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One of the problems with weight loss goals is saying you need to cut calories in order to get there.

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Now, I'm not saying calories don't matter. They are relevant, but not the most relevant,

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and I'm going to talk about evidence to support them.

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Someone is listening at home now, and they have the goal of losing some weight.

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They want to be in a better physique, be more healthy.

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Is this conversation going to help them accomplish those goals?

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I'll make sure that they get what they need.

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Dr. Benjamin Bigman is one of the world's leading metabolic and fat cell scientists.

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And now he's returned to expose some of the myths surrounding weight loss.

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And the surprising impact that one particular hormone has on our weight,

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brain, and mental health.

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As a metabolic scientist, I wouldn't want someone to think there is only one way to lose weight.

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However, I think this is the most practical and simplest strategy, a ketogenic diet.

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The huge reason is that when you cut carbs, insulin comes down.

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And insulin as a hormone is the one metabolic hormone to rule them all.

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Insulin will tell every single cell of the body what it needs to do with energy.

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And insulin is so determined to store energy that it is directing calories to be stored in

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tissues like fat or in the liver.

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Can make you fat.

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Yeah, but there's more.

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ketones are the brain's preferred fuel.

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It can control anxiety, improve depression, it can help with attention.

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In fact, the benefits of ketones are so extensive that companies are finding ways

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so you can drink ketones.

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And I have a bunch of different exogenous ketone products here of variety of different brands,

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and a bunch of other things here on the table.

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So what the hell is this?

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If someone is interested in a good smart way of losing weight, try to.

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This is definitely a prop.

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It tastes like bleach.

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I'm so sorry.

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Oh my god.

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So in 2026, to be the year where I finally get a grip of my health.

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And I asked you to meet the perfect plan.

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What would you prescribe?

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So first of all,

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just give me 30 seconds of your time.

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Two things I wanted to say.

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The first thing is a huge thank you for listening and tuning into the show.

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Week after week means the world to all of us.

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And this really is a dream that we absolutely never had.

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And couldn't have imagined getting to this place.

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But secondly, it's a dream where we feel like we're only just getting started.

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And if you enjoy what we do here,

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please join the 24% of people that listen to this podcast regularly

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and follow us on this app.

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Here's a promise I'm going to make to you.

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I'm going to do everything in my power to make this show as good as I can now and into the future.

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We're going to deliver the guests that you want me to speak to.

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And we're going to continue to keep doing all of the things you love about this show.

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Thank you.

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Dr Benjamin Bigman.

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At this time of year,

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the audience that are listening right now are thinking a lot about health and

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dietary changes that they can make to make 2026 the best year of their life to finally be able to

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kick that habit.

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And one of the things that's front of mind, I think for all of my listeners is

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their relationship with sugar, with carbs.

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And I guess the second order things that some people might know something about,

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like insulin resistance and all these kinds of subjects.

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At this particular moment in the year,

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if you had the ear of millions of people as they're coming into 2026,

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what is the most important thing that you would say to them?

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Yeah, that's a great question.

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What a way to get things started.

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In fact, I appreciate you even framing the conversation as if I had the ear

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because you've given me the ear of millions of people, so I'm going to take it seriously.

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The way you frame the question is really relevant because within North America,

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you see a pattern, a rhythm to both weight gain and even insulin resistance as it is quantified

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throughout the year, where in the winter months, people gain more weight and are more insulin

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resistant, almost like the hibernating bear, which becomes demonstrably more insulin resistant as

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it gets into hibernation. We non-hibernating mammals actually see an echo of the same thing.

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I'll be it more subtly. So it matters now where physiologically, we're more inclined to suffer

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from the consequences of bad dietary decisions. And of course, with all the holidays,

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we're more likely to be making those bad dietary decisions.

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So my advice would be to structure your indulgences as smartly as you can.

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You know that you're going to be faced with foods that are delicious and they're, I say,

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addictive. Don't rely on your own intuition to guide you through eating, that know that your

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temptation to indulge is going to be in some instances, perhaps greater than you can control.

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So structure your indulgences, give yourself a distinct period of time where you know you're

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going to imbib in these refined starches and sugars. And then if necessary, recruit help,

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have a family member, have a loved one, join you in your plan and you tell them,

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I don't want to gain the same weight I gained last year, I don't want to amplify the consequences

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of insulin resistance like I did last year. Can you please be my watchman and help me keep track

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where today's my day of indulgence or two days. And then on that Monday, remind me please be my helper.

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To get back on track, among the many problems with the modern diet is the constant carbohydrate

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consumption. It is the one macronutrient that we have the hardest time controlling and I would say,

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it's the one macronutrient that has the most disastrous consequences in the form in which we consume

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it now. Of course, carbohydrates is a broad class of food, some are just fine and some are not.

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Of course, we more focus on the ones that are not fine. So my advice would be structure your

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indulgences, be mindful of what you're doing in that you are not doing yourselves any favor.

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And then recruit outside help because you will not be able to rely on your own intuition

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to pull you out of what might become the sort of carbon-duced coma.

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I did ask thousands of the listeners what dietary changes they had planned for 2026,

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what they care about most. Funnily, keto came up number one, then cutting sugar, then weight loss,

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then fasting, more protein, whole foods, low carb, and calorie control. So this is going to be

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a bit of a road map for me. In fact, I am thrilled to hear that order. When you put out the

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histogram and you're looking at the most common responses, the fact that calorie number

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was at the bottom actually kind of thrills me because this reflects that the tide is turning,

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that over the past decades, 60 plus years, the singular piece of advice when it came to weight loss

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and metabolic health was eat less exercise more, which is a purely thermodynamic or a calorie

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centric paradigm, just stating nothing else matters other than the energy you're putting in

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any energy you're putting out. We can't possibly account for all of the energy in the complexity

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of the human body. You can have humans eat two meals that are identical in calorie number,

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so purely isocloric. And there is something called the thermic effect of food. So when we eat,

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right now you and I have an eat and we're in a fasted state, our metabolic rate is say humming

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along here. If we were to go get lunch and eat something in the hours following just the very

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act of digesting, we have turned up the metabolic engine and metabolic rate would go up a little bit.

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Metabolic rate meaning. Meaning the total amount of energy the body is

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expending. In fact, metabolism to I'll come back to this thought in just a second. As a metabolic

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scientist, people don't even understand the word metabolism. Metabolism is underwhelmingly,

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perhaps nothing more but nothing less than the sum of every chemical reaction happening in our

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bodies. It's just everything that is keeping us alive, that is keeping our neurons firing. My

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muscles moving as I'm animating my hands. Everything we're doing is metabolism. And so after we

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eat, metabolism goes up a little bit. Again, that's called the thermic effect of food. And if you

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give people two isocloric meals, so exact same number of calories. That's what isocloric means.

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Same amount of protein and yet they differ in their composition of macronutrients with fats and

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carbs. So the meal that is lower carb and higher fat, those individuals will have a much higher

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metabolic rate for hours afterwards than the group that is eating the high carb low fat version of

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that same caloric meal. And that's because insulin. Insulin as a hormone is the one metabolic hormone

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to rule them all. It will determine what the body does with energy at every single cell. This is a

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principle. Even many very educated clinicians don't understand. They think that insulin only

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controls blood glucose. That's just the most obvious thing that it does because we can prick a

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finger and measure it or slap something on our arm and measure the glucose. Insulin will tell

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every single cell of the body from brain cells to bone cells, liver cells to lung cells,

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and everyone in between what it needs to do with energy. And insulin is so determined to store

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energy that it will slow the metabolic engine of the body down in order to store more.

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And so all of this is my long-winded way of saying how thrilled I am that this is an audience

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that is shrugging off the old ideas of a calorie-centric model of obesity. Because all of these people,

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everyone's interested in losing weight or maintaining weight, which I admire. That's a good goal.

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The size of our fat cells matters tremendously. So that's a good goal to want to shrink our fat

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cells and be healthier. The fact that they didn't put controlling calories is number one,

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and indeed put it at the end suggests that the word is getting around. That more, I would say,

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better, more sound metabolic science is starting to seep through society where they're more

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interested in controlling their macronutrients. In other words, their carbs and their fats.

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Then they are controlling their calories. My brother called you, didn't he?

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He did. My older brother. What did he say? He's darling. We had some wonderful conversations.

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He was interested as a dad, middle-aged dad. In fact, indeed, checking a lot of the boxes you just

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mentioned, which is I want to be a healthy dad, I want to live a long, healthy life. One of the problems

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with weight loss goals is they look at the goal, they look at the weight where they want to get to.

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They're looking down the road and saying, this is where I want to get. And so I need to cut calories

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in order to get there. So there are two variables that come into play when it comes to losing weight.

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And I've already said this and I'll state it again just to be clear. It's a matter of shrinking fat

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cells. That's what happens when someone's losing fat mass. It's not that you're losing fat cells.

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Indeed, you don't want to. That's a topic for another time. But liposuction is a perfect example

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where you are losing fat mass and yet no health marker gets better. None. Even though you've lost,

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you could go in and suck out fat cells and you'd say, I lost 20 pounds of pure fat. I'm now going

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to go to my doctor and get my blood test and I'm going to be so much healthier and yet nothing is

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different. If they were diabetic, they're just as diabetic. So if someone's looking at their

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new year's goals and when I spoke with your brother, it was an echo of this conversation in a way.

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I said, all right, you need to shrink your fat cells. Most people only look at the calorie control.

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The problem with calorie control is that we've seen what it looks like when you only focus

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on calorie deprivation and that is in a word hunger. And there it was this within the US,

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there's this business game show over the years called the greatest loser. These people one

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lose a fantastic amount of weight and yet you never see them again because they gain it all back.

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So if your weight loss strategy is based on cutting calories without addressing insulin,

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which is the other of the two variables, then you're going to be hungry. Dr. David Luddwig

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at Harvard, a friend and colleague and collaborator, he published a report looking at the same kind of

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dynamic that I outlined a moment ago to ISO caloric or equal calorie meals. And he found that when

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they ate the meal that spiked insulin, what he called, I think he called it total energy availability.

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So they measured every calorie molecule in the blood. So ketones, BHB, they measured lactate,

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they measured fats, they measured glucose. And they found that with the insulin spiking meal,

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the total energy availability went down. What does that mean? Yeah. So in other words, with the

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increase in insulin, as I noted, a moment ago, insulin is so determined to store energy

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that it is directing calories to go from the blood to be stored in tissues like fat or in the liver.

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To make you fat. Yeah. Indeed it would. But the problem is the brain doesn't have that storage

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capacity. You know, you could have big fat cells with lots of energy. You could have a liver with

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tons of fat and glycogen, which is a stored form of glucose, ready to go. But the brain doesn't

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have a big storage reservoir. And yet it has a high metabolic rate. And so the brain is constantly

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relying on the energy in the blood that it can use, especially glucose and ketones, the two primary

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fuels for the brain. And so when you spike insulin, you lower your glucose and you stop your liver

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from making ketones. So the two main brain fuels have gone down, which is why you get brain fog.

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It certainly lead to some mild cognitive impairment, but it would also drive hunger. And so another

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group found that if you ate an isocloric breakfast, one low carb, one high carb, the group that was

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on the high carb breakfast was much hungerier, much sooner. And so this. Okay, so let me just

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yeah, yeah. The way I understand that is because I've had a meal that's high in sugar, that's

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same old carbs. Yep. Insulin has come out. It's grabbed all of the energy from my blood. Yep,

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that you just ate. That I just ate. It's stored it all away. And because my brain is getting its

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energy from the blood as well, my brain is being energy deprived in some way. And so my brain is

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going within an hour or two, you are hungry. Yes, even though your fat cells might be bigger than

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they've ever been. So that's the sort of disconnect that you end up having when you're spiking insulin

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so frequently, you may have hundreds of thousands or even millions of calories stored on your body

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in your fat cells primarily. And yet the brain is saying, I'm hungry. We shouldn't be hungry. We

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have so much energy that we can use, but only if we can access it. And this is where ketones come in.

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I hate to change the topic, but if a person has fat and they can burn that fat, then they're making

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ketones and ketones are the brain's preferred fuel. Let's just state that with an exclamation mark.

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And so if the brain is getting ketones or even if it has access to plenty of glucose, it senses,

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hey, there's no energy deprivation. We're fine. We don't need to eat. And that's what these studies

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find. And so back to the conversation with your brother, rather than focusing on calorie number,

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focus on the other variable, which is insulin. Because if you decide that you're going to start your fat

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cell shrinking journey, so with the first step, you could say, well, my first step is going to be

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cutting calories. But if you haven't addressed your high insulin, which you have to have if you've

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gained weight, it is impossible. In fact, this is worth a tangent for just a moment because I can

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state this so emphatically. You could have all the hormones in the human body and tens of thousands

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of calories coming in every day. And if you simply remove one single hormone, it is impossible

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for that person to get fat, totally and completely impossible. Now, I am a scientist enough that I

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like to avoid hyperbolic language. I don't want to state anything in the extreme. And yet in this

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case, I actually can. I can revel in all of the power of this declaration, which is you simply wipe

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out a person's insulin. It is completely impossible for them to get fat. In fact, this phenomenon is so

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real and so learned, if not already known, that you have people with type 1 diabetes. Imagine the

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temptation. Let's say you're a young woman who faces more pressure than her than her young men

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counterparts. She just gets diagnosed with type 1 diabetes and she has become used to eating whatever

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she wants and being very, very skinny. That is one of the cardinal signs of type 1 diabetes. The

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person is just losing weight. In fact, the early, the ancients thought that as they were making so much

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urine, because another feature of type 1 diabetes in an untreated state is they urinate a lot.

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That's what the word diabetes means. It means polyureia or a lot of urine formation. They thought

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that they're flesh, they're fat, their substance was turning into liquid and excreting from their

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bodies. Imagine this young woman, she's say 13 years old, she is super, super skinny, which she

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likes because there's such a pressure to be skinny. And she can also at the same time eat whatever

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she wants. And then, but of course, she feels miserable and indeed it will kill her. So she gets

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diagnosed with type 1 diabetes and she's put on insulin therapy and two things happen. She starts

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eating less and getting fat. In fact, people will gain so much weight that if they're in the hospital

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for a few days, they can't leave the hospital with the same clothes they came in. It's not to say

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they're leaving and then they're obese, but they can't have easily gained 10 pounds, 15 pounds of

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fat. So this phenomenon is known and you have people with type 1 diabetes who abuse that fact and

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will deliberately underdose their insulin. So they can eat whatever they want. They could go to

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Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner and indulge in all the sweets and just simply underdose their insulin

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and be skinny as they want to be. Now there's disastrous metabolic consequences, but it's just a

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testament to the power of insulin. So to finally answer the question, my advice when I was speaking

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with your brother and anyone listening, don't have your first step on your fat cell shrinking journey

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be low calorie because you will find that in short order hunger will win and so you'll be right back

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where you started. Let your first step be I'm going to lower my insulin because as I lower my insulin,

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I don't have to worry about hunger first of all because if you're just focusing on lowering insulin,

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you can tell the person and indeed I am eat as much protein and fat as you want because they have

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little to no effect on your insulin. So anytime you're hungry, eat something with protein and fat

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and then if you're not hungry, don't eat. But anytime you're hungry, it's not deprivation,

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it's not hunger, but the low calorie approach is hunger, you're going to be hungry. So lower your

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insulin by controlling your carbohydrates and basically whole fruits and vegetables enjoy them.

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And this is part of the conversation ahead with your brother. And he called you and told you that

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he had had positive results following watching this conversation and following your advice.

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I think you said he'd effortlessly lost 15 or so pounds without even really worrying about it

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because you're not having that annoying hunger. He didn't tell me he was reaching out to you.

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So I actually only found out that he had spoken to you when he like message me one day on what's

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happened was like I've been chatting to Dr. Benjamin Bickman. How did you get his email? How did you

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get his phone number? So he must have reached out to you. He knows people. Okay, okay. He found

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a way. Yeah, he knows people. No, but he looks radically different. I have to say he's dropped

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a ton of weight and looks fantastic. Well, he was already handsome. So I can only imagine

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what he looks like. That's the genetic component. But when I look back at the conversation we had,

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the top comment on our previous conversation is someone saying I was morbidly obese 68 days ago.

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I was 280 pounds and pre-diabetic. In these 68 days, I cut out sugar and flour entirely.

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And I reduced my calories to about 1800 a day. And I'm pleased to know that my high protein,

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high fat low carb diet is the right path. And my blood sugar is now normal.

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Yeah, remarkable. I don't mean to ever come across as saying that there's only one way to lose weight.

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That anyone listening who is interested in weight loss would say, well, gosh, it looks like I

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have to eat a lot of meat and eggs. And yet you don't. As much as I am a defender of that view,

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I wouldn't want someone to think there is only one way to lose weight. Because we could both

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think of people who adopted a purely plant-based diet and lost weight. Now, I have some significant

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concerns with that diet long term. But even still, they could say, well, I'm eating 100%

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carbohydrates, essentially, and I've lost weight. I'm not saying calories don't matter.

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They do. But it also makes it a hard long-term strategy. And so if someone can lower their insulin,

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I alluded to a metabolic advantage. And I'll just revisit that briefly. I'd mentioned already

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one of these things, which is when insulin is down, the metabolic rate goes up. In my lab,

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published a report, I'm finding that part of that is through the production of ketones. That when

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ketones move through the bloodstream and come to our fat cells, they will increase our metabolic

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rate and our fat tissue by three times. And we did this in humans. We studied fat cells in a

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Petri dish. We studied fat tissue from animal models. And then we studied fat tissue from humans,

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where we actually were pulling biopsies of belly fat from people that were in ketosis or not.

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And when they were in ketosis, their metabolic rate in their fat tissue is three times higher

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than when they weren't. And then the group that was not in ketosis. So this suggests that there's

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an advantage here that comes from lowering insulin. So as insulin comes down, the person will find that

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they're just burning weight more easily. And then one other part of that is when you're making

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ketones, every ketone has a caloric value roughly similar to that of glucose. And so what happens

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now in ketosis or when ketones are up, you start wasting those ketones from your body,

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that you're breathing ketones out or you're urinating ketones out. And those are calories that

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are just coming from your body that would have had to be burned through exercise or stored in

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fat tissue. And yet in the in a low insulin state, that is so antithetical to fat storage that the

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body just starts literally wasting energy. So every breath they're taking out when they're breathing

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out ketones, those are calories just coming out of their body. So let's start then with ketones

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because on the list of things that my audience said they planned to change for the new year,

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keto and ketones was top of that list for someone that's never heard the term before.

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Yeah. And please give me context on what exactly it is, but also how it relates to living a healthy

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happy 2026. Right, right. Well, I am, I'm a great defender of ketones. I think that they have been

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one of the more misunderstood molecules in the body for decades and it is thrilling for me to see

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an explosion of research in this realm looking at the effects of ketones in the body. So a ketone

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is a molecule that the body will make. Many tissues can make it, but if you're measuring it in your

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blood, it's coming from the liver. And ketones are a product of fat burning. So when insulin is low,

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which it must be for the body to make ketones, that's why it's ketogenesis or the genesis or the

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creation of ketones. To be in a ketogenic state, you must have low insulin. That's required.

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When insulin goes down, you have two important things happening. First, starting at the fat cell,

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then going to the liver, when insulin is down, the fat cell is breaking apart its triglycerides,

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which is the molecule that the fat cells stores as fat. So that's called lipolysis,

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lipolysis, lipid breaking or fat breaking. So you have in a low insulin state, the fat cells

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breaking down as fats. Now those fats are coming to the liver. So in a low insulin state, you mean

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if I was fasting? Fasting or low carb? Okay. Yep. So the minute I'm low carb or fasting,

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then I start producing these things called ketones. Yeah, within about 16 hours. So if you and I

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went to lunch and we ate a typical kind of high carb type lunch, a typical lunch with all kinds

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of macronutrients in it, our insulin would go up. And then if we stopped eating then about 16 or

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so hours later, we would start making ketones. That's a long enough period of time for fat

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burning to kind of take over. And so the fat cell is breaking down its fat. That fat is going to

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the liver right here. In fact, so here we don't have a lot of subcutaneous fat on this guy here,

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unfortunately. So on the outside in the front of the body or around the middle, we have this fat

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that we can pinch and jiggle. That's the subcutaneous fat. So it would be surrounding in this model for

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those watching. It'd be surrounding the organs on the outside. That is fat to the body burns

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very readily. That fat is running to the liver in very short order. So it goes to the liver.

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And now the liver has some options. The liver is the I say that delivers the soccer mom of nutrient

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metabolism. It knows what to do with everything, whether it's lactate or glucose or fats or ketones,

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the liver can handle all of them. So the liver is getting a lot of fat from fat cells and it has

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some options. It would say, well, I can store this fat or I can burn it. And how does the liver

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decide insulin tells it what to do? And if insulin is down, the liver cannot store fat. It has to

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burn it. So if I'm fasting, if I've been fasting say for two days, for example, or I've not been

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eating carbs for two days, the liver won't store fat. In fact, the liver, it is so

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antithetical to fat storage in the liver that you have human studies where people have significant fatty

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liver disease confirmed through ultrasound measurements. And they can just go on a ketogenic or

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low carb diet for just a week. And if I recall the study correctly, I think it reduced the liver fat

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by like 60% in which was significantly more than the high carb version. And so even it was the

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same calories. Once again, just further evidence the calorie number as much as I don't, calories matter

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but just they're not number one. They're they're they're relevant but not as not the most relevant.

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So you the the liver cannot hold on to its fat as insulin comes down. It must burn it. And the

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liver begins within each liver cell. The liver is burning so much fat that it's actually it's

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burning more than it needs for its own energy. And it's basically, if you'll allow me to speak a

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little silly, the liver begins to say, I'm burning more energy than I need. I wonder how the brains

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doing. And the brain won't burn fat. The brain will burn ketones. And so the liver starts creating

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ketones. It's it's it's it's way of sharing the energy with the brain. So a ketone is to put it

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very succinctly a product of the liver burning a lot of fat. Anytime you're burning a lot of fat,

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you're going to be making ketones. People have heard of the keto diet. When you talk about the

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keto diet, there's lots of rebuttals. Some people say it's not sustainable. You can't do it for a

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long period of time. How do you respond to arguments against ketone? Yeah, that's that's a great

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question. I appreciate the concerns. The the stated concern that they would say it's not feasible.

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You can say that about any diet. You really can. And I don't mean to

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push aside people's concerns. But you could say the same thing about someone going on a low fat

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locality diet. That's not sustainable. And it never is. They always get off it. And so any time a

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person is making a dietary change to improve their metabolic health, every diet works until you

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stop doing it. That might be a maxim that people can leave with a ketogenic diet because it's not

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based on hunger. I think has the potential to work. But we know there are people who've done it

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their whole lives, right? There are people who from childhood adopt a ketogenic diet in order

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to control their seizures or their their their epilepsy or the people will do it to control their

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migraines because if there's one tissue in the body that thrives in the midst of ketones,

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it's the brain. You can almost throw a dart at a board that lists all of these chronic brain

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disorders, whether it's schizophrenia, whether it's bipolar, whether it's depression, whether it is

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dementia, like Alzheimer's disease, every one of those instances, there's evidence to show even

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things like multiple sclerosis. There's if instance evidence to show improvements in humans with

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a ketogenic diet. The brain and to say that in a different way, the central nervous system

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loves ketones. I'm just looking at some of the people who watched our last conversation and who

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left comments on that conversation. And there's this one chap here who I'll throw up on the screen

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called Shanti. He says 35 days of keto for the first time ever started on the second of January

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2025. It's now the 8th of February and 8 kilograms or 17.5 pounds gone. So easy and loving my

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few choices. I'm having no more than 20 grams of carbs per day. I am amazed. Not felt this good

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since I was a teenager. Another 15 kilograms to go and I know I'll get there. That's roughly

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37 pounds to go. So that's remarkable. It really, really works. Well, it does work, but I don't

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mean to ever, you know, neither you nor I are going to tell anyone everyone listening. This is the

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only way to lose weight. But I think it is the most practical and simplest because the problem with

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so many weight loss strategies is that it puts you against your own hunger and hunger always wins.

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You have to have a weight loss journey that doesn't have hunger being a constant feature because

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if you're imagining this long walk to shrinking my fat cells to what this guy wanted of almost 35

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total pounds, I think is what he's going for. If you're carrying hunger, it's like it's like a bag.

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It's like luggage that you're dragging along on this journey, the chains that you're dragging that

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are going to make it almost impossible for you to get there. This sounds almost counterintuitive

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because when people hear that you're not going to have sugar, they assume that you're

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therefore going to have loads of cravings for it. But the remarkable thing I discovered the first time

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I went on a low carb slash keto diet is I was walking through this wall mall in Cape Town where

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where I live sometimes and I saw this concession stand for like cinnamon rolls. And I thought to

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myself like I've not had sugar for, you know, I've not had a high sugar diet now for a couple of

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weeks, I'll just go look at it and see how I feel. And I walked over and looked down at it at a food

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I would absolutely love in my mouth the water just thinking about it. I looked down at it and I had

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the emotional urge to buy one was completely gone. And it's hard to explain. It's hard to explain.

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You were able to just look at it. I felt nothing. Yeah. And I was really, I found that really

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fascinating that I had no urge, no craving, no desire to buy the cinnamon roll. And it had

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vanished. Well, this is this is one of the things where I think the future of as ketone research

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and humans continues to evolve. I there is already evidence showing profound you can use a ketogenic

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diet to help people with eating disorders. These are there are published case studies on this.

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And I think a part of it is when the brain is so nourished and consistently nourished by ketones

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by ketones. The brain reaches this new level of of indifference to what it knows might be harmful.

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And that's in the midst of that answer I have that's kind of loaded where if you're on a ketogenic

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diet, the beauty is fuel is stable. ketones are stable. Even glucose is stable. You're avoiding

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the massive volatility of glucose. And as much as so much of the glucose centric view is only

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worried about the high glucose high glucose is harmful that it can induce the glycation of molecules

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throughout the body where the glucose is literally binding things and disrupting their function.

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Proteins fats so glucose is harmful but so too is the volatility of the glucose where it's

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really high than it's really low and then it's really high again. That is a roller coaster of

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energy for the brain where it's you're force feeding the brain all this glucose and now you're

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depriving it. It's like it's like a form of abuse on the brain. But when it's a ketogenic

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diet, it is stable, consistent energy. And so it's not surprising to me that people find they're

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able to resist cravings better because the brain is able to say to the rest of the body, now we

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don't need that. We're doing fine. We got energy. What about the haunts? Oh my gosh, that's a brilliant

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question. So I would say the brain is number one tissue that thrives on ketones and I'd actually

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put the heart as number two. There is a lot of great research. I would refer people to Gary

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Lopichuk's work and others that I just don't know personally but I know him. He's at the University

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of Alberta in Edmonton and he has found and others. So I'm going to synthesize their work collectively

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that when a person's experiencing heart failure, it's a combination of variables where the heart

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may not be able to contract well enough to eject the blood. It has to work a lot harder for every

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pump. In that case, they have found that the heart will shift its fuel to start relying on ketones

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to improve its function. But there was a paper just published this year looking at a different form

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of beta hydroxybutyrate, which is the main ketone. Whenever I've been saying ketone, I've been thinking

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of the molecule beta hydroxybutyrate, when the liver makes BHB or beta hydroxybutyrate, it actually

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comes in two forms that are mirror opposites of each other in structure. So the way they're built,

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it's referred to as DBHB or LBHB. So in heart failure, the heart muscle itself, like the brain,

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starts relying a lot on DBHB as its fuel. Then you would say, that begs the question,

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what about the L? This paper that was just found used a pig heart model, which is actually

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shockingly close to human anatomy. So it's a pretty good corollary. Here, they found that with LBHB

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infused into the cardiovascular system of the pigs, which is ketones, which is a different form of

391
00:34:33.280 --> 00:34:38.240
the ketone that the liver makes. Yes. So the liver is making two types of BHB, DBHB and LBHB.

392
00:34:38.800 --> 00:34:45.600
And when they perfused the cardiovascular system with LBHB, they found that the what's called ejection

393
00:34:45.600 --> 00:34:50.800
fraction. So the amount of blood coming out of the left ventricle, which is the part of the heart

394
00:34:50.800 --> 00:34:58.160
that's beating blood everywhere. So with LBHB, they found that the heart was able to eject 40%

395
00:34:58.160 --> 00:35:02.720
more blood for every beat. But now you would say, well, it's just because you're making the heart work

396
00:35:02.720 --> 00:35:09.280
harder. No, it was not at all an effect of the heart itself. It was because all of the great arteries,

397
00:35:09.280 --> 00:35:14.960
like the aorta right out of the left ventricle will come the aorta, which is the main avenue

398
00:35:15.040 --> 00:35:21.920
for moving blood everywhere. The aorta expanded and all of the great vessels enlarged so much

399
00:35:21.920 --> 00:35:27.200
that the heart was now able to beat out 40% more blood with every single beat. So when it comes

400
00:35:27.200 --> 00:35:32.960
to someone with heart failure, I think they are among the most, they should be among the most

401
00:35:32.960 --> 00:35:40.880
interested in testing out the effects of ketones. Even as a personal note, I tend to be kind of

402
00:35:40.880 --> 00:35:46.880
high anxiety, high performance, sort of I'm always thinking of something. No surprise that I tend,

403
00:35:46.880 --> 00:35:52.000
and I don't sleep particularly great. And so no surprise that I sometimes have higher blood pressure.

404
00:35:52.640 --> 00:35:57.200
I one time measured my blood pressure on a random, I went into my dentist and the dentist has now

405
00:35:57.200 --> 00:36:04.320
started measuring blood pressure. It was 139 over 90 something and I had never been that high. I couldn't

406
00:36:04.320 --> 00:36:09.040
believe it. I'm such a healthy bloke. How on earth is my blood pressure this high? And I thought,

407
00:36:09.040 --> 00:36:13.520
well, I'm kind of sleep deprived. I've had maybe a little too much caffeine that morning or whatever.

408
00:36:13.520 --> 00:36:18.640
But it was a concern. And over the next few days, my blood pressure continued to be higher than

409
00:36:18.640 --> 00:36:22.640
it had ever been. And of course, I'm getting old enough that I think these things start to matter.

410
00:36:23.440 --> 00:36:29.440
I took a shot of, as an experiment, seeing this paper that was had just been published in 2025.

411
00:36:30.080 --> 00:36:37.520
I took a few grams worth of LBHB. I drank it. And within about an hour, my blood pressure was like

412
00:36:37.520 --> 00:36:44.880
110 over 70. So it had this, now that's anecdotal. It's an NF1. Maybe I just calmed down enough.

413
00:36:45.440 --> 00:36:51.360
But I saw in almost immediate reduction in my blood pressure. And it could be because of what

414
00:36:51.360 --> 00:36:57.840
they found, which is that all of the vessels that the heart is beating into, they expanded. And so

415
00:36:57.840 --> 00:37:03.200
every, with every beat of the heart, the heart was able to eject more blood. And the wider a blood

416
00:37:03.200 --> 00:37:07.680
vessel gets, of course, the lower the pressure is. And so that's, that could be the mechanism that

417
00:37:07.680 --> 00:37:13.680
explained in my case, why my blood pressure got fixed so quickly. How did you drink that? Yeah. Yeah.

418
00:37:13.680 --> 00:37:19.200
So there are a few different ways as much as we've been focusing on endogenous ketones. So I'm

419
00:37:19.200 --> 00:37:24.640
pointing to my liver, but here's the liver. So when a person is in a ketogenic state, they're making

420
00:37:24.640 --> 00:37:30.400
their own ketones. We would use the word endogenous ketogenesis or they're making ketones in their

421
00:37:30.400 --> 00:37:37.680
own body. But it's no surprise that the benefits of ketones are getting so extensive that now there

422
00:37:37.680 --> 00:37:42.720
are companies that are enterprising individuals that are finding ways to get into ketosis without

423
00:37:42.720 --> 00:37:48.320
having the rigor of a ketogenic diet. And so you can drink ketones. And that comes in a few

424
00:37:48.320 --> 00:37:55.280
different forms. Of course, the form I'm talking about is just straight BHB. And it's two,

425
00:37:55.360 --> 00:38:02.160
in its two versions, you can get it in either version, DBHB or LBHB. So that's just you consuming

426
00:38:02.160 --> 00:38:06.720
it in the way your liver makes it. If you looked at my kitchen cupboard over there, you'd probably see

427
00:38:06.720 --> 00:38:10.640
frankly about a hundred different ketone products. Obviously, some of them are the same, but there's

428
00:38:10.640 --> 00:38:17.040
like a hundred different units of ketone products. And here is my ketone reader, which is where I pick

429
00:38:17.040 --> 00:38:22.160
prick my finger frequently. In fact, you'll be delighted once you get one. Nowadays they make them

430
00:38:22.720 --> 00:38:28.240
attachable. Really? Yeah. So ketones are so easy to measure, not unlike glucose, that just like

431
00:38:28.240 --> 00:38:33.360
people have continuous glucose monitors. Now in Europe, you can get continuous ketone monitors.

432
00:38:33.360 --> 00:38:37.280
From what? Next time you're in the UK, get them. You can't get them here yet. They're not FDA

433
00:38:37.280 --> 00:38:43.920
approved, but there was a company out of Germany that sent me one called Sci-Bio, SIBIO. And you

434
00:38:43.920 --> 00:38:47.600
can just strap it on and look at your phone and it's giving you continuous readings.

435
00:38:47.680 --> 00:38:51.680
Damn. Yeah, it's very, very incredible. I'm literally going to buy that ASAP.

436
00:38:53.120 --> 00:38:58.080
But before I get that, I've been using this little ketone reader here, which I have no

437
00:38:58.080 --> 00:39:02.240
affiliation to at all. And prick my finger every single day to see my ketone levels when I'm in

438
00:39:02.240 --> 00:39:08.080
a ketogenic state. You talked about exogenous ketones. I have a bunch of different exogenous

439
00:39:08.080 --> 00:39:14.240
ketone products here. I know some people use ketone salts. I have two different ketone brands here.

440
00:39:15.120 --> 00:39:20.160
Yes. Yes. So there are different forms. You have two different forms here and you mentioned

441
00:39:20.160 --> 00:39:24.240
one that ought to be described because that actually is the type of ketone I was just talking about.

442
00:39:24.240 --> 00:39:30.160
So ketone IQ is a ketone precursor where it's a molecule called 1-3-butane dial that will come

443
00:39:30.160 --> 00:39:36.960
to the liver, then the liver will metabolize it to a large degree into BHB, the main ketone that

444
00:39:37.040 --> 00:39:43.120
we're talking about. And that is the ketone that people want. Then the other one, this is an

445
00:39:43.120 --> 00:39:50.480
ester. An ester bond is a molecule that has a chemical bond that is broken when you eat it

446
00:39:51.440 --> 00:39:56.960
through enzymes. So you digest that where it's one part BHB, the straight real ketone,

447
00:39:56.960 --> 00:40:01.520
and then it's one part 1-3-butane dial, which is the same precursor, the ketone precursor,

448
00:40:01.520 --> 00:40:08.080
and ketone IQ. And so those are two of the three forms, well, maybe four forms. And then the other

449
00:40:08.080 --> 00:40:15.200
two are straight BHB, where it's either a BHB salt, where the BHB molecule is bound to a sodium

450
00:40:15.200 --> 00:40:23.120
or a calcium or a potassium. And you can buy those in the D or the L form, or nowadays it's the

451
00:40:23.120 --> 00:40:28.160
straight acid, what's called a BHB acid, where it doesn't have any of the electrolytes in it,

452
00:40:28.160 --> 00:40:32.400
where it's you can get, that's what I was referring to a moment ago. And I lowered my blood pressure,

453
00:40:32.400 --> 00:40:38.720
I took the straight, a straight shot of L BHB, and you can get that in D and L forms as well.

454
00:40:39.360 --> 00:40:41.120
Okay, so I'm just taking the shot of ketone IQ.

455
00:40:41.120 --> 00:40:45.840
Yeah, so that's one-3-butane dial, and you taste it, right? It has a particular kind of kick,

456
00:40:45.840 --> 00:40:50.720
because it's an alcohol molecule that, you know, you feel it, like it's sort of like taking a

457
00:40:50.720 --> 00:40:56.000
little shot, but your liver will take that in, and then over the next couple hours, it will start

458
00:40:56.000 --> 00:41:01.920
converting it to varying degrees into BHB. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to quickly

459
00:41:01.920 --> 00:41:08.960
do my blood ketone levels now, and we will see, if in 10 minutes time, let's do 10-20 minutes time,

460
00:41:09.520 --> 00:41:14.400
there are ketones flowing in my blood. So I've pricked my finger, I put a little bit of blood on

461
00:41:14.400 --> 00:41:19.920
this little ketone sensor here, and it says that my blood ketone levels are currently 0.3.

462
00:41:19.920 --> 00:41:24.000
Yep, yeah. So can you describe for me, now that I've just had a shot of ketone IQ, which by the way,

463
00:41:24.000 --> 00:41:29.680
I'm affiliated with, I'm an investor in the company, but that's why I brought a variety of

464
00:41:29.680 --> 00:41:33.760
different hands. Yeah. Can you tell me what's going on inside my body now that I've just had one

465
00:41:33.760 --> 00:41:39.280
shot of that? Yes, yes. So now your body is taking in that main molecule of ketone IQ, which is

466
00:41:39.280 --> 00:41:44.320
called one-3-butane dial, and it's going to get absorbed from your guts into your blood,

467
00:41:44.880 --> 00:41:49.280
and then from your guts, it's going to go to your liver, and then the liver will pull in that

468
00:41:49.280 --> 00:41:56.560
molecule and rearrange it into BHB, and then release that into the blood. Which is ketones?

469
00:41:56.560 --> 00:42:01.280
Which is key, it will turn it into BHB, the ketone. Yep. And now again, there are different forms

470
00:42:01.280 --> 00:42:05.840
that you can take, whether it's the straight one-3-butane dial, or whether it's an ester.

471
00:42:05.840 --> 00:42:08.880
And what's happening from there? So it's showing my blood, what's happening then?

472
00:42:08.880 --> 00:42:15.360
Yeah, so now that wants to BHB's in the blood, anytime BHB's in the blood, it is both fuel

473
00:42:16.080 --> 00:42:21.760
and a signaling molecule. And that last part is often overlooked. We've been over the course

474
00:42:21.760 --> 00:42:25.600
of this discussion talking a lot about, or I've been referring to the fact that it's a fuel

475
00:42:26.160 --> 00:42:32.560
for any cell with mitochondria, which is everything but red blood cells. Red blood cells are

476
00:42:32.560 --> 00:42:38.640
the only cells with no mitochondria, but every other cell of the body will take in BHB, the main

477
00:42:38.640 --> 00:42:45.280
ketone and use it for fuel, every single cell of the body. And do so gladly. And it's important

478
00:42:45.280 --> 00:42:50.800
to compare the BHB, the ketone against glucose. In many of the biggest tissues of the body, like the

479
00:42:50.800 --> 00:42:57.280
muscle or the fat or even the heart, glucose can't just come in. It needs an escort, if you will,

480
00:42:57.280 --> 00:43:02.240
or it needs permission, and that's insulin. So there's this regulating step. There's this

481
00:43:02.240 --> 00:43:07.680
checkpoint where insulin can say, all right, you can come in, or not because I'm insulin resistant,

482
00:43:07.680 --> 00:43:13.040
or there's not enough insulin or whatever, ketones have no such regulation. They just come in.

483
00:43:13.040 --> 00:43:17.440
If the cell has mitochondria, the ketones going in. So that's one effect, where the ketone is

484
00:43:17.440 --> 00:43:24.560
metabolized as a fuel, giving the cell literal energy. Number two is the fact that the BHB

485
00:43:24.560 --> 00:43:31.040
can bind to the cell, and there are receptors on cells that will sense the BHB, then the BHB

486
00:43:31.040 --> 00:43:36.000
will tell it to do something. The ketone. Yeah, yeah. So it's, which is really, really unique,

487
00:43:36.000 --> 00:43:41.760
where you have something that is both a calorie source and energy source, and it acts like a hormone,

488
00:43:41.760 --> 00:43:47.760
where it tells cells, that's the signaling effect, where it tells cells to do something. Like a moment

489
00:43:47.760 --> 00:43:54.960
ago, I'd mentioned how LBHB is capable of expanding the great blood vessels in the body. Well, in that

490
00:43:54.960 --> 00:44:00.720
regard, it's acting as a signaling molecule and increasing the production of nitric oxide,

491
00:44:00.720 --> 00:44:05.280
which is a great visodilate, or all these guys that are taking nitric oxide drugs like

492
00:44:05.280 --> 00:44:10.720
Cialis, for whether it's a rectile function or nowadays, guys are taking it to have better blood

493
00:44:10.720 --> 00:44:16.400
flow and perform in the gym and have a better workout. Well, LBHB might be kind of the way forward,

494
00:44:16.400 --> 00:44:22.240
where if you can signal something else, but get the same effect without the consequences or the side

495
00:44:22.240 --> 00:44:28.240
effects that you get from Cialis, then that might be one of the strategies and use of LBHB in the future.

496
00:44:29.040 --> 00:44:32.480
So that's been about five or ten minutes, and my blood keto levels are now at 0.5,

497
00:44:33.280 --> 00:44:38.400
and they're continuing to climb just from one shot of ketone IQ. Some people ask me about sex

498
00:44:38.400 --> 00:44:44.080
differences in the ketogenic diet or a low carb diet generally. Some people are concerned that

499
00:44:45.120 --> 00:44:50.960
low carb diets or ketogenic diets are especially useful for men, but might have a different set of

500
00:44:50.960 --> 00:44:57.200
complications for women. And we did have a female expert debate on the show where I asked about

501
00:44:57.200 --> 00:45:02.240
the ketogenic diet for women. And the sort of consensus was that it should be treated differently

502
00:45:02.240 --> 00:45:10.800
for women. Yeah, yeah. I remember I tuned into that and I respect it tremendously. I really

503
00:45:10.800 --> 00:45:15.600
appreciate the view that a lot of these gals have advocated for, which is that women are not just

504
00:45:15.600 --> 00:45:21.120
small men. The differences between male and female, of course, are enormous. That doesn't mean

505
00:45:21.120 --> 00:45:27.600
there are differences in everything. So women are very unique when it comes to hormones. They

506
00:45:27.600 --> 00:45:32.400
women experience a rhythm of hormones that there is no equivalent in men because of the

507
00:45:33.280 --> 00:45:39.040
reproductive burden, if you will, or responsibility that a woman has, where she will see changes in

508
00:45:39.040 --> 00:45:43.520
hormones that can reach thousands of times differences, like, progesterone levels can change by a

509
00:45:43.520 --> 00:45:49.360
thousand times over the course of the ovarian cycle. Estrogen levels will change by multiples.

510
00:45:49.360 --> 00:45:55.040
Men just don't have that kind of volatility. Those female sex hormones do influence metabolism,

511
00:45:55.040 --> 00:46:01.440
but then it matters tremendously, which phase she is in of her ovarian cycle. So if she is in the

512
00:46:01.440 --> 00:46:07.200
the first follicular phase, which is a low progesterone higher estrogen state, what's the first

513
00:46:07.200 --> 00:46:12.800
follicular phase? Yes. So if you look at the female fertility phase, it is like a 200-piece

514
00:46:12.800 --> 00:46:17.760
orchestra. It is so dynamic, whereas men's fertility is like a barbershop quartet. It sounds

515
00:46:17.760 --> 00:46:23.760
nice, but it's very simple. So in the first phase, leading up, so she's just had her menstruation

516
00:46:24.560 --> 00:46:29.200
and now she's starting the beginning of a new cycle. That first phase is called the follicular

517
00:46:29.200 --> 00:46:34.160
phase, which is when her ovaries are having some follicles, or a future, a little egg,

518
00:46:34.160 --> 00:46:39.040
getting bigger. One will end up becoming the dominant one, but that is creeping in higher,

519
00:46:39.040 --> 00:46:46.720
higher levels of estrogen. And then she will ovulate with the ovulation that what was a follicle

520
00:46:46.720 --> 00:46:51.360
in her ovary now becomes what's called a yellow body, or a corpus ludium. And so it's called the

521
00:46:51.360 --> 00:46:57.520
gluteal phase. And that is defined by very high progesterone and progesterone changes things.

522
00:46:57.520 --> 00:47:02.960
So where I think the conversation in women is very relevant and fascinating is that in the first

523
00:47:02.960 --> 00:47:09.360
phase, in her follicular phase, she is a fat-burning machine. You can measure, she will get into ketosis

524
00:47:09.360 --> 00:47:14.080
faster than her male counterpart, and she's burning more fat than her male counterpart. In fact,

525
00:47:14.080 --> 00:47:19.280
this is one of the few clinical values where there's a male version and a female version.

526
00:47:19.280 --> 00:47:24.000
This isn't very common. Many of the typical metabolic type markers, whether it's glucose,

527
00:47:24.000 --> 00:47:29.840
or insulin, triglycerides, LDL cholesterol, they're the same across the sexes with the exception

528
00:47:29.840 --> 00:47:36.000
of free fatty acids. So earlier I had mentioned that when insulin is low, the fat cell is breaking

529
00:47:36.000 --> 00:47:42.720
down fat. It's breaking down that fat as free fatty acids. And so the free fatty acids in a woman

530
00:47:42.720 --> 00:47:48.320
are about 40 or 50% higher than in a man. Dream at first phase. Yes, especially during the first

531
00:47:48.320 --> 00:47:53.040
phase. And that's because she's burning more fat. And that helps her get into ketosis faster.

532
00:47:53.040 --> 00:47:58.080
So if you, this has been shown in studies, take a male and female have them start to fast,

533
00:47:58.080 --> 00:48:03.840
she will get into ketosis faster than him. Now, during, during, just during that phase,

534
00:48:03.840 --> 00:48:08.960
especially during the phase. Yeah, I don't know that they compared and controlled for the

535
00:48:08.960 --> 00:48:15.760
eludial phase, but it's worth noting where I think fasting and ketogenic diets start to change.

536
00:48:17.360 --> 00:48:22.640
So it'll keep going up. Yeah. So I just got another reading. Point eight. Yep. Is ketosis

537
00:48:22.640 --> 00:48:27.440
considered what point five? Technically, but frankly, I actually call it ketosis at point three.

538
00:48:28.080 --> 00:48:32.400
The moment you can detect it on one of those blood meters, I'd say you're in ketosis. And I

539
00:48:32.400 --> 00:48:36.240
think point three is the lower limit. So point five is a little bit of an arbitrary cutoff,

540
00:48:36.240 --> 00:48:42.480
but that is the classic view. So in that, in that eludial phase with high progesterone,

541
00:48:42.480 --> 00:48:47.680
progesterone is a hunger hormone. And so if she's trying to do a fasting protocol during,

542
00:48:47.680 --> 00:48:52.720
and her cravings are going to be higher and her, she's going to be hungerier. And so that's

543
00:48:52.720 --> 00:48:58.400
where I think the conversation's very important is that during her eludial phase after she has

544
00:48:58.400 --> 00:49:03.360
ovulated, it's going to be harder to stick to a ketogenic diet. And that's where I think it might

545
00:49:03.360 --> 00:49:10.240
be prudent for her to be a little generous with herself, where it might get a little more difficult.

546
00:49:10.240 --> 00:49:15.840
Now, however, some of the concern with women and ketogenic diets is misplaced.

547
00:49:15.840 --> 00:49:19.520
And I would be remiss if I didn't mention a study that answered this question very well

548
00:49:19.520 --> 00:49:25.280
with regards to cortisol. In fact, I'll state this now. I already chatted with the team.

549
00:49:26.080 --> 00:49:30.560
I would love to see you bring on a scientist in the UK named Dr. Isabella Cooper.

550
00:49:31.280 --> 00:49:37.840
She has published a series of studies in women that are fascinating because of the intervention

551
00:49:37.840 --> 00:49:43.360
that she's done. She's taken women who had been adhering to a ketogenic diet as part of their normal

552
00:49:43.360 --> 00:49:48.880
life. Then for 21 days, they have to adopt a typical high carb diet of the standard UK

553
00:49:48.880 --> 00:49:56.000
guidelines similar to the US, about 55% carbohydrate, decidedly not ketogenic for 21 days. So more

554
00:49:56.000 --> 00:50:01.520
than long enough to detect changes. And then they go back to their diet for 21 days and they have

555
00:50:01.520 --> 00:50:08.000
blood tests again. And so these are healthy women who go from a ketogenic diet to a high carb diet,

556
00:50:08.000 --> 00:50:12.800
back to a ketogenic diet. And when they looked at cortisol, when Isabella and her group measured

557
00:50:12.800 --> 00:50:20.640
cortisol levels, no statistically significant change at any point. There was just noise and no trend.

558
00:50:20.640 --> 00:50:26.320
Some gals had their cortisol go down, some had them go up. But as a group, it was just a big

559
00:50:26.320 --> 00:50:33.040
messy flat line. And what does that mean? That takes a lot of wind out of the sales of people who say

560
00:50:33.680 --> 00:50:38.480
that a ketogenic diet is a unique stress on women because people want to invoke and they'll say,

561
00:50:38.480 --> 00:50:43.040
well, cortisol goes through the roof and that sign of a significant stress. And yet Isabella's

562
00:50:43.040 --> 00:50:50.480
own data show that cortisol levels aren't different. That there is no unique cortisol-related stress

563
00:50:50.480 --> 00:50:54.320
state of a ketogenic diet. So I think it's relevant because it just brings a little nuance

564
00:50:54.320 --> 00:51:00.080
to the conversation. Not to say men and women are not different. They absolutely are.

565
00:51:00.080 --> 00:51:07.520
But I do believe the view that a ketogenic diet is uniquely stressful in women, but not men,

566
00:51:07.520 --> 00:51:12.720
I think is overblown. And again, I'm relying on Isabella's own data to support that.

567
00:51:12.720 --> 00:51:19.360
So coming into 2026 and I want 2026 to be the year where I finally get a grip of my health,

568
00:51:19.360 --> 00:51:25.760
where I finally become the person that I know deep down I could be and I desperately do want to be.

569
00:51:25.760 --> 00:51:33.200
And I asked you, Dr. Ben, to make me a plan, the perfect plan, the perfect diet. I know everyone's

570
00:51:33.200 --> 00:51:39.120
different. So we're going to have to play with me here a little bit. But the perfect plan for 2026,

571
00:51:40.160 --> 00:51:45.760
what would you prescribe as a diet lifestyle choices? And I'm going to write it down.

572
00:51:45.760 --> 00:51:50.800
Yeah, yeah. So I would, at the risk of sounding too self-absorbed,

573
00:51:52.160 --> 00:51:57.040
this is, I'll kind of describe my own approach as a metabolic scientist. But please,

574
00:51:57.040 --> 00:52:00.560
everyone listening, appreciate that I will, I'm inserting my own constraints because

575
00:52:01.280 --> 00:52:07.760
my approach is kind of that of a guy who knows a lot, but is also constrained by my demands in life.

576
00:52:07.760 --> 00:52:12.800
But I think a lot of people fit into that category. So Steven, if you want to look like a

577
00:52:12.800 --> 00:52:19.360
freckled bald wrinkled man, this is what you can do. All right. So first of all, zero to little to no

578
00:52:19.360 --> 00:52:25.280
carbs for breakfast and lunch. Okay. Little to no carbs for breakfast and lunch. Yes.

579
00:52:25.280 --> 00:52:30.560
Yes. You wake up in the morning, anyone who's wearing a continuous glucose monitor,

580
00:52:30.560 --> 00:52:35.840
will find that their glucose levels naturally rise in the morning and that coincides with a mild

581
00:52:35.840 --> 00:52:40.320
state of insulin resistance every morning because of changes in cortisol and other hormones.

582
00:52:40.320 --> 00:52:46.320
So my view is don't doubly load to the glucose that's already happening by eating in the morning

583
00:52:46.320 --> 00:52:52.320
with starchy, sugary stuff. So be very strict with all of your meals up until dinner.

584
00:52:52.320 --> 00:52:56.400
So just on point one, so I'm clear. You're saying no carbs, but is there anything that I should be

585
00:52:56.400 --> 00:53:02.080
having? Yeah. So any, if a person wants to, as much protein and fat as they'd like. And I would say,

586
00:53:02.080 --> 00:53:06.880
especially for lunch, let lunch be your biggest meal. Okay. So let's go through those three points.

587
00:53:06.880 --> 00:53:13.360
Yeah. Why as much protein as I can. Yeah. Protein and fat. Okay. Why? Yeah. Because they won't

588
00:53:13.360 --> 00:53:19.120
have an insulin effect. And that's the key. Like my approach to staying lean at 50 years old and

589
00:53:19.120 --> 00:53:25.840
having my wife like what she sees is keeping my insulin low and still not being hungry all the time.

590
00:53:25.840 --> 00:53:30.880
And so protein and fat are the two macronutrients with carbohydrates being the third. But protein and

591
00:53:30.880 --> 00:53:36.000
fat have little to no effect on insulin. Fat has none. And protein may have a modest effect,

592
00:53:36.000 --> 00:53:40.880
depending on some other variables. So you want to keep insulin low. So what would that breakfast look

593
00:53:40.880 --> 00:53:47.120
like? So for me, I actually don't eat breakfast. And again, this plays into I'm extremely mindful

594
00:53:47.120 --> 00:53:50.400
of my family. So that's going to come back again when we get to dinner because we've left that

595
00:53:50.400 --> 00:53:56.480
meal untouched for now. In the morning, I make breakfast for my kids every morning. And it's

596
00:53:56.480 --> 00:54:01.920
something I remember from my childhood being raised by my dad. And every morning, it was just

597
00:54:01.920 --> 00:54:06.880
structured. And I think all of my siblings and I have thrived in life in part because of the

598
00:54:06.880 --> 00:54:11.760
structure we had at the beginning of every day where we would all eat breakfast together. We would

599
00:54:11.760 --> 00:54:15.360
read scriptures very briefly. We would have a family prayer very briefly and just review the day.

600
00:54:16.240 --> 00:54:20.720
And I think that was my dad's way of kind of surviving with so many kids just to sort of check in

601
00:54:20.720 --> 00:54:26.480
with everyone. You had nine siblings. Yeah. Yeah. There's nine of us. Yeah. And so we have I'm

602
00:54:26.560 --> 00:54:32.800
very big on that. So breakfast is dad's domain and my wife cheers me on. So I make breakfast for the

603
00:54:32.800 --> 00:54:39.200
kids. And I am sipping on a cup of your bammate the whole time. Why? Yeah. In part because I like the

604
00:54:39.200 --> 00:54:45.680
taste, there's a good GLP one effect. So it helps me feel a little more satiated. And it's just a

605
00:54:45.680 --> 00:54:49.760
habit. It's a little bit of a perk. A little pick me up. I don't drink coffee. I drink your bammate

606
00:54:49.760 --> 00:54:55.760
instead. What is a bammate? The brand that I get is called unamate. And it's a leaf. It's a

607
00:54:55.760 --> 00:55:00.160
South American tea. Basically and you can get it in any number of ways. This is just a really

608
00:55:00.160 --> 00:55:05.680
convenient and good way to get it. So I'm sipping on a cup of it would be someone drinking coffee or

609
00:55:05.680 --> 00:55:11.520
tea. I'm taking your bammate tea. So I don't eat for breakfast. I find that I'm not generally hungry

610
00:55:11.520 --> 00:55:16.160
for breakfast anyway. And so I may as well keep my fasted state going a little longer. So that's

611
00:55:16.160 --> 00:55:20.240
what works for me. And then I would encourage people to have a big hearty lunch. Because if you have

612
00:55:20.240 --> 00:55:26.400
a big hearty lunch, mostly protein and fat, it makes it easier to taper off later in the day,

613
00:55:26.400 --> 00:55:31.200
especially in the evening. If people are noticing that they have significant cravings, especially

614
00:55:31.200 --> 00:55:36.160
for carbs, because that's the only thing anyone craves in the evening, have a bigger lunch. See if

615
00:55:36.160 --> 00:55:43.200
that helps. Okay. And then sometime around either before or after, have a good resistance workout.

616
00:55:43.200 --> 00:55:49.360
I have my resistance workout in the, in fact, Stephen, I even have to go a little earlier. So my first

617
00:55:49.360 --> 00:55:56.240
thing in the morning is I go on a rock at 5 a.m. I have my weighted vest in these 15 pound kettlebells

618
00:55:56.240 --> 00:56:01.600
and I hike one mile up a hill and one mile back every morning at 5 a.m. And then I get a little

619
00:56:01.600 --> 00:56:05.680
work done. And it's just some personal kind of reflection and meditation time, if you will. Then the

620
00:56:05.680 --> 00:56:11.440
family wakes up. I'm making breakfast. The family chaos begins. I'm sipping on my yer bammate. Then I

621
00:56:11.440 --> 00:56:17.280
go to work about 10 30 or 11 is that good time for me. I go down to the gym on campus. And I do my

622
00:56:17.280 --> 00:56:23.360
very brief, very effective, I would say, resistance training. And then I go into the sauna for 12 to 15

623
00:56:23.360 --> 00:56:28.720
minutes. But in the morning, I've done a little ice bath, too. I didn't mention that. I have an ice

624
00:56:28.720 --> 00:56:35.040
bath on my back patio. I'm a Rose Calforge and I love it. It is spectacular. So then I do sauna

625
00:56:35.040 --> 00:56:41.280
session after my workout. Then I go eat my big lunch. Why are you doing the ice bath in this one?

626
00:56:41.280 --> 00:56:45.200
Yeah. So I do, I do an ice bath in the morning because it helps me sleep better in the evening.

627
00:56:45.200 --> 00:56:49.600
I'm a terrible sleeper. And especially in the northern hemisphere in the winter, the sun isn't

628
00:56:49.600 --> 00:56:57.760
coming up till 9 o'clock or so 9 a.m. And by shocking my body, I get this jolt. And I think it just

629
00:56:57.760 --> 00:57:03.680
helps get my clock ticking. And so by the time evening rolls around, I'm tired and I'm ready for bed.

630
00:57:04.240 --> 00:57:09.120
Okay, I'm just doing my ketone test to see where it is. We're probably about 30 minutes off me taking

631
00:57:09.200 --> 00:57:14.240
that ketone shot. We'll continue with you a day in just two sex. And I'm now at 0.9.

632
00:57:15.040 --> 00:57:20.320
It'll keep going. Yep. Yep. So you're 0.8, 0.9. Next one will be one. But it looks like it's

633
00:57:20.320 --> 00:57:24.240
starting to curve a little bit, which isn't surprising. You went up pretty quick and then it's going

634
00:57:24.240 --> 00:57:30.160
to curve for a bit. I'm what's going on in my body right now that I have 0.9. Yeah. So that is a

635
00:57:30.160 --> 00:57:34.720
unit of measurement called the millimoles. And so it's looking at the number of molecules,

636
00:57:34.720 --> 00:57:40.080
basically in a given amount of of your blood. And so you took in that ketone precursor,

637
00:57:40.080 --> 00:57:45.360
the liver converted, it's just continuing to convert it into BHB. BHB being ketones. BHB being

638
00:57:45.360 --> 00:57:50.800
the main ketone. Yep. Okay. Yep. I'm not making me... Well, it's going to make you sharp. Okay.

639
00:57:50.800 --> 00:57:55.840
So your brain is now using those ketones. Your heart would be using the ketones. And your

640
00:57:55.840 --> 00:58:00.320
reliance on glucose as a fuel for your brain and your heart would be going down. Would my

641
00:58:00.320 --> 00:58:04.720
heart be going down? Oh, yeah. Yeah. So I'm going to be less hurt. But also the benefits of BHB

642
00:58:04.720 --> 00:58:11.360
and the brain are myriad, where it's been shown to be an anxiolytic, so it can control anxiety.

643
00:58:12.480 --> 00:58:17.440
It can control, it can improve depression. It can help with attention. Memory. Memory always

644
00:58:17.440 --> 00:58:22.480
certainly with cognition. Yeah. I read about the studies on dimensions. Yes. That is, it is

645
00:58:22.480 --> 00:58:27.840
incredibly... We're entering a kind of donning of an era of ketone research, where the number of

646
00:58:27.920 --> 00:58:35.840
NIH and NSF funded ketone-related projects is wonderful. It's thrilling to see where it's

647
00:58:35.840 --> 00:58:40.480
going to be a wonderful decade of a lot of great biomedical research on the metabolism of ketones.

648
00:58:41.200 --> 00:58:45.440
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649
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650
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651
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652
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653
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654
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655
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656
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657
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660
00:59:43.120 --> 00:59:47.040
So let's go back to the perfect day, the perfect day, the perfect day for the start of the 2026.

661
00:59:47.040 --> 00:59:52.000
So then do my resistance training at some point after I've had my breakfast?

662
00:59:52.000 --> 00:59:57.680
Well, yes. So whatever for me, I do body weight-based exercises, so I don't like having a big

663
00:59:57.680 --> 01:00:03.200
belly of food. So being in a fasted state, my view on exercising, even that's a debate. Do you

664
01:00:03.200 --> 01:00:08.800
exercise fasted or do you exercise with fuel like you take a bunch of carbs and stuff? My view is

665
01:00:08.800 --> 01:00:16.640
it's dependent on what your goal is. As a middle-aged guy, my goal is not performance. It's not going out

666
01:00:16.640 --> 01:00:22.640
and sprinting and showing power. It's to live a long, healthy life, and so it's a more metabolic focus.

667
01:00:22.640 --> 01:00:29.360
If your interest is metabolic, then I think fasted exercising in a fasted state is very smart.

668
01:00:30.160 --> 01:00:35.680
If your goal of the exercise is performance, like your collegiate athlete, or you are an elite

669
01:00:35.680 --> 01:00:42.240
rugby player or something, okay, then don't exercise fasted. Take some fuel before you go work out.

670
01:00:42.320 --> 01:00:48.800
So for me, I've done my early morning ruck, my personal kind of reflection time, ice bath,

671
01:00:48.800 --> 01:00:54.640
yerba mate, and then my mid-morning workout. Just on that point of exercising fasted.

672
01:00:55.280 --> 01:00:59.200
Why is that better if your goals are longevity and health?

673
01:00:59.200 --> 01:01:04.480
Right. Because it's just going to help you continue to burn fat and improve

674
01:01:04.480 --> 01:01:09.200
maintain your insulin sensitivity. Okay, fun. So I have my mid-morning workout, then I have a

675
01:01:09.200 --> 01:01:16.000
nice big lunch, then I have my afternoon productivity, and then I get to dinner, and dinner is the

676
01:01:16.000 --> 01:01:21.680
main social meal within my home. And so I have dinner with my family, and that is cart blanche.

677
01:01:21.680 --> 01:01:26.720
Whatever the family's eating, I'm eating. I have daughters, and as a college professor,

678
01:01:26.720 --> 01:01:31.920
I've seen enough young women struggle with eating disorders that I always worried would my

679
01:01:32.720 --> 01:01:38.080
incessant talking about diet somehow stimulate eating disorders, and I've never wanted to become

680
01:01:38.080 --> 01:01:43.600
obsessive about it. And so I have dinner with my family. Whatever it is, if it's pizza, I'm having

681
01:01:43.600 --> 01:01:49.440
pizza, if it's pasta, I'm having pasta. Now my wife happens to see things kind of the way I do,

682
01:01:49.440 --> 01:01:56.880
so it's usually meat and vegetables, in some mix. And that's my dinner, and then ideally,

683
01:01:57.760 --> 01:02:02.320
I'm done. What time are you having that dinner? Yeah, that's about five or six.

684
01:02:02.880 --> 01:02:10.080
And you avoid eating late? Oh, yes. In fact, I would submit, Steven, if we were to look at any one

685
01:02:10.080 --> 01:02:16.800
thing someone could do, I would say, anyone who says, Ben, what is the one thing? If I'm putting a

686
01:02:16.800 --> 01:02:22.400
question in your mouth, I'd say, stop snacking in the evening. Anything you can do to not overeat,

687
01:02:22.400 --> 01:02:27.200
and go to bed hyperglycemic, or elevated, or spike your blood glucose levels, do it.

688
01:02:27.840 --> 01:02:32.960
That's when people at their weakest. People, you and I could be hanging out all day, walking past a

689
01:02:32.960 --> 01:02:38.560
plate of cookies, and not be tempted at all until seven or eight p.m. It's just human nature,

690
01:02:39.280 --> 01:02:43.760
and yet that is one of the worst times to eat it. Because when you go to bed hyperglycemic,

691
01:02:43.760 --> 01:02:49.120
it activates a part of the nervous system, an aspect of the nervous system called the sympathetic

692
01:02:49.120 --> 01:02:55.600
nervous system. That's also known as the fight or flight. So when someone, we hear a car crash

693
01:02:56.480 --> 01:03:02.240
right nearby, or we hear a gunshot, then immediately our heart starts beating faster and harder,

694
01:03:02.240 --> 01:03:07.840
our body temperature climbs, and we're stimulated. Hyperglycemia will have that effect,

695
01:03:07.840 --> 01:03:12.480
and that is terrible timing. Because when you're going to bed, you're wanting to rely on what's

696
01:03:12.480 --> 01:03:18.480
called your parasympathetic nervous system. The aspect of your nervous system that is calming,

697
01:03:18.480 --> 01:03:24.480
it's lowering your heart rate, it's lowering your blood pressure, it's helping you calm down to

698
01:03:24.480 --> 01:03:30.880
sleep better. Hyperglycemia throws that into opposite. So then you're going to bed, you're lying

699
01:03:30.880 --> 01:03:37.120
there wondering why your heart is beating so hard, why you are so hot and uncomfortable,

700
01:03:37.120 --> 01:03:40.240
and it's because you just spiked your blood glucose with a bunch of sugar.

701
01:03:41.200 --> 01:03:46.320
Is there anything else? Is there, you know, for people that are focused on that 2026

702
01:03:46.320 --> 01:03:50.400
goal of finally becoming the person that they know they can become? Is there anything else you

703
01:03:50.400 --> 01:03:54.960
would say to them? Is there any tools they need to buy? Is there any of the tricks or tactics or

704
01:03:54.960 --> 01:04:00.000
hacks? Yeah, yeah. I do think that they could, if they were adopting this diet, it's definitely

705
01:04:00.000 --> 01:04:05.840
going to put them into ketosis. That can take a little time to adjust. So very relevant to our

706
01:04:05.840 --> 01:04:12.000
earlier conversation. I do think exogenous ketones can help a person transition into relying on

707
01:04:12.000 --> 01:04:19.680
a ketogenic diet more readily. And anytime a person's losing weight, they run the risk of losing

708
01:04:19.680 --> 01:04:24.800
some lean mass at the same time. And my lab just published a paper about two weeks ago,

709
01:04:24.800 --> 01:04:29.760
at the time we're filming this, finding that in humans, in a weight loss protocol,

710
01:04:29.760 --> 01:04:35.760
if they were drinking BHB or exogenous ketones, they were able to retain more muscle mass,

711
01:04:35.760 --> 01:04:40.400
more lean mass in the midst of the weight loss. So there could be some strategies like that.

712
01:04:40.400 --> 01:04:46.960
But I would also add that there are some non-physical ones as well. If someone's trying to say I'm

713
01:04:46.960 --> 01:04:51.680
going to be the best version of myself, then start reading more, too. Read more books.

714
01:04:52.640 --> 01:04:57.200
You'll be the best, you'll be even better version. As you're losing weight in your brain is

715
01:04:57.200 --> 01:05:02.800
firing on more cylinders than ever before as it's fueled with ketones. Challenge your brain.

716
01:05:02.800 --> 01:05:08.400
You had mentioned dementia earlier. Ketones are a therapy for dementia, but so too is challenging

717
01:05:08.400 --> 01:05:15.120
your brain in the form of making it learn new things. So read a good book. This woman contacted me

718
01:05:15.600 --> 01:05:19.200
on November the 11th. When you do a podcast, you get lots of feedback. You get 10s of

719
01:05:19.200 --> 01:05:23.280
thousands of people sometimes per episode. And I can imagine you looking through everyone.

720
01:05:23.280 --> 01:05:28.240
Finding the gems. I actually, funnily enough, I do look at the comments section because it's a place

721
01:05:28.240 --> 01:05:32.080
where I really trust the feedback. So people that comment on these videos, I really do trust them

722
01:05:32.080 --> 01:05:35.680
because they are typically listeners. They've kind of been with me on this whole journey. So when

723
01:05:35.680 --> 01:05:41.680
they have feedback, when they have good or bad feedback or constructive feedback, we pay attention.

724
01:05:41.760 --> 01:05:46.400
Well, Steven, I'm pleased that something brought me back. So the comments can't have been too negative.

725
01:05:46.400 --> 01:05:50.640
No, they're really, I mean, they were unbelievably positive. But I got this one from on LinkedIn,

726
01:05:50.640 --> 01:05:57.920
from a lady called, I'll keep her anonymous. Let's just call her Mrs. L. Okay. And Mrs. L

727
01:05:57.920 --> 01:06:01.760
said, hi, Steven, thank you for the great work you do and the information insights inspiration.

728
01:06:01.760 --> 01:06:09.760
You provide on keto. My husband lasted eight hours on a keto diet and was unconscious. It turned

729
01:06:10.000 --> 01:06:17.120
out he had a neuro doctrine cancer called insuluminium. Oh, yeah, you know, a neuroendocrine cancer

730
01:06:17.120 --> 01:06:21.440
called insulinoma. I said, that's exactly what I said. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I hear a minor in there.

731
01:06:23.200 --> 01:06:28.800
And if the paramedics hadn't intercepted with glucose, going keto would have killed him. Yes,

732
01:06:28.800 --> 01:06:35.360
he's amazing. We have three children and he volunteers for 50 more every weekend. We don't want to

733
01:06:35.360 --> 01:06:40.400
lose him. No, no. So to share this story, but it's not the first time I've seen one of your posts

734
01:06:40.400 --> 01:06:46.880
or one of your guests talk about ketosis and what's worked well. And in this case, it was fatal

735
01:06:46.880 --> 01:06:51.440
for him. Yes. I hope you don't mind, but I wanted to share this with love, respect, and kindness

736
01:06:51.440 --> 01:06:56.960
to hopefully give food for thought, no pen intended, of how you decide to use your platform and to

737
01:06:56.960 --> 01:07:02.800
provide further context and nuance. Yeah, yeah. What works for you and thousands of others might not

738
01:07:02.800 --> 01:07:07.760
work for everyone. I believe it's super important that we share this information and inspiration

739
01:07:07.760 --> 01:07:12.800
carefully. And in a way that exemplifies a growth mindset, not fixed mindset, for example,

740
01:07:12.800 --> 01:07:17.520
not fixed one diet or one way of working for everybody. If you read this above all else,

741
01:07:18.320 --> 01:07:22.320
please know I'm sending this with the utmost respect to kindness and hope best.

742
01:07:22.320 --> 01:07:26.560
Love it. Yeah, what a thoughtful, what a thoughtful message. Yeah, it is very thoughtful.

743
01:07:26.560 --> 01:07:30.480
I appreciate I appreciate any kind of communication, by the way, because on social media,

744
01:07:30.480 --> 01:07:35.040
it is so easy just to become the worst version of yourself without fear of any consequence.

745
01:07:35.040 --> 01:07:41.680
So she happened to describe a person who would probably be the worst individual. So in insulinoma,

746
01:07:42.400 --> 01:07:48.000
she describes a neuroendocrine cancer. An insulinoma is an insulin secreting tumor.

747
01:07:48.560 --> 01:07:53.600
So usually it's the pancreas, which for those watching is here again. Imagine that a part of the

748
01:07:53.600 --> 01:07:59.520
pancreas is expanding with the tumor, but it's filled with cells that make insulin. So it's a bunch

749
01:07:59.520 --> 01:08:05.040
of beta cells, which are the cells that make insulin. And this is a guy who can't stop making insulin.

750
01:08:06.240 --> 01:08:12.560
Suffice to say, if you now cut your carbohydrate consumption and you're continuing to make

751
01:08:12.560 --> 01:08:17.600
tons of insulin, which is not normal. So this is a very much a disease state. And I appreciate

752
01:08:17.600 --> 01:08:22.560
her stating it as such. It's a cancer. It's a tumor of the pancreas. So what would have happened

753
01:08:22.560 --> 01:08:29.600
in him? He cuts the glucose. He cuts his carbohydrates, but he can't stop making insulin.

754
01:08:29.600 --> 01:08:34.000
So now it's actually back to that diet that you and I that I mentioned at the beginning of our

755
01:08:34.000 --> 01:08:39.600
conversation, where the people were eating a high carb version or a low carb version of a diet.

756
01:08:39.600 --> 01:08:46.240
When you spike insulin, you lower both glucose and ketones. And that's what happened to him. He would

757
01:08:46.240 --> 01:08:52.000
have become hypoglycemic. And he would almost never make any ketones because he always has high insulin.

758
01:08:53.120 --> 01:08:59.440
And so he would have been depriving his brain of its two fuels in lowering the glucose by pushing

759
01:08:59.440 --> 01:09:05.360
it into muscle and fat and blocking the liver from making ketones. So he's the worst person.

760
01:09:05.360 --> 01:09:09.280
Anyone with an insulin, of course, neither you nor I are giving any medical advice.

761
01:09:10.160 --> 01:09:16.720
But if a person has an insulinoma, that's like the worst person to adopt a low carb diet.

762
01:09:16.720 --> 01:09:20.560
They have to eat carbs because they're always making insulin. They can't stop.

763
01:09:20.560 --> 01:09:26.240
What's interesting is it appears from what she's written that her husband found out that he had

764
01:09:26.240 --> 01:09:32.240
this. Oh, because of adopting the diet. Oh my gosh, that's remarkable. Yeah. So a person could

765
01:09:32.240 --> 01:09:36.320
test this early though, Steven. So just what you've been doing now over the past period of time

766
01:09:36.320 --> 01:09:42.000
by pricking your finger, if a person worried that they had an insulinoma, they could just on a random

767
01:09:42.000 --> 01:09:49.840
morning or fast for fast for 12 hours or so and measure your glucose. If you have a continuous

768
01:09:49.840 --> 01:09:55.760
glucose monitor, even easier, look at your glucose because in you and I, if we fast for 24 hours,

769
01:09:55.760 --> 01:10:01.120
our glucose levels stay normal. They just run along like nothing's happened. In a person with an

770
01:10:01.120 --> 01:10:07.680
insulinoma, they're getting lower and lower and lower and lower constantly because they can't stop

771
01:10:07.680 --> 01:10:13.040
making insulin and it's always driving their blood glucose levels lower. So a person could

772
01:10:13.040 --> 01:10:17.600
determine that on their own. This would have been a guy who anytime he fasted it, all he would have

773
01:10:17.600 --> 01:10:22.800
started to feel miserable because she says in the message, my husband lasted eight hours on a

774
01:10:22.800 --> 01:10:27.840
keto diet and was unconscious. It turned out, which suggests that they found out. And we hope the

775
01:10:27.840 --> 01:10:32.720
husband's doing well. Yes. And insulinomas is a big deal. My hope is that they would be able to

776
01:10:32.720 --> 01:10:39.200
identify the location of the tumor. And you can. What's cool about cancer is that cancer is such a

777
01:10:39.200 --> 01:10:45.600
sugar eater. It eats so much glucose that you can inject glucose into someone that has a little

778
01:10:45.600 --> 01:10:51.280
bit of radiation to it, not harmful. But then you can do an x-ray and see where does all the glucose

779
01:10:51.280 --> 01:10:57.040
go. And it would be going to this little lump on the on the on the pancreas. And so hopefully they

780
01:10:57.040 --> 01:11:01.840
can cut out. What does that say about cancer and sugar? Oh my. Yes. So you I know you've had the

781
01:11:01.840 --> 01:11:07.360
authority on this. So everything I'm about to say is me quoting Dr. Thomas Seafreed who is he needs

782
01:11:07.360 --> 01:11:14.240
all the attention in the world as he has resurrected an almost 100 year old view of cancer being a

783
01:11:14.240 --> 01:11:19.440
disease of glucose and sugar metabolism. The warberg effect is called. But Dr. Thomas Seafreed has

784
01:11:19.440 --> 01:11:26.240
been a champion of bringing this view into the modern era by finding that cancer cells rely on

785
01:11:26.240 --> 01:11:32.000
glucose as their fuel. Primarily, he also identifies glutamine. But if you can deprive the cancer cell of

786
01:11:32.000 --> 01:11:37.680
its fuel, normal interventions, even like chemotherapies, which have terrible rates of success,

787
01:11:37.680 --> 01:11:45.440
they become suddenly much more effective. In fact, part of my motivation in adhering to a ketogenic

788
01:11:45.440 --> 01:11:50.800
diet is cancer related. When I my mom passed away from cancer as a boy and it's been one of those

789
01:11:50.800 --> 01:11:56.400
diseases that's always scared me a little bit. And I think all right, my statistical likelihood of

790
01:11:56.400 --> 01:12:00.720
getting a cancer in life is going to be higher than average because of a first degree relative

791
01:12:00.720 --> 01:12:06.000
dying from cancer. So one of the reasons and I've already outlived my my my my saintly mom now.

792
01:12:06.560 --> 01:12:11.280
One of the reasons I adhere to a ketogenic diet is I want to do it. I can to try to kill any

793
01:12:11.280 --> 01:12:15.920
little budding cancer cells by starving them of their glucose that they want. When we had them on

794
01:12:15.920 --> 01:12:21.360
the show, I remember the BBC went very happy that I had them on and said that it was a no it was

795
01:12:21.360 --> 01:12:29.200
misinformation. Oh my gosh. Isn't that unfortunate? So he is the leading authority. I would say in

796
01:12:29.200 --> 01:12:37.040
the world on cancer metabolism. And it's such a shame that his finding it. Let me he might have

797
01:12:37.040 --> 01:12:41.520
explained this already. But I just want to explain to everyone as a scientist how thrilled I was to

798
01:12:41.520 --> 01:12:46.800
see what he'd done and how disruptive it was to the convention. And let's admit, let's admit

799
01:12:46.800 --> 01:12:51.760
what we think we know about cancer isn't working. Cancer rates continue to climb. Cancer mortality

800
01:12:51.760 --> 01:12:58.800
continues to climb. Clearly the old views aren't working. He took tumor cells and then so cancer

801
01:12:58.800 --> 01:13:05.040
cells and then moved over the nucleus because the traditional view is that it's a disease of mutations

802
01:13:05.040 --> 01:13:10.400
and all of these genes are in the nucleus. The kind of brain of the cell. He took the nucleus

803
01:13:10.400 --> 01:13:14.960
from a cancer cell, put it into a healthy cell. And then you would think if it's a disease of

804
01:13:14.960 --> 01:13:20.000
the nucleus and all of those genes mutations, this cell should have cancer now. And yet it didn't.

805
01:13:20.000 --> 01:13:24.160
It was a totally normal cell. It didn't matter at all that it now had the nucleus of a cancer cell.

806
01:13:24.160 --> 01:13:31.520
However, when he took the mitochondria from the energy factory of the cell that's so disrupted

807
01:13:31.520 --> 01:13:37.360
in cancer, he took the mitochondria from the cancer cell, put that into a normal cell. Now it was

808
01:13:37.360 --> 01:13:43.440
a cancer cell. What a destructive view. It proves that it's a mitochondrial problem more than a

809
01:13:43.440 --> 01:13:50.560
nucleus problem. And then it suggests it adds evidence to his view and the others of us as well

810
01:13:50.560 --> 01:13:57.120
that cancer is a metabolic problem. So when publications like the BBC attack my guest

811
01:13:57.120 --> 01:14:01.840
for saying such a thing or for me having one of the show and suggest that it's like misinformation

812
01:14:01.840 --> 01:14:10.160
or dangerous information, how do you interpret that? It's so discouraging. I interpret it as

813
01:14:10.880 --> 01:14:16.560
we've seen echoes and shadows of this in the past five or six years with the pandemic and

814
01:14:16.560 --> 01:14:24.960
everything related to it where science can be very inconvenient to various entities and institutions.

815
01:14:25.760 --> 01:14:31.760
And we see scientists who will compromise themselves to try to receive the funding and the

816
01:14:32.400 --> 01:14:41.120
adoration of those institutions and entities. But it is an attack. Science is the pursuit of truth.

817
01:14:41.120 --> 01:14:47.520
I was blessed to do my dissertation work, my PhD studies, with a wonderful man named Linus Dome.

818
01:14:48.400 --> 01:14:53.760
I will love him forever. One of the things he taught me, I'd come to him with discouraging results.

819
01:14:54.720 --> 01:15:01.120
The hypothesis that I'd had with regards to fat and insulin resistance, it was not supporting the

820
01:15:01.120 --> 01:15:07.040
data were terrible in this particular line of experiments. And he wasn't he was unflavable.

821
01:15:07.040 --> 01:15:13.760
He wasn't upset. He wasn't angry. He said, Ben, don't be upset. That's truth. We are seekers of

822
01:15:13.760 --> 01:15:20.720
truth. That's what scientists are. What a glorious thing to get paid to seek truth. It doesn't

823
01:15:20.720 --> 01:15:27.520
pay that well. But it's a glorious job nonetheless. That is what Dr. Thomas Seafreet is doing.

824
01:15:27.520 --> 01:15:33.360
And when I think you have a big entity like the BBC telling a scientist who's simply stating his

825
01:15:33.360 --> 01:15:38.400
own findings that had been peer reviewed by other experts in the field, it should be beyond.

826
01:15:38.400 --> 01:15:42.960
It should be, he should have every platform in the world to talk about this. Every scientist

827
01:15:42.960 --> 01:15:47.920
ought to. And it ought to be scrutinized. Scientists should never think they know the truth.

828
01:15:48.000 --> 01:15:54.240
Even the declarations in the past few years of believe the science. No, that is anti-scientific.

829
01:15:55.200 --> 01:16:01.440
Science is a scientist must be so humble that he or she is constantly prepared to dump their

830
01:16:01.440 --> 01:16:06.080
hypotheses if they've been shown to be wrong. And I guess it's important for those ideas to be

831
01:16:06.080 --> 01:16:10.640
out there. You want to even be able to scrutinize them and challenge them. Especially in something

832
01:16:10.640 --> 01:16:16.640
like cancer, where clearly what we're doing isn't working. And so let's welcome new ideas. And his

833
01:16:16.640 --> 01:16:22.880
evidence is incredibly compelling. It's so discouraging to hear. But it is also, Steven

834
01:16:22.880 --> 01:16:30.320
perhaps, a manifestation of a broader opposition to anything low carb. You just utter the word ketone

835
01:16:30.320 --> 01:16:37.840
to a dogmatic and conventionally trained dietician. Oh my gosh, you are tempting their wrath.

836
01:16:39.440 --> 01:16:45.440
It's like the more educated a person gets, the more rigid they become from time to time in their

837
01:16:45.440 --> 01:16:52.560
ideas. You should never see that in a scientist. A scientist by our, by our, through our training,

838
01:16:52.560 --> 01:16:58.720
we should be humble enough to admit that we don't know everything. I remember when they contacted

839
01:16:58.720 --> 01:17:02.960
me the journalist at BBC and said we're going to write the story about, you know, the misinformation

840
01:17:02.960 --> 01:17:07.360
spread by these guys. And I looked at what they had said. And this, and they made this little

841
01:17:07.440 --> 01:17:20.160
documentary in this article. And they had found that 0.001% of our total recorded hours of conversation

842
01:17:20.160 --> 01:17:25.840
and transcripts contained things that they thought could be disputed. Oh my gosh. And they felt

843
01:17:25.840 --> 01:17:32.400
with 0.001, they would write this big breaking new story in this article. And I remember thinking,

844
01:17:32.480 --> 01:17:37.680
Oh, that was the day that I that I felt I understood. That was the day that I felt I

845
01:17:37.680 --> 01:17:41.600
understood how the system works. You could, you peeked behind the car. I got to see behind the car.

846
01:17:41.600 --> 01:17:46.720
Yes. And I was like, Oh, I thought, you know, I thought that these like, because it's like a big

847
01:17:46.720 --> 01:17:52.560
brand that I've grown up looking at. I thought like they are so concerned about rigor and the most

848
01:17:52.560 --> 01:17:57.360
important thing and balance. And I said to the, I said to the journalist, I said, of what you found

849
01:17:57.440 --> 01:18:03.200
0.001, because they said you've got a right to reply. So that was my reply. They, of course,

850
01:18:03.200 --> 01:18:06.720
they wouldn't have published it. They took it out. They took my response out. Yeah. Because it was

851
01:18:06.720 --> 01:18:11.120
too doubt. It was too like, you know, and then obviously the other thing they pointed at another

852
01:18:11.120 --> 01:18:16.640
guest that I'd had on and said, you know, you also had this person on. And I, so I went on,

853
01:18:16.640 --> 01:18:21.040
I just typed his name in and the word BBC. And they'd had him on too. Oh my gosh. And in fact,

854
01:18:21.040 --> 01:18:25.760
when he came on this particular doctor and he had said his points of views, the journalist at the

855
01:18:25.760 --> 01:18:30.560
BBC had just basically said nothing. And that was the end of the second. When he said it to me,

856
01:18:31.120 --> 01:18:35.440
then all of a sudden it's a problem. No, I read out the rebuttal from the British Heart

857
01:18:35.440 --> 01:18:40.800
Foundation. I read out all of the rebuttals to what he just said. But of course the BBC published

858
01:18:40.800 --> 01:18:44.480
this article saying that I'd had him on. They'd had him on too. They'd never rebuttal them. I did.

859
01:18:44.480 --> 01:18:49.440
And so this was the moment that I thought you're becoming disruptive. To be honest, I suspect a

860
01:18:49.440 --> 01:18:56.960
part of it is you are the embodiment of a new media. You know, I think even beyond the science.

861
01:18:56.960 --> 01:19:02.000
So if this had been in the US, I would have speculated that a part of their concern would have been

862
01:19:02.000 --> 01:19:07.360
that you are sharing your platforming someone who is bad for their bottom line because so much of

863
01:19:08.000 --> 01:19:14.800
the income that media outlets get in the US is from drug company ads. In the UK, you don't have

864
01:19:14.800 --> 01:19:20.320
that. Drug companies don't aren't I don't think they're allowed to air ads on normal channels.

865
01:19:21.440 --> 01:19:27.600
In the UK, I think it's two degree happening everywhere. Your platform is probably bigger than

866
01:19:27.600 --> 01:19:32.560
many of theirs and they might feel that threatening. It's interesting because I try and remain as

867
01:19:32.560 --> 01:19:37.200
objective as I can. So in those moments, one of my strategies is to try and understand what the

868
01:19:37.200 --> 01:19:42.320
signal is versus the noise. And to take all of this noise and figure out exactly what really,

869
01:19:42.320 --> 01:19:46.480
really matters as it relates to my genuine mission, which is for the audience that

870
01:19:46.480 --> 01:19:51.200
decided to tune in every single week and day and month to get really great information to improve

871
01:19:51.200 --> 01:19:56.800
their lives and to be able to strive at the things that they care about striving for, whether that's

872
01:19:56.800 --> 01:20:01.760
business or entrepreneurship or whether it's the health goals or fitness or finance or whatever.

873
01:20:01.760 --> 01:20:05.920
And the thing I actually took away from it is that there is a lot of information when you're

874
01:20:05.920 --> 01:20:11.360
pursuing science. And so one of the best things we can do because we know we're going to continue

875
01:20:11.360 --> 01:20:15.760
to have lots of different voices on the show is to continue to provide more context on what's

876
01:20:15.760 --> 01:20:19.840
what's being said. So one of the things we've we introduced this year, which I really love,

877
01:20:19.840 --> 01:20:24.720
is on the screen during these conversations as you're talking about different complicated words

878
01:20:24.720 --> 01:20:29.360
or you're talking about different studies or whatever it might be, those studies will be appearing

879
01:20:29.360 --> 01:20:34.240
on the screen for the audience to see. And I think this is a first in podcasting. I don't think

880
01:20:34.240 --> 01:20:38.720
anyone else any of the major podcasters have done this kind of thing. But that is something I actually

881
01:20:38.720 --> 01:20:41.680
took away from it. I thought you know what we can give our audience even more context so that they

882
01:20:41.680 --> 01:20:47.200
have a fuller picture. That's brilliant. So, you know, every cloud. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's certainly

883
01:20:47.200 --> 01:20:52.400
an opportunity to iterate and say, all right, how can we do it better? Not everyone's going to take

884
01:20:52.400 --> 01:20:56.800
that approach though. Always. And you know, like the question I was asking myself is like, what are

885
01:20:56.800 --> 01:21:00.640
we here to do? And what is our mission? And what would further the success of our mission? And

886
01:21:00.640 --> 01:21:04.480
that's one such thing. So the people, I had a lady contact me the other day. She said, I listen,

887
01:21:04.480 --> 01:21:11.280
Spotify, I didn't realize that you were doing these like pop up things on the screen. But they're

888
01:21:11.280 --> 01:21:15.440
there. Yeah. And also it definitely isn't a watch. Yeah. And in the description as well,

889
01:21:15.440 --> 01:21:20.880
there'll be there'll be a link to context as well that you can check out. But getting back to it.

890
01:21:21.920 --> 01:21:26.800
So, 2026, are you giving me this sort of daily protocol to follow? Is there anything else that

891
01:21:26.800 --> 01:21:30.080
we've missed? Because I really want to make sure that people listening achieve their 2026

892
01:21:30.080 --> 01:21:33.840
health goals. I mean, you know what those goals are because the message you. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

893
01:21:33.840 --> 01:21:38.080
I mean, it's always, it's almost always weight loss in some way, shape, or form. No, I think

894
01:21:38.080 --> 01:21:41.680
that protocol smart. I mean, we didn't talk, I mentioned a little bit about the role of exogenous

895
01:21:41.680 --> 01:21:51.840
ketones, which I am an advocate of. And I would say if a person is able to maybe just sort of look

896
01:21:51.840 --> 01:21:57.120
at what other supplements they might be interested in, like omega three, if they are looking to gain

897
01:21:57.120 --> 01:22:01.760
muscle and they're working out and doing some resistance protocols, definitely I would say if you're

898
01:22:01.760 --> 01:22:06.480
not eating omega three rich sources of foods like fish, then get a good omega three supplement.

899
01:22:07.360 --> 01:22:12.240
Omega three helps with muscle building in a very meaningful way. It's not just one of those,

900
01:22:12.240 --> 01:22:16.400
it's not just something to take for hard health. We were talking before we started

901
01:22:16.400 --> 01:22:23.040
recording about vitamins. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So, I was joking with you about how I was

902
01:22:23.040 --> 01:22:28.080
listening to this conversation. So, everything I'm about to explain people know that I am, I'm not

903
01:22:28.080 --> 01:22:32.960
an expert as much as I'm a metabolism expert that allows me to talk about this somewhat intelligently.

904
01:22:32.960 --> 01:22:38.080
So, let me lay the groundwork here. So, I was listening to a discussion of a rancher, a person who's

905
01:22:38.080 --> 01:22:43.600
growing livestock, and of course, just to help the business, you want these animals to get as big

906
01:22:43.600 --> 01:22:51.120
and even fat as possible and then get them off to, you know, just make your money. They found that

907
01:22:51.120 --> 01:22:56.080
I'm going to mess up these numbers a little bit, but I'm going to be closer than someone might

908
01:22:56.080 --> 01:23:01.120
think. I'll put them on the screen. So, they found that, for roughly every six pounds of feed,

909
01:23:01.120 --> 01:23:06.240
they would give an animal. So, for every six pounds of food, you could expect one pound of growth,

910
01:23:06.240 --> 01:23:11.920
and just normal, a normal feed, of normal just the mix of the soy, the corn, whatever they're eating,

911
01:23:11.920 --> 01:23:19.360
and pigs or cattle. And then, if you start adding B vitamin complexes, like a bunch of B vitamins,

912
01:23:20.240 --> 01:23:25.920
and then the higher that gets, you can go from three pounds of feed is enough to get one pound.

913
01:23:25.920 --> 01:23:28.960
It all up to the point where they could find that they could give the animals

914
01:23:28.960 --> 01:23:33.680
for every two pounds of food they would eat. They would gain one pound. So, they had effectively

915
01:23:33.680 --> 01:23:39.840
tripled the efficiency with which the animals were able to get fat off of a given amount of food.

916
01:23:39.840 --> 01:23:45.440
So, one of my concerns as a scientist is the degree to which part of our obesity epidemic

917
01:23:45.440 --> 01:23:51.840
might be the degree to which we are consuming too much vitamins, especially B vitamins.

918
01:23:51.840 --> 01:23:57.040
And the irony there is that people take B vitamins because they want their metabolism to

919
01:23:57.040 --> 01:24:01.280
be more efficient. You'll hear that term. And yet, when it comes to weight loss, you actually

920
01:24:01.280 --> 01:24:07.600
don't want efficiency. You want inefficiency. Let me invoke the analogy of an engine. So, let's

921
01:24:07.600 --> 01:24:13.840
imagine that we're sitting in a car and we are in drive. We're in gear. We press the accelerator

922
01:24:13.840 --> 01:24:18.560
and we see the RPMs going up. That means we're burning fuel. The engine is revving. And because

923
01:24:18.560 --> 01:24:23.360
we're in drive, we are moving. So, we're actually driving. So, we're getting work done.

924
01:24:23.920 --> 01:24:30.320
That's what we would say is efficient. An inefficient metabolism is actually more conducive to weight

925
01:24:30.320 --> 01:24:35.200
loss because now you're revving your engine, but you're in neutral. And so, you're not going anywhere.

926
01:24:35.200 --> 01:24:40.960
You don't have to get any work done. So, that's maybe a little step too far with the metaphor.

927
01:24:40.960 --> 01:24:47.520
But B vitamins are essentially making potentially the mitochondria and the cell be so efficient

928
01:24:48.160 --> 01:24:52.800
that it's storing more energy better rather than burning it and wasting it.

929
01:24:52.800 --> 01:24:57.600
Storing more fat. Storing more fat. You see hints of this in human studies where when they

930
01:24:57.600 --> 01:25:02.960
take high doses of niacin in various clinical trials, it's one of the B vitamins. There are many

931
01:25:02.960 --> 01:25:09.440
of the B vitamins. But do you see substance in humans that supports this view where high doses of

932
01:25:09.440 --> 01:25:14.240
some of these vitamins do result in weight gain? Now, they're not really well controlled studies,

933
01:25:14.800 --> 01:25:20.640
but nevertheless, combined with the animal data, it does suggest that there's something about

934
01:25:20.640 --> 01:25:25.360
maybe people taking too many of these B vitamins and they're getting fat or for every calorie consumed

935
01:25:25.360 --> 01:25:29.440
because the body is just storing it too easily. I mean, you're talking about taking too much.

936
01:25:29.440 --> 01:25:33.600
You're not talking too much. I'm not talking about like reaching the daily minimum. But people are

937
01:25:33.600 --> 01:25:38.720
going like two or three or four times beyond that nowadays because everything is fortified. You'd

938
01:25:38.720 --> 01:25:43.920
mention one of the people in the comments mentioned that they cut out flour. Flour is heavily,

939
01:25:43.920 --> 01:25:49.440
heavily fortified with B vitamins. And so every time we're eating it, we're getting B vitamins from

940
01:25:49.440 --> 01:25:53.600
everything. And usually it's coming with processed carbohydrates. So one more reason, because you're

941
01:25:53.600 --> 01:25:57.840
not going to get an overload of B vitamins from just staking eggs. It's going to be something that's

942
01:25:57.840 --> 01:26:02.720
been packaged because it's been fortified with these B vitamins. So one of that might be one of

943
01:26:02.720 --> 01:26:07.920
the reasons why people are getting fatter than ever. I've got this pen in front of me. Do you know what

944
01:26:07.920 --> 01:26:14.880
this is? That's a GLP1 medication. A Zempec. Oh, Zempec, yeah. I've got an Zempec pen right here.

945
01:26:14.880 --> 01:26:21.120
Now you've told me lots of different ways that I can lose my body fat in 2026. But couldn't I just

946
01:26:21.120 --> 01:26:26.400
jab myself with this? Yeah. And my hunger will evaporate and I'll lose fat. So that works until it

947
01:26:26.400 --> 01:26:32.240
doesn't. By that, I mean, we have really, really good data now. So briefly on GLP1, although I know

948
01:26:32.320 --> 01:26:38.160
your audience is probably very familiar with this by now. GLP1 is primarily a satiety hormone.

949
01:26:38.720 --> 01:26:45.040
It'll tell the brain that we're done eating and it will slow down the intestines significantly.

950
01:26:45.040 --> 01:26:49.200
So you'll eat food. If you and I were to go eat lunch, again, I've used that a couple times.

951
01:26:49.200 --> 01:26:53.840
Our food would be in our stomach for four to six hours, maybe. If we injected ourselves with

952
01:26:53.840 --> 01:27:01.280
a GLP1 drug, which puts an artificial amount of GLP1 in our body, boom, we shoot it in.

953
01:27:01.280 --> 01:27:08.240
We'd grab a piece of fat and jab it in. Then it slows down people's intestines so much

954
01:27:08.240 --> 01:27:12.480
that they'll have food sitting in there for 24 hours. So one of the things people talk about is what's

955
01:27:12.480 --> 01:27:19.120
called ozemic burps, where they just have this kind of belching bubbling gas because the food is

956
01:27:19.120 --> 01:27:24.880
sitting in the stomach for way longer than it's supposed to. So no surprise, the people are less

957
01:27:24.880 --> 01:27:30.080
interested in food. GLP1 tells the brain they don't need to eat as much and slows down the intestines.

958
01:27:30.080 --> 01:27:36.080
Now, however, I said it works until it doesn't. The main thing it helps people do

959
01:27:37.680 --> 01:27:44.320
is eat less carbohydrates. It controls cravings, particularly. But there was a human paper that found,

960
01:27:44.320 --> 01:27:50.000
when they followed people for two years, it was a beautiful figure. At about six months,

961
01:27:50.000 --> 01:27:55.360
they found that sweet cravings dropped significantly, a huge reduction in their cravings for

962
01:27:55.360 --> 01:28:00.640
chocolate and sweets. At 12 months, it creeped up a little bit, but it was still noticeably

963
01:28:00.640 --> 01:28:06.800
below where it started. At two years, it was right back to normal. So at two years on the drug,

964
01:28:06.800 --> 01:28:12.160
the effects of having them not be interested in that plate of cookies, now it's gone.

965
01:28:12.160 --> 01:28:17.920
What's going on now? So yeah, it's diminishing returns as to invoke a principle of economics.

966
01:28:17.920 --> 01:28:22.160
Doing the same thing again and again and again starts to work less and less and less.

967
01:28:22.560 --> 01:28:28.960
We see this manifested in innumerable different ways of medications. So why do our clinicians?

968
01:28:28.960 --> 01:28:34.160
Why does the doctor tell us to make sure we take our full dose of antibiotic? Because if we don't,

969
01:28:34.720 --> 01:28:40.320
we give it just enough for the bacteria to become resistant to it. And now next time we would need

970
01:28:40.320 --> 01:28:47.280
two times the amount of antibiotic we had. So it's natural for the human body to become

971
01:28:47.280 --> 01:28:53.920
less responsive to a stimulus. And that is so much GLP1 activation that it's no surprise that

972
01:28:53.920 --> 01:28:58.400
this body starts to say, Hey, you're screaming at me too much and I'm going to become deaf to your

973
01:28:58.400 --> 01:29:07.040
signal. So it starts to work less. And in the UK and in the US, about 70% of people get off the

974
01:29:07.040 --> 01:29:11.920
drug of their own volition at two years. They get tired of being on the drug because it's basically

975
01:29:12.000 --> 01:29:17.520
like a constant state of nausea. That's kind of how you'd say it works. That if you're feeling

976
01:29:17.520 --> 01:29:22.400
always a little nauseous, you just don't really want to snack on something and people get tired of

977
01:29:22.400 --> 01:29:27.840
feeling nauseous. But another two year study, two years appears to be kind of a magic timeline,

978
01:29:27.840 --> 01:29:36.080
found that of every every pound they lost 40% of it was from lean from fat free mass.

979
01:29:36.160 --> 01:29:43.040
What does that mean? So that means 60% was coming from fat, 40% was coming from not fat,

980
01:29:43.040 --> 01:29:48.320
including muscle and bone. It would be water as well, but muscle and bone. And that matters because

981
01:29:48.320 --> 01:29:53.280
imagine if we have an older woman, let's imagine a 60 year old woman who wants to lose weight and

982
01:29:53.280 --> 01:29:59.440
goes on a drug. If she's lost weight now and then two years later wants to get off the drug like 70%

983
01:29:59.440 --> 01:30:06.240
of people do, her fat mass will come right back. But her lean mass may never come back.

984
01:30:06.240 --> 01:30:12.000
That muscle and bone may be gone for good. Who is it for? Who would you recommend definitely

985
01:30:12.000 --> 01:30:19.920
does it, uses it and for how long with whatever supplementation? So my recommendation of the drug

986
01:30:20.640 --> 01:30:25.440
is to not... Currently, it's being used for weight loss where people just say,

987
01:30:25.440 --> 01:30:30.240
here, jab yourself with this and you're going to lose weight. And it works. They will absolutely

988
01:30:30.240 --> 01:30:35.840
lose weight. But again, the concern being that you're going to lose a lot of lean mass at the same time.

989
01:30:36.400 --> 01:30:42.320
So my best use of that drug would be using it with two distinct purposes or two ways, but for one

990
01:30:42.320 --> 01:30:47.280
purpose, which is this is a drug that's going to help you learn to control carbohydrates. Because

991
01:30:47.280 --> 01:30:51.920
that's the one macronutrient that people are addicted to. They're addicted to carbs. We eat too

992
01:30:51.920 --> 01:30:57.280
many carbs. We're a carb crazed culture. So my view is use these drugs to help people cure

993
01:30:57.280 --> 01:31:00.800
their cravings for carbohydrates. But then when I stop taking it, isn't it going to come back?

994
01:31:00.800 --> 01:31:04.960
Well, so that's it then. So then you use it in two different ways. One, you use a much lower dose

995
01:31:04.960 --> 01:31:10.720
than is currently used. What we could call a microdose, if you will. So use a lower dose and you

996
01:31:10.720 --> 01:31:15.680
cycle it on and off. So what I think people should be doing, and I'm going to talk about evidence

997
01:31:15.760 --> 01:31:22.160
to support this in just a second, go 90 days on the drug at a low dose while receiving

998
01:31:22.160 --> 01:31:27.840
coaching or counseling on how to use a low carb diet. Because they will find it easier than ever

999
01:31:27.840 --> 01:31:33.600
to control their carb consumption. Then at the end of 90 days, wean them off the drug and say,

1000
01:31:33.600 --> 01:31:38.880
let's see if these habits of stuck very often they have. I know many, many people, again,

1001
01:31:38.880 --> 01:31:41.920
we're going to be publishing a report on this. I'll touch on that in just a second,

1002
01:31:41.920 --> 01:31:47.200
who they've done 190 day cycle of a low dose GLP one coupled with coaching on how to do a low

1003
01:31:47.200 --> 01:31:52.880
carb diet. And they find that their cravings are gone and they don't need to be on the drug anymore.

1004
01:31:52.880 --> 01:31:57.280
Some people will find that it lasts for a while and the cravings start to come back. All right,

1005
01:31:57.280 --> 01:32:02.480
well, let's cycle you back on and try again. Let's find out what didn't work this time. So we're

1006
01:32:02.480 --> 01:32:06.640
about to publish a report. Anyone who wants to see a little more about this, I just encourage them

1007
01:32:06.640 --> 01:32:12.880
to go to my site insulin IQ.com. I'll link it below. Great. But we have done a collaborative work

1008
01:32:12.880 --> 01:32:17.840
with a group in Idaho, a clinic in Idaho, where they have done just this. They have people

1009
01:32:17.840 --> 01:32:24.800
getting low carb counseling with a cycled low dose of GLP one and the results vastly outperform

1010
01:32:24.800 --> 01:32:29.680
those who just rely on the drug. Better fat loss and better retention of muscle mass.

1011
01:32:29.680 --> 01:32:34.560
And when you say low carb counseling, that's just they just people like me, you know, me saying,

1012
01:32:34.640 --> 01:32:38.720
Stephen, I'd like to go on a low carb diet. You saying, okay, great. Let's talk about how you can do

1013
01:32:38.720 --> 01:32:42.320
it best. Kind of a little bit like what we've been doing, but basically just like a diet coach.

1014
01:32:42.320 --> 01:32:49.040
Okay. But the results have been fantastic. Literally outperforming just the drug trials alone.

1015
01:32:49.040 --> 01:32:53.040
Over what period of time? Yes. So it's now been we have people who've been two to three years.

1016
01:32:54.720 --> 01:33:00.800
Yeah, we'll publish that soon. It's not submitted yet. All I had to do was brain dump. Imagine if you

1017
01:33:00.800 --> 01:33:07.040
had someone with you at all times that could take the ideas you have in your head, synthesize them

1018
01:33:07.040 --> 01:33:12.160
with AI to make them sound better and more grammatically correct and write them down for you.

1019
01:33:12.160 --> 01:33:16.880
This is exactly what whisper flow is in my life. It is this thought partner that helps me explain

1020
01:33:16.880 --> 01:33:21.840
what I want to say and it now means that on the go when I'm alone in my office, when I'm out in a

1021
01:33:21.840 --> 01:33:26.720
bow, I can respond to emails and Slack messages and WhatsApp and everything across all of my

1022
01:33:26.720 --> 01:33:30.400
devices just by speaking. I love this tool and I started talking about this from my behind

1023
01:33:30.400 --> 01:33:33.760
the scenes channel a couple of months back and then the founder reached out to me and said,

1024
01:33:33.760 --> 01:33:37.200
we're seeing a lot of people come to our tool because of you. So we'd love to be a sponsor,

1025
01:33:37.200 --> 01:33:40.720
we'd love you to be an investor in the company and so I signed up for both of those offers and

1026
01:33:40.720 --> 01:33:45.760
I'm now an investor and a huge partner in a company called Whisper Flow. You have to check it out.

1027
01:33:45.760 --> 01:33:50.080
Whisper Flow is four times faster than typing. So if you want to give it a try, head over to

1028
01:33:50.080 --> 01:33:56.880
WhisperFlow.ai slash DOAC to get started for free and you can find that link to Whisper Flow in

1029
01:33:56.880 --> 01:34:01.760
the description below. You know, every once in a while you come across a product that has such a

1030
01:34:01.760 --> 01:34:07.520
huge impact on your life that you'd probably describe it as a game changer and I would say

1031
01:34:08.400 --> 01:34:14.400
for about 35 to 40 percent of my team, they would currently describe this product that I have

1032
01:34:14.480 --> 01:34:20.640
in front of me called keytone IQ which you can get at keytone.com as a game changer. But the reason

1033
01:34:20.640 --> 01:34:24.480
I became a co-owner of this company and the reason why they now are a sponsor of this podcast

1034
01:34:24.480 --> 01:34:28.640
is because one day when I came to work, there was a box of this stuff sat on my desk. I had no

1035
01:34:28.640 --> 01:34:33.600
idea what it was. Lily in my team says that this company have been in touch. So I went upstairs,

1036
01:34:33.600 --> 01:34:39.760
tried it and quite frankly the rest is history in terms of my focus, my energy levels, how I feel,

1037
01:34:39.760 --> 01:34:44.960
how I work, how productive I am, game changer. So if you want to give it a try, visit keytone.com

1038
01:34:44.960 --> 01:34:50.400
slash Stephen for 30 percent off. You'll also get a free gift with your second shipment and now

1039
01:34:50.400 --> 01:34:56.240
you can find keytone IQ at target stores across the United States where your first shot is completely

1040
01:34:56.240 --> 01:35:01.840
free of charge. I have a bunch of other things here on the table that my team have got to me and

1041
01:35:01.840 --> 01:35:06.320
they didn't tell me why they've got me these which I think is useful because this means that I can

1042
01:35:06.320 --> 01:35:11.440
ask questions that the viewer might have. What the hell is this? Yeah, so Allulose is for anyone

1043
01:35:11.440 --> 01:35:14.960
that can't see it's a white car. So if you could lick it, lick your finger, you could put it in

1044
01:35:14.960 --> 01:35:19.040
and it's going to taste a little bit like a kind of diluted sugar. It's just a sweetener.

1045
01:35:20.400 --> 01:35:25.840
It's not quite as sweet as sugar if it is actually Allulose. Maybe it's not. It's definitely

1046
01:35:26.800 --> 01:35:32.240
I'm so sorry. This is definitely a prop. It tastes like bleach. It's not bleaching.

1047
01:35:32.240 --> 01:35:39.680
No, it tastes awful though. It tastes like they labeled it Allulose but it's taste like the thing

1048
01:35:39.680 --> 01:35:43.840
that you use to clean your clothes. I was baking. Okay, so at least it's not going to kill you.

1049
01:35:43.840 --> 01:35:46.960
Oh my gosh. If it bleached, you need to go rinse your mouth. You're going to sign that.

1050
01:35:46.960 --> 01:35:52.240
That was the end of the podcast. Oh my gosh. Yeah, Dan Bigman kills Steve Bartlett. Okay,

1051
01:35:52.240 --> 01:35:57.600
I didn't know that. I'm so sorry. So Allulose. Allulose is it's a sugar replacement. It's what's

1052
01:35:57.600 --> 01:36:04.720
called a rare sugar. By that, I mean it exists in nature. It is a sugar-like molecule. It tastes

1053
01:36:04.720 --> 01:36:10.640
sweet and yet it is non-metabolizable. It doesn't get taken into the body and it's not calories.

1054
01:36:10.640 --> 01:36:15.680
You need to worry about. But what it does in the context of this discussion is that it will go

1055
01:36:15.680 --> 01:36:20.960
further in the intestines and elicit a significant increase in GLP1 production. So this should be one

1056
01:36:20.960 --> 01:36:26.080
of the ways that someone listening who may be even on a GLP1 drug and thinking, I need an exit.

1057
01:36:26.080 --> 01:36:30.400
I want to get off this drug. I can't afford it or I feel miserable. I'm tired of the nausea.

1058
01:36:31.280 --> 01:36:36.560
Using Allulose, either as a sweetener in a coffee or a tea or your baking or whatever is a way

1059
01:36:36.560 --> 01:36:41.840
to increase your GLP1 naturally. So is your bammate that I'm drinking now that I start every

1060
01:36:41.840 --> 01:36:46.400
morning with? That has been shown. We've published a couple reports on that. That works as well.

1061
01:36:46.400 --> 01:36:51.760
And what foods have Allulose in them? Yeah. Allulose is not something that you're going to get

1062
01:36:52.240 --> 01:36:56.720
naturally. It has to be added. Yeah, it's added. But there are some like there are some yogurts

1063
01:36:56.720 --> 01:37:01.920
now that have it. There are a few supplements that will use it as a sweetener and I encourage that

1064
01:37:01.920 --> 01:37:05.920
development. It's a good sweetener to use. Okay, this other chemical that my team have got here,

1065
01:37:05.920 --> 01:37:10.880
which is again, it's a white powder. I'm not going to try it this time just in case it's

1066
01:37:10.880 --> 01:37:16.320
something awful. It says has a label on it that says collagen peptide. Why have they got this?

1067
01:37:16.320 --> 01:37:20.640
Yeah. So collagen peptides are another way to increase GLP1. So that would be another

1068
01:37:21.200 --> 01:37:25.680
signal here that if someone is interested in a good smart way of losing weight, I am a fan of

1069
01:37:25.680 --> 01:37:31.600
collagen. There was in fact just a paper just published this week finding that a mix of collagen

1070
01:37:31.600 --> 01:37:37.920
and various amino acids was very effective at enhancing skin integrity and the collagen in the

1071
01:37:37.920 --> 01:37:43.120
skin. So I'm a fan of collagen peptides. Are there any supplements that we haven't mentioned

1072
01:37:43.200 --> 01:37:49.360
that you're a big fan of in terms of weight loss? Yeah, I already mentioned a Go BHB,

1073
01:37:49.360 --> 01:37:56.480
so an exogenous ketone source. I do take collagen as well. It's called iron feather. I love it.

1074
01:37:57.520 --> 01:38:03.600
But also omega-3. In addition to other habits, like the the urbamate, which I love and other

1075
01:38:03.600 --> 01:38:07.920
things like that, I don't call it a supplement as much as just a habit. What about creatine?

1076
01:38:07.920 --> 01:38:13.840
Oh, yes. Yes. I can't believe I didn't mention that. I'm very much an advocate of creatine. In fact,

1077
01:38:13.840 --> 01:38:19.760
we have a study going on right now on it, but I'll come back to in a second. Yeah, creatine has been,

1078
01:38:20.640 --> 01:38:26.720
it's kind of the new thing where its traditional use had been in muscle and then now all of the hot

1079
01:38:26.720 --> 01:38:32.720
evidence is coming out in the brain. So in the muscle evidence, there's two things to note. In fact,

1080
01:38:32.800 --> 01:38:38.080
the first one is generic where creatine, not that you're asking this, but people may wonder how it

1081
01:38:38.080 --> 01:38:44.800
works. Creatine will be taken into a cell and it creates this pool of potential energy called

1082
01:38:44.800 --> 01:38:50.560
creatine phosphate. Now earlier, I'd mentioned ATP and I'm holding up three fingers because of the

1083
01:38:50.560 --> 01:38:59.040
three phosphates on that ATP, the triphosphate molecule. When we say contract a muscle or a

1084
01:38:59.040 --> 01:39:03.520
nerve is sending a signal, you're breaking ATP apart. You're splitting off one of those

1085
01:39:03.520 --> 01:39:10.480
phosphates. Now you're left with a dye phosphate ADP. In order to recycle or regenerate the ATP,

1086
01:39:10.480 --> 01:39:15.280
you need another phosphate molecule and this is where creatine comes in because creatine has a

1087
01:39:15.280 --> 01:39:21.360
phosphate now that it can come and give to the ATP rapidly recycling ATP. Which means so you're

1088
01:39:21.360 --> 01:39:26.400
able to restore the energy in the cell sooner. Which means for me on a daily basis. On a daily basis,

1089
01:39:26.400 --> 01:39:30.560
would be two things. In the two tissues of interest, one, you can get more work out of your muscle

1090
01:39:30.560 --> 01:39:34.800
in a given unit of time. So if you wanted to have a very effective 30 minute workout, your

1091
01:39:34.800 --> 01:39:40.720
rests could be much shorter because of your ability to regenerate ATP or recover. But then the

1092
01:39:40.720 --> 01:39:46.160
newest area of research is what's happening in the brain. Where creatine has been shown to increase

1093
01:39:46.160 --> 01:39:51.360
brain energy and there are some incredible human studies finding that you take people with

1094
01:39:51.360 --> 01:39:57.440
cognitive decline or some form of early dementia, give them creatine supplementation and over the

1095
01:39:57.440 --> 01:40:02.400
next few weeks their cognition will improve. So as much as you have the gym bros who are taking it

1096
01:40:02.400 --> 01:40:08.000
for muscle, which I'm sympathetic to, I want big healthy muscles too. More than anything, you and I,

1097
01:40:08.000 --> 01:40:12.240
we're not getting paid because of our muscles. We're getting paid because of our brains. So you and

1098
01:40:12.240 --> 01:40:18.240
I are taking creatine to have bigger, better brains. But in order for the creatine to saturate the

1099
01:40:18.240 --> 01:40:24.000
brain, you need more. And that's been some of the newest focus where you can get away. If you're

1100
01:40:24.000 --> 01:40:29.520
just taking it from muscle purposes, five grams is enough of creatine monohydrate. And if you want

1101
01:40:29.520 --> 01:40:34.800
to get it to work for the brain, you need 10 or 15 grams. So quite a bit more. I heard this from

1102
01:40:34.800 --> 01:40:39.440
another guest I had on the show and I was really shocked because I didn't think about creatine as

1103
01:40:39.440 --> 01:40:44.400
being something that could really elevate my cognitive performance. And from the studies that I've

1104
01:40:44.400 --> 01:40:49.680
read in the research ahead of this conversation, I read that creating helps your brain stay sharp,

1105
01:40:49.680 --> 01:40:56.080
especially when you're in a low sleep mode or when you've been working very, very hard. So that's

1106
01:40:56.080 --> 01:41:01.680
a study. There's a human study that sleep deprived people deliberately had them take creatine versus

1107
01:41:01.680 --> 01:41:06.480
the placebo and then do a series of cognitive tests. No surprise. The sleep deprived people on

1108
01:41:06.480 --> 01:41:12.800
placebo did very poorly. They're so tired. They're lethargic. The creatine treatment group performed

1109
01:41:12.800 --> 01:41:17.120
much better. I heard this and I thought, wow. So when I'm like jet lagged or I'm just

1110
01:41:17.120 --> 01:41:21.760
slept, I should be taking my creatine. Yeah. And so as an under slept dad, you'll get there soon

1111
01:41:21.760 --> 01:41:27.680
enough. I take creatine every morning. It is literally the first thing I drink. It's hard for,

1112
01:41:28.240 --> 01:41:32.080
I've noticed in my friendship group when I've talked about creatine, it's sometimes hard to

1113
01:41:32.080 --> 01:41:36.960
convince women to take creatine because there's a sort of prevailing stereotype that it makes you

1114
01:41:37.040 --> 01:41:43.360
large. Yeah, I wish. Because then I'd be jacked. No, no, it doesn't. In fact, I think you could make

1115
01:41:43.360 --> 01:41:50.000
the case that a woman relevant to the cognitive aspects of it should be focused on it more than men.

1116
01:41:50.000 --> 01:41:55.040
So there are a few chronic diseases that women suffer from more than men and Alzheimer's diseases

1117
01:41:55.040 --> 01:42:00.880
one of them. So this is a disease that will affect women almost double or even triple the rate of

1118
01:42:01.040 --> 01:42:06.960
affecting men. Insofar as the latest evidence shows that at higher doses, creatine helps with

1119
01:42:06.960 --> 01:42:14.240
cognition, I think every woman middle aged and beyond should be taking creatine daily. And indeed,

1120
01:42:14.240 --> 01:42:17.600
on the higher end of that dose, because that's the dose you need to help your brain.

1121
01:42:17.600 --> 01:42:22.080
And I read from one particular study, I think you talked about this on your YouTube channel,

1122
01:42:22.080 --> 01:42:26.880
that creates increases strength by up to 10% and power output by up to 15%

1123
01:42:27.120 --> 01:42:33.360
reduces muscle damage by 20 to 40% after intense exercise. Yeah, so creatine both acts as an

1124
01:42:33.360 --> 01:42:39.360
energetic source and it changes genes transcription. So there's evidence to show that creatine in muscle

1125
01:42:39.360 --> 01:42:45.280
stimulates what's called myogenic genes. Myogenic genes are those genes that promote muscle

1126
01:42:45.280 --> 01:42:51.840
protein synthesis and muscle growth. So creatine both energizes the muscle and promotes growth of

1127
01:42:51.920 --> 01:42:55.840
the muscle. Now, a woman may say, well, I don't want to get big. You can't get big.

1128
01:42:56.480 --> 01:43:02.160
The female, a female body does not have the right mix of sex hormones to get big muscles.

1129
01:43:02.160 --> 01:43:06.720
All that will happen is she'll have wonderful, healthy, strong muscles. She just, no woman ever

1130
01:43:06.720 --> 01:43:10.800
needs to be worried about getting too big in muscles. It doesn't happen. Why do vegetarians and

1131
01:43:10.800 --> 01:43:15.360
vegans need to pay more attention to creatine? Right. That is, yeah. So creatine is one of the many

1132
01:43:15.360 --> 01:43:19.040
things, if you'll pardon me for saying it, that a vegan would need to pay attention to.

1133
01:43:19.760 --> 01:43:25.840
So creatine is a molecule that you can eat. So if someone's getting a lot of red meat,

1134
01:43:25.840 --> 01:43:28.880
you could make the case that they don't need to supplement. That they're getting more than

1135
01:43:28.880 --> 01:43:33.200
enough. But if you're not eating red meat, you may not be getting enough. And I'd say you

1136
01:43:33.200 --> 01:43:38.880
probably aren't. And there's a reason to get it to supplement. Does creatine have an impact

1137
01:43:38.880 --> 01:43:44.800
on blood sugar levels? No. Blood sugar spikes at all. No. I would say if someone ever notices,

1138
01:43:44.800 --> 01:43:49.120
if they're taking a scoop of creatine and they see, then it's probably because you have some

1139
01:43:49.120 --> 01:43:54.480
maltodextrin in your creatine powder. June, I had my blood levels done a couple of weeks ago.

1140
01:43:54.480 --> 01:43:59.360
And the doctor said to me that I should be careful because they're seeing high levels of creatine

1141
01:43:59.360 --> 01:44:04.480
in my kidney. Okay. So what they would have said is they would have seen high levels of creatinine.

1142
01:44:04.480 --> 01:44:09.120
That was it. Yeah. But that's important for people to know because that's one of the long

1143
01:44:09.120 --> 01:44:15.920
standing attacks against creatine has been a high level of creatinine. So creatinine is the

1144
01:44:15.920 --> 01:44:20.480
metabolite of creatine. So when creatine has lived its life and served its purpose,

1145
01:44:20.480 --> 01:44:25.520
it gets converted into a molecule called creatinine, which is actively secreted from the kidneys.

1146
01:44:25.520 --> 01:44:31.120
Now it's a waste product and the kidneys happily dump it out. Now in an average person,

1147
01:44:31.120 --> 01:44:34.960
if someone has, if you came in and you did a urine test and we found your creatine,

1148
01:44:35.040 --> 01:44:40.400
your creatinine levels were really, really high, we would worry, hey, is this a sign of kidney

1149
01:44:40.400 --> 01:44:46.800
damage or your kidneys allowing too much to get filtered? And it might be a sign of that. However,

1150
01:44:46.800 --> 01:44:53.040
if a person's taking creatine, it is absolutely guaranteed that they're going to have more creatinine

1151
01:44:53.040 --> 01:44:57.040
coming out. And that's just because they're metabolizing more of the creatine. There's no

1152
01:44:57.040 --> 01:45:02.320
reason to be worried about it. You talked about a five year study that found zero kidney changes

1153
01:45:02.320 --> 01:45:07.760
in athletes taking up to 20 grams of which is significant. Creatine a day. Yeah, there's no

1154
01:45:07.760 --> 01:45:12.160
evidence. I'm unaware of any study that has shown kidney damage on creatine supplementation.

1155
01:45:12.160 --> 01:45:18.720
It is what we call in science and artifact where you see a little hint of a problem and assume

1156
01:45:18.720 --> 01:45:23.200
it's actually causing a problem when it's actually just a manifestation of just what you're doing.

1157
01:45:23.200 --> 01:45:27.040
But I'm going to ask you to close your eyes. I'm ready. Okay. And I'm going to ask you to

1158
01:45:27.760 --> 01:45:36.800
embody what I'm about to say. So suddenly now you are a let's say 35 year old man.

1159
01:45:37.920 --> 01:45:46.560
And your name is Dave. And you have one kid. You have a little bit of extra fat around your midsection

1160
01:45:46.560 --> 01:45:51.360
that you're trying to lose. You've been listening to this podcast for a while. You've heard lots of

1161
01:45:51.360 --> 01:45:55.040
things. You haven't managed to make huge amount of progress. Sometimes you try and then you bounce

1162
01:45:55.040 --> 01:46:01.440
right back and you're kind of at your wit's end. You really, really want 20, 26 to be the year

1163
01:46:01.440 --> 01:46:06.160
that you finally proved yourself, your family for the sake of your kids and inspiring them to

1164
01:46:06.160 --> 01:46:12.800
live a happy, healthier future that you can make a change and you can become the strong, healthy,

1165
01:46:13.600 --> 01:46:19.360
sexy dad that your family wants you to be and that you want to be. You want to finally

1166
01:46:19.360 --> 01:46:23.200
prove it yourself after all these years of struggling, trying, failing.

1167
01:46:25.920 --> 01:46:32.560
What is what is it that that guy or that woman needs to hear to close out this conversation

1168
01:46:32.560 --> 01:46:42.000
today, Ben? Yeah. I appreciate you mentioning the kid. I think you need to have a reason

1169
01:46:43.440 --> 01:46:48.480
because making change is hard. You have to have a reason that is motivating you to do it. That goes

1170
01:46:48.480 --> 01:46:53.920
beyond yourself. That's I should add that. That you'd mention the handful of internal motivations.

1171
01:46:53.920 --> 01:46:58.640
You want to feel better. You want to look better. Those are all valid. But sometimes it's not

1172
01:46:58.640 --> 01:47:03.280
enough. Have an external reason and when you're a parent, you have a reason. You have a child.

1173
01:47:03.280 --> 01:47:08.320
You're living for your child. So have a reason for doing what you're doing that goes beyond your own

1174
01:47:08.960 --> 01:47:15.680
motivations that touches someone else's life. And then too, you need to find a way to control

1175
01:47:15.840 --> 01:47:23.120
your cravings. I think the more I look at the debates around obesity and weight loss, which is so

1176
01:47:23.120 --> 01:47:28.400
central to looking and feeling better, the more I think you have to learn to control what you're

1177
01:47:28.400 --> 01:47:38.560
addicted to. And so I would say start with the simplest habit and change it. So if this is if Dave,

1178
01:47:38.560 --> 01:47:45.200
the 35 year old dad of one, if he finds that he is starting to drink alcohol in the evening.

1179
01:47:46.160 --> 01:47:51.920
And then he's doing other things too that he doesn't like stop doing that and recruit outside

1180
01:47:51.920 --> 01:47:57.680
help. So start with one habit. You know you should change and change it. And then that can when he comes

1181
01:47:57.680 --> 01:48:03.440
to changing diet, which is among the hardest things to do for many people, I would say eat a big lunch.

1182
01:48:03.680 --> 01:48:09.200
Some people don't want to make small changes because they don't feel consequential enough. It

1183
01:48:09.200 --> 01:48:12.880
doesn't feel like it matters. You know, this is one of the things I've learned from interviewing so

1184
01:48:12.880 --> 01:48:20.320
many people is that all of these habits are like at some level interconnected. And actually when

1185
01:48:20.320 --> 01:48:26.560
you change one, you influence another, I totally agree. And actually a huge change in life starts with

1186
01:48:26.560 --> 01:48:33.840
small steps. And so cutting out the alcohol, for example, that's going to have knock on effects in

1187
01:48:33.840 --> 01:48:40.480
other areas of life, right? He will sleep much better. So multiple studies show that with cutting,

1188
01:48:40.480 --> 01:48:46.640
people have a have a mistaken view of alcohol when it comes to sleep where they fall asleep faster,

1189
01:48:46.640 --> 01:48:50.480
but then they sleep worse throughout the rest of the night, which then means what?

1190
01:48:50.480 --> 01:48:55.520
Yeah, so then you wake up the next morning in your lethargic, you're tired, your cortisol will be

1191
01:48:55.520 --> 01:49:00.400
higher. You will be more insulin resistant. So higher insulin levels throughout the day, which means

1192
01:49:00.400 --> 01:49:04.320
you're going to have cravings, which means you'll have cravings. And every calorie you consume,

1193
01:49:04.320 --> 01:49:08.640
you're going to be more likely to store it. So then your body is more efficient at getting fat

1194
01:49:08.640 --> 01:49:13.280
on any given amount of calories. So even even something as simple as alcohol, which you not

1195
01:49:13.280 --> 01:49:18.480
haven't discussed at all, and maybe Dave is an alcohol drinker, but many people are.

1196
01:49:20.000 --> 01:49:24.720
That is, it has this patina of helping a person sleep in you that absolutely does not. And sleep

1197
01:49:24.720 --> 01:49:30.400
is a massively relevant variable when it comes to metabolic health and weight loss. And just

1198
01:49:30.400 --> 01:49:34.240
feeling well. What about stress? That's a protagonist in the story that we haven't talked about,

1199
01:49:34.240 --> 01:49:39.600
but I know it does tell us into ketones. Oh, it sure is. So in fact, it's a perfect segue,

1200
01:49:39.600 --> 01:49:44.880
because sleep deprivation, I believe, is leading cause of stress. And stress is one of the three

1201
01:49:44.880 --> 01:49:49.920
cardinal causes of what I call fast insulin resistance. When the body becomes insulin resistant

1202
01:49:49.920 --> 01:49:56.400
in like hours, stress is one of them. And poor sleep is the main cause. And so in this case,

1203
01:49:57.200 --> 01:50:01.760
a person could look, let's say Dave is not sleeping well, there are actually the problem of stress

1204
01:50:02.400 --> 01:50:06.480
is that it's hard to define that they're going to bed and they're not feeling very great and

1205
01:50:06.480 --> 01:50:11.440
they're worried about stuff. And if I were to tell him, Dave, reduce your stress. Now he's even

1206
01:50:11.440 --> 01:50:15.520
more stressed because he doesn't know how to do it. This is where I think another opportunity for

1207
01:50:15.520 --> 01:50:22.080
some smart supplementation can come in where there are these adaptogen like molecules in nature

1208
01:50:22.080 --> 01:50:27.600
like ashwagandha. So I just tried an ashwagandha source in the form of a little gummy, a goli gummy.

1209
01:50:27.600 --> 01:50:32.880
And it had enough like a full kind of therapeutic dose of ashwagandha. And it's in the form of a

1210
01:50:32.880 --> 01:50:37.680
delicious little gummy. So you don't have to take this bitter tasting powder from an ashwagandha

1211
01:50:37.680 --> 01:50:42.560
root. You can take a gummy and then you sleep a little better because it's been shown in humans

1212
01:50:42.560 --> 01:50:47.600
to improve sleep. Latency improves sleep architecture. And it could be one of the mechanisms is

1213
01:50:47.600 --> 01:50:54.880
that it's just suppressing your cortisol response. So if Dave or anyone is feeling that that would

1214
01:50:54.880 --> 01:51:01.920
just be one more strategy to address your metabolic health that you would sort of take the small steps

1215
01:51:01.920 --> 01:51:05.040
you can, the little winds and maybe he's saying, all right, I need to sleep a little better. I'm

1216
01:51:05.040 --> 01:51:08.720
going to cut my alcohol. I'm going to take a little a couple of these ashwagandha gummies before

1217
01:51:08.800 --> 01:51:14.080
you go to bed and not eat before I go to bed. So I don't go to bed hyperglycemic. You'll start

1218
01:51:14.080 --> 01:51:17.200
to sleep a little better. You'll wake up the next day ready to kind of win the day.

1219
01:51:17.760 --> 01:51:23.680
Is there a relationship with ketones and stress? Yeah, there is in that ketones help. So ketones

1220
01:51:23.680 --> 01:51:29.120
are more and more called an anxiolytic. That's a technical term for reducing anxiety.

1221
01:51:29.120 --> 01:51:34.160
It has been shown to be a direct effect. So BHB, the main ketone acts as a signaling molecule

1222
01:51:34.160 --> 01:51:38.080
and will come to the brain and reduce the stress hormone signaling.

1223
01:51:38.800 --> 01:51:41.680
What is the most important thing we didn't talk about that we should have talked about, Ben?

1224
01:51:43.600 --> 01:51:47.520
As it relates to that person who's looking to make a change once and for all.

1225
01:51:49.360 --> 01:51:53.760
One thing I would add, if we go back to the middle-aged guy who's just trying to be the best

1226
01:51:53.760 --> 01:51:59.520
version of himself, part of it might be his testosterone levels. And that is worth getting

1227
01:51:59.520 --> 01:52:04.720
checked. So as much as we focus, you've had in the past very good conversations about women's

1228
01:52:04.720 --> 01:52:09.520
health, including menopause, men have their own version of it. I'll be at more modest,

1229
01:52:10.080 --> 01:52:14.880
but we could more technically call it andropause, the male version of it. But there is a steady

1230
01:52:14.880 --> 01:52:20.720
reduction in testosterone levels. And if he finds that he is tired and he's gaining weight,

1231
01:52:21.360 --> 01:52:26.240
get your testosterone checked. If it's actually low, lose a little weight in the testosterone

1232
01:52:26.400 --> 01:52:30.400
will boost. But if you need help, there are supplements that can even help with testosterone

1233
01:52:30.400 --> 01:52:35.920
production that go that you could use before full on testosterone replacement therapy.

1234
01:52:36.880 --> 01:52:42.560
But ice bath and ice bath, I know guys who've doubled their testosterone levels by doing ice

1235
01:52:42.560 --> 01:52:47.600
immersion, cold plunge, and then a workout after their cold plunge. That's a wicked,

1236
01:52:48.320 --> 01:52:52.800
awesome combination. So there are a couple of tests that we've mentioned today. So I just want to

1237
01:52:52.800 --> 01:52:56.320
summarize some of those tests. Can people check their insulin levels at home?

1238
01:52:57.680 --> 01:53:02.480
No. No. Not really. There are some tests that have been marketed for at-home use, but they're

1239
01:53:02.480 --> 01:53:06.080
quite cumbersome. And I would say they're not really ready for mainstream yet.

1240
01:53:06.080 --> 01:53:08.080
Okay. So they have to go to a doctor and get that test.

1241
01:53:08.080 --> 01:53:11.040
You do. And then the testosterone, you can't check that at home either.

1242
01:53:11.040 --> 01:53:13.360
No. I guess you could, could you get sent something in the process?

1243
01:53:13.360 --> 01:53:18.000
You can. Yeah. So there's companies in the US, blocs and joy. For example, there's other

1244
01:53:18.000 --> 01:53:22.000
services you can use where you go online, sign up, and they send you either a phlebotomist,

1245
01:53:22.080 --> 01:53:26.640
or a little thing nowadays that you just snap onto your arm, press a little button,

1246
01:53:26.640 --> 01:53:28.800
and it'll fill the tube with blood and you just ship it back.

1247
01:53:28.800 --> 01:53:32.720
Are there any tests that you recommend my audience get done?

1248
01:53:33.360 --> 01:53:38.480
Yeah. Yeah. I would say I am an enormous advocate of measuring insulin. If I could change any

1249
01:53:38.480 --> 01:53:44.480
policy within the United States and worldwide, it would be that as much as every blood test,

1250
01:53:44.480 --> 01:53:48.240
you and I will go into a blood test every time they'll measure our glucose and our lipids,

1251
01:53:48.320 --> 01:53:53.840
like cholesterol and triglycerides. They'll never measure insulin. If I could have one change

1252
01:53:53.840 --> 01:53:58.320
in the US and the UK and everywhere else, I'd say add insulin to that panel.

1253
01:53:58.320 --> 01:54:02.960
Because once we get insulin, we can measure the fasted level and a person wants to see it

1254
01:54:02.960 --> 01:54:07.200
at around seven microunits per mil or less. That's a really, really good sign.

1255
01:54:07.200 --> 01:54:10.560
So you look at your insulin alone, but then with insulin and glucose,

1256
01:54:11.360 --> 01:54:18.160
you can do something called the HOMA, HOMA, the HOMA score. And that's a really good score

1257
01:54:18.320 --> 01:54:20.960
of where you fall on the insulin resistance spectrum.

1258
01:54:21.760 --> 01:54:24.720
And do you recommend that people try and wear a continuous glucose monitor,

1259
01:54:24.720 --> 01:54:29.840
which is a device that costs $20, $30. You can get it on everywhere online. That stays on

1260
01:54:29.840 --> 01:54:34.160
your arm for 14 days and it monitors your glucose levels, ay, your blood sugar levels.

1261
01:54:34.160 --> 01:54:40.480
Do you recommend people do that? I do. I think that a CGM is one of the best ways for a person

1262
01:54:40.480 --> 01:54:45.120
to make their own changes. So if you put a CGM on your body, you're able to look at your phone

1263
01:54:45.120 --> 01:54:48.640
and see what's happening in your blood. A CGM being a continuous glucose monitor.

1264
01:54:48.640 --> 01:54:52.800
A continuous glucose monitor. So you're getting a continuous measurement of your glucose levels.

1265
01:54:52.800 --> 01:54:58.960
I have seen more people make changes of their own volition when they just are wearing a CGM.

1266
01:54:58.960 --> 01:55:03.120
And they don't need someone to be nagging them. You know, you have that internal motivation

1267
01:55:03.120 --> 01:55:06.560
because you see what's happening in your own body. For anyone that's never tried, I highly recommend

1268
01:55:06.560 --> 01:55:12.000
it. I'll link a CGM below in the comment section. I don't have an affiliation to any CGMs,

1269
01:55:12.480 --> 01:55:16.720
but when you eat something within minutes, usually, you can see on your phone,

1270
01:55:16.720 --> 01:55:21.120
your blood sugar levels rising. And for me, it was a really important and informative

1271
01:55:21.120 --> 01:55:26.480
14 days with this CGM on my arm because I got to try things that I have every single day

1272
01:55:26.480 --> 01:55:31.840
and understand my blood sugar relationship with those things. So I got to try

1273
01:55:31.840 --> 01:55:37.840
tomato ketchup and then I got to try a Coke Zero and then I know cheese and bananas and fruit.

1274
01:55:37.840 --> 01:55:43.840
And I got to see within minutes how much glucose was in my blood and that informed

1275
01:55:43.840 --> 01:55:47.360
going forward for the next couple of years, the decisions that I made in my life.

1276
01:55:47.360 --> 01:55:51.040
Yeah. And people who the nice thing about it is you can stack it with other technologies.

1277
01:55:51.040 --> 01:55:54.400
Like, let's say you're wearing a whoop. Yeah. How should I add?

1278
01:55:55.040 --> 01:55:58.800
One of the cool things with the CGM is the ability to stack it with other wearables.

1279
01:55:58.800 --> 01:56:03.840
Well, let's say that a person notices that they with wearing a whoop that their HRV

1280
01:56:03.840 --> 01:56:08.960
is suggesting that they're stressed. And then you look at that at the same time as your CGM.

1281
01:56:08.960 --> 01:56:14.800
You may find that what's causing you to feel stressed could be your hyperglycemic spike.

1282
01:56:14.800 --> 01:56:18.400
And you wouldn't have known that if it weren't for the CGM. So I think there's a lot of utility

1283
01:56:18.400 --> 01:56:23.360
in stacking some of these wearables. Some day they're all going to be in one and they'll crack

1284
01:56:23.360 --> 01:56:28.240
the code of doing that. But I think it really does lend insight. I made one of the biggest

1285
01:56:28.240 --> 01:56:34.560
changes to my sleep by wearing a CGM where I would sleep terribly. I'd be monitoring my stress

1286
01:56:35.120 --> 01:56:40.480
and find that wow, every time I sleep really poorly, my blood glucose, I'd spike my blood glucose

1287
01:56:40.480 --> 01:56:45.920
in the evening. I'm going to try cutting that out and sure enough, it was the single greatest

1288
01:56:45.920 --> 01:56:50.080
change of my sleep habits. But we have a closing tradition on this podcast that the last guest leaves

1289
01:56:50.080 --> 01:56:53.280
a question for the next guest not knowing who they're leaving it for. The question left for you

1290
01:56:53.280 --> 01:56:58.320
is if you could have anything in the world for the rest of your life, what would it be and why?

1291
01:57:00.560 --> 01:57:06.800
And you can't say you're family. Oh, okay. I was going to ask for that clarification. Okay.

1292
01:57:06.800 --> 01:57:13.200
If I could have any one thing, an item that's not a person, I would choose to have my

1293
01:57:13.840 --> 01:57:22.960
scriptures. These holy scriptures that I read every day. I believe a lot of my happiness in life

1294
01:57:22.960 --> 01:57:29.120
has come from my religious conviction and my belief in a higher power and my faith in God.

1295
01:57:29.120 --> 01:57:34.800
As a scientist, it seems like too many people want to describe faith as a negative thing, but

1296
01:57:34.800 --> 01:57:40.160
everything we do is based on faith. Every action we take is a faith and a hope that the

1297
01:57:40.160 --> 01:57:46.320
consequence will be one we want. And so for me, it would be my scriptures. Just my way of

1298
01:57:46.320 --> 01:57:52.320
meditating and pondering my position in the greater universe and my connection with what I believe

1299
01:57:52.320 --> 01:57:58.000
to be a God, a loving Heavenly Father who cares about me. And then I can go to when I feel like

1300
01:57:58.000 --> 01:58:01.920
I need help that goes beyond what I can do with my own hands. What do you think this is all about

1301
01:58:01.920 --> 01:58:06.240
this life? What do you think the point of this or if this is? Oh, that's a big question.

1302
01:58:06.240 --> 01:58:14.000
I believe it is to show our Heavenly Father that we are capable of more. That I have very much a

1303
01:58:14.000 --> 01:58:20.720
very clear worldview that we have a loving Heavenly Father that we existed in a premortal state.

1304
01:58:20.960 --> 01:58:27.440
That our bodies, this mortal experience is an experience for us. We've been given this much power.

1305
01:58:27.440 --> 01:58:32.240
These bodies give us some power. We have power over life. We have power over death.

1306
01:58:32.240 --> 01:58:37.120
And all the temptations that can come from addictions and habits that are unique to this mortal

1307
01:58:37.120 --> 01:58:45.600
tabernacle. I think we've been given a period of time to show that we can wield power and control

1308
01:58:45.600 --> 01:58:53.760
ourselves. Just assuming my religious view is very much that just like as a father, my great hope

1309
01:58:53.760 --> 01:58:59.120
is that my children will grow up to be wonderful mothers and fathers that I want them to be able to

1310
01:58:59.120 --> 01:59:04.560
pattern their lives after what they see in my wife and me. I believe that we have a Heavenly Father

1311
01:59:04.560 --> 01:59:09.200
and a Heavenly Mother actually that we have these divine parents who want nothing more than for their

1312
01:59:09.200 --> 01:59:14.160
children to grow up and be like them. And I think this is just like my children will have to leave

1313
01:59:14.160 --> 01:59:18.960
the home. If I coddle them and protected them and only let them stay in my home, they'd never

1314
01:59:18.960 --> 01:59:23.440
learn anything. They'd never grow up because mom and dad are doing everything. This I think mortal

1315
01:59:23.440 --> 01:59:30.720
life is our divine parents' opportunity to show to help us grow up. And then the time will come

1316
01:59:30.720 --> 01:59:36.000
for us to pass on and we will come back to them hopefully showing that we are ready to continue

1317
01:59:36.000 --> 01:59:42.160
to learn and progress and be more like them. To what end? For what reason? To mimic what our

1318
01:59:42.160 --> 01:59:46.160
Heavenly Parents have been able to do where they they have been able to create a world and

1319
01:59:46.160 --> 01:59:51.600
populate it with their spirit children. I want to do that too. You and I before we started recording,

1320
01:59:51.600 --> 01:59:58.880
I joked about how much I miss babies. I desperately and I do. It is an ache in my soul that my children

1321
01:59:58.880 --> 02:00:06.640
are not little cuddly babies anymore. Another darling children nevertheless. But I miss babies. And to

1322
02:00:06.640 --> 02:00:14.960
me, heaven is my wife and I, whom I love, having a family that never ends and that we're able to

1323
02:00:16.400 --> 02:00:21.760
give life to this countless number of future children. That someday will be born on a world

1324
02:00:21.760 --> 02:00:27.280
just like us. That's a pretty cosmic grand view. But to me, the purpose of life is to

1325
02:00:28.160 --> 02:00:37.120
show Heavenly Father that we are worthy of more and not just end into an nihilistic blackness when we die.

1326
02:00:39.440 --> 02:00:41.200
Thank you. We're done. My pleasure.

1327
02:00:45.040 --> 02:00:49.760
If there's anything we need, it is connection, especially in the world we're living in today.

1328
02:00:49.760 --> 02:00:54.800
And that is exactly why we created these conversation cards because on this show when I sit here with

1329
02:00:54.800 --> 02:01:00.640
my guest and have those deep intimate conversations, this remarkable thing happens time and time again.

1330
02:01:00.640 --> 02:01:05.760
We feel deeply connected to each other. At the end of every episode, the guest I'm interviewing

1331
02:01:05.760 --> 02:01:11.040
leaves a question for the next guest and we've turned them into these conversation cards. And

1332
02:01:11.040 --> 02:01:15.280
we've added these twist cards to make your conversations even more interesting. And there are so

1333
02:01:15.280 --> 02:01:19.760
many more twists along the way with the conversation cards. This is the brand new edition. And for

1334
02:01:19.760 --> 02:01:25.440
the first time ever, I've added to the pack this gold card, which is an exclusive question from me.

1335
02:01:25.440 --> 02:01:31.680
But I'm only putting the gold cards in the first run of conversation cards. So get yours now before

1336
02:01:31.680 --> 02:01:35.680
the limited edition gold cards are all gone. Head to the link in the description below.