Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz - Ketones for Metabolic Health, Brain Function, & Fertility with Latt Mansor

Episode Date: July 14, 2025

Latt Mansor explores the multifaceted role of ketones, particularly their influence on brain health, fertility, memory, and focus. The re-release of an episode from 2023 delves into their impact on serotonin receptors, blood glucose regulation, and weight management. Mansor also highlights the potential therapeutic benefits of ketones for conditions such as sleep disturbances, infertility, depression, and Alzheimer's. If you want a balanced approach to health discussions, where scientific understanding encourages expanded knowledge and experience rather than limitations, this is the episode for you. To view full show notes, more information on our guests, resources mentioned in the episode, discount codes, transcripts, and more, visit https://drmindypelz.com/ep296 Dr. Latt Mansor holds a Ph.D. in Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics from the University of Oxford, where his research focused on the metabolism of type 2 diabetic heart in hypoxia. He also holds an M.A. (Columbia University) and a B.Sc. (Hons) (University of Nottingham) in Biotechnology. He is a world expert in physiology and metabolism and consults with elite sports, military, clinical and research organizations. Check out our fasting membership at resetacademy.drmindypelz.com. Please note our medical disclaimer.

on this episode of the Resetter podcast. I bring you Dr. Lat mansor. Now, a couple of things to know about Dr. Lat and the conversation you're about to hear. For starters, we're going to dive deep into the concept of a ketone. So Dr. Latt holds a PhD in physiology, anatomy, and genetics from the University of Oxford. So he is brilliant. and he has really mastered the use of ketones when it comes to performance. So I loved this conversation on so many levels because A, it gave me some new insight into how we

might look at ketones and its effect on all aspects of our life, not just our health. but B, what Dr. Latt brings to us is what we call an exogenous ketone. And an exogenous ketone means that you actually are not producing it on the inside of your body, you're actually taking it from an outside source. Now, in full transparency, I want you to know that I have typically been against exogenous ketones. But Dr. Latt, he has changed my opinion based off the science that he is bringing us. So if you've been one of those people who have messaged me, have wondered about exogenous ketones, where they fit in, this is the conversation for you.

There were a couple of my big takeaways on this, one of which is how we can use exogenous ketones in the fed state. So this isn't in the fasted state. How do we eat a meal and then use an exogenous ketone to help stabilize blood sugar? That blew my mind. I also loved how he looks at ketones for recovery from exercise. And then, as I said, how can we lean into these exogenous ketones for just overall performance in our day-to-day activities? So Dr. Latt completely changed my opinion of exogenous ketones and you're about to hear

why. Plus, for all you science nerds that want to know the research, Dr. Latt will bring it to you. So enjoy. This is definitely a conversation that was needed and I'm so excited that I got to have this with Dr. Latt because not only as you will see, he's incredibly brilliant, but he also has a huge heart. He's on a mission like so many of us and he is reinventing the way we all look at exogenous ketones. So with that, I will tell you, joy. This is an incredible episode. Welcome to the Resetter podcast. This podcast is all about empowering you to believe in yourself

again. If you have a passion for learning, if you're looking to be in control of your health and take your power back, this is the podcast for you. Okay, Lat. One thing that's really emerging for me in the world that I've been in with launching Fast Like a Girl into the the world is that we need conversations around the information. When we look at health, one of the challenges we have is we go black or white. You know, a ketone is good or it's not good. You know, it's very like you want your numbers to be this or you don't want it to be that. And the human body doesn't work like that. No, it doesn't. Metabolism, I tell people all the time, metabolism is not a straight line. No. It is a flux. It's always ongoing and you need to keep it in the Goldilocks

zone is the optimal level of pH, optimal level of temperature, optimal level of amount of hormones that you're going to be in, amount of enzymes and you're going to be in, just because something is good doesn't mean that more is better. Exactly. And so to that point, I feel like one of the challenges we have in the biohacking world is we understand something new about our body. And this could be something as simple as like we just discovered our hormones, like testosterone, all of a sudden, we're like, I need as much of it as I possibly can get. Yes. No, no, you want to always be bringing these things into balance,

and that's where the body really shines. So with that in mind, where I want to start this conversation is, what is a ketone? Because there's so many people chasing ketones that don't even know what it is. So ketone is the brain's super fuel. Okay? Why do I say it's a feel? It's the same as every other form of fuel.

You know, in the human body, we know the fuels are carbohydrates, fats, protein to a certain extent. Of course, our body will always try to preserve protein until the last bit. So mostly we'll be using glucose or fats. Ketone works the same way. So ketones are broken down from fat, getting converted from fat in the liver and enter the crept cycle the same way glucose and fatty acids would and provide ATP, which is the energy currency for the cell. Right.

Then a lot of people ask, why do we have so many different forms of fuels? It's because of the different question. Yeah, it's a good question because different situations would require different form of fuels. So when we use glucose, it's when we need fast fuel because glycolysis is the first part of glucose metabolism. You don't need oxygen. to create that. So when you do intense exercise, when you go on an aerobic exercise, you will burn

glucose first. For fats, fats account for 20 to 40,000 calories of storage in our body versus 2,000 calories worth of storage of glucose. So fats contain way more energy, but it's harder to burn. So when you go on endurance race, when you go on cardio zone 2, that's when you tap into your fat storage. Now, I know you talk a lot about this on your podcast. When you are on a carb-restricted diet, i.e. like keto diet or when you're fasting, your body goes really low on carb storage and blood glucose. But your brain needs glucose to function primarily. Right.

But when you're low on glucose, what happens then? Like your brain can't stop working, right? So that's when your body says, okay, I'm going to convert fat into ketones. Why can't fat just go up to the brain and get metabolized for energy? Because fat can't bypass the brain barrier. So it needs to be converted into a smaller size molecule because fat has, you know, 18 to 20 carbons, sort of long chain molecule. So it can't get past because of the size of a molecule.

So it needs to be converted to ketones. So it needs like a surrogate. Like a surrogate. That's what I just heard. And a smaller, smaller size molecule to get into your brain, to be metabolized for energy. But then over the years, we have seen research

that's shown that when ketones are present, the brain would preferentially take up ketones for energy. And in fact, I interviewed Dr. Tommy Wood, this brain health expert from Seattle, he said when, you know, people go through brain injury or an infant trying to develop their brain, they actually use ketone preferentially.

So this is super interesting because they are using ketones to re-synthesize fatty acids that is used to repair the structural damage caused by the brain injury. Okay, hold that thought for it because you just gave me a whole other elevated that. So if we are not putting ourselves in,

I'm just going to say a fasted state because that's the door in. I've always looked at for ketones. I think it's the best door in. for ketones. If we're not, if we're eating fat, but we're not putting ourselves in a fasted state in order to signal to the body what to do with ketones, then is that fat more stored as fat? Do you see where I'm going with this? Like there's an environment inside the body that needs to happen in order for that to signal, hey, we need ketones, let's make ketones,

let's use ketones. Yeah. And if I'm like go on the ketogenic diet and I bring, carbohydrates down. I'm like, oh, they told me to eat a bunch of fat. I eat a bunch of fat, but I haven't created the right environment in my body. Will that fat not turn into a ketone? Will it more likely turn into a fat molecule around my waist? That I would say no, it wouldn't, unless you are having such an excess amount of calories that it forces your body to go into storage mode versus burning mode. Because if you are having a maintenance amount of calories, for example, just the right amount of calorie for you to just function and maintain your weight, then inevitably, you will be turning that fat into ketones. Because either way, your brain

will need that energy. And where is it going to get the energy from? Not glucose, because you don't have any. Right. So it's going to really pull from the fat conversion into ketones. Okay. And then another interesting fact is that liver converts ketones into BHB, which is the, sorry, liver converts fat into ketones, which is BHB, beta-hydroxiboutrate, the main form of ketone that our body uses. There are three forms, beta-hydroxiboutyrate, and acetone. But the main form that is getting circulated around and get metabolized for energy is beta-hydroxibutri. And that's also why whenever you talk about blood ketone levels, when we test it, it's usually

BHB level. The interesting fact is that even though the liver is a conversion organ that converts fats into ketones, it does not metabolize ketone as well. It does not have that sort of as much enzymes. The liver doesn't. The liver doesn't. So who else metabolizes it? So the heart, the brain, muscles. We have seen in heart failure studies that the failing heart actually prefers ketones, probably because it's more efficient being used as a fuel per molecule of oxygen use. So there are different parts of our body that prefer ketones. Correct.

Over glucose. Yes. Is it like the brain is 50-50, right? The brain primarily uses glucose when you have glucose present. Okay. But then when ketones are present, even when glucose is present, it takes up the ketone independent of glucose uptake. So it doesn't even affect the other substrates uptake.

Right. So which means, you know, that the brain really wants it. And you just basically providing extra energy. for the brain to work. So I always go back to our primal ancestors and how do they do this. And that actually makes perfect sense that the cardiovascular system would require it because the longer you go without food, the more focused you have to become to find food. So that's why the brain gobbles them up. But you're also probably running and chasing and going after hunting food, which is why it would go to the cardiovascular system. Yep. So you have two points there. One is the cognitive benefit and the

other is the energy benefit when it comes to performance. And we can talk about that with regards to exogenous ketones. But most importantly, one study by Mujica Parody two years ago, they published a paper that showed keto diet and exogenous ketones and then placebo, three groups. Right? Ketal diet for a week, exogenous ketones, one dose, and then placebo. And then they measured functional MRI. They looked at the interaction of the brain regions and they call it brain network stability. And this stability decreases as we age. And that's when you increase the risk of developing neurodegenerative diseases. Okay. So what they have seen is that both keto diet for a week and one dose of exhaustion is ketones, they both increase the brain network

stability. That's crazy. Is there a part of the brain that it did it activate? They just showed the increased interaction between the brain region. So the activity, the brain activity increase. Okay. So to your point. You know, you are increasing your cognitive abilities, your cognitive sort of focus, but also because it goes into your crept cycle and produce energy, ATP, especially when you need the cardiovascular fitness and cardiovascular performance, you have it. Okay, so now, now I'm going to go down this path with you. This is like, oh my God, this would be like what I do on a Friday night is having a conversation like this. It's very exciting to me. I know. So is it the mitochondria, if we look at, we have the most amount of mitochondria in our brain, our heart,

our eyes, and our ovaries. Actually, in the female body, the eggs that live in our ovaries have the most amount of mitochondria compared to any other cell in our body. So my brain is thinking, okay, well, if they're the most dense amount of mitochondria there, they need the most amount of ketones. Yep, most amount of energy needed. That would make sense from our primal friends because our primal friends need to stay alive and the women need to stay alive and reproduce so that we all can be sitting here today.

So do we have any information on what ketones would do for the eyes or for the ovaries? That would be an interesting study. I've never seen any studies specifically looking at that. But now that you mentioned, the theory of it, I mean, theoretically it would work. it would need a lot of mitochondria. It will need a lot of fuel to fuel those mitochondria. And therefore, the hypothesis would be like, if I'm providing ketones to the body,

then I should be able to see the uptake of ketones in the eyes and ovaries at an exponential level. However, I think the feasibility of running those studies, I mean, because the heart, they've done it in animals where they measure the blood going in, zero blood versus venous blood, blood going out. And then that's how they measure the amount of uptake of different substrates. Right.

How would you do that with the eyes? I guess you can measure. Yeah, you can't be like put and die. Right. My ophthalmologist, you know, dilates and put stuff in my eyes. So maybe you could do it the same way. Yeah. But I'm even thinking for, well, I'm thinking two things.

One is, you know, as I went through my 40s, there's a moment that your eyesight goes and you can't read up close. But the more I've been practicing a fasting lifestyle, the more ketones that I put into my body, I'm just seeing subtle shifts and one of them has been in my eyesight. Like I'm not needing my reading glasses as much. And so the other day I was wondering,

I was like, what am I doing in my life that is allowing that to happen? So it would be really interesting to see how it works with as far as eyesight goes. But the bigger elephant, in the ketone room would be fertility, especially women that are, do we, and especially if we did, I mean, I know we're going to talk about like Alzheimer's and dementia, but do we have any way to measure if putting someone in a ketogenic state or using exogenous ketones over a certain period of

time helped with fertility? That's super interesting. I don't know, per se, and I don't know, because I know for a fact that for keto, diet, sort of ketogenic diet studies, female bodies react differently, slightly different compared to male bodies. And I think there is a paper that publish the effect of keto diet on basal metabolic rate. Basically, the postmenopausal women would be similar to males. Yeah. But the premenopausal women behaves completely differently. Right. I just had another thought. Sorry. I have to get this out before because you literally.

I've studied this stuff, and now this is why I love talking to you. Like my whole brain's going in new. Okay, so when we look at the women's menstrual cycle, when we look at day one all the way through ovulation, which is the follicular phase first 15 days, what's happening is estrogen is coming in in order to release an egg. And estrogen needs glucose to be low and thrives when ketones are high. And I'm wondering if that's because that's what the eggs need. Because they have so many mitochondria.

And they're also actively dividing and really produce, yeah. Whereas the back half, like the eggs already released. So it doesn't need that, which is why all of a sudden, progesterone wants glucose to be high. So you actually don't want ketones in the back half of your cycle. But it may all be based off of the egg. This is how we run a study together. Yes. Do you know how to run a study?

This is the conception of our collaboration to run a study. Yeah. Because then we could look at something like, you're, you know, exogenous ketones and we could say, okay, how do we use that in an effective way to facilitate a better menstrual cycle and potentially better ovulation for a woman? And, I mean, I have always thought of as exogenous really helpful. I can see it for Alzheimer's and dementia. But now you got me really thinking that this could be a really powerful tool for fertility. And you also have me thinking, and I don't know if you all have thought of this,

is that when we're looking at an exogenous ketone, it's probably best done in the front half of the cycle, and then the week before a woman's period, she would probably not use, she would cycle off of the exogenous ketone. Right, right, right. And that way you can have that predictable level of ketones in your body. Right.

Because when you use exogenous ketone, it's transient enough, and the effect is acute enough for you to control when you need it to be on, when you need it to be off, versus when you're on ketogenic diet, you'll have that adaptation period. And then even when you cycle off, you'll have that adaptation period as well. Right. So that gives you the flexibility to really switch on and off whenever you want to be in ketosis.

So one of the things that I did when I developed the fasting cycle in Fast Like a Girl is I tested it on a bunch of my team members that were struggling to get pregnant. Okay. And like immediate, I was like, let's try this cycle where we're going to go high carb, low carb, carb, and we're going to do ketones in and out of ketosis over your menstrual cycle. Let's see what happens. I have a theory here. I'm like, I think it'll take us about 90 days to understand if this worked or not. Within 30 days, both of them got pregnant.

And after trying to get pregnant for years, like these women were struggling. So what was your theory then? When you ran that and you saw that result, what was your theory then? The theory was that estrogen wants glucose down and ketones up. Okay. And so when a woman is on day seven of her cycle, eating pizza, ice cream she's actually making herself more infertile and she doesn't really realize it and then the back half the opposite happens and so you want glucose up and ketones down and I hadn't thought of it in

terms of the mitochondria so now we're going back into the basic science and mechanism of action and that could be why yeah so so so then I was like after I saw these two women get pregnant I was like oh my god okay let me try it on my patients so I tried on my patients same thing everybody like 30 to 60 days, most of them 30. So then I went to my YouTube world and I'm like, let's try this. This was the birth of fast like a girl. People were writing in. And do you know right now on Amazon, my reviews on the book,

I love reading the ones that say, yep, I got pregnant in 30 days. But what do we do with your product? What do we do with exogenous ketones to facilitate that? Well, I mean, like I said, you know, if you are going high and low, you know, manipulating. glucose and ketone intake, you can use this to really boost the ketone levels on a transient level. Right.

Because what happens when you drink exorogyns ketone like ketone IQ, for example, is that your blood ketone levels will go up to, you know, one to two point five millimolar over three, two four hours. And it will stay above one hour if you're sedentary, if you're not working out, it will stay above one millimeter molar after six hours. And it will start dropping down to baseline. Okay. And then after that, either you have to.

to top up or you just let it, you know, just flat out on a baseline. That way, you can measure, you can even, like, you can really solidify your theory about the ketones and glucose, and you can really pinpoint what exactly needs to be dead. But I'm wondering if it's the health of the mitochondria and the egg. So if you have eggs that aren't viable, you let the root of that, you have mitochondria that are weak. Mitochondri dysfunction. Yeah. So, and then every woman who's struggling with infertility is going to have a little bit of a different dysfunction. So where I might need on day 10 to take in one bottle, another woman might need like three.

So I think that's where the end of one comes in, where you're going to have to figure out what that pattern is. And that's when it comes to sort of personaline medicine. And that's why I love talking to people like you. Because you have the direct contact with people and you touch people's lives directly, whereas I'm coming from a basic scientist's point of view. And for you guys who don't know, basic scientists means like scientists who always try to investigate the mechanism of action.

We look at molecular biology. We look at animal models and really figure out what is actually happening inside mitochondria. What is actually happening with this particular molecule? Whereas clinical scientists are scientists who run clinical trials and look at effects on humans. So when we put one and one together, this world just, you know, we can start explaining. the science behind this. It's so funny you say that because this has been my new cry to people who are listening is like, science gets us in the ballpark.

Now we have to figure out what seat we want to sit at. And we have to take that and we have to apply it to ourselves. But I fear that one of the things that we've done with science is we've held it up as the gold standard. And it's like, no, it's just opening our minds. And to your point, we need each other in this conversation. as the people listening, we need them as well to give us feedback so that we have some kind of understanding of how humans apply this.

Yeah, because one is proof of concept and the other is translation and application into humans' life specifically. And as we know, metabolism is a beast when it comes to how to pinpoint and how to really fix, especially when you come up with dysfunctional metabolism. and there is level of severity and you don't know where that level is and then you need to get into the optimal level. Do you overshoot it? And when you overshoot it, it becomes another form of dysfunction.

Right. It's just a very difficult beast to tackle. Agreed. So, okay, let's go to the brain because now that we've gicked out on the ovaries, and, you know, the sperm, I don't know the mitochondrial makeup of sperm or testes. that would be interesting to know too, because this, you know, even though men don't have a cycle, you know, a monthly cycle, you guys have a daily cycle. Right.

So I would assume it will have high mitochondrial activity just because they're constantly being, you know, the DNA materials are being replicated and producing sperms. Yeah. And therefore that activity would sort of be increased compared to the rest of your body, which is just, you know, as demand sort of function, right? function, right? Well, and the sperm need to be strong. Yeah.

Strong swimmers, right? So there's got to be some mitochondria in there because that's the battery of everything of human life. Oh, yeah, 100%. Yeah. Interesting. Okay, so take me up to the brain. When we say that the brain gobbles up my ketones, do we know what part of the brain's

gobbling the most? That I'm not entirely sure. I do feel, I do know that ketones does increase, BDNF, so brain-derived neurotropic factor. And exercise also increased BDNF, right? And BDNF has direct effect on hypercampus. Ah, okay. Hippocampus is also responsible for learning and memory. Yeah. And so we know that and yeah, and mood. And I, so I know that that region is very sensitive to ketone being available. Yes. And that makes sense because in our $6 million contract with the DOD,

we are currently looking at exogenous ketones in cognitive and physical performance in hypoxia. And in the study, we're wrapping up now, so we've got a lot of data already that's going to be published, but we have seen when in hypoxia and low oxygen levels,

ketones actually increase memory recall as well as accuracy and reaction time. Because normally when you're in low oxygen, level, your cognitive function decrease because your brain is saying, hey, I've got less oxygen, and therefore let's lower the activity, and therefore that goes with the function. But we've seen the increase in memory recall as well as reaction time and all of that. And with all these cognitive studies, it just comes to show that hippocampus, you know, when it's, when it comes to like memory and learning and mood and all of that, as well as mood.

Like, I recently gave a lecture at University of Malaya as a fellow last month. And I brought ketone IQ shots and gave it to the students. One of them actually said they had struggled with anxiety for a long time. But ever since he took the shot, 10 minutes after they took the shot, they stopped fiddling with their limbs. And they said, it actually works. Well, that's because ketones. I don't know if you know that when ketones go up, GABA goes up. Yes.

Yes. It works on the GABA pathway. Yeah. It's an anzolytic. Yeah. Because I've told people that all the time, like, just sit there. When you're in a fasted state, just tell yourself, ketones are coming. Ketons are coming.

And once they come, you'll go from this, like, I got to eat. Yeah, to, huh, I strangely feel calm right now. And this is the area I love to explain. I would love to hear your take on this. So ketones gets you into that relaxed state and calm state, right? But ketones also give you energy. Yeah. How do you explain that?

I'll give you my take after you give yours. I'll explain it. Why you have to, ketones were meant for your survival. You had to go hunt. And so you can't be all frazzled like, oh my God, I'm running out of food. I'm hungry. Ketones are like, boom. They're like they put you in your body.

They give you focus so you can go and hunt so you can eat so you can stay alive. That's how they were developed in our body. And so they had to bring GABA up. They had to bring dopamine up because dopamine, that motivation molecule is like, let's go get that food. that's all, to me, that's what we're all searching for. And once we click in that ketone, we're actually in a hunter state. So you have to be calm, collected, focus, laser focus,

and at the same time being able to really sprint out and use that physical prowess that you have in order to get that food. And the way I explain it is, especially when it comes to exogenous ketones, is that you need to stop thinking about it like a stimulant. It's not a caffeine. It's not a stimulant. so it's not actually giving you the extra boost by blocking adenosin receptor

and make you feel less fatigue, but still not give you energy. That's stimulant, right? It increases heart rate, it increases blood pressure, but it doesn't directly give you energy. You still need to pull the energy from somewhere. Ketones directly gives you energy, but also gives you the signaling effect

of the calming, the anzolytic effect via signaling. And therefore, you don't need to be in the air. jittery, like frazzal sort of moment, like you said. And that's why you can use in both physically demanding situation, but also in a way to calm yourself down, especially if you have anxiety. And I think a lot of people now starting to realize one good use of exogenous ketones is when they want to go for exams,

interviews, podcast, because they're calm, but their brain is switched on. So they can actually, you know, think better and really have the memory recall dialed in. Yeah. But at the same time, they're not having this nervous energy that is stopping them from thinking clearly. The first time I learned about fasting and a ketone, I was experimenting it on myself. And I was trying, I used to give these big presentations to my patient base. And we would do a big one to hundreds of people every January to kind of set the year off.

And so I wanted to bring fasting to them. We had just learned about Dr. Osumi's work, Walter Longgo had come out with his three-day water fast. That's a very interesting point. We're going to get into that one as well. So I was like, they're going to think I'm crazy because I've been talking about nutrition and detox. And now I'm going to tell them that actually all the supplements, all the food things I've told you pale in comparison to what I'm about to tell you. So I went on a five-day water fast. And on the fifth day, I gave the presentation.

So I hadn't eaten in five days. And I did it on purpose so that I could show my office. my patient base, this is what it looks like to be on ketones. And so I give the whole lecture. It was a two-hour lecture. And about 90 minutes in, I just said, and I know you probably think I'm crazy. And I want you to know, like, do I look tired right now? And they're all like looking at me kind of funny. And you sure, you fostered for five days? Yeah. And then I just, well, I did. And I just said to them, I was like, I haven't eaten in five days. And everybody was convinced at that point. And it was because I had ketones in me. So to give a speech, to stay calm, I wasn't hungry.

It was a performance moment. And I think we lose sight of that because everybody comes to ketones thinking, oh, I want to lose weight. But I always say, come in to lose weight. And then I'm going to ask you to stay for all the other benefits. Right. Exactly. The way I describe, what is the use. I remember when we launched it early last year, we had a whole list of use cases and benefits. of ketones, right? Yeah. You get the cognitive benefit, you get the performance, you get the recovery, and then you get the metabolic health.

But then after all of that, it sounds like a snake oil, right? It sounds too good to be true. So right now, my favorite way of describing what's the best use case and what's the best benefit of ketone is that it will benefit you in any activity that you use your brain for. Yeah. So either you're using it for intellectual. cognitive performance side of things

or if you're using physical side of things because even when you're doing physically demanding tasks you still need your brain people on long rides on long runs they still need that focus people on trail runs they need their sort of alertness and focus of their surrounding

their balance and everything people who are doing anaerobic exercise they still need to be in the zone to get the form right to think of all everything the weights and all of that. You're in your primal state. You're in your primal state. So, okay, now I'm going to really geek out on a part of the brain that I have been

currently this week writing a whole chapter for my new book on. Already. You're on the role, Mindy. You are always on it. You're always on it. Well, I love to solve problems that our culture isn't solving. And one of the biggest problems that we see right now with women going through menopause is that there's this massive brain change.

And one of the pieces of the brain is a receptor site known as 5H2A, which is a serotonin receptor site. And estradial goes into that and activates serotonin, which helps with keeping us joyful. When estradial goes away, we have this empty receptor site. So I've been looking at what else do we have that can go into this receptor site. Well, one study that I came across was that something as little as eight hours of fasting will activate the seroton. protonin 5H2A receptor site. And now in the in regardless of what diet they are. Regardless of what diet eight hours seems so minimal.

It's just sleep overnight. Yeah. And it's in the hippocampus that it, because we have 5H2A receptors all over our brain, but it's in the hippocampus that it activates, which is why they actually think fasting isn't, it can act as an antidepressant. But I'm thinking it's because the ketone goes into that receptor site. So do you know any studies on that receptor site and ketone? I haven't seen anything specific to that receptor side.

And I know in terms of receptors, things are very specific, right? It's very unlikely that a foreign molecule will bind to that receptor site. But then again, a lot of studies also shown that ketones have direct effect on DNA as a signaling molecule. They call it beta-hydroxybutylation Because we know methylation Of a DNA And it causes, you know, difference in gene expression Right

So they found out that beta-hydroxybutylation Is a thing now, it's a mouthful Yeah, it is a mouthful You can just say BHB BHB relation Yeah So I like to shorten things anyway It does have

It does have effect By binding on sites that we didn't know That they bind So I think the area is still very new And I spoke to my supervisor back in my PhD days in Oxford a couple of months ago. And she's still in the research area. And she's like, the next big thing now is metabolites as signaling molecules. Because we need to stop looking at all these metabolites just as energy fuels.

We are looking at it as signaling molecules, like how glucose does not only provide you with energy, but it's going down this cascade of pathway that's, that's, you know, working in tandem with insulin, glucagon, gLP, in a different sort of setting and cause a whole different phenomenon of inside your body. Okay. So, yeah, oh my God, I could talk to you forever. So this leads me to the next question, which is, is there an environment in which an exogenous ketone is welcome in our body, and is there an environment when it's not welcome?

Like when I first heard about taking an exogenous ketone, honestly, my first thought was, well, that's cheating and I'm like a hardworking. There's so many people who say that. There's so many people. Why would I take exogenous ketones when I'm burning my own fat and turning it into ketones? And that's an easy question, right? Let's say if you are going on a ketogenic diet to lose weight, right? The goal is for you to access your fat storage and turn it into ketones and also burn the fat directly as an energy fuel. Sorry, as an energy source.

What are you eating mainly? Fats, right? Your own fat. Your own fat. They're calories, right? Yeah, I guess they are calories. Exogenous ketones, they are source of calories, right? If you're on a ketogenic diet to get into ketosis, you're going to get the source of calories anyway.

why not have a portion of that be a direct form of ketone? Okay, so, but what if my blood sugar, if I just ate a meal, my blood sugar went up, so now I've got all this glucose for the body to use, and then I toss down some exogenous ketones. That's another use case. So studies, a few papers have been published by Dr. Jonathan Little from University of British, Columbia, Canada. When you take exogenous ketones, across the board, they have seen lowering of black glucose.

Oh my God. This is acute. And you can, you know, you can take my word for it because we've measured it ourselves. We've had people at Ketocon when I met you. Yeah. We've got people with continuous glucose coming up to us. We gave them a shot. We're like, come back in an hour and let's measure your glucose.

And it dropped 40 to 50 points. It's like apple cider vinegar. It's like apple cider vinegar. I mean, by the way, just so you know, I do all these science dense videos on YouTube. and they do well and then I throw out apple cider vinegar and everybody goes crazy.

Yeah, I had my CGM a couple of days ago and I drink ketones before I go to bed and then it starts, the app asked me, it's like, what did you do? Your glucose was 70 when you go to bed because I drank ketones. But at the same time,

you don't feel the hypoglycemic effect. No, I never thought to do it before you go to bed. is that the scientist, that Dr. Jonathan Little sort of hypothesized is that when you take exogenous ketone, you are sending signal to the liver to lower gluconeogenesis. Gluconogenesis is a process of making sugar from other sources like glutamate from, you know, fats and proteins and all of that. That is especially true when you are on ketogenic diet or when you're fasting because either way, even when you're on low glucose, You measure your blood glucose, you'll still have a baseline.

You'll still have about four or five millimolar. Okay. Right. Where does that glucose come from? You're not eating sugar. So it's from gluconeogenesis. I was just going to say. Yeah.

So gluconeogenesis also happens at all times, even when you're eating sugar. Okay. So your body balances it, right? It balances it by saying, okay, these are the external sugar. I'm going to use it. But at the same time, it's a flux. It's a balance of you producing your own sugar. Same with fat.

When you take in fat, it does not just go into your muscles and get used, right? It gets repackaged, it gets redistributed into the body and churn it round, right? Right. So this is what they hypothesized. When you have exorogyns, you're lowering that glucose production in your liver, and therefore it reduces the overall blood glucose level. But that also shows that your body perceive ketones as a, energy source that you have plenty that you don't need to produce the glucose anymore. Right?

So that's the main point here. Exogenous ketone and endogenous ketones, while it is a little bit different in nature because you're not producing itself, ultimately the molecule is the same. So your body will still recognize it as ketones. BHB is BHB is BHB. It's not a novel magic molecule that a pharmaceutical company whips up from a genetic. modified organisms, it is literally the same exact molecule that your body would produce. So a big challenge that I see with a lot of fasters is that when they eat dinner, their glucose

goes up and then they go to bed and somewhere around two to three in the morning, all of a sudden the blood sugar dipped so much that it causes this, I mean, it's the dawn effect, right? the liver secretes a bunch of glucose into the system in order to be able to, you know, regulate itself. They wake up at two or three in the morning. They get it the next, you know, when they actually wake up and get out of bed in the morning, they look at their glucose and they're like, oh my God, it's higher than it was before I went to bed. So if that theory you're talking about is right, could we use exogenous ketones before we go to bed to stop that two to three wake up?

that the liver does because now the liver has a sensor that it tells it you don't need to. I can literally show you my glucose data right now. Like when I'm like asleep, like it literally flattens out. That's crazy. So, oh, so you don't even, when you're sleeping, it doesn't even have like spikes up and down like we typically see. Have you tested it on like your aura ring? I have, yes. It hasn't shown an improvement. I mean, we tried doing it in a study. as well to look at HRV and all that. Sleep quality-wise, we are still a bit far from being able to test how effective it is. But in terms of blood glucose levels, yes, yes.

We know that it flattens out when you sleep. And so there's two new places that I've never, ever thought to use ketones that you've really expanded. Well, I think I have more than two, but right now in this moment I have two, which is before bed for sleep, which I just want to tell you for menopausal women, that would be a game change. because as we lose progester, and we also don't go into as deep of a sleep. And then after a meal.

After a meal, yeah. To bring down glucose. Yeah. So then my brain goes too because I love it. And then the interesting thing, another way you can check is when you work out, like halfway into the workout, into the end of the workout,

you'll see your glucose go up a little bit because your body starts sending signals to say that, hey, you are doing something physically demanding, therefore creates more glucose, right? But when you have ketones as a pre-workout, you don't see that spike. Oh. But you'll have energy. Okay.

So, but as a pre-workout, if I've got ketones in there, I'm not going to get as much release of sugar out of the muscles. And maybe I want to, like, show more definition. So I kind of want the release of muscle of glucose so that it like breaks down fat. Do we have any research on like what it does? as far as muscle maintaining muscle, as far as, you know, leaning muscle out? So there is a study that looked at another form of exorgetal, Kesto-estis, diaster.

They looked at kakxia. So muscle loss due to cancer. Okay. And they show that ketones actually help retain muscle. And we know that from a recovery point of view, there is a study that looked at having ketones together with protein and carbs, after a workout, and they looked at it from an in vitro point of view, looking at biopsies of muscles, they actually upregulate the lucid mediated amtel activation, and that is essential for protein

synthesis, which is also essential for recovery. Wow. So if I'm going a three-day water fast, and I don't want to lose a lot of muscle, then taking some exogenous ketones is preserving that muscle. Correct. And a lot of people ask the question, will I bring my fast because it contains 70 calories? And Cynthia Thurlow and myself, we talked about this on our podcast, is that when you are fasting, when you go in a water fast, what kickstart the ketogenesis, right? The ketogenesis, right? It's when you're low on sugar, when you're low on insulin, right?

You're starving yourself, and therefore your body kickstarts the ketogenesis. When you have 70 calories of ketones, it doesn't increase your glucose level. It doesn't increase your insulin level. there is no reason to believe that you won't kickstart your ketogenicis. But also this brings back to the conversation of Walter Longo study. I was just going to say, Walter Longo study of fast mimicking diet. They are giving these participants 500 to 750 calories worth of food and they can still mimic the effect of water fast.

So 70 calories is nothing. You'd have to have 10 of those in a day. 10 of those. and also acutely what they have seen in animal models is that when you take exogenous ketones, you are upregulating all the transporters enzymes which are relevant to ketone metabolism, which means when this is transient,

after six hours, it goes back down to baseline, you are now tapping back into your own endogenous ketones. You have upregulation of all these different enzymes that's needed for ketone metabolism. so you are primed and ready to burn more ketones from your own body. Oh my God. Now you have me thinking like, well, why would you fast without exogenous ketones? Like it's next level.

It's next level. Okay. So then where would we use this for like Alzheimer's, dementia? I hope everybody listening knows how I'm going at this from menopause and women now. And I hope people take this seriously and try it with like fertility and things. like that. But let's talk about... I would love to find out more about that.

Yeah. That's not my area of expertise. And I know a lot of our audience are also women who are interested in metabolic health, especially, you know, as we are aging, we know that all these different risks and all these different foods that we're eating that put us at risk, right? So I would love to hear more, you know, after you experiment with it. Yeah. And really, like, real life examples, real life cases are, we're.

what's going to move the niddle. What's going to do it. Yeah. Well, we'll put the links to your products in there. So people listening, please go try this and see because fertility is expensive. Yep. And it's, you know, breaks people's hearts. And yet the body was meant to reproduce.

So if there's an issue where the body's not able to reproduce, then we got to fix that. And it's coming back to a molecule that's as innate in our body as our blood is, is, is a ketone and yet the world, half the world is not even getting the ketones. Disclaimer though, it does not taste like soda. It does not taste like juice, right? We are working on the flavor, but knew this. The reason why we are surviving and thriving is because when people take it, they feel the subjective difference.

And regardless of the taste that people are taking it for the benefit. And what's very, very funny is that most people that have been taking it long term now, they're like, actually, I don't mind the taste. Yeah, you get used to it. Yeah, I can totally see that. Yeah, you know what I always say when you like take a shot of something that's healthy and you're like, oh, I hate that. I'm never going to do that. I always think, well, what did you do in college when you're at a bar and like they gave you like a, you know, a teal. You take it for the effects. Like you didn't just, you didn't go, oh, I don't like that. You're like, give it to me. I want to feel good. I want the effect

of it. That's a great example. That's a great analogy. It's like, what did you think when you were doing? What were you thinking? What would you tell your 21-year-old self? So now we're talking about therapeutic uses. Yes. Because, you know, like what we're saying, everything that uses your brain, every activity that uses your brain, you can benefit from having ketones in your body.

I don't care whether you get your ketogenic diet or fasting or exogenous ketones. As long as you have the molecule in your body, you will, granted, you need to get at least above one millimolar in your blood for your blood ketones. Okay, wait, why? Because the measurement people in my mind, community geek out.

It's 0.5. 0.5. Yeah. But everybody's like, well, more is better. Okay. Great, great conversation. Okay. So, the definition of ketosis is anything above 0.5, right?

But for therapeutic users, a lot of studies shown around 1 millimeter molar. Anything above 1, you start to see effect already. Okay. For performance, we're looking at above 2 milamolar. Oh, wow. Okay. Above 2 milamolar, but also not meant to subsidize. or replace glucose.

It's meant to be used together so that you have the hybrid fuel system. And I know you want to talk about this about high sugar, high, high ketone levels. We can go into that later. But most importantly, when we talk about the threshold, we want to make sure that it's in the optimal level. Like I said before, right? Metabolism is in the Goldilocks zone. And the reason why I tell you more is not better. is that we have seen this in study, and this I can say confidently, in the military study,

we dose them via weight-match dose. So we do 0.5 grams per kilogram of body weight, which means some of these guys are big. They're like 80, 90 kilograms people. So you are getting ketonesters. That study we use in ketonesters. They're getting about 40, 50 grams of ketonester's. Wow. And one disadvantage of ketonester, the advantage of ketonester, the advantage of ketonesstis, that

Ketone ester is that it can spike your blood ketone levels between 3 to 5 millimolar. Quite high, quite quickly. Ketone IQ is not ketone ester. Ketone ester is a B.HB molecule bound with butyndyel in an ester form. So that's why it's called ketone ester. What we have found is that because it spikes it too high, it also increased blood acidity. It lowers blood pH. Because BHB is beta-hydroxibouty acid, and it does cause your blood to be acidic.

I wonder why the body does that. So over time. when you spike it too quickly in the short amount of time, you increase your cardio-respiratory stress biomarkers, your heart rate, your breathing rate, because you're trying to expel the carbon dioxide to neutralize it. But most importantly, because half of it is butyentiole

and half of it is BHB, the BHB goes straight into your blood, which means it's dose-dependence. So the more you drink, the higher your BHB will go. So initially we thought the more the better, right? The higher the better. No. So some of these people were having blood BHAB of 6 7, 8 millimeter, and they start to not feel well. They just feel unwell in general, just wanting to puke, and just your body is trying to

expel it, because it's just too much. It's the same when you overdose on glucose. Right. You have too high, you just don't feel well. It just generally you feel unwell. And I think this is the case with ketones as well, even though it's good for you, even though it's an energy source, but if you're not using it, it's just sitting around, your body will try it's best to balance it out in homeostasis and into this this optimal zone. So what,

this actually leads me to a unique question that I've seen with just a handful of people, which they feel worse in ketosis than not in ketosis. And my brain was always like, okay, the ketones are going, they're going to repair something. So what needs to be repaired in the body? Yeah. But what based off of what you just said, even if somebody's at like 0.7.8, is it possible that that could be too many ketones? From what I have seen on the overdosing is usually five and above, right? If they're on around 0.8.7 and not feeling well, chances are, I think they are just doing it too quickly, the adaptation period.

They're not used to it, and therefore they're going through the keto flu. So it could be something to do with electrolytes, something to do with dehydration, because when they lose glycogen, when they first go on keto diet, they shed all the glycogen off. But with glycogen, it also comes with water storage. Right. So it could be that. Do you find that, do you ever see the keto flu with exogenous ketones?

Because I don't hear about the keto flu very much anymore. But like I said, I am seeing some unique cases where they go into ketosis. And they, you know, my theory is you go in, you go out, you go in, you go out. And so in these cases, we're doing that for a very long period of time. But they're still not feeling well. in the ketogenic state. So, but that would fall under the category of a keto flu. So if I gave that person, if I fed that person, fed them breakfast.

That's one, yeah, go ahead, yeah. Fed them breakfast and then gave them exogenous ketones so that they get the benefit, would there be a different response? That's the perfect way to find out whether if this person is feeling unwell because, yeah, if it's too high ketone levels or if it's ketone flu. because with exogenous ketones, it's predictable. You know you will get their ketone levels above one or close to one. If they're still feeling unwell, then it could be the ketones.

But if they're feeling good, then the ketone is doing the work, but they're not going through any electrolyte problems. Changes. Okay. This leads me to my next question, which is, could you, and I'm not advocating for not fasting because I think there's, so many therapeutic. Oh, yeah.

But let's say that everybody decided, I don't want to fast anymore, and they just wanted to eat again. And we gave everybody a bunch of exogenous ketones. Are we getting the same benefit when we take an exogenous ketone as compared to the endogenous ketone? Are they the same benefit? That's a great question, Mindy. And this is the question that I've been asked a lot, because a lot of people are like,

oh, there's cheating. you know, I'm not achieving what I'm trying to achieve with keto diet. So when you look at the molecule, like I said, it's going to be the same molecule. And therefore, if you're looking at any signaling effect or any energetics point of view, it's still going to be the same. You're still getting the energy from ketones. You're still getting the preferential treatments in different organs with ketones. And you're still getting all the signaling benefits from ketones.

However, whenever you're doing keto diet for a specific reason, you may, may not be able to achieve that with exogenous ketones. And I'll tell you certain situations here, if you are specifically aiming for lowered glucose level and lowered insulin level, you can't get that with exogenous ketones. Even though exogenous ketones can acutely decrease blood glucose level, it does not have any effect on insulin. Right. So if you're still on a normal diet, you are still going to be regulating the blood glucose, the glucose you're getting from the carbons. intake as well as your insulin. That's because the body, by the way, that's because the body's so smart.

Yeah. That the body's like, I don't need to make insulin. Right. Because this came from the outside. Right. And then you get epilepsy treatments with keto diet. I don't think exogenous ketones would be as efficient because you need to be, that's another thing in terms of prolonged period in ketosis.

Because when you're on exorogative ketones, you need to top up regularly to be in the ketotic state in a more consistent way, whereas ketogenic diet, you don't need to think about it, don't need to worry about it. If you want to get into a deeper ketosis, you want to reach a higher blood ketone level, then exogenous ketone could help augment that. But it may not help you achieve whatever you're trying to achieve by getting on a keto diet or fasting. Because if you say fasting to lose weight, right, you are, you are, you are, you are, you are emphasizing on lowered calorie intake, lowered insulin and all of that. It's very unique to fasting.

So I want people to think about ketones not just as a magic molecule. Think about it as a tool that's helping you to achieve what you want to achieve. If you're fasting to lose weight, but because ketones, exorgetousinous ketones have apothex suppression effect and it gives you the focus to augment your fast. go do it. Right. Don't, not fast, just because you can get the benefit briefly just from this. You can't sit on your couch and eat a bunch of pizza and ice cream and drink ketones.

It's not a magic molecule, right? You still need to do that foundational work. You know, you want to lose weight. You still need to go exercise and all of that. The way I look at it is that when the body makes endogenous ketones, it's making it because it's burning fat. So if you're trying to lose weight, to your point, just drinking a bottle of ketone IQ is not going to be like,

oh my God, now I'm all of a sudden losing weight. And it is, it is calories. It is calories. But what it is doing is it's killing hunger. Yes. And what it is doing, we just discovered, or I just discovered, is it's lowering blood sugar. So it is a part, like you said, of a tool to be able to put you on your weight loss journey.

It is not the thing that's not like the thing that's going to make you lose weight. And just a sneak peek. currently I'm talking to a researcher from UBC as well who looked at the blood sugar lowering effect. I'm talking to another researcher within the same university. We're looking at running a study specifically on appetite suppression, on hunger hormones, on grelin, and there is a study that showed that butin diol specifically,

which is the raw ingredient in ketone IQ, increased leptin sensitizing effect in the brain, which means you feel, more satire, you can have higher satiety compared to placebo. And we're looking at calorie intake as well. So when that study published, it's going to be huge because then now people can confidently say, hey, I'm taking exhaustionist ketos,

not as a replacement of my lifestyle, of my keto diet or of my fasting lifestyle, but I'm using it as a tool to really augment it, make my fast easier because I don't have to think about food, all the time. I get the focus I need. I get productive throughout the day. And same thing when I'm on ketogenic diet. I feel like, you know, I'm not getting in deep enough ketosis. So I'm augmenting with exogenous ketone. Or I am going through this really difficult adaptation period. I'm taking ketone IQ so that I can upregulate the enzymes needed to prime my body to be able to

metabolize ketone better. Well, I'll tell you, like, I'll use myself as an example. Yesterday had a really long day, and I didn't get enough food in me. I woke up. I was a little hungry. I was like, okay, what are you going to do? You know, I have an interview here with you.

I've got one in a couple hours. I'm like, what am I going to do? Am I going to eat? Am I going to not eat? And then we took a shot of keto, ketone IQ. I'm not hungry anymore. I don't even think about it. And now after this, Kelsey and I,

we're going to go work out and film some contents. And I'm definitely going to take another shot, but I'm not hungry. I'm not thinking about food. Yeah. It's really cool, because it does turn off that hunger hormone. So it's quite impressive.

The interesting thing as well, sorry to cut your off. Yeah, no. Is that while it turns off the hunger sensation and it keeps you satiated, in a study that looked at recovery when people are exercising, they increase the calorie intake.

The participants, the cyclists were given food at libidum, so they can eat whatever they want. however much they want, but because they're exercising, they are actually increasing their calorie intake, but also corresponding to that, they increase their performance by 15% in terms of work output after three weeks after using ketones, carbs and protein as recovery.

Wow. So the way I like to describe ketone is an adaptive fuel. Yeah. It upregulates and down regulates certain things in your body depending on what you're doing. Would you take it every day? Or you just... I take it every day.

Yeah. And do you do it intentionally like I'm going to go work out? Yeah, correct. Hey, I'm going to be on a podcast. So it's a performance enhancing tool. Some people take it on a just in the morning, just as a ritual kind of thing. I prefer to take it on a very intentional. Okay, I'm going on a podcast.

I'm going to take this. I'm going to bed. I'm going to go workout. I'm going to take this. So that for me has worked. But I also know a lot of people on our team themselves. They just take it one shot in the morning just to keep themselves. productive.

Yeah. And that's why it's very interesting because you can use it as pre-workout and before bed. Yeah. So, okay, I got to summarize this. We've talked about it potentially helping with infertility because of the denseness of the mitochondria and the eggs. So everybody go try that. We've talked about it for depression because of what it does in the hippocampus.

We've talked about it for lowering blood sugar post-meal so we can put weight loss. you know, gosh, weight loss is all over this conversation, whether people realize it or not. We've talked about it taking down hunger. We've talked about it helping with sleep so you don't create gluconeogenesis at 2 in the morning. Performance when you are when you're actually going to work out up regularly in these ketones. Anything I'm missing? Brain health. Brain health.

Yeah. We talked about Alzheimer's, brain injury, have EDNF, and how ketones are actually taken up by the brain. to create the fatty acids needed for structural repair of the brain. Yeah, and then that's very important for Alzheimer's, dementia, or these neurodegenerative diseases. Those are the areas we talked about. Oh, the cardiovascular system. Cardiovascular.

That was new. You taught me that today. Yeah. So, and what I love, and I hope people are gathering this, and this is my jam just in life, is bringing two people that are passionate about, similar things together and going, hey, how does your work and my work, come together so that humanity can win.

Yeah. Let's change the world. Yes, exactly. So, okay, I have to finish on this comment. These, there are these questions. This is my theme for the year is self-love. So we're going to take it away from ketones, although I do know the ketones are a form of self-love.

So the challenge is for me to take it back into ketones, right? Yeah, right. I'm just saying we got, you can answer this without the, the letter K coming out of your mouth. Your audience should have a drinking game. Every time we say keytone, they have a shot.

I'm sure they'll be flawed by the end of this talk. Yeah, or they're going to be so, like, buzzing that they're not going to, they didn't stick with the podcast. They probably went out and worked out. Yeah. Do you have a self-love practice?

And the second part of that question is, what do you think your superpower is that you bring to the world? Oh, boy. Okay, let's go to the first part first. I think self-love, I always thought I have self-love, right? And I grew up, like I said, my family side has high prevalence of chronic diseases. So my mom's side has really high prevalence of obesity.

And I grew up overweight on my life. And this is a story that I share a lot with Ben Azadi because he has gone through. Yeah, he's got a huge weight loss journey. Yeah. So I used to hate how I look. And I worked out and worked out and improved how I looked because I hated what I was or how I looked before. But now it's just a simple switch of perspective. I work out and I want to be healthy because I love myself.

Because I was given this body, this metabolism, this family, this genetic. And that's only one of me. So why not love myself enough? to make a change. Yeah. Why not love myself enough to do something good for my own body? Wow. And I think that's from a physical point of view.

Yeah. And mentally, I always thought I loved myself as well. But then I realized I didn't until two years ago. Because growing up in Asia, your self-worth is most often than not tied to materialistic stuff. your parents would love you more if you go to a better university, if you get straight A's, if you become a doctor and engineer, a lawyer. That's precious. Good paying job.

And I'm sure a lot of people grew up in Asia, even here in America, you know, some families, they can relate to this, right? The tiger mom, right? And I know my mom wants the best for me and my parents wants the best for me. But at the same time, that became my foundation. Right? So I tie myself worth to all of these things, but then I never love me for being me. So I started meditation two years ago now, although I could be more consistent with it nowadays.

And it really took me out of that inside view to a third person point of view, if you would. I'm able to zoom out and look at that and realize that. And just realizing that, I think the first time I meditated, I cried. Because it was a guided meditation. It says, put your hand on your heart. Love yourself and be compassionate with yourself. And then that was when I realized I never did. I loved my accomplishments.

I loved where I got in life. I loved what I am in terms of I'm a scientist. I'm an educator. I'm a science communicator. I never loved a lap, Manzo. Oh, I forgot about it. Wow. And that was when I realized,

and that's when everything else does not matter. Not money, not fame. It's what I do, what I'm passionate about. And when I leave this world, I ask myself, I always ask myself, if I die tomorrow,

will I have any regrets? And the goal is always to say no. That you've done everything you could. and full of love for yourself and for people around you. So. Oh my. That's the best one.

That was like the best answer I've been given all season. There's been some good answers. Okay. Does this fit for the inaugural in-person interview? How you get, tell me what,

now tell me what your superpower is. I think I just found it. My superpower, I think my superpower is something that I really cherish is the ability to connect with people. Yeah.

Because when I was overweight, I was always that friend that people can count on, but not that friend when people want to have fun with. Or when, you know, I'm that overweight friend who's like, oh, you know, Latt's good with his homework. Let's talk to him when we need him academically, you know, because it's smarter. But when it's like, oh, he's not the cool friend, you know, he's not the cool guy. But that helped me develop my personality. that helped me to come out of my shell,

be an extrovert, and that helped me really put an effort into, how do I connect with people? How do I remember? First and foremost, always remember the person's name. Yes. People always appreciate that. And then you think about what are the common things

that you can connect with, that you can talk about. I'm always conscious of that and intentional when it comes to that. And then when you connect, everything else is magic. Yeah, agreed. I think that, for the worst or for the better, that was not the most, you know,

some of the experience were not the sweetest, but the lessons, nonetheless, were something that I can take with me for the rest of my life, and I will forever cherish it. Yeah. That was the most beautiful, it was literally the most beautiful answer

that I've been given, and is at the heart of why I do what I did? because we have a culture that looks at skinny, beautiful, and says that's successful cars you drive. That's what we're all going for. And we lose sight of the bumps along the path and the internal conversations we have with ourselves and how we start to orchestrate our whole life around those internal conversations.

So what I hope everybody gathers from what you just said is you had some really rough moments and you changed the internal conversation and that changed your life. Yeah. And no matter what kind of experience you have bad or good, it's still part of you and it's what makes you you now. And what matters is now. Yes. Not the past, not the future. It's now. What you do now matters most. So focus on you now. Whatever you can do now, just do it. For yourself, for your people that love you, for people who are around you and even for people who do not love you, prove them wrong.

One of my favorite quotes, I'm a big quote fan, is don't think about what the world needs. Think about what lights you up because what the world needs is more people that are lit up. And that's the goal to me. That's what we're working towards.

So how do people find you, L-A-N-U-L-A-N-S-O-R? People can find me at Lat-M-A-N-S-O-R on all social media, platform and also HVMM podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, all podcast platforms as well as YouTube. And yeah, send me messages. I do answer them and comments and happy to share. Yeah, and test everything we talked about out and then give us both feedback. Yes.

Amazing. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health. you. If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it, so please leave us a review, share it with

your friends, and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.