Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 613: Robb Wolf on Keto, What the Health, Wired to Eat & MORE
Episode Date: October 9, 2017In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin swing my Robb Wolf's office on the way home from the Spartan World Championships and cover a variety of topics including the What the Health documentary, eating keto..., his book Wired to Eat as well as other fascinating topics. Babysitting sick dogs (2:17) Robb entering clickbait world (4:33) HPA dysregulation/Cock blocking thyroid regulation (9:50) Order of operations to help people’s dysfunctions (20:33) How does he see his children’s future (28:55) The best approach to feed your children (39:15) Self-awareness and becoming a better man (44:25) Ketogenic diet and autoimmune issues (55:45) Protein fasting (1:11:08) Food quantity or food quality (1:14:05) Gluten intolerances non-existent in different countries? (1:17:30) Rob’s take on Sal’s past tummy issues (1:23:48) Rob’s take on What the Health (1:28:45) Related Links/Products Mentioned: Wired to Eat: Turn Off Cravings, Rewire Your Appetite for Weight Loss, and Determine the Foods That Work for You – Robb Wolf Robb Wolf (website) Robb Wolf (@dasrobbwolf) Instagram Ketogains - Gains powered by ketones (website) HPA Axis Dysfunction | Adrenal Fatigue Solution Palate Fatigue: Yes, Your Taste Buds Can Get Tired Too! (article) Episode 342 – Dr. Bryan Walsh – “Adrenal Fatigue” and Low Cortisol (Paleo Solution Podcast) Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked – Adam Alter What Employers Look For On Social Media Profiles | Money (article) CreativeLive: Free Live Online Classes (website) Common Allergens | Food Allergy Research & Education (website) Ep-482-Robb Wolf - Mind Pump Media (podcast) Protein intake and exercise for optimal muscle function with aging: Recommendations from the ESPEN Expert Group (study) Mediterranean diet – Wikipedia Microbiota Transfer Therapy alters gut ecosystem and improves gastrointestinal and autism symptoms: an open-label study (study) What The Health: A Wolf’s Eye Review Joe Rogan Experience #1006 - Jordan Peterson & Bret Weinstein People Mentioned: Gary Taubes (@garytaubes) Twitter Dr. Bryan Walsh Milton Friedman Valter Longo Dominic D'Agostino (@DominicDAgosti2) Twitter Grace Liu Dr. Tommy Wood (@DrRagnar) Twitter Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) Twitter Joe Rogan (@joerogan) Twitter Would you like to be coached by Sal, Adam & Justin? You can get 30 days of virtual coaching from them for FREE at www.mindpumpmedia.com. Get our newest program, MAPS Prime Pro, which shows you how to self assess and correct muscle recruitment patterns that cause pain and impede performance and gains. Get it at www.mindpumpmedia.com! Get MAPS Prime, MAPS Anywhere, MAPS Anabolic, MAPS Performance, MAPS Aesthetic, the Butt Builder Blueprint, the Sexy Athlete Mod AND KB4A (The MAPS Super Bundle) packaged together at a substantial DISCOUNT at www.mindpumpmedia.com. Make EVERY workout better with MAPS Prime, the only pre-workout you need… it is now available at mindpumpmedia.com Have Sal, Adam & Justin personally train you via video instruction on our YouTube channel, Mind Pump TV. Be sure to Subscribe for updates. Also check out Thrive Market! Thrive Market makes purchasing organic, non-GMO affordable. With prices up to 50% off retail, Thrive Market blows away most conventional, non-organic foods. PLUS, they offer a NO RISK way to get started which includes: 1. One FREE month’s membership 2. $20 Off your first three purchases of $49 or more (That’s $60 off total!) 3. Free shipping on orders of $49 or more Get your Kimera Koffee at www.kimerakoffee.com, code "mindpump" for 10% off! Get Organifi, certified organic greens, protein, probiotics, etc at www.organifi.com Use the code “mindpump” for 20% off. Go to foursigmatic.com/mindpump and use the discount code “mindpump” for 15% off of your first order of health & energy boosting mushroom products. Add to the incredible brain enhancing effect of Kimera Koffee with www.brain.fm/mindpump 10 Free sessions! Music for the brain for incredible focus, sleep and naps! Also includes 20% if you purchase! Please subscribe, rate and review this show! Each week our favorite reviewers are announced on the show and sent Mind Pump T-shirts! Have questions for Mind Pump? Each Monday on Instagram (@mindpumpmedia) look for the QUAH post and input your question there. (Sal, Adam & Justin will answer as many questions as they can)
Transcript
Discussion (0)
If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go.
Mite, op, mite, op with your hosts.
Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews.
What's up, pump heads. This is Sal here.
On the way back from the Spartan races last weekend, we had the awesome opportunity of sitting down with Rob Wolf, a good friend of ours. He's a huge figure
in the wellness, paleo, health community. He wrote a fantastic book, Wired to Eat. In fact,
it's a book that me, Adam and Jess and reference all the time. Highly recommend people read it.
The information in there is excellent. Anyhow, in this episode, we talk about a lot of things.
Rob gets a little unglued on a few subjects,
which is hilarious, the guy is hilarious.
We talk about business in here as well,
but mostly about wellness and health.
We have a great conversation.
I know you're going to enjoy this interview.
You can find Rob Wolf online on his website.
It's Rob, O-Rwolfwolf.com.
So it's robbwolf.com.
You can find them on Instagram at DOS.
D-A-S wolf.
That's his Instagram page.
And also, I want to talk about one of our bundles
that we don't talk about a whole lot
that I get a lot of questions on.
And that's our build your butt bundle.
So the build your butt bundle is maps aesthetic and maps and a ballack.
We took both programs, we combined them, and then we added some modifications designed
to get your glutes to fire more effectively so that when you do your squats and deadlifts
and lunges, you get the glutes to do more of the works.
You get that bump building effect from them. And that's what this bundles all about.
It's the Build Your Bump Bundle comes with two maps programs. If you were to run those programs back to back,
you're looking at about six months of
exercise programming. If you combine them together with the mod, now you're doing the Build Your Bump
bundle kind of configuration
uh... you can find that at mine pump media dot com so without any further ado
here's me adam and justin
talking to our group good friend
robo
man that we just had the uh... two thousand seventeen spartan championship
race we're actually hoping to run into robber down there but uh...
you got uh... you got tied up a little bit.
It was against my parole.
Kill the mice.
Obligations to go to California.
You know, it's funny, so we have a little three-acre farm, and this time of year is kind of critical for getting everything buttoned up and winterized, and all that type of stuff.
And as part of that, this didn't specifically keep me away from Spartan, but we get
flood irrigation. And when the field floods, mice and other critters die, and my dogs went
out there and ate these partially decomposing animals. And then middle of the night last
night, they started pooing and spewing from both ends. And at some point, I checked out
and I put the earplugs in. I'm like, Kay Nikki, you're up. I've got an 8 a.m. interview with the mind.
Oh gosh.
Oh, so you're welcome.
Yeah, you're welcome.
Yeah, you're welcome.
You're welcome.
Yeah, you're welcome.
Yeah, you're welcome.
Yeah, you're welcome.
Yeah, you're welcome.
Yeah, you're welcome.
Yeah, you're welcome.
Yeah, you're welcome.
Yeah, you're welcome.
Yeah, you're welcome.
Yeah, you're welcome.
Yeah, you're welcome.
Yeah, you're welcome.
Yeah, you're welcome.
Yeah, you're welcome. Yeah, you're welcome. Yeah, you're welcome. Yeah, you're welcome. Yeah, you're welcome. Yeah, you're welcome. Yeah, you're welcome. Yeah, you're welcome. Yeah, you're welcome. Yeah, you're welcome. Yeah, you're welcome. Yeah, you're welcome. Yeah, you're welcome. Yeah, you're welcome. Yeah, you're welcome. Yeah, you're welcome. Yeah, you're welcome. Yeah, you're welcome. Yeah, you're welcome. Yeah, you're welcome. Yeah, you're welcome. Yeah, you're welcome. Yeah, you're welcome. Yeah, you're welcome. Yeah, you're welcome. Yeah, you're welcome. Yeah, you're welcome. Yeah, you're welcome. Yeah, you're welcome. we get this little runoff of water that was in my backyard. Rounded up perfectly safe, dude.
Yeah, I drink it.
And my dogs must have drank out of it.
And then the next day it was the biggest scare I'd ever had
for with the dogs.
I mean, he just couldn't move.
He couldn't get up and he was disoriented.
I tried to pick him up.
He started crying.
I mean, I freaked out, rushed him down the hospital.
And it literally took us
all day long to try and you know process of elimination. What could it be? You know, we didn't leave this out, we didn't do this and then I see this like pull of water that just,
you look at it and just looks disgusting and it's a runoff from the neighbor's next door.
It talks, it talks. Yeah, so, but nothing I could do about it, man. I would be, I'd be worried
about mice and them eating that and them getting sick
like to a point where they could die from that, I would think.
Yeah, and I mean, I tease my wife each time the dog comes up and licks her.
I'm like, yeah, that's plague lick right now.
He's licking you with plague, you know.
I'm still searching for the upside of dog ownership.
Like, I've always been a cat guy and a dog when I was a little kid, didn't have one until
my wife shook me down on this and I'm still kind of like,
I'm not seeing the upside on any of this stuff, but.
So before we got on air, we were actually,
and I love to talk to people like you
about what they're going through with business,
and it looks like you're getting ready to enter
into the click funnel world and start diving
into Facebook every time,
and you're somebody who pretty much has grown organically since you started. And now you're heading that
journey. What that's a polite way of saying that I had no fucking idea what I was doing.
And I just typed and talked and expected something good to have. You were so good. I have
to do any of it. Well, it's probably deceiving like you said, because I mean, you were part
of a lot of the CrossFit when it first started and just kind of probably exploded without you're putting out great content.
I mean for sure, Paleo has now become attached to CrossFit so it's probably kind of, I mean, it's kind of hard to probably tell that you weren't doing all the things you could be doing.
You probably were crushing it right out the gates and never thought twice.
Why did you or what led you to start to look into this?
What did you...
You know, some of it, it's interesting.
So we became more savvy about what's going on within Facebook and Google.
Like we talked again a little bit before rolling like Google in particular is interesting
and that they're trying to curate and own medicine and health and fitness.
So if you put in a search term like bench press or something like that,
Google will typically now provide a curated response.
And it doesn't go to any person or individual organization site.
It's something that Google decided to curate.
And you've got to work your way down the list quite a bit before you get to the first
paid ads, you know, with response to bench press.
And then eventually you get down to the stuff that the first paid ads, you know, with response to bench press.
And then eventually you get down to the stuff that's actually good shit, you know.
Who actually goes through all that?
Right. And fewer and fewer people will go through that process. And so we just noticed that
we were kind of moving into a cul-de-sac, you know, where no matter how good the content was that we generated,
you know, I mean, downloads on podcasts were good, but not spectacular.
Website traffic was good, but again, you know, there wasn't this really spectacular
element to it.
And so we started kind of kicking some doors and talking to people and they're like, yeah,
so these click funnels and doing, you know, figuring out how you're going to do some of
the paid advertising and whatnot.
We're trying to figure out how to do is to not make it to like 30 pages scrolling HTML text,
even though that stuff clearly works. It just works. It's kind of funny. For a number of years,
I kind of, as a badge of honor, I'm like, I don't do any of those seven steps to paleo abs type things.
And then we were just at this event where there were people and we talked about this.
There are people who don't have nearly as much reach as I do. And they're
pulling down like $2 million a month. And what do they do? Seven steps to pay the right
of it.
This is the challenge.
Yeah.
Where I wanted to go with you because this is something that we've struggled with.
We all started.
We all started this.
You know, if you do want to make a lot of money on the web, there are all these click
baity things that you have to do. And guys like yourself,
who I know have a lot of integrity,
this has got to be a major challenge.
Like how do you do that?
How do I get their attention like everybody else does
without doing what everybody else does?
I'm not totally sure.
Like we're still in the process of kind of motoring through that.
One thing, so we're working on it
and have finished this thing called the keto master class.
And so I put a ton of effort into that. Now I would say that the're working on it and have finished this thing called the keto master class. And so
I put a ton of effort into that. Now I would say that the technicality on it is geared for something
that would be appropriate to like the the Weight Watchers crowd, but it would push them. Like they're going to understand a little bit about like bed oxidation of fatty acids. Like it's going to
push them a little bit. This is not something that the super geek who spend all day on the internet, they're
not going to learn anything super new with it, but it is a soup to nuts program, it's beautifully
done, it's got great video, the coursework book alone, which takes you day by day through
all of the material, it's like 168 pages.
So, I mean, it's a book within the whole thing. So we put a ton of effort into that. So
what I'm hoping is that yeah, we'll have to do some to click baity stuff, but then when we give
people is actually really, really good. And then, you know, we've got bait and switch type of
a little bit of a bait and switch. It's just kind of like, okay, yeah, this looks like bullshit. Oh
wow, it's actually. That's a good, really good. You know, and that's the hope. And we've shown it
to like the guys at keto gains, and they were like,
wow, this is really, really good.
It's engaging, it looks good, it has good polish, and all that.
And then the material is on point.
And when element of the material is even though it's recommending a ketogenic diet, we have
a kind of a self-selection process where maybe a ketogenic diet isn't the way you should go.
Maybe it's just kind of moderate carbon.
So we actually have a way for people,
even though this is the keto masterclass,
we're not selling it as religious dogma
that this is the one and only way to go about this.
If you're a CrossFit Games competitor,
if you're into jujitsu, if you have some adrenal fatigue
or HPTA access dysregulation or what have you,
key to genetic diet might not be the way that you want to do it.
Like a moderate-carb approach,
and we give people a completely step-wise fashion
to figure all that stuff out.
So the hope there is that, yeah,
we're going to lean on some of these
clearly successful marketing tools,
and then hopefully deliver something that's not total dog shit.
You said something I have a question about. So you talked about HPA dysregulation in
Keto. Why wouldn't that be a good, necessarily a good option for people in that particular state?
Well, it's funny. It could be a great option or it could be a disaster option.
Okay. So if you have somebody who is experiencing...
Now HPA dysregulation, what is that first option? So if you have somebody who is experiencing...
Now, HBA dysregulation, what is that first off?
At the Thalamus, pituitary, adrenal,
and then you can also throw in thyroid, HPTA.
I wanna hear any else to say about motor, yes, yes.
But you have some people that become insulin resistant
for a variety of reasons, it can be sleep,
it can be gut dysbiosis, it can be,
and generally overeating is a big piece of this. It doesn't necessarily just need to be carbs,
although carbs definitely facilitate the process. I'm not in the camp that carbs are the cause of
like insulin resistance and diabetes and all that. I think that they're definitely a contributor.
I'm not specifically in that kind of Gary Tobs camp that's as carbs are in soul resistance.
I have been there, but over the course of time,
I've kind of changed positions on that.
But if somebody gets into a spot for whatever,
however the fuck they get there,
and they're in high blood sugar, low blood sugar,
high blood sugar, low blood sugar,
that cyclic element of the blood sugar dysregulation
is super stressful.
The brain does not like these peaks and troughs
and blood sugar, so we get the adrenals pinged
to release cortisol and adrenaline
to bring the blood sugar back up on the backside.
That antagonizes thyroid production.
The cortisol released directly
antagonizes conversion of T4 into T3.
It accelerates conversion of T3 into reverse T3.
So you just kind of cock block all of the thyroids
in production.
It's literally the body trying to balance out
while it's going up and down.
And over time, this can cause like receptors
to downregulate and the body to become more resistant
to even things like cortisol.
Right.
Right, yeah.
So you have one group of people that is in a situation where they're getting that cyclic
hypoglycemic kind of event in a low carburetidogenic diet, maybe the ticket for those people.
But you have other folks that maybe the HPTA access dysregulation, whether it's thyroid
specifically or some people with autoimmune disease,
guys, you guys need to get on the your podcast, Brian Walsh.
He's a naturopath.
Okay, so I had him on my show and I thought I knew my immunology and like my...
Oh, wow, he tried some knowledge on you then.
Oh, dude, I had some immunologists ping me who were like for a non-immunologist, that guy knows his immunos.
Wow.
Yeah.
How's his conversation?
Is it like yours?
Just phenomenal.
Oh wow.
He's an educator through and through,
but he really got in and started talking about like,
okay, so if we do something like a Dutch test
and we'd look at total cortisol and cortisol metabolites,
maybe the reason why the cortisol is low is because the
body is trying to turn on or off different segments of the immune system for a therapeutic
effect. So your cortisol looks low and the kind of standard like a three or four point adrenal
stress index test. It's kind of like, okay, usually somebody would see that,
they would see an overall low cortisol status,
and then they would recommend something like licorice,
which licorice extracts enhance the retention
of cortisol in our system, blocks the breakdown
of cortisol in the liver.
So we may get an elevated cortisol level,
but that may be antagonistic to what the body actually
needs you to do because it's actually trying to, we don't suppress, we're gonna enhance one element.
And so this is where you're basically doing green alipathy.
You see something that you assume on this specific little slice of the story is a problem.
So you treat the symptom and then you end up making the overall problem.
Now, are there signals that you see like when people are trying to figure this out,
when like they say we're trying to figure this out for me.
And I noticed stuff going on with my body
that I can tell you about, like the average person
that's playing with going in or out of keto.
Is there signs that this could be you?
It's sleep dysregulation, performance decrease.
I mean, it's kind of the standard deal that I look at.
How do you look? How do you feel?
How do you perform?
We could look at some basic biomarker kind of considerations, but that's where I just,
we try to sort people, it's kind of like dropping a marble down this thing.
So we try to sort people, create a logic tree so that they can get themselves to a spot
where they can then test.
And then based off the testing, we can then drive the boat like, okay, yeah, man,
Keto's working great for you.
No, it's not.
Let's bump the carbs up to 75 grams a day and see how you do.
And so we have a really transparent process with that to help people figure out what's
best for them.
So in that state, why would Keto be bad?
Then you were going down that path of the, for some people and in Egypt, particularly in the beginning of this process, we do see an enhanced
adrenal output. We tend to see elevated cortisol, elevated adrenaline, corticosteroids across the
border elevated. And if somebody's already in kind of a compromised state, it might be too much.
It is definitely a stress, particularly when you first enter into the ketogenic state.
So if they're already like teetering on the brink, it may not be the thing.
I noticed this was fasting with clients of mine.
In particular, I noticed it with myself, when I fast, sometimes the energy I get feels
very sympathetic in nature.
It feels like it's cortisol driven.
And I can tell the difference between normal good energy
and that kind of wired, dare I say,
addictive type of energy that I tend to get.
And so that's when I'll start to modify how often I fast,
because I know if I push that too hard,
I could enter into that state.
I've also speculated potential behavioral changes
in people where perhaps they're seeking out activities that cause cortisol despite
because they need more.
For example, I'll notice people like this who are in this HPA kind of dysfunction will seek
out the harder workouts because they feel so good while they're doing them, even though
it's the exact opposite of what they need.
Perhaps because those harder workoutsto-workouts are causing
that spike of cortisol and that they feel good.
Are there other behavioral effects that you can kind of
connect to some of these things?
Yeah, and I mean, this gets really soft science.
And it's fun.
Yeah, you're a fun person to speculate.
I just don't know if you did it last time.
I see people just like dysfunctional relationships.
So like they cause those cortisol spots. they can't deal with just like,
hey, like my wife and I, I give her shit all the time,
but she is super even keel.
We have a really amazing handoff deal.
Like, in working on this keto masterclass,
when I was doing the primary content generation,
she did the bulk of like the cooking, the house,
all that type of stuff.
I finished that, and now she is the one that's basically tasked
with getting all this click funnel integration,
all this type of stuff.
And so the past two, three weeks,
I take the kids to school, pick them up,
I do 99% of the cooking.
So we have a really easy transition with that,
and there's no drama.
We were just talking about, neither one of us ever hang the other one out
to dry because it's like,
oh fuck, I've been taking care of the kids
for three weeks right?
It's like, well, yeah, because Nikki,
you're doing all the important stuff now
and I don't have anything important to do.
There are people that, and I think some of it is maturity
also, but I think that there's something
where like either low dopamine or maybe this need for that kind of a drenalized state, they just create drama because you feel more
alive in the moment and then you get all the makeup sacks and all that type of afterwards
too, but you know, they can't deal with even keel, even keel freaks them out.
It's almost like there's no, it's almost like a sensory deprivation chamber in a way
where they don't get any feedback and so they need to start, it's almost like a sensory deprivation chamber in a way where they don't get any feedback
And so they need to start it's like a bat, you know, it's pinging out sonar to try to get something coming back
I don't see when people say that's kind of soft science or woo-woo
I counter and say we've known for a long time that changes in hormones and you know
Neral chemicals definitely can affect behavior. They can definitely change behavior.
You give testosterone to a woman or you give a man estrogen or whatever in extreme cases.
You will see changes in behavior.
It only makes sense that if the body is seeking out or needs cortisol that it will alter
behavior in ways that will cause more cortisol to release.
So things that I've noticed with clients is, these people that I've identified in this particular,
you know, in this category of people,
they'll be late for appointments often,
they'll have deadlines and I'll wait to the last minute
to get them going and they'll be going good
and they'll purposely sabotage themselves, right?
And it's because they, it's almost like their body's
driving them to do these types of things.
And then when we work on, and it's funny
because it's this cyclical type of thing
because it feeds it so then I'll tell them we need on, and it's funny because it's this cyclical type of thing, because
it feeds it, so then I'll tell them we need stress management.
And then that'll also feed into getting their bodies more responsive to cortisol.
Now, is this something that could potentially be something that's more behavioral that
they've been embedded with since they were children because of that?
Because they grew up in a chaotic house, and stress was always there.
So they were, see, for me, being the reductionist, like biochemist guy, where I'm like,
the neurophysiology, the biochemistry and the behavior,
to me are inseparable.
Oh, you know.
God damn, so happy you say that.
And there's a bunch, but then there's a bunch of people
that are like, where's the spirit?
And everything, and I'm like, I don't know, man,
I'm so waiting for my end book.
So, so I don't know.
And when I said that I, you know, this stuff is soft science,
there's this whole little corner of the internet
where if you don't have an RCT for something
then it just doesn't fucking exist.
And you know, all of those people,
I really want to, our favorite ones to poke at, right?
I want to bring them to the hammer-o-meter
where we stick their foot in this thing
and it's like, you drop a hammer on their foot
and it's like, did it hurt?
And they're like, yeah, I'm like,
ah, there's not a fucking RCT for it. Go on. It didn't like, you drop a hammer on their foot and it's like, did it hurt? And they're like, yeah, I'm like, ah, there's not a fucking RCT.
It didn't hurt.
You know, there's no proof that it hurts.
Yeah, it's, uh, it's interesting because, um, just through our process, through fitness,
we've all been doing this for so long, you start to get to this point where you
realize that in, in often a state of optimal health, that your body kinda, the signal that it tells you
to eat, sleep, and the way you should behave,
and whatever, you just kinda listen to your body,
and it kinda tells you what to do,
but then when you throw them off with poor diet
or constant exposure to electric lights,
or whatever, it throws everything off to the point
where it affects your entire life,
not just the stuff that we normally can measure
like body fat or performance and that kind of stuff.
So it's very, very fascinating.
I know when we deal with these people,
I know I have a few series of things that I tend to go to.
Do you have like a go to advice that you kind of start?
Because someone who seeks that all the time,
it's kind of like, okay, let's address food, sleep.
Do you have an order of operation that you tend to go to when helping somebody?
Oh, man. So when we ran the gym, I was just, I was going to say I was such a dick, but
it was what I had a really short window of opportunity for people to get on board.
Because there was a point where I had like 48,000 unread emails in my inbox,
and I don't have that now because now my assistant deals with you, you know, and he kind of sorts
and free audits, but we would open these emails and there were people that were like dying,
and they're like, I just, I need help with autoimmunity and I live in Illinois,
is there anyone that can help me? And so like, there was all this latent need and people that would kill for any help.
And then I had this person come in front of me
that was exhibiting or experiencing
these kind of squirrely behaviors
because it dope me in or whatever the fuck it was.
And so I had a really brisk direct intervention with them.
It's like, hey, there's a hundred people behind you.
You're going to do xyz, and you're going to trust
in the process, and you're not going to ask questions
because there's somebody else that wants it more than you
when they may not be the pain in the ass,
and I'd rather succeed than fail, you know?
And so, but I mean, it's the standard stuff,
it's sleep, appropriate movement,
and then also trying to get people in their body.
And this is something that you kind of alluded to.
If somebody was raised in a super chaotic environment,
and I would kind of put that with myself.
I love my parents here, great people.
My dad had something I want to do a book
about both my parents' lives.
You lost it, right?
What age, right?
Not super early, but my dad 11 years ago,
my mom like four, four or five years ago. But they had super abusive, but my dad 11 years ago, my mom, like four, four, five years ago, but
um, they had super abusive challenging drives.
And so what they were able to do with me was a quantum leap better than the lives that
they experienced, but it was still like crazy.
Like my, looking back now and talking to my sister sometimes, like my mom was probably bipolar,
like she had all kinds of problems going on,
but did a really amazing job for what she did,
but coming out of that chaotic environment, I saw chaos.
And so a lot of my early relationships,
like the more dysfunctional and broken the person was,
like, man, I've got exactly,
here's your gears and man, my gears mesh,
perfect dysfunction.
Oh, I got your solution and it took a long time to be able to disengage from that
and actually,
it took me 28 years.
How long did it take you to remember?
Possibly a little longer than that.
Yeah.
You're smarter than I am.
So, you know,
but, and I talk,
talk to my wife about this.
This is part of the reason why I do jujitsu,
part of the reason why I do bow hunting and stuff like that.
I've got to have that other thing that is the danger
and the risk and the dopamine
and the engagement.
Otherwise, it's like, oh wow,
here's a dysfunctional person.
And you know, all of those tendencies are still there.
So I would try to have that conversation with folks,
but I'm not a therapist.
But, you know, just some of this kind of big picture stuff
of it's really interesting getting people
to start functioning in a way that's healthy.
So if they add a gambling habit,
or if they spent money that they don't have,
like there's all this kind of dopamine,
like, you know, living in the moment kind of deal.
And if you get people to not do that,
they'll look at you and they're like,
dude, this is like eating cardboard.
It's kind of like the hypo-palatable food problem.
Their life just sucks.
They don't have any joy, they don't have any excitement.
And you have to figure out ways of getting it
from other places.
And this is why you look into the CrossFit world.
There are a ton of people that were addicts
of various flavors.
Oh geez, yeah.
Dude, CrossFit, and I still can't figure out how more
of these formerly addicts become Crossfitters are not also vegan
because that just seems like the fucking...
I'm like, I'm like, I'm a fact.
Yeah, and I just, perhaps the training volume
actually kicks them out of that.
Like, it would destroy them if they did it.
But, you know, you find things like that.
We're hopefully it's a more...
It's a healthier obsession,
but there's still that need for,
and Arctavani, I know I'm bouncing all over the place,
but Arctavani has talked about this a lot
from the evolutionary perspective.
We just had a certain amount of chaos
in danger baked in the cake,
living as hunter-gatherers.
And there's some expectation for that,
and life becomes so monotonous and predictable that
then people start doing squirrely things. This is our theory on like the
huge rise of like OCR and these events where we punish ourselves for 16, 19
miles in obstacle because we're becoming so plugged in that we need to feel
again. We need to feel ourselves and feel alive and so I think a lot of these businesses are going to
continue to explode because tech is just moving so fast
and we're becoming more, I mean, we got VR around the corner.
Right.
Real soon here, we're going to see people that probably
have a challenge of stepping out of VR because VR is better
than their actual reality.
It's so funny.
You said what you said because a lot of our issues early on
with some of the movements of CrossFit and
then OCR and Marathons is because when we were trainers, the clients that would seek those
out were the last people that should probably be doing that.
They would treat them like another addiction.
Like they're moving from one to another and just continue to pound their body because
they're seeking that.
And so a lot of our job was to try to, you know, okay, well, that's one step.
Now, let's get you to another step. It's almost like you got to take a person through steps of obsession
that are gradually better and better and better, kind of get them wean them off on most.
Right.
It's this whole desensitizing process, I think, is what you're talking about where people will stop and then just be like life sucks.
Right.
And it's no different than for me at least,
than when I work with a client
and I start to change their nutrition
and they're finding the food that they're eating,
just boring, you know, it doesn't, like water.
This one always used to blow me away,
but I would tell people like,
all you're gonna drink is water.
Let's start with that from now.
You know, getting psyched.
Pushing him.
And then I can't drink water, it doesn't taste good.
And to me it was just mind blowing, like,
it's fucking water.
What do you mean?
And you just lock him in a closet for like four days
and then you're like,
this is gonna be the best thing you ever do, right?
I was like, I'm effective.
And you scoop it out of a tepid toilet, you know?
And you're like, there you go.
And I'm like, ah!
Absolutely.
But I do think, you know, just talking about this,
it's as if we've been taught to ignore our body's signal since
we were children, everything from hunger to which most of us never experienced real hunger
to ignoring our systems of satiety, to then hijacking our systems of what is it called when
you get sick of eating something, palate fatigue.
Pallet fatigue, and it's almost like,
we're so disconnected from our bodies
that it just turns into this total mess.
And you're talking about the psychological piece.
I see the future of health and wellness being,
you need to know all of that
because it's such a big role in what we're doing.
And to a degree, I tried to tackle all that
in YRD, sleep and circadian rhythm,
food, movement, and then community.
And community has this whole,
it goes from the gut microbiome to the people around us,
and that's also though where stress,
most of the things that we experience as stress live,
like the keeping up with the Jones is deal.
And all of that, so much of what we perceive to be stress
is just this activity going on between our ears And all of that, it's so much of what we perceive to be stress
is just this activity going on between our ears of something that happened in the past
or that we're worried about potentially happening
in the future.
And it's very, very rare that it's actually something
like right in front of us,
like the car barreling towards us or something.
It's like, okay, that's a legitimate stress.
We need to address that.
And everything else is just something that we're bringing
on ourselves.
And the book, The Myth of Stress, I fought that guy on that.
I had him on my podcast.
And I was like, oh, you know, 100 gatherer times,
like we had less stress and everything.
He's like, no, no, no, that's bullshit.
But it was, people were more in the moment.
And we didn't have this past future orientation
and he pretty well like beat me down with that.
Oh, okay, you're actually totally right.
So along those lines, as a father,
what are the things that you're scared about in the future?
Or I don't know if scared is the right word,
but what concerns you about your children's future
and what are you excited for?
So what do you think about?
Oh man, that's a big, let me noodle on that a little bit.
One thing I've been doing with both girls
is when they get upset, we do a breathing exercise.
So I'm like, okay, you're okay,
whether they get psychologically or physically hurt,
they crash or bike, whatever and I'm like, okay
Let's put our hands on her belly and we're gonna do our breathing
Hold it hold it
We have a contest to see who can you know go the longest on the way out and I tell you like
My youngest Sagan whose dude, she crashed her bike
in the most epic way. And like, it was chilly in the morning.
So she had on gloves, she had on sweat suit and everything.
But I mean, it was like tumble, she had on her helmet
and everything, but it was like a dust cloud.
Garntale. Yeah, it was a goodie.
And I went up there and she's crying completely reasonable.
But I like, propped her on my leg and like,
you okay, everything good, I'm like,
let's do our breathing, it'll make you feel better.
Just like, okay, Dad, let's do it.
And it was, and by the third breath,
she was even keel.
And you know, if I had had that technique as a kid
and could have carried that through my adult life,
that would have been pretty powerful.
Now usually I still need to coach them on it.
Like they don't just like auto regulate with that,
but one thing I'm trying to teach them
is just this very basic like kind of biofeedback thing.
So if they're ever in a situation,
if they can get to wear with all,
they can bring themselves back down
to a really calm state.
So, how do you handle tech right now?
They watch a little bit of TV, maybe twice a week, it's mainly PBS, I am chagrin to admit.
It's so funny, it's almost like the kids are attracted to junk food.
Zoe has figured out how to navigate the Apple TV and I went in there the other day and
it was like Barbie and friends, mermaid adventures.
I'm like, what the fuck is this?
I watched it for a few minutes and I'm like, no, we're not watching this.
It was just ridiculous.
It was just conflict for the sake of conflict.
Like there was nothing, even just like the dialogue and stuff was terrible.
Now I will say she has wrote me into watching some my little pony stuff and it's illustrated
in kind of a Japanese anime kind of deal and there's some funny stuff in there and some
kind of like, okay, yeah, you can watch a little bit of that.
But it's usually a little more...
There's some intelligence you were in there.
Curious George, Wildcrat, and then you know, we will jump onto YouTube and we'll pull up, like both kids are fascinated by planets
and dinosaurs and so like I'll pull up the Carl Sagan series
and so we'll watch some stuff on planets and stuff like that.
But they really don't get any iPhone access, any iPad access.
If we travel, then we have two iPads that we pull out
and they get to watch some movies on the iPad
because when we're in hour eight or 10 on the airplane going somewhere, I'm kind
of like, okay, we'll deal with whatever, you know, ramifications are, and it's like cocaine
for them.
They want it desperately.
And it's interesting.
We bought both girls a little camera, last Christmas, maybe the Christmas before.
And it has a lot of games on it and everything,
but it's a set number of options,
whereas these iPhones and iPads are effectively infinite.
There's always something you can download or find.
And download, and so it's interesting.
They will go through cycles where they'll play with the camera
and they take pictures and they do the kind of like
low grade photo editing with it and stuff like that.
And there's a few games that they play on it.
And they enjoy it, but then they put it down.
They may not play with it for three weeks, whereas like if there's any of that iPhone iPad
interaction, it's like cocaine.
It's interesting.
I notice like literal, I mean, classic withdrawal symptoms from my kids, because they'll go to their grandma's house
and sometimes she's busier, whatever.
So they'll get on these iPads and they'll be on them for,
I mean, if I, no joke, I'm fully confident
and if I left them alone with an iPad,
they would stay on there from morning till night.
No problem.
If you don't monitor them at all.
Possibly until they starve to death.
Maybe, yeah, maybe.
But I'll take it away if they've been on there
for three hours, you know, come home and be like,
no, I'm taking that away.
And there's these classic withdrawal symptoms.
And then they're...
It's just like food.
It's great, probably the one of the best books
I've read this year was a book called Irresistible.
And they talk about the addiction
and how all of these guys who created all these apps
and was...
They wouldn't let their kids go near them.
They don't.
Yeah.
To me, that just fascinates me.
That here you are as a father who's creating
this incredible thing.
This is what probably provides the food for your children,
but they're not allowed to use that tool
because I know how much R&D I put in
to making it a dick.
Yeah, making it a dick.
Yeah, that's a scary thought.
And then you see, and I don't know how far you think
is I know they're younger,
but like you see with Instagram and Facebook,
and even now companies, when they go to hire somebody,
they ask for social media.
Because as a business owner now,
if I've got all three of you coming to work for me,
and you guys are all trainers,
and Justin's got 3000, Sal's got 2000,
you got 20,000 people connect you on Instagram,
well, I don't even really care if these guys
are maybe a little bit smarter than you, I know you're gonna pull more for my business, so I mean now it has that much power and influence
So as a parent like how do you wrap your brain around like how do I introduce this to them? How do I let them use this?
But they also not discourage and too much new from here
Yeah, I could potentially hurt them in the future for work and business like you know
It's interesting. So both girls go to a Montessori school
Which is super cool and the way that they handle tech they they for work and business. You know, it's interesting. So both girls go to a Montessori school,
which is super cool.
And the way that they handle tech,
they don't want any screen time.
Like even the amount of TV that we provide the kids,
they're probably like, it's too much.
But one point that they make is that technology advances
so quickly that the UI, the user interface,
it gets simpler and simpler and simpler.
There's no point in having the kids go over
and type stuff into a keyboard
or even playing around with that quite yet
because the user interface, when they get into
a work environment, is probably gonna be different.
That's a great point.
Why even bother with this stuff?
That's interesting.
When you go into their library,
they definitely do have some nice computers in there
for kids to do research and stuff like that.
One of the things that caught me the most
when I walked in there is at the top shelf
of one of their main bookshelves was like 20 years
of the Economist magazine, and I'm like,
oh, there you go.
I'm fucking here.
Yeah.
If they're teaching kids that now,
that's the fun. And they have teaching kids that now, that's the point.
And they have some cool stuff where like all of the classes help to prepare the hot
lunch and then they start as the kids get into the primary education, they learn about
profit and loss and what they're charging.
Oh, okay.
To make this thing a mountaineer, and cheese costs this much money and we need to charge
this much to be able to deal with. Right.
And stuff like that is real.
So, maybe I'll try to avoid the scary stuff, but one of the things that did just pop
into my head, the opportunity here, if you have an interest in something in this day
and age, like they would need to lock you in a room to prevent you
from learning about it and potentially becoming a world expert on it.
Right.
Now, if you want to learn welding or knife making or, you know, how to do a cardiothoracic
surgery or something like that, you need to go as effectively intern with that, but you
can learn a massive amount about so many different things.
You can learn languages, you know, all of the, what is it, Khan Academy and all that stuff.
Like literally the, potentially the,
if you want to learn economics,
you could learn from someone who's not only brilliant in it,
but brilliant and communicating.
Versus like you hit the community college
and it's kind of a mixed bag, maybe there's a good,
maybe there's a guy.
That's how I started, man.
I was on YouTube and I saw Milton Friedman,
which he's one of the greatest communicators of economics
that you can find and that just took me down a rabbit hole
and I became very passionate about it.
But had I gone to a university
and listened to some boring instructor,
I remember my econ class in high school,
so I could have like, this is the sucks.
Then you hear Milton Friedman, I'm like,
well, this is great.
Right.
Exciting times, definitely exciting times.
So you have an opportunity like that.
And our youngest is really interesting.
And at three, she, and this is the doding dad
to some degree, but even other people are kind of like,
okay, she really understands math well.
Like she'll, she's like,
that I'm this many and Zoe is this many
and you're four plus five,
you know, for 45 and all this stuff,
I'm kind of like holy shit.
And we just bought a puzzle the other day,
this dinosaur puzzle,
and the kid just like scans the pile of pieces,
grabs it, plugs it in.
And like it would take me 30 minutes
to find that thing,
and I would have to sort each one I'm looking at the colors.
So she's got some pattern recognition stuff early,
and so I'm maybe some math, maybe some engineering who knows,
and then Zoe has a whole set of stuff
that she's really interested in.
So that part is really exciting
in that we could use some technology
to be able to, you know, anything they're passionate
about, anything they want to do.
If one of them wanted to do art,
you could learn so much about art online
and then if they really wanted to go intern with somebody,
it's like, okay, there's this dude in Florence, Italy,
and it's instead of sending you to university
to get a fucking slap dick art degree,
we'll send you to Florence.
You need to study and learn Italian,
and you're gonna intern with this guy for one to two years.
And so long as you stay on course, I'll pay for that.
So cool.
So those are a little cost same amount.
It would probably cost the same amount,
but the connections.
Oh yeah.
And the, you know, like, yeah.
Are you familiar with the company Creative Live?
If you've used this stuff.
Yeah, yeah, you'd like that.
I know those folks, yeah.
Oh, that's a great stuff for sure. That's that Have you seen this stuff? Yeah, yeah, you still like that. I know those folks, yeah. Oh, that's great stuff for sure.
So along these lines with nutrition,
obviously this is an area of expertise for you.
How do you feed your kids,
and how do you recommend people feed their kids?
Because I know obviously we talk about different ways
of eating, some of them are more restrictive than others,
like keto, but when you feed children,
what is the best approach to, to, you know,
making sure that their health is there a best approach? I would be super reticent to saying
there's a best approach, like I would be really remiss in saying that. I'm glad in a way
that we had kids later, as opposed to earlier, in my whole paleo process because I could have probably been a lunatic earlier
on, but it's tough.
So what did they have for breakfast this morning?
They had some organic patty, sausage that we got from Whole Foods.
They had strawberries.
They had this nutty hot cereal.
So I take apples and almonds, blend them up in a blender, puree, super, super fine, basically,
like oatmeal kind of consistency,
cook it on the stove top and it's just like hot cereal
and I put a little cinnamon in it and girls crush it.
So they had sausage, strawberries, nutty, hot cereal,
and then some pecans.
And that's what they had.
Yesterday, they had some sausage
and they had some gluten-free French toast
that I made on the weekends.
We kind of loosened stuff up a little bit, but I tell you what, after they had french toast
that morning, all the way through the evening, first thing this morning, they're like,
that I can we have french toast.
And usually Friday nights, we do gluten free pizza night.
And they, part of it is, is they really enjoy it and part of it is by Friday my wife and I
Are smoked and it's the one meal that we stick in front of them and they're like a pack of hyenas
They just eat it down to the nubs and they lick the plate and we don't have to do a fucking thing
We're not like hey eat that, you know blah blah blah and they don't drop it on the floor like if they do they're down
They're like licking it off the floor. So there's, so there's this is you know blah blah blah and they don't drop it on the floor. Like if they do, they're down there like licking it off the floor.
So there's, this is, you know, so you ask about what's optimum.
Part of the optimum of that is we get one meal where my wife and I can like have a glass of wine
and we're like, we can just talk because the kids, they're like,
that have more pizza and you're like, boom, there you go, done.
Whereas like even though they will eat well generally, but I have to be like,
hey girls, come on, get after this, you know, and there's a little bit of that. But generally it's meat,
fruit, veggies, it kind of rotates seasonally. The girls love soup. So I make soup a lot and it's
just like carrots and broccoli. It's a tough, it's tough with children because on the one hand,
you know, you want to, you definitely dictate what they eat and you regulate it. But on the other
hand, you don't want to create these bad relationships
with food where you're finished this
or you can't eat that or you know,
you reward them with food.
I do do some speed bump stuff
for it, they're like, oh man,
I'm trying to think of an example.
Even just like blueberries or something like that,
I want some more blueberries, I'm like, okay,
finish your meat and you can have some more blueberries.
So I do a little bit of a speed bump method where they have to do stuff like that. Zoe asked
me, she's like, well, Dad, why can't we just have pizza and french toast all the time?
I'm like, that is a really good question. I was like, some people do pretty much do that.
And for some people, they can be healthy. And for a lot of other people, it makes them
unhealthy. They get sick. They're Tommy hurt, they maybe gain too much weight.
She has a friend whose father had a heart attack and we talked to her a little bit about some
of this food can cause problems with your heart and everything.
So we're not trying to do scare tactics, but we're also trying to say, generally we
well, and then that way it allows us to eat this other, and I try not to even call it
treats and stuff like that, because I don't want any
emotional
Attachment to it, you know, sometimes we have this stuff and sometimes we don't we just don't you know and and
Interestingly, I think both girls and so this also dictates a little bit of what we do
Both girls seem to be pretty damn insulin sensitive, which their mother is very insulin sensitive
So I think that they kind of pull from that, because even if we do like the French toast
steel, the girls, we don't get like a blood sugar crash two hours later where they're
like melting down and going crazy.
Some of that maybe because they always get some fat and protein with it.
Some of it maybe because they're active and they're just generally insulin sensitive.
But I haven't noticed, there's a little bit of dairy issues,
so we tend to give them goat and sheep dairy
instead of cow dairy.
They'll get some cow dairy if we're out eating
or something like that, I don't sweat that,
but we don't do that.
A huge amount.
Yeah, I've done this world,
the strategy that I've developed with my kids,
and it seems to work really well,
as I'll just serve them in the order of importance
with the foods.
And I don't bring all the food out at the same time
because that really fucks things up.
So I'll literally be like, all right, and boom,
here's your vegetables.
And then I'll just go, yeah, I'll be like,
what do we have for dinner?
I'm like vegetables.
And then the lethal vegetables and then,
okay, here's your meat and then the meat.
And then if they're not hungry anymore,
then there's no need to continue progressing,
because they've eaten the important stuff.
So now, I have to like, I don't wanna eat anymore,
then it's like, okay, well then we're done eating.
And then it's more expensive.
Yeah, otherwise you end up doing the whole,
don't eat that, you have to eat that.
Right, type of thing.
So, I wanna circle back Rob to something
you mentioned about your childhood.
I grew up in a challenging household.
My mom also had a crazy childhood,
and I probably talked about the same way you do
where I think she did the best that she could,
and much better than what she would probably went through.
But nonetheless, my father took his life when I was seven,
my mom remarried into an abusive relationship,
so, and I'm the oldest of five kids.
So a lot of that definitely formed me into the man that I am today. Some things awesome, and and I'm the oldest of five kids. So, a lot of that definitely formed me
into the man that I am today.
Some things awesome and then I'm happy
and I'm grateful for those characteristics.
Some of the other ones have taken a long time to grow through.
What are the things that you notice about yourself
from being brought up like that that have made you,
the man you are today as far as your strengths
and the ones that you still battle on.
And that's a really good question.
You know, it's funny because you opened with like doing
the business stuff and the like funnels and all that.
Being raised in a poor, now poor is relative.
This is poor in a first world country, white, blah, blah,
all my privileged stuff.
I had to explain to people like,
I know what food stamps look like.
Yeah, I've been a big food from my house.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, but I had a roof over my head.
The brick of government issue cheese, I really look forward to it.
So comparatively, we were pretty poor.
What I got phenomenally good with coming out of that environment was like, you could dump
me anywhere and I would figure out something reasonably cool with that situation.
Like I could make do with whatever I was thrown into.
Drop me off in Siberia and I'll have a still and you know, grow in potatoes or whatever.
And it was interesting.
I was in a grad program and interestingly as part of this science-based grad program, they
had an art elective and I'm like, oh, I'll take this art elective.
And the gal told us to envision something
that we wanted to make and then make it.
And they were like, Legos and erector sets
and all this different stuff.
And I just started kind of throwing shit together
and she came by and she's like, so Rob, what do you,
what do you make?
I'm like, I don't know, this thing's kind of cool
and this and that.
And she's like, well, the exercise
is to envision something and then make it. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. And I wasn't know, this thing's kind of cool and this and that. And she's like, well, the exercise is to envision something
and then make it.
I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know.
And I wasn't doing it.
And she kept needling me and needling me and dude,
I got fucking pissed.
Like, like, you know, melt down, stomp out there.
Like, she got in my kitchen.
And I didn't even realize until later,
the frustration that I had is I was incapable
of envisioning something.
I was completely cock blocked on that.
I couldn't envision anything I wanted to do.
Now, I could make do with what I had in front of me, but I was incapable of being able
to envision something.
Maybe five years fast forward and I'm in a relationship with Nikki, my wife, and she's talking to me about this
stuff because these things pop up in the course of like business and whatnot.
Like I became really good at making do, but I was abysmal at being able to envision something
and then go for it.
And part of what I believe in outgrowth of that is that in this chaotic environment, you
can't really plan down the road.
And so you become good at just dealing
with the here and the now.
And that's a very lotable thing.
That's powerful, but an inability to plan,
and to dream, and to chase that stuff.
And part of it too is you already deal with so much let down
that if you envision getting something
and then you work toward it and you fail,
that might be enough to just fucking kill you,
like right where you're at.
So the thing that I'm really just kind of birthing
into is being able to say, hey, I wanna do this,
I wanna do that, you know, like I finally
a couple of years ago, I'm like,
I'm gonna get my fucking black belt
in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, I may be 70 when I get it,
but I'm going to do it.
I'm ticking that stuff through and then we had some ideas around like we had a beautiful
house and kind of a suburban kind of setting.
I'm like, I hate this.
The homeowners associations are neighbors.
I fucking hate them.
I hate all of it.
I want to be on a little farm.
I want to be able to shoot my bows and arrows.
I want to do this at and the other.
So Nicky was like, well, envision it.
And I drew some stuff out and we went and got it
and we knocked it out.
But I'm probably at like a eight or nine year old's level
of being able to envision something
and then go out and knock it out and do it.
But that's been a hugely powerful thing for me.
And it was something that I,
what happened to me being able to make do
with the situation was really beneficial
and it still serves me a lot today.
Like, I don't have a lot of like frustrations
and I see people that show up at a restaurant
and they're like, this cheesecake just isn't the way
it was last time and I'm like,
well, crime me a fucking river, you know? Whereas for me, I'm like, well, cry me a fucking river.
Whereas for me, I'm like, oh, it's a little bit different.
That's cool.
I'm gonna have more of the Brussels sprouts or whatever.
Like, it just doesn't phase me in that regard,
but then also, it allows me to not have the standards
that I should have and the things that I do actually want.
Like, I'll be like, eh, okay, that's cool.
I'll just make do with this.
And there are some times where like you wanna get your
fucking back up and be like, no, God damn it. I'll just make do with this. And there are sometimes where like you want to get your fucking backup and be like, no, goddammit, this is what I'm
going to do. And it's a 45-year-old male. I'm just now learning how to do that. But I've
been very, very good at making do. And I'm just now learning how to make what I want.
It's really interesting. And I've got it still scary. Like, it's a, I feel like I'm high
wire walking and not real comfortable with
what I'm doing with it. Because I've got years of skill set that's so refined in the
southern area, but that's a really good question. That requires a such a high level of self-awareness
because I'm so, so much a part of who you are. Like how did you start to even see and
recognize it? Well, especially when, and this is like I can totally relate,
when a majority of your life, it, uh, it helped you get through.
And you were successful because of it.
Success.
So I remember being like, you know, very easily identified with it and be like,
this is how I work and I'm already kicking ass and what's the big deal to?
This is why I always tell people, you know, normally your greatest strength is also your greatest weakness.
Right.
And if you learn to look at it like that,
because we, real easily, we look at,
oh, this is, this is why I'm having success.
Like, you can't tell me otherwise
that I shouldn't be doing this or to look into it
because this is what got me here.
So, yeah, that's really interesting.
And it's actually the opposite of me,
which is funny because I think I always
wanted to do escape where I was at.
So I was always envisioning stuff and the future
and thinking all the time.
So what I'm incredible at is the visionary piece.
I'm horrible at the other part.
Interesting.
So you're probably frustrated by almost every meal
and like yeah, yeah.
Yeah, super easy.
I'm literally frustrating.
Ha, it's interesting.
It's interesting.
It's interesting.
Yeah, interesting.
You know, I'm trying to think, you know, so I think part of the self-awareness on this was realizing
that I had a strong predilection towards super, codependent, dysfunctional relationships.
And then when that got on my radar, I went through some therapy and counseling, the woman
that I worked with on that was amazing and interesting.
And you know, so like even my career path, I just kind of made do with on that was amazing and interesting and you know so like even my career path.
I just kind of may do with where I was. I was like I ended up in a chemistry class and I was good at it. This was another thing. It's common from kind of poor or not. Maybe it's not just poor.
Maybe it's just this make-do kind of deal but you know anything that I was good at I would go for
it because you got those easy accolades with it.
And so I ended up in this chemistry class,
and I was good at it, and then I got into organic chemistry,
and I was really good at that.
I had that ability to bend these bond angles and everything,
and kind of see how shit plugged together.
So that's largely what determined my career path,
and then I was in a physiology class,
and I was pretty good at that.
And the woman was like, dude, you should be a doctor.
And I was like, oh, okay.
It was basically somebody external to me
had to give me some sort of validation.
And then I would be like, wow, I could be a doctor.
And she's like, yeah, you could tell,
look at what you're doing here.
So do you look at Jiu-Jitsu as like you kind of going out
of your comfort zone and challenging yourself?
Absolutely on a lot of different levels.
It's been great for you.
Yeah, because, um,
one, I have a modicum of success in the world that I've, I've been in.
So like, I could just say,
okay, I'm going to be powerlifting Rob and I could go back into the gym and have some impressive numbers with that and just like
stay in that scene and that's fine and I'm not, not running people down who do that.
But part of the Jiu-Jitsu thing is you are naked every day.
Like you-
You get your ass kicked all the time.
All the time.
All the fucking time.
Bye guys, smaller than you, we're the new.
Women, you know what I mean?
Yeah, and so there's that element to it
and it's also something that I need to sit in
and actively steward my process.
It's like, well, what type of game do I want?
If I have a completely passive, just let it come to me,
kind of approach to GJ2,
I'll never make any progress anywhere.
And so it's something that keeps me engaged
and forces me to have kind of that vision
about where I want to go with it.
But you know, the really becoming aware
of the type of relationships that I was good at again.
I had great skill set for dysfunctional relationships.
And then I was like, I don't want to be in dysfunctional relationships.
So I've got to recognize when I'm heading in that direction, and then I've got to develop
a set of skills to do something else.
And I got, have to get my wife huge credit on this stuff.
Like it was interacting with her, and in the process of growing multiple businesses,
I would ask her a lot of questions. I'm like, so what are you thinking through with this? She's
like, well, I'm imagining that we're going to boom, boom, boom. And I'm like, I can't imagine any
of this stuff. And then this is where I told her about the art class and this and that. And so it's
been kind of a, you know, peeling the layers back of this whole thing, but it's a, yeah, I guess
that's been kind of a process.
I definitely, I used to say I had a sign on a back that on my back that you said, I'll
help you, and I used to totally date those girls, you know, right, the father figure.
I don't say that.
Broken wing.
I am your answer.
Yeah.
I just love to fix everybody, right?
And it took, I said to fix everybody, right? And it took, like I said, to about 28.
Now, was Nikki the first woman that wasn't like that for you, or were there previous relationships where you started to notice
that you were starting to put that together, like,
oh, I, she's not as messed up as the previous one.
She's still a little bit of a stepping stone.
Yeah.
That's what I noticed.
I'm Katrina is definitely my rock.
If she'd been with me for six and a half years,
but it took about three other women
that weren't just really dysfunctional
to lead up to that before I finally feel like,
oh, this is what I'm supposed to be with.
I'm supposed to be with a partner
that actually makes me a better man too, right?
We've been in this with my equal versus me always
helping and teaching and growing.
Yeah, and you know, I got lucky with Nikki.
There's this thing called the Chico State Effect
because you look at her and you look at me and I'm like,
I don't see how that works and also smart
and she's not crazy and everything.
She's super even keel.
But there tend to be five women for every two men
at Chico State University.
So like if you're a guy and you get close
and you don't have a giant like a rest record,
you're gonna do pretty well.
So yeah, that worked out.
Yeah, yeah.
So we live in San Jose, it was like two,
three men for every woman.
Yeah, they call it man Jose is with man Jose.
I wouldn't do well in there.
Yeah, man, it'd be like cell block D right.
I like okay, it's you and me man.
We like fighting.
Yeah, excellent.
Well, if we can change gears a little bit
and go back to nutrition,
because I love bending your ear on that topic.
Let's talk about the ketogenic diet for a second.
Why does keto type diets seem to work so well for people with autoimmune issues?
Because it seems to be, dare I say, one of the better options for people with autoimmune
issues, or at least it teps to control or help a lot of them. What is it about it?
Is it the fact that they're not eating carbohydrates because it can be inflammatory?
Is it the ketones, both?
You know, so I'll throw a caveat in there.
I think that keto has application in some autoimmune contexts, but I think just an autoimmune
paleo approach is probably even better. Okay.
There's some interesting work by a guy
Walter Longo doing a fasting mimicking diet,
which may be even better,
like do the autoimmune paleo foods go the seven days
without eating, reintroduce,
more or less anti-inflammatory food,
but there's clearly, I mean, without a shadow of a doubt,
there is a gut permeability issue associated with autoimmune disease.
You cannot have autoimmune disease without gut permeability.
And now the question becomes, does a gutoimmune disease cause the gut permeability,
or is the gut permeability cause the autoimmune disease?
And there may in fact be some push-pull element to that, but this is one of the things that happens. One of the generally underappreciated elements
of HIV turning into AIDS, the syndrome recognized as AIDS, is a loss of intestinal barrier function.
That's kind of the last fucking straw that goes. And then that whole immune driven catabolic cascade kicks off with that.
And this is why I literally want to choke fuckers to death who do not just at least give
this a little airplay.
It's like we have a suggested mechanism related to behind cancer and diabetes related killers.
This autoimmune thing is massive.
And the treatment for it is piss poor.
So the people who just dismiss it out of hand,
I literally want to like kill them physically
with my own two hands.
But so if we have a gut permeability issue,
then definitely fermentable carbohydrates
can be a problem because we get
the small intestinal bacterial overgrowth.
That can lead to some problems
with, say like lipopolysaccharide translocating
into the circulation and causing inflammatory problems,
liver issues, response right there.
That's an immune response right there.
Then we just have the immunogenic potential of foods,
dairy, nuts, tomatoes.
This is another thing.
There's a couple of popular things.
If I can just clarify,
when you say that to our audience,
what you mean is there are foods
that just have a higher propensity for an immune reaction.
So, and this is just the fact,
there's foods that typically people,
if we go extreme and talk about allergy.
If you just search, yeah.
What are the most allergenic?
There you go.
Okay, thank you.
Peanuts, wheat, soy, dairy, you know, and again,
it's not say everybody has that,
but those problems with it, a lot of people do.
And the autoimmune foods tend to kind of follow
and lock step with that list,
but you know, so like tomatoes are an interesting thing.
A lot of people just dismiss tomatoes and nightchades
that they could be problematic in the least,
but yet the alkaloids and the supponins
and the constituents that are in tomatoes
are oftentimes used as adjuvants for vaccines.
And there have been people who've renowned
for doing research reviews and stuff like that
and have completely shit on the notion
that nightshades could be problematic in any way.
And if the person is renowned in research
but yet has completely missed the fact
that they're used as an immune stimulating agent
and fucking vaccines,
either suck as a researcher
or you're a duplicitous cock face
who's on the other agenda goal.
That's not true.
No, again, that doesn't mean that all autoimmune disease is triggered by nightchades or
titos.
Doesn't mean that it always happens, but we have a proposed mechanism, we have all kinds
of other supportive data, can we at least kick the tires on this thing, and at a minimum,
if somebody's having a problem, say, hey, why don't you try this elimination diet?
And I'm actually working on a review right now.
There was just a paper that was a pilot study
so there was no control arm in this,
but they used an autoimmune paleo diet
for irritable bowel disease,
which include ulcerative colitis and,
oh man, Crohn's disease.
And they had a really remarkable result with it.
Now we didn't have a control arm
and it was small number of people.
And, you know, so people get in
and start throwing all these hand grenades at it,
but the purpose of the study was to show the potential efficacy
and that people would actually adhere to the protocol
and is it worthwhile doing a randomized control trial
and the answer is yes, it's compelling.
So, yeah.
I'm in that world, by the way,
because I have a family member with Crohn's
and thank God for the internet.
You've got enough people that can gather together
and create enough anecdote to where that can drive some research.
But also, if you're a,
if you have Crohn's disease today
or some other autoimmune disease
that, like you were saying, Western medicine has shit treatments for it.
It's either a hammer your immune system with something or suppress the hell out of it or
even give you mild low doses of chemotherapy, believe it or not, to some of the treatments.
So you can go online and see these groups and this family member found that something
called the carbohydrate-specific diet seemed to work really well for people with Crohn's and really literally is eliminating
a lot of these foods that tend to have these immune responses and he went into almost complete
remission with his Crohn's from following this type of a diet.
But at the same time, the Western medicine doctors or the traditional ones, they don't even
seem to acknowledge
that there could be a connection between the two
at this particular point.
It's very, very frustrating.
Oh, it's incredibly frustrating.
It's reached a point for me where it's interesting.
I ran across some of the lawyers.
I think we talked about this a little bit on the last show,
but the lawyers that were involved
with the tobacco litigation,
and we kind of put on their radar this idea about,
if you have some sort of dyslipidemia or metabolic syndrome,
you're a healthcare provider,
and you recommend something other than a low-carb diet,
you should be held legally responsible
for the deleterious after effects,
and they're like, oh, dude, we could,
it'd just be easier than tobacco, you know?
And in the same vein, you know, any of these autoimmune diseases, it's reached a point
where if you are a gastroenterologist, endocrinologist, what have you, and you are ignorant of
the fact that there is some therapeutic potential here, because all we're asking people
do is tweak their food.
You know, maybe 30, 60 days, see what happens.
And I think like the number three killer of Americans is medical intervention.
And this is just shit going wrong.
Like, go to your doctor for something, it should be benign.
It's not even obvious it's dying.
It's doing exactly what they're telling you to do.
Yeah, it's a complete standard of care.
And so we're worried about recommending low carb diets
or ketogenic diets when like going
to get a tonal removed and you fucking die from it.
You know.
No, it's, it's, it's, to me, it's, it's fucking mind blowing that we don't consider food
to be one of the most important factors in how you feel, period. I don't care what your
disease or disorder is. I really don't. Food is gonna play some kind of a role.
Maybe that doesn't cause it.
Maybe doesn't cure it.
But it can definitely have an impact.
I mean, you're taking food and you're putting your mouth
and it becomes a part of your body and you're doing this
every single day and it can affect everything
from your skin to your stool to your mood.
And it's just crazy that they don't even consider that.
It's absolutely.
This is what we talked about.
We did discuss this the last time and I think it's so fascinating
that if we're studying an animal, you know, Absolutely. This is what we talked about. We did discuss this the last time, and I think it's so fascinating that,
you know, if we're studying an animal, you know,
that we just found somewhere like,
all the stuff that we look into, like their sleep patterns,
the food they eat, when they sleep,
we take in that all into account.
A human comes into the doctor's office.
And none of it applies.
None of that.
Yeah.
How does that make sense?
Like, why do we do that for some animal across the world
that we've never met before,
and we're trying to figure
everything about it?
But then if a human comes walking in and says,
I've got this issue, and it's just like,
all those things don't matter.
So you're a shift worker, you have poor relationships,
you eat terribly, you just have a statin deficiency,
like that's the issue, you know, it's not.
We do give you more statins.
Yeah, yeah. Which we just had need to give you more statins.
Yeah.
So we just had a great research article on statins and it was basically like statins accelerate
atherosclerosis.
They are a calcifying agent and you absolutely know or are very, very suspicious justification
for recognition.
It's a very narrow, narrow slice of the population that may benefit for statins.
But the reason why they're so prescribed is because we made it, it's funny too, by the
way, because we see this in the supplement industry where they'll take something and then
they'll hammer that particular piece of information because they have something that can directly
affect that.
In other words, let's hammer cholesterol
as like this is the cause of everything.
And then, oh, here we go, take this medication
and it fixes your cholesterol numbers.
And that's the cure.
And because we're sold so hard on cholesterol
being the cause of everything,
now it's easy to prescribe.
Well, that reminds me of what we're seeing right now.
And we called this years ago with the ketogenic diet,
because now it's introduced, know, it's introduced now
It's awesome. What do we do now? We make a supplement and we try and do that. What are your thoughts on that? What are your thoughts on?
Yes, we gotta go here
We gotta go here and because we called this we called it a two plus year ago literally on the podcast
We were talking about I said it's a matter of time before supplement companies jump on the Keto bandwagon
And then sell you Keto supplements and now that's the fact that I'm seeing it already a matter of time before supplement companies jump on the keto bandwagon and sell you keto supplements.
And now that's the fact that I'm selling it already now.
All the celebrities, all the people with beta hydroxybutyrate.
I've got testing their pee to make sure they're in ketosis and take their supplement to
get them in ketosis.
Meanwhile, they're not sleeping.
Their stress is fuck all this other stuff.
And their diet shit.
So what was the question now? It's super frustrating for
me because I think whatever type of exogenous ketones we're talking about, there's huge therapeutic
potential there. They vetted a bunch of this stuff out with Navy SEAL divers and the
Dr. Mark. So there's huge therapeutic potential on the one hand, but then it's funny, some of the worst offenders of this stuff, of basically suggesting that
exogenous ketones are equivalent to being in a ketogenic state and fat burning.
Early in their life cycle, this was the messaging, and it was kind of a wink wink, not
nod, but we'll just jam that out.
Through back channel stuff, I've heard that some of these companies have made, you know,
$60, $70 million a year off this stock.
And so it's kind of like, well, they're a lot more successful than I am, but I have some
ethical concerns around that.
You know, like, I have seen screen captures where somebody says, I just ate most of a chocolate
cake.
I blew my ketogenic diet.
What do I do?
And they're like, no, man, just slam some of the ketone salts
and you'll be right back into ketosis.
So we're taking somebody and we're gonna have sky-high
blood glucose levels and super high ketone body levels,
a state that we only see in the most fucked up of medical
scenarios, like diabetic ketoacid.
You don't see that naturally.
No, and the ketoacid. As antagonistic of one another,
you could possibly get.
What a great fucking point.
And I could see some potentially huge problems with that.
Now there are some scenarios where you have somebody
who's a high-end like athlete,
and there's some suggestion that, say, like a ketone
ester plus elevated glucose levels.
Sure.
At the right time, we may get some enhanced performance.
Is elite athletic performance
completely congruent with, you know, health among them?
Not at all.
Not really, you know.
So, but we've got a bunch of nuance and caveat with that.
And so on the one hand, I really don't want to throw
these products out because they could be really
efficacious for a wide variety of situations.
In particular, like this spec op scene,
like those guys need every bit of support
that they can throw to them.
So I don't want to completely shit-canum on that regard,
but then we have all these folks
that are kind of being fed align a goods.
But, you know, well, context is so important, right?
Like ketones, probably good for you in this context.
Change the context in a high carbohydrate situation
who knows and maybe not and probably not.
Right.
And you know, so we could beat up on the ketone,
the exogenous ketones, but I see people doing something
as injurious and not scientifically credible
just in the recommendations of fat bombs for people.
So just throw this at this to your diet.
Yeah, just, you know, so I think
we can take a bulletproof coffee for that one.
Yeah.
And so we're 600 calorie coffee in the morning.
I don't have to eat for another six hours.
This is a whole drain.
Yeah.
And again, there are situations where that's great, you know?
Well, let me say that, do we all use that, right? Yeah, I do. I do it. Yeah, but that's great. Yeah, you know. Well, let me say that, do we all use that right?
Yeah, I do.
I do it, yeah.
But that's on the day that I'm going to probably end up
burning 4,000 calories between Jiu Jitsu, doing farm work,
and everything else.
And it's kind of like, yeah, I need that as a prop.
But I saw, again, another screen capture where there was a
person who was like, I had five cups of coffee today,
each cup of coffee I had a half a cup of cream in it,
and I'm not in ketosis and I know why it was the 10 grams
of sugar that was in the, you know,
the three and a half cups of whole cream,
and it is kind of like, no, it definitely wasn't
the 1800 calories that you consumed.
Now, potentially that should actually allow you to be in ketosis or whatever, but they've
been doing this for a while and the person was reporting that their weight loss is stalled
and everything or their raise light.
Everybody in this group was like, yeah, it's the sugar, it's the sugar.
Maybe you can find a lower carb cream or use creme fraiche because it's fermented and
so the carbohydrates been reduced.
That is crazy villain. And there are subsections of this ketogenic diet world
where they're basically telling you to eat oil
because any amount of protein releases an insulin response
and so you're reduced to eating oil.
So you get no vitamins, no minerals.
Oil is probably satiating up to a point,
but protein is arguably more satiating, and it's
actually healthy.
So, you know, I'm in this kind of keto gains camp where it's pretty reasonably high
protein, and high is kind of a relative deal.
If you have a fat loss goal, then use protein to suppress appetite, eat as much nutrient
dense vegetable matters you can so that you
stay under that carbohydrate threshold of really suppressing a potential fat burning and
or just caloric deficit.
You know, I mean, as long as we get an easy caloric deficit introduced with adequate protein
and some resistance training, magic is going to happen.
Now speaking of protein, what do you think, because we're coming from the fitness world
and the muscle building world, like protein is the magic macronutrient, you can't get And now speaking of protein, what do you think, because we're coming from the fitness world
and the muscle building world,
like protein is the magic macro nutrient,
you can't get enough, eat more and more and it's better for you.
What do you think about occasional protein fasting
or going low protein sometimes?
I think that's brilliant.
And you know, some of the stuff I've been playing with
as a result of kind of learning about this stuff.
So we've got these dueling banjos of things like M-Tore and insulin versus the anabolic effects that we want
and what not. And art of Annie again, I just have to give that guy a hat tip. He's like,
don't just don't be fucking chronic about it. It's like dummies, you know, just be
intermittent. And so, you know, dinner happens at 5 p.m., you eat breakfast, maybe 9 a.m., maybe 10 a.m., big protein meal,
and then maybe you don't eat again.
Or if you do eat, it's just carbs, or it's just fat.
And then you go until dinner, and then you have another protein meal.
And those two protein meals, like for me, if I want like 130, 140 grams of protein total, then each of those meals, you know, is a half of that.
And I've been playing around with that. And I'm like, man, I feel pretty good. And I'm
leaner. My performance is good. Oftentimes, I just skipped that afternoon meal, because
I just wrapped up jits. And I'm like, okay, it's two o'clock. We're going to eat it five.
Okay, maybe I'll do a Mark Sissing College in Bar,
and I do that, and so I do a college in protein
in the intermediate, or I don't do anything.
It just seems to me like anything you expose your body to,
anything, hormones, food, whatever, over a period of time,
your body becomes desensitized to it, and it seems like,
and there is some evidence, and I can't recite the study,
unfortunately, I usually can, but I can't remember, but there is some evidence, and I can't recite the study, unfortunately, I usually can, but I can't remember,
but there is some evidence to show that if you consume
high protein all the time, very frequently,
you actually become less efficient with it,
and you use it more for energy than for muscle building.
There's a couple of studies that showed
that actually a single protein meal a day
was more anabolic than multiple feedings.
Now you need to really get in and eat.
Like you've got to have the days allotment, but the body is actually much more efficient
with it versus using it as an energy substrate.
And so I personally will do one vegan day a week and it's not, it's usually just high
vegetable, very low calories, low protein. And I get, I definitely notice an anabolic effect the day after and I just feel so much better
doing it. And protein also in high amounts over, you know,
frequently all the time can have some, it seems like there's
evidence for that it will accelerate, you know, signs of aging.
So it's probably a good idea. And from an evolutionary
standpoint, it makes perfect sense. Yeah. Yeah M-Tore is in certain contexts is fantastic,
but in the wrong context, that's a pro-cancer.
You don't want to necessarily blast M-Tore all the time
if you're in the wrong context.
Right, so here's a good question for you
that might get controversial.
What is, and you might hate it,
but what is more important?
Food quantity or food quality?
Oh, man.
My clinical experience, in general, if we chase
the quality story first, then the quantity story is a dress.
And this is what got me kicked out across, filled with,
and they're back story, but this was the sand in the wheels,
because of the zone and all that type of stuff,
which I think is all great,
but so on the autoimmune side,
and also it's a little bit context-driven,
can we weigh and measure ourselves out of autoimmunity?
No, not with the wrong foods.
And this is part of the problem is that they had looked at a standard American
diet and various sliced and diced deals with GI problems with autoimmune diseases.
And there's like, there's no effective diet on these diseases.
And that's, no, that's not the case.
There's no effect of the same diet in different ratios on these diseases.
So depending on like health condition and disease state,
like gastrointestinal issues, autoimmune issues,
the food quality may be way more important
than the amount of.
Then you'll have people jump in and they're like,
well, if they eat 10,000 calories a day of it,
then they're gonna die as, okay,
we do have some non-ridiculous parameters
that we put around this stuff.
Yeah, but how many times have you actually seen somebody eat 10,000 cows?
I used to say as a trainer, go try.
Here's your foods I want you to eat from.
Good luck.
I swear 80% of my life now is providing legal disclaimers for the fucking
jerk offs on the internet.
Get the like six standard deviation, you know, thing that happens
less frequently than the
appearance of the universe.
Right.
I'm trying to, I'm trying to, it could happen, man.
I'm trying to help the majority of you.
Yeah, asshole while you're over here, right?
It just, arguing over semantics.
It just seems to me that when you have, when you focus on food quality, your, your, your
natural signals of satiety and hunger are so much, they're just in better balance.
Yeah.
And so a really good point of illustration of that is that if we have a skinny kid that's
geeked out on paleo and he's lifting weights and he wants to gain weight for football,
we may need to tweak that because it's so satiating he won't be able to eat enough calories.
And so we actually need to tweak those parameters.
It's like, hey, we're going to throw in some rice.
We'll throw in some dairy.
We may throw in a slice or two of apple pie here and there
just to actually like prime that pump
because these whole unprocessed foods are so
seething that if we have a situation where somebody
needs to consume a significant amount of food,
it may not be up to the task.
And that is kind of an interesting juxtaposition
to this whole thing.
So yeah, I mean, I would generally say that the food quality is where it really starts.
Now clearly, if we want to get to like figure competitor level of leanness and stuff like
that, we've got to start weighing in there.
Totally different.
But yeah, I mean, I'm just really kind of nervous about like the impending implosion of our
economy and our health care system
due to diabetes and everybody else is,
you know, and so all these guys are like,
well, I train MBA players and, you know,
you need to weigh in measure food.
Oh my God, okay, whatever, man.
When society falls, you don't have dry food
or interlocking grids of fire, I do.
So, yeah.
So, let me ask you, because you about gluten, you had mentioned several times about serving
your kids like gluten free, you know, waffles or whatnot.
Here's an interesting anecdote.
I've heard from many, many people clients and I've even experienced this myself and I find
it very, very strange.
I have now just because now I've been able to identify and eat so much better and take care of my body.
I now have a, what I would consider kind of low level
gluten intolerance, although I still have an intolerance to it.
However, when I travel to Italy or to Europe,
the same gluten there, or maybe it's not the same gluten,
but gluten there does not affect me nearly as bad.
And I've heard this from many, many, many clients.
Now my theory or what I'm deducing from this is I know that in the US here, glyphosates
are used as a desiccant on wheat many times.
So they spray the hell out of wheat.
And although wheat is in a GMO, they use the glyphosates to dry them or to get them to
ready to harvest much quicker.
Whereas in Europe, they don't use that process.
And if they do, they have to label it.
Is that the difference?
Or are we just making things up?
Or is there really an inherent issue with gluten
or is it more of the glyphosates or both?
So I mean, for humans in general, gluten has always been a bit of an issue.
And when you look at the, if you do, this is always some interesting stuff.
You do evolutionary
advantage in the disease. So you do evolutionary advantage, silly act. And the evolutionary
advantage advantage of silly act disease is that these folks have a disproportionately
elevated immune response in the gut. And these tend to be people who, if you look at their
derivations, tend to come out of these early farming communities
of where humans started living in proximity
to each other and animals,
and in enhanced gut immune responses.
Check them alive.
We have kept them alive.
Now, some of the proteins in gluten, though,
can trigger an overactive immune response
and zonulin release and intestinal permeability.
So this is the trade-off with some of that stuff.
So that's apiece.
There's an inherent potentiality of this anti-predation chemical
in wheat for being problematic.
If you look at the European varieties of wheat
and the way that they use them in the United States
when we make bread and pastry-type products,
we use concentrated gluten to enhance those products.
So we add more.
We are just adding more, which is kind of an interesting deal.
Really interesting story.
So in kind of researching this autoimmune paleo diet,
I wanted to make a point that it's in its early stages
and we just had a pilot study and then things move along.
And I wanted to show that same historical process
for the Mediterranean diet.
There was a point in time when nobody knew
what a Mediterranean diet was.
And then somebody suggested this
and then there was a review paper,
which is the first thing.
And then people get curious enough about it
to do a pilot study and then it goes from there.
Interestingly though, if you go to the Wikipedia page
for Mediterranean diet,
one of the references there is gluten intolerance.
I'm like, oh, that's interesting.
There's a link there to a recently done paper
that suggests that globally,
incidents of gluten intolerance
that silly act disease has increased
as a consequence of recommending
the Mediterranean diet to the world.
And so we've recommended wheat,
and so this was interesting.
This is a whole other like rabbit hole
that I've gone down and they mentioned
both the potential of the glyphosphate issue
and also just the fact that the type of wheat
that we use in the wheat containing products
we tend to enhance.
If you assume gluten to be a potentially toxic substance,
which is completely fits all the parameters of that, it's non-hyperbolic, it's not unscientific,
it fits all those definitions. And we add more to it than we're increasing the tox can
low. We tend to do more antibiotics in the United States than elsewhere. We have more
C-sections, so you've got dysbiotic issues.
There was a study, and I'm sorry I'm bouncing around.
No, I love it.
There's two gone.
Big picture.
There was a study where they took, kids with Ciliac, and they did a fecal transplant
on them, and I think like eight out of the ten kids, then were no longer Ciliac, so they
could eat gluten and not have the Ciliac reaction.
So we have enzymes that can break down different nutrients,
but we kind of forget that these gut bacteria that right along with us,
they can do a hell of a job processing different nutrients.
And so is a bunch of the problem that we have just lost a microbiotic constituent
that could help to grade this stuff?
I think it's all of these things.
The interesting thing about the roundup story
is the roundup is suspected to be mitochondrial toxin,
mitochondrial disruptor.
And so in addition to just the siliac
or non-siliac gluten sensitivity issues that we see,
these folks tend to have a bunch
of other interrelated problems,
kind of multiple chemical sensitivities, which deals with detox that, you know, liver mitochondrial
activity and all the other, you know, what organelles that are involved with that.
So there's a lot of different moving parts to this thing.
And, but I have heard consistently that people will go from Italy to here, eat our wheat products
and they're like, dude, that crush meat or conversely they go to Italy or somewhere else in Europe,
they have a scone or some, you know, whatever there and they don't have a health.
I kept hearing it from my clients and I experienced it myself when I went there and ate the bread
and the pasta and I would expect, I was expecting like this major reaction and I didn't have one.
Right.
And it blew me the fuck away.
And then when I came back,
You thought it was a fly-safety, right?
Well, I mean, I'm just trying to put, you know, pieces together to figure out why this would be the case.
If it's the glyphosphate issue, then I would be, it would be unlikely that you would experience that
immediate kind of GI response.
Because the glyphosphate to my understanding
is take some time.
It's take some time and it's more
this mitochondrial disruptor deal.
So in that situation, I would be leaning more towards.
Towards the more gluten, that makes absolutely perfect sense.
So very interesting.
And then going back, there was a topic,
there was something I did wanna bring up
when we were talking about the exogenous ketones.
So I've done very, very well keto-ish
because I tend to have autoimmune issues
when it comes to my digestion.
Although recently I seem to have gotten a lot better
and I'll get into that in just a second.
But I've always, I've messed around with the exogenous ketones
and I noticed if I pushed my exogenous ketone consumption
along with a ketogenic diet to the point
where I had really high levels of ketones,
I would be far more susceptible to fungal infections.
Oh, interesting.
And I did do a little bit of research,
and I found that there are that some certain
funguses can feed off of ketones.
And so although you may be killing off some bacteria
that may be doing some harm to you,
you may be feeding other things that may cause problems.
It just goes to show that balance is very, very important.
Oh, that's fascinating.
I mean, a few people like Grace Liu and, uh, God, Mike, I can't believe him.
Ruscio?
Ruscio, yeah, God.
He's gonna punch me in the face.
That sees me for the last name,
but both of those people have mentioned
small intestinal fungal overgrowth is being this thing
that is like splint under the radar
and like the biofilms and all that type of stuff,
but I had not, man, yeah, you could get a really wacky bloom
because I mean, how often are your guts just swimming with? Keytones, just swimming with ketones with that many because I was pushing them through the roof
And I did it several times and every single time I'd get athletes foot and if I never get and I have no reason yeah
And I was like oh shit. It's the ketones pretty crazy and then more recently I did which seems to be
Okay, so you know my just this mic's recommendation, right?
Wasn't this-
My recommended this to me, Dr. Ruscio, so my diet dialed, you know, in terms of I know
what I can eat, what I can eat, what's gonna work for me, you know, sleep was good, exercise
was good, but still always hypersensitive, still always if I have a little bit of too much
of this or that, or I don't have enough vegetables, I'm gonna have gut problems and it was
really a pain in the ass, no pun intended, and he recommended that I do a course of antimicrobial, you know, nat, you know, herbs or
whatever.
And I did the exact same protocol with like the Saccharomyces ballardae and the, there's
like eight different bottles that you end up with and-
Well, and I started with the fast and then I took these, you know, these supplements,
I had a, you know, what they would call a herximer effect,
although I don't know if that's a real thing,
but where I had this kind of reaction for a couple days,
and then I felt better and I did that twice
and I swear to God, my gut has never been better or healthier.
It's almost like I had to go in and kill a bunch of shit.
And you did the same thing.
I did the same thing and had it at work for you.
You know, it's funny.
So I did it for a month and I felt good up until a month.
I was heading into month two and then I felt crushed.
Like it felt terrible.
So I went off of it and I would have some kind of ups and downs
and then I did a month of keto while I was rehabbing
my MCL strain.
And it's interesting.
During that time, I do some work with the Tommy Woods
at a Nerschmounce Drive and so they did some stool samples
and everything.
They sent me the report on it and I don't really know
how to interpret these things, but they're like,
dude, this is the healthiest gut we've seen
out of working with like 2,000 people in my dude.
If mine's the healthiest gut, like all these other people
were probably like nearly dead, but it, dude, if mine's the healthiest guy, like all these other people are probably like nearly dead,
but it was after doing this intervention.
And since then, my carb tolerance has been better.
Like, I still definitely have certain things,
you know, like carrots I do great with,
apple sauce I do well with,
a raw apples, they don't digest,
and I'm like, 2D fruity, you know,
two hours after eating them,
and they, it just, nothing good happens with it.
What I noticed, which was really fascinating,
was up until this point, my stimulant tolerance was poor.
Like I have caffeine.
My stimulant tolerance is better.
Now, what is that?
Do you think it's just a cortisol response?
And maybe because the immune reaction is so strong,
because I literally could handle 100 milligrams of caffeine,
and that was it anymore,
now it would be anxious and just feel terrible,
and now it's like caffeine that just feels great.
It definitely, you know, it's funny,
because genetically I'm a slow metabolizer,
so I'm never gonna be that like take care of it.
I'm gonna say that like liver enzymes, yeah.
Yeah, but I mean, I don't know,
but it definitely like that corticosterooid kind of release under a stress scenario.
Definitely, if we just have intestinal permeability,
that is a low grade stress,
and we're gonna have a cortisol response,
coming about that.
And also the liver is impacted that way,
because it's dealing with LPS.
So some of the detox pathways are dealing
with the cellular byproducts of the bacterial
fermentation and whatnot.
And so if the liver, in its different pathways,
potentially, but if the liver is super bogged down
dealing with this, then it may be less able to deal with the caffeine.
Well, that's very fascinating.
So before we sign off, I have to ask you your opinion.
I know our audience will kill us if we don't
on the documentary, What the Health. I know you did a thing on it, and it's a little old
news now, we've hammered it to death, but our audience is like, you got to ask Rob.
Man, so on the one hand, the greatest frustration I have with these guys is that they did a really,
really good job of uncovering the relationship between these mega corporations
and our food supply.
That part of the film is spot on and is bulletproof.
And whether you're vegan or not, the thing that is damaging about the way they handle things,
they just want to be ignored or misrepresented at a huge number of scientific
papers. Like they just outright lied. Because they're not that big of idiot. You can't make a movie
that looks this nice and be dumb. So these people aren't dumb, but they were duplicitous.
And what they ended up doing in the process, so one of the examples, like they cited a study about
And what they ended up doing in the process. So one of the examples, like they cited a study about dairy products, increasing cancer,
I forget what one of the points was, one, it's a food frequency questionnaire deal, which
I just put no credit in those things.
But full fat dairy was benign, even beneficial, low fat dairy was problematic, and they didn't
distinguish between the two.
So that is wantently nefarious.
There's something really problematic there,
but let's just back up a little bit
and say that all the vegan land stuff is correct,
more or less, but they misrepresent this data,
but then they were right about the collusion
between corporations and our food supply
and all these problems.
When they get the science wrong and they are easily verified as lying about the science,
then the good work that they did in exposing the food industry is also thrown out.
So this is the problem of turning anything like veganism into a religion such that you ignore the facts,
because these guys could have kind of a credible
position to go in and we start saying,
hey, we need to decouple the big money
from our food supply and farm subsidies need to go away.
And you could have a really credible position
with that if you treat the science properly,
but because they did a shitty treatment of the science
and their message about the bigger picture of corporatism as it relates to our food supply, it's just gone.
It has no credibility.
And there was actually a vegan registered dietician, masters of public health, who did almost
as lengthy a take down of the movie as I did, and she raised exactly the same concerns.
And the irony to me is pointing out the cronism
in the food supply, but then forgetting that
some of the biggest...
Well, they were saying it was all the meat owners,
the meat suppliers.
The thing about that that is absolute bullshit,
they own the meat, they own the wheat,
they own the shoulder.
It's not separated, and that's where it's just absolute bullshit.
Yeah, to us, we interpreted it as vegan propaganda
in the sense that they were very driven
by the moral opposition to eating meat.
And so they're trying to make a case
to get everybody stop eating meat.
But it's not based on health.
It's just, we don't want to eat meat.
So let's try and light everybody up.
Well, when you draw parallels to what was eggs and cigarettes.
Right.
Two eggs is like giving your kid like a pack of cigarettes
for breakfast.
Right.
And you know, I don't know if you guys
want to unpack all that stuff,
but there was a tiny subset of people
that were hyper responders to dietary cholesterol.
And, but even then, this begs the question.
We just had this statin discussion.
So, there are some people who are hyper responders to cholesterol.
And so, and I mean, again, it's a really, really small piece of the overall pie, but if they
consume eggs, they do get an elevation in cholesterol levels, which still begs the question,
did it just raise cholesterol?
Is it bad? Is it bad? they do get an elevation in cholesterol levels, which still begs the question, did it just raise cholesterol?
Is it bad?
Lipoproteins, does it have any bearing on anything,
particularly because you're supplying
a choline and lessethin and antioxidants in the egg,
even the shitty, shitty estates have some remarkable
nutritional quality.
So that's all, you know, completely,
you know, a bunch of stuff to unpack.
And they extrapolated it to the totality of the population
and said everybody responds exactly the same way
and that it's correlated to like a 15 cigarette a day habit.
And if you're gonna throw stuff out like that,
although people say ridiculous shit all the time.
So I guess it is.
Well, this one actually, and I think why we came out
did an episode and we've talked about it and probably hammered it to death was,
I was surprised on how much and how many people had impacted it.
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
I was my phone and messages and seeing people all said,
oh, I'm going vegan now. And I was like, oh, my God, really sheep.
Everybody, come on. Seriously, right.
Sagarettes, eggs, come on, that right away.
And we're racist if we eat pork or something.
Yeah, that was my favorite one.
But definitely this will get the listeners shipped down.
But I mean, if you can politicize anything right now
and try to make it a race or gender issue,
then it's there.
And just when I thought I couldn't like you anymore,
you said something like that. Well, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, Yeah, it's there and just when I thought I couldn't like you anymore That's right
Well, in a let's let's be honest what if you show me a
A Republican vegan or a conservative vegan and then
What you are showing me is someone who probably saw an animal slaughtered in their their youth and they just can't even deal with the thought of eating meat.
It's got nothing else to do with anything,
but I mean, the political divide in this whole story.
So it's interesting like the global warming stories
and God, the social justice kind of element to it.
But dude, that's sexy.
And if you even just try to have a discussion about it,
I'm not even saying arguing,
but if you just ask some questions,
like, well, better educate me on this,
you know, it's like you are an asshole immediately,
though, and it's like, okay,
and I don't know if you guys have followed any
of the Jordan Peterson stuff,
you're like, Rogan and all that,
Jive, like, people don't appreciate that this,
there's a constant cycling and backlash
and when the kind of lunatic fringe left goes crazy,
there's a chunk of kind of centrist individuals
that migrate to the right.
And migrate to the right.
And then what they've done is anybody who is,
there's a race to the bottom in the marginalization deal.
So I don't know, you could be a little ethnic possibly,
so you are more marginalized than I am,
because I'm clearly whitey-McWiderkins.
So, we've got a lot of their professional Olympics.
Yeah, the oppression Olympics.
But then, whoever is at the bottom of that thing,
everybody else is an oppressor,
and they get sick of fucking being an oppressor
if you're just having a pulse and then you start peeling people and what scary is the right is well armed, well organized and if you want to radicalize that scene you could have some really shitty stuff go down and people just don't.
No, it's crazy, but yeah, and you guys may want to edit all the shit out. I love playing you. So we're going to stop soon, only because I'll get going
with you.
This will try to do something completely different.
But yeah, if you can politicize, they will politicize
anything including diet.
Because if you ask the average person,
how does a liberal typically eat, or how does a conservative
typically, they will give you diets that they think
that they, because it's been so politicized, although diet
has fucking nothing to do with any of it.
So anyway, man, always always always a pleasure talking.
Honour being with you guys.
Absolutely.
Well thanks again.
Thank you guys.
Excellent.
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