The Joe Rogan Experience - #935 - Robb Wolf

Episode Date: March 23, 2017

Robb Wolf is a former research biochemist, health expert, and author of the New York Times bestselling The Paleo Solution. His new book Wired To Eat is available now.

4, 3, 2, YES! Rob Wolf! What's up buddy? You look great man, you look super healthy. Oh thanks! What are you doing? I know you're doing a lot of jiu-jitsu, but you look like leaner and tauter and... They took the pineal gland out of a small child and then implanted it in me. Is that all you need to do? Pretty much, yeah. Imagine if that was the case, people would run around with like helmets on their kids, keeping people from stealing pineal glands from them.

It's illegal here, yeah. Where'd you go to get it done? I can't really divulge that. Oh, cool, cool, cool. Wherever it was, as long as it wasn't America. Right, right. So you're balls deep in jujitsu these days, man. Trying to, trying to, yeah.

But you could see that in you. You look different. You really do. You look like, I to, yeah. But you could see that in you, like you look different. You really do, you look like, I don't know. You know, when I was on here last time, I was at the end of a pretty big travel cycle, like doing military gigs and stuff like that, and I was pretty beat down. And we've had two kids since I think I was on the podcast, and although that has beat me down, it's beat me down in a different way.

So I've just been at home and I can train, don't travel as much. And so, yeah, everything's been pretty good. I do this gymnastics bodies programming a couple of days a week, a little bit of squatting, a little bit of deadlifting, pretty on point with the food, and then just getting the dog piss beat out of me at JITS like two to four days a week. So, yeah, yeah. What got you into that? Oh, man.

I've always been interested in martial arts. Like as a kid, I had a brown belt in like the Ed Parker Kempo system. Old school. Yeah. Old, old school Elvis Presley style. Yes. And, uh, and, you know, like I knew that, uh, Parker had some connections with like Bruce Lee and JKD and I was really always really interested in that. So I went down to long beach, California and ended up tracking down some folks at the Inosato Academy and went and sparred with a kid that had been doing Thai boxing for like six months. And he was 60 pounds lighter than I was, not particularly athletic, and he beat the crap out of me. I mean, it was just like a man fighting

a boy, only I was bigger and stronger and faster, and he just destroyed me. So I went back home and I burned my brown belt and I started studying some Thai boxing. And it wasn't long after this that I encountered Brazilian jujitsu for the first time. And I had a little bit of a high school wrestling background and I was a state California state powerlifting champion. So it was a strong athletic kid. And again, like this guy like submitted me 50 times in like two minutes and I was just kind of blown away. But this was back in like 92. And unless you were in a major metropolitan area, you just couldn't find jujitsu. So I did a couple of weeks of it then, you know, around like 92, 93. And I didn't have a second

jujitsu session until like 2003. And again, it was like a month or something because at that point, the folks that were usually running these schools, like they could barely keep them open. They were at like nine o'clock in the back of a karate school or something. So it's only been the past couple of years that I've been able to be pretty consistent. So you just found a great gym out where you were at. Yeah.

Yeah. I've kind of bounced around a little bit. Kelly Farrell at Conviction Martial Arts and then also the Gorilla Jiu Jitsu affiliate there in Reno and then I get out to Elko to the guys that Straight Blast Gym

in Elko under Chris Meyer every once in a while so are you out in the Reno area yeah dude I didn't know what Reno was like

I went to Reno this past August and went maybe I'd passed through once when I was younger right but we went through Reno into the mountains

in Nevada. It's fucking beautiful. It is. It is. Yeah, it's four seasons. The summer's great. Winter was really cool this year. Good snowboarding and all that.

And it looks like Colorado up there. Yeah. You think Nevada. You think desert. You think barren landscape. Not very pretty. Or pretty in sort of a, hey, you better bring water sort of a way. It wasn't like that at all.

It was gorgeous. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of funny when people, you know, like if I'm being interviewed or something like, you live in Reno, really? Is that part of a parole violation or something? No, we really like it. Yeah, totally.

Yeah. The thing that is sad, though, is the casinos in Reno. They're weird. It's a really weird mix because you have like Tesla and all these tech companies that have moved into town and it's really got this new vibe going on. Yeah, like the big Tesla mega plant is out there kind of

east of town. So you've got this kind of technology scene. There's a whole startup row in downtown Reno and then you have the casinos and that whole underbelly element to it. And so these two things are like literally, you know, you change corners downtown and you're in either the like super depressing, you know, like failed at the casino deal. Or you go around the corner and there's a bunch of guys with the technology startup. Do you think the technology startups will overwhelm the shitty casinos?

It's still, you know, like tech in general, and this is maybe getting off in the weeds, but there's so much stuff that's just been built on speculation and eyeballs and nothing real that I'm still curious if like tech in general is going to make it. What? Yeah. How so? In what way? You know, there was so much speculative money that went into that scene,

and there's only a few entities like Facebook and Google and stuff that have really turned it into a money-making venture. And a lot of these technology startups, there was a lot of money going into them, but it was just kind of predicated on growth or eyeballs. But they never really had a strategy towards profitability. And so I'm just kind of curious how many of these things are really going to, going to make the cut, but it could be really good to like, if we, if that stuff tightens up, and people really start looking at it like a legitimate business and not just eyeballs and bandwidth. So it'll be interesting. Yeah, I've always thought that was weird about Twitter, that Twitter has so many users and has so much, there's so much activity. There's something going on there, right?

But then they have to figure out how do you generate money from that? Right. Right. Yeah. And then it's worth a lot of money. It's worth a lot of money, but for no reason. Right.

It's like, God, everybody's using it. Yeah. But what do you do with it? Right. No, but I feel like someone's going to figure it out.

But I felt like that two years ago. Right. You know? Yeah. How do they stay open? I have no idea. I have no idea. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I keep hearing that I'm on a

shadow band list. Have you heard of that? I don't believe it. I think it's horseshit. You did have Jordan Peterson on, so that probably got you on some sort of a short list really quickly. I've had a bunch of people on. Gavin McGinnis is more egregious, probably, and more ridiculous, and Stephen Crowder.

Alex Jones is the biggest one, for sure. Right. Did you see what the list means? What it means to be on that list? No, not exactly. You just get your tweets reviewed by a person before they make it out to your feed or something. Get out of here, really? Is that real? That's what it said. I don't know if it's real, but that's what it said.

Well, most of my tweets make it out there. And the ones that don't, thank you. Thank you for cutting those off. Some kind of oversight. Yeah, if I'm hammered at the comedy store at 2 o'clock in the morning, I want to rile some people up for no reason, yeah, thank you. Thanks for protecting me from myself. I'm kidding.

I'm not in any way advocating censorship. And I'm not necessarily sure I believe it either. Sorry about that deviation. Not at all. Not at all. Yeah. So I've been following your Instagram feed, and you and your wife have been doing some crazy blood sugar tests after foods, post-carb meals like beans and a bunch of other different high-carb foods. What are you trying to do there? Are you on a keto diet diet or what are you doing?

I generally run really well keto or pretty close to it. Fueling jujitsu is a little rough with that, so I maybe do about 75 to 100 grams of carbs on harder training days. And then other days it's pretty low carb. My wife, though, is kind of like Wolverine. Like you just can't kill her. And this is some of the stuff that I've learned in the past couple of years, this personalized nutrition, where there's a huge

variation from person to person and how they respond to carbohydrates, foods in general, but in particular carbohydrates. There was a study done at the Weizmann Institute in Israel a couple of years ago, and they basically put a continuous glucometer on folks. It's a little disc that you pop on the back of your arm. They did a full genetic screen on them, a gut microbiome test, and then they started feeding these folks different meals. And the blood glucose responses were all over the place. Like one person would eat rice and they would have a barely perceptible blood glucose increase. Another person would be near diabetic from eating that rice.

And do they believe this is a genetic variability? Is it location? Both. Genetics and gut microbiome seem to drive it. And so if the gut is unhealthy, then that seems to make your blood sugar response worse. And then conversely, if you eat in a way that makes your blood glucose response look pretty good, then the gut microbiome seems to shift towards what they consider to be a healthier profile. Huh.

So now, is there anything you can do to your gut biome to change the glucose profile? Yes, but exactly what to do is pretty complex. Like, you know, some people can have a condition called small intestinal bacterial overgrowth where the bacteria are basically growing too far north in the gut essentially and then whenever you eat something with carbs in it it makes those bacteria grow in an inappropriate place and inappropriate way and it's kind of difficult to basically starve the bacteria in the foregut and then feed the bacteria in the hindgut and there are some some yeah chris kresser on like he's one of the the bacteria in the hindgut. And there are some, yeah, Chris Cressor on, like he's one of the best people in the world probably

in dealing with stuff like that. But it's, I'll put it like this. In the last five years, we've learned more about the gut microbiome than we knew in the previous 50 years. And like literally every month that goes by, we learn more and more and more. But the clinical application of doing something

to help somebody that's sick is not easy. It's a pretty complex process. A lot of people will experience a lot of improvement from just kind of a low carb diet, but it doesn't work for everybody. Like they may, a lot of people may need like some herbal interventions like garlic and different antimicrobial agents that help to knock that bacterial overgrowth back. And it's a pretty challenging process, particularly if the person is really sick. Does fasting have any effect on it? It can. It can. And just like reduced meal frequency seems to improve the gut microbiome and the overall gut health.

So this is some of the stuff that I think is going on with intermittent fasting, where instead of eating like six or seven meals a day and just constantly kind of keeping the gut inflamed, instead doing maybe one or two meals a day, pretty broad spacing seems to have some great benefits for folks. I've been doing that thing where you only eat for 10 hours a day. Yeah. Yeah. I did a podcast with Dr. Rhonda Patrick and she was explaining it to me and I said, let me give it a try. And I've had some really great results. I lost a lot of body fat, like almost immediately I started losing body fat from it, but didn't lose any energy and don't, I feel great. I mean, everything feels really good, but, uh, it's been, it's challenging because

I would come home from shows like late at night and I'd be hungry and all I'm supposed to be drinking is water. Like, you're not even supposed to have anything that your body has to metabolize. Right. Yeah. Even coffee will kind of cause a little bit of a adrenal response. The liver kicks out some glucose and then it basically presses the reset button. What about herbal tea? I would think that that would probably be okay. But I mean, the folks that really know a lot about it, like Rhonda Patrick, Walter Longo, they're really pretty adamant that in that fasting period, you're doing nothing but water. Yeah. Water is delicious

when you're thirsty. And not so good every other time. You're like, ah, it's boring-ass water. That's why I grabbed one of these guys. Those are great. Those Zevia's. Zevia, for people who don't know, is not a sponsor. It's just we drink it, and it's Stevia-flavored soda, so it's really like a guilt-free soda. Right. Which is crazy. Like soda that's sweetened with

plants. Right. And not sweetened in a way that affects your blood glucose level at all. Stevia can reduce blood glucose. So in some people, because of the sweet taste, they actually release insulin in response to that. Really? Can you grab a couple of those, James? And then... I'm getting thirsty. But the downside is that if you have somebody that has kind of an insulin roller coaster, it can actually make that problem worse. So the Stevia is super good.

I think it's a lot better than most artificial sweeteners, but there are folks that can kind of get themselves into a bad spot with it. That's interesting. I did not know. So is there like a recommended daily allowance of Stevia? No, again, this is just a really individualistic thing, you know, and it's something that, like if somebody is a health coach

or a doctor or healthcare provider and they see somebody that's struggling with something and then they're like, okay, so how are you eating? They're like, oh, I'm kind of eating low carb. Okay, so are you doing any artificial sweeteners or, you know, what have you? And if they're doing something like this, then it could be something that is kind of kicking them out of the, you know, the insulin regulation that would work better for them. Now, what do you think about colonics? Is that in any way related?

No. colonics related no no but because I feel like it was a thing for a while yeah a lot of people were talking about cleaning out their intestinal tract and you know you just got to get water up there flush everything out and they people would like literally watch the tube and go oh I know what you're eating and I'm like what it always seemed odd to me. Very. That seems like generally an exit only kind of process. And so, yeah. Unless you're trying to do certain drugs. Right.

Certain drugs apparently are best when you stick them up your butt. There's a girl named Neuro Soup. I don't know if she's on YouTube anymore, but she had this whole detailed story about a DMT trip that she did where she took DMT up her butt and went on like some five hour journey into the netherworld because it goes directly in your bloodstream from there. Right. Yeah. It's that base.

And so you've got a non-acidic deal. You did it like with your hand, that base. Kind of an asshole we're talking about that you're making that hand signal. But I always wondered if it was good for you. I'm like, I just feel like you should leave that area alone. Flooding water up there just doesn't seem like the smartest move. Yeah, it seems like just skipping a meal here and there and just

kind of letting it do its natural business seems like a pretty good thing. The people that I encountered that did colonics, they seemed to be on kind of a merry-go-round with it, and they also were into some other really squirrely stuff. Like healing. Yeah.

Psychic healers. Psychic healing and chakras. And it just seemed like they were always moving towards something and never really getting there. And so it just seemed odd. Like there was never like a resolution to the situation. And I kind of like having some end points and then move on and do something else. Well, I always get very curious of something or very sort of, I guess skeptical is the right word, but of something that doesn't have any research behind it.

Right. So that's why I wanted to know, like how much research is there behind colonics? I never hear about any. I've never dug into it. So I honestly don't know. I do know that there have been some studies looking at the gut microbiome like when they do a colonoscopy. So they'll kind of flush you out,

and they'll give you some stuff to move everything out. And there is some research that suggests that's not great for the lower gut microbiome, that there's actually some pathological changes from that. So going in and getting a colonoscopy and all of the like strafe bombing that they do to move everything out may not be that great. That's a great way to put it. Yeah. Strafe bombing.

I'm thinking about fighter planes. Totally. Agent Orange. Well, I know that people that have antibiotics, that like people that are battling staph infection have a horrendous time sort of reconstructing their gut biome. Right. And Rhonda Patrick detailed that on one of the podcasts that we did. She had a tremendous staph infection and it wouldn't go away.

And she actually wound up... One of the things that really helped it was the topical application of garlic. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which is really interesting. Yeah. Garlic, oregano.

There's a lot of these traditional. Oregano oil, right? Yeah, oregano oil. And like the oregano oil and the garlic are really potent in general. They kind of spare the healthy bacteria or what we would call the more beneficial bacteria. But even that's not a universal story. Like it can suppress some of the more beneficial bacteria in some situations. So again, this is where if you think you've got something going on, it's probably smart to work with somebody that knows a little bit about what they're doing so that you've got a protocol,

you can test it, see what the results are, and then we can make some decisions based off that. Because you could really, you know, if you're already in a compromised state, and then you throw something like that in, you can end up worse. Now, for people that are listening, who would someone go to? Like, say, if you really wanted to get your gut biome checked out? I mean, someone like Chris Kresser. There's a gal in Austin, Amy Myers. There's a Dr. Ruscio up in the Bay Area. Chris Kresser also has the Kresser Institute where he's certifying health care practitioners. These are the folks that you want to check out. Also, the Institute of Functional Medicine is a really good place.

Most of the doctors and health care providers that go through that functional medicine training are really well versed in looking at the this whole gut microbiome story. But interestingly, they kind of pull it back and they've got this kind of evolutionary biology picture that they look at. So they're thinking about sleep and your food and stress levels, social connectivity, and they really put all that stuff together in a pretty good way. And they're not chasing symptoms are really trying to figure out root cause and then try to address that root cause and move forward. And they're pretty they at figuring out, like, you've got 18 things going on. Which is the one thing we need to address first? And then we'll knock that out and go to the next one and the next one.

And now when they start applying, say, like probiotics, are all probiotics created equal in terms of, like, foods? Not in terms of, like, supplementation because I know there's there's some like really intense probiotic supplements that you can buy that you have to keep refrigerated. Right. Now, I mean, again, there's huge variability in that. You have some people that when they add probiotics, like just like kimchi or sauerkraut, they improve immediately. Like their clinical symptoms improve. They feel better. Maybe depressive symptoms improve, they get leaner. And then you have other people that

everything they have going on gets worse. And these are the folks that you start wondering if they have some small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. Do they have some reactivity to these things called FODMAPs, which are fermentable carbohydrates that can, you know, make the gut microbiome kind of freak out. And there's another layer to this, which is called small intestinal fungal overgrowth. So there are people out there that have some sort of a persistent fungal infection, which doesn't get picked up on the general gut microbiome screening because they're looking at bacteria, not fungus. So this is a whole other layer to the story that people may have had a years-long, decades-long fungal infection in the gut that is then disordering everything, causing inflammation. And those are really, really

difficult to deal with. What does one do when they have a fungal overgrowth? You can do some of the antifungals like diflucan and again, some of the herbal preparations. But this is another layer, you know, kind of peeling the onion that there aren't that many practitioners that are even looking for that as an option. And then the treatment protocols are not super well vetted out. So there's a lot of experimentation that happens there. Do they know what, is there a dietary cause? I mean, there's always an influence on the diet, but, you know, you could, you know, refined carbohydrates makes all the stuff grow better and it disrupts the normal gut flora. It causes inflammation.

But, you know, oftentimes people will go on a round of antibiotics. The bacterial population gets pushed down and then the fungal population, which is always there, but usually it's in some sort of a symbiotic balance with the other microbes, then the fungal infection or fungal population can increase. And this is where some people will go on a round of antibiotics and then they end up with some sort of a legitimate fungal infection, you know, like they can see it on their skin and the doctor will prescribe some antifungals for that. But you can also have this happen in kind of a low-grade subacute level where it's not bad enough where they're getting rashes and hives, but it's bad enough that it's making them sick and not kind of optimized. Wow. It's just so hard to figure out what's going on with you unless you, I mean, it seems like for

the average person that has a full-time job and family and all that jazz, it's probably incredibly difficult to get to the bottom of what your health issue is. It definitely can be. The average time for diagnosis of an autoimmune condition or something like celiac disease is like 12 to 15 years. So people are suffering. They're suffering for a long time and it's not the easiest thing in the world to pin down because the symptoms are so variable from person to person. Now, if you go to a good doc, particularly someone, again, kind of functional medicine training, or they've got a little bit of this evolutionary biology perspective, they usually ask a set of questions and more questions so that they can kind of narrow down what's going on. narrow down what's going on. But if you're kind of doing the dock in the box deal and you've got five minutes with this person, like they're just trying to figure out what's the script I'm going to write so I can move this person out and get to the next person. Yeah, that's unfortunate.

And you're just not going to, unless you get lucky, you're not going to figure out what the issue is. Yeah, it would seem that the amount of time required to figure out what's wrong with the person would also be very expensive and likely not covered by a whole lot of health care plans. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting. Like some of these functional medicine docs do a lot with pretty little, you know, but some of what they're doing is a time investment. Like they'll do a two hour history and if they can get the information, they'll ask, so, you know, what was your in utero environment like? Like, did your mom eat well? Did they smoke when you were born? Was it a vaginal birth or C-section? Were you breastfed or not? When was your the approximate age of your first round of antibiotics? Did you ever go on

tetracycline for extended period of time for acne? And so they'll build a really comprehensive early life history and then try to march this thing forward. And they'll ask you questions like, did you ever travel out of country? Did you get some sort of a gut bug while doing that? So there are some really important pieces, but a well-trained practitioner will rely a lot on the intake. And then that will kind of inform where they go with the testing. And so the testing might be a little bit expensive, but you're not just casting around blindly, like because of that

really thorough intake, and kind of understanding the early life history and trying to ferret out if there's ever been like a big event that could be linked back to this health crisis, then they can really dial in the testing. Then depending on what they get from that, they can make a treatment protocol, try the treatment protocol. If we have success, then good to go. If not, then we start modifying from there. When you say eating foods out of the country and catching some sort of a bacterial infection,

that is one of the scariest things in the world to me because I've watched that stupid show too many times. Oh, right. What is it, The Enemy Within or something like that? Yeah. in the world to me because i've watched that stupid show too many times right what is it the enemy within or something like that yeah it's hard to to think of your body as being like not just an organism but a whole ecosystem right right and and stuff can come in and take up residence and you didn't really want it yeah i've had giardia twice oh really and it's um it's bad it's bad how'd you get that uh the first time I was snorkeling in Mexico. Oh, Jesus.

And so everybody in the main snorkeling group was kind of out in the saltwater. And then there was nobody over in this other area. And so I was like, I'll swim over here. But apparently, and there was a, it was an estuary. Like there was a saltwater freshwater interface. And so I started swimming in the freshwater. And then they were like, yeah, you're really not supposed to swim in there because it's water out of a cenote.

And like sometimes people take it down. What's a cenote? The underground kind of freshwater springs that come out of the limestone there in the Yucatan. I interrupted you when you were saying people take a dump in that water. Take a dump in the water, yeah. Oh, boy. Yeah.

Yeah. I know you get Giardia from beaver poop. That is another place. Yeah. And I don't know that there are beaver poop. That is another place. Yeah. And I don't know that there are beaver in the Yucatan, but there are some other carriers. We were in Prince of Wales Island once, about a year and a half ago, two years ago. And it's really high up and it's above the line where beavers are. And so you could take a water bottle and dip it into a lake and just drink it out of the lake. And you feel, it's so dangerous feeling.

Right. But they assured us. They're like, you could absolutely drink right out of that lake. Oh, man. That just gives me a little gut rumblings even thinking about it. Yeah. We had a float plane land on that very lake. And I'm like, what are those things leaking in the lake?

I'm drinking diesel water. And they're like, there's millions of gallons of water in this lake. Like, whatever it is, it's not going to affect you. I'm like, it says you. What if I scoop it right where the thing dropped off its diesel fuel I don't know But it just seems weird that you can do that and then it seems even weirder when you think about the fact that you can't Do that everywhere right like that most even though we're a giant percentage of us is water Really can't drink most water right my professor Lauren Cord, the guy who kind of founded this paleo diet concept, he used to be a lifeguard at Lake Tahoe, you know, 30 years ago, 35 years ago.

And they would jump off the pier, dive down where it was super deep, really cold, open up their water bottle, fill it up, swim back up, drink it. And you can't do it now because the lake has giardia in it and a bunch of other weird things. What happened? Well, for him, nothing. No, but what now because the lake has Giardia in it and a bunch of other weird things. What happened? Well, for him, nothing. No, but what happened to the lake? More people moving in and just, you know, it's just kind of a volume of poo input at some point kind of overwhelms the natural system. We suck. We fucking ruin everything.

Goddamn people. Yeah. I mean, most indigenous cultures were savvy to the idea that you didn't take a dump in your own water system. So, yeah. Well, they knew about parasites for sure. I mean, that was always a whole idea about not eating pigs. All the religious, excuse me, all the religious rules about not eating pigs was the big part

of it was because pigs eat almost everything. They eat everything that's on the ground and they would eat something that has trichinosis in it. And people would get really, really sick from eating pigs, so they sort of determined that pigs were evil. Right. And shellfish, similar. Yes.

A good friend of mine, John Durant, did a book called The Paleo Manifesto, and he actually has a really interesting background, has kind of a pretty deep kind of religious studies background, and he would talk about some of these food prohibitions in different religions and then what we know about it today. And so things like shellfish, every once in a while we get something like red tide or, you know, the diatom, you know, overgrowth. And these filter feeders would pull all this stuff in and then get loaded up with a toxin, and it would kill you if you ate it. And so these food prohibitions really add some pretty good wisdom to them in general. But then there's also some super goofy things. But it's pretty common across all cultures.

Like people would, you know, kind of build into their systems these prohibitions against different foods. And oftentimes because of this kind of bacterial or parasitic deal. I wonder what, like, the kosher ones for, like, milk and meat together. Like, you can't have milk and meat together. I wonder what that's about. I would have to ask him about that. I've never heard anything about that.

And then it's interesting, in Islam, then there's not that prohibition. And I don't know if that was just kind of like a fuck you to the judeo-christian deal yeah now what about eating fats with complex carbohydrates or fats with sugars does that affect your your glucose levels like and how it's absorbed by the body yes but again like from person to person it really varies a lot so for for some people, you know, if you did something like a white potato and you're going to have a certain blood glucose response from it and you put a good whack of butter, olive oil or something in it for one group of people, it would actually reduce and spread out the total glucose load. So your blood sugar wouldn't go as high. Your total insulin load would be lesser as a consequence. And then there are other groups of folks that they will see an increase in blood glucose response and a really pronounced increase in insulin response. And is the amount of fats that are in like the olive oil and the butter that's in the potato, is it uniform? Are they

measuring it very carefully? The studies that have been done, they're quite uniform. Yeah, like they get in and do a pretty good job. So they're, you know, person eats X amount of carbohydrate, they add X amount of fat, they're kind of standardized for body weight, so that you're diluting the glucose about the same amount from person to person. And so the best understanding that I've seen out of this is just that there's a pretty good variability from person to person as to how they're going to respond to that. So it's not always a case where adding fat to a decently dense carbohydrate source is going to buy you anything. For some people, it is an improvement. And for other people, it's actually more of a problem.

So you'd almost have to do like the kind of experience, the experiments that you're doing with your wife, where you take the blood levels post. What are you doing? What time periods are you doing? So you do, for the recommendation, it's called the seven-day carb test, you do 50 grams of carbs, and that's the net carbs. So all the fiber is subtracted out. And so if you're doing something like black beans, it's a huge pile of beans because they have a lot of protein and fiber.

So those things are hard to do. Something like white rice or gluten-free bread or something would be a lot easier to do. But you consume that, you set your timer for when you're done with the meal, two hours later, you check your blood glucose. And for my methods, I'd like to see that two-hour mark probably under 150 milligrams per deciliter for folks, which is pretty conservative. But when we look at, again, some pre-agricultural people, they tend to have some really, really nice blood glucose responses. And again, from this Weitzman paper, what we saw from that is if people control their blood glucose effectively over time, their inflammation drops, their gut microbiome improves.

And so you could have two people that have a very different response to say like rice or potatoes or something. And one person like my wife, it's kind of crazy, like she can just crush this stuff. And she does great. And interestingly, she can eat a ketogenic diet and do great. Like she just kind of she can switch whatever fuel she wants to eat, and she does fine with that. But if we keep that gut microbiome or the blood glucose response pretty consistently good, then even someone like me that kind of like pulled the genetic short card in the lottery, like I don't know exactly what is wrong with me, but I don't handle carbs that well. If I eat in a way that my blood glucose response looks like my wife, then my blood lipids look good.

My gut is healthier, like everything else pulls into a good spot. So even if you're not, you know, from that genetically talented side of things, if you can make your blood glucose response look like that genetically talented person, then you should get most of the metabolic benefits. You don't have as much latitude in your day-to-day eating, but I mean, you know, not everybody can flat foot dunk a basketball or something. So you just have to take what you get. Yeah. That's interesting. So you just have to kind of figure out what it is that your body requires. And the main goal is staying inside these parameters. Right, right. And, you know, it's, it's a tough thing for someone like me who's, you know, like I love the paleo diet. I love that basic concept. And I don't, in general, if you throw out the following, you say most people

should eat whole unprocessed foods, not a lot of contention there, like, you know, but when you get a little bit granular with that whole unprocessed foods could be beans. It could be potatoes, could be sweet potatoes. And for me, it's interesting, like lentils, I do great with, I can do a lot of lentils, do a decent amount of carbohydrate from lentils. My blood glucose response is great. If I do rice, white potatoes, sweet potatoes are better. But you know, the rice and white potatoes, like I look like a diabetic after eating that stuff. So, you know, even though that general recommendation of eat whole unprocessed foods is generally spot on, there's still a lot of details and granularity in that. You know, you could be following a whole food diet.

And for you, because of your genetics or the epigenetics, like your gut or maybe taking antibiotics in the past, you still may need to be really, you know, careful about the amounts and types of carbohydrates that you eat. That's crazy. Taking antibiotics in the past can affect you that far into the future. How much of an effect time-wise? Well, so there's two levels to this, in my opinion. The one level is the gut microbiome. There's another level to it. Certain antibiotics, the way that they work, they interrupt the transcription and activity of the ribosomes in bacteria. But our mitochondria are effectively a bacteria, like they have bacterial DNA and

ribosomes. And even though in general, like mainstream medicine says that antibiotics don't affect mitochondrial function, there's some pretty good papers that suggest that antibiotics can disrupt and damage mitochondrial function. And when your mitochondria get sick, you die. Like this is so much of what Rhonda Patrick talks about with, you know, the benefits of fasting and having really good micronutrient density and whatnot. And, you know, Tim Ferriss pinged me a question about why has Lyme disease gotten so much worse for people? You know, used to it was kind of like catching a cold. You know, he lived in upstate New York. Everybody seemed to get it.

It wasn't something that would cripple people over the long haul. And now you're seeing a lot of long-term problems. But my question was, is it really the Lyme disease or is it the damage to the mitochondria from being on antibiotics long term? Because the Lyme disease requires a really long treatment protocol with antibiotics. That's fascinating. But isn't it even worse for people that go misdiagnosed? And so they don't get on the antibiotics for a long time and the Lyme disease gets deep, deep, deep into their system. Yeah. Honestly, I don't know much on that side. I've been looking so much at this kind of mitochondrial dysfunction side. I can't really comment much on like the long-term untreated Lyme disease.

Yeah. Lyme disease is a scary thing because there's so many ticks that have it now. I mean, I was talking to some people this weekend and they were like, yeah, my mom's got it. My dad's got it. I got it. How many goddamn people are getting lit up by these ticks and catching this little freaky disease? And where was it 20, 30 years ago? You know, it's funny.

NPR just had a piece on this. And it was some of the modern farming practices has killed off the predators that would normally knock the tick population down. Like what? I forget. You know, I literally just kind of scanned it. down. Like what? I forget, you know, I literally just kind of scanned it, but somebody that commented on there like, oh yeah, this is why we have free range chickens on our property to basically keep the tick population down. But part of what is suppressing that is that the free range chickens are eating mice and stuff. So the mice are a vector that allows the ticks to grow and

populate. So the, you know, I just scanned this thing, but it was, it was interesting, and populate. So the, you know, I just scanned this thing, but it was, it was interesting, but it was suggesting that the kind of monocropping process of what we've done with modern agriculture has created this gap where we now have pests like mammalian pests, like mice and moles that are a vector for the ticks. And so they've just got more surface area, more, more real estate that they can live on, and so their population has grown. That's a really important factor for people that don't like coyotes. There's a lot of people that are very angry that coyotes, coyote ate my dog. I understand, and it is terrible.

However, the coyote also eats every rat that you can find, and that's one of the reasons why rats aren't everywhere. And if you go to New York City, you see very few coyotes and a fuckload of rats. And what would you rather have? I think I'd rather have a few coyotes every now and then, an occasional lost cat, than a fucking black plague running through your neighborhood in the suburbs. It's true. But they have eaten three of my cats in Reno, so I do smoke a coyote every once in a while. Do you? How do you get them?

Archery or with a suppressed rifle. Oh, wow. Do you know that when you kill coyotes, you actually increase the population? No. Yeah. It's really counterintuitive. It's like Hydra. You cut its head off. Yeah, I know.

It's the reason why there's coyotes in every single state. And we have a podcast coming up with a guy named Dan Flores who wrote a book called Coyote America that I read. It's fucking amazing. But coyotes, when they yell out what they're doing, like all that stuff, is they're doing roll call. And they all chime in. And when one is missing, it triggers a response in the female to produce more cubs. So in healthy conditions, when they're not being pressured,

the female will produce like three or four cubs interesting so in healthy conditions when they're not being pressured the female will produce like three or four cubs okay when they're being pressured they'll produce like a dozen or more it's crazy like and they spread out too they'll change their their area humans will be long gone and coyotes and cockroaches will still be here they will inherit the earth yeah well it's also amazing how many native american myths and stories evolved about the coyote. Right. And about how the coyote was this sort of god that was kind of watching over everything and was responsible for creation and a lot of other things. Right. It's really weird.

Yeah. It's a freaky smart little animal. They are. And it is a wolf, too, by the way. Yeah. So I had read some stuff about the coy wolf where the uh wolf populations have been really pushed back and so they started cross breeding with coyotes and so now where coyotes were maybe about like 25 30 pounds now they'll be 70 or 80 pounds and they hunt in packs and so they've got these

characteristics of wolves and coyotes and there's quite a few of them but one of the things that's important is that coyotes when a coyote and a wolf breed they're basically the same animal so even though there's variations in the way they behave particularly in that coyotes, when a coyote and a wolf breed, they're basically the same animal. So even though there's variations in the way they behave, particularly in that coyotes can hunt alone and they can hunt in packs, whereas wolves almost exclusively hunt in packs. Right. They share DNA. So when they have babies, they're viable. Right.

So it's not like a hybrid. Right. They're basically the same animal. Yeah. It's really weird. Yeah. They're everywhere. Apparently they're having a real issue with them in New York City.

They have them in Central Park. They have them in Queens. Yeah. The urban areas are some of the most vibrant locations for these coyotes. Yeah. I mean, they just crush the pet population. If you let your pets out at night, it's Russian roulette with that. It is. Even in the day, man. I at night, it's Russian roulette with that. It is.

Even in the day, man. I have chickens, and one of my chickens got stolen by a coyote, and I watched him hop the fence within his mouth, and I was like, wow. It turned out her mouth. It turned out she was a female, and she had cubs. Oh, wow. Yeah, and I was trying to figure out what to do. I just kind of let it alone.

I was going to kill her. I was going to figure out a way to kill her. But then I thought, well, if I kill her, then the... I don't want the babies to grow up and kill my chickens more, but then the other thing is I don't want to stop a mother from feeding her babies.

I felt like I fucked up. I didn't secure the yard enough. It was my fault. There's a game being played and the game is stay alive and the chickens are playing a way easier version of stay alive than the coyote is. So I felt like I had to give her that point. Right. All right, you got that one.

It's on the board. Don't eat my fucking dog. I'll kill you all. Right. That's where it crosses the line. Like my appreciation and love for my chickens is a one thousandth of my cat. You know what I mean? Right. It's just different yeah well my wife um

convinced me to get a rhodesian ridgeback oh those are a dog and he's a great dog he's about 105 pounds and like two percent body fat and i wouldn't want him getting mixed up in a pack of coyotes but i i think he could probably hold his own for a good bit if if something went down coyotes are sneaky though yeah one of them will come out and and they'll, like, taunt them. Right. And then they'll chase them, and then the other ones will ambush them. Right. Or, like, if the female coyote is fertile at that point, and they're pumping out the

pheromones, and it'll lure the dog away, and they're like, yeah, you didn't get any action, and we're going to eat you. There's a great story that this guy told me who worked at my pet food store. And he also works as a nurse in a veterinary office. And they brought this pit bull. And it was one of those freak pit bulls that people breed and get it to like 120 pounds. Right. Have you ever seen those?

There's a company called Land of the Giants. I think they're in Massachusetts. And they make these pit bulls that look like bodybuilders. Right. They don't even look real. Anyway, this guy had a pit bull like that, and they brought it into the vet's office, and it was just covered in massive cuts. It required something in the range of 1,000-plus stitches.

Wow. All over its body. And they're like, what happened? He goes, I don't know. The dog got out of the yard, and he's just covered in cuts. Chewed up. They figured maybe it was a dog fight or something. They didn't know.

And he's just covered in cuts. They figured maybe it was a dog fight or something. They didn't know. But there was just a trail of blood that led from his house up into the hills where he found nine dead coyotes. Holy smokes. Yeah. So they just laid a trap for him. And he just fucked them all up. Like, what a huge mistake.

You brought this freak, this Brock Lesnar pit bull into our midst, and he just mauled them all. And the whole family is gone now. Everyone's dead. He killed them all. He tore them apart. And apparently they just kept fighting. I don't know what happened, but he said it was spread out. The carnage was spread out over several yards.

But this pit bull just went to town. Pit bulls are, I mean, they're just amazing animals. I mean, they are incredibly strong. That jaw power is just off the hook. They're really smart. So, yeah, that would be a handful, especially if it's like 130 pounds and jacked. They say that the thing about the pit bull is that it's not worried about dying the way a coyote is. Like coyotes, because no one's feeding them way a coyote is like coyotes because no

one's feeding them their whole thing is like stay alive survive you know attack and kill something but don't fight to the death right whereas a pit bull is essentially bred to fight to the death right and the the ones that didn't they were removed from the breeding population like this the horrible truth of pit bull fighting is um like that michael vick story where the ones that would quit or the ones that would turn that wouldn't wouldn't engage in the fight they would kill them and right and torture them it's horrible horrible horrible stuff but because of that really nasty cruel vicious way of approaching the dog breeding what they get is this bloodline of ferocious warriors that I just have no fear of death and

When you get one that's 120 pounds like that like fuck man, right, right? What a giant mistake. I Don't know if it's 120 pounds. I might be making that number up. It's huge huge pitbull I mean they're supposed to run like 60 pounds. I think at the upper end So when you start doubling that that's a lot of real fighter ones are 35 pounds Okay, when they fight them they're small right like when people have this idea of a pit bull in their eyes they have this idea of a guard dog but it's not really the ones that they fight they're really not that big right their physical their muscles aren't that big because really it's all about having the endurance and having the gameness right attack and kill. Pull up this website, Land of the Giants, Land of the Giants Pit Bulls, because a friend of mine sent it to me.

I was like, what in the fuck is this? They've just figured out a way to do the same thing that the poultry industry has done, just breed bigger and bigger chickens until you have this freak chicken that can barely walk. These guys have done that with pit bulls where it's just like, it looks like they're breeding it with something else, but it's really just taking the biggest one. Or maybe some anivar in the puppy chow or something like that. Can you do that? Would that work?

I wonder if people have done that, like inject steroids in your dog. I guarantee you somebody's done that. Oh, yeah. I'm sure, right? Yeah. Pit bulls have an incredible bite, but what's really crazy is that a wolf has a bite that's five times stronger than a pit bull. Really? Yeah.

Yeah. A wolf has a bite that's, I think it's 2,500 pounds per square inch versus 500 for the pit bull. Look at that thing. This isn't quite the same one, but these are big, fully blue giants. What the fuck is that? Look at the size of these things. That is so ridiculous. that's a lot of dog it's such a ridiculous dog did you see that land of the giants website did you find it i typed it

in and just like a facebook page popped up oh really maybe they went under forums asking about them but they might have went under who knows what they did rated though yeah who knows yeah it's it's really crazy that all these dogs whether it's a Chihuahua or an English Bulldog, all of them came from wolves. Yeah. I'm like, what? My four-year-old daughter asked me about that. She's like, Dad, weren't all dogs from wolves? And I'm like, yeah.

And she's like, how does that work? And I'm trying to explain genetics and genetic variability and everything. And if you can explain something to a kid then you've got a pretty good grasp on it but i think that she kind of kind of got the gist of it the way i tried to explain it to someone was that it's it's kind of like people because people you know you have like bridget the midget and then you get shaquille o'neal they're both people right but you know one of them obviously is a genetic disorder but you could sort of breed for that genetic disorder right and well the guy like shaquille o'neal like me and shaquille o'neal are

in the same species like how's that even possible right you know like it's they're they look so different right and that's sort of like dogs that we by preference and breeding and you know and i guess geography as well that's a huge factor as well. Right. But it is interesting like that. The wolf, coyotes, I guess like dingoes, like there's a real uniformity there. Like nature ended up pushing some things where they've got this kind of snoutiness and they've got good hearing and good smell, but not like a hound dog, which has better smell.

You know, it's interesting. Yeah. There's also interesting genetic variabilities in terms of what kind of temperature their their body has to be involved like for um certain mammals when they grow farther north they become much much larger right like white-tailed deer in like alberta can get to around 300 pounds whereas in tex, they're only like 100 pounds. Right. Maybe 150 is like a big deer.

Right. It's fascinating that their body just decides that, look, the best way to stay warm is to be enormous. Right. And they get more round and shorter limbs and all that stuff. Like polar bears are some of the largest bears or Kodiak Alaska bears, which is like sort of a perfect example because in Kodiak Alaska bears, which is like sort of a perfect example. Because in Kodiak Island, those brown bears have access to massive amounts of protein and salmon and beached whales and deer and fawns and things like that.

Because they're just such a genetic, they're such a genetically powerful creature as is a brown bear. But then you give them all this massive amounts of protein and incredible food, and then on top of that, it's freezing fucking cold. So they just become these enormous behemoths. Right, right. Yeah. Did you see what came out about dinosaurs today?

You were just talking about the wolves. Dinosaurs aren't real, bro. Didn't you watch that podcast? It's not about that. Some scientist did a bunch of research. He did like three years of research on himself or on his own. He said he went into museums and was studying the bone fragments. And he put all of his information into a computer program.

And after five minutes, it spit out something that said that like all of the two major dinosaur family trees are different. This little sum is up here. It's like what you thought. This is something like telling you that neither cats nor dogs are what you thought they were and some of the animals you call cats are actually dogs. This is what discovery is sort of like.

It's like that. For a dummy like me that doesn't know much about dinosaurs, theropods, all of them, the classic tree, interesting. What are they saying, though? Where they're from might be different. They thought this particular kind came from South America. Before now, it might have come from Norway.

Dinosaurs came from Norway? Yeah, that's one of the things it's saying. So this is one guy, and this news hit the waves today. It's making big headlines all over about what does this information mean. And I was just thinking as you guys were saying that about wolves, that what if they find out next week that all dogs didn't come from wolves and they came from cats

or something. Wow. How strange. Yeah, super strange. Their diets are a little different. Some real small ones had different kinds of teeth that proved that they were omnivores and not necessarily carnivores or herbivores or whatever. And that's a good lesson in like all science should have a sign hung on it that says good until further notice.

And you don't like turn it into religious doctrine and assume that it's 100% factual. You know, we create models and hopefully those models help us kind of predict and model the world. But, you know, when you get better, newer information, you may have to scuttle that whole thing. Yeah, there was an article that I tweeted and then a follow-up article earlier today or last night, rather, about scientific journals, about some scandals that are emerging from scientific journals where scientific journals are essentially operating on a pay-to-play basis. Right. Some of them they're publishing these things without really vetting the information that's inside the papers and it's just it just seems like anytime money gets involved in stuff people become assholes sting operation reveals science's insane fake news problem i love the term fake news

right just such an anti-intellectual it's so anti-intellectual you know like fake news. Right. Just such an anti-intellectual. It's so anti-intellectual, you know, like fake news. It's fake. Like when Donald Trump says that you are fake news, like how are you allowed, like there should be like a list of things that would disqualify you from being the president. Like as soon as you say that, you're like, okay, did you say that? Yeah. Okay. You got it.

You got to step down. Right. You can't call CNN fake news. Yeah. You are fake news. No, they are the news. You might think they're biased. You might think that you might be able to point out some inaccuracies and make them,

you know, make, print a retraction. But you calling them fake news, like that, just that term that anyone can use and it's such a small mouth noise to make. Right. Fake news. Fake news. And you say it. Yeah.

Next. Next. Like, whoa, buddy. Settle. Fake news. And you say it. Yeah. Next.

Like, whoa, buddy. Settle. You're fucking with the entire information process. Because of your own power and the inconvenience of someone telling you challenging things, you're fucking with the entire process of getting information to people. Right. This last election cycle was really interesting. It's a good way of putting it.

Man, I don't know. It would be, I think, kind of cool to be 50 years down the road and look back at how all this plays out. I don't know that it's going to be great living through it. I have these thoughts that there's going to be the great North American states at some point, where the U.S. is like five different sub-countries after some horrific thing goes down. But people are so entrenched in their ideology and it's just, it's virtually impossible to get somebody on the opposite side of a fence to have a discussion about anything in any meeting of the minds. And it's interesting to me, I really think social media has kind of facilitated this. Historically, you had like print paper for, you know, maybe a couple of hundred years and people would have, you know, community gatherings and they would talk about

different topics. But that meeting in person and the potential of pissing somebody off and having them like try to beat you to death or vice versa, there's a certain civility that occurs with that. And within social media, you get those same deep held beliefs, but then you don't have the ramification of somebody wanting to kick the shit out of you if you, you know, start upping the ante on something. And so like the discourse is just crazy. Like there's just no discussion. There's no middle ground.

There's no understanding. And this last election cycle was really crazy. And like it kind of broke me in some ways. Like I am way less inclined to invest in much of anything now, whereas before I would kind of bleed a little bit for some social causes and trying to put some thoughts out about something. But it was just kind of like, fuck it. I just don't care anymore. Well, there are a lot of people that invest a tremendous amount of time just engaging with people and fighting and arguing and insulting and attacking people online.

And I have gone to a bunch of different Twitter pages where I go, how many hours is this guy on? And then I check to see when does he start his tweets. Right. And there's people that are tweeting 12 hours a day. Right. And it's all mean, nasty attack shit. Like some mentally ill person has a computer and nothing's preventing them from just going

after people and trolling people and attacking people. What disturbs me is not just that, but also this natural human tendency that we seem to have where you have an idea in your head and then that idea is not just an idea, but it's your idea. And you have to defend that idea, even if it's a preposterous idea like the earth is flat. Right. And what you find out is that these people form groups and other people who have also sort of adopted this preposterous idea and refuse to look at all at any evidence that points that that's a silly idea. And instead, they dig their heels in and get confirmation bias from all these other people. And then they form these social media groups, Facebook groups. They go to websites.

They get on web forums. And they start interacting with each other and exclusively interacting with each other and then also enforcing each other's beliefs. And great job man good job Attacking those shills right you know those like if you do you know if you think the earth is round you are a globetard That's the newest Jamie literally like cringed Took him he had a hit a like step back blink his eyes Yeah, you're a globetard. That whole thing is because these people,

someone said something that someone went, people love to find secrets. They love, like, this dinosaur thing is cool because it seems to be real. Did you see the gal that said that all the fossils were basically people doing, like, kind of Michelangelo deal and chiseling them out of rock? Because the fossils came out of rock? Oh, you got you and she actually

what she has some pretty nice boobs too but um yeah yeah maybe that's why people are listening but she's like i've got a platform no you've got tits no it's really good i mean yeah so she's basically like okay so these things come out of rocks. And so these anthropologists, because there's millions of dollars in anthropology or archaeology, they're just chiseling these bones out of rock. And yeah, here we go. Is that her? What's that? You don't want to play it?

I shouldn't. We need to play some of this. The composition. to play it? Cushions Against Dinosaurs. We need to play some of this. A little bit about the composition and what they end up being when everything is said and done. So a fossil is not actually a piece of bone. It's not actually a piece of bone. A fossil is actually a bone that was once in the ground that has been then filled with limestone, calcium, and other kind of stone-like deposits over the course of many, many years. What's going on with her left eye? Is that a patch?

At the end of the day, it's looking like a bone. I know. Glass eye. Like, why is she doing that? Glass eye. Push your fucking hair out of your eyes. So you have a rock this big. And you say, okay.

What do you mean? A flock of seagulls? Inside this rock this big, there's a bunch of fossils. Here you go. Okay. And you hand the rock off to a paleontologist. And the paleontologist takes a little mallet and they chip away at it. And at some point they come out with something looking like a bum. This is a problem. Hold on. This is a problem. Just pause that. The problem is some fucking idiot like this gets to talk about a subject that she's not educated in and no one is over her shoulder going, that's not true. That's not true.

And here's the thing to people that, you know, someone out there who buys into a lot of this stupid shit, you must be an expert in something. You know, think about what you do for a living. Here's a perfect example. expert in something you know think about what you do for a living you know like think this here's a perfect example like some if someone tried to tell me that like a lot of these chi touch martial arts guys are too deadly to fight in the ufc and if they make a video they make a video about this and i'm not there while they're making this video so i can't talk to them like and stop them and pause them i go nope that's not true nope that's not nope that's not correct nope no here's actually what happens when you get knocked out no it is not a fucking a chi dispersion or dispersion technique you're not really interrupting the chakras flow

no it's a fucking concussion stupid and we can measure concussions we know about all the different variables in the blood when you could prove there was actually um there's some new tests that i wanted to get into as well um where they um there's an institute now that's checking concussions and they're checking um they're doing blood tests on people to find out about concussions that they've had in the past and how those concussions uh have healed obviously i'm deviating from the path but the point is i know a lot martial arts. So if someone wants to do a video about martial arts, well, I am an actual martial arts expert and I can talk to you about what you're saying that's incorrect. I know about the history of it. I know what works and why it works. I know about torque and leverage and all these different variables.

But you could make a video without me being there and you could ramble on. Or not even me, any martial arts expert. And you could ramble on, and if someone doesn't know, they watch that and they go, wow, that guy's dropping some truth bombs. Right. This is amazing. You know, I don't know if you saw this, but Matt Thornton, he's the Straight Blast Gym founder. Really brilliant guy. And they put together this, I forget who it was, but it's kind of a philosophy department. And they put together this kind of white sheet on using Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in particular

as a means of teaching critical thinking to students. Because there's this really testable, verifiable process. Does it work or does it not work? And you can define what working means versus this kind of like, you know, chi, dim, mock, death, touch type stuff. And so they've actually developed this curriculum around using this physical process of Brazilian jiu-jitsu and I think also mixed martial arts in general, but specifically jiu-jitsu as a means of teaching critical thinking skills. And I'll noodle on what like kind of like the search terms for it would be. But it's really interesting. And it's something that I think helps pull this stuff together because you've got that kinesthetic element of people being able to feel.

Okay, you know, somebody gets mounted onto you. Can you get them off? No. Well, look at this 110-pound chick. She can dismount this person because she's using these techniques of leverage and balance and timing and all that stuff. And so then you can throw these things out about, is this a verifiable process? Yes or no? And it is.

And so then you start laying the foundation of being able to create a good critical thinking process. One of the things that I really love about Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in particular is that it seems to be a study in variable absolutes, meaning that there's so many variables involved in like two people engaging with each other. Say if two people are blue belts and they engage with each other and one person dominates that person with superior technique and knowledge and gets the tap over and over again. You could take that same person who dominated that person and then put him in there with a guy like Jacare, and he would just get manhandled, and it would look like he knows virtually nothing about jiu-jitsu

because one person's variables, the understanding of all the complexities of the techniques, they have mastered them, and they have also built their body to a much stronger physical unit. So all these are variables, but the absolute is getting the arm bar, getting the choke, putting someone to sleep with a choke. Those things are absolutes. When you tap out, if you're not just a person who gets scared really quick and taps out for no reason, which does happen, but you're thinking about someone who has some experience.

When you're tapping out, you're essentially saying, you've got me into this absolute position. I'm at the point of death or massive injury, knees tearing apart, arms breaking. So in doing those, you encounter these variable absolutes in a way that is really kind of uncommon in our world, outside of fucking car accidents and someone hitting you over the head with a baseball bat. And you, you, you, you encounter the

consequences of actions and movements in a way that sort of makes you really appreciate the overall variables of life and how important it is to take care of your health, how important it is to know what you're talking about. You know, if fighting, I always try to talk about fighting as if it's a language. And if one person has like one word, they yell at you. And they're like really good at going, shut the fuck up, like one expression. Like that might work with some people. It's not going to work with someone who's got a really good grasp of the English language. Oh, I should shut the fuck up?

And why should I shut the fuck up? Because you would like that? Why would you like that? Because you're too stupid to have a conversation about something you don't know what you're talking about and that person's like it's really like drowning which is the same way you would feel if damian maia was on top of you trying to choke you right it's a lot like a language like you don't have enough variables to respond to this particular thing and then there's also the strength factor and all those other factors, I think it teaches you critical thinking in a way that is almost unavailable outside of like war and like real physical trauma.

Because the beautiful thing about jujitsu is although you can get injured, most of it is pretty safe. Right. Compared to boxing or kickboxing. Yeah. You've got a much more forgivable kind of margin of error on that. Yeah. Much more.

And I think the environment that it establishes, that it creates, and the way that effect that it has on your mind, where it's forcing you into these extreme problem situations and solving those problems and understanding where did that go wrong? What can I do to my body to maybe strengthen myself so that I can stop that from happening or maybe understand the position? So two steps ahead, I recognize that if I go left, I run into that. And if I go right, I run into this. What I need to do is be patient, use my hips, hip escape, do this, do that. And understanding those variables and having that database in your mind and recognizing that that is also – there's analogies that you could make in all sorts boxing or Thai boxing, jujitsu, judo. There's kind of an authenticity with that because you really can't bullshit. It's kind of like, can you speak Spanish? Okay, well, let's have a conversation in Spanish. Let's read a Spanish newspaper and tell me what was going on with it.

Can you swim? You know, Sam Harris, I think he wrote that piece, you know, jujitsu was like drowning. For a non-swimmer looking at someone treading water, it looks inconsequential and you throw them in the water and they're going to die. And so there's a real authenticity there that when you get in and do that, compared to some of the fantasy martial arts where there's an assumption that just going through some sort of paces is going to get you somewhere. And it doesn't necessarily mean that it does, you know, and so there's this whole great feedback loop and it crushes your ego and you have to really stay grounded if you're going to maintain through that process. But it has so much value with every other facet of your life.

You know, it's fascinating. Yeah. If you can keep from being injured. If you can. Yeah. Yeah. And I think one of the things that really helps to keep from being injured is I think it's very critical to strengthen the body. And I think there's a lot of people that

don't like to do that. They just like to train. And I was guilty of that for quite a while until I just mounted up a series of injuries that I almost couldn't deny anymore, particularly back injuries. But strengthening the body and sort of strengthening the overall structure in which you engage in these sort of things, meaning not just like strengthening the body by lifting weights and doing squats, but also by yoga, also by doing really unusual exercises like kettlebell windmills and stuff like that that really puts a very bizarre load on the spine in weird ways. And it really strengthens the core in a substantial manner that allows you to deal with the pressure of certain positions

without succumbing to the attempt by your opponent. Right. You know, it's an interesting topic because you have someone like Marcelo Garcia that he's like, I just roll. And clearly that works. Yeah, but he's injured now. He doesn't compete. Is he injured now? Yeah.

I mean, he's definitely, you can just roll. Right. You definitely can do it. And if you're as good as- Until you can't. Yeah. As good as technical as him. He also has weird genetics.

Like if you look at Marcelo's body, his legs look like a man who weighs 300 pounds. Right. I mean, he has cankles. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Giant calves, giant legs. And that's one of the reasons why he's so good at controlling the back. Right. I mean, he has cankles. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Giant calves, giant legs. And that's one of the reasons you rely on versus trying to develop this stuff where you've got a game that you could do whether you're 40 years old or 80 years old?

How do you play back and forth with that to optimize that process? That's a real good question. And I think a good study is Roy Jones Jr. study is Roy Jones Jr. And Roy Jones Jr., in his prime, was probably the most attribute-based fighter of all time with substantial attributes. His speed and his

style, the movement in which he used inside the ring was really very difficult for people to handle. But as soon as that went away, his physical attributes sort of started to deteriorate, his career declined substantially. He went from being the best in the world to two years later, people wanted him to

retire. And he went from, and there's a bunch of variables that could have happened in that effect. I think some manipulation of hormones, you know, I'm just speculating, but I believe steroids are probably involved in him moving up from light heavyweight to heavyweight where he beat John Ruiz for the heavyweight title and was jacked at 200 pounds shredded and then went down and fought Antonio Tarver and looked listless and soft and didn't look as fast and I think a lot of that was his body responding to the fact that his hormone levels were off. And I don't know if he was checking that stuff, and I bet he probably wasn't. I bet he just had lost too much weight and dehydrated himself too much,

getting down to that 175-pound limit again. So Tarver knocked him out, and then Glenn Johnson knocked him out after the Tarver fight, and it was bad. Right. I think that when Roy was in his prime, though, he did some things that were so hard to handle so unconventional because of his ridiculous speed like very rarely did he throw the jab instead he would throw a lead hook he would throw a lead hook and it was as fast as a jab but it would knock people the fuck out right you know he would just he would just just leap in on you and plop and you

see guys get hit and then boom the right hand would be behind it. He was so fucking fast. So when he was young, he beat Bernard Hopkins, and he beat him pretty handily. When he was older, Bernard Hopkins beat him, and beat him pretty handily. And Bernard Hopkins was always older than him. So when he was young, Bernard Hopkins, who had that very defensive-based style, keeps his hands up very high, very technical, couldn't deal with the speed of Roy Jones Jr. He just was ridiculous. But as soon as Roy lost a step in his speed, then his style's not really

the best style. The best style is the most technical style. And you can do that most technical style with extreme attributes. Right. So I would agree with them that the best thing to learn is the proper way. Learning all the techniques, like learning good defensive posture, good hands up when you're throwing strikes,

good movement and footwork, and not just relying on freak athleticism. I think it's probably the best way to attack it. What do you think about the really grip dependent games? You know, like all the spider guard and all that stuff. Like I see these guys doing really amazing stuff, but it seems like their hands are broken

and at pretty young age. And I mean, maybe that's something that you burn just because you've got a competitive career and then you've got to kind of shift games. But then you have someone like Krohn who really, he has an interesting, you know, open guard game where it's a lot of collar control and stuff like that. And he's not getting in and doing like spider guard and inversions and whatnot. And you could argue he's maybe not as successful as a lot of other people in that really competitive circuit, but he also seems to be motoring along

pretty well, reasonably injury free and and still has a very powerful game. Well, he has an incredibly powerful game. You also have to think, well, his dad is the greatest jiu-jitsu player of all time that had to play a factor, although he didn't really train much with his dad, which is kind of unusual. He doesn't have the... His dad, and when I say the basics, when I mean the basics, I don't mean like it's a simple game.

His game's very complex, but he doesn't do any weird sort of De La Riva stuff or weird spider guard stuff. Like his game is basically the same kind of jujitsu you used to see in 1994 when Hickson was the king. But it's not but it's just super tuned in and high level and razor sharp. One of his best submissions is the guillotine. Another best submission is the rear naked choke. And if he gets you in those positions, you're fucksville. And it's really just that his technique is so fucking sharp, and there's levels to that

sharpness of technique. There's some guys that just have a technique that is so goddamn sharp it's impossible to avoid. On a lower level, but there's a guy named Paul Sass who used to compete in the UFC who used to fucking triangle everybody. He won something like 9 or 10

matches by triangle. It was ridiculous. He just would pull guard and then you'd be fucked. He would just figure out a way to wrap your neck and arm around his legs, squeeze the shit out of you. And next thing you know, you're tapping or you're blacked out. Right. And people knew what he would do. They knew that that was his game and they would still get caught in a triangle. It's like, what the fuck? Right. It's because his technique was so razor sharp. So I think there's a lot of people that get caught up in those grabbing games, those grip-dependent games. And maybe they would go, well, let me try it on you.

I'll fuck you up with it. And maybe they would fuck me up with it. But I honestly believe that the best jiu-jitsu is jiu-jitsu that you can do with a gi or without a gi. And a lot of those guys, where they get into MMA, they don't have any handles to grab. And so no-gi jiu-jitsu is much more like Greco-Roman wrestling, whereas Eddie Bravo and his 10th Planet Jiu-Jitsu system,

what he's done is sort of incorporate much more no-gi, like Greco-Roman control. And you can do that. I still roll with the gi, but when I do gi jiu-jitsu, I very rarely grab the gi. Right. Everything I'm doing is like

underhooks, overhooks, I'm getting gable grips, and I'm using no-gi techniques with the gi. So for me, what I like about the gi is defensively, I can't fuck around.

Right. I can't just yank out of arm bars and shit. If you're in there with a good guy and he's got you in his guard and there's a gi, there's so much friction that you have to really be careful. But I think offensively, you have to be very careful to

not use that gi. Right. But the good thing about learning how to use the gi is, like, say if you get in a fight with someone and they have a winter coat on, they're fucking dead. Right. You know, some guy wants, some drunk wants to kick your ass and you just get your hand inside his collar. And like, oh, look at you. You're a dead man.

You don't even know you're dead. Like if you get a guy who's like got a good Ezekiel choke or something like that. And he gets a hold of you and he's on top of you and he gets his own collar and wraps around. Chokes you to death with his own arms. You know, it's. That's good stuff. Yeah. There's like a judo player.

Like if someone like Jimmy Pedro gets a hold of your leather jacket you're fucked man you're gonna he's gonna hit you with the world essentially like when someone's throwing you on the ground like a real world-class judoka they're hitting you in the head with the world they're gonna throw you on your head you're gonna go unconscious right have you guys had henry a on? No, I haven't. Henry's amazing. Such a good guy. He's a black belt under Hickson as well. I know Henry very well. Hickson's black belts, there's certain...

There's a few black belts like, whoa, you got a Henzo Gracie black belt? That's fucking legit. There's a few of those like that, and Hickson is one of the most legit of those. Right. Yeah, Henry's just a great guy, and his game is really interesting like the gi and the nogi game are virtually identical i mean you do a little collar stuff you know for the collar chokes and whatnot but otherwise it's it's just completely uniform from gi to nogi and so it's it's interesting for me too being 45

and trying to motor through this stuff and i'm really not that bright of a person it's like i need transferable job skills like i want to learn something once and not need a million nuances for things you know how many dummies right now are listening to this going you're not bright what am i am i a fucking chimp shit he's not bright fuck could be could be now uh what are you doing to regulate your hormones or check your hormones? I check them about yearly. And, you know, the main deal with that is just keeping a really good eye on my sleep, my nutrition, my recovery. I do some HRV monitoring. What is HRV? The heart rate variability. So you check that in the morning. And basically, HRV was studied, developed, discovered by the Eastern

Bloc countries. And it was part of the space program. And it's looking at the total allostatic load or the stress load on an individual. So the heart, if you have 60 beats a minute, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's beating once a second. You may have three beats that go really fast, and then there may be a long pause, and then two beats. And so there's variability to it it's basically chaos mathematics that describes this stuff but if you are not under significant stress if your parasympathetic nervous system the rest and restore part is kind of brought to the fore like breathing meditation yoga that sort of stuff then you tend to have more heart rate variability and that's a good thing when you get under, then you tend to have more heart rate variability. And that's a good thing. When you get under stress, then you tend to have less heart rate variability and becomes

more metronomic. So I've found that if I keep an eye on my heart rate variability in conjunction with my food and my sleep and all the rest of that stuff, then the hormones tend to stay pretty good in line. But if they start pushing anything, if I start compromising sleep, for me, if I go too low carb too long, particularly with some really hard training, then I will kind of get adrenalized. And I get all the signs and symptoms of testosterone kind of dropping down and whatnot, which is interesting, because I know you've played around with that and some pretty good success at like keto fueled rolling. Yeah, well, what I had, what fascinated me is I'm on testosterone replacement therapy. And when I took my diet away from a high carbohydrate diet to a

much more high-fat diet, ketogenic diet, my testosterone levels went way up. Interesting. Way up. And not just me, but a bunch of my friends who are also on testosterone replacement therapy reported the same thing, where they said, like, my friend John, his stuff doubled. His levels doubled, and he couldn't find any other variability, any other thing. Was that just free testosterone or free in total? Good question. I believe it was free. Okay.

But what it is apparently is, and please correct me if I'm wrong, the precursors for testosterone are the saturated fats and cholesterol, and your body produces testosterone from them. Right. And when you have an abundance of them and you're in a healthy balance, it's not like you're consuming unhealthy foods. When you get a healthy balance of those, your body produces more testosterone naturally. Okay, okay.

Well, and it's interesting, and this is where this stuff gets really complex, but usually when people are on a lower carb diet than this hormone called sex hormone binding protein or sex hormone binding globulin, that increases and what that can do, it can reduce the level of free testosterone. So your total testosterone may look good.

The free testosterone may look great. That's a not uncommon thing to happen on low carb diets. But then the interesting side to that is that the receptor sites, which are really what matters in this whole story, the receptor site density for testosterone increases. story, the receptor site density for testosterone increases. So you may not need as much to get the same effect that you would otherwise have. Or if you have a little bit more testosterone, then you're going to get an even greater effect. And so that receptor site density, like what is causing that? I don't fully know. But when people are on a lower carb diet, it does appear that anabolic hormones have a more pronounced effect than what they would have during a higher carb period. And I don't really know the mechanism behind how that works. or estrogen in one person and they have a certain number of receptor sites and then

another person, same hormonal level, but more receptor sites, then they are going to get a more potent anabolic response out of that. Yeah. There's so many variables. And then when you take into account what we've discussed already about genetic variables, different people respond differently to carbohydrates and fats and proteins, it is so difficult for people to find the thing that works best for them. Right.

Right. For me, it seems like keto or maybe a little bit more carbs and keto is the way to go. Right. You know, but what I do is one of the big things that I do is, how many of it are laying around here? I supplement with exogenous ketones. Okay. Yeah.

And that seems to have a big effect on me. It definitely puts me into a state of ketosis. I use something called ketogenics, but I believe there's some other stuff on the market. But Dom D'Agostino, who is a professor in, what is it, University of Florida? And he is one of the foremost experts on keto. And he's coming on the podcast soon. We're working on finding a date. But in the meantime, his interview with Tim Ferriss is amazing.

I think he's done twice, maybe more on Tim's show. But when he discusses it, you kind of understand what the benefits of being on this high-fat diet are. And then you also realize what the compromises that your body has to make when you change it to a high-carbohydrate, high-sugar diet. And one of the things that is a new study that Dr. Rhonda Patrick sent me recently was the dangers of saturated fats have been sort of overstated, and a lot of it because of that. I'm sure you're aware of that New York Times article about the sugar industry literally bribing scientists to lie in the 1950s and say that heart disease is being caused by saturated fats and taking the blame off of

sugar. Right. And they altered data and really fucked with generations of people's ideas to change the information that we receive and fuck with people's heads. But there's a recent study that showed that processed sugar mixed with saturated fat is actually not healthy at all. And it actually perhaps could be more unhealthy than processed sugar alone. Right. And it really makes sense because if we over consume carbohydrates in general, then we fill up the liver glycogen and then the liver starts converting this into palmitic acid, which is a saturated fat.

And that palmitic acid tends to make us insulin resistant. And there's good mechanisms behind that. Like there's good kind of engineering there if we're eating a little bit more of an ancestral type diet. But when you throw a modern processed diet a regular basis and then you take some time like I've gone like really strict ketogenic for four or five months and then I'll go off and have like a milkshake and fries and I can't fucking believe how bad I feel yeah and I've got to think that there's my body just doesn't know what to do with it anymore it doesn't during the state of ketosis so you know and you say normal it anymore. It doesn't. During the state of ketosis, so,

you know, and you say normal, it's like normally the brain runs off glucose, but what's really normal? Like for me, normal is trying to look at this from this ancestral template, you know? And so for eons, humans and every other organism on the planet didn't have consistent food. And because our brain is so big and it's so metabolically active, even though I think it's like 2% of our body weight, but 20% of the energy use, it's really important that we protect that. And so the process of ketosis is a workaround so that we don't have to break down protein to convert it into glucose to feed the brain. We can break down body fats. The body fat gets turned into ketone bodies, which are water soluble and can go through the blood brain barrier and it can fuel the brain in a really effective way. But when you do that, what you are trying to do is spare glucose just for the brain, just for the red blood cells, the few tissues that have to run on glucose.

Like they have no other workarounds. So red blood cells. And then some parts of the brain. Like so some parts of the brain, if you're on a, like, really restricted sugar diet, they will suffer. Initially, until you get ramped up into ketosis, and then you're fueling more of the brain. And the numbers vary. Somewhere between 70, 80% of the brain can shift over fully to ketone body metabolism. But the other 20 can't.

Can't. 20 to 30. And we always, even in ketosis, we still have a blood glucose level that's being metered out by the liver. But what the body does is it creates what's called metabolic insulin resistance, where the muscles become insulin resistant so that we don't use glucose in the muscles. We're using free fatty acids and we're using ketone bodies. So then you go and you've been ketotic for a while.

You have physiological insulin resistance to support and maintain that ketotic state. That's totally fine. But then your first meal out of that is like the milkshake, you know, fries, you know, 200 grams of carbohydrate. milkshake, fries, 200 grams of carbohydrate. And because you're physiologically insulin resistant, it takes a massive amount of insulin to be able to push that stuff into storage. And it will make you feel like death.

I feel terrible. I always need a nap. I have headaches. And I'm like, what kind of a pussy have I become? What's happening here? Because it used to be easy for me. Right. And, you know, it's interesting trade-off because you could make an argument that we should be able to live like a cockroach and like you just you know you bounce back and forth you know you under

ideal circumstances we would be resilient and we could be able to shift these fuel substrates and this is some of the argument for like intermittent fasting, where you force your body to run off of fats and maybe you do carbohydrates every couple of days or maybe earlier in the day and then later in the day, it's just fat and protein. And then you fast through part of the next day so that you're forcing your body to run off fats, produce some ketones,

maybe not at a level of full nutritional ketosis. But then also when you do drop in some carbs, your body can handle that. And it doesn't put you into that kind of like diabetic blood sugar levels. And it's all really speculative. I don't really know what like the right answer is with any of that stuff. stuff but it is interesting and it does kind of call into question that you know how useful is chronic ketosis relative to being able to cycle in and out of it I don't have a good answer but I definitely feel best when I'm ketotic you feel best when you're ketotic but you tend to do a little bit higher

carbohydrates a little jujitsu yeah so and that doesn't knock you out of a state of ketosis as long as you've been fairly consistent? It does. So when I'm fully keto adapted, the blood ketone levels are higher. And also, if I needed to miss a meal, if I just didn't get breakfast, lunch, dinner, and I went a full day, it would be inconsequential. I would be a little hungry, but it really wouldn't affect me at all. Yeah, that's the biggest benefit, in my opinion. Yeah, it's huge.

really wouldn't affect me. Yeah, that's the biggest benefit. Yeah, it's huge. And so when I do that 75 to 120 grams of carbs to fuel the jujitsu, I can't do that as easy like 10 hours in 12 hours in of, you know, so I sleep on sleep through the night. So I've got a 12 hour fast, then I get up. And if I tried to go to 6pm that day, I'd be hungry. I wouldn't be totally broken down dysfunctional like I was when I was, you know, insulin resistant sugar burner, but it's not the same as being keto adapted. Now, do you mess it all with exogenous ketones? I do a little bit, but the ketone salts give me the trots. Oh, no.

Yeah. So those are kind of rough. I do a lot of the caveman coffee and then their MCT oil, and I'll actually mix that up with peanut butter and then either soy lecithin or sunflower lecithin because it kind of emulsifies all that stuff. So I'll mix it up together, and then I'll eat that. And I get a decent, like, 0.5 millimolar blood ketone level off of that, even though I'm eating some carbs with it. That's interesting. So now your peanut butter is sugar-freefree peanut butter, a natural peanut butter? Yeah, just basic peanut butter.

Yeah, you say peanut butter, people think, oh, Jif, I'm going to just eat it by the tub. Right. Well, and then in Paleo land, peanuts are legumes. And so there's a bunch of super hardcore Paleo folks that are freaking out and dying right now that I'm eating peanut butter. Now, why don't paleo people like peanuts? What the fuck's wrong with them?

So legumes do have some, what we call immunogenic properties. They can irritate the immune system. And if you improperly prepare them, then they can make you really sick. Like if you cooked some black beans or kidney beans or something, you didn't cook them enough and you ate them, it can give you gastritis, like where you're shitting blood, essentially. It's pretty, pretty nasty stuff. And these are the anti-predation chemicals that are in grains and legumes.

But if you soak them overnight, you pull off the rinse water, maybe sprout them for a day, and you don't even have to do that involved. Or if you cook them in a medium that has a little bit of acid in it, then it tends to break down these anti-nutrients and they're not nearly as immunogenic. But somebody who has serious GI problems, and this circles back again to that small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. Somebody who has SIBO, somebody has some other GI problems if they have an autoimmune condition, grains and legumes may be something that you want to minimize because it is immunogenic for a lot of people. And this is the success that we've seen with this autoimmune paleo approach. So I think that the unfortunate thing is, on the one hand, there are a lot of people who dismiss the power of limiting these foods in people that it would benefit.

They're like, there's no science to support it, and they've never invested a minute towards researching it. So they're ignorant about that. But then on the other side, there's a whole group of people that maybe they had success with this autoimmune paleo protocol. They had ulcerative colitis. They had multiple sclerosis. They had success for it. Now they say that nobody can or should eat these foods. And, you know, I've got to throw myself under the bus. I've probably been that person for a decade or longer, you know, but over the course of time, just life, it's that jujitsu thing again, you know, where it's like the truth will pound you. And at some point you either get it or you just become this like calcified old turd and you can't learn or grow. And over the course of time, it just became obvious that if

your gut's healthy, if all the cylinders are firing, doing some grains and legumes is probably not going to be a negative problem for you. But if you are a cop or a firefighter in the military, and you've historically been able to eat these foods, and then you go to a shift work schedule, and you're under a massive amount of stress because of an altered sleep-wake cycle. Those foods that may have been okay may no longer now be okay. And so that's another piece that people just need to remain open that something that's working for you today may not work for you tomorrow. And then, you know, something that worked for me may not work for this other person. for me may not work for this other person. It's kind of common sense, but people just desperately in the, this health wellness nutrition realm, they want black or white yes or no binary stuff.

This is good. That's bad. And as much as I would, it would make my life way simpler if that was the case, but it's just not like there's all this variability in there. Are you familiar with the Dunning-Kruger effect? Yes. Okay. So yeah. So Dunning-Kruger effect, like if you do like the X, Y axis, the X axis is going out and this is time and the Y axis is your perceived knowledge on a topic. When you don't have any time in a topic, then you assume that you know everything about it and they call it Mount Stupid. And I spent a lot of time in Mount Stupid. As we all have. As we all have. And then there's this like, like low ebb, the dark tea time of the soul, you know, where you've been in it. Yeah, there we go. And so as that stretches

out, then you get some, hopefully some degree of aptitude. But the, as you learn more and more and more, you're confident about any given topic just starts going down more and more. And I'm at this point now where I'm like, I don't know if I know anything about any topic. And I guess that that's kind of a good process. 10 years ago, I was much more confident about a whole host of things. It's like, there's a right answer and there's a wrong answer. And today I just really don't know.

Yeah. There's a great expression about that as the lake of knowledge increases, the shoreline of ignorance grows as well. Yeah. Or I think Dennis McKenna had a take on it, too, that as you increase the bonfire of knowledge, it exposes the greater level of ignorance. Right. Because the light does. Yeah. But it's a natural human tendency for some strange reason to want to know everything or to want to pretend you know everything.

It's like a defensive mechanism or something. It definitely is a defensive mechanism. And it's just so appealing to basically put a fence around what your current knowledge state is and be like, there it is. We're good. And it's a really tough deal to just kind of dangle in the breeze and to hang that sign, you know, good until further notice. Yeah. And that's why today it's so weird because you can find other people that agree with you on that and they pump you up and they give you that confirmation bias and they support each other and they get together and make fun of everybody who's not in the know, hashtag woke. Right, right. Oh God. Yes. And you know, I had a lot of that, like running a CrossFit type gym.

I would recommend this low carb paleo type of approach. And for people that were insulin resistant, overweight, it worked amazingly well. And then when I started working with more MMA oriented folks and CrossFitters, it took a long time in breaking a lot of people to figure out, okay, these people need some more carbs. You know, like they may not need as much as what they've historically done, but this fully keto-fueled process is probably not going to work with them. And it broke some people, including myself. Well, it's very hard for people to wrap their head around the idea that eating fruit is

not a good idea. Like eating too much fruit could be bad for you. People are like, what? Right. I can eat a banana and some strawberries and some grapes and an orange and I feel great. And some people might, but there's a lot of people that can get in the deep end of the, you know, the blood sugar management story with that. Yeah. Yeah.

That seems so counterintuitive to what we've been told as kids. Like, you have some fruit. It's good for you. It tastes good and it's good for you. Like, oh, okay, great. It's good for you. Well, and it's interesting. We have these old variety crab apples on my property.

Oh, those are nasty. And a Johnny Appleseed kind of deal. And that's what apples effectively used to be. We used to throw those at each other. Yeah. Yeah. We make cider out of it. Did you throw those? And, turns pretty good for that. But, uh, if you pull up like a, a image of what an original

banana looks like. Oh, they're ridiculous. It's all seed. Yeah. And it's tiny and it's all seeds and there's hardly any edible structure to it. And so if you look at most of the fruit that was available kind of pre-agriculture and that selective breeding of fruit. Like it was much smaller. It wasn't as sweet. And again, it's not to say that you shouldn't have any of that stuff, but it's just there was an interesting piece that came out of the UK where it was looking at feeding kids fruit.

They were like, let's recommend that these kids eat fruit. And the kids already had a hypercaloric diet. They were eating too much they were eating too many carbs and then they threw fruit on top of it and they're like wow adding fruit to this already shitty overeating program made it worse you know and it was like there was going to be some sort of magic that came about out of adding some fruit to this this story whereas the kids just needed to pull more of the junk out and get some sort of both caloric control and some carbohydrate control.

Is there any fruit that is in its original state? Like maybe pomegranates. Berries are pretty, you know, blueberries, blackberries, those sorts of things. Especially wild ones. Yeah, they're pretty similar to the original. Have you had wild blueberries? Yeah. Not that sweet. Not that sweet. No, different flavor Especially wild ones. Yeah. Yeah. They're pretty similar to original. Have you had wild blueberries? Yeah. Yeah.

Not that sweet. Not that sweet. No. Yeah. Different flavor. Yeah. You know? Yeah.

I've picked them like in the wild, like in the back country. Right. Like a blueberry and it's just like, hmm, this is a. It's not bad, but it's not spectacular. Yeah. It's not what you're used to. Yeah. Yeah.

But oranges, clearly they've been fucked with. Right. Yeah. Apples. Apples. Like, we were on a trip once and we bought these apples, and they were literally like the size of a softball. Right. And you bite into it.

It's like the most delicious dessert you could ever have. I'm like, this can't be a fucking real regular apple. Right. Something's been going on. It's a Chernobyl apple. I mean, how much of our food, I mean, especially our fruit, how much of it is genetically altered? It's got to be massive amounts. Yeah.

And, you know, that GMO story, I'm in a spot where I usually piss everybody off about it because I am way less concerned about genetic modification of these things and more concerned about some of the business practices that happen. Like we've been doing selective breeding for thousands of years, and that has modified the genetics. Back to the wolf turning into dog story. Tomatoes, everything. And without, I mean, the classic thoughts of frankenfoods, meaning laboratory, some sort of injection into this. That's not what's going on.

Selective breeding, for the most part. Yeah, most of it's selective breeding. And the thing about GMO2 is the apologists for it. Like, when you look at the results that you get with the GMO, the genetic modification, it's really unimpressive. I mean, it's not like dramatically increasing yields. What it inevitably is doing is creating something that's usually more resistant to Roundup than what the last thing was. Roundup being that pesticide. Yeah. Yeah. Which is legitimately some pretty nasty stuff. And so it doesn't really seem to be working any type of magic as far as like feeding the world

or anything like that. It is creating a funnel where in order to grow this thing, you need more chemical fertilizer input. You need more pesticide input. And it just seems to grow this thing, you need more chemical fertilizer input, you need more pesticide input. And it just seems to be this feed forward mechanism on that. And so I'm really, from a health standpoint, I'm not that freaked out about GMOs just as a baseline. But from a really shady business practice, I'm not a big fan from actually moving the needle on food production, it's really unimpressive to me. So my position on GMOs usually just makes everybody mad because I'm not really jumping into either one of these camps whole hog. Well, food production in general, when you look at these gigantic large-scale farms, that is one of the most unnatural things you're ever going to see in life. Right.

These giant cornfields. Right. It's so unnatural. Right. These giant cornfields. Right. It's so unnatural. Right. Monocrop. Yeah. And not only the monocrop, but those are genetically modified monocrops and, you know, and you want to kill off all the weeds.

Right. So you're spraying your genetically modified monocrops with some shit that kills off everything but your genetically modified monocrops. And who knows what that consequence is on the human body. crops and who knows what that consequence is on the human body. Well, you know, so Roundup is now being suggested or has been suggested for a long time as a mitochondrial disruptor, similar to that antibiotic story. So this is where people, you know, the last questions about like, well, what about this gluten intolerance thing?

Like people didn't have it 50 years ago. Why is it going on now? And we really don't know, but maybe it's antibiotics, maybe it's changes in the gut microbiome. But a lot of this stuff seems to have a mitochondrial dysfunction piece to it. Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, type two diabetes, they all seem to have mitochondrial dysfunction elements to them. The mitochondria is not producing energy the way that it should. And back again to that point about being flexible with our fuel systems, people seem to be coming inflexible in their fuel systems. And this ketotic state may be the default that we're able to go back to to be able to

maintain some degree of health. And it also seems to press a reset button in the mitochondria where we get apoptosis and cell death and abnormal cells. But the need for people to shift towards a lower-carb diet may be reflective of some changes in the environment where we're being made sick by things like glyphosate or maybe over-aggressive antibiotic use. And then the thing that we need to default back to to be able to be healthy is some sort of a low-carb or ketogenic diet. be healthy as some sort of a low-carb or ketogenic diet. Now, when you're talking about foods and foods that people eat and breads and gluten deficiencies or gluten intolerances, what about sprouted breads?

And what are the difference between something like an Ezekiel bread and, say, like a Wonder Bread? Yeah. So with an Ezekiel bread, they soak these grains, pour off the water, let them sprout. And in that sprouting process, the enzymes that are released tend to break up the gluten and gliadin proteins. And for a lot of people who are gluten intolerant with like a piece of Wonder Bread or, you know, it's standard French bread, they could eat something like the Ezekiel bread. Not everybody

can. I can't. Like, if I had a piece, when I hit your bathroom, it would need a priest and an exorcism afterwards. Really? And you would brick it over and never use it again. So do you have a gluten intolerance? You know, I was never, we've looked at like, is it celiac? Is it gluten intolerance? But if I get some sort of a wheat exposure, and it's to the degree that like if a steak is grilled on a grill, and somebody grilled French toast on the grill the day before, I'm going to be sick from it.

So I'm like the canary in the coal mine on it. It sucks. It's amazing. That's fascinating. But does it have any effect on nutrient absorption? Because of the, like, celiacs, a big part of it is when you're exposed to that bread, it's not just that you go to get diarrhea, but the nutrients are not getting into your system. Right, because of the intestinal permeability.

The way I got into all this stuff, I was really, really sick and had ulcerative colitis. And I'm about 175 pounds right now. When my ulcerative colitis was at its worst, I was 130 pounds. So I was 40 pounds skinnier. How old are you? I'm 45 now. But how old were you then? At that point, I was like 27, 28. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. So you looked like death. I looked like concentration camp deal, yeah. And it was just malabsorption. Like I couldn't absorb anything. I was shoveling food down. And for me at that point, it was a grain and legume-based kind of vegan diet, which for me was just not working.

For that point in my life, in Seattle not having any son like that was a really really bad move for me and but I will say this this was also on the heels of getting and resolving at least to some degree Giardia so I think that parasitic infection low vitamin D levels bad sleep bad circadian rhythm like all that stuff fed into it and so a combination there yeah if you want to get taken down at the kneecaps, that was a good way to do it. And to cure Giardia, what did they give you? Mitronidazole, which is antimicrobial that they use for things like Giardia and then also some of the like ArchiBacter bacteria.

So these kind of parasitic bacteria type things. And does that have an effect on mitochondria as well, the same way that antibiotics do? It's not the same way, but it is a mitochondrial disruptor as well. Yeah. Now, what is a pro-mitochondria supplement? Is there anything that... Oh, man. So like resveratrol, fasting, ketosis, those things all tend to flip some switches in the mitochondria that make them healthier and more robust. I've heard variable varying things rather on resveratrol being

absorbable. It's very difficult to absorb it. Yeah. Yeah. What is the best way? Usually it's some sort of an emulsification with fat and, you know, lyophilized. And so it's quite fat soluble. So if you can get it mixed into a fatty matrix, then it enhances the absorption. But it does seem to, and you know, most of this data is petri dish type data. So we really don't know if it's having great effect in the body. And then there's another layer to this a ton of these polyphenolics don't really enter the body or they don't enter the body as the original chemical they get modified by the gut bacteria and then either the gut

bacteria manufacturer a completely different chemical or some sort of downstream chemical is what enters the body or it may just interface with the gut lining and then the gut sends out different signaling molecules that then affects the rest of the body. Wow. So depend upon the healthiness of your gut bacteria. That's a massive impact. It has a massive impact on whether or not that resveratrol or other similar nutrients get in your system. It's just pharmaceuticals in general.

Like when you look at people going on a heart med or, you know, different things. Pharmaceuticals in general, like when you look at people going on a heart med or, you know, different things, like depending what something that they're understanding is not only do we have genetic differences, but the differences in the gut microbiome may have a really profound influence in the way that people respond to supplements, pharmaceuticals. Yeah. Yeah. It's just so much to take in for the person. The average person is listening to this that wants to sort of optimize their health. There's so many. There should be like, it's kind of amazing.

And I guess a lot of this is because this is a fairly new discipline in terms of the last few decades. And guys like you who are on the forefront of it have done some personal. And Chris Kresser, who's gone through his own deal, he was a macrobiotic vegan at one point in time. And now he tells you to eat liver. And you should see pictures of it. He ended up getting a really nasty gut bug traveling in I think the Philippines. And pictures of him before,

he was like jacked. Super thick legs, like thick neck, Thai boxer. And now he's pretty wafey, and he's never really been able to put all the weight back on and kind of get back to as robust as what he was before that. But it was another situation where maybe some irritation to the gut because of the diet. And then definitely this infectious agent, whatever the bug was that he caught, just crushed him. There should be some sort of a place that

you could go, like a string of places, places you know where you can open them up in major cities and metropolitan areas where someone can go and find out like what is the right stuff to do i went to this one that's they did some blood work on me and the lady told me avocados just don't agree with you i'm like fuck off that is so dumb there's not a god i eat avocados all the time they're great they're just trying to come up with some sort of ridiculous blood test that shows that avocados i'm like that's not real right that can't be real can it there's not much again that that stuff gets really especially avocados i know it's like damn avocado so if somebody has intestinal permeability for whatever reason, then you can become reactive unlike the IgG antibody testing.

But the problem is not the food specifically. The problem is that you have gut permeability. So if you fix that gut permeability, then you're no longer really going to react to the food because the food doesn't get into your body. Then you break it down into the protein, into the amino acids and fatty acids and the constituent carbs. And so the immunogenic properties that it had before don't really matter because it's in your gut. And when the contents are inside the gut, it's outside the body. Is there any test that they can do with your blood that would show that in any way? And is there any way that avocados, one of the healthiest foods known to man, could possibly be something you should avoid? Avocados are a not uncommon allergen.

So some people do develop allergies to avocados. They're a seed, essentially, with that fruit around it. So there are some immunogenic proteins to it. But you would have a pretty obvious reaction then if you were allergic to avocados. And this is where... The reaction wouldn't be grabbing another chip and dipping it in the guacamole because it's awesome. Yeah.

And usually it's something like foggy headedness or a GI issue or you know like joint creakiness or something like that. Creakiness? Like the joints actually physically make noise? No, they just don't feel so good. Oh, okay. Yeah. So it feels like, yeah.

Now, what about sugar causes that inflammation? Because that is a big factor with people that have injuries. Even if it's not injuries, if they have joint pain, like knee pains, back pains. I've had this conversation with people, and I got it from a chiropractor. She said, believe it or not, like gluten insensitivity, just reducing gluten and becoming gluten-free will change the way injuries hurt, like back injuries. And I thought, well, that sounds like some hippie bullshit.

And so this was many years ago when I started getting into this idea of inflammatory foods affecting the way your body and your joints particular feel, but she only took it to the point of gluten. Right. And then it wasn't a sugar thing for her. And then once I started looking into sugar, I'm like, oh, these are all foods that cause inflammation. Well, what is happening?

Like what causes, how does sugar or a high sugar processed sugar diet, how does that cause inflammation? So a couple of different mechanisms that can happen here. is sugar or high sugar, processed sugar diet, how does that cause inflammation? So a couple of different mechanisms that can happen here. We definitely understand that the sugar can feed bacteria, both good and bad bacteria. Most of the bacterial mass, though, should be occurring in the colon, like pretty far south. And if we eat a diet that's really deficient in fiber, high in refined carbohydrates, all of the carbohydrates get absorbed early. And if we eat a diet that's really deficient in fiber, high in refined carbohydrates, all of the carbohydrates get absorbed early. And so there's not actually any food for the bacteria that should be living in the colon. So these bacteria tend to move more upward in the

GI tract. And this is where we get small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. SIBO is a pro-inflammatory process. So that's one way that we can get inflammation out of that. Another way is just when we get really wild swings in blood sugar, that tends to be a pro-inflammatory process. So just the upregulation of insulin, particularly if it's over a chronic process, that can be a pro-inflammatory experience. And then the other piece is, you know, if you start getting cortisol released in response to blood sugar crashes because you get hypoglycemic and you're trying to

ping the liver to release some more glucose, that can be a pro-inflammatory process. And what is the inflammation? What's the physical reaction? Like what is happening when you say inflammation? So there's a bunch of different mediators there. So you've got different cytokines, these chemicals like interleukin-1, interleukin-6, that are turning on typically immune cells, and then other cells in the body are being affected as well. But it's usually some sort of immune cell response, which then they, in their process and doing what they do, they tend to release chemicals, cytokines and similar chemicals, that it can turn into a feedforward mechanism. So, you know, it's ultimately chemical messaging that can turn on other inflammatory processes

in cells that are nearby and also the immune cells themselves. So that is causing these joints to be painful. Oh, and then back to the joints. So whenever we do anything, any type of workout, even just exercise. So this is an important point to make too. Inflammation in and of itself isn't necessarily bad. It's the amount and type and placement and all that type of stuff. So exercise is a pro-inflammatory process. It's what we call a hormetic stress. So we get a little bit of this stress, ideally an

appropriate dose, and the body senses this stress, and then it makes us stronger so that we can cope with a subsequent exposure to this. But if our system is already pro-inflamed from poor diet, inadequate sleep, gut permeability, what have you, then these little, you know, tears and bumps and bruises and adhesions that we get from physical activity, they never really heal because our body is allocating resources to deal with the inflammation in the gut and are kind of over hyped up inflammatory response. And it doesn't have the resources to deal with the inflammation in our joints and our muscle and whatnot.

Interesting. So what are the best anti-inflammatory supplements or foods that people can take? Because ibuprofen is something you should pretty clearly avoid now. Use it sparingly. Yeah. And this is for people that are listening to this that are not aware. It's been shown over the last few years in particular that ibuprofen is actually pretty dangerous and can cause a host of- Heart attack.

Yeah. It increases like 60%. Strokes. Yeah, strokes, heart attack. Potential strokes. A good friend of mine, Cameron Haynes, who's a marathon runner and an ultra marathon runner, used to take it every day. Right.

And he was always in pain. Right. And what's fascinating was I did a podcast with Rhonda Patrick where she talked about the dangers of it and talked about how horrible it is for your gut bacteria. Right. And that that could, in fact, be causing the actual inflammation that you're trying to fight with the ibuprofen.

Right. This continual cyclone loop got him off of it, and his joint pain went away. Right. Which is just insane. Yeah. You think, how does this happen? How does this guy has joint pain all the time, and he's taking ibuprofen for his joint pain went away. Right. Which is just insane. Yeah. You think, how does this happen? How does this guy has joint pain all the time and he's taking ibuprofen for the joint pain

he thinks is just a fact of life. Well, and the joint pain is an inflammatory process and he's taking an anti-inflammatory, which you would think, oh, this is probably a win. Right. But, you know, and the complexity is kind of crazy. But yeah, and interestingly, it seems to be gut bacteria-mediated. Yeah. Now, when a person does have some sort of an issue, like a headache or some sort of a swollen joint or some pain,

is there anything that you can take that has anti-inflammatory properties that doesn't have the negative health consequences? You know, for me, this is my own. I'll maybe give you some of my own triage with this stuff. Like I had an L4, L5 disc injury about 15 years ago doing CrossFit at CrossFit HQ of all places. And it was pretty catastrophic. What was the disc bulging? So the first workout was 75 glute ham sit-ups, which, you know, you're on like a glute ham developer and you're doing this super long range of movement sit-up. And I ended up with abdo.

Like basically my stomach was inflamed. It was inflamed for like 12 days. It was about 13 days later we're pulling abdo instead of rabdo, like the rabdo myelitis. Rabdo myelitis is when you overtrain, your body literally starts breaking down your muscle tissues. And it can plug up your kidneys and you can die. Yeah. So I had kind of a compartmental syndrome with this. It was just in the abs, but it was bad.

So my abs- So you just overworked your abs. Massively overworked. I mean, there was no scale up, no ramp up. This is the first time I've seen this movement and I did 75 reps. Yeah, it was ridiculous. So 12, 13 days later, we were supposed to pull max deadlifts.

My abs were still not healed and I had like 465 on the bar. I was just passing my knees and my abs just failed. And so I had this like flexion injury with a lot of load at a very precarious spot and I had an L4, L5 disc injury.

It's bulging. It's not ruptured. But if I don't mobilize, if I sit too much, if my hip flexors get tight, it will get super cranky. So I will get to spots, like if I'm working a lot, where I have to take some ibuprofen and all. So you have this injury still to this day? Oh, yeah. Yeah, like it's way better in general. But every once in a while, I can piss it off pretty good.

Have you ever used a reverse hyper? Yes. Yeah, and it definitely helps. Yeah, it definitely helps. I mean, when I stay on my mobility maintenance cycle, I am good to go. But when I get super busy, when I'm traveling, you know, if I have to sleep in a weird bed or something, like, it tends to be a cumulative thing that adds up over, like, two weeks. And then I can get kind of a backflip. For people who, someone just asked about this on Twitter yesterday, the Reverse Hyper is a machine created by a guy named Louie Simmons,

who is a really famous powerlifter and a completely insane person. If you want to listen to the podcast Jamie and I did with him at his place, Westside Barbell, he's a fucking nut, but genius in making this machine that allows active decompression of the spine. I'm a big fan of it. Do you do any sort of spinal decompression exercises? Yeah. What do you do?

So both kind of the inversion board and then also just hanging. I'll actually use some weightlifting straps and go out on a pull-up bar, hands together, and I'll hang for like three minutes at a shot. So I'm getting like thoracic decompression and then also so it's not grip dependent right i do that but i do it with a grip i just because i feel like for jujitsu and for all the other things i need strong hands so i'll just kill two birds with one stone yeah for that i'm i'm wanting such a training stimulus for loosening my thoracic girdle and everything that it's gonna it's gonna wipe out my grip my grip would fail way before i would get that kind of thoracic opening yeah did you ever think maybe you should work your grip to balance it out pretty good grip but i i mean we're talking about it's a fairly fat bar also that i have at home okay and so i'm just using that as a little

bit of a bridge for that but i mean like there's a real benefit in having a fatter bar, right? It's... You can get strength from here rather as strength from this closed... I think, again, like this variety, you know, like getting as much variety as possible. I love rope climbs. Like, if I had one pulling movement I was going to use, it would probably be a rope climb. Really? That's interesting.

Yeah. How come? You get this unilateral movement, but you're also, like like you get pec involvement, lats, serratus, the whole thing. And as you pull it in, it tends to look a lot like a lot of the positions and strength in jujitsu. And so you also, as part of it, you can work these lock offs as part of the transition. as part of the transition. So for me, it just ends up getting more development across my back, my arms, my shoulders in one movement than I can get

from any other type of pulling activity. That makes sense. Now, as far as like lower back decompression, do you ever do that one where you're hanging from your waist only, from the waist down? I love that one. That one seems to isolate the lower spine. What is the name of that thing that we have in the back, Jamie?

The one that does that? There's that one spinal decompression machine that we put together back there. The one with your feet? The hang-ups thing? No, not the hang-up one, but the other one. The one that you kind of, it looks like a Roman sit-up chair. Okay. But it's just for decompression.

Right. And you just lean forward and it just it seems to target directly the lower back much better than just the ankle ones right the ones from the ankle i feel like my legs are holding a little too much stress and i'm hanging on i'm controlling it a little too much right or is this one i can completely let go well in some of the the uh the gravity boots like they were finding that people were getting like laxity in their knees, like the knees were giving way before you really decompress the back. That makes sense. Yeah. That makes sense. But, but also some of that laxity

in the knees probably relieves some knee pressure on some folks as well. Sort of like how shoulder hangs, releases a lot of shoulder pain in some people. Right. Right. Yeah. Totally. Totally. Yeah. But you know, back to your question about the anti-inflammatories, like, if I get a really spicy backflip, I will do 800 milligrams of ibuprofen, but I'll hit it once

and then I'm good. And do you feel any adverse effects because you don't do it a lot? Do you feel it, like, do you take it and then feel any health consequences? I don't, but I mean, one of the primary health consequences is keeling over from a heart attack or a stroke. So it's, you know, but it's one of those things where I've played with it. And once it gets in that, you know, I can ice it and I can do STEM and all that stuff

helps, but it's just like, man, if I can get one targeted bolus of, of ibuprofen, 800 milligrams, I hit it once and it just drops it down. And then, you know, it changes the whole thing from being a two day issue to like a 12 day issue, because otherwise I'll just kind of drag on. And I've just gotten to a point where if I really get myself into a bad spot with my mobility or just getting this thing pissed off, then it's like, okay, I've just got to do this. But then beyond that, there's this product from a new chapter called Xyflamend. And it's really, really pretty slick as far as anti-inflammatory. It pulls some ginger extracts, curcumin. They do a supercritical extract on it. And that stuff is pretty legit. And that can, for a lot of people,

like I haven't found that it works as well on that pain and inflammation reduction when my back gets really spicy, but it's pretty darn good. And everything that's in it, you can make some arguments. It would be pretty beneficial over the long haul. Like it's these COX-2 pathways modifiers, but it does it in a different way than

what the ibuprofen does. Is it dose dependent? I mean, is there like a point of diminishing returns where you get, you know, 800 milligrams is like the magic number for ibuprofen. They say you shouldn't go over that. Right. But is it something like that with this stuff? I don't know. I don't know. Like they have a recommended dose on it, but I haven't really played around with that. But I mean, everything usually has some sort of, you know, kinetics like dose response curve with it. So I would assume so. Yeah. Yeah. That's why I was wondering, like, what if you took like hyper doses? I haven't tried that. I have not tried that. Because it's all natural stuff, right? Like curcumin is not really dangerous in larger doses, is it? is not really dangerous in larger doses, is it?

I don't know about the toxicology on that. You know, like just because it's natural doesn't necessarily mean that it's non-toxic. Strychnine. Strychnine, arsenic, yeah, yeah. So that's interesting. That is an interesting idea. I haven't really thought about going beyond what the recommended is on that.

Yeah, I would wonder if that would ramp it up. Now, other than that, what about aspirin? Aspirin has some benefit. Aspirin has some benefit, but it's kind of an interesting mixed bag, too, like to take enough of it to get a really potent effect like you would, like if somebody had a back spasm or something like that. spasm or something like that, you're looking at the potential of GI bleeding. You have a really potent blood thinning effect. So, I mean, aspirin is a little bit dodgy in that regard. If you have that really acute deal that you're trying to manage. But it is a possibly interesting side note. Aspirin, like a baby aspirin a day, there's some studies that have suggested that women taking that baby aspirin a day, it could reduce breast cancer potentiality by like 70% because of the anti-angiogenic effects of the aspirin.

Now, I've read some things about the ketogenic diet and cancer, and that is very fascinating to me about having these high-fat, low-complex carbohydrates, low-simple carbohydrate diets can have a great benefit on reducing the fuel that cancer needs to stay alive. I would say it's at least twofold. It's probably multifactorial there. So on the one hand, certain types of cancer tend to preferentially run on glucose. And so if you can limit the glucose, they don't really do well with fats or proteins as a fuel source. So you can limit that. Not all cancers fall into this category, though. Some cancers are super metabolically flexible and they can use just about anything as a fuel source. a glioblastoma, a couple of other endothelial derived cancers that just directly that reduction in glucose level may be really beneficial.

There's another layer to it, though, that that low glucose environment and that shift towards ketosis tends to set up this kind of stress response. So we actually have a little bit of oxidative stress occurring in the mitochondria and normal tissue do great with that, but cancerous tissue does not. So it's a little bit of an irritant. And what they're doing right now, what they're studying is getting folks ramped up on a ketogenic diet so that you get that hormetic stress response, you're limiting glucose, and then they will have people fast immediately before chemo or radiation. So this is still doing some conventional therapies, but that fasting state that while you're also in ketosis, it reduces your pool of this substance called glutathione, which is our normal antioxidant defense network.

So interestingly, and maybe counterintuitively, they're trying to reduce your antioxidant pool and get it down to a bare minimum. Then when they whack you and the cancer with the chemo and the radiation, the cancer is more prone to die because it doesn't have antioxidant defense mechanisms to keep it going. So it's an interesting thing because a lot of people in the kind of alternative cancer treatment scene, you know, they'll start dosing people on super high antioxidants with the thought that some of the etiology of cancer may be driven by free radicals, by oxidative damage. And there may be some truth to that, but it's kind of like the horse is out

of the barn at this point. Like they're kind of tackling it in the wrong way. And even when they're using high dose vitamin C, they're using it intravenously. And even though vitamin C is touted as an antioxidant, it can be a pro-oxidant at high substances and so, or at high concentrations. So it may be a situation where you get the glutathione pool depleted, you hit these people with high dose vitamin C, and then they maybe do hyperbaric oxygen, where they go into a pressurized canister and they do pure O2, and that increases the oxidative stress, and that may be another adjunctive treatment to this. But that's all of these different mechanisms that are kind of an outgrowth of the ketogenic diet going on in the background.

Wow. Do you mess around with cryotherapy at all? Not a ton. I mean, I live on a little three-acre farm in Reno, and so it's cold frequently, and I have, like, a tub of water. And every once in a while when I sack up, I'll go out there and sit in it. But it's rough, man. So it's just cold water. It's not like you don't throw ice in there or anything. Well, I mean, there's usually, for much of the year, there's a little layer of ice on the top of it.

And so I've got to, like, chisel that out. And then you climb in? And then I climb in. in you measure the temperature no i mean it's it's uh it's somewhere slightly above freezing because you know it's got an inch or two of ice on on the top of it but after you had ronda patrick on here um i kind of opted more for the uh hot sauna kind of deal because i'm like dude that's a lot a lot more fun. That's way easier. And it seems really positive. Yeah. And I've been doing that after jujitsu. And on the days when I can pull that off, my recovery is amazing. It's almost like I pressed a reset button that day. And although I got the benefit of jujitsu, I didn't have any of the downside.

I mean, it is crazy. And I didn't experience that when I would do cryo immersions after exercise. I felt better kind of in the first maybe hour or two after a hard workout doing the cold water immersions. But then a day or two later, like I was still sore and joint creaky and all that stuff. Whereas with the sauna, you get, and it's not an infrared sauna. It's just like this hottest ball sauna, 140 degrees plus. And I would sit in there as long as I could, 15, 20 minutes. And, man, when I finally break and I want out, it's like if there was an old person in front of me getting out of there, I would push them down.

I mean, it's panic getting out of there. Now, is there a differentiation in your body between a steam shower and a sauna? Like when you get into one of those hot steam showers and it's 135 degrees and you're... That's a good... Because it's heat response, right? It's heat response. That's really what's going on. It's heat shock proteins.

Yeah. I don't... Rhonda Patrick would know that one. I do not know. It seems like for me that air can be hotter and it's interesting though because water uh can uh confers or or removes uh heat like 30 times faster than air does so like it you know so um you could heat or cool the body much faster with water than you can with air clearly and so i'm wondering you know would you need water that's as hot as the air to get the same type of like temperature elevation in your body

or is just the skin being exposed exposed to you know air temperature that's like an oven is that is there something kind of cool with that like i i don't know that's a good question i'll have to forward that one to ronda yeah i'll make a note of that. Yeah. What about other forms of recovery post-workout? Have you found anything to be beneficial? Are you messing around at all with like those hard balls, like those WOD balls? I do some stuff like that. So I follow this gymnastics bodies program. Oh, yeah.

I wanted to ask you about that. Yeah. And it's really good. And they have the strength work as part of this whole thing, pressing and pulling, all kinds of trunk work and everything. But each strength movement has a mobility movement paired with it. So it's really interesting because as you get stronger doing this stuff, there's a tendency to get tighter. So they just kind of bake the mobility movement into the cake with that. But then they also have a three-day-a-week stretching sequence. One's the front splits, one's the side splits. And then the other one is

thoracic mobility for like a backbend. And so I just kind of punched the time clock on that. Like each day I have some strength and mobility work that I do with that three days a week. I do the, um, the dedicated stretching sequence. I tend to do it with my daughters. They're like three and five. And so we just get in the floor and, you know, it's just a shit show in there with them also, but it's a ton of fun. And we'll,

I'll hit that like three days a week. And that's been really good. Um, a meditation app, like doing something like brainwave, like the binaural beats. I'm so wound tight and kind of type a, that if I can just like sit down,

go outside, look at the trees, do five minutes on that thing, do some kind of cyclic breathing, that's amazing for me. Like that is a really, really good system reset for me. Have you done any isolation tank work? I have done some isolation tank work. You tried to get me to go out to Torrance last time when I was here. I couldn't make it happen. But you've done that since? I have done that, yeah.

So tell me what you've been doing and how often. I don't do it often. It's usually when I was here and I couldn't make it happen. But you've done that since? I have done that. Yeah. So tell me what you've been doing and how often. I don't do it often. It's usually when I'm traveling. There is a place in Reno now, like it's just kind of getting into Reno. It's taken off all over the country now. It is. It's amazing. I had a guy approach me with an idea for a pretty legit business model around this.

And we were kind of looking at some people putting some money into it. pretty legit business model around this. And we were kind of looking at some people putting some money into it. And then I heard that Massage Envy was going to open up, you know, the float tanks. And they're everywhere. Like there's Massage Envy on like every corner. And so I was like, okay, I backed out of that. Because you didn't think that it would be profitable that way? I thought it would be really easy to get outmaneuvered by a multi-offering kind of location. Right.

That makes sense. Yeah. Massage and float all in one location. Yeah. And if they sell weed, too. There you go. Because float tanks plus weed is like the greatest thing in the world for relaxation. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. And Reno now, Nevada is now on board with that. Thank God, Nevada. For the longest time, Nevada was one of the strictest places in the world. If you got caught with a joint, you went to jail for something like seven years. It was really crazy. It's an interesting environment because you have brothels around there.

You have the gambling. But then there was this pretty draconian approach to really minor drug offenses and that they should be offenses. It all is ridiculous. It's pretty ridiculous. Now, have you messed around at all with CBD oil or CBDs, which is non-psychoactive, but has tremendous beneficial properties for anti-inflammation? I have not. And it's one of those things that's like on the list to do.

You need to get on that. Because I would think that with someone, when I was asking you about anti-inflammation things, like CBD apparently has profound effects. You know, what's interesting about CBD is that everything that you would think is good about kind of a paleo ketogenic diet, sleeping well, exercising right, CBD does it effectively. Now, it doesn't work the same in every single person, and you need to kind of play around with that. So there's some caveats with it. But when you just look at the pharmacology, look at the research on it, and you look at all this other cool stuff that's been done by dietary interventions elsewhere and lifestyle interventions, then the CBD oil hits all of those pieces. So, yeah.

It's kind of amazing that that plant was illegal for so long and still is in a lot of places and still it's federally and there's so many benefits to it and non psychoactive benefits folks doesn't have anything to do with your mind you know you just want to find an excuse to get high fucking loser that it really doesn't even get you high CBDs don't do a damn thing it does apparently alleviate anxiety in some folks. Right. Right. Yeah. But I wonder how much of that is anxiety is dependent or caused by inflammation. They just had some great studies that were looking at alterations in gut microbiome and inflammatory status and depression and anxiety. And it was basically if they shifted things such

that the gut microbiome looked healthier, the depression, anxiety basically disappeared. And then, you know, it could shift the other way. And it's interesting, again, where if you add something, so not everybody's going to change their diet. And like, I advocate for that and push and shove. But the reality is like our world is sent up and incentivized to not do that. Like the big junk food manufacturers, they study how to make this stuff addictive. Like what's the Lay's potato chip line? Bet you can't eat just one. And I was like, I'll take that thing to the bank all day long. So you can ridicule people, fat shame, do all this stuff. But there's a reality that our modern world is set up to work exactly against our genetics.

So what do we do then? Well, you could have something like CBD oil where you put it in a little bite of chocolate Our modern world is set up to work exactly against our genetics. So what do we do then? Well, you could have something like CBD oil where you put it in a little bite of chocolate and the person has it one or two times a day or whatever the dosing regimen is. And maybe it puts their ulcerative colitis into remission. Maybe their depression is gone. And then maybe if we get them moving in a good direction and they don't feel like shit, then maybe we can say, okay, let's now get some diet changes in there. Let's get you going to bed earlier. If you are going to stay up and work, put on some blue blockers so it doesn't mess with your sleep patterns as much. But it's a really accessible, inexpensive, no risk proposition that could add some really huge

benefits for people. Yeah, I think what you said too, that this system is sort of set up to get people to eat these crappy foods and make them incredibly available and very difficult to pass up. And once you start eating them, you consume on a daily basis, your body starts craving them. You get addicted to them. I was at the supermarket the other day and I was under the influence and I was always wandering through the aisles. It was one of those weird moments where I went, is this always been like this? Like I was just looking at these cans of food, everything's canned. And I was thinking, this is all food, but it can last forever. And like, food's not supposed to last forever. The whole idea is supposed to grow it. You take it out of the ground, it's alive, you eat it and then you're healthy. And then I was looking at

this food that was like, just filled with preservatives and canned and these packages and plastic bags of it and i was like this is so it's so strange that this is the prevalent food because it's so easy to store it's so easy to ship it's so easy to have for sale you put a barcode on the package and you're good to go but this is not really i mean you can eat it it's food kind of right but it's not really food right food the real food is on the edges right the real food is where the the vegetables are where the meats are where the eggs are that stuff in the middle in those aisles where you just see these bright colored cans they would it was so weird it was like a little kid's toy store right like because i was high so i was wandering through the the aisle and i'm looking at all these different colors on me this is so weird it's like

trying to draw me in with smiley faces on the the cans and on the plastic bags but it's we unless you're going to a really good natural food store you're probably inundated with that stuff if you go to the as a regular vaughn's and just walk down the aisle man you're gonna inundated with that stuff. If you go to the regular Vons and just walk down the aisle, man, you're going to get hit with so much of this shit. Right. And it's interesting because the folks that make these foods, they study neurophysiology, they study evolutionary biology, they study how to make things addictive. So it's kind of funny on the one hand, where like the gatekeepers, the medical establishment, a lot of the media, if you talk about like this ancestral health template or what have you, there's still a bunch of like pissing match and contention around that. Whereas the people who are making these foods addictive, they fully get it, but they're using it in such a way that they're like, okay, here's our predilection to eat more and move less.

Here's how we're going to make that happen. And we have these really interesting flavor combinations and different experiences. And do you want to run that video? So here's a really interesting example of this. Where, you know, you could get bored of even a really tasty food. But then you can figure out a way to bypass this whole process. I cautiously eat a few fries. The strategy works for now.

And I resume my epic ice cream battle. Okay, so what's going on there is Andrew Zimmerman, or no, Adam Rickman, Man Vs. Food, he does these eating challenges. And he's in this thing called the Kitchen Sink Challenge. It's an eight pound ice cream sundae. And I think anybody would say that an ice cream sundae is pretty tasty, you know, and it's hyper palatable, like it would make you want to eat it. But what happens to him is he gets completely bogged down in this process and can't go on until he orders a plate of extra salty, extra crunchy French fries. So he's actually gagging on the ice cream, can't go on. He's not going to win this thing. And the way that he gets

out of this situation is by eating more food. He would not have finished the Sunday were it not for eating the French fries. And so you have this situation where in our woven into our genetics is this process called palate fatigue, where even if we have a really tasty food in front of us, we will get bored of it and then we'll want something else. And if you have that other thing, that something else immediately available, and it's different enough from the thing that you just got bored with, you can eat more in total. And it's just so interesting. Like, he would have failed eating this ice cream sundae were it just the sundae. But not only did he eat the sundae, he ate probably about 1,500 calories of extra salty, extra crunchy French fries.

How did he know? Did someone explain that to him? salty, extra crunchy French fries. How did he know? Did someone explain that to him? So if you go to professional eating websites, like people who go do these things where they like eat hot dogs and whatever. Yeah, competitive eater.

There are pairings. So it's like, okay, so with hot dogs, you need something like gummy bears because the hot dogs are salty and meaty and umami. So you need something kind of sweet and fruity and light. And so there are all these pairings that you do. And so with ice cream, because it's cold, creamy, sweet, the perfect compliment to it is this salty, crunchy umami that you get out of the French fries. That's fascinating. You know, I've always found that if I'm eating something and it's really good,

You know, I've always found that if I'm eating something and it's really good, like a steak or something, and I'm stuffed, even if I don't want any more of the steak, if I have fries and I taste those salty fries, I'll start eating more fries. But I know I'm full. Why am I stuffing my fat face with these stupid fries? It's that novelty. And from an evolutionary biology perspective, it's great wiring. It's great engineering because we didn't have guaranteed food all the time. You know, like you had to eat when you could get it. And then, you know, you might go a long period of time without having that food. But now we're in a situation where you have infinite variety.

There's 50,000 different food-like items in an average supermarket. It's 10,000 or 11,000 new food-type items that are released each year. They're engineered to be hyper palatable to bypass the neuro regulation of appetite. And it's super easy to just go fill up your pantry with a wide assortment of these things. So then you can do what what he ended up doing here, you can eat one meal, you're like, man, a little sweet thing would be really good. So you have that sweet thing. And then, gosh, a little salty crunchy would be nice. And so you have the salty crunchy. And you can just keep eating through this whole process.

And it really makes most of the standard like dietetics recommendation of, you know, eat less, move more, everything in moderation. There's no moderation in that environment. Like it doesn't exist. It's a hookers and cocaine experience. You know, I mean, it's like these things spin the dopamine centers in the brain. They are addictive. And if we are surprised by that process at all or feel bad about it, it's kind of crazy. Like it is not your fault if you find yourself entrapped in this world of hyperpalatable foods. self entrapped in this world of hyper palatable foods. And I don't suggest that people just roll over and, you know, expose their belly to the world and let, you know, let the world have its way with you. But understand what, what, why it's so difficult. Like you should not feel guilt.

There shouldn't be any drama. There should be no morality around it. Like if we just understand this is your basic biological wiring. And if you understand that and it's not your fault, but let's do something, then we can at least decouple ourselves from the emotionality and the drama and the guilt that we've had around this. And we can start making some changes. But so many times, the reason why I've heard from people that they peel out of some sort of a new way of eating or lifestyle is that they're motoring along, they seem to be doing well, and then they're like, they're just gone. And then you talk to them and they're like, oh, it was just hard. It's like, yeah, it is hard, but it wasn't just that it was hard. They usually start getting some

sort of internal dialogue where, well, I suck. I must be weak. I can't do it. It's easier for that guy than it is for me. So they bail on it. And when I, when I started putting this kind of spin of this evolutionary biology and this neuroregulation of appetite into working with people, particularly people who had had difficulties with eating over the long haul and maybe like some weird relationships with food or what have you, there was like this light that went on. They're like, okay, so it's not my fault. I'm like, no, man, it's not your fault. We still need to do something. And it's not necessarily going to be easy, but we can do this. And if you aren't beating yourself up about the fact that this thing is a difficult process, then we're going to be able to get a lot

further down the road. Are there any foods that when you do go off the rails, like say if you have a cheat day and you have a, oh my God, I'm gonna eat a whole pizza and a bowl of spaghetti and some fucking ice cream. Is there any foods that can counterbalance the damaging effects or the addictive properties? Because the worst thing you want to do is have a cheat day and go, oh, fuck it, I'm just going to be a slob. Right. I do enjoy a cheat day, by the way. You know, it's... Don't you?

You know, so instead of calling it a cheat day, I usually just say, kick your heels up, do whatever you want to do. I've seen a little problem when people set it up and they're like, okay, Saturdays are my cheat day. And you start gearing up towards Saturday. It's like a heroin user who they get the box out and they flip it open and they're getting all their gear set up. And that anticipatory process for most of these people is better than actually having the thing. And that anticipatory process is getting the dopamine, you know, going in the brain and it just gets you all wound up into it. So ideally, you know, let's say people eat three meals a day, seven days a week. It's 21 meals. Let's just say 19

of those meals are pretty on point and two of them are kind of kick your heels up to whatever and do it whenever you want to do it. The caveat to that is, are there things that are going to flip you out and you're not going to come back from it? You know, and it depends. It's, it's really an individual thing. So it could be a heroin food out there. Well, so my heroin food is, uh, is a sea salt and vinegar potato chips. Oh, I love those. Yeah. I always felt like they're kind of healthy though.

There's vinegar, there's potatoes, potatoes, there's salt. Yeah. What's bad about them? Uh, well,

when you eat like a five pound bag of them, which I can do in the blink of an eye, then how big is a five pound bag of potato chips? They're pretty goddamn possibly facetious, but that would be a big size bag okay let's say let's say a 16 ounce bag of potato chips even a 16 ounce bag what kind of a slob are you that's crazy that type of slob you know it's so it you know whereas my wife she'll eat a little bit of potato chips but she's more of a sweets person whereas i'll eat a little bit of potato chips, but she's more of a sweets person.

Whereas I'll have a little bit of dark chocolate, but literally a good brick of dark chocolate will sit in the cabinet for a month. And I'll chip away at it a block here, a block there. But if we have potato chips in the house, I will eat all of them. I'm a dark chocolate and peanut butter dude. Okay. I dip the dark chocolate in the peanut butter. Because you know, you got your chocolate in my peanut butter. Remember those commercials?

And it tastes delicious. Guess what? Reese's peanut butter cups can't fuck with an actual candy bar and actual peanut butter. That's way better. Right. They fucked up with that commercial. But it's still a really good idea, though. They shouldn't have done it, and that's why they stopped doing that commercial because people said, fuck Reese's.

I'm just going to go buy a chocolate bar and a big ass tub of peanut butter and have a party. Right. Right. It's way better. It's way better. But, you know, and that's interesting, too, like thinking about the palatability thing. How much chocolate can you eat by itself? Right.

How much peanut butter can you eat by itself? But together. Together, you can eat more. You can fuck them up. Yeah. Yeah. Like Ghirardelli's chocolate, like one of those big ass thick chocolate bars. Oh.

Right. And it's, you know, for me, I'm not trying to moralize it or say this is right or that's wrong. But just being aware that like stacking those flavor combinations, like in general, if you can make your meals enjoyable, but not over the top to the point that you're overdoing it. And it's just different for everybody. That sounds like you're saying enjoy it, but don't enjoy it too much. That's pretty much it. God damn it. But what about someone who wants to enjoy it?

What about someone who wants to have that delicious taste of the sea salt and vinegar and the potato chips? What I recommend is generally you have that out of the house, and you don't have it hanging out in your pantry. You've got to go to the woods. Remember when we used to find porn when we were kids? You find porn in the woods? You've got to bring potato chips in the woods. Eat them in a dangerous environment,

so you're constantly looking over your shoulder for wolves and shit. Right, right. That's a good strategy. I was thinking more just kind of like go to the mini mart and eat it in your car. Oh, God. Then you feel like a real junkie. You're in a bad neighborhood shooting up in a good strategy. I was thinking more just kind of like go to the mini mart and eat it in your car, but yeah. Then you feel like a real junkie. Like you're in a bad neighborhood shooting up in a parking lot. Oh yeah.

So for you, it's just that that's, that seems like a good, healthy heroin food though. As far as like heroin foods, I mean, it's just a potato or root vegetable. Yeah.

But I mean, you can really, I tracked my blood sugar on it. When you eat a bag of, you know, like the sea salt and vinegar potato chips, my blood sugar was like diabetic levels. Really? Yeah, it's bad. Oh, wow. So you have weird genes.

Yeah. I would like to track it. Yeah. I would like to track myself on it. I can get you squared away with a CGM if you want to do that, a continuous blood glucose monitor. Okay. You put it on and it – How's it doing it?

Is it doing it through your skin? It's a tiny hair-sized probe that goes through the skin. And then it samples the blood, the interstitial fluid, once a minute for the duration that you have this thing on. Usually you wear it two or three weeks. And yeah. I was using one of those ketone monitors where you have to cut yourself.

But it doesn't make me bleed because I have too many calluses in my hand. So I'd stick it in the fingers. My fingertip skin is too thick. Right. So I'd have to too many calluses in my hand. So I'd stick it in the fingers and my fingertip skin is too thick. Right. So I'd have to go to the side of my hand. Right. And it's fucking gross.

Yeah. To like jab myself in the side of my fingers. Right. I got annoyed by it. This is pretty mellow. I was even able to roll with it. I just took some rock tape and put over it. Oh, wow.

It's that small? Yeah. It's, you know, like a 50 cent piece kind of wow. It's that small? Yeah, it's like a 50 cent piece kind of deal. It's low profile and pretty flat. So you rolled with it on your body. What if someone put you in like a bicep crusher on that arm? That would have sucked. That would have sucked. So, yeah.

So what did you do? Tap out before it gets to that? I mean, that one did not come up during that. Where do you put it? Usually right there. That's right where I'd get you. Yeah. Look for that spot. I know he's got that thing on. I'm going to fucking attack that thing. That's so funny.

For me, man, it's linguine with clams. That's my heroin food. I love linguine with clams. Is there any benefit to having gluten-free linguine versus regular linguine? Definitely if you're reactive to gluten, then yeah. It seems to me just, it seems like my body processes it a little easier.

Right. But it doesn't seem as satisfying either. Hmm. Hmm. And it's been prepped pretty much the same way? It's just like, it's a little less substantial. There's something about like real linguine from a good Italian restaurant where it has that al dente bite to it.

It's very hard to get that with gluten-free pasta. I mean, there's a textural element to it. There's clearly a flavor element to it. Gluten's just really interesting, like the type of protein that it is. This is why it makes pasta and pastries and everything so unique. We don't make pastries out of corn because it sucks as a medium like that. It's not bad for tortillas. It's not bad for tortillas, but you're not going to make, like, French bread out of it.

A sandwich out of it, yeah. Yeah, so, I mean, you've got those flavor elements, and then for some people they do get a little bit of an opiate response off of wheat. And you were saying that for you, you have a tremendous intolerance to wheat, so you cannot fuck with that. But for the average person that doesn't have this tremendous intolerance, is there a benefit to eating sprouted bread over regular bread? I would say generally, yes. A nutrient-based? Not necessarily nutrient, but potentially this inflammatory process.

Okay. Yeah. And again- Because of the enzymes. The enzymes break down the gliadin. And so in, in part, it's just partially digested. So it's easier to, to digest and absorb, um, to the degree that there's some problems with like gliadin, wheat germ, a gluten, and those proteins get broken down. So I would say that there's a lower likelihood of those foods being pro-inflammatory. So if somebody is like, dude, I want a sandwich, then doing the Ezekiel bread and doing it on that, to me, would be a pretty good wing compared to doing Wonder Bread. Now, is there any nutritional properties or benefits to eating that bread? Is there anything

like you could say, I'm eating something good? The fact that it's a whole grain and it hasn't been super denuded and processed,'re gonna have more b vitamins you could have more minerals so in general like if we were to weigh out equal you know say 100 grams of this 100 grams of that there's going to be more vitamins minerals antioxidants in the ezekiel bread than in the white bread even though the white bread gets enriched with iron and some b vitamins i would say that the ezekiel bread is still probably a win i never buy that enriched shit right right rich flour like why are you enriching it what are you doing because it's iron and some B vitamins, I would say that the Ezekiel bread is still probably a win. I never buy that enriched shit. Right, right.

Enriched flour. Why are you enriching it? What are you doing? Because it's goddamn nothing. Because if you eat it without that, then you get super, super sick. Yeah. Yeah. That's crazy.

Is that why they enrich it? Yeah, because there were nutrient deficiency diseases like 1920s, 1930s as we really started industrializing the food system. 1930s as as we really started industrializing the food system and you know and there's there's a good argument for changing wheat flour to white flour when you remove that protein and fatty element that's in the whole wheat flour it goes rancid much faster so white flour is much more shelf stable it lasts a lot longer and also it has a different flavor profile and everything's a little more mild but there's a good argument again, but you know, it's like that, that shelf stability thing. This is part of the hallmark of something that's maybe not a great option other

than chicharrones. Chicharrones could last a million years and they're still amazing, but there's an exception to everything, but you know, it's, there was economic and palate incentives for why you would want to make this white flour. But it also people started getting more nutrient deficiencies because the amount of B vitamins and whatnot that usually come in that whole grain were gone. That makes sense. The Ezekiel bread is notoriously poor as far as like shelf life. Yeah. It gets moldy. Almost immediately.

You have to keep it in the fridge and all that. Yeah, that's one of the few breads that I always keep in the fridge. But so it's not necessarily good for you, though. It's better for you than, say, a processed wheat bread, but it's not really good for you. I'm going to take that as a no. No, I don't know. I mean, that's a really good question. I've never really thought about it like that.

You know, like, is a blueberry good for you? Yeah. Is a piece of like steak good for you? Yeah. I don't know. Like, again, so if we did a nutrient density kind of story and we looked at that Ezekiel bread compared to good types of fruit, vegetables, squash. I think that the Ezekiel bread would look pretty skinny. Like if you had 100 calories of this versus 100 calories of these.

But again, we looked at the vitamins, minerals, antioxidants that both of them had. I don't think the Ezekiel bread would be a real rock star, but I bet it would be better than white rice. It would probably be as good or on par with something like lentils or something like that, again, as far as vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, all that stuff. So that's weird to me because I would think that lentils would be vitamin rich. Not huge, but they're not terrible either. I mean, it's just all this kind of relative thing. And, you know, Rhonda Patrick is really good about this stuff. She's really geeked out on what are the most nutrient-dense foods out there

and trying to really make an emphasis of eating those. And so, like, sprouts tend to be at the top of the list. And then, interestingly, things like organ meats are super high up on the list. And then it starts kind of stratifying out. Herbs and spices tend to be off the Richter high in nutrient density, but we tend to not eat a ton of them. But, you know, like ginger and basil and garlic and all those things are really, really nutrient dense. And they also seem to have medicinal qualities and antimicrobial qualities. So there's some interesting stuff there. But, you know, at the

end of the day, you know, you could, people people do try to do it it's like every meal is going to be blueberries and uh you know wild caught deep water fish and you know a mountain of greens and and god love you for doing that i guess but you know every meal does not have to be that way to be pretty damn healthy and and you know all that so that's where the ezekiel bread i think that's probably not like a terrible by no means is it a terrible option in the story. So it's not a terrible option, but it's not necessarily the most nutrient dense thing you could eat. Right, right. But you could do way worse. Right, right, right, right. Yeah. Now, getting back to what I asked earlier, is there a food like that you would recommend for a guy who did eat that one pound bag

of potato chips? Is there anything or is it fasting maybe the best option? Yes. That's the best option. Yeah, I mean, something like that, or just, you know, some period of less intake. And so, you know, but then that gets, like, I hear people screaming, like, you know, disordered eating now, you know, it's food, you know, eating disorder. How is fasting considered an eating disorder it's not eating yeah an eating disorder seems to me to be like maybe so many people start associating with both like anorexia yeah and potentially the bulimia deal but anorexic people

don't fast that's what's bizarre they just don don't eat. Right. Right. Well, it's interesting again, like the only thing, so you could eat like a cockroach, like you could walk into a work environment or, you know, like post your photos on Instagram about eating, having a big gulp and donuts and all this other fucked up stuff. And most dieticians won't really bat an eye at that. They're like, yeah, you should eat better, but they're not going to say anything. But if you post some stuff about a low carb paleo kind of looking deal, then you're a disordered eater. Or if you eat gluten free, then they call it disordered eating. Intermittent fasting is being called disordered eating. But who's being called it by?

Generally, like the dietetics, healthcare, you know, kind of mainstream, like I get assailed by these people all the time. And the intermittent fasting thing is really fascinating because again, for just a very brief historical step back, it's like have humans always had three meals a day? And most people don't even eat just three meals a day. They just eat all day long, you know? And there's some clear problems with that from an inflammation standpoint. They've done some studies where they have people eat a caloric-restricted diet, which

should be anti-inflammatory, but the one group of calorie-restricted folks eat consistently throughout the day, and they don't get that anti-inflammatory benefit because they're just constantly keeping their digestive system going and all that type of stuff. So, you know, there's some really, really strong evidence and suggestion that some sort of punctuated eating pattern would be really healthy. But it's interesting on the one hand, just being really aggressively researched in the kind of cutting edge communities like Rhonda Patrick,

Walter Longo, Dom talks about this stuff a lot. But then when you get into kind of this mainstream dietetics story, they're just freaked out by this stuff. Like they really can't wrap their heads around it. People probably aren't even freaked out about those lap bands, those disgusting bands that they put around people's stomachs what do they call them lap bands right that's one of them yeah yeah I saw some guy arguing for a vegan diet and then I found out that he was a surgeon that

performs stomach shrinking operations yeah yeah yeah yeah like what the fuck man are you trying to get people healthy or you just trying to make money right that's crazy in the will with folks, it's the only option. Bullshit. It's never the only option. Does your mouth work? Do your hands work? Can you put food in your mouth?

Then it's not the only option. And disempowering people or saying that it's the only option for some folks to get them healthy, that is insanity. Right. You are coddling them to the point of you're you're willing to diminish their their overall physical structure of their digestive system I mean that's what you're doing right right I've read some horrendous things about the consequences of these stomach minimization activities right or

surgeries rather right it's a really scary stuff you have to completely limit what you eat from now on. Your stomach is about the size of my fist now. It's this little tiny thing and you get full quicker. So that's the psychological mechanism behind it. You get full quicker. Yeah. And,

but the rebate, so the interesting thing is almost immediately when people undergo these procedures, if they were like a type two diabetic, like they come out of it and they're no longer a type 2 diabetic almost immediately. Like it's really, really interesting. So there's that upside. But then also the long term, you know, two years, three years, four years, almost inevitably they get themselves back into the situation they were in.

And part of what's interesting is because they have such a small stomach, they can't hardly eat anything. So there's a tendency towards eating more refined food because that's, you know, they just can't eat that much. So it's. I know a guy who broke his out. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah.

He got his stomach shrunk, got an operation. He's a big fat guy and got his stomach cut and then broke it out and had to go in and get a second surgery. Yeah. It's a, that's where I'm very glad I didn't go into medicine specifically. Like that's just such a quagmire. I would probably shoot myself being in it. I just get infuriated when someone says that that's the only option for some people. That is not true. That is just absolutely not true. There are always options. If you have willpower, if you have a mind, if you have a support system, if you have people that can coach you, if you're willing to listen, if you're willing to understand and believe the consequences of your actions, you can change your diet and your behavior. You can. And it doesn't matter if you're 600 pounds or 60 pounds overweight or 6 pounds overweight.

You can make changes. It's interesting because insurance will reimburse for these like lap band and gastric bypass surgeries. And there are 30, $40,000 to pump people through it. But it's really difficult to get them to reimburse like a gym membership, a health coach, you know, that type of stuff, which, which, um, well, it's gotta be some collusion between the healthcare providers and the medical industry. I mean, just the mean, that's the only thing that makes sense. Or that people demand it so much that they can't deny it from people. Right. It's just very, very frustrating for me when you tell people that they don't have any other options.

Right. And that this is the best options to cut you open and cut your stomach and stitch it back to a smaller version of what it is. Well, and did you see that thing where they now have a stomach pump okay where you can they they basically put a tube in there you can eat the food and then pump the food out of the stomach and this thing is awaiting fda approval so they used to in roman times this is where like you know the the uh bread and circus just keep everybody entertained and the whole thing collapses. But they used to have the vomitoriums where people would eat.

Do you know that that's not true? Really? Yeah. Not only is it not true, vomitorium doesn't mean that. Really? What vomitorium means, it's the entrance and exit to an arena. Really? Yes.

This is something that I've gone into in great detail. And I went to the Colosseum in Rome and they explained the vomitorium. And it's just a misnomer. Joe, you're crushing my whole. You shouldn't be saying that. But this is crushing my whole like Rome fell, we're going to fall. These guys used to throw up and now we're doing it too. They may have done that.

They may have thrown up. But it wasn't at a vomitorium. Okay. A vomitorium is here. Pull it up, Jamie, so you can see what a vomitorium is. What a vomitorium is is the actual structure of an arena, like where the people come out and go through this area. And it has nothing to do with the word vomit.

Okay. How am I going to tell my post-apocalyptic story about Rome got fucked, we're heading to the same deal? Vomitorium. That's what a vomitorium is. Okay. But how do I tell the story? Well, you fucked up. That's what a vomitorium is. Okay. But how do I tell the story? Well, you fucked up.

You should have Googled it, man. Dude. You should have done what we did. You fucked up. You tried to pass away some bullshit. Man, I'm so chagrined. But it's important because I've had a lot of people tell me that. And educated people like yourself have said that.

It's just not true. Okay. Go back to that. The images of- Aspiresist, yeah. have said that it's not just not true okay that's what uh go back to that the images of yeah this these vomitoriums exist in like every arena that's that's what they are the stairways come down and then that opening at the bottom of the stairway that is a vomitorium but what is the origin of the word no they threw up they threw up a few of them did really rich people they wanted to eat and keep eating they threw up that but that's not what it is like go larger please so i could see that a series of entrances or exit passages in ancient roman

amphitheater or theater a place where which according to popular misconception the ancient romans are supposed to have vomited during feasts to make room for more food not true there you go damn sorry dude oh man it's important that you know about it i am properly chagrined thank you it's just one of those things that people repeat, and then they never bother looking it up. Would that pump, though? Go back to that fucking disgusting stomach pump. This is so nasty. So this is, oh, hi, I'm fat, and my brain is stupid, and I just love to eat, so I can

eat now, and yay, eat normal, healthy meals. Hey. The girl in the middle is triggered. I can eat now and yay, eat normal healthy meals. Hey. The girl in the middle is triggered. I can tell. And then you stick this pump through a fucking hole in your belly button and it sucks out the food. Because nothing could go wrong with that. Look at her.

Honey, go outside. Go running. Stop. Look at me. I put the food in my mouth and it sends a signal to my brain. It's a simple procedure. Low risk. Completely reversible. Takes just 15 minutes. How

about fuck you? Twilight sedation. Back and home in just a couple of hours. Look at that cartoon. The cartoon people. That girl needs it? That girl's hot as fuck. She's skinny. Even cartoon hot. This is ridiculous. You don't need it, she's skinny even cartoon hot this is ridiculous you don't need it honey stop well i think this is her afterwards oh that's her yeah oh there's all

these people that have shrunk down from having wait go back to that go back to that here's the thing folks all you people that have benefited from it you could do another thing right you could just change your diet and one of the most powerful benefits of the ketogenic diet is appetite suppression. And that appetite suppression is fantastic. It's amazing. Even for a person like me who's never really struggled with their weight, I find that going without food is not only is it easy, but it's really inconsequential. It's not an issue at all.

I can go without food for five, six hours. It doesn't an issue at all. I can go without for five, six hours. It doesn't bother me at all. Yeah, it's super liberating. And to the, as powerful as it is, it can also be where people get themselves in trouble. A lot of the problems that are ascribed to just low carb, I think is an outgrowth of it being so satiating that you under eat.

So if you're hypocaloric for too often, too long, then that can be a big problem. I don't have issues with that. I eat like a pig. Right. But I've definitely lost weight by changing my diet to that ketogenic diet. And I've met so many people on the road, so many people while I'm out and about, they come up to me and they say, thank you. I've lost 60 pounds. Thank you. I've lost 80 pounds. Thank you. I've changed my diet. I drink kale shakes in the morning and now my body is just a completely different thing and

it just feels different. It works better. It's so important, man. It's just so important to take care of this meat vehicle that you're driving around. And so many people are falling prey to that supermarket line of cans with shiny colors on them and labels. And you get roped into this idea that just because you put it in your mouth, it's food. And your body is just sludge. It's just slugged down with all this nonsense. And ketogenic diet is interesting.

Some people that seem to never really be able to get anything else to work, it's possible they may have some damage to the hypothalamus, the energy regulating centers of the brain. It's unclear what's going on. But we know that a ketogenic diet has some really great benefits for neurological conditions in general, like epilepsy. There's some Parkinson's, Alzheimer's research that's going on. Thyroid conditions as well. Thyroid conditions. But it's possible that these ketones may be altering the physiology of the hypothalamus in such a way that we get normal energy regulation and metabolism and appetite, more importantly.

Cognitive benefits as well. It's another thing where people don't have that lazy, foggy feeling after meals. Right. And that foggy feeling is pretty substantial and really important if you're someone who has to think for a living. Right. You know what I mean? Which hopefully is most people.

Most people, hopefully, think in some way. But, you know, your brain running on ketones, that's one of the things that people are always scared about. Like, oh man, your brain runs on sugar. You need glucose to run your brain. That's not really true. Right. Right. And again, like 70, 80% of the brain tends to shift to just ketone body metabolism. When you're fully keto adapted, there's still some of the brain that's going to run on glucose. There's some red blood cells that are going to run on glucose. But the, the interesting thing though, is that you just have, if you just look at blood glucose over time, there's a pretty cool, a guy went on a medically supervised fast for 382 days. And you look at his blood glucose levels and his beta hydroxybutyrate levels.

How does someone do that? He just drank water. He drank water, had some electrolytes. For 300 days? 382 days. How does he stay alive? I don't even understand that. His body fat. What?

How fat was this guy? Fat. Yeah. It should have a picture of the guy when you track it down. How much did he lose? He was over 400 pounds. He went from over 400, I think close to 500 pounds, down to like 180 pounds.

I think he finished off like 180 pounds. This guy didn't eat for 382 days, didn't poop for almost two months. Whoa. Hold on. He fasted for over a year and somehow lived. How far can you go without risking your health? Whoa. Is there a before and after photos of this gentleman?

This is, it was, if you go to this and just go to the images, then you'll probably see like, yeah, go to images, and then we'll have something with the beta hydroxychloride. I'm not seeing it. That's incredible. Imagine if you knew this guy and you didn't see him for a year. Could you throw ketosis in there also? Amazing. if you knew this guy and you didn't see him for a year? Could you throw ketosis in there also? It's amazing if you didn't see this guy. Oh, there it is, the fifth one over. Yep, right.

Nope, that one right there. Yep. So blood glucose, free fatty acids, and ketone body levels during his fast. So it was blood glucose that second from the top line, the triangles, it dropped and then was just rock solid. Beta-hydroxybutyrate, which is the main ketone body that gets used as a fuel substrate, that goes up to a pretty high level. Higher than what you would get under a nutritional ketosis typically because this is a starvation deal. Free fatty acids elevate.

Acetoacetate elevates, acetoacetate kind of interconverts with the beta-hydroxybutyrate. But what's interesting to your point about the mental state, if we were graphing someone's blood glucose over time for this period of 40 days, and they were eating normal mixed meals, that thing would be seesawing all over the place. I don't understand how he has any glucose. Because of gluconeogenesis in the liver.

So he's even eating absolutely no carbohydrate at all. There's a glycerol backbone of fat that can get converted into glucose. And then also certain amino acids, which are gluconeogenic, can get converted into glucose. And so the body will use those because we still need, like just making DNA, the pentose phosphate pathway, we need some glucose to be able to do that. So like cellular replication and whatnot. But you can do that with effectively no carbs. So without dietary glucose, the body converts fat to glucose. Some of the backbone of fat, the glycerol part, and then also proteins.

Yeah. But with this guy, it's not even proteins unless his body's eating his meat. Which they probably did to some degree. But this is part of the benefit of ketosis is that it really reduces the breakdown of lean body mass. But if you think about it, like there are people who end up with these huge, you know, folds of skin that need to get surgically removed. There's a pretty good argument that had they used a fasting protocol instead of like a low fat, higher protein protocol. If that protein is still being supplied in the diet, then even though the fat goes away, you still have the protein matrix of the skin and the interstitial uh uh connective tissue that isn't going to go away but when we're in that fasted state or intermittent fasting or maybe

ketosis the body is turning over that protein base and that's really important that's this apoptotic process but you you could potentially have a scenario where people who are losing a lot of weight if they use these fasting protocols aren't going to need that cosmetic surgery at the end to get rid of these sales of skin. Is that possible? Yeah. Is that really possible? Yeah. But has anyone done it?

I mean, it's anecdotal at this point. Well, that seems like someone should do it if they've done this. Why don't they do it? Well, what happened to this gentleman? Well, this guy looked totally normal. That's the thing. I mean, he was huge, and then he looked totally normal. So he didn't have ridiculous loose fat like flying squirrel skin?

Right. Whereas like a lot of the people that you saw in like The Biggest Loser, like they had that stuff. And they were using a higher carb, moderate protein kind of calorie restricted deal. Sorry to interrupt. Does your body have the ability to understand that the skin that's hanging loose is not necessary? Yes. Yeah. Just kind of mechanoreceptors, this piezoelectric effect, the feedback of all that. Yeah. What about people that have lost all the weight in another fashion and now they've gotten to them, you know, themselves into

this really thin body with all this extra skin? Could they go on a fasting protocol then? And would the body absorb that skin tissue first before it started eating up the muscle tissue? Possibly. But the challenge with that, is it because they've already decreased their fat mass? Like, are they now leading this into an unhealthy state? So what if they decided, let me fatten up again? Like, maybe the move would be to fatten up again and get yourself obese again and then go on this.

I mean, you're laughing, but honestly, wouldn't that be the move to get yourself fat again? And then going on a fasting like this guy's monitoring medically monitored fasting. And then your body would absorb the fat again and the skin tissue. Maybe. I would. Maybe. It's interesting. I would have never thought about doing that.

I would maybe think about like two or three days a week of fasting, so some intermittent fasting, and then you get into some normal eating. And then even what you could do is you could go two or three days of fasting or a very low calorie intake, and then at the end of that period, you could just be very low protein. And then maybe four out of the five days, four out of seven days, you're low protein. And two or three of those days, you're super low calorie. What if you tried that and it didn't work?

You still got that floppy skin. Then it would suck. You'd be suffering. This guy's got it nailed. This guy might have it nailed. Yeah. Yeah. Fuck, you gotta get fat again, folks. Don't get the surgery. Just get fat again. Don't say that to people though. It's hard to say because nobody wants to do that because it's so hard to lose that kind of weight. Right. Once you lost that kind of weight. So,

but when people do get that operation, when they cut their skin, I mean, it's really dangerous, right? It's super dangerous. There's a high risk of infection, high bleeding. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's not- And it looks horrendous. Yeah, it doesn't usually finish off that well. You look like a guy who got attacked with a knife or something, you know?

Right, right. He's covered in these massive swords. Yeah, yeah. Scars, rather. You have a book out. Yeah, yeah. What's the book? Wired to Eat.

What's it about? It's about the neuroregulation of appetite. Oh, well, we've been talking about it. We've been talking about a bunch of it. Yeah. What's the book? Wired to Eat. What's it about? It's about the neuroregulation of appetite. Oh, well, we've been talking about it. We've been talking about a bunch of it. Yeah, yeah. So I mean a bunch of the stuff like the ice cream deal. Like I talk about that stuff in the book. It's, you know, it's steeped in this evolutionary medicine perspective, but I'm really, if I'm effective with this, I'm really trying to decouple people or like unpack all the

emotionality that they've got around food. Like if they've found challenges around changing their diet and lifestyle, it shouldn't be a surprise and it's not their fault. But at the same time, I don't want them to just roll over and give up. Like we, we've got ways to move them through a process of discovering what works for them, what doesn't work for them. And we can motor forward. But I would say like 50, 60% of the people that end up failing in this process, it's kind of emotional baggage type stuff. And also there's this sense. So when people are at jujitsu and they're like, man, this shit's really hard. It's like, yeah, if you want to keep doing it, then do it. But it's, it's hard. It's always hard. And similarly, doing diet and lifestyle changes frequently is pretty difficult. And so if you can just understand that and

understand that that's normal and you're not beating yourself up about that process, then we really stand a much better chance of turning that corner and making these effective longstanding changes. All right. So the book is out right now. Right now. Rob Wolf, they can get it to Amazon, all that jazz. Anywhere books are sold, yep, yep. All right, dude, well, thank you very much for being here, man. Dude, thank you for having me.

Great to see you again. Great to see you, yeah. Rob Wolf, ladies and gentlemen. All right, this show's over. Go do something else. Bye, love ya. you