theresa Piela:
Yeah. Well, I kind of think of my days that way. If I find myself getting a little bit too serious about something, I have to, again, stop myself in the same way I'd stop those kinds of hypervigilant, loop-based thoughts and say, "Whoa, what needs some play here?" So gamification, that's a term I haven't heard, but I love it
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. Well, Theresa, I really appreciate you being on here. I appreciate your time. For all of those you listening, make sure to give her a follow on Instagram and check out her website. Thanks for listening to the podcast. If you haven't already, make sure to hit the like button, subscribe and leave a comment down below if you want us to cover a different topic.
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Jayton Miller sits down with Loren Delacruz. Loren is a function Nutrition Therapy Practitioner and Root Cause Protocol Practitioner. She has a unique perspective on different areas of the metabolic theory of health, and in this episode, you hear her speak about iron, why we need to get rid of iron, zinc, copper, and so much more. Check it out and let us know what you think!
Facebook Group and Fanpage -
Thermo Diet Community Group ( https://www.facebook.com/groups/16721... ) - Thermo Diet Fan Page ( https://www.facebook.com/thermodiet/ ) Youtube
Channels: - Christopher Walker ( https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTA1... ) - UMZU Health ( https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2IE... )
Instagram: -
@_christopherwalker ( https://www.instagram.com/_christophe... ) - @researchcowboy ( https://www.instagram.com/researchcow... )
https://umzu.com/
Loren's Website - https://www.innate-nutrition.com/
Studies Mentioned -
- Deiodinase:
-
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8116544/
- From my notes: Deiodinase enzyme is selenoenzyme, doesn't work unless copper is present < I can't find anything about selenium binding to copper, but would be very curious if you end up finding something!
- Male Fertility:
-
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8033970/
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25245929/
- Anemia of Chronic Inflammation:
-
- I believe this is the study actually calling it ACI...
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4115203/
- Iron Chelation for Covid - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7366458/
Full Transcript:
Jayton Miller:
Welcome back to the ThermoDiet Podcast. I'm your host, Jayton Miller. And today, I have on the podcast, Loren De La Cruz. So Loren is filled with information. And today, she takes us through all of the details on iron, zinc, copper, vitamin A, and how they play a role with each other. So I'm really looking forward to being able to let you all listen to this episode. So let's get into it.
Jayton Miller:
How's it going today, guys? I am here with Loren De La Cruz from Innate. It's Innate Functional Nutrition, correct?
Loren De La Cruz:
That's my Instagram handle, but my business is Innate Nutrition.
Jayton Miller:
Okay. Awesome. How are you doing today?
Loren De La Cruz:
I'm doing well. Thank you. Thanks for having me Jayton.
Jayton Miller:
Yes, ma'am.
Loren De La Cruz:
Super excited to be here.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. So for the listeners out there, could you tell them your background story and how you got to where you are?
Loren De La Cruz:
Of course, yes. So I guess my path to nutrition is what you're looking for, right? So yes, I first started my foray into nutrition was actually after my experience with the birth control pill. I had been on the birth control pill for about eight years. And I actually started the birth control pill, and you know hindsight is 2020, from getting cystic acne, because I got such terrible cystic acne after being vegan.
Loren De La Cruz:
So now I know that there was a lot of mineral deficiencies and nutrient deficiencies, vitamin deficiencies that spurred that hormonal imbalance. But I was on the birth control pill for about eight years, and it stopped working. I also had terrible health while I was on it. So I knew that there was something wrong. It wasn't working for me. There was definitely some downsides to it. And the more I started researching, the more I realized I didn't know much about it at all. And I started getting really informed.
Loren De La Cruz:
And when I came off the birth control pill, I had terrible symptoms as well. While I was on the birth control pill, I had candida, I developed an autoimmune skin condition, I was prediabetic. I had all of these health issues and no doctor ever connected the dots. So when I came off of it, I also had a slew of issues. I started losing my hair, the cystic acne came back 10 times worse. And no doctor that I had, whose care I was under, so my dermatologist, primary care physician and my gynecologist as well, no, they couldn't offer me any other solution other than to get back on the pill or to get on a different one such as spironolactone.
Loren De La Cruz:
So I started taking things into my own hands, doing even more research and really experimenting with nutrition and lifestyle. And I ended up healing myself through some smart changes with lifestyle, some really smart changes with nutrition. I also had ended up healing my lifelong asthma, which was a icing on the cake when it came to my healing process. And after that, I knew that there had to be a better way than the ways that we were approaching these issues, like prediabetes, like post-birth control syndrome, like cystic acne, like asthma. And I really wanted to get in, dig in even more and get some schooling, and really help people look for an alternative approach to their ailments.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. That's awesome. So one area that you talk really well on is iron. So can you go into what iron's role is and why we usually have too much of it?
Loren De La Cruz:
Yeah, of course. So iron's role, it performs a couple of functions in the body. It's mostly known for its involvement, and I should say that's a keyword, involved in the transfer of oxygen from the lungs to the tissues, and the creation of red blood cells. So that's where it gets its fame. Energy production as well, but it's involved in those functions, not necessarily responsible for is what I want to clarify.
Loren De La Cruz:
So we get iron from our food. And usually, there's heme iron, there's non-heme iron. So heme iron is going to be animal-based iron. And then there's plant iron, which is non-heme iron. And the heme iron is more readily absorbed and is more stable in the body versus non-heme iron. We absorb maybe 30%, but it's more volatile I should say.
Loren De La Cruz:
So essentially, we get a lot of iron already in our food system. We get it through animal foods, we get it through plant foods, but our food system has actually been fortified since the 1940s with iron shavings. So supplemental iron. And this was very misguided. It's hard to pinpoint the exact reason why we started fortifying the food system, but now you also have enriched flours and iron being added to a lot of other things in our food system, not just the natural sources that we get that we usually eat day to day.
Loren De La Cruz:
So we're getting a lot. And I think the percentage is something like it's increased almost 400% since the 1940s, the iron content in our food system. So it's really prevalent in our food system. We get plenty, plenty, plenty every day. So we're getting lots of it. And it's actually creating a lot of problems. One being, we have this very sophisticated iron recycling system that most researchers tend to overlook. It's called the reticuloendothelial system, the RES. I'm just going to call it the iron recycling system.
Loren De La Cruz:
And it involves the small intestine, the spleen, the bone marrow, the liver, a bunch of other organs. And it's a sophisticated system that helps recycle 24 milligrams of iron every day, all by itself. So when red blood cells go to die, we actually reuse the iron that was in those red blood cells. We don't necessarily need extra. So we have a really sophisticated iron recycling system. So those dietary recommendations are actually quite inaccurate, because taken into account 24 milligrams, we only need one milligram perhaps per day.
Loren De La Cruz:
And I should mention also that our recycling system, I say 24 minimum. So there's other people that say that it's upwards of 30 milligrams per day that we can recycle all by ourselves. So we have our reticuloendothelial iron recycling system, really sophisticated, helping us recycle all the red blood cells, all the iron in our body, but we're also adding more of it. And that's where we are getting really in a sticky situation.
Loren De La Cruz:
And so when we talk about copper too, and our food system's impact on copper, the supplements that we're taking, the daily practices that we have every day, that plays a huge role into why iron has gotten so out of control. But I'll let you continue asking questions because we'll definitely come back to that.
Jayton Miller:
All right. Sounds good. Yeah, that's really interesting. And so by having this excess iron, that's why we start to get deposits in the different tissues around the body, correct?
Loren De La Cruz:
That's absolutely correct. So when we have excess iron, I mentioned copper, and this is really important to understand why; copper is what helps manage iron. So in the world of minerals and vitamins, there's virtually none that work alone. There's always a partner or multiple partners. And for iron, that partner is copper. So copper is what actually helps manage the mineral itself, iron itself.
Loren De La Cruz:
So wherever there's iron, there's always copper because if you just have iron alone and it interacts with oxygen, which is very likely in our bodies, it's going to create rust. And you have cast iron pans probably, or one cast iron pan or you've seen one, and maybe you've seen a not so well taken care of one, and it starts creating rust just by being exposed to air. That's why we have to cure it. So copper is what helps cure iron, and helps it interact with oxygen safely in the body.
Loren De La Cruz:
So when it's carrying oxygen to go make energy, or to go make new red blood cells, copper is always there to help really protect the iron and protect the oxygen from creating rust. So it's like a buffer. So what happens when we don't have enough copper, or what happens when we have too much iron, the ratio is just completely imbalanced. The body knows that iron is very toxic in the body. It's very reactive. It's going to create a lot of free radicals; rust, reactive oxygen species. And so the body will take it out of the bloodstream and sequester it into the tissues.
Loren De La Cruz:
And this could be the liver, this could be the muscle tissue, this could be other organs. So it sequesters it into organs. And it's kind of a protective mechanism, although that in itself is not ideal either, because sequestering iron can create things like autoimmune disease and arthritis, and just a bunch of other issues.
Jayton Miller:
The biggest one that I see is pituitary issues. The iron deposition in the pituitary is a big one.
Loren De La Cruz:
That is a very real thing. Yep, yep. And that can create a lot of problems. So basically, any disease really can be traced back to iron. That is a very good point. It's just so reactive and is such a trigger for the immune system inflammation. So the body knows how reactive iron is. So it'll take it out of the bloodstream, sequester it. And that's why people, when they have too much iron, actually it's called anemia.
Loren De La Cruz:
And so the body has taken the iron out of the bloodstream, but we only test for serum ferritin when we test for iron levels, which is also a very inaccurate way to test for iron. So we don't get a true reading of what's actually happening. We could have no iron in the blood or very little, but tons of it in the tissues, up to 10 times more. So it's really backwards in the way that we test for iron, and the way we treat anemia, which is usually more iron, which causes the body to sequester it even more. That's why iron therapy doesn't really work, or creates worse problems.
Loren De La Cruz:
It'll work for a temporary timeframe in terms of getting the serum ferritin up or hemoglobin up. But then you see people, that's why they have to get iron infusions multiple times. That's why they said, "Oh yeah, I started taking iron pills. They worked for a little while, but then my anemia came back." It's because iron therapy in the body is trying to protect itself from the excess iron that you're giving it with the iron therapy.
Jayton Miller:
So-
Loren De La Cruz:
And it's very well ... I'm sorry.
Jayton Miller:
It just ramps up the storage of the iron. So by supplementing with iron, it's just making the body speed up the storage of it?
Loren De La Cruz:
Yeah.
Jayton Miller:
Okay.
Loren De La Cruz:
So we're not solving the problem by taking more iron. And the problem is usually 99% of the time, copper deficiency or retinol deficiency; so that's a vitamin A. So either one can really create sequestration of iron because we need copper to manage iron. We need copper to help create new red blood cells with the iron. We need copper for so many other things in the body.
Loren De La Cruz:
And so the reason I say retinol, vitamin A, that's actually what activates "copper". So copper itself, it's a great mineral, but copper needs to be in the form called ceruloplasmin, which is a very ... an easy way to think about this is saying it's activated copper. And retinol, so vitamin A, real vitamin A, not from plants, not beta carotene from animal fats, from things like beef tallow and butter, and high quality dairy and liver. That's what loads copper into the ceruloplasmin enzyme. And ceruloplasmin is really what's carrying out all of these functions, and allowing iron to interact with oxygen very safely. So totally, it could be either of those things.
Loren De La Cruz:
I should also mention too, that infection can also cause anemia. And we have to, also, when we think about infection, we have to think about the strength of the host, because it's not just the infection that's causing the iron sequestration. It's the strength of the host. How's their stomach acid? Are they really resilient to infection? And copper is needed for the immune system as well. It's very well-documented there. But if you have an infection like a parasite or a virus or bacteria, that's what feeds on iron. It's like their favorite food.
Loren De La Cruz:
So the body also will take iron from the blood and store in the tissue, so that these infections, these pathogens cannot consume and proliferate off of the iron that's in the blood. So that could be another alternative reason. But that said, there's always a reason for the weakness of the host and why it got to that place in the first place.
Jayton Miller:
Wow. That's really interesting. So, how does zinc play a role in this? So isn't there a ratio between copper and zinc that we need to take into consideration?
Loren De La Cruz:
Yeah, there definitely is. And they share the same receptor sites. So this is why the kind of ratio is important because if the receptor sites are all like, I think of it as a parking lot, if the parking lot is all full with copper cars or the parking lot is all full with zinc cars, then we're not going to be able to absorb the other mineral. So it's important in a sense, because then we're not recreating an imbalance in a sense.
Loren De La Cruz:
So I don't over index on the ratio too much in my practice, but it is important because it tells us a little bit about hormones. With hair tissue and mineral analysis, which is one of the lab tests that I offer to my clients, the copper ratio is more correlated with an estrogen effect, whereas the zinc ratio is correlated with a more progesterone, which is an anabolic hormone, and testosterone, which is also an anabolic hormone effect. So if there's too much copper or too much zinc, we're going to have a bit of an imbalance.
Loren De La Cruz:
And usually if copper is too high, it's not that there's too much. It's not a bad thing per se. It just means that it's probably unbound from ceruloplasmin, which is that copper protein that allows it to work safely in the body. So we have to think about why that might be, and it's probably due to, again, retinol deficiency. So we need that retinol to load copper into that protein. And we don't necessarily need to do anything to get rid of the copper. We just need to allow it, give it the tools to function properly in the body and get loaded into that protein properly to reestablish balance.
Loren De La Cruz:
So, yes, the ratio is important, but I also, like I mentioned, I don't condone trying to shift it too much by supplementing copper or zinc either. And the reason being, again, they compete for receptor sites. So it can push you into another extreme. But also, if you do supplement zinc, it triggers a synthesis of this protein called metallothionein. And metallothionein binds up zinc and copper, but it binds up copper at 1,000 times strength compared to zinc. So it creates an even more strong imbalance, and it can have pretty bad ramifications down the line.
Loren De La Cruz:
I've seen a lot of zinc supplementers pretty imbalanced in their ability to recycle iron because of their zinc supplementation. So it all has a trickle-down effect. Again, minerals and vitamins don't operate in isolation. There's always some consequence if you do supplement one thing or another.
Jayton Miller:
So a lot of athletes are told they need to supplement zinc because they run through it faster during times of extreme exercise. What's your recommendation for that?
Loren De La Cruz:
Oh, that's interesting. I would argue that they run through copper probably just as quickly or more, because copper is so critical for creating energy. You can't create energy without copper. And so zinc is not present in that chain, from my understanding. So to support an immense amount of exercise, you obviously need energy. And of course, we burn through tons of other minerals like magnesium, potassium, sodium.
Loren De La Cruz:
Sure, zinc. I bet we're burning through a bunch of vitamin C, a bunch of B vitamins as well. So to say that, or to look at exercise as a depletion of zinc is just one, or tunnel visioned, I guess. There's a lot more going on. And again, minerals and vitamins act synergistically. So to be supplementing one is shortchanging the immense impact and importance of magnesium, potassium, sodium, which are arguably even more important for athletic performance.
Jayton Miller:
Wow. So, do you notice that whenever people are in an anemic state, it's just a copper deficiency or a vitamin A deficiency?
Loren De La Cruz:
It depends. And that's why I don't like to use serum ferritin as a marker for iron status. It's because serum ferritin is actually a sign of pathophysiology. So ferritin should be inside of the protein, not outside. And so when we're measuring serum ferritin, something's wrong. And that got started in the '80s when a Spanish doctor discovered this marker and everyone hopped on it, because it was a new, bright, shiny thing. But we actually used to measure iron status via hemoglobin, before that. And that's a much more accurate marker.
Loren De La Cruz:
So I personally like to use the Full Monty Iron Panel, which has a bunch of iron markers. It includes ceruloplasmin, which is the really important copper protein that I just mentioned. Copper, it does include ferritin, so you would get that as well. It includes hemoglobin, iron, total iron binding capacity, magnesium, red blood cell count, transferrin. You get vitamin A, you get vitamin D, and you get zinc. So you get this really big picture of all the factors that could be levers in iron status. And so it really depends, to answer your question, because there are people that have plenty of copper, but not enough ceruloplasmin. So in that case, we would need to work on getting them a little more retinol, figuring out why they have too much copper in the first place.
Loren De La Cruz:
So it's more of like a ratio thing. Or if maybe they might have enough ceruloplasmin, but just a ton of iron and a ton of iron saturation, and so maybe we need to look at zinc. Are there other supplements that they're taking, or what they're eating, to really figure out okay, why do you have so much iron in the body? Or is it just that you need time to rebalance? Because once you have enough ceruloplasmin, that's when all the magic really starts to happen.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. So if someone does have iron overload, what are some of the ways that they can get rid of it?
Loren De La Cruz:
That's a great question. So figuring out if you have iron overload, it's tough, but you can pretty much assume that almost everyone in the United States, at least, has iron overload just due to the fact that we've been so bombarded with iron throughout our entire lives, since the 1940s. But there's also this other aspect of other compounds or supplements, or things that can also negatively impact copper and ceruloplasmin status, which also impact our ability to manage iron. And so we end up iron overloaded.
Loren De La Cruz:
These are things like vitamin D supplements, ascorbic acid, zinc supplements, which we talked about already, refined foods because they're usually fortified foods and can contribute to extra imbalance, zeolite supplements. So there's a couple of multivitamins, prenatals. There's a long list of things that can impact the status of ceruloplasmin. And that in itself can impact our ability to recycle iron properly. So we have to first, stop taking those things. And that can be ... it makes a huge impact.
Loren De La Cruz:
And that can be honestly, sometimes enough. But if you start to look at your food ingredient labels and see, okay, ascorbic acid is acid added to this, okay, my milk has synthetic vitamin D added to it, am I taking vitamin D? Am I taking zinc? Things like that. Start to really look at the labels of the things that you're taking, the things that you're eating, and start removing those negative compounds. And then the next stage I would say, or phase would be to get nutrients that support the production of ceruloplasmin. So make sure you're getting enough copper in your diet, make sure you're getting enough retinol in your diet.
Loren De La Cruz:
So low fat diets or diets that are mostly unsaturated fats, that's not going to help with ceruloplasmin production. So we need to be getting a lot of animal fats through beef liver, through high quality dairy, through butter, ghee, beef tallow. So those really, really yummy foods and fats, and not skimping on the fat when you do have a nice fatty piece of meat, just eating it. And then getting enough copper-rich foods as well. So copper-rich foods include beef liver, which usually copper-rich foods are also iron-rich foods. That's the way nature intended. It puts these co-factors all in one food.
Loren De La Cruz:
That's why mother nature is so beautiful and whole foods are so beautiful. So beef liver, oysters, huge amount of copper, vitamin C-rich foods. So that actually has copper inside of it because it has an enzyme called tyrosinase, which contains copper inside of it. And I think this is why copper is so important for collagen formation and structural formation as well, structural fortification and myelin sheath creation too, is because it operates in an enzyme called lysyl oxidase. So making sure you're getting enough vitamin C-rich foods.
Loren De La Cruz:
I definitely love shellfish as well. So like lobster, crab, shrimp if you have access to it or can afford it. These things don't have to be super fresh either. They can be canned. So if you want oysters, don't worry. You can have canned oysters, or you can even take desiccated oyster. And that's fine. So getting a lot of retinol-rich foods, getting a lot of copper-rich foods and yeah, that's the next step, I would say in terms of being able to manage your iron better.
Jayton Miller:
That's awesome. So, do you take any steps towards chelating iron?
Loren De La Cruz:
Sometimes. It depends on the person. Blood donations for example, are really non-invasive. Well, I shouldn't say non-invasive, but really a gentle way to chelate iron. So we lose quite a bit of iron during a blood donation, and that reignites the iron recycling system that we have in our body, so all those organs, the bone marrow to create more red blood cells. And so it needs to release the iron that's stored in our tissues in order to do that. It kind of coaxes it out, because it's like, "Hey, we need more." Okay. It's okay to release it. It's not going to be eaten by an infection or bacteria. So that's a really great way to restart, or I should say supercharge your iron recycling system.
Loren De La Cruz:
If you're a female, making sure you're cycling. So your monthly cycle, your monthly period is a great way to detoxify iron as well. So I would fight for that cycle. If you're not someone that's cycling or if you have gone through menopause, scheduling a quarterly blood donation is just like I recommend for meals. Quarterly blood donations are a great way to really gently get rid of excess iron in the body. There are of course, other therapies. There's apolactoferrin, there's IP6, there's curcumin, but those therapies I would use probably in a case by case basis, depending on how they're tracking, how my client is tracking towards creating ceruloplasmin and their iron saturation and all that stuff.
Jayton Miller:
Do you ever do salicylic acid, or making sure to drink coffee after meals, stuff like that?
Loren De La Cruz:
Oh, yeah. That's a really, really great and easy way to do that, chelate iron as well. So coffee has really amazing properties. I think it's the caffeic acid in the coffee beans plus any some kind of polyphenols. It's not just the caffeine, it's the polyphenols as well that really help block iron from being absorbed in the digestive system. Caster oil actually, also has really amazing iron chelating properties due to quercetin. So that's another iron chelater that's actually pretty gentle to take as well.
Loren De La Cruz:
Iron chelation is also ... there's a study by Perricone that you can probably find online. I can share that with you after the show, but iron chelation therapy is actually a really great way to combat this virus that's going around.
Jayton Miller:
Wow.
Loren De La Cruz:
Yeah, it's super effective. So also, that's what hydroxychloroquine is, too, which is the controversial, but also star that's being touted as a helpful protectant. So, yeah.
Jayton Miller:
That's awesome. Do you ever use activated charcoal?
Loren De La Cruz:
Not too much. I don't use it as much unless I'm experiencing some kind of digestive distress or anything like that, which is not very often. But I do like it. I prefer to use other therapies just because it has to be taken in a very specific way, and it can bind to not just iron, but other minerals when going through.
Loren De La Cruz:
So that's especially if you eat it in your food. But if not, it's pretty great. But I do really like that, especially for mold, when people have experienced mold illness as well, which that can also really tank someone's copper and ceruloplasmin as well, and lead to iron overload.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. So, what are some of the signs that someone can look for if they have either an excess of iron? And then what are some of the signs that they can look for if they are deficient in vitamin A or copper?
Loren De La Cruz:
Those are really good questions. So signs of excess iron, we'll start with that. I might forget the other one, so you might have to remind me.
Jayton Miller:
Okay.
Loren De La Cruz:
Signs of excess iron. So really, it could be anything, honestly; high blood pressure, high cholesterol. Just overall, it's just like a low metabolism, because metabolic function, that's what copper helps support is you need copper if you want proper metabolic function. And when we don't have copper or ceruloplasmin, our metabolic function will start to deteriorate. And what deteriorating metabolic function looks like, can look like anything. It can look like imbalanced hormones. It can look like chronic illness.
Loren De La Cruz:
It can look like, again, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, hypothyroidism, cold hands and feet, not sleeping through the night, insomnia. Just honestly, any symptom you can pretty much connect with iron overload. And that's a result of a lower metabolism, because if you don't have enough copper to run it, iron is going to build. I know that's probably not as clear-cut as your listeners might want, but it always helps to ... if you're looking to optimize your metabolism and you don't feel like you're there, you probably have a little bit of excess iron that needs to be taken care of.
Loren De La Cruz:
And I guess, another clear-cut sign would be hormone levels. So estrogen, for example, increases the ability to absorb iron by three times. And in pregnant women, it's nine times.
Jayton Miller:
Wow.
Loren De La Cruz:
So it's kind of funny how women are the ones that are more anemic than men, and pregnant women also deal with this kind of anemia on the third trimester. So these dots should be connecting for you and your listeners. And so if we have excess estrogen, and men can have that too, if you're a little overweight or if you have excess fat on your body, our fat cells can create estrogen too. So we are probably more estrogen dominant in that sense.
Loren De La Cruz:
So any kind of estrogen dominance or hormonal imbalance, low T can also be a thing too. We probably are iron toxic in a way. And depending on the severity, that really is not known until you get a test, but that's another way to think about iron overload is the hormonal aspect. So you asked about vitamin A and copper?
Jayton Miller:
Copper. So, how do we tell if we have a deficiency in those? Are they the same signs?
Loren De La Cruz:
They can be very similar. There is some overlap there, for sure. Like skin issues are very clear-cut vitamin A deficiencies. Bone growth and development issues; so if you have constant breakages or spurs, you might be vitamin A deficient. Vitamin A is actually quite much more important for bone health than vitamin D. Much more, because vitamin A activates vitamin D. A little secret.
Loren De La Cruz:
So a lot of people that have bone issues, skin issues, immune system issues as well, again, vitamin A activates vitamin D. So if your immune system is not functioning properly, you're low in vitamin D, there's a whole another tangent I can go off because the testing is also very backwards for that, but you need vitamin A for all those functions. And copper as well.
Loren De La Cruz:
Copper is really important for thyroid function. So you need copper to convert T4 into T3, the more active and potent thyroid hormone. You need copper for cholesterol recycling. You need copper for immune function. Because copper is so critical to energy production, and vitamin A is as well in the way that it activates copper, any deficiency in these will be shown in a lack of energy production. And the lack of energy production is the beginning of disease. So if there's any sort of issue that you're struggling with, it's probably due to a lack of energy, which means you probably need more copper and vitamin A.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. I would say low protective hormones in most cases, too.
Loren De La Cruz:
Oh, yeah.
Jayton Miller:
Because I think pregnenolone is derived from cholesterol, vitamin A and T3.
Loren De La Cruz:
That's correct. Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jayton Miller:
So in order for steroidogenesis to take place, you have to have vitamin A present. So low protective hormones in general are also added in there.
Loren De La Cruz:
Yeah, absolutely.
Jayton Miller:
And then I had another. Oh. So, does copper work with selenium for the deiodinase enzyme?
Loren De La Cruz:
Yes, it does.
Jayton Miller:
Okay, okay.
Loren De La Cruz:
Yeah.
Jayton Miller:
So, do they form together to make the deiodinase enzyme?
Loren De La Cruz:
That, I cannot recall.
Jayton Miller:
Okay.
Loren De La Cruz:
But I do know that copper plays a really big role in that.
Jayton Miller:
Okay.
Loren De La Cruz:
So I'd have to look up my notes, but I can follow up with you.
Jayton Miller:
Okay. Definitely. I'm interested in that. I'll put it in the show notes for anybody who is curious about whether or not copper and selenium attach to each other to form that enzyme. But that is really the extent of the questions that I had prepared. Is there anything else that you would like to tell the audience or let them know?
Loren De La Cruz:
Oh, yeah. If you're interested in learning more about iron and iron toxicity, I'm definitely well-versed in it because I went through a program called The Root Cause Protocol. So my mentor and teacher is named Morley Robbins, and he's the Magnesium Man, but he's basically the Iron Man at this point. And so all of my research, I've done additional research, but a lot of it's based on the research that he's done and led the charge on. So I'd go check out The Root Cause Protocol.
Loren De La Cruz:
There's a free protocol that you can do to start building up your ceruloplasmin levels. So check that out. And then yeah, I primarily work with women, but I love minerals. I have a huge interest and a passion for minerals. And so this is why I find myself here with Dayton right now. But yeah, feel free to check out my page. I have a lot more information on ascorbic acid, vitamin D, zinc supplementation. So if those piqued your interest, definitely check it out.
Jayton Miller:
And that is innatenutrition.com?
Loren De La Cruz:
Yeah. Innate-nutrition.com, or Innate Functional Nutrition. And that's @innatefunctionalnutrition on Instagram.
Jayton Miller:
Yeah, check that out. I follow her on Instagram. I love your Instagram page. It's great.
Loren De La Cruz:
Thank you.
Jayton Miller:
You did a really good job, so keep it up. I respect that.
Loren De La Cruz:
I appreciate that.
Jayton Miller:
But yeah. Thanks for listening, and make sure to give Loren a follow and check out her website. I was looking on it earlier and it actually is a pretty good website.
Loren De La Cruz:
Thank you.
Jayton Miller:
So make sure you check it out.
Loren De La Cruz:
Thanks so much, Jayton.
Jayton Miller:
Yes, ma'am. Have a good one. Thanks for listening to the podcast. If you haven't already, make sure to hit the like button, subscribe and leave a comment down below if you want us to cover a different topic.
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast, Jayton Miller sits down with Meg Langston. Meg is a Functional Nutrition Therapy Practioner and RWP. She specializes in helping women heal their bodies and feel like the best versions of themselves. They take a deep dive into the menstrual cycle, how it works, the importance of the menstrual cycle, and so much more. Check it out and let us know what you think!
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Meg's Website - https://www.meglangston.com/
Full Transcript:
Jayton Miller:
Welcome back to the Thermo Diet podcast. I'm your host Jayton Miller. And today, I have on the podcast Miss Meg Langston. So today, we talk about the menstrual cycle. We talk about the different parts of the menstrual cycle, what makes a menstrual cycle difficult to deal with, how do you overcome some of those difficulties, what are some of the benefits of actually having a period, and why it may give women a hand up whenever it comes to health and telling them what's going on with their body and stuff like that.
Jayton Miller:
So I'm super excited for you all to listen to this episode. It's filled with golden nuggets. So let's get into it.
Jayton Miller:
How's it going today, guys? I am here with Meg Langston. How are you doing today, Meg?
Meg Langston:
I'm good. Thanks for having me.
Jayton Miller:
So Meg, do you mind telling the audience where you came from and what you're currently doing?
Meg Langston:
Yeah. So I'm going to try to keep this brief, but I think it's so important when you get to know me that you know my story, because a lot of what I talk about is from trial and error, and I think especially because I feel like this podcast is going to be a lot towards women, talking about the menstrual cycle. And I feel like a lot of us females have a similar story. I don't know. Maybe men do, too.
Meg Langston:
But so I grew up a pretty competitive athlete. I played soccer my whole life, and very competitively where I was in something called Olympic Development Program, I was playing in high school, I was playing in club, missed a lot of dances, and then eventually was so burnt out, didn't play in college, and I started to put weight on in college.
Meg Langston:
And I remember calling my dad one time and I was like, "Well, what are you eating?" And I'm like, "Well, Special K for breakfast," because this was when Special K was the end all, be all. Maybe it still is. But I definitely thought if it had dried strawberries in there, it was really healthy. "And then pasta for lunch and Jimmy John's dinner, turkey sandwich on white bread." And he'd be like, "Well, that's just all carbs." I'm like, "Don't I need carbs?" He was like, "You're not an athlete anymore."
Meg Langston:
So anyway, that was the first time I had ever identified food impacts your body and what are carbs. And I say this as a joke, but it is really sad. Back in 2007 when I was in college, they didn't have the ... I guess Facebook was just starting out, but it wasn't like Instagram was there and it wasn't like you were looking at information for health on Facebook, at least that I knew of.
Meg Langston:
And so I was going to magazines and I was letting magazines tell me, "This is what is healthy. This is what defines health." And it was always a picture of a woman's body that was very slender or extremely shredded. And they were always talking about the kale salads and the kale smoothies and how to, in a way, eat less and how to do more. And so I really took that on, because I'm an extreme person. I think the best way to describe my personality is I never ran a marathon in my life and I went for a full marathon and then backed off from there. And that's just completely my personality.
Meg Langston:
So I took it very extreme on, and then I dabbled at ... Like I said, I've always ... because I've always been an athlete, I've always dabbled in a bunch of sports and got into marathons, triathlons, got into body building. And all along the way, I had developed really disordered eating habits from trying to do more, eat less, and then an eating disorder because I just didn't feel good enough about my skin. I talk a lot about identity and, in this health world industry where it's very heavily focused on nutrition, we also have to be content and happy in our own lives so that this holistic world of nutrition doesn't just consume us. And it definitely was consuming me and becoming my identity, rather than just enjoying life and being who I am.
Meg Langston:
And so anyway, I got really involved in the fitness industry. I had a lot of really awesome opportunities. I was a paid athlete to do the ... have you ever heard of the Olympia?
Jayton Miller:
Oh yeah.
Meg Langston:
Yeah, the Olympia and to the Arnold. And so I was wearing little sports bras and shorts, which, if you knew me, that would never be anything I'd wear. But I was lost in my identity, getting praised for my body, and-
Jayton Miller:
That's quite a feat, too. That's a lot to accomplish, too.
Meg Langston:
Yeah. Yeah, it was. Yeah, it was ... Yeah. It took a lot of extreme, extreme behavior. And not everyone does it that way, but that's how I did it. And I think a large majority of that fitness industry does do it that way. I was taking fat burners. I had tried SARMs at one time, which really messes up your testosterone and hormones. I was doing anything that I could to look shredded and maintain energy to keep that up.
Meg Langston:
And so eventually, I got into more Olympic lifting and CrossFit. Really fell in love with Olympic lifting. But it was the same thing. It was like in order to lift really heavy and be impressive, you had to weigh less. So it was manipulating weight and just back to the same cycle.
Meg Langston:
And I met my husband and was on this journey of, "How do I become healthy? How do I identify with health?" And the difference for me from the bodybuilding to the strength community was they did push for more performance, performance and less on body image. So it did give me a start of a mental shift of, "Okay. Maybe it's not just about my body image."
Meg Langston:
And this is a whole nother other topic, but all along I was really getting ... Faith was really important to me and I was really finding out who I was in my faith and just what did I believe about body image, what did I believe about this diet culture that was saying, "This is what defines health."
Meg Langston:
And eventually, it took me to a place where I was trying to get off birth control and I was about to get married, and I wanted to just ... I didn't want to be on birth control. There was no point or anything like that for me to be on it. And I started to try to figure out what my cycle was doing, because I didn't have a period anymore, which is really common post birth control syndrome. And that is really what led me to learning about, oh my gosh, your cycle has so much to say about your health, because I wasn't ... My temperatures were like 95.9. They were so low. And these books were saying, "Hey, a healthy temp is this." And I was like, "Wait a second. So what does that mean? Oh okay. That means my thyroid is not functioning well."
Meg Langston:
And then went to a holistic doctor and got all the lab work done, after being failed by conventional doctors. And here we are. Now, I serve women that are having any kind of dysfunctional conditions from infertility to hormonal imbalances, even acne to thyroid, all of the things. But it really started when ... The information really started when I was learning about my menstrual cycle, which is really cool.
Jayton Miller:
Heck yeah. That's awesome. So the menstrual cycle is something that you're very familiar with. Do you [crosstalk 00:07:51] giving us an overall of the menstrual cycle and the different parts of it and how it works?
Meg Langston:
Yeah. Yeah. No problem. So the ... I actually don't think a lot of women know this, and when you first start, as a woman, start to learn about your cycle, you're just so defeated on why and disappointed on why you were not taught this as young woman, because all of these things make so much sense once you start to learn that this is a really natural thing occurring in your body.
Meg Langston:
And if you're a male listening to this podcast, I would say just continue to listen because this is important for you to understand if you're ever coaching anybody in terms of nutrition or health or hormones or a trainer, because a woman's body is so vastly different from a male's. Our cycle changes within a month, where a male's is like 24 hours, right?
Meg Langston:
So a woman's menstrual cycle is biphasic, meaning it has two phases, from the follicular phase to the luteal phase. And what separates the two is ovulation, which is the main event. So the follicular phase is very estrogen dominant, and it is known as the pre-ovulatory phase because it's before you ovulate. And this phase is anywhere from 10 to 23 days. On average, it's about 15 days. And this is where it can vary.
Meg Langston:
So I'll talk about what a healthy cycle looks like and then where you can find abnormal cycles or where dysfunction can happen. So the cycles, on average ... The follicular phase, rather, is, on average, 15 days. And if you're taking your basal body temperature, which is basically taking your first morning temperature before you get out of bed, you would do this because, one, it's great at checking to see ... Dr. Broda Barnes talks about this, but at checking to see how your thyroid is. And then, two, it's the only way females can confirm ovulation. LH sticks don't work because you can miss it, miss the LH surge, which happens during ovulation, and then you don't want to rely just on cervical mucus because that ... If you're having an unhealthy luteal phase, which we'll talk about, that could show up.
Meg Langston:
So you always want to use the basal body temperature to confirm the ovulation has happened, and a good temp is around 97.6 in that follicular phase. So anything above that is considered really healthy and of high functioning thyroid. Anything below that is a good indication that there's some sluggish thyroid happening, maybe some hypothyroidism.
Meg Langston:
And so like I said, that this is a varied part of the cycle. So if you're somebody that has longer cycles, then you are going to have ... then you're going to ... which is above, oh gosh, I want to say ... I can't remember right now. It's 42 days, I would say, is abnormal. Let me pull up a note here. Yeah, 35 days. Forty-two would be considered too long. Sorry. So 24 to 35 days. So if it's above 35 days, your cycle's longer than 35 days, then that is a good indication that that follicular phase is too long.
Meg Langston:
And what would cause your cycle to be long is delayed ovulation. So your body's just not feeling safe enough to ovulate. So why would your body not feel safe enough to ovulate? It could be stressors. It could be happy stressors like planning for a wedding. It could be moving. It could be alcohol. It could be just trauma. It could be gut infections. So there's lots of things that would cause delayed ovulation. But nonetheless, it's a stressor.
Meg Langston:
And fertility always matters because it's a sign of health. Your body should always want to get pregnant and your body should always be able to get pregnant. Obviously, there's things that ... Well, your body should always be trying to get pregnant, right? Or at least be healthy enough to get pregnant is a better way to say that.
Meg Langston:
And so when it's not, it's going to protect itself and say, "I'm not ready to ovulate." And that's why something, a cycle, would go longer, is because it doesn't feel safe enough. And ovulation matters because not just for pregnancy, but because in a woman, ovulation is what strengthens their bones, our bones, heart, and brain. And so every time you ovulate, you're actually baking those health benefits for later on in your life.
Meg Langston:
And this is why it's so scary to think about the birth control pill, because it actually suppresses ovulation. So not only is it suppressing the benefits of what I just said, your heart, your bone health, and your brain, you're not getting those benefits, but what comes after ovulation is something called the corpus luteum. It's a gland that your body makes, a female's body makes, and it produces progesterone.
Meg Langston:
So when you're not ovulating on the birth control pill, you are not making that hormone progesterone that is completely the female hormone, that opposes estrogen, that protects our stress response, that supports thyroid function. And that's an issue.
Meg Langston:
So does that make sense on the follicular phase?
Jayton Miller:
Definitely.
Meg Langston:
Okay. So I think I feel like it's a lot of information, but the most important things to think about is the follicular phase is from your period bleed to ovulation. It's on average about 15 days. You absolutely do not ovulate on day 14 every month, like doctor's would say. Your ovulation can vary. And you only ovulate one day, but you are fertile anywhere from two to seven days out of the month. And that's because women have something called cervical mucus, which is a discharge. But that's actually really, really healthy for a female to have. It's a type of estrogen, but it actually ... its purpose is to capture the sperm, feed the sperm, and take the sperm where it needs to go.
Meg Langston:
So it's like our bodies are so amazing, and women usually get super embarrassed about that or feel weird. And it's like, "No, that's the most healthy thing your body can do during that time frame."
Meg Langston:
So then you ovulate, and then you step into the luteal phase, which is the last half of your cycle. And so this is ... the luteal phase is not going to ever change, meaning the length will always be 10 to 16 days. It will never be more than 16 days. It can, if you're low on progesterone, be less than 10 days, which is a good sign for you. If you're getting your period really, really soon, you have short cycles, that's a good indication that you have low progesterone. And remember, that progesterone is so important for thyroid function. It's anti-stress hormone. It is incredible for calming the body back down and therapeutic for the thyroid and things like that. So anything less would be a progesterone deficiency.
Meg Langston:
But that luteal phase is anywhere from 10 to 16 days. Under 10 days is progesterone deficiency. And this is where we will see a lot of estrogen dominance type of symptoms. So this is where women would have, although very common, is absolutely not considered healthy, PMS symptoms, tender breasts, extreme cramping, mood swings. And that's a big sign of estrogen dominance, and it would be because your body's not producing enough progesterone.
Meg Langston:
If you were to take your basal body temperature here, it should be about 98.4 is a really good temp shift. So 97.6, ovulation happens, and then it spikes up to at least 98.4, would be a really healthy, flourishing thyroid and body.
Jayton Miller:
Is that related to thyroid performance or an increase in progesterone?
Meg Langston:
Increase in progesterone.
Jayton Miller:
Okay.
Meg Langston:
Yeah. Progesterone is going to raise the basal body temperature.
Jayton Miller:
Okay.
Meg Langston:
And I feel like a really common thing that will happen here too is that a lot of women will notice histamine issues here, and that's because estrogen drives histamine, and histamine drives estrogen. It's like this vicious battle. So when women complain about headaches before their menstrual or even ovulation, because ovulation, you get a surge of estrogen. If you get a headache during ovulation or notice any other kind of allergy type symptoms, it's usually driven by histamine.
Meg Langston:
And I was saying this earlier to somebody, but it's so funny because when I was working on fixing my hormones, I was doing everything that these books said to do. I was supplementing with zinc. I was taking magnesium. I was seed cycling. Do you know what seed cycling is?
Jayton Miller:
No.
Meg Langston:
Okay. So seed cycling is just basically you take different seeds. It's like pumpkin seed and sesame seed and flaxseed, and you grind them up depending on where your cycle is. And this is problematic because seeds are a polyunsaturated fat or a PUFA. And so they're causing excess estrogen to happen. So their purpose is to help detox estrogen, yet the very nature of the seed is actually promoting estrogen.
Meg Langston:
So these books are talking about taking zinc, and zinc actually depletes our bioavailable copper. And bioavailable copper is important for thyroid function. It's also important for breaking down histamine along with magnesium.
Meg Langston:
So it's interesting because I was doing all these things and I could never ever get better. And now, looking back, I'm like, "Oh my gosh. It's because I was doing everything that depleted my bioavailable copper and put stress on my body so it depletes magnesium and then was increasing estrogen," because I was eating so many PUFAs and all those things.
Meg Langston:
So yeah, there's so much more to say about that. Do you have any questions on that?
Jayton Miller:
No, I think it makes pretty good sense. So as you see the rhythm of estrogen go up, your body temperature usually goes down.
Meg Langston:
Correct.
Jayton Miller:
And then as estrogen goes down and progesterone goes up, your body temperature will rise naturally with that as well?
Meg Langston:
Yes.
Jayton Miller:
Okay. Sounds good. So what are the main things that you would do to help with harsh periods?
Meg Langston:
Harsh periods, like painful periods or cramping? So we look at that and we say, "That's a lot of excess estrogen." So there's ... You want to look at a woman's body and support the detoxification of estrogen. So the liver, which has over 500 jobs, also one of its main jobs is to get rid of excess estrogen in the body. And so you want to support the liver, which helps get rid of excess estrogen.
Meg Langston:
So that looks like dandelion root. That can look like eating beets, which actually helps thin the bile. The bile is what will help release the toxins and excess hormones. So anything that will help support the liver, castor oil packs, will help decrease estrogen.
Meg Langston:
One of my favorite things, which is so simple to do, is eating a raw carrot salad. Do you do this?
Jayton Miller:
Oh yeah.
Meg Langston:
Oh yeah. So Ray Peat's raw carrot salad, it is the cheapest, most effective thing that I can ... If you can't sit still for 45 minutes to an hour for a castor oil pack, no big deal. At least get in a raw carrot salad, because they're so beneficial at uniquely binding to excess estrogen and helping it be removed from the body and endotoxins. And any time you have endotoxins, it's feeding bacteria, and bacteria's promoting estrogen.
Meg Langston:
So I would say supporting the liver, and again, that looks like supporting bile flow, which is beets, dandelion root tea, castor oil packs, eating raw carrots every single day. And then really supporting the thyroid, so eating ... Something that's not always talked about with the thyroid, and I love that Morley Robbins talks about this so much, is getting enough vitamin A in, because it helps with the conversions or helps with thyroid hormone.
Meg Langston:
And so vitamin A would be eating high quality saturated fats from animal meats like beef, bison, things like that. So that's really important to get in.
Jayton Miller:
A good amount of liver.
Meg Langston:
Good amount of liver. Yes. Yeah. Are you eating liver? Do you eat it or supplement?
Jayton Miller:
I eat it.
Meg Langston:
You're so good.
Jayton Miller:
Yeah.
Meg Langston:
I want to. If I ... My mom makes the best liver pate, and I wish that I could duplicate the recipe, because I actually love the liver pate, but I cannot make it myself. So I'm still supplementing. But if you can eat liver, that is one of the most beneficial nutrients in all things thyroid, all things hormones, all things.
Jayton Miller:
There's two things that I found that make it more tolerable. Number one, mixing it with ground beef. So if you toss it up and just toss it in with the ground beef, you can't hardly taste it at all. Second is freezing it and then tossing it in my smoothie in the mornings. And you can't taste it past the berries.
Meg Langston:
Really?
Jayton Miller:
Mm-hmm (affirmative)-.
Meg Langston:
Okay. So what else do you put in your smoothie?
Jayton Miller:
So it's a weird smoothie. I do pineapple, I do a berry mix that has cherries, blueberries, and some blackberries, and then I'll do cottage cheese because it makes it a little more creamy, and then I'll do some nonfat milk. And it's gold. And then sometimes, I'll toss some collagen in there as well.
Meg Langston:
Yeah. That sounds good. It sounds weird, actually. I'll be honest. It sounds weird. But I would try it. And I'm glad actually you brought that up, because dairy is such a hot topic for hormones and removing dairy. And I think you and I are definitely on the same page about this, but dairy is one of the most abundant nutrients that you can actually consume.
Meg Langston:
And so if your body's unable to digest dairy, you really want to look at why your body's unable to digest dairy. So any time you address the gut, you can't just address the gut. You have to support metabolic function. And when I say that, I mean metabolism, because the metabolism impacts the digestive system. And when we're talking about the digestive system, we're talking about being able to properly break down your protein, carbs, and fat.
Meg Langston:
And when people have a sluggish thyroid, they are going to have a hard time breaking down protein, carbs, and fat. A sluggish thyroid is going to slow down the digestive system and it's going to allow for undigested foods to ferment and putrefy in the gut, which can feed bacteria and cause a whole number of issues. And this can make it really hard to digest dairy.
Meg Langston:
So I always say if there's ... Of course, there's allergies out there. But if there is, it's usually having to address the gut a little bit and reestablishing the metabolism to run optimally before just completely eliminating it, because it is so pro-thyroid. And anything that is so pro-thyroid is so pro-hormone and getting rid of excess estrogen.
Meg Langston:
I do the GI map stool analysis in my practice, which some people love, some people hate. I actually love it, as long as you're working with the metabolism alongside of it so that you're not just addressing the gut and then leaving the person with the slow thyroid and slow metabolism, because then of course it's going to just happen again in a few months.
Meg Langston:
But I usually do something that ... a quick oregano supplement or something to help get rid of the dysbiotic bacteria to make it easier to digest dairy. But for those that are like, "Okay, I'll give it a shot. I'll see how it helps me," I would start out really, really slow. Did you ever eliminate from your diet?
Jayton Miller:
Dairy?
Meg Langston:
Yeah.
Jayton Miller:
I did at one point, because basically, I had trouble digesting it for quite a while, whenever I was severely hypothyroid. And so it's due to the lack of the ability to produce the enzymes that are necessary to break down the proteins, because you have less stomach acid whenever you're hypothyroid, less enzymes when you're hypothyroid, and then you have a dysbiosis within the microbiome.
Jayton Miller:
And so it took me quite a while before I was able to do it, and I introduced it very slowly. And I took Kate During's approach where she starts with higher fat derivatives of milk, and then she also starts with cheeses. So she'll do Parmigiano Reggiano, and she'll start with those first because they're typically a little bit easier to digest.
Jayton Miller:
But before that, I actually started with goat dairy. So-
Meg Langston:
Yeah. Yeah.
Jayton Miller:
Those molecules are a little bit easier on the digestive system. So I started with that, then moved over to regular dairy, the higher fat derivatives, and then moved down to the lower fat derivatives whenever I was prepared.
Meg Langston:
Yeah. That's exactly what I tell my clients to do and exactly what I did, because I stayed away from it for so long when I was trying to ... And I didn't say this, but through all of the madness, I caused myself subclinical hypothyroidism. Most of us have it, right?
Meg Langston:
So because I couldn't digest dairy well because my thyroid was so low, when I finally started to introduce it, it took me about a full month to totally do it, which is interesting. I just recently saw a study that said it takes about 21 days to get the enzyme lactase back to be able to break it down.
Meg Langston:
But I did the same thing. I started out with Parmesan cheese and then goat's milk, and then eventually felt confident enough to go to a local farmer and get raw milk. In Georgia, it's not legal for humans, but it is for pet consumption. So we go to our local farmer. They very well know that we're drinking it, but on the cap it says, "For pet consumption only."
Meg Langston:
And if you're able, raw dairy is so beneficial. I don't know. Is Colorado ... Are you able to get raw dairy?
Jayton Miller:
You have to buy a share in the cow.
Meg Langston:
Okay.
Jayton Miller:
So you're getting ... Technically, you're getting the milk from your cow whenever you do that.
Meg Langston:
Oh, that's good. That's really cool. Yeah, it's so interesting to me that alcohol and everything else is so legal, but it's God forbid you eat anything that's healthy. But that's because it works, right/
Jayton Miller:
Mm-hmm (affirmative)-.
Meg Langston:
That's a whole other topic.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. So what do you see whenever women have difficult periods? What are some of the most common mistakes that you see them doing whenever they're trying to handle that?
Meg Langston:
Yeah. I think where it starts is that most women under-eat and maybe not intentionally, but I think most of the time it is intentionally, because it goes back to that identity part where, for some reason, body image is ... And I don't know if it's like this for males, but there's such a driving force of being successful, being a good mom, being a good business owner. If you can look good while doing it, you are somehow more successful.
Meg Langston:
And I feel like that's so un-talked about, but it is true. There's this driving force of everything goes back to how you look. So I say that because when somebody is trying to fix their hormones, but still obsessed with their body image, they tend to not eat enough. And any time our body ... Not eating enough causes stress in our body. Stress is stress to our body, again whether that's planning for a wedding or under-eating.
Meg Langston:
And when we under-eat, it messes with our blood sugar. It causes blood sugar dysregulation. And it causes our body to produce cortisol, and cortisol will rise estrogen. So I think the most common thing, which is the hardest thing to tell women, is that you have to eat enough. And what does enough mean? You can get with a coach that knows macros that will find something appropriate for you, or you can just try to eat until you're satisfied.
Meg Langston:
I don't always push for macro counting, just because I think a lot of women are ... It just feeds into that diet culture. I think it can be used as a tool for a short period of time. But I typically have women just go towards how they're feeling during a meal. You don't want to feel overly stuffed, but you definitely don't want to feel hungry. And you should ... I recommend waking up within the first 30 minutes of waking and eating, eating every three to four hours after that. That's going to help manage blood sugar, which is going to help reduce stress levels in the body and, therefore, excess estrogen.
Meg Langston:
So the most simple thing you can do is make sure that you're eating enough and frequently enough as a female. From there, I think that one of the most ... And same thing with overexercising. Women are working out, going to Orange Theory like five times a week. That's a high intensity interval training. That's a lot on your body. I find that most women do well with two to three times a week, which I think is another struggle to try to get people to say, "Hey, you've got to calm down on your workouts and you're going to be okay." But ultimately, it is going to help calm the body back down from that stress.
Meg Langston:
So I would say overexercising, under-eating, and then doing the things like I said before. So many of these books are talking about supplementing with zinc. And even with the virus that's going around, women are ... Not women. Women and men are supplementing with zinc to support their immune system. And the reason that is not good is because it depletes that bioavailable copper I was talking about. And bioavailable copper is incredibly therapeutic towards hormones and getting the hormones in balance and the thyroid.
Meg Langston:
So not supplementing blindly, I think, is really important, and instead, because you're like, "Okay. Well, then how do I get bioavailable copper in?," focusing on foods like liver, bee pollen, Whole Foods vitamin C, and oysters, things like that that are going to be really therapeutic for not only the thyroid, but hormones in general. Any time you're talking about thyroid, you're talking about hormones.
Meg Langston:
So I think that is really important. A mineral that is also missed is magnesium. Do you take magnesium?
Jayton Miller:
Oh yeah. Definitely.
Meg Langston:
Yeah.
Jayton Miller:
So do you usually use bicarbonate or do you use gluconate and those other forms as well?
Meg Langston:
I do bicarbonate.
Jayton Miller:
Okay.
Meg Langston:
What about you?
Jayton Miller:
I like the gluconate form, just because it has the glycine attached to it. I also know that the citrate is okay. It's not really as favorable, and then the aspartate is usually pretty good as well. But I'll do that, and then I'll also do the magnesium salt baths as well.
Meg Langston:
Oh okay. That's so great for anybody that's looking for the ... that has those headaches during their ovulation or during their period or the week before their period if they're getting headaches. Getting a magnesium bath or Epsom salt bath can be so, so quickly ... The magnesium quickly absorbs into your body and can help break up that histamine and those headaches. So I'm glad you brought that up. That's so huge.
Jayton Miller:
Yeah. The recipe that I use, just so they know, is I'll do a cup of baking soda with a cup of the magnesium salt flakes. And then every once in a while, I'll toss in some aspirin in there as well to further enhance the oxidate metabolism. And-
Meg Langston:
Are you taking aspirin on a regular basis?
Jayton Miller:
No, I don't, just because I've gotten a few hair analysis back that showed anemia. So I'm not afraid of the anemic part. It's just I don't want to further chelate the iron just because of that. So I'm focusing on my copper and zinc right now. But yeah, it's just not something that I want to further mess with in that realm.
Meg Langston:
Yeah. Super interesting. And for those, I am definitely not an expert in this at all, but I think it's worth explaining a little bit to get people to do their own research and get inspired by it. And actually, going back and taking Morley's class, you know Morley Robbins?
Jayton Miller:
Mm-hmm (affirmative)-.
Meg Langston:
His class in February, practitioner class. But first of all, the birth control pill has iron in it, and iron will feed estrogen and pathogens in the body. So when a woman has just continued excess iron ... I'm sorry, excess estrogen symptoms, oftentimes they also have iron overload in the body, which won't necessarily show up on blood work. And that's because they're not eating the same ... the nutrients that we talked about before, the minerals of bioavailable copper, magnesium, things that help move iron appropriately in the body.
Meg Langston:
But I think it's worthwhile to note that, when you're not on your cycle ... I'm sorry, when you are on your birth control and you are not having a regular cycle or period, then you are also accumulating iron and estrogen in the body, because one of the benefits to having your menstrual cycle is you will help iron appropriately leave the body the way that it should.
Meg Langston:
So it's just something else to think about when you are on the birth control pill or when you're getting off and you continue to have these excess estrogen symptoms. It's also contributing to iron overload, and it goes right back to why those minerals are so important to consume in your diet, which is that bee pollen, the beef, liver, the oysters, the dairy. All of those have minerals and just nutrients in them that help iron move appropriately, so therefore will help estrogen detox the way that it should be.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. One thing that you mentioned earlier was some of the benefits that the menstrual cycle can have. Can you go into what some of those benefits are and how they work?
Meg Langston:
Yeah. So I did a presentation in Chicago one time on the menstrual cycle, and I said ... I heard a speaker say this one time, and I was like, "This is the best thing I've ever heard." And so the title was A Woman's Unfair Advantage, because it's absolutely true. We as women have an unfair advantage to checking in and to seeing how our health is on a regular basis. And that's because our menstrual cycle is going to reflect how healthy we are.
Meg Langston:
If our temperatures are lower in the follicular phase or the luteal phase, that's a good indication that our thyroid is not working the way that it should be and it's sluggish. So that's going to throw everything off from digestion to hormones.
Meg Langston:
Our cycle will show us if we're having too much stress. So if we have delayed ovulation, that is going to show us that we've got to cut back on stress. And this is why I think fertility awareness method, which is just basically what I'm talking about, learning how to understand your cycle, is going to be so beneficial, because for women to really just be empowered to be able to say, "Oh okay. I actually ovulated way too early. So that means that I have actually excess estrogen," or, "I'm ovulating way too late. So that means that I have too much stress going on in my body. Where do I have to manipulate? I need to put up more boundaries. I need to help delegate X, Y, Z so that I can calm my body back down. I need to be making sure that I'm eating enough."
Meg Langston:
And during ovulation, women should have a sex drive. Our bodies are meant to produce then. So it's okay if, towards your period, if you're like, "Eh, I'm not really feeling it." Hormones are a little bit lower there. That's not abnormal to not completely desire sex during that part of your cycle. But you should have a sex drive. Sex drive is an indication of health, especially during that ovulation window.
Meg Langston:
So if you're tracking your cycle and you know that ovulation is occurring and you're not craving sex or thinking about it, maybe you're not in a relationship, but you're not noticing the opposite sex to be attractive and you're not, I don't know, maybe even feeling more vivacious. I don't know what it would be. But you should have somewhat of a sex drive and you would be able to tell what's appropriate with where your season is.
Meg Langston:
But if not, your cycle will ... If you're not having a sex drive during ovulation, then you know, "Okay. That's a sign of unhealthy." Maybe it's too much stress. Maybe it's excess estrogen, same thing. It's a good indication that you can rely on during your menstrual cycle to be a key to how your health is.
Meg Langston:
And that luteal phase, I talked about cervical mucus being appropriate during the ovulation phase. During the luteal phase, a woman with PCOS or low progesterone is going to show cervical mucus or discharge in that luteal phase. And if you are tracking where your cycle is and you know that you have already ovulated, you would know that would be inappropriate to have any kind of cervical mucus during that time. So you would be able to say, "Oh okay. My progesterone's too low. If my progesterone's too low, that means I need to support my thyroid. That means that I need to make sure that I'm doing all X, Y, Z, eating enough, not overexercising, getting enough varied proteins in, saturated fats in, managing stress."
Meg Langston:
So I think those are the biggest things that I can think of. But it truly is a fifth vital sign to being able to manage your stress and your health and even your nutritional deficiencies just by becoming familiar.
Meg Langston:
And you may not need to know every enzyme like I'm talking about for histamine and stuff, but you can say, "Oh, my temps are off. This isn't right," or, "Oh, she said that cervical mucus should only be in your ovulation phase and I've had it for 10 days straight now. Something's off." And it will at least give you language to articulate, to be able to get the help that you need.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. That makes a lot of sense. So what would you say are some of the best tactics? You mentioned eating beets, the carrot salad, the castor oil pack. I haven't heard of that one specifically. Can you go into what that is?
Meg Langston:
Yeah. So the castor oil pack is basically ... Most women know the castor oil for inducing labor, which I actually took to induce labor. It is absolutely wild and definitely induces labor. But actually, I had a client that was 62 years old and she said that she used to get it for immune boosting. They used to take a spoonful of it in the winter. Her mom always gave it to her. So I thought that was interesting. I had not heard that before.
Meg Langston:
But castor oil is just a monosaturated fat, and you ... A castor oil pack is basically taking a wool cloth, pouring castor oil on it, and then you put it under your right rib where your liver and gallbladder sits, and then a heating pad on top of it. Sit there for like 45 minutes to an hour. And it will help the liver detox for men and women.
Meg Langston:
When my husband's feeling really off or ill, I'll actually have him do it. For females, you have to be a little careful. If you are breastfeeding, it may not be appropriate. If there's a chance that you're pregnant, you may not want to do it after ovulation. Some people don't like to do it during their periods. I think that towards the end of your period, it's totally fine.
Meg Langston:
And you can be a little bit more strategic with where, when you're approaching ovulation, if you're somebody that has an unhealthy ovulation, meaning you are very moody, PMS type symptoms, breast tenderness, headaches, that's again an unhealthy part of ovulation and would be a sign of excess estrogen. So you can actually ramp up the castor oil packs leading up to ovulation, and that can help. Similarly to your period, you can ramp up the castor oil pack, and that will help with the detox of estrogen.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. That's awesome. Well, I think that is the entirety of my questions that I have for you. Is there anything else that you'd like the audience to know about?
Meg Langston:
No. I always say this, and I think that this is important. I guess I said no, and then I said that I do have something. I think that when we're talking about health, it's important for me to always leave this with people's minds because sometimes when we're trying to get healthy, we are so self-consumed and we are doing everything that we can to soak in and consume all of the information.
Meg Langston:
And the healthiest I ever am is when I'm looking out to serve other people, get involved, give my finances to support something that I care about. And so I just encourage people that when you are trying to recover from healing or you have someone that you love that's trying to recover from healing hormones, whatever it is, digestive issues, infertility, I encourage you to give either a part of your finances or serve somewhere else, because when you become self-consumed, it makes you sicker.
Meg Langston:
And when you're able to just take some of that stress off and really just enjoy life and enjoy the happiness of other people, it just ... it allows for this internal healing and for your body to start accepting healing a little bit.
Meg Langston:
So something that's a little bit unique, but I think that the healthiest people I see are the ones that give back the most with healthy boundaries. And when my clients, when they give in any capacity, they also improve their healing the fastest.
Meg Langston:
So food for thought.
Jayton Miller:
That's awesome. So where can people find you on social media, website, stuff like that?
Meg Langston:
Yeah. So my Instagram is Meg, M-E-G, underscore Langston, L-A-N-G-S-T-O-N. And I have a website, MegLangston.com. I have a course. So if you are looking to maybe not work with me one on one, but you want to do the course, so you want to get testing done with me, you can do that. And my course is just called The Rebalance Course, and it's basically talking about everything from hormones to thyroid and supporting the body using nutrients and things like the castor oil packs and things like that.
Meg Langston:
So that's what I offer right now. The one on one to work with me, I do have a little bit of a wait until end of January, February. But depending on when you hear this, you can reach out to me still.
Jayton Miller:
Heck yeah. Sounds good. Well, for all those who are listening, make sure to give her a follow on Instagram, check out her website. She actually has a pretty good website. I was looking at it this morning, and it was pretty nice. So [crosstalk 00:45:13].
Meg Langston:
Thank you.
Jayton Miller:
I recommend checking it out. But that's all for this one. Meg, thanks for your time. I appreciate you hopping on.
Meg Langston:
Thank you.
Jayton Miller:
Thanks for listening to the podcast. If you haven't already, make sure to hit the like button, subscribe, and leave a comment down below if you want us to cover a different topic.
I this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Jayton Miller sits down with health and wellness professional Keith Littlewood for a second talk. In this episode, Jayton and Keith talk about all things thyroid. From how estrogen and cortisol affect the thyroid to how methylene blue can increase the amount of available thyroid hormone in serum. They also talk about Keith Functional Endocrinology and Nutrition Seminars where Keith teaches people everything you would ever want to know about hormones and food. Check it out and let us know what you think!
Facebook Group and Fanpage -
Thermo Diet Community Group ( https://www.facebook.com/groups/16721... ) - Thermo Diet Fan Page ( https://www.facebook.com/thermodiet/ ) Youtube
Channels: - Christopher Walker ( https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTA1... ) - UMZU Health ( https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2IE... )
Instagram: -
@_christopherwalker ( https://www.instagram.com/_christophe... ) - @researchcowboy ( https://www.instagram.com/researchcow... )
Keith's Website - https://balancedbodymind.com/
Full Transcript:
Jayton Miller:
Welcome back to the ThermoDiet Podcast. I'm your host Jayton Miller and today I have on the podcast, again, Mr. Keith Littlewood. The first episode that I had with Keith was one of my favorite of the history of the ThermoDiet Podcast and I'm super excited for you all to listen to this episode today.
Jayton Miller:
We talk about things from how estrogen and cortisol affect the thyroid, the diurnal rhythm of the thyroid, vitamin A, thyroid carrier proteins, methylene blue and its relationship to higher thyroid availability, the largest factors in maintaining a healthy thyroid, and the key functional endocrinology and nutrition seminars. I'm really looking forward to you all being able to listen to this one. It's filled with an extreme amount of value so let's get into it.
Jayton Miller:
How's it going today, guys? I am here with Keith Littlewood. How you doing today, Keith?
Keith Littlewood:
Not bad. Traded the heat of Dubai for the cold and snow of the Lake District in England. Enjoying the shift, to be honest.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. This is your second appearance on the ThermoDiet Podcast. I really appreciate your time and thank you for hopping on here and talking with me again. For those who haven't listened to your previous podcast, could you tell them your background and how you came across this realm of health?
Keith Littlewood:
Sure. I fell into health by just starting out as a gym instructor and then into as a personal trainer and then into having my health club and small personal training company. Then I realized I hated managing people. I did some holistic exercise stuff in the US with the C.H.E.K Institute and then I moved away from that and got into functional medicine testing and then more into Ray Peat's work, which I found really interesting and the science that he referenced, whether it be Albus and Georgie or [inaudible 00:02:01] Katharina Dalton, some really good scientists with some really incredible work behind them.
Keith Littlewood:
That spurred me on and challenged my biases. I thought it was all very good reading these books, which are absolutely astounding books but I decided to go to uni ... Back to uni. I did a degree in fitness and health, which was really just a plodding along, not really meaning anything at the time.
Keith Littlewood:
I did a post-grad and a masters degree in endocrinology, looking at, specifically ... It was interesting because the experience of understanding what doctors are studying as well, because it was mainly doctors on the course, and seeing how they look at different aspects of research and perhaps shy away from the nutritional aspects and often take the dogmatic beliefs that the blood tests are the gold standard. It was interesting to really study with them.
Keith Littlewood:
My masters degree was looking at some of the older research like [inaudible 00:02:57] put out and did a small study looking at body temperature and pulse and how blood thyroid values like thyroid stimulating hormone can appear completely normal but yet people can have suboptimal temperature and have all this clinical presentation of low thyroid function. It was just along those lines.
Keith Littlewood:
I'm just starting my PHD next year, which is a real challenge for me because I thought I wasn't capable of doing the other studies but it's a lot more in-depth and going into more some clinical research and looking at thyroid receptor expression, looking at liver function when the body is perhaps ... Certainly, not human bodies but rodent physiology, when they're exposed to multiple pollutants at various levels.
Keith Littlewood:
The idea is to go and do that. That's been my journey over the last ... Well, from the fitness industry in the late '90s up until now and I'm here now doing this thing working, primarily, earning money as a kind of coach for hormone-related issues, like digestion, sleep, energy, mood, fertility, that kind of thing and trying to juggle being a parent and working and studying at the same time. It's all a bit of a juggle but here I am.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. That's awesome. Well, I know that I thoroughly enjoy your work. You're probably one of the more knowledgeable people that I've come across other than [inaudible 00:04:20] and Ray himself. I really appreciate everything that you're putting out for everybody. It's awesome.
Keith Littlewood:
Hey, I really appreciate that. To be honest, [inaudible 00:04:31] talking about Ray, a very clever guy. I just, generally, probably 20 years on most people. I'm 49 so I've read a lot more books and kind of juggle around so most people should be where I am at that age I think. It's nice to be considered within those kind of work of people but they're very clever people for sure.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. Whenever it comes to thyroid, how do estrogen and cortisol and I guess stress, in general, kind of affect the thyroid's functioning?
Keith Littlewood:
Yeah. There are multiple levels. Even from the basic skipping meals where we know that cortisol is going to need to be produced, primarily, if there's not enough energy around, the body has to start breaking down fats as a fuel. If glucose is running out, the brain is preferentially going to ensure that the liver is saving some liver for the brain. The brain likes to use glucose. If it gets to start breaking down fatty acids as a fuel, chronically, it's a bit of a problem.
Keith Littlewood:
Initially, the thing of just skipping meals, which can and should be able to do if they have a healthy physiology but a lot of people don't. The ability to skip meals is one of the primary reasons why they can't cope. If you're training in a fasted state, for example, you're going to be starting to produce a lot more cortisol. That has an effect.
Keith Littlewood:
We know that glucose, cortisol, and even adrenaline, for example, have the capacity to inhibit thyroid, primarily, because it's a bit like analogous to the digestive system, right? When you're not in the parasympathetic state of digesting foods and you're startled and you have to spring into action, the digestive system shuts down and you start funneling blood towards the working organs, the periphery, and the skin just to get you prepared for that stressor.
Keith Littlewood:
That's the same thing is when you have these higher levels of adrenaline and cortisol, it's really there to get you out of a situation. That comes at a cost by inhibiting the organizational hormones like thyroid.
Keith Littlewood:
You know, what you might tend to see in the acute stages is perhaps a slight increase in TSH. It's usually inhibited very, very quickly. When you look at medical cases where people have been using long-term cortioc steroids of something, for example, then the thyroid physiology is certainly suppressed and sometimes TSH is unreadable in that state.
Keith Littlewood:
This is why we tend to see a lot of thyroid blood tests appear completely normal. I think that's relatively problematic. I've been working with a lot of clients in Australia recently and there's this dogmatic upholdance of the TSH being the gold standard. I see a lot of clients that have been to the doctors and they've looked at my TSH and they won't look at the T4 or T3 or the three T4s and T3 as a marker, because they think that that's the gold standard test.
Keith Littlewood:
I think that's the problem. There are many things that can make thyroid blood tests appear completely normal and being stressed and cortisol production is just one of those as an example, whether you're training in a fasted state or chronic emotional stressors, chronic pollutant stressors, perhaps you're over-exercising, perhaps ... There are a number of stressors that can drive that but that's just one of the reasons why cortisol might be elevated but at the same time, TSH might be suppressed.
Keith Littlewood:
In a normal healthy system, what you should see is that as TSH starts to increase, you'll generally see cortisol increase as part of that. You'll tend to see a lot of people don't have that normal response and this is why perhaps the feedback mechanisms with the loops, that there being enough thyroid hormone within the blood and in the carrier proteins, which we'll talk about later.
Keith Littlewood:
Going back to the pituitary and that feedback mechanism going, "There's enough thyroid in the blood. We don't need to produce anymore. We don't need to ramp up TSH production." TSH production, as I said, usually what would happen is cortisol would increase. TSH, in itself, for example, is a stress hormone. Not everybody tends to view it as that.
Keith Littlewood:
When you have high production of TSH, it's associated with fibrosis, it's associated with follicle [inaudible 00:08:55], within the thyroid gland itself. TSH can be as much a stressor as, say, cortisol and the effects of estrogen, which we'll talk about in a minute. Also, the TSH receptor, which can be problematic as well. The TSH receptor is not just in the thyroid gland. It's in the ovaries and the testicles and the liver, in the bone, and there are various reasons that when the thyroid-stimulating hormone receptor is not regulated, there are connotations with this and its progression with tumors and cancers.
Keith Littlewood:
There's a knock on effect of perhaps understanding why TSH should start to increase in response to a lack of peripheral conversion of thyroid hormones. Understanding, that there are mechanisms that can inhibit it as well. That's why TSH perhaps on its own can be a complete waste of time.
Jayton Miller:
Yeah. Definitely. Whenever it comes to the TSH receptors, especially within the reproductive tissue, do you know exactly what's going on there?
Keith Littlewood:
No. I don't. I'm still working my way through that as part of my studies. I think it's that it might be as part of the mechanism with the extra peripheral thyroid issue. Maybe it's having an effect that's slightly problematic that's perhaps related to growth. There may be some synergy with some of the other tissues that are associated with growth in cancers as well. Perhaps like the endothelial growth factors that you tend to see with angiogenesis, and other factors of growth. Maybe it's to do with growth and proliferation, much like the estrogenic issues that you tend to see but I'd put my hand up and say I don't fully know at this moment in time.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. Whenever it comes to estrogen, do you usually notice that it is estrogen, then high TSH levels from the suppression of the thyroid or that it's in the reverse?
Keith Littlewood:
Could you say that again? I'm sorry.
Jayton Miller:
Whenever it comes to estrogen and its effect on thyroid, do you usually notice that estrogen inhibits the thyroid function and then TSH goes up or the other way around?
Keith Littlewood:
I think it's hard to say with that sometimes. Estrogen does have the capacity to inhibit thyroid hormone production. It can affect the thyroid binding globulin and to a degree, maybe even transthyretin, but sometimes when estrogen is produced, it will suppress thyroid physiology.
Keith Littlewood:
I think even to a certain extent, you could argue, and I've seen this with some female clients, is that they're pushed into a subclinical state of hyperthyroidism, even on the buildup in their premenstrual phase, for example. You'll have a dump of estrogen, it will have effects on stimulating glycolysis. It can have an effect on lowering thyroid physiology.
Keith Littlewood:
I generally think it's the estrogen is increasing that suppressed the thyroid, but equally, you could be low thyroid from a number of different reasons, perhaps environmental pollutants and stressors that allow estrogen to have a double whammy effect, as it were. The thyroid is being suppressed and then you have an excess of estrogen, which suppresses thyroid physiology further and that has knock on effects because it can affect [inaudible 00:12:23] and excess of estrogen can affect all levels of aerobic physiology, the electron transport chain.
Keith Littlewood:
Therefore, it can have negative effects to oxidative phosphorylation and use of fats and glucose as a fuel efficiently. I think it's going to be probably context-specific to the person on what they're experiencing but, generally, as a rule of thumb, estrogen will suppress thyroid physiology. Does that answer the question?
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. It did. Yes. Whenever it comes to the functioning of the thyroid, I know that TSH is usually highest during the night. Is there an overall diurnal rhythm of thyroid performance?
Keith Littlewood:
Well, I think you could probably look at it as similar to the seasonal effects of ... I think, certainly, the kind of nadir of TSH at nighttime perhaps parallels that need of just if you take a single day and then look at it as a seasonal thing. We know that TSH is usually at its lowest in the summer months and then perhaps starts to increase during the winter months. Why?
Keith Littlewood:
Because there's less light around as an example, therefore ... Well, there are many aspects to that. The fact that there's not a lot of light around, we often see less hormones being ... Sorry, when there's enough light around, there's enough hormones being converted but as it gets colder, we know there are things that we know our body needs to generate more heat, for example, whereas in the summer time we're kind of being warmed up by the sun and the environment around us.
Keith Littlewood:
That will mean that TSH will start to increase as days get darker and longer as opposed to lighter and longer. There are other aspects like increasing serotonin and increasing melatonin as well that might have an impact on that during the winter months as well.
Keith Littlewood:
But going back to the question regarding night time, I think the TSH is paralleling that darkness, the stress of darkness that Ray Peat, who was the first person to suggest that, for me, which I found really interesting, is that as darkness onsets, you'll have peak of melatonin, which in itself perhaps suppresses thyroid to a degree. It cools the body down. You'll have increases in growth hormone. Again, depending on someone's physiology, how well they're fed, how much they've eaten, will probably dictate how much growth hormone is being produced as an example, how much cortisol is being produced, and, ultimately how much TSH is being produced at night time. I think the standard day is just an expression of the stress induced by darkness to a degree.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. That makes a lot of sense. One question that I've had for quite a while is I've always thought that vitamin A, especially in excess, hinders proper thyroid functioning. I know it depends on the carotenoid versus the animal derivatives. What is your take on vitamin A? Is it something that we should supplement with if we don't get enough in our diet or is it just something that we should avoid completely?
Keith Littlewood:
Well, I think there are a couple of contexts to that. I've skimmed over some of the controversial posts coming out of the US from some people who say that you shouldn't be taking vitamin A. I think there tends to be a glossing over of some of the real problems in the US and I think there is a substantially large portion of hypothyroid people.
Keith Littlewood:
Now, bearing in mind, if you start throwing plenty of vitamin A at someone who is low thyroid, your ability to use that vitamin A is substantially diminished, therefore, you are likely to consume toxic levels or perhaps slightly excessive levels of vitamin A quite easily. It's well known, as you said, that the beta caretonoids tend to not be as favorable as, say, the pre-formed vitamin A, which comes from your organ, meats, livers, that kind of thing, which I think is an essential component of the diet. I think the more stress that you're under, I think the more sunshine that you're in, I think that how sick you get, will dictate how much vitamin A that you need.
Keith Littlewood:
I can't see any reason why people couldn't consume 20 to 30 grams of liver a day or maybe five to six days a week as useful. You can look for those tell tale signs of consuming the excess carotenoids and you see carotenosis and these orange-y fat pads in the hands and sometimes on your feet. When I used to do lots of physical therapy, I could tell when someone had been on a paleo type diet, consuming loads of sweet potatoes and squash because their feet would be virtually orange and I would say, "Do you eat lots of sweet potatoes?" They'd say, "Yeah. Every day." It's like you can see these things.
Keith Littlewood:
I do think it's really important to understand whether someone's liver is functional enough to utilize the vitamin A and would always favor more of the liver from that, not to say squashes and sweet potatoes aren't useful foods because they can be. When you're eating them every day, the excess of the carotenoids can have an effect on making the liver slightly more sluggish than it could be. Therefore, you need to consider that.
Keith Littlewood:
When someone's sick, as I was saying, you could become sick very, very ... It depends how sick you can be. It might be an acute or a chronic illness but you would deplete vitamin A substantially. If you're someone who gets sick quite a lot throughout the year, you might find liver being the game changer. I do find that organ meats, and particularly liver, is something that does have a big bang effect for a lot of people, particularly female clients, because it will assist with hormone conversion.
Keith Littlewood:
For example, in the female cycle, the corpus luteum holds a substantial amount of vitamin A that I think it helps to produce the progesterone from. If you're looking at ovulatory issues and fertility issues then getting adequate amounts of vitamin A could be essential. I know a friend of mine that's consumed 30 grams of raw liver every day for the last 10 years and is probably one of the healthiest people I know.
Jayton Miller:
I've seen a study where they took adolescent boys who hit puberty late and so they hadn't hit it yet and they actually supplemented with vitamin A plus iron and it had similar effects to bioidentical testosterone within the study. As far as the synthesis of the steroid hormones, how does vitamin A play a role in that?
Keith Littlewood:
It's funny because I've seen a similar study as well with menopausal women who have had similar issues and supplementing with vitamin A is basically taking some of their postmenopausal symptoms, which was really interesting.
Keith Littlewood:
I think with vitamin A it allows the liver to function efficiently, it will help with steroidal hormone conversion. It will help with tissue differentiation, which is quite important. If you look at the issues, say, for example, with people who have been in the sun a lot and they're exposed to excess UV, one of the primary actions of vitamin A is just acting as a tissue differentiator. It will just promote steroidal hormone in the peripheral tissues and in the liver. Generally, as a rule of thumb, that's the mechanisms I'm aware of of vitamin A. I don't know the exact mechanisms beyond that.
Keith Littlewood:
The other thing as well with vitamin A is that generally you might see, particularly, many females, again, coming up as anemic and, again, it's a low vitamin A status that's not allowing binding of iron efficiently, not allowing hemoglobin production efficiently. It tends to have a knock on effect to other systems related to red blood cell production as well. It's not just limited to steroidal conversion.
Jayton Miller:
Do you think that people who are anemic on blood tests should probably start supplementing with vitamin A, initially, instead of going towards iron and supplementation?
Keith Littlewood:
Absolutely. To a degree, as well, if you look at, say ... You can get a feel from some of the RBC tests like hemoglobin, hematocrit, corpuscular volume, and those ones may actually flag out the slightly low. If they're end range low or even low, you can probably suggest someone is a hypothyroid, first of all, and you'll probably find adequate vitamin A and restoring thyroid capacity will basically eradicate what looks like anemia.
Keith Littlewood:
Again, if you're just getting a blood test done that's just looking at, say, [inaudible 00:21:23] levels and you're not looking at ferritin, trans ferritin or tissue iron binding capacity, then ... You still get a lot of doctors that will look at just iron levels and go, "Hey, you're anemic" and it's like, "Well, why aren't they responding to the iron?" when you give them loads of iron. I've seen some people have IV iron drips and wondering why they feel pretty crappy just supplementing extra iron. It still makes me wonder how people can have five years of medical training and usually a specialism, get to that point where they're just looking at a single blood test and wondering why iron's not increasing.
Keith Littlewood:
Yeah. To answer the question, I think if someone has the context, their history is there, perhaps not eating enough irons means they're under a lot of stress, perhaps they get a lot of sunshine, all of these reasons, perhaps they've been sick multiple times throughout the year, that would be a good indication of needing for that.
Keith Littlewood:
Many females, as an example, tend to shy away from organ meats anyway. I often get emails from clients saying, "I can't stomach liver. What's the next best thing?" Unfortunately, the next best thing is liver tablets because there's no getting around it sometimes. That's the next best thing.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. Whenever it comes to liver tablets, I've heard that some of the nutrients can be oxidized inside of them. Do you still think that there's a significant benefit from supplementing with them?
Keith Littlewood:
Yeah. No. I mean, it does depend. If substances have been oxidized then there may not be as good a benefit. It's something that needs to be considered on the supplement to see if the nutrients are still there for sure.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. You had mentioned them earlier but what are some of the ways that we can increase the efficacy of the carrier proteins for thyroid hormones and what are some of the ones that we can keep an eye on?
Keith Littlewood:
Well, there are three main carrier proteins for the thyroid as such, which is transthyretin, thyroid binding globulin, and albumin. You know, I think it's becoming part of the problem, certainly, I've spent the last few weeks researching pollutants as part of a literature review. It's problematic because in rodents, the main carrier protein is transthyretin and you've got a lot of research on that. Rodents don't tend to have the major human one, which is thyroid binding globulin but transthyretin is another one that's quite problematic. I think it's about 30%, 40% of their thyroid carrier capacity. Maybe 30%. I think thyroid binding globulin's probably got the majority of it.
Keith Littlewood:
They can be easily displaced. For example, unsaturated fatty acids can displace thyroid hormone from transthyretin. Transthyretin tends to have a capacity for retinol binding protein, which is your vitamin A type protein, and then T4. Now it's very easy for proofers like fish oils, DHA, to hijack that carrier protein. Other pollutants like PCBs and perhaps phthalates can also do that as well, and they're very ubiquitous in the environment.
Keith Littlewood:
When we start to see these carrier proteins being hijacked, perhaps it's one of the reasons why thyroid hormones are problematic when you come to look at a blood test. For example, you have full carriers. It seems in the blood that there might actually be enough T4 and T3. This is where perhaps these feedback mechanisms become compromised.
Keith Littlewood:
I think understanding that there are a number of things that can hijack the thyroid proteins. I'm just trying to think of practical ways of doing this. I think just maintaining the you thyroid status of having good thyroid function and I think vitamin A will play a part in that as well because it probably has a beneficial effect on transthyretin as well.
Keith Littlewood:
I think just trying to ... It's virtually impossible these days to avoid pollution and to avoid, I'll just put the word, toxins. But they are real and they are ubiquitous and they do have discernable and very nefarious effects on thyroid physiology. You can't avoid them.
Keith Littlewood:
You can do things like at your home make sure you've got clean water coming in. At the moment, I live at one of the most polluted cities in the world and we have an air filter upstairs and downstairs to deal with the air in the house. I think that there are things that you can do to perhaps create your own cocoon and make sure that you're limiting the exposure to pollutants. That includes cleaning pollutants, perhaps the cleansing products and grooming products that you use, all of those can perhaps have a cumulative effect.
Keith Littlewood:
If you live in a polluted city, you're drinking heavily fluoridated water, you come home, you're spraying Mr. Muscle or whatever, your [inaudible 00:26:42], and you're reading a lot of these things, there is perhaps a risk and a cumulative factor that's probably hard to analyze in any shape or form, but maybe that factor that pushes it over, and these can have an effect on the carrier proteins and how they are transporting thyroid hormones.
Keith Littlewood:
I think taking care of your own environment that you spend time to sleep in and regenerate in is very, very important. Also, getting out to environments that don't have these kind of ubiquitous air pollutants, some of the pollutants that we find have very [inaudible 00:27:17] qualities that are very problematic to physiology and can also have an effect of hijacking not just the carrier proteins but also the receptors as well. I know negative actions around how T3 is taken into the cell. There are problems.
Keith Littlewood:
The more that you can manage your environment at home and the more that you can get out to areas that are rich in nature, clean air, perhaps have a different vibration or feel to them when you step out there. I know being in the countryside at the moment, I feel very much more relaxed, though I'm looking after the kids all day long and there's a few things to juggle up there but being in the country with clean air, I often feel much more relaxed than I do in a city that's heavy in the air with pollutants and has a certain stressful feel to it.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. I think some of that also has to do with sound pollution too because we're not always aware of the amount of sound that's coming in subconsciously that is just keeping us stressed out [crosstalk 00:28:20].
Keith Littlewood:
Yeah. Yeah. I live relatively near a busy road in the Middle East and here there's a road outside but there's a lake on the other side of the mountains and it's literally ... The noise is apart from the odd goose flying past, it's pretty quiet.
Keith Littlewood:
I think that the carrier proteins, another interesting point is the unsaturated fatty acids and to a degree, even saturated fatty acids when they're very, very excessive, perhaps you're consuming an excess amount of saturated fats can have a similar effect. The affinity for carrier proteins like thyroid binding globulin and transthyretin, the unsaturated fatty acids have a very high affinity for it.
Keith Littlewood:
You know, brominated flame retardants, which are, again, the most ubiquitous pollutants that are around and you tend to find them in offices, warehouses where people work, in the dust and in the air and then you have all the other PCBs and phthalates and the PHIHs as well. All of these seem to have a very negative effect on how thyroid hormones are both carried and how they cross perhaps the blood-brain barrier.
Keith Littlewood:
Then you have other transport mechanisms called the monocarboxylate transports, eight and 10, and something called the OP1C1, which is an organic and ion transport proteins. These are thyroid carrying proteins. [inaudible 00:30:00], for example, is something that carriers the thyroid across the blood-brain barrier into the central nervous system and is found quite heavily in the pituitary. These can also be affected by pollutants as well. The MCT10 is kind of more a muscle tissue in other kind of organs as well. These small cellular proteins and transporters can also be affected by pollutants as well.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. You were actually the first one that I found that actually talked about methylene blue and the increasing thyroid hormone availability. Can you go into how that works a little bit?
Keith Littlewood:
Sure. It's funny you should say that because I've been thinking about this recently because I thought I don't have the true answer to it. What does appear quite a feature, certainly, in rodent physiology, is that there's more thyroid hormone availability in the serum post-methylene blue. Now at the moment, I'm not too sure whether that actually means that there's less need for thyroid hormone because of perhaps oxidative phosphorylation is enhanced but perhaps fatty acid and glucose oxidation is utilized efficiently.
Keith Littlewood:
I don't know if that higher serum thyroid value is a product of more efficient function and less thyroid need or something else. I'm actually not quite sure at the moment. I was just thinking about this recently of how that was a positive feature for the thyroid at the moment.
Keith Littlewood:
My thoughts on it at the moment are that because oxidative metabolism is functioning as efficiently as it can do, it's probably producing adequate carbon dioxide, [inaudible 00:31:50] is functioning well, perhaps the need for thyroid is lessened somewhat and that's why you might see slightly more thyroid hormone available in the blood.
Keith Littlewood:
Or it might be that it's affecting other structures and there's generally more thyroid hormone available because the system has become more efficient. I mean, typically, when you use methylene blue it tends to go to problem areas anyway. Cancer physiologists will tend to use it as a detection system, right? They inject methylene blue intravenously or perhaps into sites of tumors. You often see that the methylene blue will aggregate in these areas and can be picked up with certain imaging. I think that's very, very useful.
Keith Littlewood:
It was interesting. I was speaking to a relative who is a doctor and they thought I was balmy talking about methylene blue for restoring physiology. They said, "We just used it for looking at cancers within the body." I was like, "Doesn't it tell you something that it's aggregating there? Why is it aggregating there? Is it aggregating for a reason? Is the effect beneficial for physiology?"
Keith Littlewood:
I think it's still quite balmy that I find some ... I was doing a course last year earlier on in the year on basics of cancer physiology and they were just throwing in, "Oh, an emerging feature of cancer physiology is also metabolism." I'm like, "Well, they knew that 70 or 80 years ago." That was the [inaudible 00:33:16] effect that cells tend to rapidly dwindle towards glycolysis and burn everything up inefficiently. How as oncologists and cancer specialists talking about also metabolism as an emerging feature of cancer physiology, especially when they're using methylene blue, which has the capacity to ensure that electron transport chain and aerobic metabolism is restored efficiently.
Keith Littlewood:
To answer the question, I still don't know exactly but perhaps it's just a suggestion that the system is more efficient and, ultimately, there's more thyroid hormone available. I might have a different answer for that in a few months.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. I have two questions, one thyroid and one cancer-related. As far as the cancer goes, do you think that it aggregates there because of the reductive state of the tumors? One of my friends told me about a podcast with Ray and Georgi where they were talking about whenever they injected the tumors with methylene blue and exposed them to a certain wavelength of light, it actually helped shrink the tumors.
Keith Littlewood:
Yeah. Yes. To answer your question, I think it does aggregate there because it is going towards the reductive metabolism. I think it's because glycolysis is there. I don't know why it aggregates there. What would be the reason why it would go there? Why? That would be the question to answer that. How does the body drive it there? How does it aggregate there? I don't know the answer to that. Maybe someone with more brains than me can perhaps answer that.
Keith Littlewood:
It's interesting to know that it does aggregate there and it does have the capacity to increase oxidative metabolism. There are quite a few studies that show that when you use a red light spectrum, I think anywhere in the standard red light spectrum, perhaps 630 up to about 830 or something like that, 650 to 830, have shown every beneficial things, not just on reducing cancer or tumor size, which can be done with perhaps a number of things but I think its effects on blood parasites and malaria seem to work much more beneficially when you have methylene blue shared with a red light spectrum.
Keith Littlewood:
Yeah. It makes sense that if a tumor is running out of control, the micro environment is very acidic, it's wasting glucose, perhaps it's ... One of the hallmarks of cancer tumor and progression is the breakdown of fatty acids and the gene expression of something called the PPARs. This is well known within cancer physiology is that kind of altered, aggressive wasting state and why people tend to say all sugar tends to feed cancer. Well, sugar will feed any cell that's functioning well but, ultimately, glucose is the easiest source. When you don't have that, you aggressively break down fatty acids.
Keith Littlewood:
Now if you keep breaking down fatty acids, particularly unsaturated fatty acids, you're going to keep getting damage to the electron transport chain. It's a bit of a vicious cycle where there's chronic glycolysis and no chance of getting out of that. I think it makes perfect sense that red light is being used in conjunction with methylene blue to get the beneficial effects of cancer. Definitely.
Jayton Miller:
Yeah. Then as far as for thyroid performance, do you think that it could do with an increased amount of ATP production that is just a higher output of thyroid hormone?
Keith Littlewood:
Yeah. It's possible. Again, it would be tissue-specific. If there is enhanced oxidative phosphorylation and there's adequate ATP, perhaps it's even part of the component of carbon dioxide as well. It becomes a self-regulating feature of the metabolism. Certainly, having more energy around and more ATP around is going to be useful.
Keith Littlewood:
I think when you're not breaking down the aerobic metabolism and pushing someone towards glycolysis, you have more ATP around anyway, right? It would make sense that if there's more ATP, generally, most cells can function efficiently and that includes peripheral conversion of thyroid hormone.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. I guess as summing all of that up, what do you think are the top five tips that we can do today to help get our thyroid on track and increase its effectiveness?
Keith Littlewood:
I still do think that eating on a regular basis is one of the easiest things that we can do to maintain thyroid function. I've seen it time and time again. I've seen people who perhaps think a low thyroid, based upon all of their symptoms, and surprisingly, I've seen them actually do wonderful things and not be hypothyroid. They just needed a good solid source of nutrients coming in each day.
Keith Littlewood:
Interestingly enough, I was working with a lady just the last couple of months who was diagnosed with premature ovarian failure. She was like 42, 43 and told she had basically gone into menopause. Within the space of four weeks and some supplemental progesterone, she started having her period again.
Keith Littlewood:
The context to thyroid extends to the other hormones, reproductive hormones as well. I think eating on a regular basis is very, very important. I think getting adequate light is also essential. We take it back to what we talked about with the long days of summer. Generally, mammals produce less TSH because the need to heat the body up, the need to maintain metabolism can be, to a degree, propped up during warm days of sunshine, not to say that somebody might mistakingly be propped up by that but then you might start to see that as the lightness starts to fade and the days get longer, the true hypothyroid state might be actually expressed and this is why people get Seasonal Affective Disorder and mood-related issues in the winter. You can spot that.
Keith Littlewood:
I think adequate food, adequate light. I certainly think not over ... I think exercise, generally, you should be doing exercise up until you can't exercise anymore because it has an anabolic effect. It helps us to feel stronger. I put my back out the other day just from a long flight and six hours of driving to get to the place I was going to and I felt an old injury that usually puts me on my back in tears if I don't manage it, I literally got on top of it, did the exercises three times a day, and I was out of pain.
Keith Littlewood:
Understanding that movement and staying strong can help to promote optimal function of the body. The more that we can deal with the stresses of whether it's taking the heavy bags of shopping and lifting kids up and stuff and not being in pain ... Pain has an effect on thyroid physiology because the more chronic pain we're in, the more chronic cortisol and adrenaline are produced and we start wasting vitamin C and other nutrients that can have an effect and, ultimately, stress the thyroid out as well.
Keith Littlewood:
I think staying fit and healthy is important but then not overdoing exercise is an essential feature. If you want to stay strong, a good strength program three times a week is going to set you up. Walking every day and experiencing the stress reduction effects of walking as well can be particularly useful. If you're into your long distance aerobic work, whatever floats your boat, whatever boosts your rocket, but if you look at long distance running as an example, they're much more prone to coronary artery calcification, which tends to have a spillover with aspects of thyroid function as well. They might have interactions with nutrient availability as well. Generally, the longer distance, the more calcified arteries that people tend to have. That probably has an effect on thyroid physiology.
Keith Littlewood:
I know we're on number four but I'm going to say this one now because it's the more prominent thing, I do think if you're not eating thyroid rich foods and you've done all you can from a metabolic perspective to enhance your nutrient uptake, available energy, getting out of carbs, good quality proteins and fats and you're not getting it there, you don't have a waking temperature of 36.5 degrees or about 97.8, progressing to 37 or 98.6, then there's a very good likelihood of you requiring thyroid hormone.
Keith Littlewood:
I don't take it lightly when I say that there are probably hundreds of millions of people out there that do, that aren't. I think understanding that and exploring, experimenting with what's missing is the key thing to enhancing physiology and making people more robust. Ultimately, people having good thyroid function extends to more people thinking about the world around them and what stuff is going on and how they can change it.
Keith Littlewood:
I think a lot of people just go day to day without having the capacity to think because they're so stressed out by the regular daily things, whether it's emotions or whether it's dealing with stresses from a relationship or finances or the environment. All of these things tend to not be dealt with efficiently when you're in a low thyroid state. I think if we can raise the energy and thought processes of large amounts of the population perhaps the world might start to push towards a better place. That's just me living in perhaps a utopian dream that's modified by thyroid hormone. I do think it's, certainly, a feature that we need to think about.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. I completely agree. I think that the relationship between thyroid functioning and our psychology is absolutely completely undervalued for one but it's just mind bogging how much of an impact that it can make. For sure.
Keith Littlewood:
Yeah.
Jayton Miller:
You have a functional endocrinology and nutrition set of seminars. I would love to hear more about this and how people can get involved in that.
Keith Littlewood:
Sure. I started just over a year ago just putting together seminars, which has been basically my experience of studying endocrinology, looking at some really great scientists' work, like Ray's stuff and Katharina Dalton's stuff. It's really just seminars on looking at hormones in a way that I think is slightly more beneficial, much more beneficial than seeing skilled clinicians sometimes who perhaps just rigidly look at the blood tests.
Keith Littlewood:
It's really about understanding some of the basics between the [inaudible 00:44:18] pituitary relationships, understanding feedback mechanisms, looking at aspects of cardiac function and why the staircase effect is useful for understanding why someone's heart rate and temperature gives a really good overview of someone's health. It's looking at these client testing tools.
Keith Littlewood:
Ultimately, my main motivation is I've gone through this. I went through spending a lot of money and getting clients to spend a lot of money on testing. I used to do hundreds of stool tests a year. I've come to the conclusion now that you don't really need to put people through lots of tests. I'll get a lot of clients coming to me and saying, "What blood test do you want?" I go, "I don't want any." I said, "We'll start using blood tests, A, when we've got you to a state where those tests might mean something because you're not in a stressed state and, B, let's use them if what I'm suggesting doesn't work."
Keith Littlewood:
I think testing should be the end range. If you're not sorting out someone's nutrition, lifestyle, facts of like, carbon dioxide, all of these things, then these are the tools that you can give to people to work with clients to get them functioning without spending lots of money.
Keith Littlewood:
It's an overview of adrenal hormones in context, there's neurobiology of sleep and how to change someone's sleep, looking at why people wake up at night, how to resolve the midnight pee, there's seminars on resolving premenstrual syndrome, there's seminars on cholesterol and coronary arterial calcification, there's some on the membrane theory and trying to incorporate the standard stuff of why people say you need to have fish oils for a liquid membrane, which is a bit mental when you think about it, especially when you understand how the [inaudible 00:46:07] doesn't actually go around the whole cell. Also, how when you oxidize these fatty acids, it causes many, many problems. It's trying to incorporate Gilbert Ling's work, which I still don't understand. I've just put some brief things that look at perhaps bringing some of it together. There's some stuff on ... What else is in there?
Keith Littlewood:
I can't even remember right now. There's some biology of cancer seminars. There's about 21 seminars in there at the moment, including breathing pattern physiology, carbon dioxide retention, and the seminars range from about 30 minutes up to about 90 minutes. The idea is I add a new one every couple of months for the members just to get an idea of what I'm looking at, what I think it's important to critique and perhaps put out there against people who are saying why statins are really, really useful for longevity when it appears that they actually increase the risk of coronary artery calcification and break down the electro transport chain and create more oxidative stress over time.
Keith Littlewood:
It's really about contrasting some of the well known things that are out there and looking at some of the things that I've learned and just giving a slightly different slant on hormones and nutrition and the environment. That's what I keep trying to add to it is something that adds to those conversations.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. Where can people find that?
Keith Littlewood:
That's on my website. It's just under the functional endocrinology and nutrition page, which I'm thinking of changing soon to just functional hormones and nutrition. Still a lot of people don't understand or know what endocrinology is. I think people understand what hormones are so I'm probably going to change the name on that.
Jayton Miller:
Sounds good. That's at Balanced Body Minds.
Keith Littlewood:
Dot com. Yeah. That's it. It's just on one of the main pages there. I appreciate you advertising it. Thank you.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. Then your Instagram is TommoLittlewood.
Keith Littlewood:
Yup.
Jayton Miller:
Do you have any other social media platforms that you like to use?
Keith Littlewood:
I have a Facebook page, which is Balanced Body Mind but it's not used that much these days. It tends to be Instagram and the website and I probably need to think about another social media thing because they're always changing. I only do them because I need to get clients in. I need to think of another platform but I'm certainly not going down the route of TikTok. That's for sure.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. I'll be staying away from that as well.
Keith Littlewood:
Yeah.
Jayton Miller:
Keith, again, I appreciate you hopping on here and I know these listeners are going to love it.
Keith Littlewood:
I know. I really appreciate it. Could I just add one more thing to be cheeky?
Jayton Miller:
Absolutely.
Keith Littlewood:
If anybody is interested, there is a link on my website, which is for my PHD. My PHD is costing me tens of thousands of pounds, probably close to 50,000 pounds so I've put up a GoFundMe page, which is going nicely. I've raised nearly 5000 pounds so far. I'm not expecting all of it. I will be paying a substantial amount towards it but the lab fees are costing me over 30,000 pounds for the experiment. Independent science isn't cheap so if anybody feels like dropping $5 or $10 down or anything, that will be really appreciated because I've got the next six years to try and work with that. Even if they can't afford to do that, just sharing it with people that want to see some independent science done.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. What's the GoFundMe under?
Keith Littlewood:
That's a great question. If you go on my website, there's actually a link on there. I can't remember without shutting this down and deleting the screen and you going. It's on my website and there's also a link in my link tree and Instagram.
Jayton Miller:
Sounds good. Yeah. For all those of you listening, make sure to check that out. Please share it. I know I'm going to as soon as this podcast is over. Definitely.
Keith Littlewood:
It's really great to talk to you again. Happy to chat again but good to see you, Jayton. Thanks a lot.
Jayton Miller:
Yes, sir. It was good seeing you.
Jayton Miller:
Thanks for listening to the podcast. If you haven't already, make sure to hit the like button, subscribe, and leave a comment down below if you want us to cover a different topic.
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Jayton Miller sits down with Robert Walker, a bodyweight training and athleticism expert in his own right. Rob speaks on stretching, fascial tissue, fibrous tissue, the importance of stretching, and so much more. If you want to learn more about Rob's work make sure to check out UMZUfit at https://umzu.com/products/umzu-fit Stay Thermo Friends!
Facebook Group and Fanpage:
- Thermo Diet Community Group
- Thermo Diet Fan Page
Youtube Channels:
- Christopher Walker
- UMZU Health
Instagram:
- @_christopherwalker
- @researchcowboy
Website:
- thermodiet.com
https://umzu.com/
Thermo Diet Roadmap
Full Transcript:
Jayton Miller:
Welcome back to the ThermoDiet Podcast. I'm your host Jayton Miller, and today I have on the podcast, Mr. Robert Walker. So Robert Walker is the VP of Growth here at UMZU and the health and fitness expert in his own rights, specializing in body weight training, mobility, flexibility, and all around athleticism. We talk about a whole range of topics in this podcast, from the fascial tissue, the fiber system, how to stretch, what is stretching, the importance of stretching and so much more.
Jayton Miller:
There's a phenomenal amount of value in this episode, and I can't wait for you to listen to it. Let's get into it. Welcome back to the ThermoDiet Podcast. I am here with Robert Walker. How are you doing today, Robert?
Robert Walker:
I'm good Jayton, how are you doing?
Jayton Miller:
I'm doing well. So Rob is kind of an expert in the field of mobility, flexibility and all around athleticism. So can you kind of tell us how you got started in to that realm?
Robert Walker:
Yeah, sure. So I grew up doing... I was a three sport athlete growing up. I played baseball and I ran track and field, and I played football. I played some basketball too, and some golf. Sports were always a big piece of my life, and especially with running. So I was forced to make the choice between all of those when I entered high school, because you got to stay focused. You get to college athletics, so I ended up choosing running over everything else, which definitely piqued my interest in flexibility training and mobility because the better range of motion you have, the longer your stride, a quicker turnover. So I was doing anything I could to get faster.
Robert Walker:
The mobility and flexibility training that I learned in high school definitely sped me up. It got to the point where I was nationally ranked in the two mile, as a sophomore in high school. So I ran a 9:36 as a sophomore, and that kind of brought me to little bit of pseudo fame amongst sophomores there. What really actually got me super into flexibility and mobility training was I tore my hamstring at nationals in cross country early my junior year, and it kind of ruined my career.
Robert Walker:
I was talking to a lot of colleges about going and then they all stopped talking to me after that. So I was like, "Damn, this is really, really important to take focus on" because, I could have been better about my mobility and flexibility training and I think that could have reduced my risk of injury and the severity of that injury.
Robert Walker:
Hindsight's 20/20, but after that, I started paying a lot of attention to both flexibility and mobility, started doing a lot of body weight training instead of conventional lifting which... you know that I'm a big proponent of body weight training now. That peaked my interest and kept my focus throughout my entire life since then. I was kind of half paying attention to it when I was running, and then after I got hurt, I started really paying attention to it because I realized just how important it would have been for me.
Jayton Miller:
Heck yeah, definitely. So can you kind of explain for the audience, the importance of mobility and flexibility training? Like why is this something that we should focus on?
Robert Walker:
Yeah, sure. So let's take a look at fitness endeavors as a whole first. If you look around your gym, what areas of fitness are people most likely to be working on? Like there's a section for cardiovascular training, you'll see the treadmills and ellipticals and all that. And then there's another section just for benches, dumbbells for actual resistance and strength training. Maybe shoved off in the corner somewhere, has a rod or a dowel, and then some resistance bands to help with stretching. It's kind of like this afterthought, but really there's a big three of fitness and it's cardiovascular training, strength training, and flexibility training.
Robert Walker:
Historically, as you can see in your gyms, like the latter is the least popular. And this is super evident when you look at gyms. With the boom of the internet, it's gotten worse. So cardiovascular training and strength training, they're both kind of, I'll say sexier than the other ones. So they sell programs. If you tell somebody they're going to lose weight, or you tell someone they're going to turn into a superhero by doing strength training, that sells courses.
Robert Walker:
So with the rise of the digital age, people have driven those two down people's throats and being able to touch your toes isn't exactly something that the majority of people tend to think of as a goal. They don't buy a program for that. So flexibility training is really kind of fallen by the wayside, I think. That's my opinion, at least with the rise of the digital age here and the selling of fitness programs.
Robert Walker:
But it's really just as important as the other three. I think flexibility training is something that we all know is good. We all know that we should be flexible people and being stiff just doesn't feel right. But because we're so uninformed about the true benefits of flexibility training, this form of exercise tends to come off as tedious. People think, "I have like one hour in a day, like, what am I going do? Am I going to lift weights? Probably. Am I going to run five miles? Maybe, for some people." But never people are going to say like, "I'm going to take this hour and I'm going to stretch with it," but it really is important.
Robert Walker:
And it's because of those big three of fitness, they're not separate. Each one influences and accentuates the other. Flexibility training as I touched on with the running, it enhances your cardiovascular fitness. If you're a runner, your stride is going to be longer even marginally, and that's going to be huge for you. If you're a runner, your turnover's going to be faster if you're flexible. And then on top of that, just being flexible and I'll touch on this later, being flexible even enhances your ability to breathe. Because we have muscles that run over our lungs and our heart. And if those are really tight, it restricts the internal processes of your breathing and heartbeat, which is crazy. But people don't think about that. Just being more flexible then will in turn, help your cardiovascular fitness.
Robert Walker:
And then on the strength and power side, a lot of people ignore form more, but since I'm a body weight athlete, form is everything. Form first; always perfect form. Form is inherently tied to flexibility. And form it will help you progress in strength. Let's say you're doing a shoulder press, most people suffer from lower back pain when they do a shoulder press, that's because their form is wrong. And that's the most common lift to have incorrect form on because mostly we'll closed shoulders as opposed to open shoulders.
Robert Walker:
Open shoulders would be in gymnastics defined by like, if you reach your arms over your head, are you able to create a straight line from your tip of your fingers all the way down to your [ear lobes 00:08:15]?. Most people can't do that. Like if you listen to this, like stand up and try it, 99% of people do not have open shoulders. It takes a lot of work to do. But if you can get there, like your progression on your shoulder press is going to get way better. Because when you're lifting with closed shoulders on the shoulder press, you're putting a lot of weight on your lower back and your upper chest. So you're building up those two areas of your body, more than your shoulders. You're missing your target group entirely.
Robert Walker:
In that way, opening up your flexibility and mobility is going to help you progress in all of your lifts much faster. Putting in that time is going to reap rewards all the way down the line, because you're actually going to be able to hit the target group that you're trying to work on. That's how they influence each other. There are a ton of benefits of flexibility, and to get people kind of excited about listening to this podcast and excited about doing mobility training, I can just list a few. If you are more flexible and mobile, and that's kind of like a defining feature. It's like being strong or being fast. You are a more flexible person. You will have less stiffness in your life. You'll have a reduced risk of injury. Your body posture and place symmetry will be better.
Robert Walker:
So if you suffer from distorted sizes of muscles which a lot of people do. Like a left bicep is smaller than a right bicep, if you're right-handed typically. A lot of that has to do with how flexible and mobile you are, because it has to do with how full your range of motion is on the lifts you're doing. So it'll help you improve your body symmetry. It'll actually help you be more relaxed, which is also wild, and I'll touch on kind of why that is, probably at some point in this podcast.
Robert Walker:
Lower stress, intention in your body. Stress and emotions, they build up in your body parts, which is also just a crazy concept. And by opening those up, your body, the information is flowing through your body better, from your brain to your muscles, and you can actually lower your stress. Increasing your flexibility and mobility helps with pain relief. A lot of people suffer from chronic pain. Basically everybody does, and opening up your muscles and your joints and your fascia will help improve that pain relief. As I touched on earlier, it'll help with your cardiovascular and your strength training and just ease of daily life.
Robert Walker:
And if you participate in sports, it will increase your athletic performance. It'll improve the efficiency of all of your movements that you do. Again, reduce the severity of your injuries. It will also, and this is kind of up for debate, decrease your delayed onset muscle soreness, the dumps, and then your recovery will be much faster, which is super important. As we touched on in the muscle building program, muscles grow when they're recovering, you're breaking them down when you're training, they're growing when you're recovering. If you're going to improve that recovery, which you will, if you are more flexible and mobile person, you'll get stronger, you'll build more muscle.
Robert Walker:
To sum it all up, there's three components of fitness. It's cardiovascular, strength training and flexibility training. Each one is intertwined, they all influence one another and increasing... it's part of viewing fitness holistically. We're all trying to get healthier. That's what we're trying to do in fitness. And in order to do that, you have to attack all three of those areas, in my opinion, equally, in order to create a healthy and balanced body and lifestyle.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. I completely agree. Whenever you are doing mobility and flexibility training, what are you actually stretching, and how does it actually work?
Robert Walker:
You do a couple of things. When you work flexibility, you're stretching your muscle, also when you work mobility, you're working on the openness of your joints, that's the key difference there. And you're also working on your fascia, which is kind of this like weird topic that people don't really understand. Fascia is the connective tissue made mostly of collagen that kind of connects everything. It's not just in between your joints and your muscles. That's kind of where it lives, but it runs through your whole body.
Robert Walker:
Fascia contains a lot of things. It surrounds your organs, it contains your blood vessels, your circulatory system and your nervous system. They all run through your fascial system. And when you stretch and you work on your flexibility and mobility, that means you're not... and this is a key point to understand. You're not just increasing your ability to touch your toes or your ability to run faster or whatever. You're also improving the function of your internal organs, the rate of your blood flow, the health of your circulatory system and your nervous system, which is crazy.
Robert Walker:
If you stretch, the theory goes if you increase the healthier fascia, you should be able to communicate from your brain to your muscles better, which is awesome. You should also be able to think better, which is also a wild concept for people. Your fascia is everywhere. It's in your head, it's in your scalp and if you work on that, your body is going to be able to communicate with your brain much, much better. And that's going to have a lot of benefits, everywhere; body hormones, blood flow, everything. Everything's tied to the fascia.
Robert Walker:
So stretching mobility does impact everything when you do it the right way. When you're not just like, "Let me stretch my hamstring today," you have to take it more of a holistic approach to stretching, full body. Everything's connected. You have to stretch your muscles and the opposing muscle muscles and the interweaving fascia. It's one reason why massages feels so damn good. They're really working in that fascia and opening it up and releasing it. It's part of why massages decrease stress. Everybody accepts that that is a fact, and this is why. It's because they're working your fascia; they're opening it up and they're making the nervous system, the circulatory system, all open and flow better for a brief period of time, if you just get one massage.
Robert Walker:
But if you work this continuously, you stretch every day, or five times a week, or something like that, then that can be a feeling that you feel all the time, which is huge. You have to take this seriously and it's just as important as the other two big three of fitness in that light. It's going to change your life if you actually commit to this and take it seriously.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. So we have the fascial system, and then we also have the fiber system. Can you kind of explain what that is?
Robert Walker:
Yeah. So the fiber system is made up of fascia. Those are kind of like equitable. The fiber system refers to the network of fascia that's running through your entire body. I wanted to touch on this, to kind of depict the importance of this system. I talked about the big three fitness, I want to talk about the big three holistic networks as I call them. So this is a thought experiment that was beautifully brought forward. Whoever's listening to this and are interested in fascia flexibility training, whatever, definitely recommend reading the book, Anatomy Trains by Thomas Myers. This book is about as thorough as it gets in terms of the composition of the body, and why fascia and working the fiber system is so important.
Robert Walker:
In that book, he depicts it in the following way. He brings up this kind of painting or drawing by a man named Vesalius in 1548. What Vesalius was trying to do was he was trying to determine what makes a human, a human. So the thought experiment goes like, "If I could strip the body to nothing, and then build it back, what creates the shape of the body really?" It's not the bones, not the skeletal system, which everybody kind of runs to initially.
Robert Walker:
Because if you look at the skeletal system, you're missing a lot of stuff. You're missing face, you're missing a lot of the bodily structure, you just have bones. It's not the skin as a lot of people think. If you just have the skin and just be like, kind of like a sack of nothing.
Robert Walker:
You can't isolate those things. But what Vesalius didn't... and you can look up this drawing online. It's actually beautiful. He defined three systems that actually make up the shape of who you are. And the first one's the nervous system. So the nervous system, if we were to extract only the nervous system, we would learn a great deal about the human body. If you think about it, we'd have the brain, which is obviously one of most important things, the spinal cord, the vertebrae, we would see the shape of every single organ. We'd see the heart, the digestive system, all kind of outlined. We'd see the hands and the feet, especially those would be very visible. There's a ton of nerve endings in your hands and your feet.
Robert Walker:
I found this out the hard way. In high school, I lost the tip of my finger and it was by far the most painful experience my entire life, after that, because you miss those nerve endings. And there's so many in your fingers and your toes that your body just completely freaks out. And that's kind of why you have that ghost feeling. And that's real. People think that's a myth, about the ghost limb, but I kid you not, when I lost this tip of my finger, I could run my finger right here, and I could hit something; and it wasn't even there, but my brain would think that something was there. It was the most wild thing ever. But that just kind of depicts how many nerve endings are in your fingers and toes.
Robert Walker:
If your nervous system isn't healthy and functioning properly, there's no part of your body that wouldn't feel, that's what makes you feel things. So that's one major holistic network that kind of will show the shape of the body. The second one is the circulatory system. If you were to extract everything from the body except for the vascular system, you would still be able to see a full representation of the body, your blood flowing everywhere. You'd again, see the heart, the brain, the arteries, the veins, the lungs, and you'd kind of see this whole picture of what the body looks like.
Robert Walker:
You'd miss facial expressions that you get from the skin but the body itself would have its complete shape. The third one is the fiber system. If you were to remove everything but the fiber system, which is the febrile elements, and then all your connective tissue, you would again be able to see the entire body. It's made up mostly of collagen, elastin and reticulum.
Robert Walker:
Just as a side, this is why you tend to become more immobile and have more pain as you age because your collagen content in your body begins to decline, which means it's really important to supplement with collagen, or eat a lot of collagen and to replace that. And when you're collagen decreases, your fiber system starts to deteriorate, and that makes you less mobile, less energetic and even hurts your ability to think and hurts your ability to breathe, when you start decline in collagen, and that is why collagen makes up almost your entire body. It's the main component of one of the main holistic networks of the body.
Robert Walker:
So if you were to remove everything but the fiber system, you would still be able to see all the things I said before. You'd see the outline of the entire body. And what's amazing about these three things is that there... and this is kind of just this amazing conclusion that Myers makes in Anatomy Trains, is that, Vesalius brought the idea forward, but what Myers concludes is that all these three things, when they're brought together, they all intertwine, which is really important to understand. These three holistic networks are the nerves and the blood vessels, all kind of merge inside of the fascial system.
Robert Walker:
So they're all very connected, and the health of one, determines the health of another. So you have to look at all three components of those, holistically again to reach that point of optimal health. Then the other thing that's just really, really cool is that they all are movement-based.
Robert Walker:
So they all transmit different information. The nervous system transmits information from your brain to the rest of your body, and makes everything feel and work. The circulatory system takes food, nutrients and moves it throughout the whole body. It's all movement based. And fascia is the same way. It's not just this thing that's sitting there like a bone, it transmits movement information throughout your body. It's all moving and connected with your brain. That's a radical over-simplification of the body; that thought experiment, but I think it really wholly shows that if your goal is to do more in health, you're not just trying to look good or bench more. If your goal is to really feel good, and reach like an optimal point of health, then those three systems should be of paramount importance for you. Maintaining the health of the nervous system, the circulatory system and the fascial system.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. I completely agree. So it kind of goes back to whenever you were talking about the ghost limbs, it makes me think about the relationship that our consciousness has with our physiology. A lot of people think that the seat of consciousness is in the brain or the heart, but I think that it's in the totality of the being. And I think it's even within... they have studies that show a certain amount of energetic frequency that we emit from the body itself. I think that it's even bound within that. And so by losing it, losing that, you still have that kind of conscious part of that limb still there to a certain degree.
Robert Walker:
Yeah. You might've heard the kind of up and coming school of thought where emotions are stored in different areas of the body. What they're referring to is you store... I think one of the things like pain, emotional pain, stored in your feet and that just makes so much sense to me, whether you buy into that or not because fascia stores information and that's pretty proven. That's not some pseudoscience, fascia does store information, whether that's emotion or not, there's information there. And there's so many nerve endings and fascial components in your feet.
Robert Walker:
And it makes sense to me that that would be the case. And to kind of investigate that, I actually, I don't know if you guys have heard of Reiki at all, but it's kind of like that. I watched that Goop episode with Gwyneth Paltrow and I was just instantly intrigued, like how is this man influencing people with just his hands? How is he doing this? And I started looking into it. I actually took the tests to get Reiki certified or whatever, just to kind of go through the whole process of learning everything possible.
Robert Walker:
I've never practiced it on anybody, but I thought the information was wildly intriguing and having an understanding of fascia and a kind of a low level of understanding of chiropractic practice, it made sense to me. It doesn't seem as wild as people think it is because fascia does store information. I think that's just like a wildly cool concept that I think we'll learn a lot about in our lifetimes. And I'm excited to hear more about it.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. I think another interesting thing to point out is that the energetically demanding part of the muscle is relaxation. That's actually what uses up the energy. And so whenever we are stiff, we have a deficiency of the flow of energy throughout the body. So whenever you see, like rigor mortis, whenever we stiffen up, whenever we die, that's because we run out of the energy production, which leads to the stiffening up of the body. So if you don't have enough flexibility and mobility then you're not going to have very good energy flow throughout the system.
Robert Walker:
Yes. That is 100% true. Energy is one of those pieces of information that passes through the fascial system, and it's why one of the big benefits of being a more flexible person. I'm not saying you're going to get this by stretching for one day, but being a more flexible, mobile person, you will be a more energetic person. You won't have as much midday fatigue because your energy is efficient. Imagine you're trying to run through an obstacle course on Survivor, versus just running. That's kind of a good way to depict how that works.
Robert Walker:
So if you're stiff and you're not mobile, and your fascia is kind of all grouped together and intertwined and blocking itself, then you run into that obstacle course. Your energy is running through that obstacle course. But if you're open and your energy flows very efficiently, like the efficiency of your energy is going to get lost if you have tight and wound fascia, but it's going to work the way it should, if you are mobile and flexible. You're going to be more energetic.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. What are some of the different components of the fiber system?
Robert Walker:
Yeah, sure. This is theory, this is also something that was brought forward by Thomas Myers. I'm not going to take credit for any of this. This is something that he discusses pretty heavily in this book and he defines seven myofascial meridians that runs the body. I read this book and I practiced this idea. I made my own mobility routines based off of these seven myofascial meridians. And I've got to tell you, I think he's really, really onto something with this one.
Robert Walker:
I guess I can kind of explain so people understand a little better before I kind of wrap it all together, but there are seven myofascial meridians in the body. The first one, which is probably the easiest to understand is the superficial back line. So that one runs all the way from your toes to your scalp, which, this is just it's endlessly cool thing. So fascia exists everywhere, including on the top of your scalp. Actually the scalp is the end point for most of these lines. All of these seven lines either end at your scalp or in the back of your occiput right here. So that's why you feel just insanely good when you get a scalp massage and really, really good when you massage the back of your neck.
Robert Walker:
You can feel that energy release throughout your entire body. And it's because almost all of these seven lines connect in one of those two spots. The superficial back line starts kind of right around your plantar fascia, and it runs all the way up from your toes to heel. That's your plantar fascia kind of area there, and it runs all the way from your heel to the back of your knee, then it runs from your knee to your hip, then your hip, all the way up the back of your spine to your occiput, and then your occiput, all the way to the front of your scalp. It's all connected.
Robert Walker:
I think the best way to kind of explain this is that like touching your toes exercise that I discussed before. So if you stand up right now and try to touch your toes with your knees locked, you will feel the pull. If you pay attention to it, you'll feel the pull, all the way through that line. You'll feel it in your feet. You'll feel it run up your calf, hamstrings back. It's not just a hamstring stretch. It's a superficial back line stretch. It's going to impact your whole body.
Robert Walker:
Then as soon as you bend your knees, you break the line. So if you bend your knees, you're not going to feel it anymore in your lower part, in your calves and your plantar fascia. And that's important to know that it's all connected, from toes to head. So if you break the line by relaxing your knees, you're going to stretch more of your hamstrings, but you're going to lose the impact in that entire line. Another way to show how they're all connected is stand up and do that exercise.
Robert Walker:
Try to touch your toes with your knees straight. Gauge how far you can reach, then take a tennis ball or a golf ball or something and massage out of your plantar fascia on the bottom of your feet for a minute on each foot, then do the exercise again, you'll be able to reach three inches farther just by opening up that one piece of the line. That shows that they're all connected for the back line.
Robert Walker:
Then there's the superficial front line as well. That one runs in tandem with the superficial back line all the way from your toes of the front of your body, to your head. And then it reaches back to the back of your arm. That's a completely separate line. It's just as important and just as long as the back line. And they're very connected to each other.
Robert Walker:
So something that's important for anybody who's trying to prevent injury, is you have to stretch both the muscle that you're targeting and the opposing muscle. If you only stretch, let's say your hamstring without stretching your quad, you're opening yourself up to the potential for injury there. Because the more mobile, one of those gets, the more it's going to pull on the latter and you open yourself up for injury there.
Robert Walker:
And it's the same with weightlifting and running. I'll use running in the example because I did actually do this exact one. I tore my hamstring and it's probably one of the most common injuries in running. And it's because runners get extremely strong quads and extremely mobile quads. And when you do that and you don't stretch your hamstring and build up the strength of your hamstrings you have a really strong muscle pulling on a weak and brittle muscle and you tear your hamstring.
Robert Walker:
And that's a result, my coach back in high school didn't want us to lift weights. Because he was like, “Oh, if you…” because we were long distance runners, if you lift weights, you're going to gain weight. And then he made us, to depict it, he made us run around the track with a five pound bag of sugar in our hands to show how much it sucks to carry extra weight.
Robert Walker:
I just think that's so wrong. If you're in the gym, you're building up relative strength, you're building up strength in general. That weight is good weight. I get it for fat, but not for strength. If you're a runner and you're listening to this, definitely go to the gym, strengthen your hamstrings, or you're going to open yourself up for injury because your quads are going to be really strong.
Robert Walker:
But that's to say, this is like a holistic thing. If you stretch your back line, you need to stretch it front line as well and work on that. Then you have the lateral lines which run up the sides of your body from the sides of your heels all the way up to the top. I don't want to bore people with the exact details of what that is, but they actually determine any of your side to side movements. And how mobile you are over there. Like oblique stretches or oblique movements is a good way to pick a piece of a lateral lines. Then you've got a spiral line.
Jayton Miller:
A lot of people have trouble with the IT bands too. I know people who've just snapped their, IT bands, so that's another one.
Robert Walker:
Yeah. It's another one there. And then you got, the spiral line was runs up as a double helix, through your body. That one runs like the back of your leg and then the posterior spine and crosses as it comes up to the back of your eye. But that determines a lot of the twisting movements that you do. So if you're very immobile in your twisting movements, like the spiral line's, where you want to look first.
Robert Walker:
And then you have the arm lines. There are actually four separate arm lines. The arms are insanely complicated. And you have four separate arm line that run like, I'm not going to go through all of them, but some run from your pinky up the bottom inside of your arm, some run from your thumb up the other side, and then several of them go through and then over your pectoral, so over your heart and then over your lungs.
Robert Walker:
So they cross, they cross your body here. And that's important to note because if you have trouble breathing, if you have trouble with an irregular heartbeat or anything like that, it could very well be due to your arms being immobile, which is the most wild thing to think about. Because, you can stretch your arms, open up the arm line there and you'll actually be able to breathe better. Which is just such a cool concept and shows really well, how it's all connected.
Robert Walker:
And then you have these kind of weird lines next to, the final two. The functional lines is one of the final two, and those… There's a back functional line and a front functional line and those pretty much determine your athletic activity. The weird movements, like throwing a javelin or something like that, right, that employ several of the lines at once is actually fascia that helped you employ multiple lines at once and you will want to work on those functional lines.
Robert Walker:
If you do athletic activities, you actually will work those inherently, but you should take note that you are working those inherently. Because you need balance in the body. And something that I struggled with personally, as I used to pitch in baseball and anyone who pitches or plays baseball, probably struggles from this. You really work that your dominant hand functional line. And it leaves the other side of your body lagging. Like my left shoulders is less mobile still to this day, than my right shoulder. And it's because, you're working one functional line just over and over and over again and not the other.
Robert Walker:
So I'm now all the time, I'm working this side of my body. The left side, trying to create balance in my body. And then the last one is the deep front-line, which is arguably the most important because it helps connect all of the lines. So it runs up the core of your body and brings it all together. It's much harder to work that one because it's not like, “Stretch your hamstring,” or anything like that, which is a little easier, but I'll spare you guys the details, but the deep frontline is very crucial to work in your body.
Robert Walker:
And if you are interested in learning any more practice behind working these lines, I highly recommend, you can look at Anatomy Trains by Thomas Myers, or you can just look up how to stretch the Myofascial meridians, because this concept has gained a lot a good amount of popularity since Anatomy Trains was released.
Robert Walker:
And there's plenty of resources out there that talk about stretching these. And then when I do eventually release that into Fit Mobility program, which should come out in January or so, I will be structuring our routine completely around working all seven of the Myofascial meridians all together. So that you can make sure you're putting your best foot forward on stretching in a science-backed way. Not just stretching to stretch. It's important to have balance it's important to work all seven and that's what I'm trying to tackle with that program. So hopefully that gets some people excited about it.
Jayton Miller:
Yeah. January 2021. Mobility program by Rob Walker. So how is flexibility restricted in those cases? Why do we actually become rigid and not able to have full range of motion and have flexibility?
Robert Walker:
Yeah. So flexibility and mobility, can be restricted by a lot of things. Some of it is out of our control. Bones, ligaments, muscle size tendons, skin, that can all affect your range of motion.Those are something, we can't change our bones to a certain degree. Some of it's genetic. You can still get past that stuff, but in terms of initial capacity, that is something to consider.
Robert Walker:
Gender also does affect flexibility and mobility. Age, obviously. As I touched on before, collagen [inaudible 00:39:39] definitely impacts your range of motion. Temperature also impacts it and clothing as well is another impactor. So make sure you're as naked as possible when you're stretching. But yeah, most of these issues have to do with the amount of collagen in your system.
Robert Walker:
So it's highly recommended that if you are really interested in improving your flexibility mobility that you take two things into account. One is collagen content. If you're really serious about it, eat more foods with collagen, and then supplement with collagen. It's vitally important to your flexibility mobility and then inflammation as well. Inflammation as a lot of benefits and pitfalls. But inflammation does impact your ability to be flexible. If you are interested in pursuing this route in fitness, make sure you're taking the necessary steps to keep your inflammation low in the body.
Jayton Miller:
Yeah. I would take it as far as to say that any kind of inflammation that is outside of an adaptive response, especially chronic inflammation, so if it happens over a long period of time, it's going to be antagonistic to the state of health that we want to be in. I would also add to that, hydration from an electrolyte perspective. Making sure that we have plenty of calcium, potassium, magnesium and sodium in the system so we have plenty of extracellular fluid keeping the fascial system hydrated and stuff like that as well.
Robert Walker:
Yeah. It also helps with, when you eat salts. You consume salts, it helps with communication of all those systems, like the nervous system and the fascia system. So more salt means more communication throughout the body and that's going to help you open up your muscles and range of motion as well.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. How does one stretch properly? And then can you go into the best times to stretch and stuff like that as well?
Robert Walker:
Yeah, sure. So I'll start with how does one stretch properly question. There's some confusion about whether or not certain stretches are good or bad. I'm personally not of the belief that there's a bad stretch itself. There are a lot of studies out there and this is where I'll touch on next, because some people who listen to this podcast might've heard that there's some studies coming out that stretching is dangerous and bad for you. And that it can actually decrease athletic performance.
Robert Walker:
All these studies and the abstracts around these studies in the articles that are pointing, these studies are radically generalizing stretching. Most of these studies, not all of them, were done on ballistic stretching, which is a a high risk, more dangerous type of stretching where you instead of, holding movements for smooth, long periods of time, you're actually bouncing, which is a common method used in physical therapy when you're rehabbing from injuries to get your muscle response up by bouncing.
Robert Walker:
It shouldn't be, in my opinion, it shouldn't be used much at all for people who are not rehabilitating. So take all of those articles and claims with a grain of salt. Most of them are about ballistic stretching, but stretches in general, I don't think are bad or good, really. I mean, as long as it's done safely and correctly, and with proper form, it's going to benefit your body.
Robert Walker:
There's no dichotomy over stretches. I think a better question to ask yourself is, “Is this stretch appropriate for the specific requirements of my situation? Am I recovering from injury?” If so, then you do certain stretches, or you don't. If you're healthy, then you can do almost anything. That's the first step. It's really, assess your ability to stretch.
Robert Walker:
You should never feel pain when you're stretching, which is important. People take the no pain, no gain concept way too far in fitness. And it doesn't apply here. Stretching to the point of pain is about 50% further than the stretching to the point of tension, which is what I recommend. If you just stretch to the point where you're just feeling a little bit of tension, you relax and let gravity do the work. That's how I typically stretch.
Robert Walker:
Don't reach too much. If you're doing a seated forward fold, people tend to take assisted bands and pull the shit out of their feet, trying to get to the point where they're doing it. And they search for the pain, in order to feel like they're getting something done, but that's really not how you should do it. When your body is stressed, it's stressed, it's not relaxed. It's going to fight back against what you're doing and that's not how you let your muscles open up. You should take it slow. It's not as quick of a process as let's say, fat loss or muscle building.
Robert Walker:
Opening up your flexibility mobility is a long-term process and you should be patient about it and let your body open up. And I'll touch on breathing in a second because that's really important. But the next thing, you should warm up prior to stretching. People view stretching as a warmup and it is not. You actually do have a risk of injury while you are stretching.
Robert Walker:
It is a workout in itself. That's an important thing to drive home. You should warm up before you stretch and you can do that just by increasing your overall body temperature. That's what I'm talking about. Physically actually warming up and preparing your mind and body for stretching,. I recommend to people that they warm up with like 10 minutes of aerobic exercise to get that body temperature up, get the heart rate to a certain point. Even five minutes works right. Five to 10, and then relax, breathe.
Robert Walker:
Make sure you are ready to do this slowly and calmly. I tend to meditate while I'm stretching. I find it's a nice way to combine time together. And that really helps me relax into the movements and see more benefit in using that time. Because it's like a double whammy. I'm working out and I'm meditating at the same time. I think you should stretch before and after exercise. A lot of people think that it's one or the other.
Robert Walker:
But I think you should always do both. And stretch all major muscle groups and opposing muscle groups. That's a big one. I'll touch on that again. The running example's perfect there. You have to stretch both to stretch properly. In my program I will have people stretching their hamstrings and quads in the same routine to make sure that they are strengthening both at the same time and they're not pushing and pulling on one too much. And then, I touched on this before, but I'll drive it home again. Stretch gently and slowly only to the point of tension and breathe throughout the whole thing.
Robert Walker:
Again, you want your body to relax. You don't want your body to be stressed out. So you have to take it slow. You have to take it patiently. I'm not a huge fan of using resistance bands to accentuate a stretch. I think gravity does the work for you. I think the only things you should use assistance for are to help you with your form because form is extremely important as well.
Robert Walker:
I'll use the standing forward fold again as an example here. Think about the superficial back line as a whole. If you are reaching too far and your form is poor. You're going to have this straightness in your legs, and then you're going to be super curved on the rest of your body. It's not going to really give your lower back the stress that it needs. And it's also not going to impact your hamstrings as much. You should keep your neck neutral in all exercise movements.
Robert Walker:
This is what proper form is. It's good posture, straight back and a neutral neck. And in that way, you might not be able to reach further than the guy next to you doing the proper form right away, but you're going to reap the benefits down the line. And then the last thing is breathe. What you're asking your body to do is you're putting it in a point of tension and you're asking it to relax. Which is tough to do. If you stretch, you're not breathing, you're not thinking.
Robert Walker:
Your body's stressed and you're going to get, even tenser when you stretch, so a lot of people hate stretching. And they feel a lot of pain when they do it, but just fight through that for a second and then breathe. I use a prominent breathing method when I stretch. I typically do in for eight seconds, hold for eight seconds, out for eight seconds all through the nose. And that is one of the more studied [inaudible 00:49:20] techniques that shows massive relaxation of the body. And when you do that, try, just try. Humor me and try stretching for a little bit.
Robert Walker:
Try the standing forward fold and get to your point of tension, then close your eyes. Gauge where your hands are and close your eyes. Then for a minute, hold that stretch and do that exact breathing technique for a minute. And then open your eyes. I promise you, you will literally feel your body opening up and allowing you to stretch further while your eyes are closed and you're doing that breathing. And you will open your eyes and you will be inches lower just a minute later than you were at the beginning and it's because you're telling your body to chill.
Robert Walker:
Like, “This is okay, hamstrings. This is all right. You can open up and let gravity take you.” That's literally what you're asking the body to do. And when you're grimacing and clenching, while you're trying to stretch and you're pushing too hard, your body's just going to fight back and it's going to elicit a stress response and be like, “No, I don't want to do this anymore,” So breathing is vitally important.
Jayton Miller:
Yeah. Just to re-emphasize the importance of that and how it works. Basically, your breathing communicates with your nervous system through the vagus nerve. And so whether you're breathing out through your mouth very rapidly, that's telling your body that you're in a sympathetic state, that you're stressed, that you need to get out of there, whereas if you slow down your breathing, breathe deeply through the nose then you're communicating through the vagus nerve that your body's in a parasympathetic state, it's relaxed. And it's in a good state to where it can heal and focus on those things. What was the technique that you were talking about?
Robert Walker:
[inaudible 00:51:09] breathing? It's the act of breathing in holding and breathing out or the way I want it at least. Commonly used in yoga.
Jayton Miller:
Is it kind of like the 7-7-7 technique?
Robert Walker:
Yeah, I just use [inaudible 00:51:23] personally. I also, on harder movements, I lower it to 5-5-5, because I find it much harder to breathe in for the duration of eight seconds. It's really hard to do if you try it in a really difficult movement. If you struggle with, 8-8-8, go to 5-5-5 but try to work your way up to 8-8-8, because in my opinion it's going to elicit the most relaxation in the body yet.
Jayton Miller:
There's actually an app that you can use for that as well. If you don't want to have to count in your head, it's called Breathe. So that's beneficial for anybody who wants to try that.
Robert Walker:
Yeah. Yeah. I'll check that out too. I haven't heard of that, but I want to make sure that before we sign off, I address the rest of your questions. I think you asked, when to stretch. Really, anytime of the day. That's a common question I get. This is what I say, “As much time of your day should be spent stretching as it should be lifting weights and working cardiovascular fitness,” in my opinion. And that's going to sound like a lot of people, like the old adage of, you should spend as much time studying after class, as you do spend in class, and nobody ever does it. But I'm assuming a lot of people will view this that way as well. But I highly recommend spending as much time, anytime of the day really, stretching as you would weightlifting. Weight lift for an hour, stretch for an hour.
Robert Walker:
That's going to be tough to swallow because hours in this day and age are very hard to come by, but you can do it while you're watching TV. You can do it before bed while you're reading something in an audio book. Stretching has the capacity to be done really anywhere at any time. And if you know what you're doing, it can be really safe and healthy and then really beneficial way to use your time. If you're a competitive athlete then I would add that stretching before and after exercise is very important. And I'll reiterate that you must warm up before you stretch before your exercise. It's not a warm up in itself.
Robert Walker:
I think you asked for how long should you hold this stretch? I get that question all the time as well. Very common question. Definitely a hot topic for debate in the field. But from what I've read and studied, the bare minimum amount of time that it takes for a muscle to actually relax and give you any benefit is 10 seconds. That's, easy to do. I highly recommend you do way more than that, but I would place my personal bare minimum at 20 seconds because you have to also mentally relax to get there, and that takes a little longer.
Robert Walker:
The shortest hold that I personally recommend in my program is 30 seconds. And I typically like to personally hold my stretches for one to two minutes, sometimes even more so that I can get the added meditative benefits. There's some conflicting research on that that says that you don't get any benefit after 90 seconds from actually, it's not possible to get any benefit, but I've seen it personally.
Robert Walker:
And I think it's mostly because of the actual mental relaxation piece, but spending about two minutes on each exercises is beneficial because you actually relax and it challenges your mind. You can meditate during that. You can have enough time to breathe and it really gives your muscle itself at least 90 seconds of actual work. That's what I recommend there. I also get the question. How often do you stretch? All the time. It should be done once daily at least, in my opinion. Bare minimum, three days a week. I think to maintain your current state of flexibility and mobility. And that changes as you get better. If you're an advanced stretcher yoga, you can do all of these contortion movements or whatever, you have to stretch five days a week at a bare minimum to maintain your level of fitness.
Robert Walker:
Another common question I get is, for how long should you stretch? As I touched on before, I think you should in total stretch, as long as you plan to do any other of the big three fitness. But if you're going to stretch any longer than 30 minutes, I would recommend splitting it into two 30 minute components or three. And I would also recommend working a line at a time. So for example, the superficial back line, 30 minutes of just working that line. Working your plantar fascia, your Achilles, your calves, your hamstrings, all the way up the back. And then in another routine you can, same day I would recommend doing the superficial front-line to work those opposing muscle groups.
Robert Walker:
And then the last question I get all the time is the sequence, the proper sequence for stretching. This is also hotly debated, but the most common, and this is what I'm talking about, is order of muscle groups to stretch. Where I've landed after all of my work is that you should start at the inner most muscle, so closest to center and work your way to the appendages. And that's important because the reason why I recommend that is because if you work your appendages first, your appendages are inherently tied to your center. So if you work your appendages without working your center, you will not get as much benefit in your appendage exercises as you would working center. So I typically start with a torso stretch, chest stretch, twisting something like that. Anything around the hips of the pelvis.
Robert Walker:
And then I typically work my way up first. So I go up to the occiput, work the scalp and the reason I choose this first, distraction first is because when I touched on earlier that a lot of the lines meet in your occiput, in your scalp. So loosening these before you move to your appendages is going to enhance the effectiveness of your appendage exercises. If I was working at a superficial back line, for example, I would start with spinal exercises, work my way up to the occiput, massage the scalp, and then return back around to the hips, work all the way down the back of the legs and finish with a plantar fascia.
Jayton Miller:
And for those of you listening, the occiput is right around the top of the neck, bottom of the cranium.
Robert Walker:
Yup. Yeah. And there are many different sub-occipital muscles that you should try to isolate each one. In Anatomy Trains actually, I think he offers several exercises for working each one of the sub-occipital muscles which, I forget which one it was, but I was stretching my sub-occipitals one day and I was stretching… People give the neck is one thing, right. And I was stretching different pieces of it, and then I isolated one of them.
Robert Walker:
And as soon as I isolated it, I felt this insane feeling of relaxation throughout my entire body. And I was sold at that point. I was like, “This is awesome.” Isolating those sub-occipital muscles and stretching is one of my favorite things to do.
Jayton Miller:
Thank you. Well, Rob, I appreciate you hopping on here today. Where can people find more of your work and keep up with you?
Robert Walker:
Yeah. So UMZU Fit, that's everything. I'm the VP of growth here at UMZU, so my work is reflected throughout the entire brand. And but my personal writing and work is almost all done inside of UMZU Fit. So if you are interested in learning anything more about this, my mobility program inside of UMZU FIT will be released in January. I'm also co-writing a program with Jayden, called In the fit mindset that should be out sometime in December or very early January. I've also written, The Bodyweight Ladder, which ended up being a pretty epic, it's like 500 page novel, basically on how to progress from, zero in body weight, all the way through, doing some really amazing things.
Robert Walker:
There are nine levels of that program, some yet to be released, but it'll take you from literally zero and not to be able to do a pushup, all the way through doing straddle punch clapping pushups is the last chest exercise. So just zero to a 100,000,000. And it's a step-by-step process. I think that's one of my best works. And then I also wrote all of the body weight and weighted body weight routines, and sections inside of them. So that fat loss re-composition and muscle building.
Robert Walker:
If you're interested in learning anything more from me, go sign up for UMZU Fit and check all of those out. And then you can also talk to me personally on the platform. That's one of the big benefits of UMZU Fit. We can chat all day long if you want. You can ask all your questions to me that you want, and you can post an activity feed and I can come back and it's me personally doing it. So if you want to talk, that's the place to do it.
Jayton Miller:
Thank you. Sweet. Brother, as you listen, make sure to check him out, and until next time.
Jayton Miller:
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In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast, Jayton Miller sits down and talks about the relationship between nutrition and mental health. He covers what a healthy diet is, things about our physiology that can affect our mental health, things to do in order to improve mental health naturally, and so much more. Check it out and let us know what you think!
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In this episode of the Thermo Diet Podcast Jayton Miller sits down with Tyler Woodward, a fellow Thermo Warrior and Physiology and Neurobiology Major at the University of Maryland. They talk about all things blood flow in this episode, from how the cardiovascular system works, how nitric oxide works, things you can do to increase your blood flow, and all things in between. Check it out and let us know what you think.
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Thermo Diet Roadmap
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Jayton Miller sits down with Dan Hochman and UMZU Ambassador, Mens Empowerment Coach, and Personal Trainer. They talk about a wide array of topics from training, food, and psychology. Check it out and let us know what you think!
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Thermo Diet Roadmap
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Christopher Walker and Jayton Miller sit down and talk about what they did during the lockdown in early 2020, what they might have done differently, the possibility of another lockdown, and possible repercussions of another lockdown and more. Check it out and let us know what you think in comments or in the facebook groups!
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Thermo Diet Roadmap
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Jayton Miller sits down and talks about the most optimal way to be a vegetarian from the Thermo perspective. Find out what the best plant based proteins are, find out why most vegetarians and vegans do it wrong, and so much more. Check it out and let us know what you think!
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Thermo Diet Roadmap
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Jayton Miller sits down with Ashley and Sarah Armstrong. These two sisters are taking the alternative health sphere by storm with practical eating advice and have recently purchased a farm where they can practice regenerative farming practices. In this episode hear about their background, what they are up to currently, why they chose to start eating carbohydrates again, and the importance of regenerative farming among much more! Check it out and let us know what you think!
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Thermo Diet Roadmap
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Jayton Miller and Zach Siegel sit down and talk about the details of their training from their favorite lifting equipment and exercises, what they do on their off days, what they are working on right now and so much more. Check it out and let us know what you think!
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Thermo Diet Roadmap
Full Transcript:
Full Transcript
Jayton Miller:
Welcome back to the Thermo Diet Podcast. I'm your host Jayton Miller, and today I'm here with fellow UMZU coworker and UMZU Fit coach Zachary Siegel.
Zach Siegel:
Was going on?
Jayton Miller:
How are you doing today?
Zach Siegel:
I'm doing good, man. I feel good.
Jayton Miller:
Yeah?
Zach Siegel:
Yeah, I got a lot of energy today.
Jayton Miller:
Heck yeah. Why is that?
Zach Siegel:
I worked out this morning. Woke up at five o'clock with Rob, drove to the 24 hour fitness, and I got my workout in.
Jayton Miller:
Heck yeah. You're also on that new Miracle Morning, aren't you?
Zach Siegel:
Oh yeah. I took two of those this morning.
Jayton Miller:
It's good, isn't it?
Zach Siegel:
Two of those and a scoop of Zuum. That'll do it.
Jayton Miller:
Heck yeah. How'd you work out. Go ahead.
Zach Siegel:
Super well for a... Working out 5:30 in the morning, sometimes your strength isn't there in the morning. But I had it today. Today felt good for an early morning lift. But yeah, like I said, strength isn't usually there, low energy. You really got to... I just find that you got to stretch a little bit more in the morning, get your body warmed up, hit the treadmill, 10, 15 minutes, get into your workout, do some stretching, maybe some foam rolling, and then hit it hard.
Jayton Miller:
They usually say about 150 milligrams of caffeine is what you need to stimulate the CNS in the mornings too.
Zach Siegel:
Yeah. I think at timed it pretty well with the Miracle Morning, the Zuum, five minute drive to the gym, hit the treadmill for a little bit, and then I was ready to go after it.
Jayton Miller:
Heck yeah. So what's your favorite lifting equipment?
Zach Siegel:
Lifting equipment? I mean, I like the tried and true, the barbell. The barbell, the dumbbells. Are you talking equipment in terms of belts? I don't know, wrist straps, wraps.
Jayton Miller:
Yeah, we can do favorite equipment in the gym and then favorite equipment that you take to the gym.
Zach Siegel:
Okay, cool. So yeah, I would say the equipment that I use... I mean, I like to use a little bit of everything. I mean, it's all there at your disposal, so might as well take advantage of it. I think certain things are really good, especially if you're not... I guess it all depends on how you feel that day as well. For instance, Rob and I are working on... I mean, we're all working on that bulking program right now for for UMZU Fit, coming soon. So I'm trying different phases, like a chest phase or your neck and traps. So trying to incorporate movements every day for a certain target area. So if you want a bigger chest you're going to do inclined bench press, you're going to do the flat bench press.
Zach Siegel:
But then on other days, that might be your shoulder focus day, still incorporating chest movements, but then maybe inclined chest machine press and getting a little bit higher volume seems to work. I've been cutting for a while for peak aesthetics and everything, so I was really just bare bones and it was just barbell stuff and then dumbbells. No machines. I was just really doing... Stripped it, really minimal workout so I wouldn't increase my appetite or not have the correct fuel for the workout, I guess. So now that I'm eating more, I have, "Oh, let me try out these different toys in the gym." And it's been a lot of fun to just blast different areas of the back. High rows, low rows, doing cable stuff, dumbbell rows, Pendlay rows, everything, and just trying to hit it in different areas, and then... It's more fun, definitely, if you're eating more calories and see your strength go up, that's for sure.
Jayton Miller:
Yeah. Have you been incorporating any of the GPP work that we talked about?
Zach Siegel:
Yeah. So I've been doing that on my off days, the 50 pushups and what are the... Svend press?
Jayton Miller:
Yeah, the Svend press.
Zach Siegel:
Yeah, those seem to really hit the chest pretty nice.
Jayton Miller:
Yeah. For those of you listening, that's the one where you have the plate in between your hands and you press together and it's basically just a press on a flat bench or incline. Super good for the chest.
Zach Siegel:
Yeah. And then even... I mean here in Boulder, Gym Number Five has some really cool stuff that, now that we could try some different power lifting type equipment that I've never seen in your typical 24 hour Life Time gyms, which is pretty fun. What's your favorite equipment?
Jayton Miller:
Right now dumbbells is probably my favorite equipment. I just like getting the biggest dumbbells that we have and tossing them around and everybody looks over like, "Oh, he doesn't look like he can do that."
Zach Siegel:
Right. That's pretty fun, doing that RPT style stuff where you just pick up dumbbells and you're like, "I feel pretty good." It gives you a nice little ego boost, I guess. Especially if you can perform them with good reps. Because you don't want to be that guy that's like, "Ah." Like, "Yeah, he's trying to lift 120 pound dumbbells, but his form's jack." When you could do it with proper form, you're like, "Shit, that's pretty cool." Doing five, six reps there.
Jayton Miller:
Yeah. So what's your favorite equipment that you take to the gym?
Zach Siegel:
I got to have a dip belt. I hope we make one someday. Right now, since I'm trying to bulk up, do some heavy neck and trap stuff, I'm using some grip stuff, wrist straps? Because I've been doing rack pulls, and the grip is a limiting factor on that. I definitely need to work on my grip strength, but I don't want to not lift heavy. So I got to keep those in the gym bag so my grip isn't a limiting factor. Because it's not about, I guess... I can lift the weight, it's just my hands will give out after doing two, three reps at super high weight. Especially since I came from a cut, I'm not used to lifting this heavy. And now that I'm like, "Oh, I feel really good. I have the energy to be able to do this." I need some support there.
Jayton Miller:
I really want to try the Versa Gripps. Those ones where the little leather piece that comes up and around.
Zach Siegel:
I think that'd be nice. especially a finisher, if you're doing back and then you wanted to do pull ups at the very end, because that seems to be another thing where my grip just goes out, where I could do probably six, seven more pull ups, but then my hands just don't do it.
Jayton Miller:
Inverted rows is really good for that too.
Zach Siegel:
That's a good point.
Jayton Miller:
Getting super high volume on inverted rows. I like that a lot.
Zach Siegel:
What else?
Jayton Miller:
You got a new belt?
Zach Siegel:
I did. I got a lifting belt. I was doing rack pulls a day and I felt my lower back was going to break. I kind of want some more support there, and I feel like since I am trying to go heavier, I want to get one of these belts to incline press more reps. Because I feel like just incorporating these small little things can give me an extra rep or two in this lean bulk that will really be beneficial than not using it. Or if I was in a cut I wasn't worried about it because my reps were pretty low and my energy was low too. But now that I'm trying to be super optimal about things, I want to bench press with a belt and really have that core stability there in standing press, rack pools, dead lifts, squats, doing everything with a belt, trying to the wrist straps, the grip to get that up there. Yeah, I'm going to test it out and see how it goes, but I'm excited.
Jayton Miller:
Heck yeah. And you've got the Rise latchable belt, didn't you.
Zach Siegel:
Yeah, it's like a lever belt I think. So it's really easy to get on and off. You just pull the lever and then it just comes apart. I think those are really good. I've seen some videos about them. Seem to have some nice reviews. I'll test it out though.
Jayton Miller:
I'm excited to see how you like it. I'm going to have to pick me up one.
Zach Siegel:
Yeah, you can try it once I get it. It's $99. I think it was 103 with tax and stuff, but it seems like it's a good investment if I want to be really serious about this and I want to hit all the supplements. I'm eating more, so I'm trying to be more diligent. I'm tracking everything. I'm still getting into my steps. I'm just trying to be super optimal. I'm eating full Thermo, so it's going to be fun.
Jayton Miller:
So what was your favorite equipment whenever the gyms were closed down?
Zach Siegel:
I was doing body weight stuff, so it was easy to... I was just using Bodylastics bands. I was doing higher volume. I was using what I had. Some videos that Chris put on the channel of just looking at things or objects as like, "Oh, you could use this to lift. Here's a little ridge on a wall. I could do pull ups here. Or I could do a handstand pushup here. Or feet elevated pushups. Just being more creative. And that's pretty easy for me since that's basically my job here at UMZU. So looking at things, it was a different challenge for sure, but it did the job. My calories were pretty low, so I was just trying to shed some weight, and I thought it was super easy with doing the body weight stuff.
Zach Siegel:
And then Rob was making the program, so I was doing his program, just trying to be a gymnast, I guess. It was fun. It was way different and I didn't think that I would get that strong from doing body weight exercises, or I thought I was going to be really weak going back to the gym. But I found out that after a week or two, my weights were right back to normal after doing body weight stuff, so there wasn't that big of a drop. I guess it was just more about the muscle memory of the movement itself.
Jayton Miller:
So since you're adding in more calories, is your frequency going to go up any?
Zach Siegel:
Yeah, I'm working out four times. Four to five times a week. It just really depends, because I'm doing... I'm doing the bulking program that we're making right now, but then I'm also adding in some neck and trap stuff at the end. So I'm trying to decide if I want to tack that on at the end of a workout or just keep it on its own day. So yesterday the gym was really packed, I just got in my normal routine, and then this morning I went in there and did neck and trap, really trying to build that neck and the traps.
Zach Siegel:
But it seemed to work a little bit better because after doing the workout that I did yesterday, it was higher volume, and then thinking about it now in hindsight, if I would have did that workout and then try to do rack pulls and then overhead shrugs and then some neck and trap stuff, some neck curls and some neck extensions, I probably wouldn't have the energy. Because I was fasted, it was at the end of the day, it was after work. And I don't think I had the energy. So I think I'm going to work out five times a week.
Jayton Miller:
Heck yeah. And are the workouts themselves just going to be shorter?
Zach Siegel:
Yeah, they'll just be shorter, which I think is... I'll be able to dive in and really take warm-up sets even more serious, because when you're at the gym and you see a machine open, you're like, "I got to go." You kind of got to finish up the set that you're doing there and then try to jump on the next thing. So I think it's better. It's more optimal to just keep the workout shorter, a little bit shorter, and then just hit the things that I'm really trying to work on, my focus, the neck and trap phase and really focus on those on a separate day.
Jayton Miller:
So in your workouts, do you ever experiment with different kinds of rest times? Do you have different rest times for-
Zach Siegel:
Different exercises?
Jayton Miller:
Yeah, for your key movements versus your accessory movements?
Zach Siegel:
Yeah. I would say the key movements, definitely seeing benefits of three minutes for sure. And I don't see any benefit. I've tried five minutes, but I don't really see any difference from three to five, but definitely there's a difference between two to three I found. So yeah, the key exercises, three minutes maximum, if you feel good and you want to go to... Basically two to three minutes, but I'd suggest three minutes. And then any isolation work is really one to two. Really trying to get the volume in there, the blood flow to the muscles. I find that pretty beneficial.
Jayton Miller:
Heck yeah. What about on GPP days?
Zach Siegel:
I like to do no rest, kind of super set it. If we're doing 50 pushups, hit the 50 pushups and then go straight into the Svend press there, and then do 50 of those and then rest three minutes, and then attack that again, which is nice. And then the face pulls too. What is it, face pulls, the bicep curls, or...
Jayton Miller:
Or upright rows.
Zach Siegel:
Upright rows. That's what it is. So I really do the burn there. It just depends on what you're trying to achieve, I guess, of rest periods. It's fun to play around with, and really feel the muscles differently. If you're really trying to find the contraction or the mind to muscle connection, I really to take it.... I mean, if we're doing the GGP work or GPP.
Jayton Miller:
GPP.
Zach Siegel:
Yeah, that's what it is. I get it. I always say it wrong. You can feel the mind muscle connection there, but then I like feeling the burn at the same time. But say if I was doing a key exercise, I definitely want to give it my best effort and make sure I'm recovered to make sure that I'm going up and way, I'm progressing, progressive overload, I'm resting, and then I'm just constantly seeing those micro gains week after week, which is fun. I just have a great time in the gym right now.
Jayton Miller:
Heck yeah. So for the listeners out there who don't really know what GPP is, can you tell them why you're doing it?
Zach Siegel:
Do you want to explain? You're the research cowboy?
Jayton Miller:
GPP is basically just general physical preparedness, and basically on the days that you're not lifting, you do something that is targeting a specific muscle group for extremely high volume in order to bring that muscle group up. So say for instance your biceps and your traps are lacking, then you can do upright rows or some kind of shrugs for very high reps, really lightweight that's not going to take back your recovery for the next workout that you're going into. But at the same time, it's still allowing for different kinds of metabolites to get into the muscle, different kinds of nutrients to get into the muscle and stuff like that, and you're just working it, developing that mind muscle connection and integrating it a little bit better into the nervous system, those movement patterns and stuff like that.
Zach Siegel:
How long have you been experimenting with that?
Jayton Miller:
Honestly, I basically did GPP type stuff all throughout quarantine. So I was doing five sets of 75 pushups to five sets of 50 upright rows. I would do them every single day because I didn't have anything else to do and I was like, "I got to do something." Actually noticed that I think my size increased just a little bit from doing that high volume every single day. But long-term, it gets super boring because it's super repetitive.
Zach Siegel:
But it's nice to throw in there. I think it's nice having a strength day and then a hypertrophy day. I like mixing in the volume like that. And I like week to week basis changing the rep movements. I mean, it all depends. I mean in isolation type exercises on the second half, the key exercises mainly always stay the same, unless I'm switching between dumbbell and barbell, but then the second set of exercises, that second wave there, I like to mess around with higher reps, lower reps, and then figure out... I don't know if you've tried this. RPE.
Jayton Miller:
Yeah, a little bit.
Zach Siegel:
It's kind of interesting.
Jayton Miller:
What is it? Reps per... Reps to perceived exhaustion or exertion.
Zach Siegel:
It's interesting because I've been... I'm going to try it out on this bulk and see how I it because I've been doing the RPT style stuff for so long that sometimes I feel like you're not ready to have that five pound jump, and then you seem to have a plateau there. Where RPE allows you to walk into the gym, and if you're not feeling 100%, say you're doing RPE eight, which means you're going to do it until you know that you have two reps still in the tank. So depending on the day it can change. So if you're not an eight, this one day with two reps in the tank could be two less reps in the time that you did it before. It's all just based on you and how you feel walking into the gym, which is different. I think that's right.
Jayton Miller:
I would say that for beginners I definitely wouldn't do that just because you don't know your body that well. You don't really know what your limits are to push to. And a lot of the times people tend to underestimate their ability to failure. But if you're experienced, it's definitely something to experiment with.
Zach Siegel:
Yeah, if you're intermediate to what, advanced, I would say, if that was something that you wanted to tackle or go... I was reading about it too. There's a way to do RPE in terms of sets. You would use RPE, and you'd have a set amount of sets. Say you're doing... I guess, let's say you're doing bench press, or squats, and then you have... I'm going to hit 12 reps, but you don't know how many sets you're going to do. You're going to do RPE until you have two reps left in the tank, depending on how many sets. So one day you could do three sets, but the other day you might do five. You're like, "All right, I hit it where I can't do two more reps." So there's a different balance. It's interesting.
Jayton Miller:
So in that, would you do 12 reps, 12 reps, 12 reps, and then 11 reps, and then whenever you hit 10 reps on that last set, that's whenever you would stop?
Zach Siegel:
I would say maybe it's not 12 reps, maybe it's 10 to 12 with an RPE of eight, and you would do it until, you know that on that last set you're like, "I got two reps left in the tank. I can't do anymore." And then it might be five sets. It could be two sets. It could be 10 sets.
Jayton Miller:
How do you get motivated to go to the gym on a consistent basis?
Zach Siegel:
That's a good question, because sometimes, I'll be honest, when you're in a cut, sometimes you're just like, "I don't feel going." The motivation, it saps your willpower sometimes. And I think you can play games with yourself if you listen to your mind too much when you're just like... You just got to go. But I don't know. What do you do to motivate yourself?
Jayton Miller:
Honestly, at this point in my life it's just discipline. I just tell myself to stop being a wuss and put in the work.
Zach Siegel:
That's kind of where I'm at too, because I don't know if I'm... Even if I don't feel it, I still go because I find that if you go and then you do your first set and you're still not feeling it, maybe it's not your day, but at least you showed up. I think that's the biggest thing.
Jayton Miller:
Honestly, I don't think I've ever gone to the gym and been like, "Damn, I shouldn't have done that."
Zach Siegel:
Exactly. I agree. Once you show up and you start getting the reps in there, you naturally just feel better. And then you're like, "All right, I'm going to make it through this workout." Even if it is a grind, I still try to give it a 10 out of 10 every time, even though if my 10 out of the 10 is really a 7 that day. I still gave it a 10 out of 10, even with how I felt. And I still showed up. I still put it in the work. And I know that at the end of the day it's going to get me towards my goal, whatever that is, if it's building muscle, losing fat, gaining weight, or losing weight. Whatever it is, I think you just got to show up, put in the work, and then keep going, because you'll feel better. You really will.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. So do you have a workout partner?
Zach Siegel:
I go to the gym with Rob about every day, but we don't necessarily work out together. We show up at the same time, so we keep each other account... It's like having a workout partner, but you do your own workout. He's got different goals than I do, but we keep each other accountable by just going to the gym, showing up, doing the work, and then we usually end up around the same time. Because he's got different goals with his body weight stuff, and he's trying out body weight and hybrid, body weight with some weight training, while I'm just trying to get fucking huge. It's fun. It's definitely fun. We come up with different ideas. We'll shoot videos for UMZU Fit and stuff there. Just keeping each other accountable and really just having fun. How about yourself?
Jayton Miller:
No, I work out by myself that. Honestly, I don't even like to look at people whenever I'm in the gym. I will stare at the floor for three minutes in between my sets just so I don't have to look at anybody. I don't know, for some reason, as soon as I walk through that door, I'm angry. I don't know why.
Zach Siegel:
At everybody, at the world.
Jayton Miller:
It's just like nothing else is supposed to exist except for the work that I'm supposed to put in right now.
Zach Siegel:
I get mad sometimes too. Maybe I'm mean to people. Like, "You're using that?" I'm like, "No, bro."
Jayton Miller:
I don't know. It's probably not a good mindset to have, but I just walk in there and just... It's just time to work. And whenever I see people talking in the gym, I'm like, "You need to stop."
Zach Siegel:
Well that's the thing. I have my phone with me so I can track my workouts, but I see people on there texting or they're on Instagram, they're calling somebody, they're talking to people. I'm like, "Get off that machine because I want to use it. Stop doing this." Gym etiquette is huge to me. Especially when I'm in a cut and I'm like, "I want to eat after this workout." And you're just like, "What is going on? Get off this." But now that I'm in a bulk, I'm like... I'm trying to get in more volume, but when people are taking the stuff I'm just waiting around. Especially with COVID and stuff. You got to wear a mask and it's annoying, but it is what it is. So it seems my workouts take forever.
Jayton Miller:
Yeah. I get that. So has your cardio changed between cutting and bulking?
Zach Siegel:
Not too much. I would say I'm just... I don't do too much cardio. I don't run, I don't really do HIT stuff. I literally just try to get in 10,000 steps a day. That's all I do. It's pretty easy that way. It's not too stressful on me and I don't feel like I have to do anything else. It's not a like [inaudible 00:25:00] workout where I'm going to go to the gym just to do this HIT. I know there's advantages to it and stuff, but for me, if I'm going to the gym, I'm going to lift some weight. And if I'm not at the gym, I'm going to make sure that I hit 10,000 steps. Even if I go to the gym, I still make sure that on that day that I hit my 10,000 steps just to stay active.
Zach Siegel:
I walk to the grocery store just about every day to pick up food and then walk back. It takes a lot of time, I'm not going to lie, but I have a lot of time to myself to think and listen to books or podcasts or think about work. What could I do to basically evolve, to be better. Plus I get a lot of inspiration on walks, just being outside. You see things and I'm like, "Oh." You get inspired. And then I can go back home and then just jump on the computer. Because I do a lot of sitting at work. So being behind the computer screen, I don't get that much activity when I'm at work. Usually when I leave here I'm like, "Oh man, I only got 400 steps today." That's walking to the bathroom and back. What do you like to do?
Jayton Miller:
Jump rope's always fun, whenever I do get around to it. And now it's just walking. Or doing the dirty every once in a while, but sometimes...
Zach Siegel:
What's that?
Jayton Miller:
Doing the dirty? Sex.
Zach Siegel:
Got it.
Jayton Miller:
That's my HIT training. What's your favorite podcast?
Zach Siegel:
I've been listening to a lot of books lately. Podcasts though, this one, of course, the Thermo Diet Podcast. I listen to this one all the time, dude. I'm trying to think. I listen to Joe Rogan stuff every now and then. I like to listen to some comedians.
Jayton Miller:
King It or Sting It, baby.
Zach Siegel:
I the Rat King, Theo Von, I like Brendan Schaub. I like 2 Bears 1 Cave. I really like Tom Segura. Bert Kreischer' funny too.
Jayton Miller:
I Bert Kreischer.
Zach Siegel:
Yeah, those guys... It's fun to just listen to those guys talk, not take life too seriously. Sometimes it's really nice to just decompress, walk. Some people I know look at me so weird because I'll be laughing to myself. They're like, "What is wrong with this guy?"
Jayton Miller:
That's funny. So how do you track your workouts?
Zach Siegel:
So there's a few different things I use. Right now I'm just using... Actually right now I actually converted back to pen and paper, a notebook book. Tracking them down.
Jayton Miller:
Do you take that to the gym with you?
Zach Siegel:
Yep.
Jayton Miller:
Nice.
Zach Siegel:
Yep. I got a binder and then I printed out the workouts, the PDFs that we have. Download them on UMZU Fit. I print those guys out and I take them to the gym and I'm tracking them, and I can look back. But for the most part, back in the day, not even back in the day, a few weeks ago, I was just using my notes and just copy and paste the workout. I've messed around with Notion. It's an app where you can basically build anything, really.
Jayton Miller:
What was that one with the elephant that you were using for a while?
Zach Siegel:
Evernote, I think.
Jayton Miller:
Evernote, yeah.
Zach Siegel:
There's Evernote, there's Notion. I like notion because it's fully customizable. And like I building things that. I mean, I've used Asana for my workouts.
Jayton Miller:
I used the Strong app for a really long time, but the free trial only lets you make three workouts and I've been working out four days a week for quite a while now. So I can't put my fourth workout in there, so why should I use it?
Zach Siegel:
Yeah. I think I've downloaded that, but I always feel too restricted. I feel like I have OCD sometimes where if it's not the exact workout, I don't feel like it counts and I'm like, "I can't use this thing." I would rather just type it in myself.
Jayton Miller:
What are some in the little tips that you put in your notes? For instance, whenever I'm doing an exercise and I noticed that this weight is a little too much, I'll put in parentheses "stay," and so the next week-
Zach Siegel:
I do the same thing. I like to use emojis too. I use the arrows. I'd be like, "Go down in weight," or next week, "Go up. Thumbs up." Just little things that to keep me motivated. But I always do that. Even if I hit the top end of a rep range, say I'm going to incline bench and I hit six reps, but that way it was like... I'm like, "You should stay another week." I'm really trying to make sure that I don't lie to myself and always keep myself on target because then I might get discouraged if I try to go up in weight and I get three reps. I don't even hit the bottom, and I'm like, "What did I do? How did I hit that last week?" But then looking back at it, copy paste and it's like, "Stay, hit six again, prove it." And then I did that. If I do it again, then I'm like, "All right, now let's bump it up and hit four." So it's just little things that that I just keep keep track of. So you do the same thing? That's funny.
Jayton Miller:
Yeah, I do. I'm going to start implementing the emojis though. I haven't done that. I'm going to start adding that in there.
Zach Siegel:
I think it keeps you motivated, especially if you're feeling well. Because you could put... I haven't tried this, I usually use the arrows and stuff, but you could probably put a face next to it. A smiley face means that you could have your own little chart there.
Jayton Miller:
Yeah, like a little code for yourself?
Zach Siegel:
You could use the middle finger if you're like, "Fuck this one." If you don't hit the reps. Go down weight. Yeah, what else you want to talk about?
Jayton Miller:
What's the number one tip that you would give somebody in UMZU Fit right now?
Zach Siegel:
I would say the number one thing is... I know we have a lot of programs in there, but I would say not to program hop. Consistency is going to be the biggest thing. I would say go through all the programs, see which one you would want to do the most, what your goals are. Stick to that for the what, 12 weeks. I don't know if all the programs are 12 weeks, but I would stick to it for at least three months. So that's my biggest thing. Because if you keep going back and forth it, I don't want people to get discouraged. If you have a goal, set that goal. Don't try to do too many things at once. Really just simplify everything. Hit that one thing and then move on.
Jayton Miller:
Definitely. Honestly, most things are going to work as long as you're consistent with it. So just stick to one thing and be consistent with it. It'll work.
Zach Siegel:
Yeah. That the biggest thing. I mean, it goes from taking supplements to lifting weights, is an analogy that I to use. In terms of exercise, if you want a bigger back, you're going to have to focus on it. If you want to improve your gut health, you're really going to have to do it. It's like, "Oh, you're going to do this one workout that hits everything." That's not optimal. It's the same thing if you're going to take a multivitamin. It's not optimal. You're not going to get the right amount, the right dosage, the right form in this multivitamin. They might be cutting corners. And I feel like that's the same thing in doing certain lifting routines.
Zach Siegel:
There's not a one size fits all. You got to look at it for yourself and then see what your lacking muscle parts are, or your body parts, and then really hone in on that, dedicate yourself to a certain amount of time before you move on. Because you can't do everything. That's the same way I approach health. If I want to improve gut health, I got to eat these certain foods, fermented foods, and then I want to take my probiotic, take some ACV, and then correct that, and then take something else. That's what I think about it, but people might disagree.
Jayton Miller:
Well, thanks for being on the podcast, Z.
Zach Siegel:
A pleasure, man.
Jayton Miller:
I appreciate your time. For all those of you listening, make sure to get into UMZU Fit. Zach is super active in there. So is Rob and myself. So make sure to check it out. Make sure to hit the like button, subscribe, and we'll talk next time. Thanks for listening to the podcast. If you haven't already, make sure to hit the like button, subscribe, and leave a comment down below if you want us to cover a different topic.
In this episode of the The Thermo Diet Podcast Jayton Miller sits down and gives a complete overview of all things thyroid related. Why does the thyroid stop working? What does the thyroid do? How do you heal you thyroid? Find out all this and more in this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast! Check it out and let us know what you think!
Facebook Group and Fanpage:
- Thermo Diet Community Group
- Thermo Diet Fan Page
Youtube Channels:
- Christopher Walker
- UMZU Health
Instagram:
- @_christopherwalker
- @researchcowboy
Website:
- thermodiet.com
https://umzu.com/
Thermo Diet Roadmap
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Jake Miner sits down with Jayton Miller and talks about his health journey, how he came into the UMZU realm and how he overcame some of his health issues over the years and much more. Check it out and let us know what you think!
Facebook Group and Fanpage:
- Thermo Diet Community Group
- Thermo Diet Fan Page
Youtube Channels:
- Christopher Walker
- UMZU Health
Instagram:
- @_christopherwalker
- @researchcowboy
Website:
- thermodiet.com
https://umzu.com/
Thermo Diet Roadmap
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Jayton Miller sits down with Colin Ricco, one of the original people who were on to the philosophy when it first began. In this episode Jayton and Colin talk about various topics from his story and background, mindset, how to try and be Thermo with a spouse, and so much more. Check it out and let us know what you think!
Facebook Group and Fanpage:
- Thermo Diet Community Group
- Thermo Diet Fan Page
Youtube Channels:
- Christopher Walker
- UMZU Health
Instagram:
- @_christopherwalker
- @researchcowboy
Website:
- thermodiet.com
https://umzu.com/
Thermo Diet Roadmap
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Christopher Walker and Jayton Miller sit down and talk about UMZU. From the launch of the new platform UMZU fit to releasing our brand new product ZUUM. Check out the product roadmap and see what all UMZU has coming out for its amazing customers!
Due to technical problems we couldn't get the links to the write ups mentioned in the podcast, we apologize!
Facebook Group and Fanpage:
- Thermo Diet Community Group
- Thermo Diet Fan Page
Youtube Channels:
- Christopher Walker
- UMZU Health
Instagram:
- @_christopherwalker
- @researchcowboy
Website:
- thermodiet.com
https://umzu.com/
Thermo Diet Roadmap
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Jayton Miller sits down and talks about some quick and dirty tips to lower the amount of serotonin in the system allowing for the optimization of the system as a whole. Check it out and let us know what you think!
Facebook Group and Fan page:
- Thermo Diet Community Group
- Thermo Diet Fan Page
Youtube Channels:
- Christopher Walker
- UMZU Health
Instagram:
- @_christopherwalker
- @researchcowboy
Website:
- thermodiet.com
https://umzu.com/
Thermo Diet Roadmap
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Jayton Miller sits down with Joseph Areano, a long time Thermo Diet Group member and new UMZU Ambassador. Joseph has overcome phenomenal challenges in his health journey and shares his story with us in this episode. From being on SSRIs to having extreme fatigue and low libido Joseph has been through the ringer, but has come out on the other side a better man and human being with the help of the Thermo Diet and UMZU, Check it out and let us know what you think!
Facebook Group and Fanpage:
- Thermo Diet Community Group
- Thermo Diet Fan Page
Youtube Channels:
- Christopher Walker
- UMZU Health
Instagram:
- @_christopherwalker
- @researchcowboy
Website:
- thermodiet.com
https://umzu.com/
Thermo Diet Roadmap
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Jayton Miller sits down with independent researcher and health enthusiast Matt Blackburn. They talk about what lipofuscin is, what it does, and supplements to lower lipofuscin. Check it out and let us know what you think below!
Facebook Group and Fanpage:
- Thermo Diet Community Group
- Thermo Diet Fan Page
Youtube Channels:
- Christopher Walker
- UMZU Health
Instagram:
- @_christopherwalker
- @researchcowboy
Website:
- thermodiet.com
https://umzu.com/
Thermo Diet Roadmap
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Jayton sits down with Shane Banks one fo the ambassadors for UMZU. Shane is an athlete, father, and high performing business man among other things. They talk about how to map out your path, how to stay on your path, and so much more. Check it out and let us know what you think!
Facebook Group and Fanpage:
- Thermo Diet Community Group
- Thermo Diet Fan Page
Youtube Channels:
- Christopher Walker
- UMZU Health
Instagram:
- @_christopherwalker
- @researchcowboy
Website:
- thermodiet.com
https://umzu.com/
Thermo Diet Roadmap
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Christopher Walker and Jayton Miller sit down to discuss what psychedelics are, some of their experiences with psychedelics and more. Check it out and let us know what you think!
Facebook Group and Fanpage:
- Thermo Diet Community Group
- Thermo Diet Fan Page
Youtube Channels:
- Christopher Walker
- UMZU Health
Instagram:
- @_christopherwalker
- @researchcowboy
Website:
- thermodiet.com
https://umzu.com/
Thermo Diet Roadmap
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Jayton Miller sits down with the infamous Thermo Diet Community member Jake Miner and talks about his journey towards optimal health and how he went from an extremely stressed body and situation, to boundless energy and amazing health. Check it out and let us know what you think!
Facebook Group and Fanpage:
- Thermo Diet Community Group
- Thermo Diet Fan Page
Youtube Channels:
- Christopher Walker
- UMZU Health
Instagram:
- @_christopherwalker
- @researchcowboy
Website:
- thermodiet.com
https://umzu.com/
Thermo Diet Roadmap
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Jayton Miller sits down and talks to Georgi Dinkov, a researcher and expert on the metabolic theory of health. They talk about what endotoxin is and how to get rid of it, how to down regulate serotonin, how to get rid of estrogen, and how to increase the protective hormones in the body. Check it out and let us know what you think!
Facebook Group and Fanpage:
- Thermo Diet Community Group
- Thermo Diet Fan Page
Youtube Channels:
- Christopher Walker
- UMZU Health
Instagram:
- @_christopherwalker
- @researchcowboy
Website:
- thermodiet.com
https://umzu.com/
Thermo Diet Roadmap
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Jayton Miller sits down with UMZU Ambassador Lawrence Taylor. Lawrence Taylor is an amazing father and business man, and has had an amazing health journey over the past year losing upwards of 80 pounds and leading his family down a path of optimal health. Check it out and let us know what you think!
Facebook Group and Fanpage:
- Thermo Diet Community Group
- Thermo Diet Fan Page
Youtube Channels:
- Christopher Walker
- UMZU Health
Instagram:
- @_christopherwalker
- @researchcowboy
Website:
- thermodiet.com
https://umzu.com/
Thermo Diet Roadmap
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Christopher Walker and Jayton Miller sit down and talk about some of their experiences when it comes to losing fat and not harming the body. They talk about nutrient density, cooking, mindset going into a fat loss stage, and so much more. Check it out and let us know what you think!
Facebook Group and Fanpage:
- Thermo Diet Community Group
- Thermo Diet Fan Page
Youtube Channels:
- Christopher Walker
- UMZU Health
Instagram:
- @_christopherwalker
- @researchcowboy
Website:
- thermodiet.com
https://umzu.com/
Thermo Diet Roadmap
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Jayton Miller sits down with Danny Roddy, otherwise known as the Peat whisperer. Jayton and Danny talk about some ideas about serotonin receptors and our perceived reality, baldness and some of the best tips to help prevent it along with growing hair more effectively, and more! Check it out and let us know what you think!
Facebook Group and Fanpage:
- Thermo Diet Community Group
- Thermo Diet Fan Page
Youtube Channels:
- Christopher Walker
- UMZU Health
Instagram:
- @_christopherwalker
- @researchcowboy
Website:
- thermodiet.com
https://umzu.com/
Thermo Diet Roadmap
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Jayton Miller sits down with Josh Rubin and talks about some of the most common misconceptions of health and why people are so sick, why they overcomplicate it, and why we need to simplify what we are doing for the most successful health journey. Check it out and let us know what you think!
Facebook Group and Fanpage:
- Thermo Diet Community Group
- Thermo Diet Fan Page
Youtube Channels:
- Christopher Walker
- UMZU Health
Instagram:
- @_christopherwalker
- @researchcowboy
Website:
- thermodiet.com
https://umzu.com/
Thermo Diet Roadmap
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Jayton sits down with Hans Amato an independent researcher and mens health coach. Jayton and hans talk about topics around training, nutrition, and lifestyle. Check it out and let us know what you think!
Facebook Group and Fanpage:
- Thermo Diet Community Group
- Thermo Diet Fan Page
Youtube Channels:
- Christopher Walker
- UMZU Health
Instagram:
- @_christopherwalker
- @researchcowboy
Website:
- thermodiet.com
https://umzu.com/
Thermo Diet Roadmap
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Jayton Miller sits down with Nicholas Simpson and talks about a wide range of topics from training, fat loss, hormonal responses from exercise and more! Check it out and let us know what you think!
Facebook Group and Fanpage:
- Thermo Diet Community Group
- Thermo Diet Fan Page
Youtube Channels:
- Christopher Walker
- UMZU Health
Instagram:
- @_christopherwalker
- @researchcowboy
Website:
- thermodiet.com
https://umzu.com/
Thermo Diet Roadmap
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Jayton Miller sits down with Jessica Ash and talks about all things women's health and how to optimize it, check it out and let us know what you think!
Facebook Group and Fanpage:
- Thermo Diet Community Group
- Thermo Diet Fan Page
Youtube Channels:
- Christopher Walker
- UMZU Health
Instagram:
- @_christopherwalker
- @researchcowboy
Website:
- thermodiet.com
https://umzu.com/
Thermo Diet Roadmap
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Jayton Miller sits down and talks about some of the common misconceptions around carbohydrates, blood sugar regulation, and more with none other than Jay Feldman. Check it out and let us know what you think!
Facebook Group and Fanpage:
- Thermo Diet Community Group
- Thermo Diet Fan Page
Youtube Channels:
- Christopher Walker
- UMZU Health
Instagram:
- @_christopherwalker
- @researchcowboy
Website:
- thermodiet.com
https://umzu.com/
Thermo Diet Roadmap
In this episode of the Thermo Diet Podcast Jayton Miller sits down with Keith Littlewood and talks about some of the nuances with thyroid, cellular respiration, and more! Check it out and let us know what you think!
Facebook Group and Fanpage:
- Thermo Diet Community Group
- Thermo Diet Fan Page
Youtube Channels:
- Christopher Walker
- UMZU Health
Instagram:
- @_christopherwalker
- @researchcowboy
Website:
- thermodiet.com
https://umzu.com/
Thermo Diet Roadmap
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Jayton Miller sits down and talks to Kitty Blomfeild. Learn Kitty's story, how she overcame starving herself everyday and working out for endless hours to eating to satiety and nourishing her body. Learn some new tips on how to do liver, some ways to spice up your carrot salad, and why you should start resistance training! Check it out and let us know what you think!
Facebook Group and Fanpage:
- Thermo Diet Community Group
- Thermo Diet Fan Page
Youtube Channels:
- Christopher Walker
- UMZU Health
Instagram:
- @_christopherwalker
- @researchcowboy
Website:
- thermodiet.com
https://umzu.com/
Thermo Diet Roadmap
In this episode of the Thermo Diet Podcast Jayton sits down with Nathan Colonna and talks about myofascial release, sleep, breathing, light, and so much more.
Check it out and let us know what you think!
Facebook Group and Fanpage:
- Thermo Diet Community Group
- Thermo Diet Fan Page
Youtube Channels:
- Christopher Walker
- UMZU Health
Instagram:
- @_christopherwalker
- @researchcowboy
Website:
- thermodiet.com
https://umzu.com/
Thermo Diet Roadmap
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Christopher Walker and Jayton Miller sit down and talk about what they do when they go to the grocery store, tips to get in and out fast, and more. check it out and let us know what you think!
UMZU Blog: How To Meal Prep On The Thermo Diet
Facebook Group and Fanpage:
- Thermo Diet Community Group
- Thermo Diet Fan Page
Youtube Channels:
- Christopher Walker
- UMZU Health
Instagram:
- @_christopherwalker
- @researchcowboy
Website:
- thermodiet.com
https://umzu.com/
Thermo Diet Roadmap
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Jayton Miller sits down and talks about some quick tips on how to optimize the health of your gut. Check it out and let us know what you think!
UMZU Blog: Lactobacillus - The Strain To Amazing Gut Health
Facebook Group and Fanpage:
- Thermo Diet Community Group
- Thermo Diet Fan Page
Youtube Channels:
- Christopher Walker
- UMZU Health
Instagram:
- @_christopherwalker
- @researchcowboy
Website:
- thermodiet.com
https://umzu.com/
Thermo Diet Roadmap
In this episode of The Thermo Diet, Christopher Walker and Jayton Miller sit down and answer questions from the Thermo diet Facebook group. Check it out and let us know what you think!
Facebook Group and Fanpage:
- Thermo Diet Community Group
- Thermo Diet Fan Page
Youtube Channels:
- Christopher Walker
- UMZU Health
Instagram:
- @_christopherwalker
- @researchcowboy
Website:
- thermodiet.com
https://umzu.com/
Thermo Diet Roadmap
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Jayton Miller and Gus Nelson sit down and talk about various Thermo Topics most notably How Gus maintained collegiate sprinting performance with only 1/10 to 1/3 of the training (& put on 25+ lbs in 4 months) Raw milk, revolting against the modern world, and how you can always find ways to go deeper into the Thermo lifestyle The mental benefits of entering deeper Thermo states Why it takes time to discover the "real" oils and how to shortcut this process When the Thermo process really begins The simplest way to maintain a Thermo lifestyle (it only involves printing out one sheet of paper) Murdering the temptations of leaving a Thermo state with the help of bone broth and collagen Plus, a shoutout to Jake Miner and the rest of the community.
Facebook Group and Fanpage:
- Thermo Diet Community Group
- Thermo Diet Fan Page
Youtube Channels:
- Christopher Walker
- UMZU Health
Instagram:
- @_christopherwalker
- @researchcowboy
Website:
- thermodiet.com
https://umzu.com/
Thermo Diet Roadmap
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Christopher Walker and Jayton Miller talk about the history behind the salt myth, why salt is actually beneficial for you, and what the best types of salt are! Check it out and let us know what you think below!
Facebook Group and Fanpage:
- Thermo Diet Community Group
- Thermo Diet Fan Page
Youtube Channels:
- Christopher Walker
- UMZU Health
Instagram:
- @_christopherwalker
- @researchcowboy
UMZU Blog: How To Improve Your Electrolyte Concentration
Website:
- thermodiet.com
https://umzu.com/
Thermo Diet Roadmap
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Christopher Walker and Jayton Miller sit down and talk about the history behind serotonin, some of the misconceptions that are out there about this neurotransmitter, how you can combat it, and so much more. Check it out and let us know what you think!
UMZU Blog: How To Improve Brain Function Naturally
Facebook Group and Fanpage:
- Thermo Diet Community Group
- Thermo Diet Fan Page
Youtube Channels:
- Christopher Walker
- UMZU Health
Instagram:
- @_christopherwalker
- @researchcowboy
Website:
- thermodiet.com
https://umzu.com/
Thermo Diet Roadmap
In this episode of the Thermo Diet Podcast Chris and Jayton sit down and answer some questions that were asked by some of the members within the Thermo Diet Community Group on Facebook. They talk about their current lifting routines, some of the physical goals they want to hit, some ways to look at the journey of life, and more. Check it out and let us know what you think!
Facebook Group and Fanpage:
- Thermo Diet Community Group
- Thermo Diet Fan Page
Youtube Channels:
- Christopher Walker
- UMZU Health
Instagram:
- @_christopherwalker
- @researchcowboy
Website:
- thermodiet.com
https://umzu.com/
Thermo Diet Roadmap
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Diet Podcast Christopher Walker and Jayton Miller sit down and talk about micronutrients, some of the reasons that they are important, how doctors might not be looking at them, their important in pregnancy and more! Check it out at let us know what you think!
Facebook Group and Fanpage:
- Thermo Diet Community Group
- Thermo Diet Fan Page
Youtube Channels:
- Christopher Walker
- UMZU Health
Instagram:
- @_christopherwalker
- @researchcowboy
Website:
- thermodiet.com
https://umzu.com/
Thermo Diet Roadmap
In this Episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Christopher Walker and Jayton Miller sit down and talk about some of the misconceptions of Low T, some ways that you can improve your T levels, and more. Check it out and let us know what you think!
UMZU Blog: 10 Signs Of Low T
Facebook Group and Fanpage:
- Thermo Diet Community Group
- Thermo Diet Fan Page
Youtube Channels:
- Christopher Walker
- UMZU Health
Instagram:
- @_christopherwalker
- @researchcowboy
Website:
- thermodiet.com
https://umzu.com/
Thermo Diet Roadmap
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Christopher Walker and Jayton Miller sit down and talk about their morning and evening routines, some of the things that have helped them out, and what they have recently been into for entertainment. They talk about simplicity being an important part of success and some of the ways that they keep their lives simple. Check it out and let us know what you think!
Facebook Group and Fanpage:
- Thermo Diet Community Group
- Thermo Diet Fan Page
Youtube Channels:
- Christopher Walker
- UMZU Health
Instagram:
- @_christopherwalker
- @researchcowboy
Website:
- thermodiet.com
https://umzu.com/
Thermo Diet Roadmap
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Jayton Miller sits down and talks about some of the most effective and unconventional ways to increase blood flow and circulation. Check it out and let us know what you think!
UMZU Blog: 16+ Foods That Will Skyrocket Nitric Oxide Production
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Jayton Miller sits down and talks about the biggest things to remember while starting the new year with the Thermo Diet Lifestyle. Check it out and let us know what you think!
Facebook Group and Fanpage:
- Thermo Diet Community Group
- Thermo Diet Fan Page
Youtube Channels:
- Christopher Walker
- UMZU Health
Instagram:
- @_christopherwalker
- @researchcowboy
Website:
- thermodiet.com
https://umzu.com/
Thermo Diet Roadmap
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Christopher Walker and Jayton Miller sit down and talk about how they set their goals, some of the things they think about, and some of the ways that they follow through with those goals in order to achieve them. Check it out and let us know what you think!
Facebook Group and Fanpage:
- Thermo Diet Community Group
- Thermo Diet Fan Page
Youtube Channels:
- Christopher Walker
- UMZU Health
Instagram:
- @_christopherwalker
- @researchcowboy
Website:
- thermodiet.com
https://umzu.com/
Thermo Diet Roadmap
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Christopher Walker and Jayton Miller sit down and talk about the reasons that they do what they do. Why they got into health and why they decided to help spread the word of how to achieve optimal health. You get to hear all of Chris and Jayton's story about their health problems and what they had to go through to begin the journey to where they are now.
Facebook Group and Fanpage:
- Thermo Diet Community Group
- Thermo Diet Fan Page
Youtube Channels:
- Christopher Walker
- UMZU Health
Instagram:
- @_christopherwalker
- @researchcowboy
Website:
- thermodiet.com
https://umzu.com/
Thermo Diet Roadmap
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Jayton and Zach sit down and talk about Zach's story and how he got to the UMZU and Thermo Diet team. Check it out and let us know what you think!
Facebook Group and Fanpage:
- Thermo Diet Community Group
- Thermo Diet Fan Page
Youtube Channels:
- Christopher Walker
- UMZU Health
Instagram:
- @_christopherwalker
- @researchcowboy
Website:
- thermodiet.com
https://umzu.com/
Thermo Diet Roadmap
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Christopher Walker and Jayton sit down and talk about the ins and outs of fasting, some of the experiences they have had with it, and more. Don't forget to like this video and comment down below on what you think!
Facebook Group and Fanpage:
- Thermo Diet Community Group
- Thermo Diet Fan Page
Youtube Channels:
- Christopher Walker
- UMZU Health
Instagram:
- @_christopherwalker
- @researchcowboy
Website:
- thermodiet.com
https://umzu.com/
Thermo Diet Roadmap
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Christopher Walker and Jayton sit down and talk about their supplements stacks, why they take them, and some of the best supplements they would utilize if they were only given a finite amount. Check it out and make sure to like the video and leave a comment letting us know what you think!
Facebook Group and Fanpage:
- Thermo Diet Community Group
- Thermo Diet Fan Page
Youtube Channels:
- Christopher Walker
- UMZU Health
Instagram:
- @_christopherwalker
- @researchcowboy
Website:
- thermodiet.com
https://umzu.com/
Thermo Diet Roadmap
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Christopher Walker and Jayton sit down and talk about some of the ways they are able to stay Thermo around the holidays. Learn some of their tips on the best ways to do just that! Don't forget to leave a comment down below on a future topic you would like to here, leave a like, and subscribe!
Facebook Group and Fanpage:
- Thermo Diet Community Group
- Thermo Diet Fan Page
Youtube Channels:
- Christopher Walker
- UMZU Health
Instagram:
- @christopher_walker
- @researchcowboy
Website:
- thermodiet.com
https://umzu.com/
Thermo Diet Roadmap
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Christopher Walker and Jayton Miller sit down and talk about stress, some strategies to overcome stress during the holidays, and some good supplements to use in order to mitigate stress as much as possible. Check it out and let us know what you think!
Facebook Group and Fanpage:
- Thermo Diet Community Group
- Thermo Diet Fan Page
Youtube Channels:
- Christopher Walker
- UMZU Health
Instagram:
- @christopher_walker
- @researchcowboy
Website:
- thermodiet.com
https://umzu.com/
Thermo Diet Roadmap
Have you ever wondered what the best diet for performance is? In this episode, Jayton sits down and talks about some of the reasons why the Thermo Diet is the optimal way of eating for high-level physical performance. Check it out!
Facebook Group and Fanpage:
- Thermo Diet Community Group
- Thermo Diet Fan Page
Youtube Channels:
- Christopher Walker
- UMZU Health
Instagram:
- @christopher_walker
- @researchcowboy
Website:
- thermodiet.com
https://umzu.com/
Thermo Diet Roadmap
In this episode of the Thermo Diet Podcast, Christopher Walker and Jayton sit down and talk about some of the intricacies of the metabolism and the foundational elements you need and can do in order to optimize your metabolism. Check it out!
Facebook Group and Fanpage:
- Thermo Diet Community Group
- Thermo Diet Fan Page
Youtube Channels:
- Christopher Walker
- UMZU Health
Instagram:
- @christopher_walker
- @researchcowboy
Website:
- thermodiet.com
https://umzu.com/
Thermo Diet Roadmap
In this episode, we answer the remaining questions we got from the facebook group "The Thermo Diet Community Group" about mindset, and how to overcome a lot of the psychological barriers that we all face on a daily basis. Chris ad Jayton give you their thoughts, and tools that they use in order to work through a lot of these challenging things. Check it out and let us know what you think!
Facebook Group and Fanpage:
- Thermo Diet Community Group
- Thermo Diet Fan Page
Youtube Channels:
- Christopher Walker
- UMZU Health
Instagram:
- @christopher_walker
- @researchcowboy
Website:
- thermodiet.com
https://umzu.com/
Thermo Diet Roadmap
In this episode, we asked some of the Thermo Facebook Group members some questions they had on mindset. We take a look at how to get over several different psychological barriers such as an inability to commit, motivation, getting out of the victim mentality, and more. Check it out and let us know what you think!
Facebook Group and Fanpage:
- Thermo Diet Community Group
- Thermo Diet Fan Page
Youtube Channels:
- Christopher Walker
- UMZU Health
Instagram:
- @christopher_walker
- @researchcowboy
Website:
- thermodiet.com
https://umzu.com/
Thermo Diet Roadmap
In this episode of Ther Thermo Diet Podcast Christopher Walker and Jayton talk about macronutrients and all that encompasses them when it comes to achieving the optimal state of health that is known as Thermo.
Facebook Group and Fanpage:
- Thermo Diet Community Group
- Thermo Diet Fan Page
Youtube Channels:
- Christopher Walker
- UMZU Health
Instagram:
- @christopher_walker
- @researchcowboy
Website:
- thermodiet.com
https://umzu.com/
Thermo Diet Roadmap
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast, we take a look at what activators are in the Thermo Diet, what health actually is, some of our favorite activators, and some tips to incorporate some of them into your everyday. Check it out!
Facebook Group and Fanpage
- Thermo Diet Community Group
- Thermo Diet Fan Page
Youtube Channels:
- Christopher Walker
- UMZU Health
Instagram:
-@_christopherwalker
- @researchcowboy
Website:
- thermodiet.com
https://umzu.com/
Thermo Diet Roadmap
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast, we talk about what blockers are in the Thermo Diet, some of the biggest blockers that we see in everyday life, some tips to avoid them, and how to add in some activators at the same time as taking blockers out of your life. Check it out!
Facebook Group and Fanpage
- Thermo Diet Community Group
- Thermo Diet Fan Page
Youtube Channels:
- Christopher Walker
- UMZU Health
Instagram:
- @christopher_walker
- @researchcowboy
Website:
- thermodiet.com
https://umzu.com/
Thermo Diet Roadmap
In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast, we have Brenton on the show. Brenton is an awesome motion graphics editor and does amazing work for us here at the Thermo and UMZU office. Brenton has just begun his Thermo journey and has seen some serious progress and is seeing even more as he fully embraces the Thermo Lifestyle during Thermo30. We talk about his experience, benefits he has seen with Thermo, and get into various other topics such as meat, mindset, digestion and so much more. Check it out and let us know what you think in the comments below!
Facebook Group and Fanpage
- Thermo Diet Community Group
- Thermo Diet Fan Page
Youtube Channels:
- Christopher Walker
- UMZU Health
Instagram:
-@_christopherwalker
- @researchcowboy
Website:
- thermodiet.com
https://umzu.com/
Thermo Diet Roadmap
In this episode of Ther Thermo Diet Podcast Christopher Walker and Jayton (The Research Cowboy) take a dive into what the Thermo Diet is, some of the many benefits that are associated with the Thermo Diet and Lifestyle, how to get out of your own way when you are on your journey towards optimal health, a proper perspective of vegetables, and how to balance Thermo in a way that fits real life along with much more. Check it out and let us know what you think!
Facebook Group and Fanpage:
- Thermo Diet Community Group
- Thermo Diet Fan Page
Youtube Channels:
- Christopher Walker
- UMZU Health
Instagram:
- @_christopherwalker
- @researchcowboy
Website:
- thermodiet.com
Thermo Diet Roadmap