207 - Why You Can’t Lose Fat When Insulin Is High (And How to Fix It)

24:22But when you start mixing your macros, you might have blunted the glucose response because you had a higher insulin response.

24:31Just Ingredients:Interesting. And that's not always an optimal trade-off, of course. But I am a fan of not eating naked carbs, less so for the sake of controlling glucose and more just for the overall satiety of it. And carbs are just not essential. They're the least nutritious part. Fats and proteins are what humans literally need. We don't need dietary carbs. Now, I'm not saying we shouldn't eat them, but we don't need them. And so like in my home with my kids, as much as they, of course, just want to eat all the refined carbs they can get in their face, I will always just ask, have you had protein yet? But even if they're eating a piece of bread, I would feel better if they did have avocado on that toast, because I know that that avocado is going to give them really healthy fats and it's going to nourish their body more and make it so they're going to be less inclined to overeat garbage.

25:20And so I'm a fan of bringing macros together, not necessarily because of blunting a glucose response, because, again, sometimes that might have a negative tradeoff of having happened because you had a much higher insulin response.

25:33Just Ingredients:That's really interesting because I wore a glucose monitor just to watch things. And I mean, it shows when I would eat a carb with a protein. I didn't get nearly the spike. Yeah. But you're saying it could have just been... Yeah, you would have had a higher insulin spike. Even still, I wouldn't say that's a bad thing. But I feel inclined to mention it just because the blunted glucose response is not where we should end the conversation. So mixing a carb with protein, I think, is a good mix. carb and fat, that would blunt your glucose response, but that is the most fattening combination of macronutrients you can have.

26:08Because then you have the carbohydrate act by stimulating a big insulin response. Fat alone won't elicit an insulin response. So if you're sipping on your bone broth and you add fat to that, your insulin doesn't move at all.

26:22Just Ingredients:It doesn't. I've watched it all day. And your glucose won't and your insulin won't either. It is just going to flatline. but if you eat pure carbohydrate you have a huge effect and so when you add them together carbohydrate is blunted but you've actually amplified the insulin response and taken in more calories and this is touching on a deeper conversation but suffice it to say for the sake of keeping the conversation on track but i do focus a lot on fat cells as a scientist if you spike insulin and provide a lot of calories that is a tremendously fattening combination because the insulin is telling fat cells to get fat and the calories are fueling that fat.

27:03And so it's a wicked mix.

27:05Just Ingredients:So that's the number one driver, you'd say, of our obesity problem? Yes. To hijack the topic for a moment from you, yeah. I would say if we drill down, obesity is a two-part problem. Again, high insulin to signal the fat growth. Insulin tells the fat cell, I want you to get fat. But then the fat cell would say, well, with what? Insulin alone can't be turned into fat. Glucose can be, and it is to a little degree. But if you are stimulating insulin and giving a lot of fat, well, then that's a perfect mix to tell fat cells to get big. Giving a lot of fat or a lot of calories? Either. Either. So fat does have, of course, is a very calorie dense macronutrient.

27:45Just Ingredients:Now, but then that makes people afraid to eat fat. Yeah. And so that's, oh my gosh, yes, indeed so let me just finish that whole thought both of those are necessary if you remove either of them you cannot get fat so like let's just create some scenarios here let's tell us how to yeah yeah because it's fun well even if we start manipulating these variables it becomes apparent why you need both and then i think that does lend itself to a strategy when people want to say well what's actionable here so for example there are a group of people who have total control over their insulin levels. And that is a person with type one diabetes.

28:21They can have total control over their insulin. So they become a very interesting test case. What happens if a person has very little insulin and they're eating a lot of calories? They cannot get fat. It's impossible. In fact, this is so known to a type one diabetic that there's an eating disorder that is totally unique just to type 1 diabetes. It's called diabulimia. And anyone listening can understand just how tempting this would be because all the person needs to do is deliberately underdose their insulin and they can eat as much as they want. And I mean literally an unlimited amount. They can eat 10 ,000 calories a day.

29:02Just Ingredients:Doesn't their blood glucose then spike? And their ketones go to acidic levels and they... So it causes other... Oh my gosh, yes. I'm quick to note that, that they will die if this is abused too much. Okay. But they will look great. And so just imagine the temptation. Look great and feel horrible. That's absolutely. I couldn't have said it better myself. But it is still a perfect example of how powerful insulin is. That as much as we have a calorie-centric view of obesity, calories matter. But more important is the hormones that tell the body what to do with those calories. And if insulin is elevated among its many effects, It is telling fat cells, I want you to get big and store fat.

29:42But if there's no insulin, then literally no amount of calories matter. So an untreated type 1 diabetic who has no insulin or before they've been diagnosed, they will eat 10 ,000 calories a day and they're getting skinnier and skinnier and skinnier. So it's not just a calorie problem. Now, on the other hand, if you had a person who only had elevated insulin and was not consuming calories, that would bottom out all their glucose. The glucose levels would go to zero. Their ketone levels would go to zero. And the brain needs to have one of those fuels. You have neither glucose nor ketones because insulin is going to force them both down to zero because you're not eating anything.

30:20Then you die. Either way, you're going to lead to death, whether it's a slower death with the low insulin but high calories or a very fast death within hours if If it's high insulin, low, low calories, you need both. And so to me, if someone listening is trying to find something actionable there, you just know there are two variables that are contributing to being overweight. Insulin and some other hormones that kind of play into it, but less or so like progesterone contributes a little bit as well to that. But insulin is the main one. And calories. The person's probably over the years just tried cutting calories without addressing their insulin level.

30:58That works until it doesn't because it drives a lot of hunger. And that's the strategy that's taken by the contestants on The Biggest Loser game show. And you never see them again because they all gain it back. Because hunger always wins. So if you're just starting your weight loss journey with cutting calories without addressing your insulin, you'll only go so far and you're going to find yourself right back where you started. So start your weight loss journey with lowering insulin. So if this is coming out at the beginning of the year and people are studying goals for the year, don't worry about calories.

31:30Let the calories take care of themselves. Let's worry about that later. Let your first step be, I'm going to change my habits to lower my insulin. And that can take any number of forms, the least of which could be, I'm just not going to start my mornings off by eating starches and sugars. That if I am going to eat, it's going to be more protein and fat, or I'm going to fast and have a lunch. And even then, when you have lunch, focus on protein and fat and let the carbs kind of be the smaller portion if you will, or the smaller concern on the plate because it's the carbs that are spiking your insulin.

32:05So focus on controlling your insulin by being smart about your carbs. So whole fruits and vegetables, I say eat them all the time, enjoy them. But if the carbs are getting more and more refined, then of course you need to be careful with them. And then that will result in a certain amount of fat loss, indeed a meaningful amount, just by controlling your insulin. And then if a person finds that they lose weight and then start to plateau and they want to go further, then we can revisit the calorie part. But even still, I wouldn't say you count your calories. You just start doing a structured fasting protocol, like an intermittent fasting structure where you just are eating in a window and you're not eating in the bigger window.

32:43Just Ingredients:Okay. So we're going to summarize all this. So people that are looking to lose weight, they are going to learn how to lower their insulin, which is going to be less stress or managing their stress, I should say, because I hate when people tell me to have less stress. And that's such a difficult thing to do, right? Like you're telling people you need to control your stress. Now they're even more stressed. You can manage your stress really easily. I think with like breath work, with things you're telling your mind, adaptogens. Putting the phone down. Yeah. Oh yeah. Adaptogens like ashwagandha, those absolutely work.

33:13Just Ingredients:Okay. So we're going to lower our stress. We're going to sleep. Focus on our sleep, but we're going to watch when and how we eat to help that insulin drop okay but i know it's not a perfect science but for me when i wore the blood glucose monitor and when others do isn't that a good way though to see oh super good because when you spike yes then you know a ton of insulin is having to be used so you know you're not keeping balance absolutely yeah yeah if i have said anything that blunts my enthusiasm for CGM, shame on me. I'm an enormous fan of CGMs. If I had my dream, it would be that we also have a continuous insulin monitor, but that is years, decades from happening.

33:57It's so hard to measure insulin. It may never happen. For now, the CGM is the best thing we can come to. But we're also getting complementary technologies where a person could also, at the same time, be wearing on the other arm, a continuous ketone monitor. And ketones are valuable as much as they're very misunderstood. Ketones actually have a value because they are an inverse marker of insulin, where ketones are simply products of a lot of fat burning in the body. And insulin is so antithetical to fat burning. It inhibits fat burning so well that if insulin goes up, ketones drop really, really quickly.

34:38In contrast, over hours, if insulin's coming down, you will expect to see ketones coming up. Even if a person, like, so if a person wakes up in the morning and they had a decent dinner the night before and they didn't, you know, go to bed with three bowls of cereal or something, they're going to have a little bit of ketones in their blood at that point. Insulin's been coming down, they've been burning more fat, and their continuous ketone monitor would tell them that. And they may see that their glucose is nice and in control as well. If they go through breakfast either in a fasted state or protein and fat, the ketones will keep humming.

35:10They'll keep indeed going up. That's evidence that insulin is staying down. So as much as we are decades away from having a continuous insulin monitor, we already have continuous ketone monitors, albeit not in the U.S. yet. But through Asia and Europe, you can buy them. I've had them sent to me and I've tried them. It is fascinating to look at the difference where when glucose starts to rise, ketones start to drop. And that's because of the insulin that's going with that glucose. So absolutely, yes, I'm an advocate of CGMs. And a person can learn a tremendous amount about their body and how they're responding to foods and habits by just looking at their CGM.

35:49Just Ingredients:And so let's just explain to the followers that you cannot burn fat if your insulin is high. You cannot. You need your ketones. Well, you need your insulin to drop and ketones to rise. Yeah. So the ketones are going to be the product that's the sign that you're burning fat okay so as insulin comes down it's kind of a double negative it disinhibits what's called lipolysis and lipolysis is the technical term for breaking fat down from our fat cells so the fat cells are holding on to their fat as triglycerides and when insulin comes down now it can start breaking down its triglycerides into what's called free fatty acids and so the as insulin comes down free fatty acids will go up that's the sign that you're breaking down fat.

36:33And then a couple hours later, you'll start to see ketones going up. And that's the sign that you're really burning fat. Now you will already have been burning fat. But when you start to make ketones, that's proof positive that you are really fat burning. Let's take a quick break to hear from our show sponsor.

36:52Just Ingredients:I share a lot about getting to the root cause of your health concerns. Because whether it's low energy, stubborn weight changes, mood shifts, gut issues, hormonal imbalance, or just feeling like something is off, everything your body does is communicating something. You deserve real answers, not trial and error. That's why I love what Function Health is doing. Function Health gives you access to over 100 comprehensive labs that look at all the major symptoms in your body, hormones, nutrients, metabolic health, thyroid, heart health, immune markers, and so much more. They also test for early indicators of thousands of diseases.

37:29Just Ingredients:And the best part? You don't need insurance, and there are no surprise bills, just transparent, science-backed testing that helps you finally understand what your body needs. Plus, they walk you through your results with clear explanations from top physicians and researchers that include personalized food and supplement plans. Start the year empowered with real data about your body and a health plan built just for you. Try Function Health today and get$135 off with code KCALL11 or through the link in the show notes. Now back to the show. Okay, talking about ketones though and fasting, there's a lot of stuff out there on social media about fasting.

38:16Just Ingredients:and some say like it's great for men, not so much for women, or they say women do a shorter period of time, or women, it can affect your hormones. So even I get confused sometimes when fasting. So what do you think about this? I think it's an important conversation and I think some parts of it are overblown, that there aren't quite as many differences in this regard between men and women as we would think. Although there are tremendous differences between men and women, especially when it comes to cycles and hormones. So it really is a matter of when she is in her cycle. But before I even answer that aspect of cycles and fasting, there was a paper just published by a woman in the UK named Isabella Cooper.

38:54She is a fantastic scientist. She wondered, in part, among many questions, the degree to which a low-carb diet is a stress on women, uniquely. Because you hear this a lot, that women don't do keto diets, don't go low-carb, it's harmful for your stress, and you're going to have higher cortisol levels. So she took women that had been on a ketogenic diet and measured all their hormones, cortisol included, which is the one I'll focus on for this conversation. Then she had them for about one month, go to a normal high carb diet. So get out of ketosis, high carb, like a traditional diet in the UK and in the US, where I think it was about 55 to 60 % of calories from carbohydrates.

39:33So very normal. And then she had them transition back to a ketogenic diet. So it was this sort of, you're in ketosis, you step out of ketosis, you step back into ketosis, and then they adapted for weeks and they did another blood test. And they found that cortisol didn't change at all.

39:50Just Ingredients:Interesting. It was just typical noise in human subjects. Some had a little increase, some had a decrease. There was no statistically significant theme associated with it. Now, one thing that was very interesting, although this is talk about a sidebar here, She looked at GLP-1, which is, of course, the hormone that is all the rave these days. Everybody's talking about that. Yeah, because of the GLP-1 hormones. Fasted GLP-1 levels from the keto diet to the control diet or high carb back to keto, they dropped to about a sixth of the level. So in every single subject, the moment they went from low carb, their GLP-1 went, I can't remember the units, but the graph, the figure is striking.

40:31high GLP-1, a huge consistent plummet in every single subject to just like a fraction of what it was. And then the moment they went back on low carb, GLP-1 spiked back up a lot. And again,

40:43Just Ingredients:it was like a five times increase in GLP-1. So if people are wanting to leverage the power of GLP-1 before you look for some injectable, which has a lot of consequences, try to leverage your own GLP-1. Now back to fasting and gals. During the follicular phase, when the follicles are developing, right prior to ovulation, a woman is a fat-burning machine. In fact... Good to know. Did you all hear that, women? Yes. Gals are burning about 50 % more fat than her male counterpart at any given moment during that follicular phase. Because estrogens promote fat burning. But they also promote fat uptake.

41:20And so what you would say is that estrogens just help her fat cells just turn over the fat more quickly. There's more going in, but there's more coming out. But then after ovulation in the luteal phase, when progesterone starts to go up, that complicates things because it'll make her body a little more insulin resistant, which can make it harder for her to avoid carbs. But also it makes her hungrier, where progesterone is a direct hunger stimulus to the brain. Whenever we talk about hunger, we talk about leptin or we talk about GLP-1. No one ever talks about progesterone, but any woman who is in her luteal phase, or maybe she's on a birth control or sex hormone replacement therapy and it's progesterone based, she is going to be hungrier.

42:04Progesterone acts as a hunger signal to the brain. So my view on it is that she can be very thorough and strict during that follicular phase, but during the luteal phase, I think she needs to be a little more generous. I'm not saying go hog wild. I don't think that's prudent, but I do think fasting might be harder. Low carb, I think, is still feasible and justifiable, but fasting is going to absolutely be harder because now you have a hormone that has gone up by thousands of times. You know, from the pre-ovulation to luteal phase during ovulation, her progesterone levels go from almost nothing to like thousands of times higher.

42:44And that is a hunger signal that I think would make it harder for her to just do a heavy fasting protocol.

42:50Just Ingredients:This is so unfair for women because progesterone is also the calming hormone, though, that helps women not be a witch. Yeah. Yeah. I hope I don't regret stating it this way. The dose makes the poison that I think that progesterone probably can be leveraged. And I'm reaching the limits of my knowledge on this topic. But I think there is probably an optimal range where she could be on it as like a hormone replacement therapy and be getting those benefits without maybe the hunger stimulus. And I don't know that that's ever been quantified where that is. Okay. Let's go back to the cycles. So day one through 14, fasting's a great time.

43:26Just Ingredients:But I want to know what you consider fasting because people can just start with a 12-hour fast, correct? In fact, I think they ought to. I think that every adult, even kids, frankly, should be able to easily fast for 12 hours. Stop eating dinner at six or seven. Don't eat until six or seven the next day. That should be absolute standard. Where I think we ought to be going a little further, for those of us who want to try to leverage our nutrition for better metabolic health, is pick a meal at the end of the days to fast through. Now, I state it this way because there's evidence in humans that have looked at intermittent fasting that has people fast through breakfast, or they eat breakfast and lunch and they fast through supper the later part of the day.

44:12It's awkward, but fasting in the later part of the day is better. Oh, interesting. So when you do head-to-head comparisons.

44:19Just Ingredients:I don't know if I could do it. Exactly. Look at that in the day. Well, that's the problem is that it's not feasible. In part because, you know, you have a family. You want to go home and have dinner with your husband and your children. How weird is it? And I want to do the same with my family. How weird is it if we go home and we're sitting around the dinner table while everyone's eating and we're just blinking at them with affection in our eyes and looking at their plates and wondering if we could have. I want to eat that dinner. Yeah. Yeah. I'll skip the scrambled eggs. Yeah, exactly. And so I think just for the sake of social norms and living a normal life, I think fasting through breakfast should be a pretty consistent strategy.

44:55And then have a nice hearty lunch. I would say focus on proteins and fats, of course, more than the carbs. And then my strategy, you know, about 50 years old, a metabolic scientist. I want to be lean and healthy. I am very strict through breakfast and lunch. And then I have dinner with my family. Whatever my family's having for dinner, I'm having for dinner. So the other night it was Chinese food. It was ham fried rice and some noodles. Sure, maybe I'll eat a little less of that and focus more on the beef or the pork. But even still, I'm enjoying dinner with my family. I've never wanted to create a culture in my home where food is obsessed over.

45:33And now I know a lot about the metabolism of it all, but I didn't want that to impact the family in a negative way, especially my daughters, where as a college professor, I quit counting the number of young women I encountered that have eating disorders. I've always been very mindful of focusing and obsessing over food and having that be a point of contention in the home. I mean, my kids know what's healthy and what's not. You know, they certainly know sugar is unhealthy and I don't regret ever teaching those principles to them. But rather than always vilifying foods, and they even know, like if they're going to eat a sugary granola bar, they'll eat a beef stick first.

46:11And that's, of course, anything we can do to reduce the amount of sugar they're eating while still letting them enjoy food, we will. But it's just basically, have you had protein? And with that protein comes healthy fat, of course. But it's just, I didn't ever want to say, have you had fat? Lest it become really weird and they're just biting a stick of butter, which I think could probably be perfectly healthy. but I'd rather have them eat real protein and the fat that comes with that protein. Because in nature, all protein comes with fat. And humans are designed to eat it that way. If we eat protein alone, we'll get a certain amount of digestion of those amino acids.

46:49But if a human eats protein with fat, we get much, much more. We digest protein better.

46:54Just Ingredients:I'm so glad you just said that because you were just a spokesman for my protein without even knowing it. It's designed to come with fat. Yep. It helps with digestion. When we think about fat digestion, we'll often invoke the bile, bile acids, which help emulsify and break up fats. But few people realize that bile also helps activate the proteolytic enzymes that break down proteins. So, yeah, in nature, there's a lesson to be learned from nature that as much as we have a fat phobic culture, we should never have pulled the fat away from the protein. They're supposed to come together. I love that.

47:26Just Ingredients:OK, really quick, back to the fasting. So what would you say to women? 16 hours? I think that's very justifiable. Yes, absolutely. And if not every day, then almost every day. Okay. I would say the only time to eat breakfast, if you felt like you need to, it would be if you had a really hard workout the day before. Then I think it's justified. Now, having said that, despite what I just said, which is protein and fat are meant to come together, all the more if a person's had a hard workout. If you are trying to build muscle or defend your muscle, I think there's a case to be made for taking a little bit of amino acid, like branched chain amino acid in the morning.

48:02Like if you were going to start your morning with bone broth, although bone broth actually has some great protein in it, to be frank, but you want to try to soften the catabolism of your muscles that's been happening overnight. So overnight, we have a little more catabolic or breakdown of muscle than we do anabolic. And that's not surprising because we're fasted. But for a middle-aged guy who wants to keep whatever muscle I can, I want to try to stop that. I'll take some creatine in the morning and then I'll take two capsules of branched chain amino acids. I just want a little bit of leucine, especially to get in my bloodstream and stop the breakdown of the muscle.

48:37Even though I would digest a whole protein better with fat, and that is a much more nutritious signal, I don't want food in the morning. I want to fast for a few reasons, but I do also want to stop the catabolism. So I'll take a little bit of branched chain amino acids in the morning. Okay.

48:55Just Ingredients:So I have a question about that because I've gotten this question before people will say i fast through breakfast but i have a protein shake because it doesn't spike my blood glucose oh yeah considering it part of my fast yeah yeah yeah i actually i respect that view and and it makes us come to what i've identified in the past as two different forms of fasting the form we've been talking about is the traditional view which is what i call a caloric fast where you're not really eating and drinking any calories and that would be the traditional view. But there's also something I think is worth mentioning, what I call a metabolic fast, which is, am I spiking my insulin?

49:37Insulin is actually the hormone that tells the body whether we're fasted or not. In fact, the most famous fasting scientist, he would have called himself a starvation scientist. His name was Dr. George Cahill, a legend in this realm, which is to say nobody knows who he is except metabolic scientists but he's a legend he said that insulin is the hormone of the fed state and then the absence of insulin is the fasted state and so as much as we look at a traditional caloric fast and say well i'm fasting because i'm not eating calories a metabolic scientist would say yeah you're fasted because your insulin's low well then the same thing could be said of someone who's controlling their carbs and focusing mostly on protein and fat.

50:22One of the reasons among many that I'm an advocate of a smart carb diet is the more you can be nourishing your body but keeping insulin in check, the more you're getting the best of both worlds. That you can be blunting the catabolic loss of muscle while at the same time still be activating autophagy in different parts of the body, in different tissues and cell types. I can be making ketones to continue to fuel my brain, which loves ketones maybe more than any other tissue in the body, and yet still be nourishing my body. So you get kind of the benefits of both, that you're nourishing the body, you're feeding the body, but you're keeping the fasted state going to a degree.

51:00Just Ingredients:So if you're keeping your fasted state going with insulin, meaning the insulin isn't spiking, then you're able to make ketones. Yes, that's right. As soon as that insulin spikes, you're not making the ketones. Ketones will stop because fat burning stopped. Yep. So the person who is saying, well, I'm having my protein shake, so I'm still kind of fasting. Maybe they are invoking my terms. It's a metabolic fast. Your ketones would tell you. And some could, depending on the mix of proteins and fats or whatever else might be in there. It's possible that they are able to get that in. And if they were wearing their continuous ketone monitor and see, yeah, my ketones are still high, I would say that's a fast.

51:37You did not metabolically break your fast. But if there's enough other stuff in that shake that they find their ketones dropped and went below detection, I'd say that's not a fast anymore. And not that it's bad. It might have still been nutritious, but it's not a fast.

51:53Just Ingredients:Okay. So I know listeners are going to ask me this and be mad if I don't ask you. So do you believe in a keto diet? I do. Yeah. So let me clarify, though. I've never wanted to be seen as an advocate of a ketogenic diet, but I am a staunch defender because there is so much nonsense when it comes to ketones, just myth after myth and nonsense after nonsense. I would submit that ketosis, which is a state of mildly elevated ketones, is a natural state for humans. And in fact, there is an entire realm of evolutionary biology that suggests that humans became different from all other primates because of our ability to make really high levels of ketones.

52:38And basically they say that ketones are the way for the brain to develop. And that is not wrong. A newborn baby will nurse from mommy having fed and within an hour will be in a deeper state of ketosis than two adults would be after a full day of fasting.

52:54Just Ingredients:Oh, wow. So, and then we start to lose that ability as we get older. But this is one of the reasons, this is thought to be one of the reasons why a baby that is born premature, they lack body fat. They're very, very thin. They're skinny even. The less fat you have, the less fat you can burn and the less ketones you'll make. So one of the reasons why babies born prematurely are at a higher risk of learning disorders could be that they aren't able to make enough ketones during those early developmental years to fuel the incredible development of the brain. So I am an enormous defender of ketones.

53:30I think whether a person is adhering to a ketogenic diet or they're consuming smart exogenous ketones or ketone supplements, I think every adult should spend at least a few hours every day in ketosis if for no other reason than for the sake of your brain or your heart or your blood vessels or your liver. There are so many tissues that benefit. it. We just published a paper two years ago finding that ketones can blunt all of the inflammation that happens in response to uric acid or like gout. So ketones are known to be very anti-inflammatory, but I will defend ketones if I'm not an advocate for a ketogenic diet.

54:08And I don't want to be necessarily as much as I will defend it. I am an advocate for ketones that, again, whether you're on a low-carb diet, ketogenic, or whether you're drinking exogenous ketones and not all ketones are created equal in that realm. People need to be smart. My recommendation is find anything that has go BHB in it. If it has go BHB, then it is a real ketone. If it's anything else, it's not a real ketone. If it won't be BHB, it'll be some other precursor that has consequences on your liver. But we can get into that another time perhaps, but you can drink your ketones or you can make them.

54:43But I think everyone, every adult should have at least a few hours every day of being in ketosis.

54:49Just Ingredients:This is actually fascinating because a lot of people take supplements in the morning or at night, but rarely do you hear people taking ketones. They're getting more and more common as the benefits of ketones are just getting too hard to ignore. And they really are. So there was just a paper published last year that found that when the cardiovascular system is getting ketones, it induces a dilation of the great arteries, like the aorta. And that mattered because what they found is it increased cardiac output. So the left ventricle was able to pump out 40 % more blood for every beat, not because it had to beat harder, but because all the vessels were wider.

55:31And so it was just easier to move the blood. And this is one of the reasons why more and more ketones are used as a therapy for heart failure, because it so improves the cardiovascular system. Of course, there's been now over a decade of evidence finding ketones helping with cognition, where you can take someone who has early stage Alzheimer's disease and have them perform a couple cognitive tests. Like they try to tie their shoes or they try to draw the face of an analog clock. And it's just a jumble of nonsense. You give them exogenous ketones and then an hour or two later, they can tie their shoes now.

56:06Not perfectly, but they can do it. They can draw the face of a clock. It's not perfect, but it is demonstrably better than it was two hours prior. And even migraines, we've known for over a hundred years. Like I think the first paper was published in 1930. So about a hundred years that if you put someone with migraines into ketosis, of course, at the time they didn't have exogenous ketones, it'd be a low carb diet. They, their migraines stop. Like over 90 % of migraineurs will see that they have a total cessation of migraines as long as they're in ketosis. Epilepsy is the same thing. uh so i'm a great defender of ketones drink ketones if you want because you said a lot of people are um very favorable to supplements i am too but the evidence of the benefits of ketones are just getting so great that of course there's an opportunity in the market and and there are a lot of kind of imposter ketones that i would encourage people to be careful with if i'll put a fine point on it.

57:05If it has 1 ,3-butanediol in it or it's a ketone ester, I am strongly opposed.

57:11Just Ingredients:Well, you just have opened my eyes to the next supplement I need to make. Yeah, good, good. I could make a really good tasting drink, I think. I think you could get the best on the market. But I do have a question really quick about ketones and we'll start wrapping up. Yeah. If it's a great anti-inflammatory tool, I'm thinking that can help with depression, anxiety, hormone issues, sleep. Well, you said migraines, joint pain. I mean, a whole list of things. Yeah, yeah. I love that list, actually. But that's because we can actually go back to whole human data. You had mentioned depression and anxiety.

57:43Both of those have been shown to be, in part, influenced by a phenomenon referred to as brain glucose hypometabolism. So in people with both depression and anxiety, they see, albeit in different regions of the brain, that if they put in glucose in the body that they can monitor with PET scans, they can see that in the brains of people with depression, their brains aren't using glucose very well. And so part of the depression might be the way the brain is manifesting with its hunger. It's malnourished, it's undernourished. But then that's where the ketones provide the opportunity that maybe the fact that there is in fact evidence showing that a ketogenic diet improves depression, it could be in part because you're just giving the brain its energy.

58:29And so future studies, there are some funded right now are looking at all of these things, including the role of exogenous ketones in depression and anxiety and bipolar disorders and many more.

58:39Just Ingredients:This is fascinating because I think, you know, my story from years ago that I suffered with depression. I've learned how to manage it, but I feel like I eat sort of a keto diet because if my smart carb, smart carb diet is how I eat. Even if I eat just a plain apple and my blood glucose spikes, I don't do good. You feel it. I feel terrible. I am so sensitive to my sugars. Yeah. But so imagine the opportunity then because an apple is delicious and you don't want to never eat an apple again. You have to eat it. If you could snack on an apple and drink a delicious mix with some OBHA in it or just some straight ketones.

59:14Yes. Then because the brain is sort of getting on this roller coaster of energy now because there's just only glucose, there are no ketones. Then when you give it ketones, the nice thing about ketones is it's a consistent energy. If you're allowing it to be. And so if you're not on a low carb ketogenic diet, well then just drink some ketones.

59:32Just Ingredients:Oh my gosh, you guys, I am formulating this drink. This is going to be an amazing drink. So you're in ketosis when you wake up after fasting. Yes. So then would you want to take more ketones then or at lunchtime? Yeah. Yeah. It's extremely uncommon for you to push your ketones too far. That's not something you really need to be concerned with. Where I would say the opportunity is with the latest research. And this will be something that we talk more about as you continue to explore product options. The human body makes primarily one form of BHB. BHB is beta-hydroxybutyrate. The main ketone that the body makes is what's called D-BHB.

1:00:11We make a little bit of a type of BHB called L. And the L-BHB is where the hottest research is. So a person could come wake up and say, okay, I know I got some D-BHB, but I want some of the cognition and the hard benefits of L. And so I'm going to make sure that I'm taking this mix of the ketone drink and it's going to give me a little more L. So that would be the opportunity for the morning. But yes, certainly if the person starts eating, then you would say, all right, well, I'm going to be kicking myself out of making my own ketones, but I still want some. Then that's of course, the obvious opportunity for getting some exogenous ketones.

1:00:46Just Ingredients:Wow. I am fascinated by this. I need you back on just to talk all things ketones. It'll be around three. Okay. That would be amazing. Well, thank you so much for being here. I hope you listeners have learned about how you can maybe approach weight loss better in the new year. Hopefully you can explain insulin resistance now and the importance of keeping that insulin leveled more. And so thank you for teaching so much today. Oh, my pleasure. It's fun. Really. Thanks so much. Well, this year on my podcast, I'm asking the final five questions. Okay. So five quick questions that get quick answers.

1:01:20Just Ingredients:Okay. The first one is what emerging health topic excites you the most? You know, let's go with what we ended with. I'd say exogenous ketones. So ketone supplements excites me the most where we're doing some incredible work in my lab and with some collaborators looking at brain energy and weight loss strategies with exogenous ketones. That excites me. I am so excited to learn more on this. Okay. Number two, what is a piece of advice you'd give to your younger self? Oh, that's a great question. You know, I could say a lot of things, maybe just sticking with health. I would say eat more red meat.

1:01:51Just Ingredients:We discussed that before the podcast. I know that's controversial, but I wish I would have. When I look back at how physically demanding my high school years were and what I would eat in the evening, and I think, man, I would have been better off and healthier and stronger if I would have eaten just like a pound of hamburger or something or some scrambled eggs. Maybe I'll say that another way, which is be smart about what you eat in the evening. I love that. We could have a whole podcast on this red meat topic. I'm a defender of ruminant meat. I really am. I think that's among the healthiest single food on the planet.

1:02:20Just Ingredients:All right. We'll need you back. Round four. All right. Question number three. What's the one health practice you'll never compromise on no matter how busy life gets? I would say a workout, but that can mean a couple of things because I do an early morning walk. I wear my weighted vest with kettlebells and I'll hike up a hill and back. Oh, I love it. And I love it. But I also really love my kind of 30 minute strength training routine that I do in the mid morning. I'd say if I had to pick, I'd go with that strength training routine. That would be the last thing I'd drop. And four, what's your favorite Just Ingredients product and why?

1:02:52You'll have to remind me of the name. There was a mango, like an orange mango. Guava mango, maybe. It might have been guava, I think. Is there a tangerine mango? An orange pineapple. That's it. That's it. So I was mixing that. It was an orange pineapple, maybe just an electrolyte mix.

1:03:08Just Ingredients:Yep, yep. Here's really, this sounds bizarre, but anyone listening, I defy you of trying this and not enjoying it. What is it? It's the orange mango? Orange pineapple. Orange pineapple. That's what it was. It's an orange pineapple electrolyte mix. I, on a whim one time, put that in my blender with water and ice and I cracked in two raw eggs. Oh, wow. It was so good. I don't know if I want to drink the raw egg. Okay, so let me defend it for just a second. It tastes like an orange Julius, but with just protein and fat. Okay. It is so good. I had been making these for my wife, Cheryl. And she would just come and sip some, and I'd give her a little cup.

1:03:47And then one morning, she sees me making it, and I'm cracking the eggs in. And she says, I don't want that. What are you putting those raw eggs in my drink for? I said, well, this is the drink that I make in the morning. And she said, I don't want that. And I said, all right, fine. I'll mix you up one without it. And she was sipping on it. It's delicious. but the mouth feel of the blended raw egg is so good. And she said, okay, fine. I just don't want to see you put the eggs in it. So that is the one product among many that I've probably gone back to the most, honestly, because it's just so yummy.

1:04:18Just Ingredients:Okay. I'm going to try that. Try it. I will try it tomorrow. All right. And the last question, and you know this question, I end all the podcasts with this. What is the best ingredient to life? Oh, thanks. Good question. I would say having a reason for wanting to be healthy. That as much as you've created such a wonderful brand of helping people be healthier, I think if I were to go on that theme, I'd say have a reason that goes beyond yourself. That if it is, I want to be healthier, but why? And it needs to be something beyond just you. Because that to me, I think is too subjected to the ups and downs of life.

1:04:55That if your motivation is purely because I want to look good, well, something's going to happen and you're going to think you don't look good. And if that's your only motivation, then you're going to stop these good habits. But if your motivation is, I have a family, I want to live healthy for my family, or I have a community I'm a part of, whatever it may be, and I serve in that community, have a why that motivates you and that why is something external.

1:05:18Just Ingredients:I love that. Out of 200 plus episodes, no one has said that. Oh, good. And I teach that all the time. Yeah, good. Find your why. Yeah. And I love that. Well, thank you so much. My pleasure. Thank you. It's been so fun talking to you. It was great. Thanks. Thank you for being here and being part of this community. Don't forget to subscribe to the Just Ingredients podcast. We've got so much more to share with you. And if you're not already, come join us daily on all social media platforms at Just.Ingredients. Until next time, keep choosing what nourishes you.

1:05:59Thank you.