Try These Tips for Better Holistic Health | Will Cole on Health Theory

Because you see their relationship with food is not about the present moment. It's not about the breakfast. It's not about the lunch or the dinner. It's about their years of baggage that they've brought into where they're at. So, you have to start to unpeel that. And that takes months, can take years to really work with somebody to overcome that disordered eating. And I don't mean that just an eating disorder. I think there's a eating disorder spectrum. I think that there's a lot of people that really have disordered relationships with food and body shame. So that if I had to punch anybody patient wise, if it got them to change, it would hurt a little bit, but if it made them change, I would do it. Um because it's literally killing them. Hey everyone, welcome to Health Theory. Today's guest is Dr. Will Cole. He was named one of the top 50 functional medicine practitioners in the US and he's written the book quite literally on how to do a keto diet with primarily plant-based nutrition. It's called Ketoarion. He also founded the Cole Natural Health Centers and is the host of not one but two health and wellness podcasts, Goop Fellas and Keto Talks. But even with two podcasts, I'm not sure you could do more than simply scratch the surface of the number of topics that this man can go deep on, including what I want to start with today, which is the terrifyingly complex diseases of modernity to put a nice fancy word to it. I love it. So define that for us like what are the things that are ailing us? You talked about in the book that there's a storm coming. What is that storm? Yeah. So this commonality between just about every health problem we face as a world is has one thing in common and it's inflammation. It's chronic insidious inflammation. And inflammation is a good thing, right? It's parts of our immune system. It fights viruses and bacteria. It's like really good to have healthy balance inflammation levels. The problem is so many people that we love and so pe many people that we know, they're going through chronic inflammatory issues. So anything from diabetes to heart disease to autoimmune conditions to things that don't even seem inflammatory like anxiety and depression and fatigue, like people don't think of mental health issues as having inflammatory components, but that's what the literature suggests. Yeah, that that was super interesting. Talk about that. So mental health, which for sure before I started researching about health, I never in a million years would have thought that it was anything other than sort of a a mental as removed from the body problem or even a brain wiring problem. I wouldn't have thought that like you said, the best medicine is on the end of our fork for something that has to do with the mind. So how is the inflammation triggered underlying all of this and then how does it work its way up to being a mental disorder? So the things that we do in life, these epigenetic modulators, the foods we're eating or the foods we're not eating, our stress, our exposure to toxins, all of these things in life are constantly and dynamically instructing our biochemistry, influencing our immune system and bringing up inflammation or bringing down and modulating it in some way. Really fast, let's let's dive into that so longtime listener listeners of the show will understand the difference between genetics and epigenetics. But are you saying that lifestyle, food, etc. are essentially signaling molecules that tell what genes to turn on and off, what amount to turn on? Exactly. They are they are instructing gene expression and they're upregulating pathways in our body of our immune system. So all of these things that we do in our life and when you look at the statistics of these diseases that I mentioned these are largely overcomeable healable things at least supportable things with easy lifestyle change. It's not easy but it's needed. Human nature is to do this same thing and expect a different result. The human nature is to want a quick fix. you know, every meal is another opportunity to feed health or feed health problems. There's no like benign food. There's there's no benign activity. And that's actually why I talk about this concept of the inflammation spectrum in ketoarian. We are all somewhere on this inflammation spectrum. From one end, it's mild fatigue and brain fog and low-grade anxiety which are ubiquitous. And then the other end of that spectrum is full-blown ICD10 like diagnosis codes, you know, autoimmune conditions or diabetes, god forbid, or any one of these problems. And then everything in between on that continuum. So my job is as a functional medicine practitioner is to like find out where what what's driving that inflammation and then start moving their health in a positive direction. All right. What are some super common inflammation causes that you see day in and day out with your patients? Well, the foods we eat is instructing our biochemistry. It's influencing the gut microbiome, which is 75% of the immune system, and that's upregulating the immune system in that way. A lot of gut centric inflammation has to do with food, but it's not just food. So, you have to look at toxins. I see that quite a bit and that's a broad umbrella, but products that people are using, um, environmental toxins, let's get real [ __ ] specific. So, I'm going to, if you had to put an apex predator of toxins, are we talking glyphosate? Yeah, it's our food supply. It's it's things that our food the way our food is grown, the way that it's grown, the way the things that are sprayed on the food, but it's also not just the food itself, but it's it's how people are cooking. They're cooking it in a wrong way. They're frying it and they're kind of turning good fats into bad fats by smoking it uh cooking it beyond the smoking point, which is different for different oils. Yes. So, give me give me a a short list of like the real bad things to avoid. So, um to avoid glyphosate, should I be going to locals farmer markets or like how how do we avoid that one? Um what fats should we be cooking with? How do we know the smoke point? How do we make sure that we're in safe ranges? Yeah, I would say for most people, and this is the double-edged sword of information, right? We sometimes people can get this paralysis of analysis. They feel like I'm screwed. Like what I'm I have to live in a bubble and like eat air and ice cubes and like do nothing. So, I want to be very like stressing about food is not good for our health either. I think people need to find out where they're at on this inflammation spectrum. And the way that I explain it in the book, the inflammation spectrum, is there's seven sections on this spectrum. There's brain, there's hormones, there's blood sugar, there's detox, there's muscularkeeletal, the seven, and then there's connections of the seven or polyinflammation. So we go and ask questions about each section. So for example, like the outer third of your eyebrows are thinning. It may seem random to the lay person, but that's a sign that the thyroid may be not working well. So, someone may think, "What the heck? Why is he asking me about the outer third of my eyebrows? These are clues like check engine lights." People need to start taking inventory of this stuff because it's the mundane that people just think it's normal, but these things are not normal. Like having low-grade anxiety isn't normal. Like not for having this fatigue and brain fog, just like getting through the day with tons of coffee and sugar is so ubiquitous, but it's not normal. But people think it's normal because that's their life. So through asking the questions in the inflammation spectrum book, people can start being conscious of the fact that this isn't normal. Whoa, I thought it was. Chronic disease is ubiquitous but not normal, right? Uh I do suffer from low-grade anxiety. It used to be bordering on paralyzing and I had to work my way out of that. Now, what complicates things for me is that working my way out of that was massively about getting my mind in a different place. And when I when I first started having to unwind it, I had no sense that this was diet related. So, I went from almost paralyzed to um still sort of a background issue, but very manageable all mentally. But now I'm in the zone where I feel like this probably is something that's happening at a gut level, like a literal gut level if I had to guess. Um, so I come to you as a patient, I can articulate that. What What do I begin to do? What am I am I doing an elimination diet? Am I going keitarian? To me, I would go deep on a health history level. Let's do it. Okay. Fire away. Uh, do you have a family history of autoimmune problems? Yes. Okay. And that's that continuum. I mean, just because you have a family history of something doesn't mean you're going to get it. But I find that a lot of people with this low-grade anxiety or anxiety and panic attacks oftentimes, not every time, you'll find this autoimmune component in the family. And there's a whole field of research called the cytoine model of cognitive function. It's basically how inflammation impacts our brain. So that's anxiety, depression, brain fog, ADHD, autism, and the like. Uh so I would want to look at the second brain at your gut and look kind of look at the complexities of the gastrointestinal system and the microbiome which is the trillions of bacteria in our gut which influence our our brain. I send off a test. Yeah. And you're looking for diversity. We're looking for diversity. We're looking for bacterial imbalances or dispiosis or bacterial overgrowths. We're looking for any yeast and fungal overgrowths. We're looking for digestion and absorption. We're looking at intestinal permeability or what they call leaky gut syndrome. We're looking at inflammation like markers like calrotectin. These are immune inflammatory markers in the gut. So we look at that to kind of get a benchmark of the what's going on in the second brain. Your gut and brain are formed from the same fetal tissue. All right. So let's say what we get back is ah there are signs of gut permeability. Mhm. Because I this is about maybe a year ago I all of a sudden I had a rash and I was like the [ __ ] is going on? It was so abrupt and so out of nowhere and I had not changed my diet. So I was like is it possible that like we changed detergents or something? And so we were like going through some of those things. Is this a topical reaction? And then I was just like no I know better than this. like the skin is for sure a representation of something that's going on inside. So, I started researching um histamine, foods that were high in histamine. And then I also I ate a lot of olives and I read that that was high in histamine and so I removed that. I was eating a lot of cured meat, a lot of cured meat, so I cut that out. Um and then once I started doing that, poof, it went away. And I was like, whoa, that's weird. So, I feel like even now I'm I'm at this where if I eat things that are high in histamine, I'm going to have a problem where I'll either break out or I'll start getting itchy or if I eat too many um highly processed foods that'll also and I don't know what ingredient it is in there or what. Um but if I stray too much from just whole food that and specifically avoid even some whole foods like olives that are high in histamine. Yeah. So I would say knowing what I know at this and I talk about histamine intolerance at length in the inflammation spectrum because of this sort of gut centric inflammatory response and I see histamine intolerance a lot. So it's typically caused or at least in part driven by something called small intestinal bacterial overgrowth or SIBO. SIBO I know it well. So it can basically it's bacteria living where it shouldn't live into the small intestines. And you know this, I'm sure, but there's this connection between the gut and the skin. It's called in functional medicine, we refer to it as the gut skin axis. It's not just functional medicine. If you look at PubMed, you'll see that connection as well. Um, but it's the the the idea that what goes on in the gastrointestinal system is influencing the skin. It's out it's the check engine light again of what's going on in the gut. So I would look at these gene snips, these single nucleotide gene variants that we get a copy from our mom, a copy from our dad. So with this autoimmune inflammation spectrum component potentially with your case, I would want to look at these snips, but it's important to know these snips have been around for 10,000 years. Our genes have remained largely unchanged. So yes, genes are a component to that, but so much of that is epigenetics. So research estimates that twothirds of that autoimmune inflammation puzzle is epigenetics, the lifestyle stuff that we do. But genes are a part of that. So if you have a slow gene, a sluggish gene variant, that's going to that's going to slow down your body's breakdown of these histamines if that's the issue. It seems like it if you're avoiding these high histamine foods, but we can kind of know as you know definitively as we can know from a lab standpoint if that's an issue or not. I love it. Yeah. So you call it a storm. the storm of inflammation is coming and when I look at the world it I'm actually scared. So you talk about seeing people that have kids that are like 2 years old that have autoimmune conditions and I'm like what the [ __ ] Like when you think about okay sure if I've punished myself for decades and decades and decades with a stupid lifestyle. I get why I end up with an autoimmune disease. when you're two, it's like that pretty clearly says to me something happened to your parents, something happened to your grandparents, your great-grandparents, and that this has been like this um ever escalating problem from generation to generation passed down either through the microbiome. It's not changes in DNA, at least I don't think. So when I think about epigenetic changes that can be handed down that gets maybe a little more controversial but the microbiome I would say is pretty incontrovertible which is you're going to pick up what your parents had. So it's there there do you agree that there's something happening generationally? Yeah. There's no way around it. You can look at the statistics of what kids are up against. Again, it's a confluence of a lot of different factors, but it's largely the world we're living in. And we are just You got to define that for me. What do you mean? So, I'm eating glyphosate. Problem number one. I'm uh eating uh vegetable oils. That was stupid. What else is stacking on us? Well, if you want to get very specific here, I think sugar is a major driver of inflammation. And it's so it's everywhere. It's in so many things with various trop nice sounding names, euphemisms. sugar that people are sucked in by uh evaporated cane juice uh even like coconut sugar, you know, it sounds more like natural, right? But it's still sugar. It may be a better, but better doesn't mean optimal, right? So, look at the grams of carbohydrates, look at the grams of sugar. I think that that's a very easy thing for people to start being mindful of. But then look, we have these some people are more insulin resistant than other people. They're going to probably have a lower tolerance for carbs than the next person that doesn't have those gene variants. They're insulin sensitive. So, yeah, some people have like I I like to use that cup analogy. Some people have big cups, some people have small cups, meaning they can get away with a lot of quote unquote abuse before you see a problem, right? The genetic tolerance to stressors. We can't change our cup size. We're born with that. But we can change to a large degree what we put in our cups. So if people have small cups, they're going to have to do more. They're just going to have to. And it's not fair, but that it's reality. And they're going to have to lean into emptying that cup. People with large cups, they could start off simple and lean into it. Uh, all right. Let's talk to the small cup people. So, uh, we're cutting out sugar. Mhm. We are. Are we going keitarian? Like, is that going to be a key part of this? It depends on what their personal preference is. Ketoarian is the way that I eat. It's a very effective way for brain function. It's a very effective way of lowering inflammation. It's the a clean way to do the ketogenic diet. And I do a cyclical ketoarian approach where I I'll be in ketosis and then I moderate my carbs when I want to. And you fluctuate your carbs more than your protein. You you'll have to adjust your protein and fat when you bring your carbs up. But you find a rhythm and a grace that works for your body. So people have to do some experimenting. So maybe it is ketoarian or maybe they can just lead into like you said an elimination diet. That's how what I actually advocate for in the inflammation spectrum. Now do you think that ketoarian works because people are eliminating a lot of the sugar and other garbage? That's part of it. Yeah. So what is it about a ketogenic diet that makes it so anti-inflammatory? Well, let's start with the basics because I I agree with you. You're going off of sugar. You're going off of inflammatory fats like canola oil and soybean. Well, you should be, but most people in keto space are. They're going off of grains. They're going off of all these sort of inflammatory foods. So, that's of course foundational to its benefits, but we can go an extra level here and kind of tap into our body's metabolic state known as ketosis. So your body we all we all have this capability but beta hydroxybutyrate is a ketone that our body produces and it yeah it's a way to burn fat and that's what people are excited about the ketogenic diet but I what excites me even more than the fat burning and becoming a fat burner is its anti-inflammatory benefits in the body that excites me as a functional medicine practitioner way more that you can lower like things like NFCappa B and and COX 2 and the these inflammosomes that are high in the people we love and maybe in ourselves So, let's tap into our body's own innate way to modulate inflammation levels and balance inflammation levels. Okay. So, to do that, um, I'm going to walk through some of the things that I think you would recommend. Um, so, we're going to have to experiment for sure. And you're very clear that one size definitely does not fit all. And I think that's absolutely correct when it comes to nutrition. um whether it's just the epigenetic state that you're in or the genetic state or the combination of the two, which of course is the reality, but you're probably going to want to eliminate sugar. You're going to want to eliminate bad fats, which you've already listed some of those. You're going to want to stop damaging your fats, meaning cooking them past the the smoke point. You're going to want to avoid environmental toxins. Let's list a few. You're going to want to stop eating things that have glyphosate, which is going to be really hard, but you're going to try to eliminate that, aka Roundup. You're going to eat whole food whenever humanly possible. Um, your your recommendation certainly in ketoarian is to be largely plant-based. You're very evenhanded about um the use of certain animal proteins um in moderation. I don't remember you actually using that word, but like that is certainly the gist of the book. Mhm. Um and then the part that I'm just looking at the way that you live. You live outside the city. You specifically wanted to get away. Um all those things, how does that play in? Yeah. All those things are super important, but it's not just about food. And I think you brought up a good point. So food has to be like a major component of this. You can't you have to start there. Um, and I think healthy fats are one way because if you're eliminating carbs and sugar, you have to fill it with something else. Avocados, avocado oil, nuts and seeds, I recommend soaking them to break down the phytic acid and the lectins, make them more digestible. Um, coconut uh, and did I mention olives and olive oil and, uh, wild caught fish, fresh seafood, things like that. So that would be the healthy fats and some protein in there. What is something that makes you want to punch your patients in the face? Like do they ignore advice a lot? Are there just common mistakes that people just keep making because they're addicted to sugar or anything like that. And I know you would punch them with love. That goes without question. But is there any like frustration element to dealing with that? In my own life, there are people that I love desperately that suffer needlessly in my opinion because there are things that they can't give up or won't give up or whatever. If I had to love punch a patient, if that was a thing, I would say it's the self-sabotage. It's it's the people that you know the other side is so near like if they could completely improve their wellness in a powerful way, but they have baggage and trauma that's sabotaging them in the present moment. That's [ __ ] interesting. What do you mean? How's how is baggage and trauma sabotaging them? Because you see, their relationship with food is not about the present moment. It's not about the breakfast. It's not about the lunch or the dinner. It's about their years of baggage that they've brought into where they're at. So, you have to start to unpeel that. And that takes months, can take years to really work with somebody to overcome that disordered eating. And I don't mean that just an eating disorder. I think there's a eating disorder spectrum. I think that there's a lot of people that really have disordered relationships with food and body shame. So that if I had to punch anybody patientwise, if it got them to change, it would hurt a little bit, but if it made them change, I would do it. Um because it's literally killing them. It's and they you see them doing well and then they go off and they binge again and they are just they feel like a failure and their guilt and shame around it. That takes time to start to unwind that. Whenever I heard somebody ask you like, and of course I'm sort of ruining it for myself because I'm going to ask you at the end, but uh like what's one thing that you would have people do? You always say you can't heal a body that you hate. I think that's super interesting that you get involved in like the mental aspect of the game. Yeah. How do you do that? Like as a clinician, how do you help with that? It's such a central part to my job. Like the science is important. We run the labs. We look at the data. We look at the objective baseline. And that's without a doubt paramount to my work as a functional medicine practitioner. But there is stuff that you can't measure on a lab that influences the lab. You cannot spend your whole day like talking to people that are going through real stuff for the past 11 years at this point and not see this human component, this emotional, mental, spiritual component to their relationship with food and their physiology at large. We find ourselves and by we I mean myself and my team find ourselves as almost food therapists in many ways as being in this space of wellness is you have to get this this right this the spiritual block right then when you get that right all of the food and the macros and the micros and all the nutrition stuff tends to fall into place a lot more easily. It's an outward expression of their realization of who they are. And then some people have to deal with just the logistical nutritional stuff. I'm not saying that there sometimes is just a food change and they're fine. But if I had to say one thing that's plaguing our culture as a whole and in addition to the food stuff, it's people's disordered relationship with themselves. So how do you insert yourself in that? Do are there questions that you ask? Is it just case by case and you pick up on something that somebody says like how do you help them begin to heal that? Yeah, we just ask a lot of questions to get to the to the root cause. But it's this it's the dichotomy of functional medicine. It's the science and then the art. And the art side of it is feeling the energy. E most of my patients are online, but I still feel that pause or that way that they word things. and you get to know somebody and I'm a fairly empathic person and you just get that rhythm of where they're at and what they need in the way that you even should be speaking to them because not everybody like you have to kind of sometimes lean people in gently for them to receive it at all because sometimes if you go with good intentions and say this is all the stuff you need to be doing they will throw their hands up and walk the other way because it's just too much too soon. So you have to find the rhythm of what what's their love language, where are they at, and then what's the lab what do the labs say? So what are some of the patterns of dysfunction? Like what do you see people really struggle with that's super common? Well, I think in this wellness space, I think that various forms of orthorexia are a problem. Meaning they get so paranoid about their diet that that becomes its own fixation. Yeah. And and a lot of times it's born out of real health issues because we have this epidemic of inflammation of autoimmune conditions. They are having reactions to the like healthiest food under the sun. They're like having histamine reactions from them. It's like if I can't eat vegetables and and olives, like what the heck am I supposed to do? And again, it's stress and shame and anxiety about food large healthy food and healthy eating. I think that's a problem. And then I think that because people are stressed and they're not sleeping well, people are stress eating. I think that's those are the two things that I see the most. That's super interesting. One of the things that I found fascinating about your own story is that you start as a were you full vegan or were you just vegetarian? I was a vegan for 10 years. Okay. So you migrate away from that. Why did you migrate away from that? So I think there's a good way to do an optimal way to go to the ve a vegan diet and there's many vegan keto options in ketoarian. So if people are for religious reasons or ethical reasons or personal preference reasons I wanted to teach them to go entirely plant-based in a way that I believe is sustainable not only for the environment but for their physiology, their environment, their bodily environment. So we all have different gene snips. I have a double gene snip of the MTHFR gene, which is the gene that makes the enzyme that converts folic acid into folate, which we need as a methyl donor. It basically does a lot of cool things for our body. It's a carbon hydrogen group that brings down inflammation. It helps our hormones working well, our brain working well. It builds proteins in our bodies. My body does that pretty dang slowly, like up to 70% slower. and folate, uh, especially in abundant amounts and B12 aren't as high in in B vitamins, uh, when you're doing entirely plant-based. So, I adjusted my diet where I'm still predominantly plant-based, but I'm bringing in things like egg yolks into the vegetarian land and then the wild caught fish. And as far as the pescatarian section of my diet, uh to provide my body more ample bioavailable sources of these nutrients and omega fats are another one of them, not just the B vitamins. But the conversion is lousy in my body of these like flax seeds and chia seeds. My body doesn't convert them to sort of the longchain omegas as well as somebody else. So we have to find out what works for our body. Then there's some people that do great with vegan diets. I mean, you know, Rich Roll, right? I mean, the guy does amazing on this diet and his wife, Julie, they do fine. But I talk to patients for a living. And I most of my patients are very well read. They've done all their research. They're eating cleaner than most Americans. They're eating vegan diets. They're eating vegetarian diets. They're doing all these things, but their health is struggling. How can we optimize it without abandoning the foundation of maybe their ethics or principles? Right. So, one thing in the book that you cover is what oftentimes vegetarians and vegans do wrong. What is that? Where do they um what hole is in their diet that you help fix? I think a lot of them overdo it on the carbs, you know, they're carbarians by definition. And when you look at the vegan diet, vegetarian diet, it doesn't by it default mean it's a healthy diet. Just means you're avoiding animal foods. So you have to have it properly formed. You have to really lean into it. And it's so easy because it's convenient to get all these convenient vegetarian foods just like any other way of eating. So you want to make sure you're again focusing on whole foods, real foods. Look at your macros. Just get a snapshot of where you're at from a macronutrient, which is proteins, fats, and carbs. Some people have a toler handle more carbs. Some people can't. Like I have many patients that if they ate what Rich Roll ate, their blood sugar would be through the roof. But some people can do it. So we have to find your what works for your body and what doesn't. So there they could that that doesn't mean that they shouldn't be plant-based. Maybe they just need to shift what plant-based foods they're focusing on. That's all. So the carnivore diet is something that I'm super interested in. So my wife has struggled very profoundly with microbiome issues and she has made tremendous progress. She's been dealing with it now for four years, but she's made tremendous progress. And she's gotten to the point where the things that she eat, she can maintain equilibrium, but she isn't like progressing as much as I she's sort of hit steady state, but she's not making progress in my estimation. Um, and so one thing that if the hypothesis about lectins is accurate and that you have plants that have these toxins in them, you eat the toxins, they break the epithelial lining of the gut and now you have um your autoimmune response. If that is accurate, then potentially for her, if she was a good carnivore and ate nose totail and, you know, got the whole mix of everything and isn't just eating hamburgers or steaks, um, I'd be very curious to see if that worked for her or not. Um, I'd be curious to get your take on the carnivore diet. Yeah. So, you would think as the author of Ketoarian, I wouldn't advocate for the carnivore diet. It's I do use a carnivore diet in my for my patients that need it. It's an an ultimate elimination approach. You're taking out a lot of variables and these people with really dysfunctional guts and gastrointestinal lining and microbiome and this inflammatory cascades going on. Sometimes you need that intervention to lower inflammation for a short period of time or for a period of time. It could be months. If you're going going to do the carnivore diet, you're going to want to make it make sure it's nutrientdense. You're going to want to make sure that you're going for more of the organ meats from a nutrient density standpoint like you pointed out. And I have people be fish centric as well. It's not just about the organ meat. So, I want people to getting making sure they're getting their healthy omegas from the fish. And grass-fed beef has omegas as well. But the problem with this is that they it's not sustainable for most people long term. And we're going off of dairy, too. And many times we're going off of egg whites for a while, too, because the albumin can be a problem for some people with autoimmunity, the egg white. Some people have dairy sensitivities as well. So, it's pretty tight. That's why for most people, it's not going to be a long-term thing. So, we do it for a period of time. We do some broths and soups and stews and things like that. sort of a GAPS approach. I don't know if you're familiar with GAPS. It stands for gut and physiology syndrome or gut and psychology depending on what you're using it for, but it's the gut brain axis, the gut physiology axis. So, it's it the premise is lots of bone broth soups and stews. So, we use that with sort of these nutrient-dense organ meats for a time and then we lean in. Why soups and stews? Bone broth I get. Yeah. I don't understand soups and stews. It's it's soft and cooked meat because even the meat can be hard to digest for these people. Many of them have hypoglyhria, decreased hydrochloric acid. They're not breaking down meats even. Wow. They have really messed up guts. So, we have to help with their digestion at the beginning really to even break down meats. But then you start with you lean into pureed vegetables after that and you know uh softcooked vegetables, low FODMAP vegetables which are the fermentable sugars that people with these dispiosis can have a problem too. How the hell if I went carnivore for a year, how the hell would I still have bacteria like a SIBO problem? So for fermentation being the thing that I'm thinking of, would that bacteria not die off? Well, there are certain bacteria and yeast that feed on other things, too. They can feed on proteins. They can feed on ketones. So, then you're going to have to bring in some typically herbal antimicrobials to help with that. Oh, god. This stuff gets so complicated. It is complicated. My my whole day job is like looking at all the variables and trying to make this as digestible, no pun intended, but as practical as as possible. Yeah, man. God, going through this with my wife, it really it is it has opened my eyes to trying things that I never in a million years would have thought would work. The laundry list of crazy things that she has tried from like hold a vial of this stuff and I'll know if you're allergic to it. It's like yeah, try it all. Like do everything you can grip strength based on what she's holding. I mean, stuff that I'm like is not possible, but she's it it's almost like the crazier stuff we finally have given ourselves over to and just like I hate the word surrendered more than you can imagine, but at some point like we have just literally just surrendered to the potential like that anything might work. tried in a very systematic titrated way. Like we're not just throwing things to the wind, but it's like trying things, anything, just to see like if something works. And it's it's really been interesting to see things that I never thought would work start to slide into place, which is actually one of the things that makes me consider carnivore. Never would have considered it before. Yeah. But let's talk uh carnivore versus vegetables. So, I maybe I like vegetables a lot, but I tend to like the ones that are really um carby. Mhm. Sweet potatoes are so delicious. I would give up virtually everything to eat them all day. Um but I even though I like vegetables partly out of laziness because I don't want to cook them, I am almost not entirely because I'll throw in rice every now and then. Um, but I'm carnivore adjacent. I like that. What is it? What nutrients do you fear I will miss if I were to eat organ meat and all that but not have vegetables? I think if you are eating organ meat uh and doing it well with a variety of nutrient-dense meats, I don't think you'd be meeting missing many nutrients other than fiber, which is a major way that we help with gut diversity. A robust variety of plant foods is associated with a healthier microbiome longer term. And we have longer term studies with these. We don't have longer term studies with the carnivore diet. I would assume that if someone's doing it properly, they're they probably at a period of time would be would seem more good than bad because they're removing a lot of foods and then it's going to be a net positive for them if they're doing a properly formed carnivore diet, right? But is that going to be sustainable long term for them? Most people are are going to want more variety than that. No, I get that. So, I do uh intermittent fasting every day. I do I try to keep my average pretty damn close to 20 hours a day. Mh. What are What's your take on intermittent fasting, fasting in general? Useful, not useful. I I love it. I I advocate it in both of my books. I But you have to find what works for your body because I feel like sometimes people I see this a lot. They go too aggressive with timerestricted feeding or intermittent fasting and then they what's too aggressive? Well, it's for their body. So, let's just say they want to try like the OMAD like the one meal a day 22 to2. You are getting your calories in in a 2hour to one hour window. So, 22 to2 or 23 to one fasting to eating window. You have to make sure you're getting enough calories in that time. You That's a big meal. Yeah. So, I've been experimenting with it. You've tried OMAD? Oh, yeah. And I like it. And I've just been doing this. I knew about the research. I've written about it before, but I didn't do it for myself until recently. Um, and I'm experimenting. What's the research saying? Cuz I want to live forever. Is this going to help in that endeavor? I mean, with these longer periods of fasting, you in theory are upregulating these autophagy pathways. The cellular recycling gobbling good cells gobbling. When do you think that kicks in? 16 hour, 18 hour, 20 hour? Well, I think depends on how much inflammation's going on in the person. It depends on how insulin will determine when autophagy kicks in. Yeah. Because if the if the body you see people that are resistant and look, we can't gauge. I have no practical clinical way for me to gauge autophagy. I wish I did, but when a lab comes out, I will be running it. But when you look at people's biomarkers and the things we can gauge, you look at their blood sugar, you look at their insulin levels, you look at their inflammation levels. Some people can't get into this in ketosis very easily. They have to kind of get these things in check and that takes time, right? And then you could measure your glucose, you can measure your insulin, you can measure your ketones if you wanted to. Have you ever worn a continuous glucose monitor? I haven't. It's [ __ ] interesting, dude. You have to do it. I know I need to. I have patience on it. I was going to say like that's a must that it's it is if your diet is clean it's a little bit gimmicky maybe the wrong word but you just get to see like oh wow like I ate an Impossible burger. I thought I'm really going to like go ham on this whole plant protein thing or plantbased diet thing. Let me see how I do as I upregulate. Admittedly it was at a restaurant. So maybe they put so much pinache in it that it, you know, is what made it ridiculous. But dude, I reacted like I ate ice cream. It spiked my glucose to like 170, which for me is crazy town. I mean, you could just see on the cuz it's, you know, my continuous monitor is pretty flat. This massive peak. It was crazy. That is crazy. Crazy. All right. Where can people find you? Where can they find your two amazing books? The inflammation book is out. The inflammation spectrum comes out October 15th. Okay. So, it's on pre-order now depending when people listen to this, but uh yeah, it comes out uh October 15th and Ketoarian's out now, but everything's that drill will.com. That's awesome. Yeah. I'm going to take away from you the answer of uh love thyself and love thy body and get rid of the shame around food, which is absolutely critical. But if people were going to make one change that would have the biggest positive impact on their health, what change would you have them make? Cut cut sugar out or lower it. It's I heard it once that it's like a recreational drug. You should not not use it very often, but and and supplement that with healthy fats. So avocados, avocado oil, olives, olive oil, grass-fed beef, wild caught fish. I think that those taking the place of sugar is would be one thing would change the human race in a positive way. I would agree with that. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show, man. That was amazing, guys. I think he has a lot of very evenhanded advice across the spectrum. Talks a lot about having to do the testing yourself, but walks you through exactly how to do that. I think you will really enjoy digging into his books, his videos, everything. It is all absolutely fantastic. I can't recommend it enough. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And 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.