← The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #35 Featuring Dr. David Jockers! A comprehensive breakdown of cholesterol, avoiding grains, the importance of fats and protein, a masterclass on intermittent fasting, MITOCHONDRIA and cellular health, TOP 5 MOST ESSENTIAL FOODS and more!
01:16:06
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Foreign.
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Everybody. Welcome back to the Dylan Gemelli Podcast. So I've been really, really excited for my guest today. I've been looking forward to this a long time. We have a lot of things in common and I'm going to dig deep and get a lot of thorough insight for everybody today. So my guest, he's well known for his work in functional nutrition as a natural health expert. He specializes in brain health, functional nutrition, autoimmune fasting and digestion education. He has 235,000 and growing subscribers on YouTube. He's an author of two fabulous books and he has the Dr. Jocker's Functional Nutrition Podcast. So my friends welcome and thank you for making time for me today. Dr. David Jocker.
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Yeah, Dylan, great to connect here and I've enjoyed our, our growing friendship and just connecting over the last few weeks.
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B
Absolutely. I mean, like I said and I told you earlier, watching your, your stuff after we met and talked, I'm just enamored with your knowledge and how similar we see things. But there's also things you talk about that aren't like my wheelhouse that I want to get out of you today too. So I do want to start with this because, you know, you have so much different wide varieties of topics. I know you got your specialties and I'm the same way, but we both talk about a lot of different things. So obviously you're well versed and you clearly have been doing this a long time. So let's take a couple steps back and talk about how you started, what it was that got you going into like the health and fitness and nutrition field and give me a little bit about your background before we dig into some, some facts.
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Yeah, for sure. Well, growing up, my mom actually she was a nurse and she saw how births were being done in the emergency room and whatnot. And she was really turned off to modern medicine and she decided she wanted to learn to become a midwife and a massage therapist and eventually a naturopath. And so I, when I was growing up, I remember my mom experimenting with so many basically different diet trends in the late 80s and early 90s. The, the natural health diet trends. Right. And one of the big ones I remember we did for, I don't know, two years or so is the macrobiotic diet, which is basically the macrobiotic diet means like nothing tastes good, right? Honestly, like if, if you enjoy food, it's like the worst diet. So it's basically lima beans, soybean, you know, like a, some sort of soy with every meal. Lima beans, steamed Kale with no salt and no oil. And I remember as a kid, I'm like, I'm rebelling against this. And my dad was totally against. He was just like, I'm gonna eat whatever I want to eat. And so. But my mom was always. She was the health advocate in my household, and she was just all about it. And what she learned was, see, for me, I was always inquisitive. I've always been curious. And I was an athlete growing up. And so when my mom would make, you know, steamed kale or whatever it was at. At dinner, I would be like, why do I have to eat this? You know? And she would say things like, well, it's gonna ha. You know, my brother had acne, my older brother. And she's like, well, it's gonna help your skin. She knew I didn't want acne like he had. And she would say, that's cause he's eating all this. This sugar. He's eating all these, you know, processed oils, right? And so I realized, okay, sugar not good. Processed oils, not good. And then she would say things like, this kale is going to have. Help you have more energy. It's going to help you, you know, be stronger and healthier. So I'm like, oh, if. If it's going to help me have more energy and be stronger, I'm gonna. I'll. I'll have three servings of it. You know, that's the way I thought about it. And so I can suck down anything if it's gonna help me. And so I realized what I learned from her, and she is, you know, she teaches what I teach now, however, which is. Which is not the macrobiotic diet by any means. What I learned from her was the food I eat, the things I put in my body impact my health and performance and how I show up in life. And I remember when we would get sick, she would make a big. A big pot of, you know, chicken soup or vegetable soup, lots of garlic. I remember eating garlic. You know, just eating cloves of garlic. When I was sick, she'd be like, yeah, eat this clove of garlic, right? And so we never took drugs growing up. It was always garlic and using food as medicine. And I realized food could impact my performance. And so in my late teens, I got really into fitness. So my athletic career had died down, but I enjoyed working out, training, and so I got into fitness. I became a personal trainer, and I enjoyed that, but I realized I was really limited in what I was able to do with it. And as I was studying in my undergrad exercise physiology. I realized all the kids that I'm in class with, they're really not that interested in this topic. But I really love learning physiology and that's. And I to this day love learning anatomy, physiology, all of that kind of stuff. And so I wanted to take it to a higher level. So I thought about maybe becoming a physical therapist. I was thinking about different, different options. This is when I developed irritable bowel syndrome. So I was in my early 20s and you know, I went from 170 pounds, just muscle, 8% body fat to about 140 pounds. And I had incredible bloating, cramping, constipation, diarrhea, right, all that kind of stuff. I had extremely low blood pressure. In fact, I had a condition called orthostatic hypotension where I go from sitting to standing and I would feel really dizzy and I have to hold on to something. And here I was a personal trainer, working two jobs, trying to go to school as well and struggling. And there were chiropractors at my gym and one of them said, hey, look, he's like, what are you eating? Right. On a regular basis? And I thought I was eating like a super healthy diet, right? It was healthier than anybody I knew any of the trainers. Like they were all eating all these, you know, packaged, processed foods. I was eating a healthier diet than they were. And he's like, hey, check out this book. And it was on the grain free diet that Dr. Mercola had just come out with. And I read that book, changed my diet. I also read a book called the Maker's Diet by a guy named Jordan Rubin and changed my diet. My health started dramatically improving. I went to chiropractic school because all the chiropractors I knew seemed to really enjoy their job. And I learned, you know, the chiropractic philosophy as a body doesn't need any help, just no interference in the healing process. And, and I realized that's the philosophy I want to teach. I ended up going to chiropractic school, becoming a chiropractor, but really with the vision of teaching functional health. Functional nutrition, teaching lifestyle, right? So anyways, I, I learned from my own pain to purpose story where I had irritable bowel syndrome, changed my diet, came off of grains and basically the no grain diet was a high protein diet. And he also emphasized grass fed meats. First person that I ever, you know, heard talking about this back in 2003, 2004, somewhere in that timeframe. So I started making these dietary ch changes, took out seed oils, right. All that kind of stuff, processed foods and really it was basically what I teach today, which is high protein diet focusing on, you know, as much grass fed organic animal products as possible, healthy fats and lots of colorful fruits and vegetables. Right. And that's what I focus on, what I teach today. I also met another guy, you know, when I started chiropractic school named Dr. Dan Pompa. And he was teaching what was called the cellular healing diet, which was basically the same diet that I used to, you know, heal myself. Right. You know, this is something, it's this sort of nutrition and lifestyle strategies. These strateg are things that I've used now for, you know, basically almost 20 years helping people all around the world.
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Yeah, so you brought up, because Ben azadi brought up Dr. Pompa as being his mentor to me and now you have. So I'm actually going to be going to see him and interview with him and have him on mine. So I'm looking forward to it because that's two extremely well known and highly respected individuals talking well about him. Let me ask you something about chiropractic because you and now are amongst like four or five people that are absolute geniuses to me that all their, their whole thing started with chiropractic or they were chiropractors in some sort of sense. I want to get into some other things, but can you touch on the importance of chiropractic to our overall health and being in alignment and everything since you mentioned that? Because I know how important that is. I have to go once a week, but I'm doing it also for maintenance after the things I've learned doing it for so long that it's far more than just cracking and popping. Could you just get behind a little bit of that for me and expl why it's so important?
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Yeah, for sure. Well, to start, the chiropractic philosophy is the body doesn't need any help to heal, it just needs no interference. And so the body is a self healing mechanism, has this self healing power. But there's a lot of things that can interfere with the healing process. One is, you know, toxins that we're exposed to. Obviously bad diet. Right. Is a big thing. Bad thinking can be a big factor. You know, poor sleep, all these things get in the way. But one other thing that gets in the way is bad posture and bad spinal dynamics. The way that our spine moves, you see our spine actually sends a tremendous amount of signals up into our Brain, in fact, particularly our upper cervical or upper neck though that area, there's all these different receptors and what we call muscle spindles are constantly sending movement information up into the brain. And when we start to lose movement because we have bad posture over time, or maybe we had some sort of trauma like a car accident, right. Or sports injury or something like that, we get scar tissue in those areas and we lose that movement information from getting into the brain and telling the brain where we are in space. And now that movement information is called proprioception. It's like a extremely important nutrient for the brain. And so when we lose that movement information, it's like depriving the brain of something critical as far as a, you know, a nutrient goes. And it actually increases the stress response and increases pro inflammatory protein release, right? So we end up releasing all of these pro inflammatory proteins because there's this scar tissue built up where there's injury in the spine, right? Upper cervical, it kind of most important areas are actually at the top and then at the bottom, right, your sacroiliac area, lower back, you know, your lumbar spine leading into your sacroiliac area. These are the areas that oftentimes are, you know, most commonly injured are those two areas. And again, that's, that's robbing critical movement information from getting to the brain. And the brain's constantly trying to communicate with all the organ systems of the body. And so when we have some sort of trauma or micro trauma damage in those areas, it's called subluxation, right? And that basically means that the bones have shifted, right? And there's scar tissue developing and it's putting pressure on different, different nerves. And now that information getting out to the organs is altered, right? And you think about it like a radio frequency, right? So if we want, if we want to listen to, you know, whatever the channel is we're trying to on the radio, we need to have the right reception. If you're getting poor reception, you're not going to hear the songs you want to, you want to hear or the talk radio that you want. You know, you're going to, you're going to misinterpret things. And that's kind of what happens in the body as well. So chiropractic comes, a good chiropractor can identify and locate where those subluxations are quickly and painlessly make corrective adjustments that basically put motion into those areas, break down the scar tissue and allow you to get the proper movement information and the proper messages being sent from the brain. To the body and from the. From the body back to the brain. Think about it like a safety pin, right? So if a safety pin is open, okay, the message, you know, like, it doesn't connect, right. A chiropractor helps connect that safety pin back.
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Okay. It was one of the things that I've been kind of learning more recently was how much the neck can impact so many different parts of your body. And, you know, I'm. I'm seeing it right now, too, that I didn't realize it. And I'm having a lot of shoulder pain, and it's resonating down into my pec here, but it's there a lot of. It's starting in my neck. And I didn't realize because I was in there even Monday, and I've been having this weird pains in my elbow. And, you know, I've had tennis elbow, but I. This is my left one, so it's odd. And he was telling me, your neck, it's causing a lot of this and it needs to be worked on. So it's intriguing. I think that it's important that we're talking about this because I think a lot of people view a chiropractor, like I said, crack, pop, you know, put you back in place. Don't really understand how significant the impact is that chiropractic can have if you go to the right chiropractor, clearly. But that's like anything else. So I really appreciate the insight, man. I think that it would be important for people to take note of that. Do you practice any chiropractic anymore at all, or.
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Yeah, it's a great question. So I opened a clinic. So I went to school from 2005 to 2000, finished the end of 2008, and I opened a clinic in 2009, and I ran that for 12 years, and I eventually sold that. I just became more passionate about creating online health content to teach as many people as possible. And I was doing that early on in practice, and it kind of took on a life of its own. Like, I enjoyed writing articles for other bigger websites, creating videos, things like that. And then I, you know, I ended up creating my own website. And, you know, at one point, we were getting over over a million organic search hits in 2018, and we still get a ton of traffic to my website, and that kind of took on a life of its own. And I really enjoy just creating content, that creative element of it. So, no, I. I haven't practiced chiropractic now in five years.
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Takes off fast, brother.
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As you can see, I. I still do adjust my family, of course. Right. So I can still adjust my family. Right. Different people that ask. You know, my best friend that comes over, he's also a chiropractor, and so he'll adjust me. I'll adjust him.
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Well, I hope that if I see you sometime, you can help me out, too.
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Yeah, there you go. Yeah.
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I've been in since I was 18, man. I hurt my back playing basketball in high school, and it's just. It's been. I don't know. I'm 43, so 25 years of being in there. But when you find the right one, you know, I. I like to keep them. Are you familiar with the Cox table at all? Because that's the use. Can you talk about that real quick so people know? Because it's kind of more on the rare side, but I found that to be one of the most effective for my back.
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Yeah, it's definitely not my. My specialty, but basically, all the discs, which are the little kind of gelatinous in between all the vertebrae and the spine, and they're a gelatinous disc. Okay. And they. They're avascular, meaning they don't have a direct blood supply. So they depend on kind of a change in the osmotic gradient. Right. I know it's kind of scientific terms. They depend on motion, basically, in order to get nutrients into them. And so if the spine's not moving well. Okay. They're not going to get the nutrients that they need to heal and repair. And so the Cox table kind of puts you in a position where it naturally stretches and flexes the discs, particularly in the lower, lower back, Right. In the lumbar spine. And that stretching and flexing is allowing for that osmotic change, that pressure change, and nutrients to flow in and waste to get flushed out.
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Excellent.
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Because I.
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My discs are worn away down to barely anything. And that's one of the only things that gives me, like, the right relief. And a lot of people don't know about it. Every time I've moved to a different state, I'm searching before I leave. Who's got wind to help? All right, well, I appreciate the chiropractic insight. I really want to shift into some diet things. I have talked about this a lot, and I really want to get a good focus on healthy fats right now. So I've discussed this about my own personal. So I'll keep it quick so that we can get into the. The fats topic and the low fat craze and all of that and shifting through it. You know, I've been a nutritionist for 15 years and yet still been in this fear of fats until like I don't know, 10 months ago, man, I don't even think it's been 10 months. And I was living on vegetables and egg whites and fat free yogurt and oatmeal for 10 years, just starving myself. And it's hard to stay focused without fats and you become irritable and it's a slew of problems that week. I'd like to go down the list with you and get your insight on. I'll leave that alone. I'm not going to talk about all of mine. But I will tell you this. The way I work out, burning like 4,000 calories a day combined with sedentary lifestyle and everything, I was eating like 1600 calories a day of no fats, but from peanut butter, like one serving. So now what I've done is shifted to about 120 to 140 grams of fat, 250 grams of protein and less than 100 cars, about 90 right around there. And I'm telling you, man, like the way my world's opened up and every aspect, blood panels, I mean, and I want to talk to you about cholesterol too, with keto and stuff like that. But man, I am telling you what, like, I even got like goosebumps talking about it because I get so amped discussing the changes and filling people in on the things I've learned. And this is as a nutritionist, right? That's how brainwashed we were. So I want to start with the brainwashing of the low fat diet and just a little bit of insight, insight on maybe why, why that occurred or how that started. And then the importance of healthy fats and some of the misconceptions on fats in your diet. Because I'll tell you this, I haven't been this cut or shredded since I was using steroids, man. Like, and this is just from switching diet. I want to just get all of your insight on this because it's a personal topic to me.
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Yeah, for sure. Well, I mean, low fat diet was big hit, hit really big, particularly in the 80s. And for the layperson they hear fat like so, so a dietary fat is basically what we call, it's another name for it as lipids, right? And it's nine calories per gram of, of lipid. Kind of the lay title is fat, right? So you have this fat. And so the idea of fat makes you Fat to most people just makes sense, right? And something that locks into their brain. And it's like, okay, if I eat fat, I get fat. It's just so easy to remember. And so that's basically where the low fat diet trend caught on. And you know, we think about fruits and vegetables, who's gonna argue? Up until recently with the carnivore diet, everybody thought fruits and vegetables. That's healthy, right? And so fruits and vegetables, what are they high in? Carbohydrates, right? And, and they're typically very low in fat. And so a lot of the natural health Trends in the 80s really started with kind of more of the, I guess you could say the environmentalists in the 60s and 70s. And those environmentalists or hippies kind of took on like, my, my parents were. They kind of took on more of like this idea of, okay, if we eat animal foods, that's bad, that's bad for the environment, that's bad for, you know, our morality, right? They were kind of came into like a, almost like a level of like spirituality of eating animals bad, bad for the environment, bad for humanity. And so this idea of, okay, let's avoid fat and let's eat kind of more of a higher carb diet became really in vogue and in Trend in the 80s and the 90s. And there were some, some researchers as well. One, one guy named Ancel Keys, his hypothesis was that fat makes you fat. And he did this, I can't remember exactly how many countries, but he looked at all these different countries and looked at, you know, how much fat they consumed, and he tried to make a graph, but he actually had to throw out six of the countries in order to make a graph for how much fat you consume and you. And basically your risk of heart disease. Right? But his theory was that, you know, eating saturated fat and cholesterol increases your risk of heart disease. And when we look at arterial plaque, okay, there is a percentage of that that is cholesterol, but actually the, the main compound that is in a plaque is actually calcium. Okay? So it's calcium. It's basically scar tissue. That's the way we have to look at it. And so when we think about what cholesterol even is in the body, cholesterol is a bust, right? When we look at LDL and hdl, LDL is a bus that's carrying phospholipids, which are fats that also have a phosphorus compound. They make up all the cells. So in every cell of our body, we have this phospholipid bilayer so it's two layers of fat with phosphorus on it. Okay. And so they're carrying all those phospholipids. For new cell membranes, good healthy cell membrane in our cell is absolutely essential. It's almost like the nervous system, like the cell membrane is the nervous system, it's sensing the environment. We need a healthy cell membrane on our cells for the cell to function well. For us to be able to carry out all the cellular dynamics. A liver cell to function well as a liver cell. For a cardiac cell to function well as a cardiac cell, we need healthy lipids, healthy cell membrane. And so the LDL is bringing that out. It's also bringing out Things like Coenzyme Q10 as well as fat soluble nutrients, vitamin A, vitamin D, vitamin K. Right, Vitamin E, all to the cell membrane. So it is a bus with very valuable cargo. HDL is a bus taking back. So that's high density lipoprotein. So after the LDL drops off its cargo, the HDL is carrying back whatever's left. Okay. That's the way you gotta think about it. So when ldl, when it's elevated, it tells me there's more cellular regeneration and cellular healing that needs to take place. Right. And it's also a way of carrying triglycerides, Right. As well to the cell. So for burning fat for fuel, we need to bring a lot more triglycerides or fat to a cell. If that's the case, we might have elevated ldl. Right. Because we're actually trafficking more fat to utilize for energy for cellular energy. We burn the fat inside the cell in what we call the mitochondria, which is kind of the cellular furnace that's burning up the fat, producing energy. So that's all necessary. All these things are absolutely critical and necessary for the body. However, it got lumped into this idea of, ok, causes heart disease. Now ldl, the bus, the carrying, all that valuable cargo can be oxidized as it's going through the bloodstream. And that becomes a problem. There's always going to be a certain percentage that gets oxidized. Oxidation, which is kind of like rusting. Internal rusting, is a precursor to inflammation. Right. So that's going to drive up more inflammation. And so the more oxidized cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, we have, the more inflammation is going to be driven up. But really what we should be measuring are oxidative elements and overall level of inflammation and not necessarily the ldl. And when we look at, for example, cholesterol, there's different sub. There's different particles. There's different subtypes of ldl, right? So you have large, fluffy LDL particles, okay, that tend to have a lot more antioxidants, a lot more vitamin E, and they're associated with lower levels of insulin. Insulin is your hormone that's released to get sugar out of the bloodstream and into the. Into the cells. Right. Very important hormone. But when insulin's elevated, well, it stops fat burning and it increases inflammation in the body. So when you have lower insulin levels, you will develop more of these large, fluffy LDL cholesterol particles, okay, that are healthy. They're actually. They actually help reduce your risk of atherosclerosis. When you have high insulin, you develop what we call small, dense LDL particles. These small, dense LDL particles lack the antioxidant protection, okay? So they lack that extra vitamin E that protects them from oxidative stress. They also, because of their small. They're smaller, smaller particles, they can get into little gaps in the. What we call the endothelial lining or the inner lining of the blood vessel. And when they get into those gaps, they kind of get, you know, jammed up into a corner of the blood vessel where they get beaten down by oxidative stress and drive up inflammation in the system. So the more small, dense LDL particles you have, the higher your risk of atherosclerosis or heart disease, and the less of those, you have, the lower risk. But when we look at a typical panel where somebody. Somebody's doing a lipid profile, they're just looking at ldl, hdl, and triglycerides usually. Right. Maybe sometimes they'll look at the very low density lipoproteins. And if those are high, those can also increase your risk of atherosclerosis. But they're not looking at small, large, you know, different subtypes of these LDLs. Okay? But one way you can know what subtype you're making is by looking at what we call your triglyceride to HDL ratio. So triglycerides are basically fat floating around in your bloodstream. You don't want a lot of fat floating around in your bloodstream. You're always gonna have some kind of, like, glucose, right? You're always gonna have some sugar. You're always gonna have some fat that's normal, natural. You need to have some in your bloodstream. But just like blood sugar, you don't want high levels of blood sugar. You certainly don't want your blood sugar to be 150, 120 right. That actually causes sticky proteins. The sugar molecules will bind to proteins in your bloodstream and create what we call sticky proteins or advanced glycation end products. Ages, right? If I were to say there's a molecule called a age, what do you think that does to your body? Right? Ages you. That's what, that's what high blood sugar does. So it's the same with triglycerides. We don't want high amounts of triglycerides in the blood. That's a sign that we are not burning fat well for fuel. So triglycerides should always be under 100 when you're doing a fasted lipid panel. So a facet is an important word. If you eat a big meal and you go in and get your blood work done, you're not gonna get an accurate measurement for your triglycerides. It should be, you should be fasted roughly 12 to 14 hours. So you eat dinner at 6, 7pm, you go in at 8am, get your blood work done. Right. And then you're gonna have an accurate fasted triglyceride level. And so it should be always be under 100. And your triglyceride to HDL, that high density lipoprotein, the good cholesterol, that ratio should always be less than two and ideally close to one. So close to one part triglyceride to HDL. So let's say you had 70 triglycerides and 60 HDL. That would be a really good ratio. And that's a sign that basically that your LDL particles are large and fluffy and less athero. They're less likely to create atherosclerosis. And so that's a healthy, healthy measurement. And I would also add in looking at inflammatory markers like C reactive protein, which you always want to be under one, you can look at your erythrocyte sedimentation rate or how your, your blood cells are sticking together. You want that to be less than 10 millimeters per hour, ideally. So that's a good measurement to look at. Serum ferritin is another good measurement. And your facet insulin, fasted insulin should be under six. And so when you're looking at that, you kind of get a better picture than just looking at what is my LDL particle like. Right. And so I think that's really key. And so I know I went off on a tangent there, hopefully that was valuable, but we were talking about low fat diets.
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B
Can I let me ask you something, because that is literally one of the best, most insightful breakdowns that I have ever heard to where you can understand it. And I'll tell you this. I mentioned to you, and I've mentioned before, like I found plaque in my arteries two years ago. And I have spent the last two years immersed in everything that I could possibly learn about cholesterol. And you, I am not just saying this because you're sitting in front of me. That is literally the best breakdown I've heard and I've talked to supposedly some of the best cardiologists in the world. Now I want to have a few questions, siphon off of that and then we'll shift back to the low fat diet because this is too good. Okay? So I am big and you brought up particles. So I always tell people you have to get a comprehensive testing done, a metabolic, comprehensive profile. So I want to talk to you about lpob that go along and coincide with testing the particle sizes because I found that I had a extremely elevated lp. So I want you to kind of discuss these, the importance. So my HDL has always been in the 40s, right? And I told you about the crappy diet, you know, the low fat. Once I shifted and started eating all this fat and all the animal proteins and everything, My HDL has been in the 60s consistently and I have been stuck in like 41. First, I want to discuss the LPOB side and that importance, how it kind of mixes into what you were talking about and then also how higher fats, you know, and how do we fix our HDL and what is the impact the higher fats have on the HDL as well? Because this is, this is so, so insightful and this could really help a lot of people that are struggling and kind of at a loss because like you said, we don't get right tests. They all look at the right tests at all. So please expound for me a little bit here and for everybody.
- [28:01]
A
Yeah, for sure. You know, I haven't looked into lp, lp, little A in a little bit. But what I do know is they, you know, they say it's a genetic marker and you're at a higher risk, obviously with, when it's higher, it's highly reactive compound and you're at a higher risk when it's elevated. But what I've actually seen is that when people are coming off seed oils and following more of a blood sugar stabilizing diet, see, seed oils poison our mitochondria. And that's the issue with them. And so when the mitochondria undergo more oxidative stress because they're not able to produce energy as well. See, seed oils will actually get into the linoleic acid in, in these seed oils will actually get into the cardio light band which is kind of the, is part of this internal layer of the mitochondria. And they'll increase the amount of oxidative stress that's produced because they'll become less efficient. For every molecule of ATP that's produced, you're now producing more oxidative stress, more internal R, which drives up more inflammation in the system. And when we get rid of that and we replace those fats with good quality saturated fats, monounsaturated fats, we have less of the linoleic acid in the mitochondrial inner membrane, we get less oxidative stress per unit of ATP, cellular energy that's produced and therefore less overall inflammation in the body. Okay. So that's really, really key and I think when, when we do that, when we make these dietary changes and obviously other lifestyle factors, reducing toxins, things like that, reducing the overall inflammatory environment. And I don't think it's really as important as testing your lp. I think it's really, we want to create as anti inflammatory an environment as possible in our system. And I think that's, that's the more important factor with this. And when your HDL is going up, like you said, now there's a Goldilocks zone for HDL as well. Some people have hdl. You know, I looked at a lot of lab tests throughout the course of my career and sometimes people have HDL up over a hundred. Okay. And that actually can be a sign of an infection in the system. Right? Somebody's dealing with an infection. There's a kind of a Goldilocks zone where really optimal HDL is somewhere between, you know, 50 and 90. Right? Somewhere in that range. And think about almost like a vitamin D level, right? You really honestly don't want your vitamin D up much over a hundred. Okay. It's kind of like that with HDL. But you also don't want it under 50. A good 60, 70, 80 range on HDL is great. Like that's, that's kind of like the, the sweet spot there with your hdl. And the way that you're going to do that is blood sugar stabilizing diet. Right? You need a, when you're eating food, it needs to stabilize your blood sugar. You don't want your blood sugar jumping way up and you don't want it jumping, you know, bouncing down, right? And, and going all over the place. So it's a Huge stress on our system. We want just a slight bump, slight increase in your blood sugar as you eat, right. And then it kind of just goes right back down within the next, you know, three, four hours, right. To a kind of a resting baseline level. And even if you were to go long periods of time, like overnight, right. Or even doing a, you know, a longer fast, your blood sugar never really change, kind of stays in this, you know, 10, 15, you know, point range, right. And it never really jumps a lot. Okay. And that's a sign of a really healthy metabolic function, really healthy metabolism. And it tells us as blood sugar's starting to drop or as insulin starts to drop, that your body's good at burning fat for fuel. And that's really the key is you wanna be very metabolically flexible where you're good at burning sugar when sugar's available, like right after a meal, and also when we need it, like when you're exercising. Okay. You wanna be really good at burning sugar during those periods of time, but then also really good at burning fat when your insulin level's lower in between meals. And then of course, you know, if you're doing more of an extended fast, you want your body to be really, really good at burning fat for fuel. And you want the adjustment to each to be really smooth so you don't notice this big kind of crash in your energy.
- [32:01]
B
I use the lumen in the morning every morning to test how much I'm burning and everything. And I, I like to wake up at least 75% fat. My some mornings I'm like 95 to 5, which I love, but I can you discuss like, like when you're checking for that. Is the fasting what will help you get into that fat burning stage when you wake up? Is it the long fast and from not eating at night or what is, what is the methodology, I guess is what I'm asking on how you can get into that fat burning zone in the mornings and you know, times of fasting or, you know, not eating, rest, et cetera.
- [32:39]
A
Yeah, definitely. So basically what you want to do is with your diet, you want a blood sugar stabilizing nutrition plan. You focus on protein first. That's really the only macronutrient that I focus on counting or at least I don't at this point, but I'll tell people to, to focus on it. You want to make sure you're getting at least 30 grams of protein per meal. And you know, really more like for, for a lot of people, especially if you're doing a lot of resistance training. 50, 60, 70 grams of protein in a meal that will help stabilize your blood sugar, but you need to add in those fats as well. Like you were saying you're afraid of fats. You were doing everything, little to no fat. You want to make sure you got healthy fats on, on board, okay? And some people can, can eat a lot of fats in a meal and feel great. Other people need less. For me, probably for you as well, Like I can eat easily 50, 60 grams of fat in a meal and feel totally fine, feel great. But there are some people, they tend to be women that have very sluggish bile flow. And for them, they might only be able to eat 20, 25 grams of fat in a meal, otherwise they feel really sluggish. Okay. And they have digestive problems and things like that. So, so you kind of have to find your fat threshold. But I found that everybody does fine with, with a minimum of 15 grams of fats in a meal. And you want those to come from healthy sources which are gonna be your, your, your grass fed red meats, your organic, you know, pasture raised animal products as much as possible. And the reason why I say organic to clear that up is I always want a nutrition plan that has maximal nutrients and minimal toxins. So when I'm eating food, Ideally at least 90% of the time, I want it to have as much nutrients as I can get in that, in that food with the least amount of environmental toxins. And so the way to do that is to get organic grass fed. You know, if it's seafood, wild, caught as much as you can. You know, I'm a 9010 guy, right? So if you, you can have space for, let's say 10% of your food coming from less nutrient dense sources, but trying to do that as much as you can. And so grass fed organic animal products, pasture raised eggs, extra virgin olive oil is a great fat source. Avocados are a really good fat source. So grass fed butter. So getting your fats from that and then lots of colorful fruits and vegetables. So consuming a lot of good, colorful fruits and vegetables and that will provide the blood sugar stabilization that you need. Things you want to avoid would be like, for example, eating fruit all by itself. Right. If you're eating fruit all by itself, okay. That can cause a blood sugar imbalance. So ideally I eat fruit as a dessert. So if I eat a good meal or, or if I'm making a protein shake, I'm putting in, you know, frozen berries and things like that. I love fruit. I eat A lot of fruit, but I'm eating it with meals, okay, with, with a high protein meal. Like for dinner, after dinner last night, my family, we had, we had mangoes, we cut up mangoes, we had cherries, right. And so we're, do we do all different types of fruits? I mean we get like on any given week, like 10 different fruits, right. When we go to the grocery store. So we get a lot of diversity in the different types of fruits that we're consuming and we really enjoy them, especially in the summertime and you're getting more sun exposure, you have better insulin sensitivity. And you think about it, that's when our ancestors would have eaten a lot of fruit, would have been in the summer. And fruit actually has this really great form of structured water that deeply hydrates your cells along with electrolytes. So I think fruit is really, really good food. Especially more eat more in the summer when you're getting more sunshine and you need more of that, that structured water. Eat less in the wintertime when our ancestors wouldn't have had as much either. Right? And so eating more seasonally like that is a good idea. But anyways, that's your blood sugar stabilizing diet. And when you do that, you're gonna feel more satiated. And when you feel more satiated, then it's easier to go longer periods of time without food. So I recommend the way you start this sort of plan is you eat three meals, zero, no snacks, you don't drink a bunch of calories between meals. Right. I have water here with a little bit of electrolytes, right? That's it, no calories in it. Or I drink herbal tea or I drink black coffee. And so when I eat a meal, I'm eating a good amount of calories. Okay. And then when I'm not eating, I'm not taking in calories. Makes sense, right? Pretty, pretty simple from that. However, it's a lot of reprogramming because most people in our society are used to putting a bunch of stuff in their coffee, right? Putting a bunch of stuff in their water or whatever it is, and constantly consuming calories. So three meals and that's it. Okay. And then you do it in a tighter eating window. So maybe you start with a 10 hour eating window where you eat from 8am to let's say 6pm that would be a 10 hour eating window. Three meals in that time span, okay. And then you have a 14 hour overnight fast. And during that period of time, your body's completing digestion, your insulin is lowering and you're starting to burn fat for fuel. Okay. So that's a great kind of baseline starting point. What you'll notice though is that, that the more you're consuming this sort of blood sugar stabilizing diet, the less hungry you will feel throughout the day. And especially if you hydrate well. So when you wake up in the morning, all of us are naturally dehydrated because we've been breathing out water vapor. So the best thing we can do is actually drink 8 to 16 ounces of water to start our day. When you do that, you expand your stomach and that actually inhibits your hunger hormone called ghrelin. And a lot of people will tell me I'm really hungry when I first wake up in the morning. And I tell them, start out by drinking 8 to 16 ounces of water, good clean water or herbal tea or something along those lines. Before you do anything, just do that. And again, that inhibits the hunger hormone. Most people tell me they don't feel hungry anymore. Right. And they're able to go at least two hours without feeling hungry again.
- [38:07]
B
Yep.
- [38:07]
A
And so just hydrating in the morning will help your body do that and you'll actually notice you'd naturally have energy. And that's a great approach. Now, as we start to do this intermittent fasting, what most people find to be be really sustainable is an eight hour eating window. Eating two or three meals in an eight hour eating window. Okay. So for me, I usually eat two meals a day. So usually it's my first meal is typically at like 1:00 clock, 1:30, somewhere in there, maybe 2:00 clock. And then my last meal is usually somewhere between six and eight, somewhere in that timeframe. Okay. And that seems to work great for me. Okay. You gotta figure out the right time plan for you. But in the morning, I'm not hungry. I have tons of energy. I feel great. I just hydrate really, really well and I feel fantastic. And then I eat those two meals. And so you gotta figure out what works best for you. And it might be three meals, especially if you're one of those women that can't consume a lot of fat in a meal and can't eat larger meals. But find what works best for you. And the tighter you get that eating window, the more time your body has for something called cellular autophagy, which is where we break down old damaged cellular proteins and we actually recycle the raw materials and create new healthy cellular proteins, cellular mitochondria, for example. And when we do that, we create more stress resilient mitochondria. And that's key, really. Ultimately the quality of our life is going to come down to the amount of high functioning stress. Resilient mitochondria we have, have. Right. Those mitochondria are really good at burning fat for fuel. You are going to feel good on a regular basis. When they're not, you're going to have all kinds of issues with your energy. You're going to have more oxidative stress and inflammation in your system. It's going to accelerate the aging process and lead to chronic inflammatory conditions. One of the best ways we can get high functioning mitochondria is by this sort of time restricted feeding or intermittent fasting where we compress that eating meal, that, that eating window to let's say eight hours. Okay. And we can even compress it further than that. Okay. But that's a great starting place.
- [40:09]
B
I don't partner with a lot of companies like at all because I feel like there's people get so saturated and they're just promoting stuff. But my big partner's timeline, and you're talking about mitochondria and I take urolithin A and that's been a big key for me also with my mitochondria on top of the diet structure. So doing that together. And when you were talking about cells and the, you know, the, the membrane and important for lipids, I mean the two most important parts of our cells are the cellular membrane and the mitochondria.
- [40:36]
A
Right.
- [40:36]
B
And that's what keeps us functioning and living. And so we need to take care of those. And I'm so glad you brought that up because it's, it's so true and so important and I, I always made cellular biology so difficult and it's really not, it's in, in fact quite fascinating. And if you just kind of break it down, it's simple. But, but I want to talk about some of the dietary things that you discussed there because everything you discussed is like everything I'm doing now and has changed my life. I was starving all day. You can imagine. I was eating 14 servings of vegetables a day. So my wife would cook like seven peppers, three zucchinis, onions, like all of this, and put bowls in the refrigerator and I just get up and snack every 30 minutes, miserable when you eat, like you said, I, I don't even think about eating until I have work worked out or do cardio. And I'm like, okay, I'm hungry now and I do the three big meals. What do you say about the people that say you can't have, and this is an old bodybuilding myth too, that, oh, if you start eating more than 30 grams of protein in a meal, it doesn't work for you or you don't absorb it. Generally every day I have a 12 ounce piece of salmon that's like 70, 80 grams of protein. I do half a pound of ground beets. Another, depending on the fat, you know, it's 50 to 60. Generally, you know, the amount I'm eating. What do you say about that in terms of the, the protein absorption?
- [41:56]
A
I think the science on that is really weak as a whole. I just look at it from an ancestral perspective. You know, our ancestors, for example, the Spartans, you've heard, you've watched the movie 300, right? So of course, you know, and so the Spartans were actually known for working hard throughout the day. Like they would get up, they would do all their training and they would feast at night. So they would eat in like a four hour eating window, right? At most, and they would feast. And so they were getting pretty much all their protein in a four hour eating window. And these were like, they were the most resilient fighters and that's what they were known for, this incredible level of resilience, strength, their physiques. Right. And the movie really depicts that well. And so they weren't eating every 30 minutes, right. Or eating every three hours, trying to get as much protein as they could and you know, a three hour time span. And so they would just feast at night. And this is what a lot of our ancestors did. And what did it do? It created more stress resilience when we're eating all throughout the day, in a sense, it creates like metabolic inflexibility and laziness in our cells. Right. And when our cells are stressed to create energy from this process of autophagy. So if we don't have a continual flow of energy coming in, our body has to go into its reserves, gotta break down stored glycogen in the muscles. It's gotta break down, you know, fat. And also it's gotta, it's gotta create new proteins in the body. And so it breaks down these old damaged mitochondria. When we do that, we become more efficient at absorbing everything from our diet when we do consume food. So really, ultimately it's gonna come down to how healthy is our gut microbiome, how good are we absorbing nutrients and then utilizing them? Okay. And I think intermittent fasting actually just creates a more efficient human being. You get more efficient at absorbing all those Things you mentioned urolith and a. What's really interesting is that urolithin A is a postbiotic compound that's produced primarily. One of the bacteria that produces is, is achermansia mucinophilia, which is mucinophilia means mucus loving. So it lives in the deep mucosa of the intestinal lining. So when we fast, this is what's interesting. We have primary feeders in our gut which live above the gut mucosa, and then we have the secondary feeders which live in the mucosa. And the mucosa is actually where 80% of our immune system is. So when people ask where's your immune system? Most of it is in the mucosal membranes throughout our body, in our sinuses, all of that, but primarily in the gut. And these bacteria live inside that gut and they can actually eat mucus and produce compounds from it, but they also love polyphenols coming from, you know, fruits and vegetables and things like that. We have these primary primary feeders that live on top of the mucosa and then secondary feeders that live deep in the mucosa. When we look at what a healthy gut microbiome looks like, it shows a diversity of all of it, but also high numbers of these secondary feeders, which we also call obligate anaerobic bacteria. They, they can't survive in a higher oxygen environment, they need a low oxygen environment. And so when we fast, we actually trim down. So if we're eating constantly, we're, we're overfeeding the primary feeders. And now the primary feeders take up all the nutrients and, and all the spots and they actually starve down the secondary feeders. Those secondary feeders are critical cuz they produce butyric acid, they produce urolithin A, they produce all these important compounds that actually strengthen the mitochondria in the intestinal lining. So constant feeding creates gut dysbiosis. And then when we fast, we actually trim down the primary feeders, almost like pulling weeds out of your garden. And allows the secondary feeders, who can survive just on mucosa, right? Not even without food, to thrive. Right? Creates an environment where they can thrive and get the nutrients they need from the diet when we consume food. And again, those secondary feeders are releasing urolithin A, they're releasing butyric acid. Those postbiotics go into the mitochondria of the intestinal cells and stimulate mitophagy and mitochondrial biogenesis. So we get stronger, healthier mitochondria in the intestinal lining, which helps keep that intestinal lining strong and stress resilient. And that's so critical because it's only one cell wall, right, that protects the, the gut from the bloodstream. And so the stronger, more stress resilient, the mitochondria are in the intestinal lining, the less overall inflammation we have in our system. And intermittent fasting is a key strategy for that. One way to think about that is like in my yard here, I've got an apple tree and I've got a blueberry bush. The apple tree sits right above the blueberry bush. And we actually have, we pay a guy to come out every year and trim the hedges down off of the apple tree. So we're actually limiting the amount of apples we can get in order for enough sun to get to the blueberry bush. So we get blueberries, right? When we do that, we get a great blueberry harvest and a great apple harvest, okay? And that's kind of what happens when we're doing intermittent fasting. It helps to tone the gut microbiome in such a way that we get really healthy intestinal cell mitochondria and really healthy stress resilient intestine, intestinal lining and we get lower levels of inflammation in our body.
- [47:11]
B
I want to tell you something now. I, I, I know why you have so many people that follow you because your breakdowns, while you still hit the science on everything, you make it so easy to understand, man. And I just, let me just interject and say I appreciate that because I can get all sciency with you all day, but not everybody will take that in. And I think you're making it so easy to understand. So just let me thank you real quick for that while you're doing it. So a couple things, and I forgot to mention one thing I was going to run by you. So you talked about the fruit not eating it alone. One of my go tos for people is I take a, you know, a bigger tub of full fat yogurt. I do the siggies is the one that I prefer and I put it into like a, a Tupperware, not a plastic one by the way. And then I put two scoops of protein powder in and then I mix my fruit in. So I got the fat, the protein and then the fruit mixed in and then I eat like a serving a day out of it. So what you touched on about not eating the fruit alone, that's like a dessert to me. That's kind of like my morning thing before I gave for a walk you know, you're not eating heavy in the morning, but you're still getting all of that protein and fat. And then that little bit of carb. That's what I found to start my day. And then I am angry at myself for all the years I missed cooking and grass fed butter and utilizing that. And then when you talked about coffee, here's what I do. I want to know your thoughts. I wait about an hour before I make coffee in the morning. Hour, hour and a half. I don't think you should take caffeine and Ellie, but I know you know, Rob and Randy, the happy, healthy guys, are the ones that introduced me to you. And I swear to you, the SCT oil that they gave me changed my life. It's my secret weapon. And in the morning, y, I put that in my coffee with a half a scoop of protein powder. And that's kind of after I go in a morning walk and sit down to work and pre cardio. So I do two of that a day. What do you think about like the SCT versus the MCT side of things? Because not many people have any clue. They just assume MCT is like the craze. Do you have any thoughts on that? On both really? Because I mean the, the least the cla. And I feel like that just gets me, me rocking every morning, even when I maybe not slept as well.
- [49:12]
A
Yeah, for sure. I mean, I'm a big fan of both. I'm a big fan of both SCT oil, short chain triglyceride oil and MCT oil. The difference between sct, MCT and LCT or long chain triglycerides is really how you digest them and what they do, you know, once you do digest them. So the short chain fatty acids actually are powerful information for your mitochondria. We talked about butyric acid, right? Acetic acid is in apple cider vinegar, for example. You know, why is apple cider vinegar so good for your, for your body?
- [49:45]
B
Right.
- [49:45]
A
One of the main reasons is because it actually helps feed the mitochondria and tell the mitochondria to replicate. Right. To create more. Tells your cells to create more mitochondria and to break down old damaged mitochondria. That's actually what apple cider vinegar is doing. Well, short chain fatty acid, short chain triglycerides, like in the SCT oil, you get a lot of butyric acid. Butyric acid is what gut bacteria, healthy gut bacteria will produce when you're eating fiber, for example, Right. But it comes in naturally in butter Right. You have it in butter. So it's like a direct source of that. Basically. That is again another powerful stimulus for the mitochondria. You also have things like, yeah, like the conjugate and linoleic acid. You have fat soluble nutrients in there like vitamin A, vitamin E. So it's a great carrier for all those things and it tastes great. MCT oil turns quickly into ketones in your system. So particularly if you're getting the C8 only. So when it comes to medium chain triglycerides, you have C8, C10, C12. Right. C12 actually acts more like a long chain triglyceride, acts more like a C14, C16. You actually need bile to, to metabolize it and break it down. C8 and C10 are kind of. Your true C6 actually is considered a medium chain triglyceride as well. But it doesn't, you don't digest it as well. C8 and C10 are your best forms of MCTs that turn quickly into ketones. Ketones. When, when ketones are elevated in the bloodstream, they downregulate inflammation in your body. They're actually a, a great energy source for, for brain cells. See, the body actually naturally makes ketones from fat metabolism. So when you're breaking down, when you're go undergoing a fast, for example, your insulin levels drop below a certain threshold and then your body starts using fat for fuel. But it can't get the, the long chain fats, the long chain triglycerides, through the blood brain barrier. So the liver takes those long chain triglycerides and converts them into a smaller chain water soluble molecule we call a ketone. Those ketones get into the blood, into the brain and they're an energy source for the brain. But they're also what we call an epigenetic modulator. So they actually communicate information to the genes. What they do is they downregulate inflammation in the brain. So they turn off something. We have, we have this system in our body and it's designed to protect us from infections, from infections from killing us quickly. And it's called the inflammasome, the inflamma zone. When it gets activated, when there's enough oxidative stress and inflammatory triggers to where it gets activated, it's like this huge alarm in our body that turns up inflammation throughout the entire body or entire regions of the body. Like in the brain, for example. In the brain we call it the neuroinflammasome. And when the neuroinflammazone is elevated, we're gonna have more brain fog, we're gonna have more anxiety, more irritability, more agitation. Blood sugar dysregulation is a key driver for activation of that neuroinflammasome. Ketones basically put the brakes on that neuroinflammazone. So they shut down the inflammation. It's like, it's like scatter. It's like, it's like poor reception for, for a radio station. Right. So it gets it back to where the reception is good. And that helps you feel more calm, more balanced, more creative. Okay. More high performing, which is why a lot of people feel really good. A lot of people are that have been following this sort of lifestyle feel really good when they're in a fasted state. They feel like they can perform at a high level because of the ketone elevation there. So MCTs are kind of a way of, in a sense, getting ketones into your system without fasting, basically. So you can put in some I, I like C8 only ke MCT. And you know, you can put that on your food, you put it in protein shakes, things like that, and will turn immediately your body turns that right into beta hydroxybutyrate, which is the main ketone in our bloodstream. And so we'll get up in there and have that, you know, positive effect of ketones. And when you add it to food, one of the things you notice with MCT or with SCT oil is that you typically just don't have a whole lot of cravings. You feel satiated easier and you feel more mentally clear after your meal. A lot of people will have their energy drop after a meal. They're trying to digest it. Insulin's all over the place. They'll feel more mentally clear and more high performing after their meal. So there's a lot of great benefits to both.
- [54:06]
B
I've started incorporating both as well now and I kind of take a couple pills in the morning of MCT right when I get up and then I shift to the SCT and kind of going back and forth. And I'm telling you, man, like these little changes, it's been miraculous. I, I want to try to get two more things with you here before you go if we can. And we're, we have to. I hope you'll come back for number two because I got a whole nother topic list. Just we didn't even share.
- [54:31]
A
Yeah.
- [54:32]
B
So I want to touch on two things here with you. First, you talked at the beginning about grain free and me and Ben had a Great laugh, because I told him the oatmeal mafia was going to come after him because we dissed oatmeal a little bit. And look, man, I ate oatmeal for like 15 years every single day. And I, Rob and Randy were the first people that told me about it, about how bad it was for you or not ideal. And then, you know, people like Ben, Dave Osprey made his controversial, kind of pushing it, their remarks about peasant food. And I, I don't know, I like that term, but I do get his points, you know, that he was trying to get to. If you actually listen to him. So can you talk? Because, you know, there's a lot of people that get angry when you say not to eat grains or oatmeal especially. And can we just discuss why oatmeal may not be great for you and then also just discuss the, the grain free thing that you were kind of getting into and discussing what you meant by that and, and why.
- [55:33]
A
Yeah, for sure. So grains are, they're. They really don't have a whole lot of nutrients, key nutrients in them, and they're going to increase your blood sugar and your insulin levels. Right. So obviously, if you get organic grains, you have less toxins than if you get conventional grains. And if you get whole grains, they're gonna be less insulogenic or driving up insulin than, you know, a processed white bread. Right. So there's different kind of layers to this. However, they also have a lot of, you know, plant defense chemicals and compounds, lectins and gluten, things like that, that can drive inflammation in the system. And so everybody has a different load, you know, for, in a sense, a different threshold for how much of those things they can handle. But what I found is that they really, they're not essential. They're definitely not an essential part of anybody's diet. Like, you don't need anything like that. Okay. There can be some beneficial compounds. Like, for example, in oatmeal, you actually have certain types of polysaccharides, beta glucan, different fibers that have been shown to actually reduce the amount of micro, microplastics. There's research out that, that actually eating oatmeal reduces microplastics in your system. Right. So there's some beneficial compounds there. It's not the worst food ever, but it's gonna, it's not going to make you metabolically flexible. When you eat oatmeal or you eat grains, your blood sugar is gonna be elevated and your insulin's gonna be elevated for A longer period of time. So it's gonna take longer for you to get into this fat burning stage. Right. This fat burning place. Okay. And we wanna be really good fat burners. And so oatmeal doesn't really allow for that. And so that's why it's really not the, the best food. Much better would be high quality protein, healthy fats, colorful fruits and vegetables. And that's really where we want to go with that. Now. You know, you can get a lot of. Grains are highly sprayed with glyphosate as well. Right. So glyphosate destroys your microbiome and destroys the mitochondria within your system. Obviously, if you're going to do grains, always making sure you go organic. I think for somebody that's metabolically healthy, like I can handle a little bit more grains now than obviously when I had irritable bowel. Right. Grains were a major driver for that. I was eating grains in every meal and it was destroying my gut. Now every now and then I'll have, you know, a little bit of sourdough bread or something along those lines. You know, we make some healthy pizzas at home, you know, once a week. But I would say six days a week, I'm not eating any grains. Right. I never look at grains as like a really good nutrient source.
- [58:00]
B
Right. I, I'm with you. I, I've learned over the years the, the same things that you're discussing. And I really thoroughly agree. And to each their own. And I understand, like I said, that people get upset. I think though, if you actually make the changes and take them out, you see the difference. I'm thankful that I did make those changes, truly. I want to ask you. This is a little bit of a loaded question, I think, but I think you can answer it as well. So if we had to take five foods that were essential in your view, you.
- [58:33]
A
Right.
- [58:33]
B
So I'm gonna give you mine. And, and this is, this is funny because some of these I didn't eat at all until like I said, till I changed my diet. And my number one food I always thought I did not like just based on appearance and everything was avocado. I cannot go a day without it. I literally won't go a day without it. I do about 150 grams of avocado every day. I think that's essential food, number one. Number two, I think are eggs. Number three for me, I would say is like either grass fed beef or I do elk, bison, you know, force of nature or just like the grass fed either 93 or 85. 4 I would say is like a salmon or very healthy fatty fish. I may be eating too much and I want to ask you about that because I do seven days a week and I don't want to over with the mercury and I. That's what your thoughts on that. And five, I'm a little bit on the I'm not sure side. I think like a fruit or a vegetable. I would put it five or maybe just healthy good fruits and vegetables at five essentials. And then there's obviously other things to throw in. But I guess maybe expound on that or what are your maybe five essentials? And am I, am I close?
- [59:40]
A
Yeah, I think you are. I think, I mean I would a pretty similar list. So I would say grass fed beef definitely for me. My body thrives on it. It's so nutrient dense. What a great source of conjugated linoleic acid. One of the best fat fats for stimulating metabolism and your immune system. Great source of zinc. You also have B12 iron. Right. All these critical compounds that are in there. And there's, it's actually when you get it grass fed too, you have a higher amount of things like carnitine and carine. Carine actually protects your muscle tissue from oxidative stress. Most people don't talk about some of these compounds. Carnitine actually helps shuttle fatty acids into the mitochondria to be used for energy. And carine protects your muscle, your muscle cells from glycation, from damage. Right. So if you want to have really strong muscles and you want to be able to recover from workouts like bodybuilders, you definitely want grass fed beef. Grass fed beef has a lot more carnosine than grain fed. Okay. Also what's interesting is that there's studies coming out about different plant adaptogens and different plant antioxidants being found in the animal products of the animals that are consuming them. Them. So grass fed beef actually, believe it or not, has you know, a certain amount of antioxidants, beta carotene in it, has, you know, tertropines which have kind of an adaptogenic quality to them. Like we find high amounts of tertiapines and things like rhodiola and ashwagandha and stuff like that. So when animals are able to eat like a wide range of different greens and grasses, they're actually gonna have higher amounts of, you know, different antioxidant compounds down. So that's really good. I think grass fed beef, I think wild caught, wild caught seafood in general, wild caught salmon I think is wonderful at. Salmon is one of the most amazing species, especially if you get, you know, you want to get a cold, it's a cold water fish, right? I recommend getting like Alaskan salmon. And you think about a salmon, they're able to swim upstream against the rapids and jump like literally 10, 15ft out of the water. That takes an incredible amount of cellular energy production to be able to do that. Now what compounds within the salmon are associated with their ability to buffer oxidative stress and drive so much energy production? Well, it's gonna be a combination of omega 3s along with astaxanthin, which is this powerful antioxidant. It's like 60 times stronger than vitamin C, 600 times stronger actually than vitamin C. It's what gives the salmon their pink color. Okay, so that's what's in it. Now farm raised salmon. The, the reason why the wild caught salmon have astaxanthin is they eat a lot of red algae. And that red algae gives em that has a natural source of that astaxanthin. When you get farm raised salmon, they're eating some whatever, you know, the, the, the feed is that that's being put in the water and farm raised salmon tend to come out grayish and then they'll inject synthetic astaxanthin in to make them pink so you don't get that same benefit. And the, and the, they also are much lower in omega 3 fats. And so you wanna make sure you're getting the wild caught. Like wild caught sockeye salmon is like the highest quality of the salmon, highest amount of astaxanthin in there. So that's what I would go with. When it comes to heavy metals and toxins, obviously you gotta do the best you can at, at avoiding them. But really the problematic foods are the highly insulinogenic processed foods foods. If you're staying away from processed foods and trying to do as organic as possible, you're gonna reduce a, a high amount of your exposure to these things. Okay. And then when you have a good blood sugar stabilizing diet, your body's better at eliminating all the different chemicals that you're being exposed to. So I wouldn't worry too much about heavy metals in, in fish in my opinion. I don't worry about that as long as I'm avoiding as much of the highly processed foods as possible, the seed oils, all of that kind of stuff, and also following an intermittent and fasting lifestyle. So the salmon is really good. I like arugula I'm a big fan of arugula. I can't have arugula, though, without some extra virgin olive oil. Extra virgin, high polyphenol extra virgin olive oil. And there's a difference between different types of extra virgin olive oil. So when you get the typical extra virgin olive oil is fully ripe olives, black olives. Okay. And black olives taste great. I. I enjoy black olives. And they're also a good source of fat, monounsaturated fats, but they're low in polyphenols. The green olives, I actually don't like the flavor as much, and they're lower in fat, but they're really high in polyphenols. Okay. And so the best olive oil, which is almost like a medicinal food, it's like a supplement basically, is your high polyphenol extra virgin olive oil where they're pressing the green olives and it has a bittery type of taste to it. And so when they do that, you're concentrating these polyphenol compounds. Now, the reason why most olive oils are using the black olives is you get more fat per olive. So you have to press a lot more of the green olives in order to get the olive oil as the olive ripens. So the unripe olive is the green. As it ripens, it loses polyphenols, but increases its fat content.
- [64:49]
B
Okay.
- [64:50]
A
So it takes a lot more green olives and therefore the price is higher. Right. For the high polyphenol extra virgin olive oil. But some of those polyphenols, like Ol Canthal, they call it nature's ibuprofen because it's so powerful. It actually regulates the, the COX2 enzyme, that same thing that ibuprofen does. Right. And so it has a really powerful effect at reducing inflammation throughout the body. There's another one called hydroxy tyrosol, which actually gets across the blood brain barrier and downregulates inflammation in the brain. And so high polyphenol extra virgin olive oil is really what you're looking for. It's gonna cost you like, 40 bucks a bottle. Okay? And so just, just remember that it's like a supplement. Think about it as a supplement, right? Get one to two tablespoons a day in with, you know, various foods, and you will get a medicinal effect out of that. It's, it's like literally medicine in a bottle. But you're also getting calories out of it, healthy calories. So that's the way you have to look at it. So I love That I love fruit. I would say the most nutrient dental fruit is going to be pomegranate. Pomegranate is really rich in something called olagic acid as well as anthocyanins. Right. And that olagic acid is what basically Akkermansia, that bacteria I talked about it loves olagic acid, oligic acid we find in any of our astringent fruits. And so most people when they go to fruits they, they want this, the really sweet fruits. But your astringent fruits are your cranberries, your muscadine grapes, your pomegranates. Okay. Raspberries have some astringent qualities to them. They have the oleic acid as well. And that is what your gut, your obligate anaerobic gut bacteria love. And they love to produce urolithin A out of it.
- [66:36]
B
Yeah.
- [66:37]
A
And so there you go. So pomegranate I think is one of the best. The challenge with the pomegranate is so messy, right? We get them and I'll work on it with, you know, I have two boys and a, and two girls, two twin sons that are nine and a half and seven year old daughter and four year old daughter and I'll have the, I'll have the three older ones work on it with me. And we make such a mess out of it. So we have to have time to clean up the mess but man, we love it. We'll put it in Greek yogurt with a strawberry. I put a berry flavored collagen protein in there and mix it in so it's like a pink yogurt. And then we put in the pomegranate it after we've kind of shelled out the, you know, the, the, the fruit and we put that in there. It tastes so good, right? So it's such a good one. So, so anyways, pomegranate I'd include in there and if I was going to add one more it would be eggs, pasture raised eggs. You just have so much nutrient density in there. You've got fat soluble vitamin A retinol in your pasture raised eggs. You've got lutein, you've got phospholipids for your cell membranes. You've got choline, one of the best sources of a choline. And choline is really key for methylation, it's really key for bioflow. So many powerful benefits to choline and eggs are, are really your best source of choline fast phospherine which, which is known to reduce inflammation in the brain as well and support really good brain function that's in eggs. So you have so much good nutrient density in the egg. So. Absolutely. I can't.
- [67:59]
B
Eggs. I don't care. I will never go without eggs. I don't. But I started to do. I was only doing egg whites, and now I do three whole eggs a day and three egg whites. And, man, it's drastically different, too.
- [68:08]
A
The yolk is where all the nutrients are.
- [68:11]
B
That's right. I will never not eat yolks again. It's the best part. My favorite is papaya. But I lived in Hawaii, so, you know, it's like, incredible. But I do the blackberries, raspberries, and blueberries is kind of my rotation.
- [68:24]
A
Yeah. And papaya. Mango. We had mango last night. So again, I. I don't know if I. I mentioned this, but we'll get like a ton of different types of fruit. Yeah. And just have varying amount. You know, like, we'll have a pineapple every two weeks or so. We'll have mango. You know, this week we got mangoes. We did mango last night. Papaya. Those are all really high in enzymes, proteolytic enzymes that break down damaged proteins in your body.
- [68:48]
B
Right.
- [68:48]
A
And they also are great for digestion, for supporting good digestion.
- [68:52]
B
Yes. I do golden kiwi with the skin on once in a while.
- [68:55]
A
Oh, yeah.
- [68:56]
B
Those are. Man, those are incredible.
- [68:58]
A
So that's how I eat my kiwis. I don't. I don't take the skin off. I just. Too much work. Right. And. And to me, it doesn't affect the flavor. And it's just more. It's. It's. It's fiber. If you're. Your body's able to handle that insoluble fiber, it's. There's no issue with it.
- [69:11]
B
We were just out of town because we're.
- [69:13]
A
I.
- [69:13]
B
We're moving to Arizona, like I told you. We were at a VRBO and grabbed some of those at Sprouts. And my wife, I told her, I said, you know what? I'm gonna start eating the skin. And she's just looking at me like.
- [69:23]
A
How could he do it?
- [69:25]
B
I just slammed it, man. It's so good. She has text. She's been in there listing this whole time, and she's supposed to be packing stuff. And she just texted me a question, but she said this was so good. So one more. She. Because she eats rice all the time, and she's asking if it makes any sort of difference if it's part of your culture in terms of the foods that you eat like DNA testing wise. And I'll throw this in, I did one of those DNA tests and they tried to tell me that I would do terrible with fats and needed to go heavy carbs. And I told him, I said, well, that's strange because I'm the polar opposite. Opposite of your, your testing here. Yeah. So does that play a role, you know, in certain things that people can consume and eat?
- [70:03]
A
Yeah, I, I think it does. I think that the best diet is a personalized diet.
- [70:09]
B
Right.
- [70:09]
A
And so I can give some, some general recommendations, you know, like talking about, like, I know that if you eat a certain amount of protein, you're going to get more blood sugar stability, you're going to have less cravings. Right, right. However, I think that there's a level of personalization that everybody needs. And so like if we're looking at a bell curve, right on one side, let's say the far left side, you have the carnivore diet. These are people that do well with basically almost no fiber. Right. And if they're thriving on a carnivore diet, they're kind of this far, far level extreme. And on the other side you have some people that seemingly seem to do well on a plant based vegan diet. Right. And there's a lot of people that follow these diets that don't do well unfortunately either. But if you're doing really, really well on a, like a plant based kind of sort of diet, you're probably on this far right side. Okay. Most of us are somewhere in between. Right. For me, I tend to be, you know, center left basically. Not politically, but you know, in this, in this, on this nutrition paradigm. Right. Where I do better on a high animal food, low plant fiber diet, fairly low. But I do need some, I don't think I would do very well on a carnivore only diet. I need that variation. I, I do really well with some fruit, with some vegetables, like arugula, cucumbers, things like that. And so, but other people might be, you know, center right where they're, they're going to do better with adding in some of those healthier grains like a, like a, you know, a rice or something along those lines where grains can be beneficial are the fiber in them can help pull toxins. Like I was talking about with the oatmeal. The study on the oatmeal helping pull microplastics. Right. So they help to bind with bile to pull toxins out of the system. So for some people, they seem to do really really well with that. Now, a way to, to tell would be, number one is look at your energy levels. Are you noticing big drops in energy throughout the day? That would be a sign that something you're doing is not working, right? Look at your physique, right? You should be lean, okay? Are you building more belly fat? Okay. Are you losing muscle? If, if you are, that something you're doing is, is not working? How about your mental clarity? Is your brain working really well throughout the day? Right? Sleep quality, right? Look at all these things. Your gut health, right? How well are you peeing and poop? You know, how are you pooping, right? On a regular basis? And then also you can look at labs, right? So what are your inflammatory markers? What is your fasting insulin level? So if you're eating rice and you're able to incorporate that and not have cravings throughout the day and actually feel real satiated throughout the day, and you do your fasting insulin, it's under six, right? Tells me that your body's able to tolerate that pretty well. Okay? So that would be the way to, to, to look at it. When you're following a really good blood sugar stabilizing diet, personalized for you, you're really not hungry until you eat. Like, for me, I barely ever get hungry until I start eating, and then my body's like, okay, now I need food, right? I need calories. But throughout the day, like, my body's so good at basically changing from burning sugar to burning fat. Okay? Like, sugar levels are go, going down. Insulin's going down. We switch right into fat burning. Feel really good. Okay, now sugar's available, insulin's elevated. Now I'm gonna burn sugar for fuel. Or if I'm exercising, I'm burning sugar for fuel. Once I finish exercising, insulin's coming down. Cortisol, stress hormones are coming down. Now I'm burning fat for fuel, right? And so it's that if you're really good at switching back and forth, then you're gonna notice your energy just, you just never have the drops in energy and you feel really good. Okay? And so every diet needs to be personalized, and a lot of that has to do with how you feel as you're eating.
- [73:35]
B
Yeah, I agree. I'm really, really in total agreeance there. I'm a very big and always have been. It's custom to the individual. We can give you all the facts in the world, and yes, they probably apply to the majority, but everybody's different. And there's so many factors, like you said, and so I always appreciate when somebody kind of says the same thing or has the same ideology, because I think that so many people are like, well, how do I lose weight? Well, how do I do this? Well, we need to dig, you know, and to. To find that a good nutritionist will personalize for you. But look, I know how gracious you've been with your time. I. I've got a million more questions. I. I do not say this lightly, brother. Like, I've interviewed what, you know, some of the biggest names out there. This has been my favorite, most insightful, to where I literally don't want to let you go interview. I. I say that, and I mean that. That in totality. My wife even texted me that she listened to the whole thing in the other room. And like I said, we're packing to move. I mean, your breakdown, your insight, you deserve. I know you have a huge following, but I think you deserve millions upon millions more. Like I said, I don't throw compliments light. I don't at all. I'm very critical of myself, and I don't think you should butter people up. But, my friend, you are on another level, and I appreciate it. It, man.
- [74:54]
A
Thanks so much, Dylan. That means a lot. And I really enjoyed our conversation today.
- [74:57]
B
Me too. Me too. So I'm gonna link everything in the description for everybody, for all of your things, but could you just kind of tell people, too, the best place to follow you?
- [75:07]
A
Yeah. DrJockers.com is my website. Best articles and infographics on every major health topic, so you can check that out. And my podcast as well. Dr. Jocker's Functional Nutrition Podcast. I'm on YouTube, Instagram, all the. All the major social channels.
- [75:22]
B
Excellent. Well, I hope we can do a part two and probably need a part three with the way that we talk, but I appreciate it, like I said, and I'm looking forward to talking and learning from you in the future. So. All right, everybody, that wraps up another one. And it was, like I said, my favorite episode. And I hope everybody feels the same. So stay tuned for plenty more to come. Dylan Gelli and Dr. David Jockers signing off.