← Biohacking Beauty: The Anti-Aging Skincare Podcast
Biohacking Beauty: The Anti-Aging Skincare Podcast
Ben Azadi: Why 93% of Americans Are Aging Too Fast + What to Do About It
01:12:31
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- [00:06]
A
Welcome to Biohacking Beauty, the show where we simplify the science of staying youthful inside and out. I'm your host, Amitai Eshel, co founder of Young Goose Skincare, where we merge cutting edge science and biohacking strategies to help you look and feel younger for for longer. Today's episode is going to challenge everything you thought you knew about skin aging, because what if it's not only your skin care, but also your metabolism? Joining us is Ben Azadi, functional health expert, founder of Keto Camp, and author of Metabolic Freedom. Ben is a pioneer in the world of metabolic health with a powerful message. Your skin issues may start long before you see them in the mirror. As we often say, skin aging, or the age of your skin, is an energy state. In this conversation, we unpack why being a sugar burner depletes nitric oxide, damages collagen, and silently exhausts your mitochondria. You'll learn how insulin resistance shows up on your skin through tags. Dullness and sagging before your lab raise a red flag. We will also explore why processed commercial seed oils might be worse than cigarettes when it comes to your skin aging. How glucose spikes trigger glycation, stiffening collagen and accelerating wrinkles. And why fasting and metabolic flexibility may be more powerful anti aging tools than most skincare products. This episode goes deep into how glow begins at the cellular level and how fixing your metabolism might just be the ultimate skincare strategy. So grab your electrolyte and maybe even your bulletproof coffee and get ready to rethink beauty from the inside out. Let's dive in. Okay, Ben, welcome to the Biohacking Beauty podcast. Long time coming.
- [02:29]
B
Long time coming, brother. Good to be with you. Amitai. Fellow Floridian, you're just about an hour and a half north of me.
- [02:35]
A
Correct? Correct. And someone I love personally. You know, it's very. It's very. I mean, you were popular, I guess, when we first met, but obviously you're gaining popularity because you speak truth and you're creating results in people's lives. But it also is vindicating to know that, like, someone you like and considered like a. Consider like a really intelligent human being, then a bunch of other people think so too. You're like, yeah, I know, I know. I'm, you know, I love it.
- [03:05]
B
I love to hear that. Well, thank you.
- [03:07]
A
Yeah. And, you know, I reached out because you have a new book, and I think we see eye to eye in, like, many, many, many things, and even things that we don't, we approach them from the same direction. And the same, the same kind of end results oriented, kind of bettering people's life kind of approach. And we will do whatever we can to support the voices such as yourself. And again, and we, we love you personally. So it helps.
- [03:37]
B
Yeah, love you right back. Love what you're doing, my friend.
- [03:39]
A
Yes, sir. So I, I want to get, kind of jump right into it because I have a lot to cover, to be honest. Let's start with like from square one. What is metabolism really? And why, why should anyone care about how flexible it is?
- [04:00]
B
Metabolism is everything. Every cell is dependent on, on metabolism. I think most people hear the word metabolism and the first thing that comes to mind is like fast metabolism, boosted metabolism, or broken slow metabolism. And you know, what I've discovered is that the metabolism isn't necessarily even operating in speeds. It's either efficient or it's inefficient. But you know, let's unpack the word metabolism. I love the way that the Greeks refer to metabolism and they refer to metabolism as transform, meaning when we eat food, whether it's processed junk food or whole food or carbs or fat, whatever it is, we, our metabolism transforms that, that's the word, into energy. And the excess is stored as fat. And you know, we're supposed to feel good and go on about our day. We could take food and do that transformation or we could not eat food. People practice fasting like you and I, and we could use stored body fat to transform that into energy. And we have what's called a substrate. So a healthy metabolism uses whatever substrate, whether it's food, body fat, heck, red light or sunshine, and we transform that to make energy. That's how the metabolism works.
- [05:12]
A
First of all, I love that you kind of said it's not about the speed of metabolism necessarily. Or at least the speed of metabolism isn't directly correlated with health. Because as far as like aging as, like the science of, of, of longevity, if you would fast metabolism, if it's ineffective, actually begets, you know, accelerated aging in general. I think like what, what, what people don't know is technically speaking, if you isolated metabolism and you said, hey, I want to live longer, should I metabolize slowly or quickly? The puritan answer, the epistemological answer would be metabolize things slowly, you're going to make less mistake mistakes.
- [06:00]
B
That's exactly correct. Every animal in the wildlife, the animals that have the fastest metabolism have the shortest lifespan, to your point. So it's not about fast speed boosting metabolism, it's about efficiency.
- [06:16]
A
Yeah.
- [06:17]
B
Having a Flexible, healthy metabolism, which is going to be the theme of our conversation today.
- [06:22]
A
Yeah, I think a good analogy is like, you know, a hybrid car, like, as far as, like, flexibility or the ability to, to access different types of metabolism forms, is like, you know, hybrid car versus, like, fuel cars. Right?
- [06:38]
B
That's right. You could use gas when you need to, and then you can use, you know, electric when you need to and go back and forth without any issues. That's essentially what we want to do. But even more cool, better than that is we have different, many more substrates than just gas or electric. We have, you know, protein, carbs, fat, which are three different substrates, three different macronutrients, and we have body fat, and then we have, like, oxygen and sunshine, and the body's so incredible. Unfortunately, 93% of Americans do not have a healthy metabolism. That is, According to a 2022 study, it showed that 93% of Americans are metabolically unhealthy. And, you know, Amitai, sometimes we say these stats and studies and figures, and it kind of just goes over people's heads. So I like to kind of paint a picture of what exactly that means. It means if you just went down your downtown area, whatever city you lived in, and you're driving around and you see a hundred people in downtown of whatever city you live in, 93 out of the 100 people you see are unhealthy. They're aging faster. They don't have healthy skin. They're not only looking unhealthy visually and aesthetically, but inside their organs are also unhealthy. Their cells are also unhealthy. That's a very, very high percentage. They are stuck burning one substrate only, and that is sugar and glucose. And we'll dive deep into how that ages you and your skin very fast.
- [07:58]
A
So let's talk about being like a sugar burner versus like a fat burner. First of all, how does one know where what. Where they are?
- [08:09]
B
You could test, and then you could also just. First, let's start with the easy way to know. Then we'll talk about how do you test to know for sure? In chapter two of Metabolic Freedom, my new book, I have what's called a sugar burning quiz. And there's six questions I ask in the sugar burning quiz. And what I say in here is that, look, if you answer yes to at least two of the six questions, you know, chances are you are a sugar burner. So here are the questions I'll ask you audience right now.
- [08:35]
A
Number one, you smell like caramel. No, I'm kidding.
- [08:39]
B
I should add that to the list. Number one, do you feel tired after eating meals? Do you usually feel tired after a meal? Number two, do you snack in between your meals? Number three, do you have more than 20 pounds of extra weight on your body? Number four, do you have skin tags on your body, usually a sign of insulin resistance? Number five, do you have brown patches on your body, typically found in the armpit and neck area that's a sign of high insulin? And then number six, if you skip a meal, do you get hangry, hungry and angry? And you know most people are going to answer yes to at least two out of those six questions. So those are signs that your metabolism is locked into burning sugar. And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with using sugar and glucose as a, as a fuel source. Unless, unless Amitai, you're only burning sugar as a fuel source. It will age you fast, probably faster than anything else. You know, your podcast is all about beauty. You're all about anti aging at not just, you know, inside, but also looking really good on the outside. Well, when you're getting constant glucose and insulin hits like 93% of Americans, one of the main things that happens is you strip nitric oxide. And you know how important nitric oxide it is. It is an essential molecule that does so many things. But one of the most important things that nitric oxide does, it opens up your blood vessels and which allows your metabolism and innate intelligence to deliver blood flow and nutrients and oxygen to tissues, including your skin cells, for healing. When you have high levels of glucose and strip nitric oxide, the opposite happens. You create vasoconstriction, which is the narrowing of those arteries and the blood vessels. Now you have to work your metabolism and body has to work harder to deliver the same oxygen, nutrients and blood flow and, and the heart pumps harder, which is the number one cause of high blood pressure, which is the number one contributing factor to the number one killer heart disease. So you can kind of see how it starts with being a sugar burn. And let me just add one more thing. One more thing. Yeah, it's unfortunate that even if you're testing your blood sugar levels, you might not know that you're in the danger zone. Here's why studies are showing, and I reference them in the book, that you could have full blown insulin resistance hyperinsulinemia for six to 14 years, over a decade in some cases without your blood sugars changing at all because your body is producing so much insulin, which is the hormone that clears that glucose, excess glucose until your cells go deaf to the screams of insulin. Then there's a dramatic shift in the blood sugar levels and then you're pre diabetic and if you don't check, you're full on diabetic. But if you tested your fasting insulin, I would argue this amitai. If we all got our fasting insulin levels, which is a blood test between three and six and we, we kept it there, very sensitive fasting insulin levels, you will anti age your skin, anti age your metabolism and you will add years and vitality to your life.
- [11:34]
A
So if I understand you correctly, both your like C reactive protein and hemoglobin A1C tests are an incomplete picture of your metabolic health.
- [11:49]
B
Correct. So C reactive protein is a great inflammatory test. Get it done. A1C is also a great test to your point. It gives you the three month average of your blood sugar, but that's not gonna change for six to 14 years. Meanwhile, you could have full blown insulin resistance without even knowing it. Because almost every single conventional doctor does not order a fasting insulin. You know why? Because there's not a medication to prescribe for a high fasting insulin. So why should they test it? So I make the case that it's one of the most important tests to get done.
- [12:19]
A
I love it. And first of all, I think it's, there are so many ways, you know, many directions to go here, but I think one of the most important directions as far as like skin health, you mentioned skin tags, which is, which is really, you know, it's a blessing and a curse to know these things because you are armed with an arsenal of walking around the world and just predict like diagnosing people with like prediabetes and you know, metabolic inflexibility wherever you go. And I think I would, I would just like, I would like preface if someone's anywhere around like pregnancy, if they've just had a baby or something like that, you know, that's kind of a different story. Having said that, let's talk about skin tags and their relationship with insulin resistance because it's pretty cool and it does apply a lot to different aging aspects of the skin.
- [13:17]
B
It does. And let's face it, they're ugly. Skin tags are ugly looking, they're just nasty. They're typically going to grow around the eyelids, the neck and then for some people on their back. And not every, in every case it's because of insulin resistance and poor metabolic health, as you mentioned, you know, pregnancy and other, there are other, some rare exceptions to this. But for the Most part it's because of high levels of insulin. Insulin as we, we know, it's, it's, it's been called like the fat storage hormone, which is, I guess, you know, there's some accuracy there. But it's also a growth factor. It's an energy sensor and it signals growth. And skin tags are a sign that you have high levels of insulin. It's just growing and growing. And so many people, instead of changing their lifestyle by doing keto or fasting or whatever it is, they just get, go to the dermatologist and they cut it off and then it looks good and then it grows back. But I, I, I have to say, like I've taken over 10,000 people through different keto and fasting carnivore protocols over the years. A lot of them come in insulin resistant with skin tags. And they would report to me, hundreds of them. Man, I'm three months in, my skin tags are falling off. I'm six months in, they're all gone. Like they actually literally fall off your body when you get healthy, which is super cool. So, yeah, that's something I would pay attention to along with the brown patches. Yeah.
- [14:35]
A
And that of course directs you. So the thing about just high levels of sugar circulating, if you would, or consumed and then circulated, is that we also are getting what we call age or advanced lycation end products. Right. So obviously there is implications there as far as like overall longevity. This is, I mean this is a hallmark of aging, but it's a hallmark of aging that specifically pertains to the skin because that is a major driver of anything from wrinkles to thinning to loss of elasticity. So maybe we can do like a side quest and talk about, about glycation.
- [15:17]
B
Yeah.
- [15:18]
A
Yeah, let's do it.
- [15:19]
B
Yeah. And you know, there's a two part to this and I want to get your, your, your input on the second part because I have a thought on it. But with, yeah, the advanced glycation end products, it's very appropriate. Right. Ages. What are great acronym.
- [15:30]
A
Yeah, the best acronym of all times. Yeah.
- [15:31]
B
So yes, the goat, the greatest acronym of all time. When we think about sugar, it reminds me of when I was a kid and I used to go to the fair and get cotton candy and I used to eat the cotton candy with my fingers and then I would press my fingers together and it would be sticky. Right. Because the sugar binds to the protein. And you would remember your hands are a little sticky when you press them together. Well, when you have high levels of sugar circulating in Your bloodstream, it binds to the proteins, like collagen, for example. And it. And it's. Because it's sticky and it strips collagen, which is not good for many reasons, but it creates these advanced glycation end products. And what ends up happening. This is the, the second part here that I want to get your input, because there's a hypothesis that I actually think it's legit. I agree with this hypothesis that's. That's called the Hayflick limit. Are you familiar with. Yeah. Okay. So the Hayflick limit states that our cells could only duplicate a certain amount of times until it reaches a certain expiration day. And once it reaches that limit, which is called the Hayflick limit, the cell can no longer duplicate and no longer could function, can no longer produce energy, and it goes senescent. A zombie cell.
- [16:41]
A
Or dies.
- [16:42]
B
Yes, or dies through apoptosis. Yeah, either one. But a lot of the times it could also be just a zombie cell, too. And what happens is then that ages us faster because these zombie cells, the senescent cells, start infecting other cells, and then we lose stem cells. We. Our skin becomes wrinkled and we just look very old. Right. The. The faster we reach that hay flick limit, of course, the faster you're going to age. And having these glucose and insulin spikes for years, like snacking and grazing all day long, eating carbohydrates all the time, will get you to that hay flick when they really, really fast. So it's another reason why you don't want high levels of blood sugar. But I want to hear your thoughts on the Hayflick limit. Do you. Do you agree with that hypothesis?
- [17:23]
A
First of all, you are correct. Meta. Like macro. You are correct. No pun intended, but macro, you are correct. Here's one thing, one anecdote about Hayflick. Hayflick is kind of the father of telomere attrition. And I don't like the telomere as a hallmark of aging discussion, because telomeres are less of. They're more anecdotal or they're more. I would say they change more according to the, to the. Your current, again, metabolic or cellular health state than something like hemoglobin A1C would be. Okay, so it's a very, you know, it's placed to the, to the, to the hands of people who profess these modalities, let's say, of reversing aging. And then they refer to telomere length and say, hey, we've extended telomere lengths, but in nature These two things are not correlated. Like again, we talked about animals that have faster metabolism. We know they live less years on average. And hey, telomeres actually don't behave like that. Like certain mice have 50 times longer telomeres than we do. So that's just about like just being careful when talking about Hayflick. Having said that, you don't know how correct you are because I'll actually go from a different angle. Skincare like 30 years ago, medical grade skincare. So some listeners would know brands like SkinCeuticals, Obagi, Zo, whatever, they really focused on stimulation of renewal and stimulation of, of cells, splitting cells multiplying, et cetera. And the problem there is that you are again calling on future reservoirs and you're eroding, you're. You're getting close statistically to that Hayflick limit. And what happens, we know now what happens. Like we are now 30 years later. 20, 30 years later. And we see people who adhered to those, to those philosophies for 20, 30 years and we see thinning skin. We see skin that is less like when let's say a surgeon opens the skin. It's less like a book that you can leaf through the pages. It's more like a book that water were spilled on it. It's more like rigid and it tears more easily, et cetera. And our skin, if you are metabolically, but also let's say if you have good reservoir stem cells, specific stem cells that relate to the skin, or if you have good blood flow, if you're taking care of things like NAD levels, autophagy, epigenetic congruency, or attrition, mainly these three things. And making sure that you have low levels of chronic inflammation. You can technically pulse things and keep. And keep enough cells in a more youthful state that you are not really depleting telomeres because telomeres are something that we can. Our cells actually produce products mainly telomerase, which are enzymes that elongate telomeres. So it's not as a, it's not, it's more like a bank account that you keep getting salaries. The problem is what happens when you're overspending, as 20 year old Amitai would have done. Okay, that's the problem. So you are correct. You are very correct, especially when you are not doing it in a healthy fashion. A lot of the. I love hating on Brian Johnson as the next guy, but Brian Johnson, his approach is again, his overarching approach of, of addressing himself as a longevity athlete is definitely correct. And you can do much more, you know, things that are much more aggressive to your biology, when your biology is able to react correctly. And that applies also to, you know, not necessarily to ages, but it does apply to, you know, IGF1, which. Which is. Which is kind of what we were alluding to when we talked about skin tags or increased insulin brings together with it signals for growth in the body, for storage and growth. Right. And some people actually want it. I'm not saying that it's a good thing, but some people, such as, for example, bodybuilders, they would love as much IGF1 as possible because they want to grow. The problem is when we talk about longevity and resilience and balancing our optimal performance right now with longevity, which is always a delicate balance, that's when we want to kind of make sure. And that's, like, why I think the first time we met and I had a very narrow view of the keto movement, and you were like, yeah, sometimes I get people who are angry with me because I go on stage and I say, hey, you should be keto sometimes, and some other times you should make keto. And I'm like, oh, my God. This is really what I've been waiting for. Like, to hear someone who is influential in the field, who knows what they're talking about, but is saying there are things here to balance. There is nuance. It's not all black and white, which is what made me drawn to your work to begin with. And, yeah, so I think that was a long rant. But I think in general, what you are doing is metabolic God's work.
- [23:07]
B
Wow, thank you, Amitai. Yeah. You know, it's that balance. The name of the game. Right. So we have the metabolism. Going back to the first question. There's. There's anabolic phases of the metabolism, which is fine and really important in spurts, and there's catabolic cleanup phases, which is also important in spurts. The issue is being locked into any other direction. Johnson is probably more catabolic, slowing the metabolism, low thyroid, I would imagine. And then.
- [23:35]
A
Yeah, that's why. That's why he's lying about using trt because. Because he associates a hallmark of aging to having high testosterone. But on the other hand, you can't be catabolic all the time and have, you know, high testosterone.
- [23:51]
B
It's just. No, it won't. It won't work. It just. You got to have to take something exogenous to do that.
- [23:57]
A
Yeah.
- [23:58]
B
So that's the balance. Right. That's why I love the idea. And I talk about this in Metabolic Freedom. I love the idea of. Of feasting and fasting. Right? Dr. Pompa talks about these feast, famine, cycling, and that's pretty much the way we're designed to be. And when I say feasting, I'm not saying eating a whole bunch of crappy food, but eating. No, fasting, eating healthy carbs. Like on my Sundays, bro, I feast. I'll have 400 grams of carbs. I am not fasting. I'm like enjoying myself. And then on Monday, I. I am carnivore, I am fasting. I'm in a more of a catabolic cleaning up autophagy state, but I'm getting the best of both worlds. Yes, that's the key.
- [24:31]
A
I think if we looked at many. I think as a rule, there are always exceptions, but I think as a rule, if we looked at the rules of nature as changes happening with acceleration and deceleration, rather than a solid state like as a continuous state, we would. First of all, we would need to be. I think you need to be more mentally resilient in order to be able to snap back and forth. I think you need to be disciplined. That's what I meant. But as long as you exercise your discipline, it's also a muscle. The real changes you're going to experience in your body are from. From acceleration and deceleration, or from action and action to a different direction. Rather than trying to hold on to just again to like tried and true type practices. Day in, day out.
- [25:21]
B
Everything is cyclical. Everything in the world is cyclical. Right? We have. The tide comes in, tide goes out, the sun rises, the sun sets. Same thing with our nutrition, our lifestyle. It's cyclical. Everything needs to change. Even with supplements. That's the way I view supplements. I don't take the same supplement over and over and over. I rotate. I use targeted supplementation.
- [25:42]
A
Yes, I agree. I couldn't agree more. Let's take a quick break from this episode to discuss skincare that makes big promises but delivers small results. We know how tiring it can be. Yungoos isn't playing that game. This is longevity science for your skin, where breakthrough ingredients meet real results. For example, our bio barrier formula features LPC6, an antioxidant that's 20 times more powerful than vitamin C. We're talking triple action defense against every type of free radical that ages your skin. And our revolutionary spermidine serums, the first skincare products to harness this cellular powerhouse that literally triggers your skin's renewal process. Every Yungoose product targets aging at the molecular epigenetic level. NAD precursors that restore cellular energy, peptides that rebuild collagen, bioidentical compounds that reinforce your skin's natural defenses. This isn't surface level skincare. This is your skin's biological reset. Whether you're dealing with dryness, signs of aging, or just want skin that actually looks as good as you feel, Young Goose has cracked the coat on what your skin really needs. If you're ready to experience what happens when you're when science meets skincare, check out the Yungoos link in the show notes or go to yungoos.com because your skin deserves the future, not just another cream. So really you, you mentioned your book, the new book that's coming. That's already a New York Times.
- [27:36]
B
Let's go right here. New York Times bestseller.
- [27:39]
A
Yes, sir. And which obviously is, is a great achievement which you deserve.
- [27:45]
B
Thank you.
- [27:46]
A
A lot of what we're going to be speaking here, because we don't, I mean, we only have about an hour are going to be concepts which if the concept I think would, would speak to someone. So if someone listening to it saying that makes a lot of sense to me. I think the next logical thing would be, you know, to, to go ahead and read the book because we're not going to, we're not going to give you a laundry list of what to do or what not to do on this podcast. It is more maybe giving you tools to then go on a journey.
- [28:16]
B
Yeah, fair, you know, to explore. Here are the ideas here. Here's what you get to explore. Yeah, fair, bro.
- [28:20]
A
Yeah, so that's, you know, we've, we've released a email recommending to read the book and I stand by it. Everyone should read your book but also really engage with your work more extensively, whether it's YouTube or keto camp or we're going to talk about more. In the end. I do want to ask you one thing and it might sound like we've covered it, but I think there is a big question here which is like why, why are so many people stuck in sugar burning mode?
- [28:49]
B
Well, you know, when we're born and you just had a baby, babies that are breastfed are naturally metabolically flexible fat burning babies. Breast milk has saturated fat, cholesterol and the baby's actually in ketosis. And that's verified through numerous studies that I put in the book. The argument that I always get but, Ben, there's sugar in breast milk, there's lactose and absolutely there is. And the baby uses that so efficiently that it naturally goes in and out of ketosis. It does what I teach, keto flexing just automatically the way that babies are designed. Here's what happens. The average baby, this is what happened to me, gets weaned off the breast milk. Then it's introduced to the standard American diet, which is processed, ultra processed junk food. High glucose and insulin spikes, inflammation. And now we're teaching this young baby, young boy, young girl, to burn sugar. And the baby grows up to be a teenager and then an adult. Now it's 40 years old, diagnosed with diabetes, which has been locked into burning sugar for most of its life. That's where we went wrong. We're there. These individuals, 93% of Americans are in a keto deficiency. They forgot how to burn fat. Their first step is to get them burning fat. You know the amazing thing about the human body, Amitai, it's just so resilient. As long as you remove the interference, it will heal right away. Right? So the first thing that I would recommend if you're eating a whole bunch of processed carbohydrates, is to reduce that, get rid of that, incorporate real food. I'll give you an example of what I mean about that. You know, when we go to the supermarket and we look at single ingredient foods like an orange or an avocado or red meat or even a potato, when we look at the ingredients of these items, it says one thing, the orange, the meat. But when you go, for example, the potato, when we're looking at the potato, one ingredient potato. But when we go to the inner aisle and buy potato chips and look at the ingredients, it's like 25 different things, inflammatory ingredients in there. Right. So that's why we have this, the sick nation. And unfortunately, it's not just the U.S. it's the world. You know, in the U.S. we spend $4.6 trillion on health care every single year. That would be the fourth largest GDP in the world if that was a gdp. Yeah. And you would think, well, we must rank in the top five of healthy countries. No, we're, we're like top 37. We're number 37.
- [31:09]
A
Yeah.
- [31:10]
B
Yet we're, we're sicker than ever before. Yet these pharmaceutical companies are richer than ever before. And what's really interesting about that $4.6 trillion we spend on health care every year. One out of every four dollars is spent on diabetes, primarily type 2, which is a metabolic disease. All of these diseases are all linked to metabolic diseases. So when we lower inflammation and Remove the interference, the body will heal. Whether you're listening right now and you're 27 years old or 77 years old, the body will heal as long as you remove the interference.
- [31:45]
A
Yeah, I think it's a beautiful statement. And you know what it brings to mind? I remember Sitchin Panda talking about it like way back when about a person that was placed basically in a fasted state. I'm sure you're going to know what I'm talking about better than I do. But they basically did not eat for like a year. Does it ring a bell at all?
- [32:09]
B
Well, the Guinness world record is 380. 392 days. Is that what you're referring to? Yeah. Okay. Y.
- [32:17]
A
And the guy basically like lost, you know, a lot of weight.
- [32:21]
B
He went from £450 to £180 in, in that time. Yeah.
- [32:25]
A
But they. He didn't have any loose skin.
- [32:27]
B
That's correct. Yeah. Cuz the autophagy. Y.
- [32:29]
A
Yes, Exactly. And I think like this is Angus.
- [32:32]
B
Barbary is the guy's name, by the way.
- [32:34]
A
What's his name?
- [32:34]
B
Angus Barbary. You can look it up.
- [32:36]
A
Shout out to Angus Bar.
- [32:37]
B
Well, he's passed on now, but that was in the 70s. But still. Shout out to Angus.
- [32:42]
A
So I pointed at the sky. Anyway, listen, so. But what's interesting here is that a lot of people are afraid. A lot of people that I talk about basically messing with calories, messing with nutrition within the parameters of like appearance. A lot of people are afraid of excess skin.
- [33:04]
B
Yeah.
- [33:05]
A
And a lot of people are afraid of loose excess skin. Even muscle and bone depletion.
- [33:12]
B
Yeah.
- [33:13]
A
So I think it's an important conversation to say when you get out of the way, it doesn't mean that there is a vacuum left. Your body has processes to fill in the voids that you've left behind. And these are better processes than what you, what you try to kind of reverse engineer or artificially engineer with, with drugs, nutrition, you know, poor nutrition or whatever.
- [33:37]
B
Yeah, you know, I had that issue when I, I was obese for most of my life. And in 2008 I lost 80 pounds in about nine months. And I had a lot of excess skin back then. And you know, I was younger so it was easier for me to deal with versus somebody who's older. That's true. And there are some situations where you could do all of the things I'm going to recommend here and you still need to go get surgery because there's just some extreme cases. But I can tell you, you know, for, for me and I made several videos on this, on YouTube that have gone viral about this topic and people have applied what I want to share with the loose skin. It's pretty effective for most people. There's always exceptions. So, you know, first of all, if you're really overweight right now and you, you're, you're on your weight loss journey, that's why you don't want to be too extreme, too aggressive. You know, just the old, eat less, move more movement. Because if you lose too much weight too fast, you know, your body doesn't have enough time to adapt. And those people typically have a lot of loose skin. So lose weight at a healthy rate and that's different for everybody. But just don't do anything too extreme is the point. Number two, as you lose weight, or even if you're not losing weight, but you have excess skin as you build muscle, of course we know that muscle mass is going to make the skin more firm. Right. So muscle mass is important for many reasons. Number one, this reason for the skin. But number two, you're more insulin sensitive. The more muscle mass you have, the more insulin sensitive you are. Prevents bone fractures and osteoporosis, osteopenia. So muscle building, muscle training, strength training is going to be important. Photobiomodulation could help as well. Right. Red light therapy, you know, you're a big fan. I do it often. It's great. Stimulating healthy skin cell production. It's great for the mitochondria, it's great for pain.
- [35:15]
A
So nitric oxide.
- [35:17]
B
Nitric oxide as well. Yeah. So, so many reasons. I love red light therapy. I have my lamp right here. And then we have autophagy. Right, Autophagy. Right. The, the Angus Barbary example, like a top. For those who don't know, autophagy is this, this cellular cleanup process that your body activates when certain conditions are met. There's different things you can do to get there. And I'll explain that. But before that, think of autophagy as your refrigerator. And when you open up your refrigerator and you look at all the groceries inside of the refrigerator, what do they all have in common? They all have an expiration date. And what would just imagine if you decided, I'm just going to let all these groceries rot in my fridge.
- [35:57]
A
Yeah.
- [35:57]
B
And I'm not going to throw them away. I'm going to let them go past their expiration date, that Hayflick limit. And I'm going to just go to the supermarket, buy fresh groceries and put them in front of these rotten expired groceries and close that door, come back a week later, open up that door. Disgusting. That's going to be a disease environment. Well, the human body is like that refrigerator. We have cells, mitochondria, we have proteins that all have expiration dates on them. Autophagy is that process of getting rid of these expired groceries slash cells. So how do you achieve autophagy? Well, you could take Young Goose products and that have synolytics in them and activated at a skin level, which is amazing. You could. Exercise is great for autophagy, which goes to the first tip with the strength training. Fasting. You know, fasting is great for autophagy. So different, different ways you can do that there.
- [36:51]
A
I love it. And you know what? I. I don't know. You know, sometimes I think I want to give these very complex analogies because I want to be like true to source. But it's challenging because sometimes you kind of lose the point. Right?
- [37:08]
B
You're very left brain, are you?
- [37:09]
A
Very left brain.
- [37:10]
B
Yeah, yeah, I can see that. But you're like technically the. What is this in the fridge?
- [37:14]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you know, autophagy is something I'm, you know, from a skin standpoint, we're so in love with because it's so important. I would argue for the skin is probably the most important thing you can kind of induce or, you know, boost or whatever. And I would love people to think of autophagy as not only the cleanup, but more like a chimney. Like, yes, it takes out all the junk, right? But it doesn't only take out all the junk. The airflow also stokes the flames of renewal or whatever. So like more the more autophagy you have, the also the other things work significantly better. Also, any kind of renewal, youthful process you're going to have in your body, in your skin, in your, in your heart, wherever that is, is now going to kind of go into either optimal mode, if you would.
- [38:06]
B
Yeah, I agree with you. And you know, the body is so smart because, you know, autophagy is that, that clean up, repair, renewal, as you just mentioned. But some cells, like we mentioned earlier, that are senescent, there's no function. The innate intelligence will attempt to clean it and fix it so it can start using fat for energy and producing energy via the mitochondria. But these senescent cells have no function. So the body is so smart, it'll go a step farther and say, oh, we can't clean it, we can't fix it. Let's send a signal for apoptosis to get rid of that cell altogether, which is programmed cell death. But then it doesn't stop there, as you know. It says, okay, we got rid of these bad cells. Now we have to replace it with healthy stem cells, these fresh cells. And the body will direct that to where it's needed, whether it's the liver, the brain, the kidneys, the eyes, the skin. So it's just so incredible and that, you know, autophagy, My favorite way to get autophagy is through fasting. Like, longer fast, different variations of fasting, but you could also get it through the other methods that I mentioned earlier.
- [39:06]
A
Yeah, beautiful. So, you know, we talk a lot about insulin, which is obviously extremely important. What are some common foods that mess with insulin or what? What should we eat instead?
- [39:17]
B
When we look at the three macronutrients, I actually have a graph in chapter four of Metabolic Freedom. I have this graph, but you got.
- [39:23]
A
To read it from the beginning, guys. The fact that it says chapter four is not like you buy the book and you start a chapter four, you.
- [39:28]
B
Don'T skip to chapter four.
- [39:29]
A
Yeah, exactly.
- [39:30]
B
Yeah, start from the beginning. Yeah, start from the beginning. Mindy Pell starts the book off, giving me a nice forward in the book.
- [39:37]
A
Yeah, okay.
- [39:37]
B
Yeah.
- [39:38]
A
So shout out to Mindy Pell. She's alive, though.
- [39:40]
B
Yeah, yeah, she's alive. We love Mindy. She's going to be around for a long time. Yeah, she's doing all the autophagy. She's amazing. So the graph shows blood insulin response from macronutrients. So we have three macronutrients. Obviously, we have carbs, we have protein, we have fat. Carbohydrates will spike blood insulin, more than protein and more than fat. And of course, processed carbs will raise it higher than whole foods carbohydrates, but they will all spike insulin. Protein has a moderate insulin response, and fat barely moves the needle on insulin just a little bit, but not much. So that would make sense that if we have high insulin, we want to eat less carbohydrates, more protein, and more fat. That is the first thing. So carbohydrates are going to be potato, potato chips, rice, even fruit, even, even whole carbohydrates, depending on the degree of insulin resistance you might want to restrict. But carbohydrates were going to be the bagels, the donuts, the cookies, the chips. It's all the packaged stuff. Protein is. And that comes naturally with. Fat is going to be your best friend and your best swap here. So the ribeye steak, the salmon the eggs with the yolk, what else? We have the avocado, the olives, the olive oil. So protein with fat is going to be the replacement for the carbohydrates. Just doing that and then you eliminate snacking in between meals, you're going to lower insulin, you're going to lower inflammation and you're going to look better and also feel better.
- [41:02]
A
I could not agree more. And what you know, when we talk about percentage wise, what would you describe as a, like a low carb diet or on the, you know, on the flip side of that, like when you talk about fat that is, that is associated with protein. Like you know, if someone is more left brained, what is the percentage of fat? What's the ratio?
- [41:27]
B
I like to look at it more on in terms of like total grams versus percentage. So I would say low carb has, there's a spectrum. Okay. Low carb could range from 150 grams of carbs per day to more keto which is what I would recommend. If you're, you know, have issues with insulin resistance, which is under 50 total grams of carbs per day. That's total, not net. And those carbohydrates come from non starchy carbs which are typically green leafy vegetables. Protein. I like for the, for most people to get 1 gram of protein per pound of their ideal body weight. So if somebody weighs 200 pounds and their goal weight, their ideal body weight is 150 pounds, they want to consume 150 grams of protein. Most days I'm okay if they're in a deficit some days, but most days they want to hit that. The fat just comes naturally with the protein sources. So I wouldn't even need to calculate that. It keeps it easy for you. So I would just make sure carbohydrates are under 50 grams to be in ketosis and you're hitting your protein requirements with the fat coming with that protein. Easy peasy.
- [42:29]
A
Okay, so I'm going to cheat because we've had many conversations before. So I'm going to bring a, bring in something that, that, that I know you for saying even though we didn't say it in this conversation. And I wonder, there is a challenge here at least for me to get enough protein in if I, if I adhere to set times for meals. In other words, I need to build into my reg. Into my daily routine times to, I don't even call it the snack, but to really to boost my protein intake. Why am I saying I'm cheating? Because I, you know, from many past conversations that we had. You are a person that regularly quotes the fact that, you know, the standard American person doesn't eat three times a day, they eat once a day. They just don't stop eating from when they wake up to when they fall asleep. And I think you have a statistic that normally people eat like 25 times a day or something like that.
- [43:25]
B
17 to 23 times. Yeah.
- [43:27]
A
So how do you kind of juxtapose these two? What would you say to someone like myself who's £210 and needs to consume a lot of. And I even try to do like 1.5 times my body weight. Right, got it.
- [43:40]
B
Yeah. Well, I mean we used to think that we could only absorb about 30 to 40 grams of protein. Right. Everything else, we just can't and never consume more than that because it'll turn into sugar and. Yeah, but we now know that that's not true. As long as you have the enzymes in place, you could consume 100 grams. Right.
- [43:56]
A
Some people now like try to say the opposite. Right. That if you consume less than 20 grams in one sitting, then nothing's going to go through your muscles and stuff like that.
- [44:04]
B
That. Yeah, I heard Peter, Peter Attia say that. Yeah. That you know, if you consume less than 20 grams, there's gluconeogenesis. Once you're over that, there's going to be muscle protein synthesis. Yeah, I don't know. I haven't looked into that enough to.
- [44:16]
A
You're saying it's, it's because it's very anecdotal and the, Yeah, I mean like most mo. I mean again like that, that's, I would say contrarian inflammatory and going against, you know, and I would say like disregarding same strength or actually much stronger evidence showing the other, the other direction that it's more about the total protein consumed in a day rather than what is consumed in one sitting. Which is again like what you are alluding to here, which is. And also Peter at the, in other times would say, hey, I haven't seen evidence to the pointing to the fact that you shouldn't consume more than 30, 25, 30 grams protein in one sitting. Right. Like every four hours, let's say. So he's inconsistent about it. And also I, I, I think science is consistent the other way where.
- [45:07]
B
Yeah, you know, fair. That's fair. Right. So to, to your question, to your point, once we're hitting that 30 grams or so of, of protein at a meal, we are stimulating some good muscle protein synthesis. So that would be like the bare minimum to to get that, which obviously is easy for you to do, you probably have the enzymes in place to break down a hundred grams of protein in between, you know, in one meal. Right. And if not, you could always take digestive enzymes and do that. So you would just load up on really protein rich meals. How many times per day are you eating within your window?
- [45:36]
A
No, so I'll eat like three times a day. Two of them will be. Will be what I consider a meal. And then at least once or twice more, I'll take like a couple meat sticks. Shout out to Maui Nui. They're. They're venison meat sticks that have some organ in them and stuff like that. So. And they're from wild caught venison, so that sounds good.
- [45:59]
B
I haven't tried that.
- [46:00]
A
Yeah, sure.
- [46:01]
B
Yeah, you know that, that sounds great. You know, if you. If you pair the meat sticks with. I don't know how you feel about this, but if you pair it with essential amino acids, I think you'll get even more benefits doing that as well.
- [46:12]
A
Oh, I didn't know that. You will. That you will say that. And that's actually a pretty cool concept. Or, or maybe just. Maybe even just isoleucine. Right? Like, or just.
- [46:22]
B
Yeah, but.
- [46:23]
A
But I do try and pair it with something that's higher in fat content, like macadamias or something like that.
- [46:30]
B
Love macadamia.
- [46:31]
A
I know you do that. You've turned. You turned me into a macadamia.
- [46:35]
B
That was me.
- [46:35]
A
Yeah. Consumer. Yes. Yes, you did.
- [46:37]
B
Those are dangerous, bro. I have to like, grab a handful and put the bag away because if.
- [46:41]
A
I take the whole thing, the bag's gone 100%. Yes. Let's take a quick break from this episode to take tell you about our new Youth Firming body cream. If you're tired of body lotions that just sit on the surface, it's time to upgrade to something that actually works from the inside out on an epigenetic level. Yungoos Youth Body Cream isn't just your typical moisturizer. We've powered it with NAD Apex, Stelvio spermidine, longevity mushrooms, and ergothionine and lemongrass extract with lipopeptides. This is a formula that literally reprograms how your skin ages. It restores cellular energy, boosts collagen production, and clears out cellular waste like senescent cells, targeting those problem areas like your arms, legs, neck, and decollete. Where aging shows up first. Think of it as a biological reset for your entire body skin. Because when your skin gets the science it deserves. The results speak for themselves. Ready for your full body upgrade? Visit younggoose.com today and discover what happens when longevity science meets skincare. You can grab the link in the show notes below. Okay. I have so much to ask you, and I feel bad that. So I'm going to jump right in. Okay.
- [48:21]
B
Okay.
- [48:22]
A
This is something that. That kind of was what I alluded to in the beginning, that we actually reached the same conclusions. But if someone asked, if they didn't have context, people might think that we are on opposite sides of the. Of the spectrum here.
- [48:36]
B
Only on fish oil.
- [48:37]
A
No, no. Seed oil.
- [48:39]
B
Almost fish oil.
- [48:42]
A
Yeah, no, I know, but I'm saying what I'm going to talk about is seed oil.
- [48:45]
B
Got it, got it.
- [48:46]
A
But fish oil. That's correct. We also are. Well, we can get to it. Anyway, you said that seed oils are worse than cigarettes.
- [48:56]
B
Processed seed oils. Processed.
- [48:58]
A
Thank you very much. So please provide context. Like why would consuming, you know, no spoiler. Seed oils would be. Would be worse than cigarettes. What is the. What is the context there? And yeah, okay, so when it comes.
- [49:13]
B
To seed oils, it's. There's a big difference between processed seed oils, as you know, versus unprocessed. So the majority of the seed oils out there, the seed oils are called vegetable oils. They're called linoleic acid, omega 6 fats. The majority of them are processed. Those are the bad ones. So if we're talking about that, the reason why they're so inflammatory is because of the chemical nature of them. Right? They're. They're called polyunsaturated fatty acids. And we know the word poly means many. So the more it contains many double bonds, these fat. The more double bonds a fat has, the more unstable it is, the more reactive it is to oxygen, pressure and heat, which are the three things they used to process it.
- [49:52]
A
Would you say it's almost like cracks in the molecule which then kind of.
- [49:56]
B
Kinks in the molecule? Yeah, exactly. Cracks in the molecule. Then you apply pressure, oxygen, heat, as they process canola, soybean, and it's already rancid, like during the processing. So they add chemical agents to kind of mask that up. Then it's bottled and then we heat it up even more and just more cracks are happening, essentially.
- [50:13]
A
And then we store it in plastic, by the way, as well.
- [50:15]
B
And it's stored in plastic. Oh, my gosh. And it's leaching the microplastic. I mean. Oh, gosh. It's amazing how we're not dropping dead left and right. It's a testament to the human body. It's incredible, bro.
- [50:25]
A
Yeah.
- [50:26]
B
The reason why I do believe they're worse than cigarettes. I know Dave Asprey also agrees and Dr. Kay Shanahan agrees.
- [50:33]
A
And Marlboro agrees as well, by the.
- [50:34]
B
Way, Marbleau is what he's saying.
- [50:36]
A
Marlboro agrees as well. Parliament, whatever.
- [50:40]
B
Yeah, they're going to agree because it's better for them. Right. There's a study from Dr. Martin Grutfeld that I put in chapter four of metabolic freedom. He's a toxicologist and he looked at aldehydes. Aldehydes are carcinogenic, of course. When you smoke tobacco cigarettes, aldehydes are produced. That's how tobacco cigarettes are linked to increased risk of cancer. So he looked at the aldehydes that are produced from frying vegetable oils, french fries and vegetable oils. And he looked at the aldehydes and he saw that the same amount of aldehydes that were produced from a five ounce serving of french fries, which is about 25 french fries, was equivalent to 25 tobacco cigarettes smoked. Which means one french fry cooked in vegetable oil is like smoking a tobacco cigarette. So why wouldn't it be equal? Then why are seed oils worse than the cigarette? Because those seed oils, the bad fats, they stay in your cells for years. The half life is 680 days, creating inflammation at a skin level, a cell level, a, A mitochondrial membrane level. And once you eat them, within hours they embed into the membrane. That's why I say they're worse than cigarettes.
- [51:55]
A
Yeah, and I love the fact that the faster we'll go back to the high flick limit basically, and the faster cells multiply, or cells that multiply faster in different organs are going to reflect that more poignantly. So, for example, like heart cell, which you know you're going to have a half a new heart in 25 years, is very different to your liver, which you're gonna have a almost completely new liver is from a cellular standpoint. Within two to three years your membranes there are going to be more saturated or are gonna be more susceptible to changes due to your, to, to consuming rad oils or vice versa. You could also make it healthier because of that.
- [52:39]
B
That's right. Good point.
- [52:40]
A
And something that people who are only here to. Hey, hey, dude. I'm only here to learn about my skin. Skin health. I'll pay. I'll. I'll pay the piper. And I'll say that two things. We rely on our, what we consume as far as fats and our cellular function to actually produce our skin barrier, which is fat based and in our acid mantle. So the what you feed your body is basically the top layers of your skin. That's number one, like one to one, like a one to one ratio. The other thing is, if anyone is interested in glow, which was like a big, big aspect of skincare these days, shout out to Hailey Bieber or whoever is in charge of that. This actually pertains to mitochondrial health. You know who turned me onto this is Patrick Porter.
- [53:33]
B
Yeah.
- [53:33]
A
And it's true. Like, you know, I didn't take him at face value. I've researched that. The. There's something called autoluminescence, which is the amount of healthy mitochondria. You have both amount of them and their health levels. You basically make cleaner energy, you make more energy. And that energy that process has a part of it is creation of infrared light. So basically the more you look healthy and like luminous, it means your mitochondria is healthier and vice versa.
- [54:05]
B
That's cool about the mitochondria. The mighty mitochondria. Exactly.
- [54:09]
A
Yeah.
- [54:10]
B
I love it.
- [54:11]
A
So let's talk a little bit about, you know, mitochondria, metabolism and skin.
- [54:17]
B
Yeah.
- [54:18]
A
What have you seen as far as like improving mitochondrial health and how it appears in people's health and their skin?
- [54:24]
B
Specifically in our space, there's a lot of health experts that are disagreeing with each other. Right. Keto, carnivore, paleo plant based. I mean. Yeah. One of the things that we could all agree to is that the mitochondria are very important.
- [54:36]
A
Yeah.
- [54:37]
B
How you get there, that's where the opinions differ. Right. But the mitochondria we know, and I have a whole section in the book about some interesting facts about the mitochondria. One of the interesting facts is that we get all of our mitochondria from our moms. Our mothers. Which is interesting.
- [54:53]
A
Thanks, mom.
- [54:54]
B
Yeah, thanks mom. Or either like thank you, mom, or like thanks mom. So it depends on how healthy her mitochondria were when she gave birth to you. But the mitochondria are way more than just these mindless energy factories. Yes. It produces energy. It's the powerhouse of the cell. Yes, that is true. But there's an intelligence, there's a DNA to the mitochondria and the mitochondria moves within the cell. It communicates to other mitochondria and other cells. There's. That's a brilliant intelligence to it. And the cells that have the most mitochondria are the cells that have the, are the most metabolically active, that are most needed for survival. And one of the conversations I had with Dave Asprey, I don't know if that got on air of the interview because I interviewed him after, I'm not sure which interview it came on, but he was saying that like the ovaries have the highest concentration of mitochondria per cell, around a hundred thousand. And I said, yeah, that's, that's high. And that makes sense because of reproduction. But I said, what about the brain? The brain has over. There are certain regions of the brain that over a mil have over a million mitochondria in a single cell. And I sent him, I texted him after I sent him some of the research on that because he, he wasn't aware of that. So I'm making the point that the mitochondria that important that God put it in the cells that are most needed to thrive, survive and reproduce. Right? The eyes, the ovaries, the testicles. Okay, so we want to support the mitochondria. When we do have healthy mitochondria, we produce more energy, so we're more energized, we burn more fat and we live a longer, healthy life. And yes, it's going to help with skin, complexion. Yes, it's going to help with energy and focus and vitality. So how do you support the mitochondria? There's so many different ways to do it. I'm going to go back to ketosis, right? Because the reason why I'll say ketosis is because when you're in a state of ketosis, which is simply meaning you're burning fat, body fat instead of sugar and food, when you're in ketosis, those ketones are signaling to the mitochondria to reproduce. It creates mitochondrial biogenesis. You produce 400% more ATP. Thank you. In ketosis versus burning sugar because of the mitochondrial biogenesis. So ketosis is number one. Number two would be moving your body, creating some sort of stress, whether that's working out, walking, jogging. But moving your body is really important for the mitochondria. I love red light therapy. I'll put as number three for photobiomodulation, especially when you have a good lamp for mitochondrial health. And then I'll add some other stressors, meaning like cold plunge or sauna or PEMF mat, you know, the right. A balance of that stressor to stimulate healthy mitochondrial production. So yeah. And then some of the things that destroy your mitochondria, which destroys your skin care or skin health. I could say glyphosate. You're gonna. Yeah, it's a mitochondrial poison. Seed oils, mitochondrial poison. High fructose corn syrup, mitochondrial poison. So as you get rid of those and bring in the good stuff, you're gonna notice a big difference.
- [57:48]
A
I agree. I agree. And I love you. I love that you mentioned it. And I love the, you know, you know, the hormetic aspect of your recommendations. Right. Basically, we're looking at signals of stress that then would yield a response of resilience in the body. And some of it is mitochondrial resilience. And I think it's important to say something about density of mitochondria that is also a part of, like, mitochondrial health. Right. It's not just about. It's not like this. We imagine, like, I don't know, like, let's say a million per cell. Right. In your brain, we imagine that we have a million and their health is what we care about. But it's not only the health of mitochondria. It's like how much mitochondria you have. Right?
- [58:33]
B
That's right, brother. Exactly.
- [58:35]
A
So what about. How would you. Where would you put fasting there? Is it a part of the keto rubric of what you said, or. Yeah, yeah, because you get.
- [58:46]
B
We talked about autophagy, right. You get mitophagy, Right. Which is the autophagy of the mitochondria. So, yeah, fasting is a great way to do it. It's a stress. And as you mentioned, as long as you stay in that hormetic zone, you get amazing benefits. So fasting is a hormetic stress. Do too much, not good. Find the right balance. It's amazing. Same thing with cold plunge, same thing with red light. Same thing with sauna. So all these biohacks that are amazing all need to be done within your hermetic zone and not violent hormesis.
- [59:15]
A
Yeah, 100%. Well, let's talk about you a little bit. Like, when you. Because you've had a big. No. Panetta. A journey, a personal health journey that.
- [59:24]
B
Yeah.
- [59:25]
A
That you've kind of undergrown. Do you remember skin changes that you've experienced while becoming more metabolically healthy?
- [59:32]
B
Yeah, dude. You know, when I looked at my back in 2008 when I lost 80 pounds in nine months, and I looked at my before and after photos, my before photos, when I looked at my skin health, man, I had acne all over my back. I had really pale, like, wrinkly skin. By day 90, all my acne was gone. My Skin was tan. It looked a lot more youthful and vibrant, which is cool. You know, I saw that huge change in the photos. But over the years I've kind of fine tuned with my lifestyle. I give you an example. When I have too much dairy, I start to get acne and it's a sign I'm eating too much dairy. IGF1 I think we've spoken about this before and I don't eat, I don't consume that much dairy. But I love like raw goat cheese. So if I eat too much, it's like I start to get acne at the sign you're doing too much goat cheese. Right. So I kind of use my skin as a gauge to see if I'm having too much dairy. The sun is something that I have. Like it's, I want to get your thoughts on this because the sun is the source. It's so anti aging. Talk about the mitochondria like it's supercharged, your mitochondria. But then if you get too much like hormesis, it could anti, I mean it could age you. Excuse me, it could cause accelerated aging. A lot of dermatologists say stay away from the sun. Brian Johnson for stay away from the sun. I don't agree with that. So for me it's about finding a good balance of getting enough sun without getting burned. And what I have found is that as soon as I got rid of seed oils and fish oil, I stopped burning in the sun. It takes me like hours to burn in the sun. So what are your thoughts on, on the sun as it pertains to like skin health and glowing skin and then also aging your skin.
- [61:06]
A
So first of all, like, you know your, your car has two types of safety features. One is passive. It means if you hit something, how safe is your car to be in. And another one is what we call active safety, which means if you see someone cutting you, how well can you can the car brake or actually also accelerate past that and how, how's the handling? Right. So this could be applied to most things. So we have passive, you know what Brian Johnson and most dermatologists are going to be discussing is passive safety, right? It's like how do we avoid or I don't know, whatever. That's not a good analogy as far as like the car. But how do we avoid the damage that is caused by the sun? And you don't remove the threat that way. And you know, you, both, you and I could be, could be blamed that in other areas we take this approach, we take this approach with packaged goods. For example, both of us, if we had someone, you know, telling us, hey, you know, in, in five seconds, tell me you know how to fix my health, I bet both of us will tell him, hey, don't take, don't consume anything that comes in a package. Right. So we do take this approach in some areas where you're saying, hey, may maybe like something extremely healthy can't come packaged, but I'm gonna err on the side of like telling you not to eat anything.
- [62:28]
B
It's like an absolute approach.
- [62:29]
A
Yeah. We don't have nuance. Right.
- [62:31]
B
Yeah.
- [62:31]
A
So that is okay. And when you have 15 minutes as a dermatologist, both of both you are indoctrinated to speak in 15 minute consults. So also your approach to what you propagate as information is, is stems from that. That's number one. Number two, if you were a skin puritan, that is not incorrect. Because you know what biohacking is to some extent is like, okay, we understand that there, that nature has a balance. Normally good comes with bad. Let's strip out the bad aspects and be left only with the good. Like we talked about red light therapy. This is what red light therapy is. It's understanding, you know, that these wavelengths within the complex of the electromagnetic waves that are coming from the sun is beneficial for us and for our mitochondria. But it is beneficial because it's a signal that you're getting some damage. Like in nature, you're going to get both, you're going to get damaged and you're going to get healthy signals. So we're stripping out the damage and we're mimicking damage. Right? We're mimicking, we're tricking the body to think there's damage. And many other things are doing it as well. Even GLP1 agonists, that's what they kind of do. They're mimicking a response to, you know, to eating or something like that. Anyway, now if you are like myself and you're saying, hey, I am not a puritan, I want to balance between these three big pillars of. Shout out to Jeffrey Gladden because he has it in his book. He has like the three pillars of health, which is whatever he describes as like ultimate performance, current ultimate performance, like how well you perform right now, resilience and longevity. Normally, if you are a puritan of one, you're sacrificing other things. So if we are not in the sun at all, we're kind of puritans of longevity, but we're sacrificing things first of all, like resilience, because if you are going to get under, if you're, you're going to be in the sun, you're going to have no melanin to protect you. That's number one.
- [64:24]
B
Yep.
- [64:24]
A
And number two, you are not going to get things that, in that, that push you to perform optimally right now, which is vitamin D synthesis, etc. So within that, you know, I always say try to expose your skin to the sun before 10am or after 4pm Even if you're going to expose your skin later on to the sun, it means even if you know you're going to be exposed at, you know, noon or one o', clock, I still want you to go at 10am and that is because studies show that the, the, when you're exposed to red and infrared wavelengths, you are actually less susceptible to sun damage later on. So you're kind of preparing your body. The last thing I would say, that the idea of solar callus is incorrect and is propagated by drunk people living in Central America, AKA Jack Cruz, and not people who are in any way healthy, by the way. And solar callus is this belief that your body has some metaphysical properties that allow it to reflect sunlight, but the only thing you have is melanin. And your ability to produce melanin is predicated to the amount of damage you've sustained to begin with beforehand. And if you are like you and I, which our genes are not South Floridian genes and we're going to South Florida, so sun, we just don't have the, the epigenetic, the genetic arsenal to handle that on average. Right?
- [65:49]
B
Yeah.
- [65:50]
A
So I think, I think we need to be just more nuanced and smarter than, than. Yeah, I think you get my great breakdown.
- [65:58]
B
I love it. I was just thinking, we have an Israeli, we have an Iranian that love each other. What an amazing relationship.
- [66:04]
A
Oh, yeah.
- [66:05]
B
World needs more like us, huh?
- [66:07]
A
Exactly.
- [66:08]
B
Yeah.
- [66:08]
A
And between us, we again, the food. The food is the main aspect.
- [66:13]
B
I'm actually going to dinner right now with my mom and my fiance and she's making me some every Thursday she makes a beautiful Persian dinner. So I'm going there right now.
- [66:20]
A
Wow.
- [66:21]
B
Yeah.
- [66:21]
A
Okay. Amazing. Well, we've exceeded our time because I'm trying to keep it under an hour, but this is too much fun. So I'm going to ask you a couple more questions and then we'll wrap it up. So first of all, if you had to give it a small tip on minerals or nutrients that help with insulin, and skin health. What would those be like, a rapid fire if you had to, like, recommend things to people?
- [66:45]
B
Yeah, I would recommend high quality fulvic and humic minerals. Great for the mitochondria, great for skin health, great for the metabolism in general. So a high quality fulvic and humic mineral. Yeah.
- [66:55]
A
Shout out to B. Minerals.
- [66:56]
B
B. Minerals. Yeah. I wasn't sure I was. But I didn't want to, you know, share it on your podcast. But, yeah, minerals, my favorite.
- [67:03]
A
Yeah, do. It's easier for me than to consume copious amounts of shilajit. But are you, like. Are you like, Camp Shilajit camp?
- [67:11]
B
I like shilajit. I use shilajit and ormus in my coffee every morning. Mana vitality. So I put that in my coffee. Yeah.
- [67:18]
A
Okay. Last is, what have you seen in the biohacking community that you feel kind of support what you're trying to propagate, like, what kind of technologies or devices you feel are moving the needle as far as, like, metabolic health?
- [67:33]
B
I like the idea of testing your blood sugars with a continuous glucose monitor or even like a finger prick, because that gives you some data. Now, as I mentioned, insulin will be the first thing to look at until they come up with an continuous insulin monitor, which I don't know if they're going to be able to do that. The next best thing is the continuous glucose monitor, and I'm about to try on a continuous ketone monitor. It's a company that reached out to me, which is pretty cool. But I'll say one thing about the biohacking community. I love the biohacking community. I think they're great. But all of the devices and gadgets and supplements will not work if you don't remove the interference first. Okay, I'll give you just a quick example as we wrap this up. If you're living in a moldy home and you have eight silver fillings in your mouth and you're toxic, but you're like, I'm going to just buy a red light panel and a sauna. It's not going to work. Those are things you add after you take care of the foundation. So you got to remove the upstream stressors first. Then you add all the sexy things we're talking about here.
- [68:33]
A
That's funny. It's. Anytime someone tells me, that didn't work for me, I told it. I'm telling them, no, you didn't work for it.
- [68:40]
B
That's it. That's it. They have upstream stressor. They have to take care of that. Then it will work for them.
- [68:46]
A
So, Ben, first of all, thank you for your time. I think people, anyone who didn't know you until now understands why I love hanging out with you so much. If someone wants to start their Benazadi Keto flex journey, you know, now that you have, you have two books out, how many books have you had total?
- [69:08]
B
I have five, but. Oh, wow, only two are available right now. Yeah.
- [69:12]
A
Okay.
- [69:12]
B
Yeah.
- [69:12]
A
So two books. You have, obviously the keto camp program. You have your podcast.
- [69:17]
B
Yep.
- [69:18]
A
Probably I'm forgetting something else. Like, but how does someone kind of put themselves into the Benazadi universe in the best fashion?
- [69:26]
B
Yeah. Thank you, bro. I love and appreciate you and your family. I'm gonna go visit you in West Palm Beach. Yeah, I would say the. The book's the best place. The reason why I say that is because, number one, the book's available on hardcover if you like to actually read or Kindle, but it's also available on. On Spotify and audible if you're more of an audio person. And I narrated the entire audio myself, so it's my voice, my personality. And it'll show you what I believe are the top interferences for your metabolism, the solutions, and then to your question. To answer your question, then there's a 30 day plan in chapter 12 where I hold your hand and guide you and show you exactly what to do. And I've seen people lose as high as 44 pounds in those 30 days. Thinking of a guy named John Miller.
- [70:08]
A
But 15 pounds, shout out to John.
- [70:09]
B
Yeah, John Miller. So I would start there. You know, you'll get some great momentum. There's a beginner plan and an advanced plan. There's fat burning recipes. And then you could get the book with an entire course we're giving away for free. And the course is all about the metabolism. And it has exclusive interviews on fat loss and metabolic health with Megan Ramos, Dr. Jason Fung, Dr. Daniel Pompa, and Cynthia Thurlow. So you can get the course, the interviews over@metabolicfreedombook.com when you buy the book, you get the course and the interviews for free.
- [70:40]
A
Love it. Again, Ben, thank you so much for coming on. I love you personally. You're an incredible person and.
- [71:07]
B
Sa.
- [71:42]
A
If anyone needed. Another reason to go and buy the book is to just support such a beautiful human being such as yourself. And I hope to see you in person as soon as possible asap.
- [71:53]
B
I hope so too. Love you too, brother. Thank you for bringing me on your podcast. Congrats to your amazing growth. Love, young goose. Love what you're all about, my friend. We'll have a fish oil debate on a. On a different. On a different podcast.
- [72:05]
A
All right, thank you, everyone, and we'll see you next time.