Cure Illness & Feel Ten Years Younger with Keto | Health Theory

What is the keto diet? Why is it that people need fat? And what's the the experience that you think that they'll get out of switching their diet around? Well, so that's a very complex question. Um and com and there's a complex equation behind it. But people need fat. Fat is a uh you know, provides not just uh burnable calories, fuel, but fat uh certain types of fat play critical roles in the creation of uh cell membranes, in the uh uh in the communication between cells, um in certain uh hormone uh precursor situations. Um certain amount of body fat is just uh sort of requisite to be healthy in the first place. So, you we're not all striving to be 2% you know, body fat people. Uh but the the idea that fat makes you fat has been long dispelled. I mean, this was like that's a quote from Susan Powder back in the '80s, right? And uh uh and it still somehow made its way into medicine for for some unknown reason because the research has been very clear. Um we we need we need certain amount of fat in our diet. And that's kind of the beauty of keto, for instance, is that we is that we we look at how we can take this millions of years of evolution and harness it to become really good at burning fat, to become less dependent on glucose, to spare the protein that we otherwise would be burning for calories. Uh and and it's all part of this great system that we evolved. I don't want to co-opt your show here, but I want to talk to talk to you about something. Please. Okay. We talk about metabolic flexibility a lot now in this new era of of macros. Metabolic flexibility simply means that you're able to extract energy from the fat on your plate, the fat on your body, the carbohydrates on your plate, the glycogen in your muscles, the glucose in your bloodstream, uh the ketones that your liver makes. That's flexibility. That's getting energy from all these different substrates and not become dependent on burning uh protein to create glucose. Yeah, so keto is a a low-carb, high-fat, moderate-protein lifestyle. I kind of feel like there is not a one-size-fits-all with diets, but for me, the thing that I hear over and over is it's like the thing that really helps people who feel like they have tried everything else and nothing else has worked. Um but ultimately, I feel like that's the way that we were really meant to be eating to begin with. I don't think that all of these processed foods and all the things that are so high in sugar was what we were supposed to be eating. So now switching to this way of eating, I feel so much better. Um I actually grew up thinking that I had really bad stomach issues and had to get all kinds of testing cuz I was always feeling sick all the time. And then when I switched to keto, I was like it was totally gone. Um so and then on top of that, in just 1 year, I had lost 100 lb. So it's like obviously the only thing that I changed with what I was what I was eating. So to me, that was kind of like, all right, like this we're going in the right direction. The cholesterol myth. Walk me through what parts of the um the cholesterol numbers people should be caring about, not caring about um because so in my own life, I went through a period that lasted probably for about 2 and 1/2 years where I was essentially doing rabbit starvation. Right. So I was eating basically chicken breast, broccoli, nothing on it, no oil, nothing. You felt amazing. I felt terrible. Absolutely horrifying. Right. But damn, I was lean. Yep. And it was amazing. Uh but yeah, I was I had joint pain just was like in pure insanity. Yeah. And then I because I heard that ketogenics possibly had some cancer prevention stuff, I tried it. And it was like it was like taking a drug. It was so anti-inflammatory on my joints that I was like, well, I'm never going back to rabbit starvation. That was crazy. Um but my cholesterol levels were so low when I was doing the rabbit starvation and I thought that was a good thing that I was super amped. I felt bulletproof. Thought I was going to live forever. Then when I started doing ketogenics, my numbers went significantly up and my doctor was like, we have to get you on Lipitor and I was like, you must be joking. I've got two guns, Tom. I've got a a 12-gauge shotgun and I've got a BB gun. You're going to get shot with one of them. Which one do you pick? the BB gun if I can have that. That's it. And that's that makes good sense. And so my contention is is that an elevated A1C, an elevated C-peptide, which tells me your blood sugar and and and serum insulin levels are always high, a very low HDL and a very high triglyceride level, those four tests those that's the shotgun. If your LDL is is 250 300, that might might be a BB gun, but the the even the research on levels that high is completely inconclusive. But if your doctor says, oh, you have a high total cholesterol, you need to be on Lipitor, you need to find a new doctor because he's at least 10 years behind in his reading, okay? Now, if he talks about LDL, then he's at least current, but still when you look at the research in its totality, it's not a risk factor. It might be a BB gun, but it's not the shotgun that that high blood sugar, high insulin, low HDL and high triglycerides are. That's the shotgun that's going to kill you. Mhm. So every cell membrane in your body has to have cholesterol to function properly. And so when we tell everybody, you got to eat less cholesterol and I'm going to put you on this pill to lower your cholesterol even lower and I want you to eat lots of whole grains, and I want you to use canola oil because if you use bacon grease, that's going to give you a heart attack, right? And so, when you're using basically what amounts to artificial fat instead of real fat, you're building inferior cell membranes. And so, every cell in your body is at increased risk of something bad. And in the skin, that could wind up being eczema, it could wind up being psoriasis, it could wind up being one of the skin cancers. What to eat on a keto diet? I wrote two books that are sort of diet focused. One of them is Head Strong, but the big diet book is the Bulletproof Diet. And here's the gist of it. It is cyclical ketosis. If you do the the the keto bro diet, as I'm going to call it, right? Which is you never eat a carb again, I don't think that's going to work for you. If you eat lots of carbs, that's not going to work for you. So, you should absolutely do keto, and then you should stop, and you should do keto, and then you should stop. And this is for your gut bacteria, and this is for the glial cells in your brain that prefer glucose to ketones, right? And so, I I feel like like if you go to the Oh, I'm going to be like I used to be a a raw vegan, you know, that's not going to end well for you. It's It'll just tell you. Really, you didn't enjoy the experience. Well, I mean, I felt great for the first 2 3 months, like most people do because you you're eating a lot less of the other crap, but it's what happens over time even if you're pretty knowledgeable. Very few people, in fact, none of the anti-aging people I know support that kind of thing because they see it in patients, the CrossFit coaches. Like, yeah, I can spot a vegan or a raw vegan. I ask them to hold on to a bar, and they drop off after 5 seconds, and people who eat french fries can hold on for 15 seconds, and people who eat grass-fed steak and you know, do keto and you know, are doing things right, they hold on for 30 seconds. Like like it it's quantifiable, right? So, this isn't a rip on vegans. I was a vegan for a long time. I would eat gravel if it's what was best for me or best for the planet. I'd say eating grass-fed meat that restores soils Um, best for you and best for the planet, but not too much. And that plus a huge plate of vegetables with lots of undamaged quality fats following the ratio in your cells. Your cells are 45% saturated fat, your cell membranes, especially in the brain, it's a little bit higher. They're in the brain about 30, 35% mono unsaturated fat. And then the rest of it is all about the ratio of omega-3 to omega-6. And there you want more omega-3 and less omega-6. So, tons of veggies, moderate amount of high-quality grass-fed protein, tons of fat. The first step would be to just give the brain an alternative form of energy and reduce glucose and insulin spikes as much as possible because that can contribute to insulin resistance. Cut out sugar as much as possible or processed carbohydrates. If they're eating 2-300 g a day, you want to bring that down to under 100 g a day of lower glycemic carbohydrates, essentially vegetables. And and go from there. But if you abruptly take out glucose from the diet of someone who's, you know, drinking lots of sugary drinks and things like that, that may initially cause even a greater deficit in cognitive function because their brain is being fueled off glucose and may take a while to uh to induce the adaptations associated with transporting the ketones, utilizing the ketones, and switching your brain to an alternative form of energy. Quantity will kind of trump quality to to some extent. So, if you are running a calorie deficit of a high carbohydrate diet that has processed foods, that calorie deficit will produce a lot of beneficial things, you know, for a lot of that people are looking for like weight loss, insulin sensitivity, even a lowering of inflammation could be achieved simply by calorie restriction. Uh, and this is, you know, there's different, you know, areas of thoughts on this, but I'm of the opinion that nutritional ketosis, but not even necessarily that, just low carbohydrate diets allow one to have the discipline necessary to implement a dietary strategy that allows for you to uh induce and sustain a calorie deficit for one thing. And even if you're not at a calorie deficit, simply by not spiking glucose or spiking insulin and by elevating beta-hydroxybutyrate, that you know, that comes with a whole host of other advantages. So, including the anti-inflammatory effects, including perhaps the autoimmune effects, perhaps the gut microbiome, uh if the ketogenic diet is well formulated with soluble, probably most importantly, uh insoluble fiber that can help restore gut health over time. The The foods that are part of the ketogenic diet, um some people will argue, you know, against GMOs or against, you know, grass-fed beef versus corn-fed beef. And if you look at the lipid composition of fatty meats that are from animals that were grass-fed, there is a significant, you know, difference in, for example, pro-inflammatory fats are much less in grass-fed meat. So, I do think that if you can budget it in to go with foods, uh ketogenic strategy, it's going to be you want to get fatty fish, meat, and and poultry um to go with grass-fed relative to uh maybe industrial farming practices. In your book, you do a great job of not spending a lot of time demonizing anything, but instead really being quite prescriptive about, okay, if you want to upgrade yourself, which is like the big tag in your website, which I absolutely love. So, if somebody wants to upgrade themselves, knowing that every word that's about to come out of your mouth comes with compassion and knowing that there's a lot of individual variability and you get all of that, but like in a nutshell for somebody that wants to upgrade themselves, what should they eat and not eat? Yeah. So, you know, opt for foods that are nutrient dense. Um one of the easiest things that I recommend that people can do every single day is to consume what I call a large fatty salad. Um I think it's one of the best ways to really check off so many of your nutritional boxes to get an abundance of uh dietary fiber that the microbes that live in your large intestine love to consume. Um and when I say fatty, I don't mean, you know, throwing on tortilla strips and cheese and ranch dressing. I mean, you know, taking a bowl of dark leafy greens, kale, spinach, which are, you know, top sources of magnesium, which 50% of people do not consume adequate amounts of folate, um arugula. Arugula is a top source of nitrates. Dietary nitrate, really important in terms of increasing blood flow to the brain. One single high nitrate meal might actually improve cognitive functions. That powerful. Um dousing those dark leafy greens with extra virgin olive oil, which research has shown out of Barcelona, Spain, the PREDIMED study, you can consume about a liter a week to better cognitive function, cognitive health, cardiovascular health, and it might even help you lose weight because it's so anti-inflammatory. Actually, there's a compound in extra virgin olive oil that is as anti-inflammatory as low-dose Advil, but without any of the potential for negative side effects. And importantly, you need to have fat in that salad because fat allows many of the most important nutrients in the salad to become bioavailable. So, I talk a lot about in this book, which I think is bringing, you know, especially um you know, there's a lot I I think actually that there's a lot uh of new information that I bring to the conversation, but I talk particularly about um carotenoids and how research has shown out of University of Georgia that by eating uh lutein and zeaxanthin, by by supplementing with these carotenoids, you can actually boost visual processing speed by 20% even if you're young and healthy. So, I mean these are young and healthy people that are already considered to be at the peak of their cognitive prowess. Visual processing speed is so important. I mean think about in terms of responding to visual stimuli, you know, driving, athletic performance, sports performance, things like that. Video games. Video games. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So, dark leafy greens are abundant in these two carotenoids and they're only absorbed through the digestive tract when in the presence of fat. You don't absorb any of them unless you're consuming them with fat. So, like that fat-free dressing, throw that in the trash. Extra virgin olive oil, you know, is super key. And then, you know, I try to eat a, uh, a low-carb diet. I try to avoid, um, dense sources of carbohydrate with the exception of occasionally eating them in the post-workout window. Um, if you're going to eat carbs throughout the day, you really want to concentrate them into one meal. Um, it seems that when you consume your carbs concentrated into one meal, uh, less insulin is required to clear those carbs from circulation, that glucose from circulation, as opposed to if you were to spread them out over the course of the day. Which makes that that old advice to eat six small meals throughout the day particularly bad cuz insulin seems to be able to compound on itself. So, rather than eating, you know, uh, 30 g of carbs at lunch, 30 g of carbs at dinner, 30 g of carbs at, um, breakfast, concentrate them into one meal and there's less of an, you know, insulin AUC. So, less less insulin being stimulated to clear that glucose, which is important because as we talked about earlier, glucose is very damaging when it's, uh, in the blood. It glycates those proteins. How to figure out if the keto diet is right for you? Let me ask you secret of secret question. Okay, got you. Do you think though that everybody should try keto? Try. 100%. I think so. Why? Because feel like for most people if they can experience the mental clarity, the improvement in cognitive function, just that alone will change people's lives. And so for me, I think yes, there could be a weight loss and a fat loss um component of it, but for me the biggest thing with keto is shifting from running off glucose to running off ketones just for your brain. Like nutrition for your brain is probably the most remarkable thing. Um being able to go from eating six, seven meals a day to eating once or twice a day and feeling optimal or going 7 days without food and still functioning as a parent, as you know, running your business, like traveling. I've done that and it's amazing cuz I was told that you can't do that otherwise you'll lose all your muscle mass. But for me, I think it's worth experimenting with just for um how your brain can improve. There's a million ways to lose fat, right? for sure. And I think both you and I So I used to be about 60 lbs heavier. I lost all my fat through rapid starvation, right? It was total misery. I hated every single minute of it. But it worked. Not saying it doesn't work. Um but my thing is and I find this so interesting about keto. I think you're right, it's an N of 1. Everybody needs to do self-experimentation. You've got to try it because it it's the one dietary thing I would say changed my life completely from just being in a constant state of inflammation to then like that sense of your inflammation drops to essentially zero, your relationship to hunger changes, um you know, I agree with you. I think that there is so much individual variability. Everybody has to try it. But keto's the one thing I'll say everybody should try it. Yeah. Whether it works for them or not, I can't say. Yeah, and I feel like, you know, our bodies were designed to do that for a reason. We have this backup system, uh you know, or whatever you want to call it known as ketosis for a reason, right? Like it's how our species evolved, right? Uh if we didn't have uh you know, the ketogenic state, we probably would have died off as a species, right? Cuz like went and we had to go times without food, right? There was feasts and famine and and it wasn't until like maybe 100 or 200 years ago where we had access to food on demand pretty much where we could go to grocery stores or there was always an abundance of food and and because we've grown up in that, we've kind of like, "Well, we have to eat three square meals a day, you know, that's what we were taught." And it's like, "No, you can go a long period of time without food actually and still function and and and thrive actually." Right now we have a keto craze going on. Mhm. Um from an evolutionary perspective uh ketosis would have served us only during starvation. So, when people tell me, "Oh, the way to eat all the time is keto." I go, "Absolutely not." 1.8 million years have proven that, but if you don't believe it, look at look at the research being done right now on hunter-gatherer civilizations that are still intact. Now, when I talk about ketosis, I'm not talking about half a millimole cuz most of us wake up in the morning with half a millimole of ketones. I'm talking about this absurdity of shooting for two and three millimoles of ketosis unless you're battling brain cancer, right? This is actually not a good idea because it actually shifts mRNA and DNA to think that you're in a starvation state. If you're eating 90% fat all the time, your body thinks, "Wow, this person sucks at finding food. So, we need to put this body in like in in in DEFCON 4 mode because this city is going to die." So, well, let's shut down the thyroid. Let's do all these things to preserve until we can get out of this jam we're in. And and proof of that is if if if two people are into keto husband and wife and they're both into they're posting their keto pictures. Oh, I'm 1.2 millimoles and my wife is 2.6 and they and she gets pregnant that baby he be imprinted with obesity genes. Because that baby is being formed under the guise from an evolutionary perspective that mom and dad suck at finding food. So, we have to make this baby so efficient that it turns everything into fat. And this has been proven. When I look at these things, I look at them from evolution. I say, "Okay, where would ketosis have really come Okay, famine. It would have got us through the famine. Would it because we're metabolically flexible?" I look at everything that way first. Why is this important? Why would we be endowed with it? Where did it come from? And then I do my research from there. It's almost like there's two camps of thought around diabetes on one end, which is like metabolically unhealthy end, and then the performance end, which is the athletes, right? It's almost like each group There's like the high-carb, low-fat people and the low-carb, high-fat people on each side. And so, there's people who think that you fix diabetes with low-carb, high-fat. There's people who think you fix diabetes with high-carb, low-fat. What I have found is that you can actually get the same drop in glucose and the same drop in weight in in two different programs, a keto program versus a high high-carb, low-fat program program in the course of a year. I'm seeing the same drops in people with diabetes. So, I think both can work. It depends on the individual. I mean, Peter Attia basically has said that 50% of people do not respond to keto. So, the question is is are they better adapted to a high-carb, low-fat diet or or maybe more of a balanced diet? But, I think that we are going to learn that like there are certain times in your life that you might you might be better suited for a high-carb diet. When I was in my 20s, I had such an easy time eating carbs. It was like no problem. Now that I'm in my 30s, it's like my my my metabolism has shifted, and I have to be really careful with carbs, and I really have to eat them in accordance to how much I exercise. And are you saying that based on the spike in glucose or based on um weight gain? Like Definitely weight, but all I mean, it just seems like I'm more likely to put weight on when I eat carbohydrates now, but I also think that um you know, like I I was able to drop my blood glucose like a point in a year um from A1C uh from 5.6 to 4.6 and in over the course of a year. And a lot of it was carbohydrate reduction. Most people who have been keto for any length of time will report back, "Dude, I first of all, three meals a day, can't even handle it. It's like I I couldn't eat three meals a day. It's way too much food." Number two, um I probably get by on 30% fewer calories now doing all the same activities than I did before I was keto. What's that about? And what that it's about it's about metabolic efficiency. It's about um you know, less um thermic effect of food. You know, sometimes we we eat a a large meal more than we should have and the body raises its temperature just to kind of burn off some of that fuel, right? Because it doesn't want that much fuel at one time. Yes, it tries to stash the the glucose into the glycogen reserves in the muscles. If there's not enough room, it goes to the fat cells. Um you know, yes, there's some uh uh protein, but excess protein goes to the liver, gluconeogenesis gets converted to sugar, same same issue with that. So, all these all of these um elements of of efficiency, now you don't need as much protein because you're sparing protein instead of deaminating it and then peeing it out all the time. Uh you don't need as much carbohydrate because you've learned how to make ketones from your own stored body fuel. Those ketones really reduce the amount of uh glucose that you need to make or you need to to take in from the outside. Um you know, there's a uh statement that many people make in the keto world that there is no requirement in human nutrition for carbohydrate at all. Uh because the body can make enough glucose through gluconeogenesis and then offset the rest of the requirements with ketones. So, the efficiency becomes again, a very um important aspect in uh reduction of inflammation, because the efficiency also carries with it a a reduction in reactive oxygen species from the from the um inefficient burning of fuel to get rid of it. Uh the housecleaning I talked about where where a cell will look at the the environment and go uh geez, there's not enough uh substrate around for me to dive to divide right now, so I'm I think I'll I'll stay where I am, and I'll do some housecleaning, and I'll and I'll literally consume some of the damaged proteins within. I'll um consume some of the damaged fats. Um a cell might even say, "Time for me to give up the ghost. I'm going to die." Autophagy. The the the cell will will self-destruct based on the signals that it gets from the environment, which and that environment is a a dearth, if you will, of nutrients. Now, conversely, if you've if you're eating every couple of hours, you know, you're eating three square meals a day, plus snacks in between, plus something before you go to bed, which most people do, the body goes, "Well, there's so much food around. This is amazing. So, my cells they can divide, cuz there'll be plenty of substrate and and and food for the for the two of me when I divide." But, as we know from sort of the anti-aging movement, you know, cells have kind of a finite number of divisions. That's what the telomeres are all about, right? So, if you can prolong that time from from when one cell decides it's time to divide, um and not only prolong the time, but then have that one cell start to do some housecleaning, that's a critical kind of theory behind the anti-aging movement and the anti-aging aspect of keto and of intermittent fasting and of long-term fasting. So, there's there's a lot of it's like a new era of science that we're in that we're embarking on here that kind of has to go back and refigure the science because the science for the last several decades has kind of been based on body needs sugar, fat's bad, uh heart attacks are caused by fat and cholesterol, um you know, uh you can you can you have to do exercise to burn off all the calories if you want to lose weight. All these things have been shown to be inaccurate now. Thank you guys so much for watching this episode of Health Theory. I hope you guys work with your doctor and give keto a shot and I hope it's as impactful for you as it was for me. Until next time, my friends. Be legendary. Take care. Thank you guys so much for watching and being a part of this community. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. You're going to get weekly videos on building a growth mindset, cultivating grit, and unlocking your full potential.