Maxxing Your Health: The Surprising Truth Behind Fibermaxxing and Other Internet Trends

26:40And, and back in the day, he thought that graham crackers would actually cure cholera, right? That was another one of These foodborne, fecal, oral transmitted illnesses that was wiping out cities during epidemics in England and France and the United States as well. And there's no cure for it. In cholera, you basically die of dehydration. Instead of shitting yourself to tears, you shoot yourself to death. And it's still a cause of, in a lot of developing countries, massive outbreaks, usually in refugee camps, that if you could get IV fluids into people, if you can get them through the worst of their outbreak, they can live.

27:14And so maybe graham crackers bound people up enough, but it really no data that it did anything other than, you know, Fibromax you. And and sadly, Sylvester Graham, I think he died of an opioid overdose from back pain. So so again, he did not live long, wasn't really longevity. He was he was a sort of a riddled drug addict in the in the in the worst sense of that, you know, that soldier's joy of morphine back in the day. And so, yeah, other than potentially slowing down explosive diarrhea, that was fiber maxing circa 1830s. But fast forward to the 1890s, and you've heard of Post and Kellogg's probably, right?

27:52Yeah, so this is kind of a cool corporate story. So J.H. Kellogg was a nutritive path of sorts who was a big believer in Graham's crusade, even though it didn't end well for Graham. And he started thinking, you know, if we started off our day with a giant chunk of just wheat, chafe, everything all together, then we'd be closer to God and we'd be more regular. And that morning BM was going to get you where you needed to go. And so Kellogg had a wellness institute out in Battle Creek, Michigan. And that really started off the whole breakfast cereal revolution. And C.W. Post was actually a patient there.

28:30And he felt so good. that he cured himself. And he started this entire cereal industry based on the diets that Kellogg was feeding him while he was in the sanitarium to get them back to life. And most of these people were sort of a nervous anxiety sanitarium where you went to kind of get back and centered. It was a wellness retreat in the 1890s where you sat around, ate graham crackers and sat on the pot all day long, which was, you know, how you Fibermax, right? So before I, you know, I get to like, this is terrible, by the way, I'm not saying, I've yet to say that fibromaxing is terrible. I'm just setting the stage for what we're actually talking about, is that, you know, we can ruin a lot of good food habits, right?

29:13So, you know, you can take blueberries, which are some of God's best fiber. It's a handful of blueberries, great fiber, really low glycemic index. But if you put it in a smoothie and add tons of sugar, you've just ruined it. And so that's essentially what happened to breakfast cereal. So what you ate in 1908 in Battle Creek, Michigan is not what you're eating when you go to the store today, right? We started to add sugars and food coloring. And then also you can see a progressive decline in fiber content in cereals, the further we got away from the Battle Creek, Michigan days and the Graham days and the Kellogg and Post days.

29:49So it's been completely hijacked by the ultra processing of grains to the point where there's actually very little nutritional quantity and quality in most of the commercially available name brand cereals today. And now they're coming back, right? Which is great. This is a good time to stop and ask, have you ever heard of this term health halo? No, that's a new one to me. Yeah. Well, so health halos are, it's a marketing ploy to take something that's really bad for you and make it sound really good. And you think, oh, if it's organic, that's a health halo. So if you go to the store and you're trying to decide, I'm going to get Oreos or I'm going to get organic Oreo-like cookies, you're going to go for the organic Oreo-like cookies because you think you're being healthy.

30:35Well, sugar content is exactly the same as what we get from more recognized trademarked cereals or trademarked cookies. And sometimes even worse, because a lot of times what health haloing does is they take something that's intrinsically unpalatable like fiber, and they just load it up with sugar so that now you're in trouble. And now you're getting worse off for yourself by thinking you're having fiber. And so when I was researching my book a few years back, I have a whole chapter on fiber. And, you know, I'm a big fan if we do it right. But if you look at a lot of the fiber supplements that are out there, especially the crackers and biscuits, they've got more sugar, you know, than like a chocolate bar.

31:15So I would say if you wanted to FiberMax appropriately with supplements, don't get the all-in-one fiber, tastes delicious. But just, you know, raw dog some fiber, just dry scoop it, right? Take as much fiber as you want. Put Metamucil, put something like that that has no sugar in it. Put it in your drink in eight ounce glass of water with your fiber intake to the day, 20 grams of psyllium or so. And then eat a piece of chocolate because you're going to love that chocolate more than you're going to love the biscuit that you have sugar pounded into, right? That is my life hack. I have finally life hacked is that I love chocolate.

31:50I don't love fiber. But, you know, I take enough capsules of psyllium to make sure I'm in good shape. and uh and yeah but i'm gonna have a piece of chocolate too man he earned it and then you'll get a lot less sugar than raw dog in that fiber supplement i think i use raw dog correctly there you have to let me know it's not bad right in so so what about fiber maxing then why is it so popular now well it actually can be a pretty good appetite suppressant because the minute you have anything that's high fiber hits your gut it especially if you're well hydrated it blows up which is great, right? So then you feel fuller and early satiety and there's great clinical trials that adding upwards of seven to 10 grams of fiber at a serving, so a bowl of cereal that is gonna be high fiber, low sugar, that you're throwing a handful of blueberries on that are unsweetened, washed, appropriately washed to get all the little bad microorganisms off them.

32:44Then that bowl of cereal is gonna last a lot longer for you so that you're not gonna get as hungry and you're not gonna wanna snack. And so two tablespoons a day of fiber gets you about seven to 10 grams. So if you can tolerate that and just get, again, cheap psyllium husks, make sure it comes from a reliable source so you're not getting shards of glass or God knows what else in there. So, you know, make sure you're getting it from a reliable name brand. It's okay to spend a little bit money to make sure the psyllium is healthy for you. But eat an apple, right? Whole skinned apple, good fiber in that.

33:19any skinned fruit that you don't peel has really good fiber. I wouldn't recommend, you know, eating a kiwi like that, but I guess you could. But how much is too much? I know it's a strange visual. How much is too much? Are there guardrails and fiber toxicity? Can you die of too much fiber? What do you think? Have you ever heard of a person keeling over from fiber maxing trends? I've never heard of that, but I have a very, very fragile stomach and fiber tends to upset my stomach, even like small amounts. I would imagine you can cross a line into a very bad place very quickly. Well, that's right.

33:54So the problem, the good and bad of fiber is it's also a lot of it is inulin is kind of the classic one too, is what we call a prebiotic. And that means that you take it in to allow the healthy gut microbiome to be exposed to nutrients that it will metabolize. Well, the problem with most metabolism, especially biotics, and well, it's not a problem if you're a beer maker or a champagne maker, it's fantastic, right? Because you get bubbles. Well, what happens when you get bubbles in your stomach and your large intestine, you become very distended or socially inappropriate very quickly. And so that is one of the downsides to eating something with a lot of prebiotics in it, fiber included, certain fibers, that yeah, you have to make sure that you build up a tolerance.

34:39And interestingly enough, it's actually not you that's building up the tolerance to fiber, it's your gut microbiome that is building up a tolerance. So in other words, it can figure out when you don't overwhelm it, just like, you know, you don't want to just take a tired tin of creatine and then go to the gym and get all your workouts for the month in one day, just because you're chock full of incredible hoax levels of creatine. You don't want to do the same thing with fiber, right? Because you will get bound up. And instead of going on the regular, you can get fiber buzoars where you get these tired balls of undigestible fiber in your gut that can be pretty dangerous.

35:14But it's really, really hard to get to that level. You'd probably double over puking first, be so nauseated that you want to go on. So I'm actually okay with fiber maxing. So right now, if you're keeping count between this episode, last episode, is that fiber maxing, probably okay. Just don't overdo it, but make it a habit. Change so that you can do something every day so that you're in really good shape because it is really important to make sure that these guys are not just like 20 grams in one day and then five grams the next and then taper off. You got to just slowly build up. So if you're taking fiber capsules, which a lot of guys do, you know, start with four a day, six a day, eight a day.

35:59And that's a really good way to get your psyllium, which is pretty easy to digest. But that's it. You know, that's the most important thing. It's go slow and then it's probably okay. So that's fiber maxim, man. I'm okay with it. I'm okay with beans. Beans are a delicious source of protein. But again, you have to, you know, work your way up to it so that you're not just, you know, going all ham on one day. And so slow exposure, a little hair of the dog with beans and fiber.

36:41Let's be real. Eating is a huge part of our lives. It fuels us. It brings us together. And yes, it's one of life's great pleasures. But once a meal's over, we don't think much about what happens next, unless something starts to feel off. Because what we eat and how our bodies respond to it is complicated. From the very first bite, food kicks off a chain reaction, signals moving between the gut, the brain, the immune system, a constant back and forth we can't see and often don't fully understand. Introducing Eating Interrupted, a new podcast from iHeartRuby Studio, hosted by longtime journalist and Crohn's patient Cynthia McFadden.

37:20Eating Interrupted explores everything from food allergies and intolerances and why they seem to be on the rise to how digestion changes as we age and what it's really like to live with a chronic GI condition. Through personal stories and expert insight, listen in to unpack what it means when your body doesn't always respond to food the way you expect and what science is now revealing about why. Listen to Eating Interrupted on the iHeart app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, this is Hayes Davenport. And Sean Clements. We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook on the Big Money Players Network.

37:56Our show is extremely accessible to first-time listeners. Each week, we talk to someone in show business, a.k.a. the biz, and try to help them with their careers and see what they have to offer us. Everyone has a good time, and no one gets mad at their publicist for letting them do our show. We've had a lot of great guests like Sarah Sherman, not that great. Actually, can you help me shape this? How about we flip it on his head? How about we flip the script? What if the surprise woman, who actually you think is the straight man, is actually the one who's acting weird? Adam Scott. This entire time, you've been expecting Adam Sandler to come to visit the show.

38:38I would never let go of that. I have. I would never set expectations for something like that. It seems like if the universe allows for something like that to happen, I'm open to it. I'm always going to accept, you know, Danny McBride. Fine. Yeah. It's all this fragile masculinity exuding. I could smell it walking down the hallway, to be honest with you. I was like, is that weed? Nope. It's fragile masculinity. Ben Stiller, no. Because a lot of times, out of context, people don't get it or even know what a circle is. You know what I mean? Like, they're like, oh, what's a state? Everyone's so dumb except for you.

39:15And fake. Right, fake and also not interested or just like, oh, I've got my life. I don't care about your life. And a lot of other big shots that wouldn't be where they are without us. Us. Oh, and by the way, Will Ferrell told us personally he loves the show and he wants to be a guest on every episode, but he's just so busy. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months. I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.

39:50I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files. I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything. Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming. They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. But these aren't stories about what's taken from them. They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

40:39Our town is small taters by most standards, right? But to the people who grew up here, it's everything. What happens when a quiet Tennessee town becomes the front line in a battle over the future of America? developers with right-wing ties have purchased hundreds of acres of land in the area the first thing you see when it pops up is pioneers in appalachia but they weren't just planting houses we need cities on a shining hill that exemplify and embody the christian way of life stop right there is that normal a podcast about what happens when a small town becomes the site of a social experiment.

41:16God need men to rule. Great. And decides to fight back. Do not use my hard work to sell your bull. They're not just opposing what's being planned for here. Our hometown is not a test tube. They feel like they're standing in opposition to an entire administration. Guess you didn't move in on a bunch of dumb hillbillies now, did you? Listen to Our Town on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Manga Shatigula and I'm back with a new season of the podcast Skyline Drive. This time I'm diving into a rabbit hole of peptides, organoids, blood boys, blue zones, and brain replacement to try to understand what this longevity obsession is all about and what it really means to live forever for all of us.

42:03I learned about some rad science. I can make a brain for you, and then we can test what draw is the best for your brain, as opposed to his brain. Here are some hard truths. I would expect Indians to age faster, but I did not expect it to be almost a four to five year acceleration. And get myself into a world of trouble. I'd say probably start bone smashing. That doesn't work. Make it look more defined. They say it works. I don't know. Listen to Skyline Drive, How to Live Forever on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

42:56What else do you got? I got one for you. Tell me if anything else out there that you're worried about that is in your feed that you're like, there's no way this works. I got to ask Mills. Let's see. Okay, well, we're going to touch more on GOP-1s later, but I've been seeing a lot of things. I've never actually heard this word spoken, so I might be saying it wrong. Berberine. Oh, yeah. Yeah, the Nature's GOP-1. Yeah, berberine is kind of an interesting one because it does have some natural weight. Well, I should say it has some natural glucose for blood sugar regulation. And if you take a huge step backwards and you look at what has become these GLP craze, a lot of it has to do with appetite suppression, but also blood sugar regulation.

43:45Because again, these were FDA approved first as type two diabetic drugs or people with type two diabetes. And so is berberine nature's GLP-1? I've seen that a lot. And or is it in metformin, which was an old hypoglycemic agent that a lot of people still take for longevity purposes. There's some data around that too. But yeah, actually it does work. Here's the problem though, is that it is really a very small, tight group of people that berberine works for. And those are people, it kind of goes back to the same thing we talked about with colostrum or with creatine or any of these things is that if you do have type two diabetes or you start along that pathway, those are where the studies show that it may help lower blood sugars and improve insulin regulation a little better.

44:36Never been a study, a positive study, been lots of attempts and looks. But if you already have normal blood sugar levels, bourbon is not going to do anything for you. So if it's a way that you're already struggling with type 2 diabetes, you might be on some GLP or metformin or other antihypoglicemic, it may help you reduce those medications. It may help you regulate your blood sugar a little bit more. But again, it kind of goes into the group of people that are wearing continuous glucose monitors as well to really, really dial in their blood sugar so that they can maximize their workout, maximize their sleep.

45:13That would be an interesting population to do a study. Hasn't been done. But maybe if you time these berberine dosing appropriately, that it can actually regulate your blood sugars in times of spikes, then I think that would be really interesting. So in other words, there is a signal there. So I'm not going to tell people don't take it. It appears safe. But I also think you have to figure out why you're taking it and what you're getting out of it and how long you're going to be taking it for. But no, I think, again, there's enough data that there's a signal. But we actually need to do a trial and we have to do it in certain populations to be able to extrapolate it to the average consumer, listener, gym rat, nutrition connoisseur.

45:52So, yeah, there's that. But, you know, the other one, I don't know if you've been getting bombarded with magnesium. Has that been a thing? Yes. Mag-maxing, mag-mog-maxing? It is true. I mean, that's something that I'm so confused because it seems like it's been good for everything. Sleep, anxiety, constipation, cognition. I mean, I've been seeing it as like really this whole cure-all to the point that it's made me very skeptical. I will say I have taken it a few times for sleep and it's been very nice. I don't know how much of that is placebo effect, but, you know, that seems to be the one that I've been seeing exponentially more than anything else in the past couple months.

46:31That's right. So it is something that is an important, incredibly important, naturally occurring mineral that is a divalent cation like calcium. And it has been purported to do everything from improving sleep to improving digestion, improving energy, improving sex drive. I just heard that recently. but the big ones are going to be sleep and gut function. So when you're in medical school, you have to learn all kinds of things in a very rapid succession. And so we have these terms called mnemonics, where you try to remember something and associate it to something else. And so the mnemonic we use for magnesium was magsqueezium because it squeezed that gut so that it improved your gut motility.

47:14So if you had delayed gut emptying, if you were trying to get ready for a colonoscopy, you make a dose on magnesium because it'll help blow out your colon. So you get ready for your colonoscopy. So magnesium citrate, that was what we call a bowel prep, where you just hork down on a bunch of magnesium and you're often running to the toilet. So that's it. That's the magnesium citrate story of improving constipation. What about cognition, sleep, anxiety, all those other things? So first of all, there's a lot of different ways that magnesium, you can't just take straight magnesium. It has to be attached chemically to something.

47:53And so that's something because it is a divalent, it's a positively charged cation. So it's not stable. So you have to attach it to a negative ion. That's just kind of basic positive, negative chemistry attracts and you take it. So without getting into all of the nuances that magnesium glyconate is probably the most well-studied one that is good for helping with sleep, constipation. But again, you have to be careful. You can go the other way with it. And if you don't have problems with constipation, but you take magnesium, then you're going to certainly, you know, have a mag-squeezing episode.

48:28So one of the reasons, too, that it is hot right now is that one of the major side effects of these GLP-1s that so many people are on, life-changing medications that we've alluded to, it can constipate you. It slows down gut motility, which is why it works, because you're full faster, so you eat less, you have less caloric intake, and there you are with sort of a gut that's not firing as it used to. So magnesium, magsqueezium can help you potentially alleviate some of the side effects of the GLP-1s. And so it's important to know how much you can tolerate. Definitely you don't want to go above 1500 milligrams.

49:07Most of the supplements come for glyconate. They come in a 500 milligram cap. So that's great. What about sleep and magnesium? That's the other big thing. We talked about this earlier in our sleep podcast. It can help a little bit. But again, if you look at the studies, a lot of times they're using it in combination with zinc and melatonin. And we know that melatonin has pretty significant sleep alteration patterns if you're a candidate for it. It doesn't work for everybody. But that's another one where it may have some data. But again, you have to take it with everything else. So how much the magnesium is actually doing is somewhat suspect.

49:44So in other words, magnesium is essential to so many cellular functions. Can't live without it. It's sort of like calcium. Should you take extra? If you're a normal, healthy person that's eating a normal, healthy diet, you probably don't need to. But if you suffer from constipation, if you suffer from sleep and you want to try it, then I got no problem with it. You know, it's again, pretty tough to get magnesium toxicity because you'll just shit it all out and realize that you shouldn't be taking so much of it. So, I mean, again, it's not even a supplement. It's an essential mineral, but overdosing on it probably not going to help you.

50:16And if you take a normal multivitamin just to cover your base, then then you're probably fine you don't really need any extra i have some safety questions about this just because this is one of the few supplements on here i've ever actually had any personal experience with and before i i took it for sleep i did a little digging about magnesium in the heart i've read that it there yes i've seen some reports out there saying that it can lower blood pressure sometimes to a dangerous degree um and sometimes could affect the the rhythm of the heart potentially. That's right. Again, if you have a heart condition, if you have low blood pressure, then you don't want to be taking anything that can do that.

50:54Because again, magnesium, there are magnesium channels or calcium activated channels that are involved in conductivity within the heart that, right, you can do yourselves in damage. And if you have chronically low blood pressure, magnesium has been shown potentially, especially at high doses, again, going to well over 1500 milligrams to potentially affect that. So in moderation, probably fine unless you have an extreme condition that you have to worry about. But another, you know, you probably don't need it then. If for guys that have borderline hypertension or high blood pressure, very, very weak data to show that it may help lower blood pressure a little bit.

51:32So again, if you know your numbers and you want to try something, I wouldn't say natural, but at least try something non-prescriptive, then there may be a role for magnesium in that setting. But other than that, again, probably not really anywhere near as good as people say it is. But it's also hard to make a buck on it, right? So, you know, magnesium is so cheap that, you know, I don't really think there's a giant magnesium lobby out there that's advertising on your Instagram feed that you should be on it. But it's always going to be tacked on with something else.

52:10let's be real eating is a huge part of our lives it fuels us it brings us together and yes it's one of life's great pleasures but once a meal's over we don't think much about what happens next unless something starts to feel off because what we eat and how our bodies respond to it is complicated. From the very first bite, food kicks off a chain reaction, signals moving between the gut, the brain, the immune system, a constant back and forth we can't see and often don't fully understand. Introducing Eating Interrupted, a new podcast from iHeartRuby Studio, hosted by longtime journalist and Crohn's patient Cynthia McFadden.

52:49Eating Interrupted explores everything from food allergies and intolerances and why they seem to be on the rise to how digestion changes as we age and what it's really like to live with a chronic GI condition. Through personal stories and expert insight, listen in to unpack what it means when your body doesn't always respond to food the way you expect and what science is now revealing about why. Listen to Eating Interrupted on the iHeart app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months. I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.

53:31I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files. I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything. Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming. They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. But these aren't stories about what's taken from them. They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

54:19Hey, this is Hayes Davenport. And Sean Clements. We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook on the Big Money Players Network. Our show is extremely accessible to first-time listeners. Each week, we talk to someone in show business, a.k.a. the biz, and try to help them with their careers and see what they have to offer us. Everyone has a good time, and no one gets mad at their publicist for letting them do our show. We've had a lot of great guests like Sarah Sherman. Not that great. Actually, can you help me shape this? How about we flip it on his head? How about we flip the script? What if the surprise woman, who actually you think is the straight man, is actually the one who's acting weird?

54:58Adam Scott. This entire time, you've been expecting Adam Sandler to come to visit the show. I would never set expectations for something like that to happen if the universe allows for something like that to happen I'm open to it I'm always going to accept Danny McBride, fine yeah, it's all this fragile masculinity exuding I could smell it walking down the hallway to be honest with you I was like is that weed nope it's fragile masculinity Ben Stiller, no Because a lot of times out of context, people don't get it or even know what a circle is. You know what I mean? Like they're like, oh, what's a state?

55:43Everyone's so dumb except for you. Right, fake and also not interested or just like, oh, I've got my life. I don't care about your life. And a lot of other big shots that wouldn't be where they are without us. Oh, and by the way, Will Ferrell told us personally he loves the show and he wants to be a guest on every episode, but he's just so busy. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

56:32Cities on a shining hill that exemplify and embody the Christian way of life. Stop right there. Is that normal? A podcast about what happens when a small town becomes the site of a social experiment. God need men to rule. Great. And decides to fight back. Do not use my hard work to sell your bull. They're not just opposing what's being planned for here. Our hometown is not a test tube. They feel like they're standing in opposition to an entire administration. Guess you didn't move in on a bunch of dumb hillbillies now, did you? Listen to Our Town on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

57:13I'm Munga Shatikula and I'm back with a new season of the podcast Skyline Drive. This time I'm diving into a rabbit hole of peptides, organoids, blood boys, blue zones, and brain replacement to try to understand what this longevity obsession is all about. and what it really means to live forever for all of us. I learned about some rad science. I can make a brain for you, and then we can test what draw is the best for your brain, as opposed to his brain. Here are some hard truths. I would expect Indians to age faster, but I did not expect it to be almost a four to five year acceleration. And get myself into a world of trouble.

57:58I'd say probably start bone smashing. That doesn't work. Make it look more defined. They say it works. I don't know. Listen to Skyline Drive, How to Live Forever on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

58:22What about Akramansia? Have you heard this one? This is kind of an interesting one. Not much. No, not before you mentioned it for doing this episode. I don't know this one really. I think this one's kind of cool. So first of all, it's just a bacteria, right? So it kind of goes into this probiotic. And if you look at probiotics in general, it goes back to the same problem we have with anything that your gut ingests. Our gut is so good at protecting our body with antibodies, like talking about IgA again, that most of the probiotic that you're going to ingest gets destroyed in the gut. So if you tag a probiotic with something, you know, like a hydrogen, tridiated hydrogen atom, and, you know, an hour, a day, three days later, you do a stool sample and try to look for the probiotic that you took in your gut that hour, day, month ago, it's probably not going to be there.

59:15And so most probiotics that you take ingest it just get eaten up. Now, if you overwhelm the system, yeah, then maybe a little bit will get through the small intestine and some of it will get into the gut, but it's rare. Now, again, foodborne illnesses had figured out ways to wreak havoc with the GI system. So we know that bad biotics can certainly do that. Probiotics for sure can as well. So that's the prebiotic, probiotic discussion. For acromantia, it has a unique ability to metabolize dietary sugars. So whatever you take in the gut, that actually can lower your blood sugar. So it can increase your insulin sensitivity.

59:58So again, people that have problems with metabolic syndrome, people that are obese, it may, acromantia may compete against some of the bad bacteria to establish a healthier gut microbiome. And therefore has some data that if you're trying to lose weight, it may be an adjunct to that by changing your gut microbiome. Because we've done studies for years that show that people with obesity have a certain imprint of colonies of the microbiome in both the upper and the lower gut that is different than people that are skinny. And there's these fascinating studies that go back 20 years now where they'll take an obese mouse and a skinny mouse and they'll fecal transplant each other.

1:00:41So in other words, they'll take the poo from a fat mouse, put it in a skinny mouse and vice versa. And the skinny mouse can become fat and the fat mouse can become skinny. I just reduced what could be Nobel Prize winning literature here into fat mouse, skinny mouse discussion. But actually, there may be something there to altering the microbiome as a target for improving obesity. And that we know that they're especially within families that often share the microbiome, that maybe one of these is an altered gut microbiome. So improving it may help and acromantia may have a role in that. But again, if you have an inflammatory bowel disease, an autoimmune disorder like Crohn's ulcerative colitis, then stay away from it because it actually can make it worse.

1:01:24It can trigger a flare up of that. So I'm interested in that. I'm going to put that one in. I'm interested, but certainly I would caution people to take it. If everything, if you're totally cool and you don't have problems that we talked about, like with obesity, then probably not going to help you much. But yeah, let's see. Let's table that one and see if there's some more data that come out on it. I have two questions. I actually have a friend You did a fecal transplant. What are your thoughts on those? And then I have a follow-up question after that. But I know very little, and I did not expect to talk about this today, so I did not prep.

1:02:00Yeah, fair enough. Yes. Yeah, you did not bowel prep for your radio show on fecal transplants. Fair enough. Yeah, so, I mean, fecal transplants can be life-saving, and it's fascinating. Again, the science for this, very good level one data, but it depends on why your friend did that, right? If they were fully normal, then what were they trying to accomplish? The classic example of where fecal transplants can help is if somebody has an overwhelming gut infection. That was, yeah. Yeah, C. difficile or clostridium, which is usually an overgrowth of a horrific bacteria that can cause your intestine to literally rupture or explode from something called a toxic megacolon.

1:02:46And that can kill you. And there's not always antibiotics can kill this bug. So we try antibiotics first, but a lot of people that get C. diff are already hospitalized with something else, and their normal microbiome has been wiped out by antibiotics to cure their pneumonia, for example, to cure their overwhelming septic, what we call septicemia, where there's some bacteria that's literally killing them. and we just nuclearize them with antibiotic after antibiotic and a very small percentage, but appreciable percentage, will develop a denuded gut microbiome where all the good bacteria is dead because it's just a nuclear bond of antibiotics that went off.

1:03:26And the best way to recolonize rapidly may be to take somebody that has a healthy microbiome off of a family member that's not hospitalized and then transplant some of the stool from that person in hopes that you recolonize this apocalyptic colon with healthy bacteria that can fight off the C. diff. So it's a clinically proven last ditch effort. But again, because there are data and people think, wow, that's really interesting. Maybe there's a role for fecal transplant in people that don't have C. diff or toxic megacolon. And I don't know why, right? But again, one of them is this mouse data that seems kind of interesting about potentially curing obesity.

1:04:10But that's a problem with a lot of the science is that what works in the mouse may not work in the human unless you're looking to try to treat a very specific condition. And that's it. C. diff, fecal transplants can save lives. And you mentioned earlier, and I'm not going to get the terminology right about there being a certain imprinting on the gut biome for people who struggle with obesity versus people who don't. Is that caused by lifestyle or something develops over time? Or is it almost in the way that there's certain people who have alcoholism in their family? It's just part of them. It's part of their system.

1:04:45They metabolize it in a way that is different to people who don't have that gene. Dang. It's deep, man. Apologies if that's a bigger topic for a different day. That's a great question. And the answer is yes, it is definitely a topic for a different day. But I will say that it is, the best answer when we don't know is to say it's multifactorial. And so, right, the quick 90 seconds is that the concept of what we call calorie in, calorie out is probably out. That in other words, you can give people a skinny guy and an obese guy, the same diet, and the skinny guy, for some reason, will not get fat where the fat guy will get fatter, even though you're taking the same amount of calories and they're burning the same amount of calories, at least that we can measure.

1:05:38And so there's a lot of really complex exercise GI physiology that goes into what our basal metabolic rate is, how we calculate it, does it matter in normal situations? And then what else is happening in the gut with the microbiome with the hormones. And I will say that one of the best, I think, psychological boosts that have come out of this GOP revolution is how well they work for people where they've tried everything else before and have given up and have gone on to surgery, where they swear they've been compliant with their diet and their exercise, and they're just not getting that effect.

1:06:16And I will say that's probably a subset of a subset of a population. but for those people, men and women alike, GLPs have not only saved their lives, but they've probably saved their souls because of that, that they really have said, God, I finally understand myself or I understand my body. And it's really changed their psychology. And so the answer is it's not that simple, but probably has something to do with the way we metabolize, what our commensurate microbiome is, and then what our activity level is. It's the same reason, I mean, the same unknown reason why I see incredibly skinny guys in my office that are taking creatine after creatine supplement and just can't put on muscle no matter what they're doing.

1:06:57And that becomes a problem on the other end of the spectrum. And so I think the answer is we just don't know. And also what works for you may not work for me and what works for populations may not work for other populations. And so, yeah, we have a lot more questions to ask before we have answers to give. That's what I'm going to say. I've been throwing a lot at you over the course of these episodes, and you're just getting on the fly. Thank you. Dude, man. Yes, for a male reproductive urologist, I can read the literature too. And none of this was generated by AI, by the way. This is iHeartRadio.

1:07:34We're human. Guaranteed human. Guaranteed human, yes. And actually, totally true. You know, this is pretty readily available research that I would recommend everybody to do that is open access and that you really can get a better understanding and education. Before you take anything that looks shiny and fancy, do a little research and don't just say, don't believe them. They say they have randomized trials or clinical data. Not all data are equal. And figure out who they were studying. Are you in that patient population or is this totally irrelevant to you? and I think that's the best way to keep safe out there and also still be part of the trends and maybe there is something out there that we talked about.

1:08:14Fiber's good, creatine is good, berberine maybe, ashwagandha. We didn't really get into that but there are a lot of these supplements that have potential benefits if you're that right person. That's all I'm asking. So that's what I got for you, man. I feel like that got rid of probably 30 % of what's out there on the internet. So it's a hell of a start, JR. Hell of a start, man. We got a whole other season to think about. What did they say about how you eat an elephant one bite at a time? Well, we are taking on the misinformation of the supplement industry one bite at a time. There you go. That's right.

1:08:51And yes, exactly. It's sort of hands on the elephant too. A lot of fiber in elephants. That's right. Yes. It's a whole different episode. All right, my man. So good to do this. and then, yeah, let's break it down again sometime soon. Hell yeah, you got it, sir. Thank you.

1:09:17Let's talk about it. Let's talk about it, the mayor.

1:09:26Let's talk about it. Let's talk about it, the mayor.

1:09:34Let's talk about it. Let's talk about it in the mail. The Mailroom with Dr. Jesse Mills was a production of iHeartRadio. It was executive produced by Jordan Runtog. It was edited, mixed, and mastered by Bahid Frazier. And the theme was provided by Long Transit. If you liked what you heard, please subscribe and leave a review. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. This program is intended for educational and informational purposes only. It is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

1:10:16Consult your health care provider for any medical or other related questions or concerns. The views and discussions aired on this podcast are those of Dr. Mills and do not represent the official positions of UCLA or UCLA Health.

1:10:36Are you looking for support in your weight management journey? ZepBound Terzepatide may be able to help. ZepBound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with obesity or some adults with overweight who also have weight-related medical problems to lose excess body weight and keep the weight off. ZepBound is approved as a 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, or 15 milligram injection. ZepBound contains terzepatide and should not be used with other terzepatide-containing products or any GLP-1 receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if ZepBound is safe and effective for use in children.

1:11:16Don't share needles or pens or reuse needles. Don't take if allergic to it. Or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer, or if you've had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2. Tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck. Stop ZepBound and call your doctor if you have severe stomach pain or a serious allergic reaction. Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gallbladder problems. Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes before scheduled procedures with anesthesia. If you're nursing, pregnant, plan to be, or taking birth control pills.

1:11:47Taking ZepBound with a sulfonylurea or insulin may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsen kidney problems. Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-5979 or visit zepbounce.lily.com.

1:12:21mad at their publicist for letting them do our show. We've had a lot of great guests like Sarah Sherman, Adam Scott, Danny McBride, Ben Stiller, and a lot of other big shots that wouldn't be where they are without us. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I survived nine months in captivity, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files. Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.

1:12:57These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Mange Shatikular, and I'm back with a new season of my podcast, Skyline Drive. This time I talk to scientists, biopunks, curmudgeons, blues owners, super seniors, and Goa's top cryotherapy lab to try to understand this obsession with living forever and what it means for all of us. And I get into a bit of trouble along the way. I'd say probably start bone smashing. That doesn't work. Make it look more defined.

1:13:31They say it works. I don't know. Listen to Skyline Drive, How to Live Forever on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Our hometown is not a test tube. 90 miles northeast of Nashville, a battle for the future of America plays out in one small town. Developers with right-wing ties have purchased hundreds of acres of land. We need cities on a shining hill. This is Our Town, a podcast about what happens when a small town becomes the site of a social experiment and fights back. Guess you didn't move in on a bunch of dumb hillbillies now, did you? Listen to Our Town on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.