018: How Insulin Resistance, Glucose, and Diabetes Affect Mental Health, with Kyle Rootsaert
Speaker 1
[00.00.00]
Throw away my pharmacy education and said, okay, I'll take the biochemistry and the rest. I'm just going
to toss and go, okay, this is what I have. This is what I'm working with. Patients are coming back and
going, man, I feel amazing. I'm not diabetic anymore. And I'm like, this is working. Holy crap. I wasn't
really planning on that. I thought it was going to work in some patient, like, no, it's working in in 100%
of these patients because what feeds the body feeds the brain. And you can't have one without the other.
Feed it well and it will reward you well. Hey, welcome back to Real Food Mental Health with Cody Cox.
Today's guest is Kyle Roosa. He is a former pharmacist and a passionate advocate for patient education,
particularly in managing chronic diseases like type two diabetes. After an experience consulting with a
newly diagnosed diabetic patient, he realized the health care system often focuses on treating symptoms
rather than addressing root causes. Kyle discovered that diabetes is not a death sentence. Lifestyle
changes can significantly impact health outcomes. He now utilizes remote monitoring and personalized
data to empower individuals to take control of their health. So just a heads up, I did use AI on this
episode to help clean up the audio quality. For whatever reason, the recording wasn't great initially. Um,
but the problem with AI is sometimes it creates some very strange background noise, so hopefully that's
not too prominent as you listen to this episode. But if it is, I apologize. Welcome to the Real Food Mental
Health podcast, where we explore the powerful connection between mental and physical health. My
name is Cody Cox, a holistic nutritional psychotherapist, and I'm here to guide you on a journey to true
wellness, mind, body, and spirit. If you're tired of quick fixes and want real solutions that address the root
cause, you're in the right place. Let. Let's get started on your path to lasting wellness.
Speaker 2
[00.02.02]
So, Kyle, you were telling me about how you were a pharmacist. What led you to making
Speaker 1
[00.02.08]
that change? There was. There's a lot of different reasons. There's there's personal. There's professional.
Probably the the one that struck me the most. And here's probably the best example. Here I am
dispensing a medication and I'm asking the patient about some side effects. And they're telling me that
the side effects that I'm asking them about is what the doctor just dismissed as, as just getting older,
things like, I can't remember, I've got this brain fog and I can't remember certain things I can't remember,
like things that I don't normally lose. And when you ask them these questions, their speech is slurred. I'm
like, okay, so you either had a stroke or you're really finding it difficult to find words to get out. And so.
I'll even ask the person next to him, say, hey, is this is this normal? Yeah, this is normal. I'll ask him
about muscle aches. They have tons of muscle aches. Oh, that's just, uh. I'm just really sore. I don't like
moving very much because of it. I'm not going on walks. I'm not going to the gym. I'm not doing
anything. Because really, I'm suffering from the side effects of a drug that like, literally is it's so helpful
for very few. And I think that that's 20% of a population that's already had a heart attack. So primary
prevention. In other words, taking this cholesterol lowering medication called statin is only beneficial
1%, 1% of the cases. So this you're not helping. You're not making people live longer. You are actually
shortening lifespan because people are dealing with these side effects. And it's the side effects that I go,
no, we can't deal with this. You should not be taking this medication specially. And this is really
important. Women. There is no data for women. There's none. Primary prevention women. And you
threw the women in with the men. What's good for the goose must be good for the wo. Stop right there.
Because last night. Tech women have different hormones. And those hormones affect your lipids, your
cholesterol. So chasing this LDL particle and screaming at it and pointing your finger at it is, um, it's
really harmful. And like, literally what what LDL is doing at the scene of the crime. It's part of the this
immune response. So blood clot, some sort of injury typically followed by a blood clot. Now this is thisis also theory I have to say. And then you have a migration of glycated and oxidized LDL small LDL
particles. So that's really important for people to I think to understand is that these small dense LDL
particles yes, it's LDL particles. They're like sand. They go everywhere. And they get glycated thanks to
elevated glucose, and they get oxidized thanks to reactive oxygen species, Ros or oxidative stress. So it's
glycated. It's oxidized, which really stimulates a macrophage, a giant white blood cell, to go into the area.
And it becomes a foam cell. And then when you look at everything under a microscope, you go, wow,
look at all that cholesterol sitting there in that foam cell, and the foam cell's dead. Well, why is it there?
Right? This is part of the normal immune immune system. A small, dense LDL particle is there at the
scene of the crime that wouldn't normally be there if you had big, fluffy LDL particles, big fluffy ones
that don't get glycated and oxidized, and they're readily recycled by the body rapidly by the liver in just a
few days, these small, dense LDL particles take like a week. They take a long time to leave your body.
So the question is why don't we look at fractionated lipid. So why don't we just do a little bit more
technology than what we're currently using to look at lipids from the 1950s. And we start looking okay.
You have a you have an LDL number. Tell me what do they look like? What do these things look like?
Are they small dense LDL particles? Are they sand and can go anywhere in your body or are they big
fluffy ones? I want the big fluffy ones that just kind of bounce up against things, right? So like beach
balls, boom, right? Small dense LDL particles are like bullets or like, what would you rather get hit by a
beach ball, right? Or would you like to get hit by a golf ball flying pretty quick? Right? I take the beach
ball. I want my LDL particles to be big and fluffy, like beach balls. And the way that you can know that
you can do this higher technology and actually spin, take all the all the LDL particles and spin them
really fast in a centrifuge. And you would get these different all LDL that aren't the same, right? You get
these different size LDL. You can make a inference of what the quality is of your the size of your LDL
particles by looking at triglycerides and HDL. So if the triglyceride over the HDL is above two, the
majority of your LDL particles are unfortunately the dangerous golf balls, the other small dense LDL
particles. So it's really important that we look at lipids differently. We gotta look at this data very, very
like just flip it over and go. Does LDL correlate to cardiovascular disease and death. No okay. Metabolic
syndrome does. Or shall we say, um, let's call it a better name. Let's call it in some resistance syndrome. I
think that's a more appropriate name,
Speaker 2
[00.08.25]
right? I think so,
Speaker 1
[00.08.27]
yes, we can and we could say it's in some resistance syndrome that makes complete sense 100% of the
time. Right. That's the finding. That's what nobody's measuring. I want to get to that because that really
pisses me off that we're not measuring that. But the metabolic syndrome is those five things, right? It's it's
high glucose. So diabetes expanded waistline. Right. So bigger in the belly section. High blood pressure.
And then the last two are really important. We don't I didn't say LDL yet. I'm never gonna say LDL. It's
triglycerides. And as HDL, what are your triglycerides and your HDL your blood pressure your glucose.
And how much central waist do you have? Do you have a big belly? This is the kind of fat that we don't
want. This is the visceral fat. This is what cortisol drives. Cortisol is wicked. Stress is wicked, as you
know I mean it. Cortisol it is going to decompose muscle to put fat in your belly section. That's driving
metabolic syndrome. Stress is driving metabolic syndrome for sure. You definitely noticed a dissonance
in the way you were practicing. Something was wrong. Yeah.
Speaker 2
[00.09.43]
You made a transition.
Speaker 1[00.09.46]
Yeah. What what did you
Speaker 2
[00.09.47]
do as you were making that transition to to learn more about
Speaker 1
[00.09.52]
this
Speaker 2
[00.09.53]
major flaw in the medical system? Like what what kinds of information were you looking for? Where did
you get any training? Things
Speaker 1
[00.10.01]
like that. So going back to that patient consultation, which the pharmacist is responsibility is right. Here's
a medication. This is what it does. This is what it's for. Basic. Sorry it isn't worth a hill of beans. A
pharmacist consultation is not helpful. Um, a patient asked me why why? Why do I have this glucose
monitor? Why am I taking this metformin thing? What do you. What is this all about? I'm like, wait a
minute. The doctor is supposed to tell you that you're diabetic because this is this isn't my job. I don't I
don't do this. I don't hand out diagnosis. I don't even have any lab. I don't I don't even know what the
heck you're talking about. I don't know, I don't even know how to help this person. Call it the doctor.
Yeah. Um, the patient's A1, C or their average blood glucose over the last three months is above
whatever number 150in this in this particular case. So I find this out from the doctor. I'm like, okay, so
you have not had a discussion with this patient about their new diagnosis of diabetes. And now I've got a
patient that I'm telling about their new diagnosis. And she thinks that she's got a death sentence. She's
crying. This isn't my job. That's what I keep saying. This isn't my job. And then she asked me the
question that I couldn't. I really it has stuck with me since the beginning. And that is. What do I do? What
do I eat? How do I live? And I'm like, you know what I. She's like, do I take this medication with food
and why? I'm like, you know, I, I should have a better answer then I don't know. That's really
embarrassing. And I don't accept that. I don't know, but I'm going to get back to you because I'm gonna
look this up. And at that point, I'm like, all my education was carbohydrates is dextrose. And it comes in
a vial. Protein is amino acid, and it comes in 8.5% fats, lipids. It's ten and 20%. And and this is total
parenteral nutrition right. This is how a pharmacist understands nutrition. This is how we were educated
on nutrition. So I realized very quickly I'm like these people get no education from the doctor. I thought
that you got educated. And then as I'm doing more research on diabetes, I'm like, there's just no way. You
cannot cover every aspect of your life because diabetes affects every aspect of your life. There is no way
that this person can walk away and have any sort of understanding about their new diagnosis. And when
they go back to the doctor for that 2 or 3 minute consult, they're never going to get the right information.
They're not going to get any of their questions answered, and then they're going to say, hey, I want you to
do this. And you come back in six months and we'll see how it worked. That's a long time to wait. It's
way too long. So what I, I realized that there's this massive disconnect with patient education. So I was
like, okay, can we get certified? So I started taking classes. I became board certified in diabetes
management. I started looking like, hey, I'll, I'll do these diabetes classes and we can build Medicare,
right? We're going to start doing all these. They get eight hours. And I loved it. And we were doing, um,
free diabetes support classes in the pharmacy during regular hours. We were doing it after hours. I was
doing it anywhere that people would listen to me and my my boss even told me he's like, you know, I
can't pay you for this. You're just having way too much fun. You enjoy it too much, I guess. I don't know,work is supposed to be suffering. Like, as you can tell, I'm really enthused about this. I this is has been
the most. This has been the most exciting time to be alive for myself. It's like I've been waiting for so
long the last ten years, hoping that someday that preventative medicine would pay. I. You know what it
is. I couldn't say no. After these patients got this diabetes self-management training course. So it's eight
hours. Every diabetic gets it. It's paid for by, uh, Medicare, Medicaid, Medicare. It's covered. It's a free
class. Rarely do anybody does anybody ever take the class. And that class is sponsored by, um, the
diabetes education, you know, Ada American Diabetes Association. So you can imagine how it's skewed.
And this is something that's really, really important. The American Diabetes Association and the
American Heart Association basically adopt the same diet, which, as you know, is a low fat diet. But
what's crazy? When you go and you do your research and we talked about open payments data.cms.gov.
You can look up doctors right. You can look up who's sitting who's sitting on these guideline panels. And
when Sarah Hallberg says ignore the guidelines I said, okay, why. What are you talking about? I didn't
realize that you can look up tax records from 2018 of physicians. As long as you have their information,
you can go online and find out where they're getting their money. Okay. So if you look up these people,
you'll see that the American Diabetes Association puts peoples on on committees and panels that are paid
for by industry. And you can do your own homework yourself. I did, and in 2015, I found almost three
quarters of $1 million was going out from Big Pharma over the last, I don't know how many years, uh, of
how much money they were getting from who? Big Pharma was donating so much money and they were
sitting on the board. So what's crazy is that who are the biggest manufacturers of insulin? Lilly I think it's
Sanofi and is Novo Nordisk. They make insulin products. Okay. Type one diabetes is to lower insulin.
You got to bring it up. Okay. That's normal. You need insulin to bring up your insulin level. Normally
insulin levels stays very tightly arranged. This in a very tight range. It's right here and it's typically 2 to 6
okay. That's healthy. That's optimal. That's by the way 7% of the population. The rest is north of six. So
type two diabetes is too much insulin. It needs to come down. So why would you inject. It
Speaker 2
[00.16.21]
doesn't make any sense, does it?
Speaker 1
[00.16.23]
No, it's a very large donation from those companies every single year to make sure that you and I don't
understand that insulin is hurtful. This makes people fat. And if you look at the data with insulin, when
they inject it in type one and type two is definitely a benefit for type one. But type two, you increase the
risk of all cause mortality because people are dying. Cancer increases when you inject insulin. You are
taking your body from a basically a fat burning mode to a fat storage mode. So what happens? The dose
always goes up. They developed their own resistance to the drug to to insulin like we all do, right? So
they developed this insulin resistance. Dose always goes up and they always gain weight. How does a
drug get approved that causes weight gain, causes cardiovascular disease, insulin resistance. But you still
have it available to people with the wrong diagnosis, their insulin levels here. This is the secret. This is
what you are taught in school is that. Oh you have. They don't even tell you that you have high insulin.
They they'll say you gotta lower the glucose because the focus is only on the glucose. If you're looking at
the glucose, you're going to miss the insulin resistance that started increasing ten years before your
glucose finally rose.
Speaker 2
[00.18.01]
I've learned that usually the major flaws in the methodology. So, for example, I've heard I'm not a major
expert on the FDA or anything, but I have heard that the FDA is actually a very small organization. It's
not as big as we think it is, so they don't have the resources to really look into things before they, quote
unquote, approveSpeaker 1
[00.18.25]
certain products
Speaker 2
[00.18.25]
and locations. But then also because they're so small, I think they rely on outside sources of data. And
usually I don't I don't know if it's coming directly from the manufacturers, but. You have to wonder, like,
where is that data coming from? And is it biased because the FDA, they only see that in data. They're not
part of this studies. They're not controlling the studies. They're not they're not looking over the
methodology, methodology to make sure it's sound. But then they see the data and they're like, oh, it
looks like you've done your research and it looks like your product is working, so therefore will approve
Speaker 1
[00.19.05]
it. Yeah. And that's exactly what happened in Covid vaccines. Holy cow. Apparently they can do it really
fast. Six weeks. It's amazing. Okay, so when it comes to the statin data, all this data about cholesterol.
They said that the side effects that I was talking about, this muscle breakdown and this cognitive decline
wasn't very common, very small amount what the real practice says, what I've experienced, what I've
noticed isn't the tiny little black box warning for a very small percentage, like like 1 to 3%. Now I'm
seeing a third. I'm seeing a third of the one out of the three of these patients. When I will cancel them,
they will go, yeah, I've noticed that. Right. So we mean dispensing as being part of the problem. What do
I tell the patient? Go off of it and see if your head clears. It's actually really good advice. And it's actually
has been done in a study. Removes the satin. Cognitive function improved. They got baseline cognitive
function improved off of the statins. Recharge them later with the statins. Cognitive cognitive function
declined. These statins are not good for our brain. We need the cholesterol. There's. So I think I feel like
um before I was I felt like I was going crazy and I was on a deserted island. Like people are not not even
receptive to this idea. They'll call it a conspiracy theory. And I'm going, wait a minute. Cholesterol is not
the culprit here, right? I've known for a long time it's. You're not. You're not measuring insulin. Why
aren't you measuring this fasting insulin? You're confused. You're confused about insulin because of the
Ada. Because of the American Heart Association. They they're covering it up. Even if
Speaker 2
[00.21.01]
you're insulin is out of balance, there's a reason for that. Like, you don't want to just jump straight to
medication.
Speaker 1
[00.21.07]
But we look at the glucose and we go, oh my gosh, your glucose is because we got a drug that lowers
glucose. But what's crazy is that that concept, that insulin is just a hormone that lowers glucose. As if
that's the only job. I mean, this thing, this is probably the most important hormone, like literally the most
important hormone. This is the anabolic king. This is this is what drives a cell to store energy and to
enlarge and right. The cell gets bigger and bigger. Bigger. Think about a fat cell. If you were a fat cell
and you started expanding so much. First of all, it's crowded in there. How can you even move around if
you're a mitochondria, which is the powerhouse of a cell, and you're absolutely necessary for this cell.
How is it going to move around? Right. It's it's squished into this space. And it doesn't want the signal of
insulin, which is to store fat and not burn it. You're going to be good at storing. You better be really good
at not burning it. Right. You can't, like, be putting water in and taking it out at the same time, right? So.
Storing carbohydrate or energy utilization is controlled by insulin. Insulin. When you eat carbs or when
your insulin levels elevated, you're primarily going to burn carbohydrates, not fat. You're going to storefat. You're not going to access fats. You can't access fat until the insulin is low. That's when you can
access your fat. So we got to bring our insulin levels down. This should be an all out war in the world to
lower our insulin levels. Everybody should be walking around with the number because that's your
insulin resistance number that tells you that your insulin level is starting to rise. It's elevated. It's above
six. Typically it's well above ten. I've seen 50 super high insulin levels. Right. So these people walking
around with those super high insulin, no one's telling them that's the crime. That's when I get really angry
and upset because because of this misinformation campaign. And that the associations. I don't even know
why they exist anymore. Do we need them or do we have enough science on our own? I think we have
plenty of science on our own. That shows when you lower insulin, you don't burn carbs, you start burning
fat. And we all got plenty of fat and it's so stupid to keep burning carbs. This tank is tiny. It is. Even if
your carb tank was totally full, it's less than a pound of energy, less than a pound of equivalent fat energy.
You have a half a pound essentially of of of energy here. And how many pounds of fat do we have?
Plenty. Even if you're a 10% body fat and you weigh £200, you still have £20. You still have a lot of
energy. Do that. Do the math. It's like 70,000 calories. You could go a long time with 70,000 calories and
be very active even, right? You can't access that fat until insulin levels drop. And our lifestyle is what's
driving those insulin levels. It's the stress we're putting on those mitochondria, especially, say, the fat
cells that are trying to expand under the influence of insulin. But finally, that fat cell has to come to a
point where it has to say nope. Insulin. If you keep telling me to store, I will explode. First of all, I'm not
getting enough oxygen over here. The fat cell that's expanded his hypoxic. We don't want cells with low
oxygen cells that have low oxygen. Because poor circulation. Because of obesity. It's called what it is.
The cells are getting too big for the for the the supply of energy, the blood supply. So now what happens
is that cell has to ignore, um, that hypoxia can stimulate cancer.
Speaker 2
[00.25.34]
And I want to point out to you were talking about how most of us have a fat issue. There are a lot of
skinny people walking around America,
Speaker 1
[00.25.42]
but we
Speaker 2
[00.25.44]
might still have the fat on the inside, right? I mean, many of us have a fatty liver.
Speaker 1
[00.25.48]
Absolutely. But again, once again, it's all just in some resistance. Why are we measuring it? Why aren't
we measuring insulin in every single patient? Because the American Diabetes Association wants you to
go. No, we don't measure insulin. How many patients? I go, hey, you need a measure of insulin? Oh,
they're not dying. They're not diabetic. They don't need it like. No. They do. Can you get me a lipid
panel? I really want to know because those people with insulin resist I think everybody it's a $10 test.
Everybody has has that right to to have an insulin level. So during Covid I would see these patients hit
the emergency room door. And I'm like, okay, what's their lipid panel. What's their triglyceride to HDL
ratio. How much what is their insulin level. Okay. So what set them up for this. We know that insulin
resistance played a huge role in that spike protein attachment. I mean, talk about I hate to say it, I gain a
function. It's kind of scary when it comes to like you pick like the perfect you pick the really the perfect
virus for that. You picked a way to knock out 93% of the population, because 93% of the population has
an insulin resistance problem. When I'm measuring. Basically, if I die tomorrow, I'll be like, remember
the insulin? It's the insulin. That's what it's about.Speaker 2
[00.27.09]
Almost all of us has a metabolic disorder and just this glycemic. There are different names for it insulin
resistance. But what does that do to mental health? Brain energy.
Speaker 1
[00.27.22]
Yeah. Well you're you're getting to that that mitochondria and our lifestyle that damages that
mitochondria. Because when you damage the mitochondria it has to ignore the signal of insulin that says
insulin. No sorry. We have to ignore you. So what happens when the mitochondria of all of our cells
throughout our body have to ignore you as to ignore insulin? Insulin levels start to rise. And what we see
in chronic disease is that when insulin levels rise, what is the effect on different tissues, organs that
elevated that hyperinsulinemia state? Like for mental illness. That's that's Alzheimer's
Speaker 2
[00.28.06]
declined cognitive function. Right.
Speaker 1
[00.28.09]
But poor a hypo glucose metabolism in the brain because of an insulin resistance throughout the body.
Because cells have to ignore the the insulin signal because you've damaged that mitochondria. And now
we're seeing systemic effects. We're all seeing symptoms like you're saying of the same disease. Totally
agree with you. Why are we seeing all these things. And we can't figure out the patterns as to how they're
interconnected. And it's through metabolism and through that hormone insulin. And probably on a more
microscopic level, it's the mitochondria, the powerhouses of the cell when we damage those through
lifestyle. And what I mean, there's so many different mitochondrial toxins. I mean, it's just go for it. Our
Speaker 2
[00.28.57]
mitochondria are constantly bombarded with toxins.
Speaker 1
[00.29.01]
Yes. But
Speaker 2
[00.29.02]
I mean, there are natural processes in which the body helps to get rid of those toxins. But I interviewed
somebody recently who kind of likened it
Speaker 1
[00.29.11]
to just a
Speaker 2[00.29.13]
volcano, where essentially your volcano can erupt on its own as it builds up toxins. Right? But the fuller
and fuller it gets, the more it needs a little bit of help to start that eruption. And so that's where, like, you
hear a lot of speculation where people are like, oh, well, detoxing is just a fad. It's not necessary. And it's
like I can kind of see that if we were healthy, that would be totally just a fad and it would not be
necessary. But sometimes we do need a little bit of help through diet and lifestyle, and maybe even some
therapeutic diets that are a little bit more restrictive. Hey, just a quick break and then we'll get back to the
episode. If you've been listening to previous episodes, at least in the last few weeks, you've probably
heard me talk. About the free giveaway that I'm doing, and it's actually a contest. If you'd like to enter.
Go to Beaver Creek wellness.com/giveaway. The more you participate, the more entries you get, thus
increasing your chances of winning. What do you win? You win a Garmin fitness tracker and your choice
between either free entry in my Restart Nutrition Group program or two individualized nutrition sessions
with me for a total value of $650. Go to Beaver Creek wellness.com/giveaway, but be quick about it if
you're listening to this episode on the day of release. The giveaway ends today, February 28th. Beaver
Creek wellness.com/giveaway.
Speaker 1
[00.30.42]
Okay, so we want to avoid all mitochondrial toxins okay. And and lifestyle does a great job of that by
being sedentary right. And hypoglycemia okay. These these changes in glucose this increases oxidative
stress on those mitochondria okay. So mitochondria toxins you can look at this glyphosate. It's it's I don't
know 130 different known carcinogens that brussel sprouts has. It's it's how are we attacking our own
mitochondria. Right. So you want to live a lifestyle where you don't damage your mitochondria. You try
to help your mitochondria. This is an all out war to keep the mitochondria around, to keep our brain
healthy, keep our muscles healthy. And it's all going to come back to energy. And energy comes from the
mitochondria. So how do we make really good, healthy mitochondria? We live a lifestyle that is
incredibly low. I say incredibly low carbohydrate. And I would even argue the fact that I don't think man
is really ever experienced a glucose, say, above 120, 140. And that was in the in the few short weeks that
fruit was available. All the other evidence tells me that many men burned fat, not not glucose for energy.
Carbohydrates were in a very, very rare short supply. They're all seasonal. It would. Unless you live near
the equator. It would be very difficult to live off of that. Fat's a better energy source. It's essential. Same
thing with amino acids. You must eat essential amino acids and essential fats every day. So I'm saying a
good lifestyle will include those. And when you start doing the math and start figuring out how much
protein you need, for me, it's 150g a day. Not the easiest thing to get in a day, right? Right. And then
must come those essential amino acids. Must come from. I will tell you right now, animal source is way
better and it has the highest absorption. Okay, so amino acid that come from animals better absorption.
And it comes with what it needs which is fat. And this is kind of weird, but you can't change biology
when you eat the fat with the protein, you're basically giving your body what it needs to create an
enzyme that helps you break down the protein.
Speaker 2
[00.33.05]
And fat and protein always come together in nature. Like, why? Why would we separate that if it if it
comes together in nature, right. It doesn't make any sense. There's a reason they come together. So let's
eat them together.
Speaker 1
[00.33.19]
Yeah, but I think we're just we gotta stop fighting over this vegan. Vegetarian stuff is. I just want to come
together and say, yeah, let's work together. Let's get healthy together. Here's the science, here's the data.
Okay, so we know from carnivores that they don't have gut issues, they don't have diabetes, they don't
have hypoglycemia. And when I do my own monitoring, so I do glucose monitoring for all my patients
as well as myself. You got to look at glucose. You gotta look at other factors like stress and sleep. Wouldyou put all those together? Then you can start tweaking out a lifestyle that goes all right. This maximizes
my metabolic health or my mitochondrial health by going long periods of time, say, without eating.
Autophagy. Autophagy. Eat yourself. Basically self eating. You will replace old mitochondria with new.
When a mitochondria breaks down it has to be recycled. Cellular products have to be recycled and and
replenished. But it's like a five year old's room. If insulin's always there, it's always pushing into storage.
Right. And it never says clean up your room if you're constantly eating. And insulin is always slightly
elevated so the room never gets cleaned, the fat cell never gets, um, recycled and renewed. It doesn't. The
mitochondria in those fat cells or mitochondria throughout your entire body don't get replaced. If insulin
levels are always elevated, you must go a period of time while insulin levels are low so the body can
undergo autophagy. This is fasting. This is this is a Nobel Prize. I don't know what year it was, but is that
is where you're that's if you think about it, that's really longevity because you're taking an old
mitochondria that's damaged, not producing enough energy. And then you're replacing it with the new
one. But here's what's important. Epigenetics, which you are hinting at before epigenetics is it's cedar
soil. Right. Let's go back to this mitochondria. Because this is the basis of energy. This is also the basis
of disease. When your mitochondria can't make enough energy to protect your DNA, it has to create
almost like a kind of like think of it like a cover. It has because this DNA gets assaulted several times a
day, like thousands of times a day. Okay. From Ross reactive oxygen species. And that rips holes through
things like bullets. And I like to think of the mitochondria. Maybe this is a better analogy, at least for me.
It is because I had a potbelly stove and a potbelly stove. It could get hot, and you close that door and
dampen that thing down and you could get that thing glowing. It is just glowing nicely. Right? You open
that door, especially if you put like the wrong kind of wood, like pine or something like that in there
instead of oak. It burns really hot and fast. Hello, carbohydrates? Um, it pops those, those hot embers out,
right? And they're just going everywhere. They're like little bullets and they're ripping through things.
They're ripping through your DNA. You're ripping through your cells, damaging membranes. Right?
This is not without its consequences. This is a mitochondria that's exploding. It's dying. And it's going to
create a whole lot of damage because oxygen is toxic and it starts spewing everywhere. And it requires
repair in order to repair that cell's DNA from being misread. Creating mutations. You need a healthy
mitochondria that can protect it. So what do we see in cancer? I don't know. What do we have in cancer
cells? A bunch of damaged mitochondria. And the cell is not using the mitochondria is bypassing the
mitochondria. And it's just what we call fermentation is taking glucose and generating lactate. And it can
do this very rapidly. And the lactate can go back to the liver and come back again. So this is a system that
cancer cells utilize for their metabolism, their energy. They can get a lot of it, especially in people who
love sugar and eat a lot of glucose carbohydrates. This will encourage the growth of tumor cells. This is
the basically the metabolic theory of Thomas Siegfried behind cancer. There's a lot of cancers that are
increasing. Why is it genetics. It can't be. It just screams no it's not genetic. What is the common. What is
the common thread amongst these cells? It's it's an old system that somebody worked out back in the.
Forever ago. Otto Warburg 19. I think it was 1923. He's like, wait a minute. All these cancer cells have
the same strange mechanism there. Their mitochondria are miss shaped, and because they're misshapen,
they can't use the mitochondria. So they're using other things in the cell to try to generate energy. And
they do this without oxygen. So when we were talking about hypoxia and obesity, when you start getting
low oxygen, you're stimulating cancer cell growth because that's where they thrive without oxygen. This
fermentation that happens outside away from the mitochondria and a different, different mechanism an
old, old metabolic mechanism in cancer cells. It does it without oxygen. It doesn't need any oxygen. It
can't do that system without oxygen. Normally you have plenty of oxygen and you use the mitochondria
and you get a lot more energy. But instead, because you got plenty of substrate, plenty of glucose, you
can make tons of energy very rapidly. We want to stay away from these situations, right? We want to do
what it takes. Keep our insulin levels low. Right. So you live a low insulin lifestyle. You're keeping your
carbohydrates, your stress of your. And we can kind of like we use glucose as somewhat of a proxy when
we talk about this continuous glucose monitors. The CMS led the Freestyle Libre and the Dexcom G7 or
whatever it is. They have these sensors and we use glucose to kind of gauge what what your insulin level
would be. So if we see someone who who eats something, we'll watch their their blood sugar start at 90,
go all the way up to like 180 and then drop down to 50 liter. You can see and you know that their insulin
level just skyrocketed right there. In some level they are in fat storage mode. They are in fat storage
mode until that insulin level drops. But matter of fact, they make so much insulin that that's what dropped
their blood sugar to 50 about three hours later. And now they're ready to eat again. That's the vicious
cycle that no one nobody's showing them. Just like I'm screaming about glucose. I'm screaming about
cgms. I'm screaming about insulin and glucose and we need to measure it. And every arm needs acontinuous glucose monitor. Everybody at some point in their life needs to learn this. They need to
understand what it takes to understand their own tracking what's going on inside their body. So what I
have found throughout the years is nothing replaces education. Patient education is key. If you don't put
money into education, they're never going to know what's going what's happening inside their body. I can
tell you what to eat and it could be a whole bunch of salads and things you don't even like, maybe things
that even give you diarrhea. I don't even know. I could tell you to eat all these things and you have all
these problems, but the one thing that would fix it would have been that glucose, because I would have
said, do what you can to keep those glucose levels down. But also, very importantly, make sure you get
your essential fats and you get your essential amino acids, and you're going to have a hard time doing
that when you start eating plants, because you don't have the room for it. For me to eat 150g of protein is
a lot of that. You're talking a pound and a half, basically of meat. Ground beef. Right. So what is that?
You know, McDonald's. I had this the other day. I had three quarter pounders for like $8, right. That's my
that's and that's like half of my day supply with the with the protein. Right. So what I'm saying is you can
you can get by and get all the essential amino acids and essential fats doing the right kind of diet that
won't make your glucose levels rise. And we need to know what that is. You need to figure that out.
Everybody individually. You also need to know how are you going to get your insulin level down? How
are you going to get your glucose levels down? How is lifestyle affecting glucose? I love this ring. This
is the aura ring. I know it's not an aura commercial, but I love this stuff because the ring as well as your
your watches excellent for monitoring your sleep and stress which affect glucose. You get a crappy
night's sleep. And we were talking about before this so talking about um, why we Sleep by Matthew
Walker. Yeah, I mean, your glucose levels are elevated when you have a crappy night's sleep. Do you
want that? No, I want to go to bed at the right time. I want to look at my sleep. I want to I want to set my
good night's sleep the day before. Right? I like getting up in the morning. I'm getting lots of light. Light
is so critical. As you probably know, light is brutal for your own timing of your sleep. When I get up, go
for a walk, get grounded, see the sun? Where is it? In the sky? I can time my melatonin release. I can go
to bed at the same time. Whatever my chronological time for sleep is. Right? Because that's that's the
optimal time. And then when I sleep, I'm looking at my sleep very carefully. I'm looking at, okay, did I
maximize my sleep last night? What's my readiness score. What's my HRV that has to do with my
cardiac health, right. What is, um, what's what's my respiratory rate? What's my body temperature? And
so I look at these things not just in myself, but in patients that I track. And what I find is those people that
get their glucose levels down and they start hovering like 70 to 90 all day. They have this crazy effect.
They start going, you know, I haven't eaten in a while. And in order to get my glucose levels down, I
really have to probably only eat once or twice a day. And there's they're not. And I'm getting my protein.
They'll start saying, you know what, my energy level is better. My pain is kind of gone away. Like I used
to have this knee pain or this back pain, and it's improved. My sleep is better, my cognitive function is
better. I am less depressed and I'm less addicted. Um, Matt Mike Collins from I think it's the sugar
addiction or sugar addict. He talks about how when you can fix their metabolism and start letting this
brain run better. You start improving cognitive function. But but behavioral um, aspects of life behavioral
like these sugar addiction, sugar addiction is real. You have to come off of that. It takes like a week to
withdraw. It's for real. And if people are watching this and they've got mood disorders, it's because of this
sugar addiction. But I want to tell you something that's really, really important. It's not just, oh, I feel this
when I eat like this. No, I want you to measure because you can't manage what you're not measuring.
You need to measure glucose. And what you'll find is that people who, when they eat, like when I first
get them as patients, they are. They are all over the place. It looks like a roller coaster ride. And you
know what? They're not even eating their blood sugars. Up and down. Up and down, feeling good,
depressed, feeling good, depressed.
Speaker 2
[00.45.29]
And part of that too is their their stress hormones. Cortisol helps to raise blood sugar. And so even if
you're even if you're not eating, if you're feeling stressed, your glucose can go up, right. And so it's going
to go up and down anyway without food. And so I was just thinking too, like you're talking so much
about stuff that is totally relevant, really good information. And a lot of it sounds physical.
Speaker 1[00.45.53]
Sorry, but
Speaker 2
[00.45.54]
but listeners are probably thinking, how does this tie into mental health? It totally ties into mental health
as you think about it, holistically and with critical thinking. He's he's talking about brain energy,
essentially the mitochondria and how to get healthy mitochondria to send energy to the brain for proper
brain function. Yeah. I mean, some of these these neurons got 8 to 10,000 mitochondria. So how in the
world are we thinking that we can damage these little guys and think that there's no consequences
associated with this? That is insane. We're damaging our mitochondria every single day that we don't go
to the gym. Right? These machines that are released from muscles that help your brain. This BDNF
allows your brain to function better and roll with it. Right? We talk about well-being increases in these
patients. When people get their glucose levels in this very like okay. So I look at variability as a very
important, um, metric when it comes to mental health. So we're talking about glucose fluctuation. People
whose glucose levels don't fluctuate very much have the least amount the least amount of mental
problems okay. Less depression less schizophrenia. Right. They do better. And that's that's the work of
Georgia eed when we can when we can keep glucose levels nice and moderate. People are fasting right.
Insulin levels are low. They're allowing their brain to take back control and allowing the brain to run on a
better energy and allowing the brain to run on ketones rather than glucose. So measuring ketones is a
very important aspect. So you want to improve your mental health, measure ketones, get them above 0.5.
So you're fasting in the morning. It needs to be above 0.5 right. So we're looking at that. So when your
ketones are above 0.5 your blood glucose isn't isn't going up and down very much. So you're not having
these mood swings of this roller coaster ride. When you get off of the carbohydrates brain energy
improves and gets better. You start feeling way better. Best thing you can do if you're if you have a you
feeling like crap, not eat, go outside, go move. Movement is medicine that lowers your glucose very
gradually, not a sprint because the sprint will raise it. But there are things that you can do in your
everyday lifestyle that can that can modulate that glucose. You talked about cortisol. Normally,
depending on your sleep pattern, you have a cortisol spike. I have a cortisol spike. Most people have a
cortisol spike in the morning about 30 minutes before they get up. That stress hormone gets that's natural.
That's normal. You want
Speaker 1
[00.48.39]
that? That's a beautiful thing. But I will. I'll have patients that I'm watching their glucose levels nice and
good. They're doing great. And then you go home at 5:00 and the blood sugar goes up 100 points. I'm
like, what are you doing? What are you eating? Okay, so I, I request that my patients put in, like, records,
kind of a food diary. Tell me what you eat. I want to know what I'm looking at here. What is this big
spike like? What's going on? So she didn't leave a record, and I'm like, hey, you know, I, I do this in real
time. I text, text patients going, can you get me a glucose like. Or can you get me, um, an idea of what
you ate at this time and they'll look at it. I didn't eat anything like. Well, what do you mean you didn't eat
anything? I remember this was one of my first patients. She goes, no, I went home to my son and I'm
ready to strangle him, so just skyrockets. It went from 100 pretty safe to 200 fold, full on. And that was
just an emotional reaction. So what are you going to do? We can't avoid these emotional responses like
we this is our feelings. We want to tamper them down. We want to feel in control of these. But I want
you to see your glucose. I want you to lay eyes on it instead of just, oh, man, something must be going on
like, no, let's look at your data. Let's look at your glucose level that's elevated, and let's look at your other
data. Let's look at your aura ring. Let's look at your sleep and your stress and go, oh yeah, you've been
really stressed lately. This is what my numbers are. And maybe you get a foot rub out of it. I don't know,
maybe you get something cool out of it. I don't you can say, hey, I had a really stressful day. I had four
hours and 15 minutes of stress. Oh, you had five. Okay, I guess I'll be working on this. Not for you, but,
like, you could you can really dial in your lifestyle and go, okay. I'm going to lower my glucose. I'm
going to try to manage my stress. But if you're skyrocketing from some sort of emotional stress, you're
going to do your your intervention. Right. But you're also want to go for a walk, get outside. That willnaturally lower the glucose because we don't need spikes up here. We want to bring those down. How
often are we emotionally distressed and we never move a movement? Yeah, I
Speaker 2
[00.50.54]
mean, we spend so much time sitting in chairs staring at screens because honestly, most of us do a lot of
internet work nowadays.
Speaker 1
[00.51.02]
But what is
Speaker 2
[00.51.03]
it? What does that do to our
Speaker 1
[00.51.06]
stress levels? So how about just just a cool little concept. So you know I focus on education right?
Imagine if you're being watched and you had sensors on you like these are just a couple of sensors. Right.
I'm telling you, the data on sensors, I mean we're going to have lactate, ethanol. I think we already have.
Yeah. There is a sensor for ethanol. We're gonna have lactate. We're gonna have ketones. We might have
uric acid, which is a wicked byproduct of fructose sugar breakdown, which raises blood pressure. Wicked
stuff. Okay. We're going to have more sensors that can really look at you and go, all right, this is what's
going on right now. You're experiencing some emotional, emotional distress. Heart rate went up, body
temperature went up. Your respiratory rate went like looking at numbers and going, oh my gosh, you're
blood. All these all these metrics are showing showing me that you're stressed right. Boom. Oh look on
my phone. It says that I'm stressed. This is an example. And patient goes, oh you know here's a here's a
motivational interview. This is what's going on inside me. I'm learning about what's going on in front of
my own eyes. Not once a week when you sit down with your coach. Right. I think you need to learn right
now. I think you need to learn while you're experiencing it. And and the educational material is sent to
you in that moment. That's what I'm trying to focus on. I want the education. I want the educational part
to be engaging. I want it to be tailored to that person's own needs because of anything I've discovered as a
diabetes, uh, education educator for the last ten years is you got to meet them where they are, and
everyone's at a different level. And, you know, I really I honestly look at all of them as victims, as an
empath, it's just like, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry that no one taught you this. This is such an injustice. Let
me help you. I just want I'm just here to help us all that I've ever wanted to do. But if I can show them
and teach them about what their data means to them, whether biosensors of some sort, and if they can
learn their own metabolism, they can survive on their own. Not without me going, hey, you need to eat
this. You know, nobody needs somebody dictating what they're doing with their entire life. I want them
to learn how they get the best results, how they optimize their results. And I'm just a coach. I'm just
trying to facilitate that, to say, hey. If you if you thought about exercising in the morning versus evening
time, what is the difference? Can we make this? Can we schedule this? How can you how can you
improve? How can you change your lifestyle? How can you see how when you exercise earlier in the
morning, that your cortisol levels that are naturally elevated in the morning that raise your glucose? And
my gosh, that's so stupid. We used to think that blood sugars in the morning was your fasting blood
sugar. And that was the lowest of the day. You know, I will tell you right now, that's the fact. It's the
highest I ever get. Is is that little that little blip if I do, um, sprint workouts or something really intense, I
do, um, stand up paddleboard racing. So I race paddle boards. I know it's crazy, but I've been doing this
for for a while now and it's been this great movement. Uh oh my gosh, talk about like a mental. Um, I
can't even go on the mental benefit of exercise being out on the water, um, feeling, being one with nature
and like, literally there's nobody within miles I could have. I could scream and nobody would know. I amout here helping myself get through some of the toughest times in my life. Um, and I'm using exercise to,
to, to put that out there and to and to release that, that energy or anger or whatever it is. So I couldn't
emphasize exercise enough, because if you think about what, what what increases longevity, not just
mitochondria health is an important matter of fact. Mitochondria health is is really what it would look
like in a number basis. So with your mitochondria is very healthy. And you've got maybe the
mitochondrial age of a 50 year old, uh, of a 20 year old. Your, um, your VO2 max is high. Your muscle
strength and muscle size is high. Okay, so VO2 max is definitely a this is your cardiopulmonary system.
How well are your lungs? How was your vasculature? Are you getting enough oxygen to your muscles or
your the lung. Uh, being able to exchange oxygen for carbon dioxide really well is the heart pumping
efficiently? How? That is the biggest indicator of how long you're going to live. And the only way to get
to that is you have to do the work. You have to do the exercise. Yeah, but don't get don't even just a little
bit. Improvement in VO2 Max has a massive improvement in lifespan. But as a side effect of getting that
movement, you're going to have muscle strength, you're going to have muscle size. And I think this is an
important conversation that we're not having, especially with Alzheimer's patients. Why is it that, as it
happens to women so much more frequently than men, why is it that women that are so frail and love
glucose? Or in the case of Joe Biden, that loves ice cream. But they have. They end up with dementia.
They end up with Alzheimer's disease, poor brain function. And you keep feeding the brain glucose. And
it's a horrible energy source. It really is awful. It makes the whole body dependent upon carbs for energy.
If you make your body dependent upon carbohydrates for energy, it's going to liquidate your muscle
gluconeogenesis. Where else is it going to get glucose? You're you're not eating enough of it. You're
eating it all the time, but you're making the body completely dependent upon glucose. So therefore the
brain becomes glucose dependent and it doesn't care. Your brain does not care because it's the last organ
to die, right? It's the last one to go down. As long as it keeps that glucose supply elevated. It's loving you,
right? It thinks that that's what you need. But what happens when when you become insulin resistant and
the brain becomes resistant to glucose? Now your brain energy starts dropping and you're running out of
muscle to feed it. Frail old women. Not only that mean they have osteoporosis for days, which is really
an effective of high insulin levels. By the way, hyperinsulinemia that effect on bones and muscle is to
make them smaller. Right? And you're liquidating all that muscle to keep the brain hot and keep the brain
going. The brain would rather and should run on ketones. But you got to take it back. You got to take
back the brain and go, no, we're not doing this today. We're not doing the carbs today. We're going to do
fat burning. We're going to do ketones instead. Brain, I know what you need. I will help you. I will keep
you healthy. And you will, and you will reward me for this. We're going and we're going to burn ketones.
We are going to utilize fat byproducts, right? We are going to burn fat and we're going to live off of
ketones. I'm spewing ketones into my into the air right now. I'm peeing it out in the toilet about a couple
of hundred calories every single day in the form of little bits of fat. Right? This is ketones. This is what
ketones do. This is their purpose is to supply us with an alternative energy source. Other than the
carbohydrates we need to be burning fat and ketones. So in order to burn fat and ketones, you have to do
a very low carbohydrate diet. And I will tell you this, the amount of carbohydrates that you need to
sustain your life is actually zero. Yeah, and I learned that too, actually. So what would you say to the
person I know a lot of people in like high school biology, for example, are taught that glucose is the
preferred energy source. Yes. What
Speaker 2
[00.58.58]
would you say to that person?
Speaker 1
[00.59.01]
Let me add them. So here's here's the problem. This is where it comes from. So there was a study that
shed that showed that you need 130g of glucose for the brain every day. But when you are in a
carbohydrate fed state, that's what the brain's going to want the majority of its energy. The brain will
want to come from glucose. But like I said before, when you take back the brain, right? Instead of
burning 80% of its energy as glucose, it switches to 80% of its energy in the form of ketones fat burning.
So now you're you're burning just fat, and only 20% of your energy is coming from glucose, from that130g. No, that 130g is a lie. The amount of carbs that you need in your diet to sustain your brain is
actually zero. Because you're going to make it. You'll make glucose from a triglyceride okay. So
triglyceride is this glycerol. This is the glycerol part. Then it has these long tails of fat. Well when you
burn the fat you leave this triglyceride this glycerol backbone to be burned as glucose. So guess what.
Those people who burn fat, they don't have a lot of these laying around. They don't have a lot of
triglycerides laying around. And their triglyceride levels are low. And I'm saying optimal is 80. Okay.
This is a really important lab. This is an incredibly important lab is triglycerides. And your doctor
probably never talks to you about it. The triglyceride and HDL, especially that ratio that we talked about
earlier. Triglycerides should be 80 and everyone should just stop, go look at them if you have them. If
you don't have them, make an appointment. You need to fast for 12 hours and get your triglyceride level.
That is so important. Most people are north of 125. It doesn't even go off as red until you're over 200.
Some labs it's like 250. These reference ranges are garbage. They're absolute, utter garbage. And if your
doctor sees your your, uh, triglycerides at 200, it says, yep, you're fine. And he's just looking at your
LDL. You missed it. You missed the whole problem. And triglycerides and HDL correlates to
cardiovascular disease LDL. No, not unless you are inflamed. And when you look up carnivore diet, it
will say and Google thank you Jeff Bezos calling you out on this one. Carnivore diet is a fad. Lower. It
will increase your bad cholesterol your LDL. But it reduces inflammation. That is just mind boggling.
Mind boggling, isn't it? How is it a fad diet? But it reduces inflammation. It doesn't just reduce
inflammation, it lowers triglycerides and it raises HDL. Like I said, those are two of the main findings
other than, you know, elevated glucose hypertension and elevate an expanded waistline as the the five
markers for metabolic syndrome. The 93% of our population suffers from this. And we're not measuring
triglycerides and HDL. We're not looking at them properly. This makes no, this makes no sense. Fat
burning people. They don't have a lot of triglycerides because that's your that is your fuel source. So you
don't have a lot of fat laying around. That's why their triglycerides are low. And I will say this, I've seen
I've seen patients at a thousand and they've dropped it all the way down to under 100. And I will say, if
you think you're doing a ketogenic diet, I should expect your triglycerides to drop in half because that's
your energy. It's not going to be laying around. Oh, it's really quick, really quick. Within just a few
weeks. Most of the most of this. So this is really encouraging. I just got to listen to this. To reverse
chronic disease. And reverse diabetes typically is done in the first ten weeks. You think about that? In
three months time, you're no longer diabetic. I've had people get off insulin even even faster than that.
Like zero. You don't need insulin. What happens is their blood sugar will be like 280, 300 to 80 to 60 to
40. They're calling me up. They're so excited. They've never been under 200. They've never seen that
number right on their glucose meter. And they're off insulin. How is it possible that your blood sugar is
lower without this lowering glucose drug? How are we lowering glucose naturally without insulin? How
are we doing this? We're removing we're removing that insulin. So what happens is the cell. The cell
heals naturally and starts making more insulin receptors. It starts becoming more sensitive to insulin. And
when we exercise we pop those cells and we snap that insulin sensitivity. So it is really sensitive to
insulin. Exercise improves your internal level. It brings it down because it improves insulin sensitivity.
For example let's say you needed let's just say 1 to 1 ratio like you need one insulin for one gram of
carbohydrates. Imagine if the cell becomes insulin resistance. Now you need five insulin for one gram of
carbohydrates. That's just an example. You need a lot more insulin to get that glucose level into the cell
because the cells are resistant. Exercise wipes that out. You go back to a 1 to 1 ratio. Exercise exercise
exercise. When you are exercising, you don't need insulin to suck up because your muscle cells will
utilize it, right? What's what's interesting about exercise is that we don't need to do this carb loading. We
don't need to make our brain carb dependent. That's a complete myth. We can we can live an alternative
lifestyle, which essentially is a very low insulin lifestyle, low carbohydrate lifestyle, a high fat diet.
When you get the fat levels up, the fat in your muscles can now be utilized. Even better. You don't get fat
wasting, you don't get end up with excess fat in your muscles like you see in obese diabetics. They don't
have much muscle at all. And when you do see it, it's full of fat. You want to burn the fat in your muscle.
You want to get really good at it. You want to get so good that fat is always your best energy source. You
depend on that fat for energy. I only use glucose when I'm sprinting, and even then I only tap into my
glucose supply when I'm at 85% or higher. My my respiratory quotient, which you can measure these
things you can measure like a at what intensity, how how much am I going before I finally dip into that
carb tank? Do I really need to do this carb loading garbage? No. Professor Tim Noakes is like, no, this is.
Yeah, he ripped out his chapter. He's like, no, I, I was wrong. You don't need to do that. You you I'm a
fat adapted athlete. I don't hit a wall. I don't run out of carbs. I don't the only the only thing that I do
during an extended race and I'm talking like, over two hours, is I will take a little bit of glucose per hour.It's about 10 to 25g per hour, not this 75 100g because this is pretty intense stuff you're going for. We're
going for our endurance races are four to like seven hours. So we're doing these longer races. But I don't
hit that wall, I don't run out of glucose. And I didn't do any carb loading. The glucose is there for the
brain to keep the brain going during the exercise, and the only reason why you slow down during a race
is to let the glucose levels catch up for the brain. The brain is about to quit and it will stop you. That is
what we call the wall. And that's why it's. According to Professor Tim Noakes. And if you look at his
data, it's really fascinating how. And I've seen this so frequently, especially in runners. Not only do they
develop AFib and it's not really good for their heart, but, um, they're more likely to become diabetic if
they do carb loading. Right? So they had these athletes and they ran them basically a month of carb or the
month of fat, and they did a bunch of measurements on them, and they found that those people that were
carb loading, essentially they're looking at sprint performance. And there was no difference. These
people who are fat adapted at sprints, oh my gosh, the amount of fat that they burn per minute is
extraordinary right? That's that's my goal. I want to burn a lot of fat every minute, not carbs. I don't want
to. That carb tank needs to stay basically topped off. And pretty much the same glucose is going to be in
my muscle now as it will in a week from now. I'm not going to tap into it unless I'm going 85% or higher.
It's really not something that I'm loading up all the time. The only thing I'm loading up on is my fat
storing fat, burning fat, storing it, burning it because it burns better. Think of it like an oak log. Versus
kindling. Right. Pine kindling. Hot, fast. Short lived. That's. That's carbohydrates. I'm telling you, man,
really was never designed to store a lot of carbohydrates. We looked at the weight, the weight of how
much store energy you have in the form of carbohydrates. Less than a pound. Right. And here's this
essential fat that it's just more than just energy. It's structure and function and hormones. And it has a lot
of important functions to it. And you've got carbohydrates which is energy only. It is glucose only. There
is no if you're looking at a cell and a cellular biology, we go, okay, what part of the cell is glucose? You
know, where where does it go? Like it's it's no it's nowhere. It is only energy. And I last I checked we had
plenty of energy. Plenty of energy. We just need to tap into it. It says it's a tiny little hormonal little
switch that you have to do. And I really this is where I feel like it's the importance of of education is you
got to know what you're looking at. You need a coach. You need a coach that says, hey, we're trying to
avoid these situations. I've seen so many patients. Have these cgms, these glucose monitors, and they go,
oh yeah, I just have that for my diabetes. I go, what is it? You know, what's the point? If you're not going
to scan it and you're not going to look at it and learn from it, what are you right? How can you use it? But
that's what I'm trying to do, is I'm trying to teach people how to use this data to help their own personal
lifestyle, help them improve every aspect of life. I'm 56 years old, I got grandkids, I want to be there for
them. I want to be that kick ass grandpa that's always wrestling with the kids. He's always throwing kids
around, right? Throwing him in the pool, whatever. That's that's what I want to I. And I want to paddle
for the rest of my life. Right. How do I do that? All right, well, these are the things that I have to work
towards. VO2 max, muscle strength, muscle size. Very, very important. You're going to the gym on a
regular basis. You're doing that exercise, you're getting out, you're getting that sunshine. And I'm telling
you, the side effect of all of this is chronic disease disappears, mental health improves substantially. And
you look at studies, you look at these medical, um, questionnaires at baseline versus after X number of
years or six months of following it. Mental improvement is Hmm is amazing. Mental function is way
better. I actually had a patient tell me that at 9:00 at night, she felt like she drank a pot of coffee. The
brain function was so much better. I even have a brother in law and he's like he. Started, uh, he started
fasting, started going longer periods of time without eating. And he goes, you know what, man? My brain
function is really I can I can participate in conversations better. He noticed it. I've had meth addicts who
hadn't slept in years control their blood glucose, and their addiction went away and they were able to
sleep to the night. A guest recently told me that something like 95% of podcasts fail within the first few
episodes, and I can see why, because there is so much time and energy that goes into the production of a
show like this one. If you would like to support me in the production of this podcast, go to Kofi com
Slash Codex. That's kofi.com/codex.
Speaker 2
[01.11.47]
You can pay a couple dollars or you can pay more if that's something you can afford. But either way I'm
going to continue to produce free content for as long as I possibly can because this information is so
important and I want everybody to be. To access it. Thanks so much for listening today.Speaker 1
[01.12.06]
Typically, one of the most common things I hear from people right out of the gate is I have more and
more energy. Physically and mentally, I'm sleeping better. I've never slept this well before because that's
one of my first questions. How many times do you get up in the middle of the night? Do you get do you
have to pee in the middle of the night? Yeah, I got to pee in the middle of the night. But you know what?
I probably didn't bother telling you this, but insulin causes fluid retention at the kidney level to cause you
to have excess fluid, which you're going to pee out in the middle of the night. So if you didn't have this
elevated insulin telling the kidneys to hold on to sodium and water, then you'd probably feel your blood
pressure would improve and your blood pressure is going to probably need to be discontinued or at least
monitored. You're going to start feeling amazing because now you're getting a full night's sleep. Now
you're sleeping really well and I can see your sleep score. Did I answer your question?
Speaker 2
[01.13.00]
Yeah. So I don't really I just wanted to tie it back to mental health. Like how is this relevant to brain
function? And I think you really hit that too. You mentioned the importance of measuring
Speaker 1
[01.13.12]
your basically your bio data, right? Like you mentioned or reading. I'm wearing a Garmin watch myself
and it's been really helpful as far as like measuring my heart rate. You mentioned HRV. Uh, there are so
many different metrics that you can track. You also talked about using a CGM and I wanted to say this
cgms can be very expensive. It kind of depends on your insurance. Look, I think you even need a
diagnosis to get a CGM. It's like a prescribed thing. Uh, but if that is a barrier for you and you want to
measure your glucose, there's the keto mojo, which also measures measures ketones and glucose. It is not
a continuous measurement. And so that kind of is the caveat with that is it's just a single data point in
time. But I wanted to point out, too, that even if you had a continuous measurement, it's really important
to pay attention to the context of the data and not just the data itself, because that can tell you a lot of
information. Like, I mean, for instance, if your glucose goes up. Of
Speaker 2
[01.14.20]
course, you need to ask yourself, why is it going up
Speaker 1
[01.14.24]
right? You
Speaker 2
[01.14.25]
can't just say, oh, it's going up, and then just move on with your life and do anything.
Speaker 1
[01.14.29]
Well, yeah, I can just scan it, just scan it, scan my phone, put it in my pocket okay. That'll that'll that'll do
for now. And that's what I find. They don't have any. There's no coach to really make sense of the data.
This is basically this is going to be this is this is medicine 3.0 as Peter outline. It's like there's going to bea new language for a while. There's going to be some growing pains, but we'll eventually understand it as
far as costs when it comes to the CGM, um, I think they're like 75 apiece at the worst would be $150 for
a one month supply. But what I do is you gotta learn what you're doing. So if you can't get into ketosis,
like what you're talking about with the keto mojo, most people are kind of there already have a really
good idea as to what it takes to get their ketones above 0.5 with their ketone meter, right? So they're
measuring glucose and they're measuring ketones like the same time each morning. And they're
measuring it and they're going, okay I need to get this above 0.5. But if you don't get to point five and
you're at 0.3 and you scratching your head trying to figure it out, you may need more detailed
information to figure out what's kicking you out of ketosis, and you may not be aware of it. You need
someone to kind of help you go, okay, this is circadian rhythm. This is stress. This is the effect of sleep.
Someone to point that out. I think it's critical. And I, I strongly believe and this is this makes absolutely
no sense why you need a prescription, but because you can go into the pharmacy and prick your finger a
million times, 300 times a day for one sensor, right? For one day of a sensor you can get you can do this
for free. This is more painful and probably more likely to cause an infection pricking your finger than a
CGM, which is just as a tiny little needle, essentially a little a little sensor that goes in and it's like just a.
I don't know. I think it's half a centimeter into your into your skin, a few millimeters into your skin,
underneath your skin. And you don't feel it at all. And most people go, wow, that didn't hurt at all. And
they can leave it there for two weeks. Now we've got two weeks worth of educational data, meaningful
educational data that you got for I think at the highest amount would be $75. I'm not telling people to do
this all the time. Absolutely. If you're if I'm trying to get you off insulin, it would be an absolute
requirement. But if I think everybody should be aware of what their lifestyle and food is doing in a on a
number of basis on a graph, because I want people to go, I want what I really want, and this has already
been taken, but I want your insulin resistance number on your phone essentially. So if I have how badly
you're going to respond to foods, I can now that person can now go scan the barcode of the food and
know what their graph's going to look like. Am I going to go up like is it going to look green, yellow, red
like like what will my response be of a certain food based off of these horrible ingredients? Right. So
knowing that information before you've eaten is helpful, but I still think you gotta experiment to see and
lay eyes on it, because when people look at that food, I want you I want you to go, no, that's going to jack
me. That's going to raise my blood sugar for 100 points. And it's it's going to kick me out of ketosis. My
insulin level is going to be elevated for six hours. You know, like if I know all the rationale behind what
is the food going to do, I have a more informed choice to go, nope, I can't do that. I don't want to do that.
I'm staying away from that for the following reasons. But I will say this about unfortunately sucrose or
fructose. We're measuring glucose here. We're not measuring fructose. I can't wait for us to measure
fructose. Fructose is wicked. Fructose is a mitochondrial toxin. Sugar is glucose and fructose linked
together. We're only measuring glucose. We're not measuring the fructose. We can't see this hideous
molecule. This is wicked. This thing is. This is poison. It is a minor, congealed toxin. It is a poisonous. It
is damaging. Like you think about your brain and how many mitochondria you have in some of these
neurons, and they have to fire or not fire, right? You have Gaba as well as excitatory neurons like that.
When you get up in the morning, basically after being schizophrenic all night, that's schizophrenia shuts
down. It's Gaba, it's inhibitory. You need energy for that. What if you don't have the energy? What if you
have neurons that are damaged? What if you have neurons with no mitochondria, right. Or they're all
damaged? And then as far as depression, you got excited today. Neurons should be firing. They're not
firing. If we can get our brain energy up by being really, really nice to our mitochondria and helping
those things grow and be super healthy, we wouldn't have mental illness, right? I think what's difficult is,
is making that leap because we have so much that's fighting this. The whole world is screaming and
saying Alzheimer's. We need a drug for Alzheimer's. We need a drug for schizophrenia. We need drugs.
The answer is not medications. Medications can't fix this lifestyle problem. People can improve their
mental illness by looking at their metabolism, because what feeds the body feeds the brain. And you can't
have one without the other. Feed it well and it will reward you well. And I've noticed that in myself. I've
noticed, I mean, my the ability to remember things, uh, I feel like I'm back in school and I go, oh my
gosh, I wish I had this kind of brain energy when I was in school because things are clicking better.
Think my brain and energy is better, and I'm sleeping and I'm realizing the value of sleep and going, hey,
this is part of my my clipping of my memories, short and long term. So it becomes, you know, more well
settled in my brain, right? This is what I want. This is what's happening. I know it right now. It's like. The
side effects of having the good metabolism is having a really healthy brain and feeling really good about
yourself. Wellbeing. Self-esteem. It's something I struggled with for years and it has only been until now.
I lost £50. I was much, much bigger, I and I, I was your typical and I knew that I wasn't well because Iwould get hypoglycemic symptoms, my blood sugar would get too low after a spike and I would be
measuring myself like this hurts three times around a meal. This really hurts. If I'm going to do this
diabetes education and I'm going to tell people to prick themselves, this hurts. And I think the CGM is
way more comfortable. I don't I'm not telling people to to utilize it all the time. Um, I don't think it needs
to be used all the time. I think it needs to be used in the first two weeks. So you can really see how your
lifestyle is affecting you, and you test it later. Test it later when you can't figure out why your ketones
started, started rising again. But you're right, keto mojo buck a strip or something less than a dollar a
strip. Glucose and ketones every morning get above 0.5 and then. Surprise, surprise. You'll lose weight.
You'll you'll notice that you've lost £10 of water weight. And we talked about why essentially why do
you lose £10 of water weight. You lowered insulin. Now sodium and water can now get dumped. You're
going to lose 8 to £10 of water in the first two weeks. It's simple. It's because you've lowered your insulin
level, don't eat carbs and you won't have that problem and your mental health will greatly improve. And
I've experienced that too. You mentioned how you wish you knew this stuff when you were in school,
and I was like, I kind of smiled. I was like, me too. I wish I knew this when I was a student, because I
would have performed so
Speaker 2
[01.22.15]
much better academically and socially.
Speaker 1
[01.22.18]
where I am and
Yeah. And life would have been so much better. And I do, I, I tend to see a lot of university students
Speaker 2
[01.22.26]
I don't, I don't know who's listening to this podcast, but there's a there's a chance that there are some
students. So hopefully they take this information there and they're able to apply it.
Speaker 1
[01.22.36]
So yeah, this is this is this is going to take off because I know that you have people like George Eade,
Brett Schur, Christopher Palmer, great books worth reading. I've read them. They're wonderful. And
you'll start feeling like you have there's a little bit more hope they know. You know that you have control
over your brain, which I feel like we just feel like a slave most of the time to to what's going on in there.
And I tell you, oh my gosh, when you're living the right lifestyle. That that voice inside of you that
screams at you and tells you how crappy you are, starts getting quieter, and those compliments start
becoming a lot louder and you're hanging onto them a little bit better. You're not dismissing them. You're
starting to feel so much more empowered. You, you, those, those, those compliments become more like
screams. And that's the way we need to live our life. Like that inner dialogue needs to be something like,
you frickin got this today. You got this, man. It needs to be more positive and less like we're a victim of
our own mind. And I feel like when you take back your brain and you start running that thing on ketones,
it just it loves you. It just thinks you every single day. It just says, yeah, what do you want to do today?
Whatever. It's unlimited and you're not afraid. You got that self-confidence. And when you walk into the
room, you feel a million times different. Like, I think I was probably a wallflower before I was much
heavier. I could disappear and no one would probably even notice. But when you start changing that
metabolism, you start losing some weight. Man, it's. It's so impactful. I've this has been quite the, um,
working with patients and watching them change. It's been a quite a spiritual, um, an emotional
experience getting them through this weight loss program and helping them feel assured. But man, it's the
best thing I could possibly do. This is great purpose for me. This is this is why I get up every day. That's
this is why work doesn't feel like work. Like I want to help. I want people to learn just like you do.You're trying to help people with their mental illness. I think this is a big part of it. Christopher Palmer's
Christopher Palmer's book, um, Brain Energy was a big part of that. And I and I really am grateful to him
for that. That is, uh, I mean, he and he acts like it wasn't anything unusual. He's like, I would do this. This
is this has already been done. We knew this about epilepsy forever ago. Fasting destroys epilepsy, right?
It destroys narcolepsy. This is this is what you need. We've got lots of. When
Speaker 2
[01.25.16]
we first started our meeting, you asked me if this is kind of a weird thing that I'm doing, and it totally
Speaker 1
[01.25.21]
is.
Speaker 2
[01.25.23]
And most therapists are not taught anything about nutrition.
Speaker 1
[01.25.28]
Why would we
Speaker 2
[01.25.29]
write like, I mean, it makes more sense that a medical doctor should be taught about nutrition. And they're
Speaker 1
[01.25.34]
not. But therapists,
Speaker 2
[01.25.36]
And that's mostly
we're not taught about nutrition, we aren't taught about psychology and maybe a little bit of sociology.
Speaker 1
[01.25.43]
it. And brain specialists.
Speaker 2
[01.25.46]
Yeah. So we really what you are brain special. You specialize in. Right?
Speaker 1
[01.25.50]But how does the brain work?
Speaker 2
[01.25.52]
It doesn't make any sense. As you think holistically, you start to realize the epigenetics. Epigenetics plays
a huge role in your mental
Speaker 1
[01.25.59]
health. You
Speaker 2
[01.26.01]
have to get education in nutrition, or at least work with somebody who has that education, who can tell
you what to
Speaker 1
[01.26.07]
do. Right. But the problem is it just doesn't make sense to people. And that's why I really wanted to get
on. Your show is like, no, metabolism is everything. Fix your metabolism. You will fix your brain. As
you have noticed. Now we're coming up on the end here. Kyle and I wanted to ask one question that I
like to ask pretty much everybody. If there's one thing that
Speaker 2
[01.26.31]
you could change about the way people approach health and wellness, what would it be?
Speaker 1
[01.26.38]
The less you know, the better. Because I think it's better to start from scratch, because we start with a lot
of UN educating people about calories, an uneducated people about your macros and what's needed and
what's necessary in this cholesterol thing. It's it's better if you work with a blank slate and go. Teach me.
Yeah. Ask questions. You couldn't ask enough questions. You're. You love questions. I love questions
because it's like that way, you know that you're that you're learning. You're getting somewhere. So I
would say question everything. Go down every rabbit hole you want to go down. Right? I'm here to
facilitate that. I will direct you. And like this information is really important. This is really important
stuff. Go to my website I, I, I think I took down my wall of gratitude, but there was a lot of people on that
I need to be grateful for because I learned from them. I basically went through a my pharmacy education
and said, okay, I'll take the biochemistry and the rest. I'm just going to toss and go, okay, this is what I
have. This is what I'm working with. And I got to get on YouTube and chase a bunch of rabbits. And
because my, my, my life had changed so much and I started feeling so much better about myself because
I was losing weight, patients are coming back and going, man, I feel amazing. I'm not diabetic anymore.
And I'm like, this is working. Holy crap. I wasn't really planning on that. I thought it was going to work
in some place like, no, it's working in in 100% of these patients. All right. How can I be a part of this
educate educate educate. And so. Having a desire to learn is really the most important thing if you want
to learn. I want to meet anybody, wherever they are, and it's probably best that you don't know about the
you know, the importance of your macros and how essential carbohydrates are because they're not. And
to get that out of your head, it's going to be really difficult for a lot of people. You know how many times
like, I'm a carnivore and I'll order food and people are like, there's just scratch their heads and and theythey put the plate down and they think that you're going to be disappointed and you're like, yes, meat.
And I'm like, I'm excited to see that. It's going to be a transition. It's going to take some time, right?
You're going to when you make this change, you may feel a little socially isolated. This isn't the easiest
thing to do. Losing weight is socially disruptive in the year to health. And I would direct you to this study
is a very good study. Vertical study. Um, they look they reverse diabetes in half their patients. And they
were, um, coaches in San Francisco and patients in Indiana. And the remotely monitoring, remote patient
monitoring is the way of the future. So they were remotely monitoring them. 54% of the patients reverse
their diabetes in the first ten weeks. All their markers improved triglycerides, improved HDL. HDL went
up, um, blood pressure went down, the insulin was removed d prescribing none of them were on
sulfonylureas. They were only on like metformin and some GLP ones. This study shows that you can
safely reverse diabetes using remote patient monitoring. This is how it needs to be done, right? This is
this is the state of the art. So I the desire to learn, I think, is all that you need to know when you can go
and just feel that out. There's so many essential, um, YouTubes that are worth watching. I think Sarah
Hallberg, one that's really changed my life was was pretty, pretty incredible. She was the co-founder of
Verda Health, her and Steve Finney. So as Sarah Hallberg, she did a Ted talk. It's a 15 minute talk. It's all
about ignoring the guidelines. And she was talking about ignoring the Ada guidelines, and basically she
didn't go into the corruption. I can go into that. That's so much fun. But I we kind of did. But it's it makes
you scratch your head and go like, why do you want to stick? Like you're just making a ton of money off
of this. And, uh, I am so excited about RFK. Um. It's if we're going to reverse chronic disease, my career
is going to vanish, right? I dispense medications mostly for chronic disease in acute cases, antibiotics,
you know, cardiovascular. Yeah, it makes sense, but it doesn't make sense when I'm treating everybody
with the number one most prescribed drug is Lipitor. That that data is locked up, by the way, the FDA.
Okay. So when we talk about FDA, FDA doesn't have the raw data with these studies. They get reports.
And every step of the way there, they're there is conflicts of interest every step of the way when a drug
comes to market, bottom line. And thereafter, the NIH, the FDA, they're all in collusion, right? They're
all together. They're trying to keep you sick because that's how you spend your money. And it starts with
food. Big pharma everybody's making sick care system. These are you're right. This is Band-Aids on
bullet holes. We're treating symptoms of a bigger disease. And it's all interconnected to that one hormone
insulin, which we use glucose as a proxy. We use triglycerides, an HDL as a proxy as well. But we know
that people have a problem with insulin resistance.
Speaker 2
[01.32.10]
It's a business model. So one last question for you, Kyle, before we close up, uh, how can people find
you? You mentioned having a website, but what is your website and and any other any other places that
you want to direct people if they want to work
Speaker 1
[01.32.25]
with you? Okay. So I have, um, the website, the unscripted. It's it's, uh, unscripted pharmacist.com. And
there I have, um, different programs, educational monitoring, as well as just a way of tracking yourself.
So I use an app that kind of brings the data together, making it meaningful so that you can look at graphs
and go, all right. I can see how glucose and things like sleep are related. We're talking about that. Try to
make that correlation with through a graph, because I feel like that's super useful when I have a graph of
something, I can keep that in the back of my head and like it's worth a thousand words, right? I know
how things are related to each other. So I have this tracking app that I utilize, but I also have all the, you
know, Instagram, Facebook, all the social media. It's, uh, the unscripted pharmacists.
Speaker 2
[01.33.14]
Okay. Great. Thanks. Thanks so much for being on my show, Kyle. It's beenSpeaker 1
[01.33.18]
great. Uh, this is a riot, I love this. I hope that this really takes off because it needs to be. People need to
go. I'm not a victim, right? I can take back my life. I can take back my mental health. I just need to look
at my body and my metabolism. Let's fix that.
Speaker 2
[01.33.36]
If you enjoyed this episode, make sure you leave a review that really helps me out and also subscribe to
the show wherever you listen to your podcasts.
Speaker 1
[01.33.46]
Real Food Mental Health is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. The information
presented on this podcast is not intended to replace any medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. While I
am a health care provider, I am not your provider. Always seek the advice of an appropriate health care
practitioner with any personal questions you
Speaker 2
[01.34.04]
may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking
it because of something you have heard on this podcast. Reliance on information provided by this
podcast is at your own risk.