Theresa Piela:

Welcome to episode 11 of the Bioenergetics View. I'm your host, Teresa Piela, joined as always by Jay Feldman and Mike Fave.
Today, we're going to be talking about carbohydrate requirements and some of the claims circulating around the internet as it relates to metabolic and skeletal muscle health and unpacking some of the cold plunging trends and claims, how it's been popularized by people like
Joe Rogan, Dr. Huberman, Wim Hof, and maybe some things to consider in the context of health and stress and feeling your best. And then closing our episode today with a Q &A. So let's get started with the Around the Internet. Our first clip is with Dr. Gabriel Lyons, who's, she's gotten really popular recently, I think.
I've had people come up to me and even mention like, have you heard you start losing muscle mass after the age of 30? I'm like, yeah, I heard. But she's been making some pretty interesting claims. And I think this clip is perfect to dive into some of her work and some of what she's been circulating. So you guys ready for that?

Jay Feldman:

Let's do it.

How much carbohydrates can you dispose of in a meal? And I would argue, and I'm to tell you the numbers, it's around 40 grams if you are sedentary. The average American eats 300 grams of carbohydrates a day gain weight, right? Completely distorts metabolism because muscle cannot balance the carbs that we are ingesting. And by the way, the utilization of carbohydrates is, know, again, a non-exercising person, four grams an hour go to the brain, two grams an hour go to organs, and two to three grams skeletal muscle. Skeletal muscle doesn't use a lot of carbs at rest if it's healthy.
Some goes to glycogen, but if you are not training, your glycogen stores are full.

Theresa Piela:

I kind of want to pause there. There's already a lot to talk about. And Jay, I'm wondering when you pulled this clip, and I know you watched it several times like we all did, I'm wondering what were your first reactions just getting to this halfway point?

Jay Feldman:

Yeah. So, there's a few things that come to mind. This was actually sent in by a listener as well. They, they post it in a comment, which was a good one because otherwise I would not have found this, but, obviously there's a lot to, I think, dispel here and discuss because I think, especially as we get through to the end and some of our specific recommendations, I think this is really harmful advice. I mean, we heard it earlier, the idea that, you know, if you're sedentary, you can't dispose of more than 40 grams of carbs in a meal.

Mike Fave:
So, I mean, think there's even just starting there, using the word dispose, I think is just terrible. You know, we're talking about a nutrient here in carbohydrates and it's something that's utilized. We use it for producing energy. It's a fuel source. We do store it as glycogen. There's various other kind of structural components that are made up of carbohydrates. It's not something that is a waste product that you dispose of. It's something that our bodies use and need. And if we don't get enough of, our bodies will go to really great lengthsproduce them.

So this idea of, of disposing of carbs, I think is already just really harmful sentiment and not the right question that we want to be asking, you know, as far as like, what is the amount that we can eat in a meal without causing problems? I think rather the question is, what is the amount that we can eat that best supports our health? And to get to this idea of 40 grams, I mean, obviously with a presentation like this, there's no, I mean, sometimes they'll use slides and they'll have some citation or something, but I've never seen anything in the literature to suggest anything like that. I don't know where she's coming up with that. And obviously we can't comment too much on that side because this isn't a type of content where she's going to be providing, you know, digging into the kind of science there. But I would say there's absolutely nothing that would support that. You know, the amount of carbs we're going to be able to utilize in a meal or, mean, we utilize all the carbs. The question is, where do they go?

And that's going to depend on so many factors. When was the last meal that we ate and what was it composed of? How many carbs were in there? How quick is the meal that we're currently eating, digesting? we having a glass of juice or are we having a balanced meal with some protein, fat and carbs? And so how slowly are we going to be taking up those carbs? What was the last time we were moving or exercising? How much sleep did we get? mean, there's tons of factors that will determine whether their carbs are going to be used immediately for energy or stored as glycogen or converted to glucose or lactate if we're talking, you know, fructose consumption, or be used to, you know, convert to anything else that carbs get converted to. But of course, the main things are going to be energy and storage. So there's a lot of factors there to give any concrete number I think is just a huge leap. And then, you know, she threw out some of those numbers as far as what the body might use.

Jay Feldman:
In an hour as far as the brain and internal organs and muscles. And we can come back to this later, but just from the numbers she gave, was four grams for the brain, two grams for the organs and two to three grams for skeletal muscle, which sounds like it's not that much. But when you add those up and let's assume three grams per hour for skeletal muscle, we're at nine grams an hour over 24 hours, that's 215 grams of carbs. And so if you're thinking you're eating three meals a day, that's over 70 grams of carbs for each meal.

So just based on the numbers that she's shared so far for a sedentary individual, I don't know how she's getting to 40 grams a day when the actual number she shared would suggest 70 grams of meal and 40 grams meal. Just for baseline function, not even considering if you're doing anything beyond that. And then there's also the problem here of this idea that the only thing that changes your carb needs are whether or not you're sedentary, but we can come back to that because she talks a lot about muscle and activity later.

Yeah, I think.Yeah, jump in. What were you thinking? I know we we are all smiling watching this together.

Mike Fave:
I mean, when I look at this, like there's even studies using tracers. So you have tagged carbohydrates where you see that in non-exercising individuals who have metabolic dysfunction, even if you just look at fructose, they can dispose 36 grams, dispose in quotations, meaning oxidize that 36 grams in a meal. And then if it's glucose and fructose, it goes up to 52. And that doesn't even account for the fact that the carbohydrate can be turned into lactate glycogen glycerol and lipids. So it's like what...

Theresa Piela:
Number one, like dispose of is an arbitrary term. Like she needs to define it here. It doesn't, it basically means nothing because your thing is like you can dispose of carbohydrate in multiple different ways. And we know from the research from like tagging carbohydrates that people ingest, radio labeling them, we can see where they go in the body. We can see that they can be disposed of again in quotations. So for me, it's like, it, it's blatantly false. Like there's, there's not like what she's saying. I don't even know where she's getting the number from. And we have studies showing
that people can actually take more than 40 gram of carbohydrate in a meal and turn it into a variety of different things, oxidizes to energy, etc. So that's the first thing. Then I did the same thing that you did, Jay. I ran the calculations, but I gave her the benefit of the doubt and I was like, all right, OK, two grams of carbs per hour for muscle. So it's 48. So even with that, it's 192 grams of carbs per day. If you did four grams of carbs per hour for the brain, two grams of carbs per hour for the organs and two grams of carbs per hour for the muscles. And so even if you had three meals a day,
and you had 40 grams of carbs for the three meals, that's what, 120 grams of carbs per day, whereas her breakdown even at the lowest estimates, 192. So she even debunks herself inside her own presentation, which is like, it's a little bit weird, it's a little bit interesting. Even if she went to four meals a day, it's 160 grams per day. And then when we start to think about the brain,We know from the research that the brain itself will use 5.6 milligrams of glucose per 100 grams of human brain tissue per minute. Right? So just to break down for somebody my size, I'm 195 pounds. That would be 140 grams of carbs per day just for my brain function. So just for what my brain is going to require. And that's not talking about the muscle tissue that I have at my size, which would increase it drastically and then also organ function because the liver and the kidneys also use quite a bit of energy on a regular basis as do the other organs.

So it's, yeah, the, don't know where she pulled 40 grams from. It doesn't make any, like I don't, I haven't seen any research support just 40 grams per meal. And then the next thing is when you start, she mentions weight loss here. It's like there's multiple studies, meta-analysis and systematic reviews, including Cochrane, who have basically come out and said that there's no difference.

Jay Feldman:
between a high carb versus a low carb diet in a variety of different metrics including weight loss. So there's this idea that you're just going to eat carbs and you're just going to get converted to fat and you're just going to get fat doing that. And it's like on diets that are both high carb and low carb and they're set up and they're set them up for weight loss, they still lose weight whether the carbs are present or not. And the results are equivocal between them. So it's like that's also not supported. And then the other thing that this whole paradigm is quite weird for me because when I think about it, it's like, okay,

So if I eat extra carbs, right, the assumption, the problem that everybody starts to think about is, okay, it's going to get converted to fat. But when you actually break down the macro requirements, right? So for somebody my size at complete, like being completely sedentary, my caloric requirements can be 2,800 calories a day, roughly, right? And I'm using this because it gives me a total amount. Then my protein requirement at 0.82 grams per pound, which I think Dr. Lyons would agree with having a higher protein intake. That was one of her big things would be 160 grams per day. So that's 640 calories. And if I did, I have four meals a day, I 40 grams of carbs. So then I would be having 160 grams of carbs per day, which would be another 640 calories. And so I have 1520 calories left over after that, right? So what am I gonna do? Eat 170 grams of fat? And it's like, the concern is that the carbs would potentially convert into fat, but it's like, I'm just gonna eat the fat then anyway. So it's like, I don't understand where this problem is, If you eat carbs and the excess converts to fat, then you have fat. And if you eat fat, you have fat. So I'm not seeing where the problem is even in that, even if we were to enter in her frame for this conversation. So it just, you know, and the other thing is not there's logistical problems with filling the rest of your diet with fat is the way that most people are filling their diet with fat. they're even if they're doing keto or something like this is they're just loading up on keto treats, olive oil, butter, things like this. And they're going to turn around and say, well, my diet is whole food based.

It's like, but you're just eating refined fat sources. It's akin from a logical perspective to just like having a higher carb diet and loading up on sugars. Like when you look one to one, it's the same thing. You have a very refined fat source versus a very refined carbohydrate source. So I think the idea in and of itself from multiple perspective falls flat and she even debunks herself inside the clip. So I just, yeah, this...

Theresa Piela:
I don't know where she's getting these numbers, like how you create the presentation. I would like to see a citation so I could follow up on the information, but without the citation just looking at his face, I'm not really seeing much here that I'm like, yeah, this is valuable information.

I think she just, she knew we needed a clip to comment on, provided some great raw material. But yeah, my first thought is just how harmful it is for people who are really confused because I get asked all the time, like, how much should I eat? How often? Every three hours, every four and a half hours? Should I be trying to make it every six hours? What should my plate look like? So when a so-called expert makes such a confident claim, I can see people

feeling more confused, but also desperate enough to maybe try and make that work for them. And like you were both saying, it kind of leaves the rest of the day, the rest of the caloric needs in this chaotic state where people maybe might be throwing themselves off and actually entering into more metabolic dysfunction because they're trying to meet this arbitrary claims. So let's finish the clip and see what else we can talk about.
We have to balance our fuel system with a diet that is reasonable and amplified for skeletal muscle health. Here's how you do it.

Mike Fave:
Current RDA is said at 130 grams of carbohydrates a day. I showed you that nobody's eating fruits and vegetables. Carry on, avoid French fries. Any carbohydrate, and the obligatory use is about 80 grams per day. I don't want to throw a wrench into this, but I'll be outside afterwards. The body can generate glucose through gluconeogenesis. You don't have to eat carbohydrates. If you're going to eat carbs, you earn it.

So if you're eating 225 grams of carbohydrates, how long do you have to exercise to burn that? I don't know, many people, maybe David is, do other than David right in the front, he's from SWAT team in San Francisco, doing two hours of exercise a day, three hours of exercise to manage carbohydrates. We're not doing it. So if you care about your metabolic health, then you have to mitigate carbs if you're not training.

Okay. Jay, know you have some comments just with that alone. What was coming up for you there?

Jay Feldman:
Where to start?  it's so hard not to comment on the, we mentioned this in the last time we were talking about our clips, how someone can say so much and yet say so little and the kind of word choice here. mean, the few words actually have meaning connotation tend to be again, like we were talking about earlier, the idea of, of disposing of cards or mitigating carbon take, but then we have lines thrown in about, you know, a diet that's reasonable and amplified for muscular health or whatever it was. mean, it's just, just words, just like meaningless words, but in any case to actually talk about maybe some of the concrete things she said. So she mentioned obligatory uses, 80 grams a day when earlier she pointed out minimum use for sedentary person of brain organs and skeletal muscle that not only is not just 80 grams a day, but was two and a half times.that amount. And that was the amount she cited earlier of basically around 200 grams a day of obligatory carb utilization by the body. She then throws in this novel idea that I'm sure no one else has ever heard of called gluconeogenesis, where your body can use other substrate, specifically normally amino acids and convert that into glucose. It's kind of like the novel idea she shared with us last time about how someone should eat a gram of protein per pound of body weight. Again, brand brand new concepts here, but you know, to, We've, we've talked so many times about the cost of doing so, right? If, if you're not getting those carbohydrates from your diet, if you're not going to get that at least let's call it 200 grams, but that's again, bare minimum. When we're talking across averages and things like that, if you're not getting that from your diet and you do have to get it or derive it from protein that's coming in, for one, you have to make sure there's enough protein coming in because if not, you have to break down your own lean tissue to provide those amino acids. And then secondarily, it's a really inefficient and therefore disfavored process internally.

 And for that reason, it requires stress hormones in order to induce that conversion of amino acids into glucose. And that requires again, stress hormones like glucagon, epinephrine and cortisol. And when we do that, we are also signaling to our bodies that there's a lack of abundant carbohydrate available, lack of good food available. And so in the process of doing that, those stress hormones also signal to reduce thyroid hormone production and conversion and lower reproductive hormone production and turn down her metabolic rate, which has a major cost in the long-term. just because you can produce those carbohydrates, endogenously without consuming them doesn't mean there's not a cost to doing so. So those are kind of the main points here, but then I just wanted to highlight again that that one at the end, she was talking about, you know, the guy on the SWAT team who's he's exercising two hours a day, which you have to do if you're going to eat 225 grams of carbs per day. Yet again, the minimum recommendation she mentioned earlier, just basal carbohydrate use was between 190 and 215 grams of carbs. So if you exercise a little bit, it doesn't mean exercise. If you just move a little bit, if you walk a little bit, you know, that's going to increase the amount of carbs you use beyond that. And you don't need to be, uh, exercising like you're on a SWAT team to burn off the basal amount of carbohydrates that your body uses in a day. And again, you were talking about this, Teresa, the kind of fear that that instills is terrible. Uh, whether, whether you're going to have the 40 gram a day mark or

Theresa Piela:
225 grams or the 80 grams she mentioned. mean, you're, she's just throwing out all these numbers that are creating a lot of fear around carb intake and are totally unfounded and instead are actually going to be causing negative effects. So those are the points that I took the most issue with. know that avoiding carbohydrates is not the answer, but that doesn't mean that we just want to consume any carbohydrate containing foods. And that's why I've created the energy balance food guide to help you determine exactly what to eat to optimally support your metabolism.

and help you lose weight, improve your digestion, get amazing sleep, boost your energy and so much more. The Energy Balance Food Guide is a one page infographic that organizes foods on a spectrum based on how effectively they support your metabolism. And it also has a separate spectrum that adjusts the scale for you in the case that you're dealing with various digestive symptoms. The food guide makes it extremely easy to get started with a bioenergetics approach to optimizing your health. So head over to jfeldmanwellness.com slash guide to download your free Energy Balance Food Guide.

Mike, what about you?

Mike Fave:
I think I know her brand is this whole muscle centered health or like muscle medicine or I don't know what the specific tagline is. I forget what it is. But it's like the idea that we need to set up a diet specifically for our muscle tissue is just kind of weird. It's like we need to set up a diet for our overall general health including muscle tissue, bone tissue, brain tissue, hormonal systems, et cetera. So it's like it's it's like almost myopic. And now it leads me to believe that the rest of our thought processes are coming from like well.

How much energy does the muscles need and how much like even the way she frames like well our muscles only use X amount of glycogen and if you're sedentary you're not going to completely refill it which completely kind of neglects the fact that our liver stores glycogen for other tissues in our body especially our central nervous system which brings us to the whole gluconeogenesis and low like the lower carbohydrate intake. It's known that the lower carbohydrate intake has negative impact on the
thyroid system and then on top of that if you go low carbohydrate high protein intake, then you have a negative impact on the stress systems where you bump up cortisol to help clear all the ammonia that you get from turning that that protein into carbohydrate because again if you don't have adequate carbohydrate and you have an excess of protein, you're going to make that carbohydrate because the carbohydrate is so essential that you will sacrifice other substrates and tissues to provide this carbohydrates. You will upregulate gluconeogenesis.

Now there's a couple problems with this and especially from her paradigm as somebody who's muscle centric. But the first thing before we even get to that is that glucagon and driving gluconeogenesis, which Jay and I have done podcast on together like discussing this in depth, but essentially driving gluconeogenesis and higher levels of glucagon are directly associated with diabetes and driving the diabetic process. So they see people who have higher fasting glucagon levels have an inability to suppress glucagon, have a higher risk of insulin resistance and diabetes overall. So glucagon, people say, oh, it's not a stress hormone. It's like, yes, it 100 % is and driving higher levels of it is problematic. So yes, can you use gluconeogenesis to produce your glucose? Sure. The question is not, can you do it? But is that optimal for your health? And it's like, clearly not. Like it is not optimal for your health. This is why you see people like Dr. Sean Baker, who has a hemoglobin A1C of 6.1 or 6.3% which is in the diabetic territory and on top of that is fasting blood glucose in the morning is like 120s, 130s. And it's like that's through gluconeogenesis. He's eating below the obligatory carbohydrate requirement while exercising and getting enough protein and you see the aberrations in the metabolic profile with that. Again, this is not a character assassination on Sean or anything like this, but he's a prominent figure who is running his regimen similar if not like more extreme than what she recommends and we're seeing the outcomes of this.

Now, the next thing that's interesting here is like it's weird to say I'm like muscle centric and then want to promote the idea of gluconeogenesis because the major substrate for gluconeogenesis is the are the amino acids that come from the muscle tissue including alanine and glutamine and yes, bats the glycerol backbones can go to gluconeogenesis but the biggest providers are amino acids at overall. So it's like you're going to break down proteins to make the carbohydrate and if you don't eat enough protein, there's only one place that it's gonna come from and it's gonna be your own tissues which is largely gonna be your muscle stores. So it's just weird to have this perspective like we need to set up this diet that is optimal for our muscle health and like get our muscles to the best metabolic state possible but then have this dynamic where we're gonna set up a diet where we potentially like degrade some of the muscle tissue to some extent by having lower carbohydrate, higher protein intake.

And then trying to run on gluconeogenesis. So, you know, I think we'd be happy to meet her outside and have a conversation about it's almost like, but you can meet me out back. That type of thing is like, But I think it's just a weird paradigm that it's like almost like a oxymoronish. Like they, they don't, they don't mix together. Like they're kind of like at odds with each other. The frameworks, they, these two competing things are existing within the same model, which doesn't really make that much sense.

And so what I want to wrap up here with on this clip, to help dispel the confusion for people that you guys are talking about with the macro requirements, macro calorie requirements, whatever the deal is. The first thing is, from my perspective at least, and you guys stand separately, so I will just speak for myself here. But the first thing is, figure out what your energy needs are so you get a rough idea of what you need to eat. Then figure out your protein needs. So the 0.82 grams per pound I cited before.

From there, the minimum requirements for carbohydrate that I would argue for and Jay and I have argued for this together, the absolute bare minimum is the amount required for brain for the brain tissue function. And then even you can probably add on top of that if you have any activity level at all, because you have other tissue that will require the carbohydrate. So it's going to be 150 grams per day for carbs. Now that's going to scale upwards based on a variety of factors, but that is the bare minimum that I'm ever really shooting for for people and that's based on those brain requirements that 5.6 milligrams of glucose per minute per 100 grams of brain tissue. And then from there, the minimum fat intake that we want to shoot for because you don't want to go too low fat. And I see this in the bioenergetics fear now is people saying, I'm just going to go really low in fat because Randall cycle and it's like too low fat causes problems as well. So like even from the research, I would say it's clear that going lower than 20 % over the long term causes problems with hormones causes problems with blood sugar, digestion, and absorption of fat soluble vitamins. So 20 % minimum. After that, you have your protein situated, you have a general idea of your energy intake, then you adjust your carb and your fat intake upwards to hit your energy requirement and figure out what works for you. Like where do you feel best? What works best for your body? Like for me, I've titrated my fat and my carb intake so I find like around 400 grams of carbs with where I'm at with exercise, stuff like that.

That's great. If after that, it's hard to hit the target. Like then I really have to try to eat more and more carbon and I just like, I can't like I just that that much food just becomes too much with the carbohydrate, especially if I'm trying to do it from whole fruits and juices and things like this. And then for the fat target, I find about 100 grams per day for me. And I titrate it up was like some I did 80 grams for some time. I did 90. I tried 70. I kind of played around to find that target for myself.

And I found about 100 grams allows me to sleep well, allows me to last between meals, maintains my hormonal function, digestion, etc. So you want it. You're going to have some play as an individual as what's going to work best for you. And for me, that's how I kind of dispel the this dietary dogma. It's like we actually set some targets on reasonable guidelines because we know there's problems with gluconeogenesis and we know there's problems with having the carbohydrate too low, but we also know there's problems having

the fat too low and also for some people having maybe the carbs too high and then crowding out room for fat and protein and things like this. So there's gonna be some play, but figure out your intake, figure out your protein requirements and then adjust the carbs and the fat with the lowest being 150 grams per day for carbs, at least from my perspective. And then the lowest 20 % of your caloric intake coming from fats. And then you can go up from there and kind of figure out what works for you. Cause there's gonna be individuality here, right? Like all of our...

Jay and I's macro breakdown is going to be different, even though we're relatively similar sizes. Obviously, Teresa, your intake is going to be very different from ours because you're woman. Yeah. metabolism is level 10. She's twice as much as us. But all of these factors will change those things. And that's why it's really about figuring out for you as an individual what works out with your context and adjusting based on some general lines in the sand. So you can see what's the next step is.

Speaker 1 (26:37.068)
and not have like kind of ridiculous, cause like we just know now from Dr. Lyons, okay, 40 grams of carbs per meal and that's it. And it's like, but then it's conflicting with the other values she added. So I wanted to give some like general idea on how at least I'm setting things up. So yeah, that's, that's my take.

Yeah, I like the idea or I love the idea of having a general understanding of what works for you and also keeping some space for the intuition to maybe nudge you in different directions. Because I think, you know, thinking of clients that have a history of disordered eating and maybe they're so they're swallowed by living their life based on their, their watch and their chronometer. And it's, kind of lose that connection of cravings and

even what sounds good to eat. I think when we bring it back more to this conversation we can have with our body and start to think, well, what is my body asking for? You know, I know I need to hit this certain target, but could it be that my body might be begging or requiring more carbohydrates today because I didn't realize that I was, you know, very focused and had a great conversation and might need to replenish in that realm instead of following, I'd say,

too rigid of a framework and Mike I'm not saying your approach is rigid at I do think so many people benefit from just having an understanding am I eating a nut or whoa am I going way over in certain categories and then bringing their own self-awareness and that ability to listen to what their body is telling them throughout the day throughout different seasons and you know understanding that they're allowed to bend things a little bit you know

based on what the feedback is from their body. again, if they're following blindly these claims, they might start developing sleep issues or maybe they feel really awesome at first when their body is flooded with stress hormones and they're feeling, you know, kind of hulk-like, they're feeling energized, they're feeling amazing. It's reinforcing this idea that they're maybe doing something right. Then a couple months pass and, you know, they can't poop, they can't sleep, they're crabby, they're irritable, they can't think clearly.

Speaker 3 (28:54.764)
then we can start to maybe, you know, that's a perfect time for them to listen to a podcast like this, understanding that just because someone's making a claim and maybe they do feel awesome at first, if we think about what's going to be sustainable and what the body really needs to function optimally in all the rounds, not just muscle in the short term, and then playing around with that based on what feedback you're getting.

Yeah, Jay, I'm wondering, you had any experience working with clients where they maybe come to you and they're following a really low carb diet and they're kind of confused why they feel so terrible? And how, if so, what's your approach from there? Like, how do you work with someone like that that might be kind of stuck in the dogma of this is the way, this is what Dr. Gabriel Lyon says to do.

Yeah. Yeah, totally. a great question. And normally as you're alluding to, people will start to see those symptoms creep in, right? Anxiety, trouble sleeping, energy starting to decrease, sometimes a lot of hunger and cravings, you know, and, and low libido. And it just kind of starts to spiral all the things that maybe had improved early on. But yeah, I mean, it's a matter of slowly doing the opposite of what she's suggesting here, which I think is something

to come back to as well. Cause Mike, you were talking minimums and you know, we almost get stuck in this conversation of minimums because that's how she's framing it. But that's not the question here. The question is optimal. Right. And, and Ed, not saying you were suggesting this, Mike, it's just like, if we're talking minimums, of course here are the minimums, but we're never suggesting just get the minimum amount of carbs. But the reality is being able to utilize, not dispose of, but utilize more carbs is so central to reversing these symptoms and improving our health. Right. If we want to be able to sleep better.

And we want to have more energy and we want our brains to turn on and we want our libido to increase and all of the other things that come with those, you know, we want better immune function and everything utilizing carbs is central there. so, you know, slowly increase the amount of carbs we're consuming. And I think, especially when we're making a big transition like that, doing it carefully, listening to our bodies, seeing what kind of symptoms come up. Um, you know, if we, if we say, okay, maybe my optimum is 300 grams, 350, 400 grams a day.

Speaker 2 (31:13.62)
We'll listen to our appetite and all that. We still don't want to jump to that. We want to increase slowly and test different foods and make sure that we're tolerating them effectively and that we're actually seeing the improvements that we're looking for because there's a number of reasons why we actually might not utilize carbs well. And if that's the case, we do want to figure out what those are and work on reversing those. So that's kind of my broad approach in that regard. And there's so many different possible pitfalls there that we've...

discussed before. So there were two other things though I wanted to come back to when it comes to a couple of the points Gabrielle Lyon made and a point that you made to Mike, which is if we're talking about a muscle centric approach, even if that did make sense as opposed to a general health centric approach with which muscle health should be a natural byproduct. But if we were just focused on muscle, the gluconeogenic hormones are directly catabolic to the muscle. If you were explaining that

the amino acids, whether we're getting them from protein or diet or protein in the muscle, we need those to produce glucose, glucose through gluconeogenesis. But in general, having more glucagon, epinephrine and cortisol is a way to degrade muscle. It's a way to lose muscle mass. It's the exact opposite of what you would want. If you were taking a muscle centric approach, unless by muscle centric, you mean trying to minimize it, which I'm assuming she doesn't. Or if you're using steroids to help prevent those catabolic effects, which again, I don't, I don't know.

if that's something she suggests or has done herself or anything like that. But that is also a totally different state of physiology where sure, a little bit of cortisol increase might not make that big of a difference because you're using, you know, super physiological levels of some exogenous hormones. So yeah, I think that that's a really important piece here. And the other, again, another claim that she mentioned a couple of times in this clip, I believe, is that your glycogen stores are going to be full if you're not training. And this idea that you have to train to your carbs and exercise,

Equals carb tolerance, even though she mentioned the basal levels with her calculations are about 200 grams a day or basal needs. But it's worth noting that training is not the only thing that's going to deplete glycogen levels, right? Just existing is going to utilize glycogen from the liver, especially as you were saying that, you know, Mike, that's where our brain and internal organs are getting their glucose from. And they use quite a bit. Not to mention your muscles will still be using some at rest. And if you're just.

Speaker 2 (33:34.912)
generally active, you don't need to be training. You don't need to have this, you know, specific weight training routine to be healthy. As long as you're generally active and moving, that will also utilize carbohydrates and also leave space in the glycogen source stores, so to speak. But also not to mention if you're metabolically healthy, those stores are malleable. So you can store way more glycogen in the liver. If you ate extra carbs, then you would normally. And that's been shown in the literature that the liver can store massive amounts of carbs if needed. So

All of those things are malleable. course the muscles can as well, but this idea that if you're eating carbs, you have to be weight training and you need to titrate those two things together. think is again, just such a harmful message and not a new one either. Right? I mean, I remember Charles Poliquin, that was his, his big tagline back, don't know, 15 years ago. Yeah, absolutely. And, and that he was, he was one of the first people who had me on a, like based on his advice, I, know, 15 years ago I was following a lower carb diet. So.

And it came from a well-intended place from your perspective, right? You wanted to be healthy. You wanted to, you know, honor your metabolic health and in doing following his rule of you, you ended up maybe taking a couple steps back. But thank goodness you're still here with us,

Yeah, well, yeah, that's true. And how unfortunate that the exact same message is still being pervaded by some of the top figures in the space.

The one thing I want to point out here really quickly is that the reason I set the minimum targets is that you have a, you want like the idea is you have a line in the sand. You know, this is where I'm at the baseline. And then you go up from there. Like from there, you know, you're getting the, you have a, can increase and kind of figure out the piece and then, or increase your, your targets, your, your intake from there for carbs and fats and kind of figure out what's going to work best for you. And then to, to Teresa's point.

Speaker 1 (35:26.35)
When I'm working with a client who has, cause a lot of people I work with are coming from these backgrounds and they have no idea now, like I don't know what to eat. I can't eat lectins. I can't eat carbs. I can't have dairy. I can't have it. So it's like, you wind up getting to like, as we were joking before, like a breath area and her breath of terry and diet. And it's like, or you just like on a protein only diet, right? Cause protein, protein is fine. Like overall, like that's where you, a lot of people get to it's like, okay, meat and greens. Right.

For me, I do like having the specific targets. I like drawing lines in the sand to some extent. Obviously, like there's always context around the lines in the sand, but I like having like, all right, at least we have like this threshold here that we know is, you know, within a margin close, like correct. And then we can adjust up or down and move from there so that we at least give ourselves some bumpers, some guidelines, some structure that, and then we can go from there. And then obviously like once.

I think there's a saying, it's like, first you learn the rules, then you break the rules, then you like, like play by the rules or something like something like this. And I tend to find that's a place like first you get some of the general rules down. And again, they're not rigid, but it's just to give you an idea of where to, where to find yourself. Cause I find a lot of people, they just, they, get all these theories, right? So it's like the insulin hypothesis, lectins, whatever else. So you get all of these things. And then the part of the problem is like,

That's just think. There's no perception and there's no act or I guess there's kind of acting with it. But if you just live your life by a series of theories and you never see what happens in play that what happens in real life, you're like in real time, then you never know what actually works. You have to. And this is where you get like Dr. Pete with William Blake stuff. It's like the true method of knowledge is experimentation. Something like this. You have to actually see it play out in real life so that you are making adjustments based on outcomes and you know that you're getting the results.

Instead of just doing something because this authority, even, you know, whether it's me or Gabrielle Lyons or whoever else, like you actually have to see the outcome in your real life. And then you will get out of the confusion because then you'll well, you know, Gabrielle Lyons says 40 grams of carbs and a meal is enough. But when I have, you know, a hundred grams of carbs in a meal, four times a day, like I feel pretty good. And my markers, my metabolic markers look good and my sleep is good and my energy is good and my workouts are going well. And I can be on these podcasts and have mental clarity and stuff like this.

Speaker 1 (37:51.5)
And it's like, yeah, like I don't like I have all the research, I have all the studies, but I don't really care what she has to say. Ultimately about 40 grams of carbs per meal because I've refined something specific to me and that that helps me to function well. And I have some evidence in my own experience that this that this stuff starts to work. So you want to be careful because I don't want to create confirmation biases either. But you also want to have the theory and then also have the practice together and not rely on one or the other.

Totally. And there's, as you were saying, there's a lot of value to having the guidelines, having the parameters, having a starting place, because if you're just starting at nothing, it can be really difficult. So we want to have some general idea what could be a good target for carbs, fat, protein, calories. What kinds of things do we want to look for under what circumstance might we want to increase the protein intake or decrease the fat intake or decrease the carbon take or any other parameters. So yeah, there's a lot of value in having.

having someplace to start for sure. think, I think we both agree. And then it's just what kinds of things are we using to, you know, allowing intuition. And if you're really craving carbohydrates, what could that be telling us? And, know, and, and maybe certain foods, like I'm really craving this one type of food. Do we need maybe some extra salt? Are we under eating overall? What, you know, what kind of clues could that tell us? And so we want to leave room for, all of that in there. Yeah, I think that's, I think that's a, that's, it totally makes sense. And even though some of us might

is to have more rigidity in different contexts. it's, it's the same general idea. as you said, perceived think acts being a really central thing. And, also, I think sometimes, and I think we were all at some point, we all felt victim to this, but sometimes what we think is thinking isn't always thinking, you know, I think it's, we see it a lot with the kind of clips that we go through here. And it's part of the reason why we want to break them down because I think other people will see these clips.

And walk away and say, yes, that makes sense. they're, they're not, they're skipping the critical thinking part and it's not intentional and there's no blame. And again, we've done this ourselves. I remember I used to listen to podcasts from a lot of like the top podcasters who would do their interviews and I would take notes on all of them and think I was learning. And really I was just, all I ended up doing was parroting the things that they said that were really just marketing. Anyway, it was never actually true information. never was thinking critically enough about it at the time.

And, you know, there's, that might be a starting place for learning. might be a starting place for critical thinking, an idea to explore, but the exploration is the learning process. so, yeah, I think there, each of those parts can be expanded. And, and the reason I was just saying that Mike, as you were mentioning, you know, someone comes across the insulin hypothesis and that's again, one of those things that all of us at some point, well, Theresa, I don't want to speak for you, but I know me and Mike both, we're definitely believing that, right. And sharing that. And that was,

That was something we definitely stood by. in thinking critically about it and exploring it, we came to obviously a very different conclusion.

Yeah, it's a good reminder too to see tracking as a tool of growth and knowledge as opposed to a tool that will keep you feeling rigid or stuck or like you're, you know, you're following something that's restrictive and another form of self-punishment. But honoring that again, no matter what anyone says, even what we say, you do have the ability to perceive and think and set up your own experiments. And yeah, it can be great to have a coach, but ultimately, you know, I think it can be incredible to trust that eventually you'll get to the, you're a point in your journey where you can kind of perceive and tune in in real time and make these recalibrations. And it's, it can be fun as well. know, you know, maybe a lot of people listening or if they're deep in the health world.

Sometimes it comes with an added layer of stress because they're maybe they feel like their health is keeping them from living the life that they want or their symptoms are so severe that basic things feel out of reach. Yes, I absolutely hear that and understanding that part of the process of bringing your body back to better function, your mind, your creativity, your connections in the world can be more of a creative act and it doesn't have to feel like both of you are mentioning like you're just kind of copying and pasting what these experts are saying, you know, kind of taking everything, questioning it, doing your own research, but not in a way where maybe you spend all your time researching and that becomes its own dysfunction and disorder. But finding that balance and I would say a big piece of it is if we can stay curious and excited and hopeful as opposed to feeling overwhelmed and fear-based.

Then we know we're moving in a good direction because even a failed experiment can turn you, you know, turn you in a direction that maybe will lead you more on a path that you are hoping for and more of those feedback cues of, you know, sleeping better, pooping better, better energy, better skin, all the things that, yeah, absolutely tell us more about how the body is integrating or how it's functioning as a whole. Okay.So let's watch the net positive podcast clip.

Cold plunging daily is one of the dumbest things you can do. You're basically just aging yourself faster for a mood boost. Don't blindly hop on this bandwagon just because it's sexy.
One, two, three. The signals that you're sending to your brain is like 911. And your brain is overriding that. Right. Because it's saying, hey, stay here for three minutes. It's going to be, we're going to be able to send more emails this afternoon. You're having basically near death experiences every morning. How long can you do that for? Wim Hof looks like he's a hundred.


I'm doing this new mental health exercise technique. I jump out of an airplane every morning and I feel like I'm just more focused. I feel like I'm more focused. I can send more emails. I'm a sunrise jumper. That's just what I do every day to start my day. You don't? Oh, yeah. A couple of us have been doing it. Yeah. Yeah, but yeah, I'm sure. It's new thing. Yeah.

Mike, you were just cold plunging a second ago

Mike Fave:
Yeah, right before this podcast, I did a nice little cold plunge prep.

Theresa Piela:
I'm glad that these types of clips are circulating right now because I do think it helps soften some of the madness where people, you know, again, are telling people what to do in order to heal and how to age as best as possible. But these guys, I think they had a necessary dose of lightness to the conversation. And Mike, what were you thinking watching this aside from drawing off from your cold plunge?

Yeah. So with the cold plunging stuff, it's, this goes with the whole hermetic theme, right? So the idea that you're going to drive a stressor and then that then like you get a benefit from the stress itself. and I think it's really important that you actually parse out the stress and the specific effect here. And so there's some, there's papers where there's different types of cold plunging. So you have like longer term, cold exposure and then you have shorter term, the cold temperatures aren't as cold and you have shorter term cold exposure where you have much colder temperatures and it can either be through air or it could even be through water. But fundamentally, regardless of which one of these that you do, you get an increase in stress hormones, particularly the catecholamines. So you have noradrenaline and dopamine drastically increase and you also get increases in aldosterone as well. Now, the reason that these hormones are increasing is because they are trying to

Number one, increase your heat expenditure, help you to generate more heat to combat this cold exposure. But the main thing acutely is to shift blood flow. And the shifting of that blood flow moves the blood towards the internal organs to keep them at an appropriate temperature because there's a reason that we run at 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit or 37 degrees Celsius. Most of our enzymatic function and our metabolic functions require an optimal temperature for things to work effectively. This is why if you put your food in the refrigerator, it preserves it longer because it slows down enzymatic degradation or enzymatic processes inside the food. basically it's very stressful for the body to be at these temperatures. it, and for example, there's a paper where they had people go in 57 degree Fahrenheit water or two degrees Celsius water for an hour and they saw noregerolinin increases of 530%, dopamine increases of 250 % and aldosterone increases of 23%. So massive increases in the catecholamines, which are stress hormones. It's basically inducing a stress response. Now, the benefit of the cold exposure is, and what people talk about is they say that it increases HRV and it increases parasympathetic activity. So it seems to help manage stress. And obviously you have the cold thermogenesis stuff where you upregulate brown adipose tissue, whatever. And this also occurs through the catecholamines as well. And again, the reason that's increasing is to help you manage your body temperature under exposure to cold environments. But the parasympathetic benefit is quite a weird thing because the way that the parasympathetic system is upregulated with the cold plunging or the cold exposure is that you have to have the catecholamines, noradrenaline and dopamine, bring your blood flow to your core organs and then raise the pressure inside the arteries so that you trigger the barrel reflex. So basically a pressure reflex that then causes the activation of your parasympathetic nervous system. So it's like you have to drive a serious stress response first to shift all of your blood flow away from the periphery towards the center around the organs, raise the internal pressure of the central arteries so that you then have a reflexive parasympathetic response. So it's like a very weird way to be like, I'm going to become less stressed by stressing myself out to the point that I then need to drive an anti-stress response to that stress. And the thing that doesn't get looked at here with these exposures is people say, well, you this was the outcome.

But it's like, what was the what is the effect of the trigger to get the outcome? What is the effect of drastically increasing catecholamines on a more daily basis in the morning such that you then get this parasympathetic response because every time you drive that the catecholamines you shift metabolism, you lower body temperature, things like this. There are effects of those things and they can be, they're cumulative. We know they're cumulative. We know the effects of cumulative exposure to catecholamines. It's like not even controversial that higher levels of catecholamines are associated with damaging the vasculature and also driving aldosterone is part of the RAS system, which is directly involved in damaging the vasculature, hypertension, blood pressure issues, etc. and also kidney dysfunction. So it's not saying that the acute cold exposure is going to do this, but the point here is that you're looking for this anti-stress to benefit by driving significant stress. And the effects of those stresses, I think are like could be cumulative, especially you're doing cold exposure every single morning, every single morning, every single morning, every single morning. It's like that.

Over time, it's like people like, well, it's just a short time. It's like, yeah, but every day, like every morning you're having this effect. And it's not even that it's just like, well, if I just do it a little bit, it's not a problem. It's like there's direct effects of these hormones that that are problematic in and of themselves. And we've actually talked about this in other videos where chronic exposure to catecholamines can actually damage the mitochondria directly by forcing bad oxidation and by forcing the excess production of reactive oxygen species.

which damage the protein structures and cell membranes of the mitochondria to the point that the mitochondria fatigue. So I think we need to be careful in all these conversations. And this clip is very helpful with this because it basically, it gets to the root of this in a hilarious way, pointing out that, hey, this thing we're doing is like very stressful. And it's like, maybe I'll answer more emails because I have these stress hormones pumping, floating around that allow that drive wakefulness and activity level.

But at the same time, like, is the long-term effect of that on our health? What is the cumulative effect of that? And then you're like, well, if I jump out of the airplane, you know, it's the same thing. Like you will get this catacholaminergic response. And it also goes with some of the fasting stuff as well. People are like, wow, I just had so much energy. I'm so awake. I'm so alert until eventually it's like, well, I can't sleep at all now. Like I sleep four hours and it's through these stress hormones. So you really need to be clear on sure like driving parasympathetic function may have a benefit.

But how you go about doing that is really important. That's something that you really want to be clear about because these things do have cumulative negative impact on the physiologic systems and driving the stress comes at a cost. So it's not just the pure upside. There's a risk versus reward on this specific upside that we have and then the downside that's required to generate it.

 Theresa Piela:
Mike, I'm so glad you brought up the mechanisms behind that parasympathetic, almost whiplash response, because I've seen a lot of people in the nervous system space saying, actually, we are right about cold plunges. They do stimulate a parasympathetic calming response. This can heal your trauma. This will regulate you. But understanding kind of the murkier underpinnings, I think, will be helpful for people, especially, mean, thinking long term, like you were mentioning, the cumulative effect. We don't want to be unintentionally shooting ourselves in the foot only to realize years later what we've kind of accumulated and stacked against our favor.

Mike Fave:
Just one thing really quick to point out there, Teresa, is that if you have somebody who is already exceptionally stressed out and they're exceptionally sick, and then you put them into this extremely stressful circumstance, there is the possibility and opportunity that you push this person over the edge in terms of the stress response. You put them in a circumstance where they actually, like maybe they get sick after doing cold exposure. And I've had quite a few clients where that's actually been the case where they have done the cold exposure after like being in a rough spot and has put them over the edge.

Yeah, good to be aware of that. Yeah, it might not be the healing modality that they, that it's been sold as and just understanding. mean, life is filled with stress, even when you're living in the mountains or, you know, working for yourself and coaching incredible clients and to understand that we don't need to be adding too many intentional stressors. I do see the benefit of, you know, doing challenging things from a more, almost like a

Yeah, self-expansion approach and pushing your limits and working on projects that are challenging but stimulating and rewarding. Those might be better stressors, I'm quoting, stressors to play around with less severe side effects. Jay, I see you nodding your head. What are your thoughts on this funny clip?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, a lot of great points here. think they do a good job of articulating things that sometimes we struggle to because they're looking at it from such a lay person perspective. the idea of making your body think that it's going to die just to feel a little better after, or just to feel a little bit less stress after, or get into that parasympathetic state, I think does a really good job of kind of touching on what's going on underneath. And, you know, it really has been something that's gone mainstream.

You know, we see it everywhere and I hear it on podcasts kind of in all different spheres. You know, it's, it's crazy how much it has. most people are doing it, not thinking that there's any cost to this physiologically. The idea is that this is something that leads to X outcome. leads to better mood. Maybe it leads to a better parasympathetic state, leads to better energy throughout the day. And there's no concept or even, even lip service given or thought given to the mechanism through which that's happening.

And as soon as you point out that it is stress driven by the fact that your body is being put into a really, really harsh environment. And of course, in this case, one that is potentially one that could kill it. So it has to react and bring your body back to a homeostatic state where it can actually survive. And in this case, you're upregulating heat production and tons of other factors. so as soon as that happens, I think it really shifts the perspective a little bit, ideally.

And, know, into something where you are getting that energy at a cost, you're getting that mood boost at a cost, or even you're getting that parasympathetic relaxation at a cost of putting your body into a severe state of stress. And, you you pointed out something that's important, Teresa, which is this idea of doing things that are challenging, doing things that are difficult to do. And this, and there's a, there's a balance to be had there, right?

 I think the idea that life just has to be pure hardship and if you're not doing difficult things, like you're not living, think that, you know, we want to be careful with that. don't all need to be, you know, in a bootcamp all the time, but at the same time, there's also a difference between doing things that are challenging for a constructive end, which you were kind of getting at as opposed to doing something that, I mean, even something like a cold plunge that has no constructive end, you could say there's a potential benefit toward trying to find something difficult to do and get value out of it.

But honestly, as I'm saying, and I feel like it more is just like, if that's what you need to do to get value out of your life. Maybe we want to consider where else we could do that. You know, are there other areas of our life that we could try to do things that are difficult and are challenging, but could actually be constructive and also give us that same feeling of accomplishment because I, this is something that's coming at a direct cost to our health. even if we're not doing it every day, you know, the question is coming back to the word meta question is, is this actually something that's beneficial because that changes everything and, and maybe we'll
play the next clip because they touch on one of the central tenants of hormesis, like the central idea of what's called the dose response curve, where if you have too much of a stimulus, it's bad, too little, it's bad. But if you get the right amount, that's when your body adapts in a beneficial way. And it's a concept that we really disagree with. They share it here in a really funny way. So we're to listen to that and then chat about it a little bit.

Everyone would have survived the Titanic if they'd known about the Wim Hof method. Like if they're just focused on slow breathing and mindful. It would have been weird to think if Wim Hof was on the Titanic, he would have actually just been swimming around. Yeah, yeah. He would have been in the water already. Yeah. He would have been having a great time. People forget is that there was a point during the mass freezing of the passage of the Titanic where they were actually healthier. Yeah. Before they froze to death. It would have been a rush of the of the benefits of an ice bath. So they wouldn't.

Yeah, you're right. They would have gotten healthier for a bit and then died.From the moment they got in the water you start the clock and for probably like three minutes bell curve goes up and it's like yeah better, better, better, better, better circulation. I'm gonna get so many things done today. fantastic.

Theresa Piela:
Let's talk about Hormesis. I think they opened up a great door for us here. Jay, I'll let you start.

Jay Feldman:
Yeah, those passengers on the Titanic, they were really close to having productive days. man. yes. What they're getting at here is, is this concept that things that are really toxic and can and will kill you can lead to benefits if given in the right dose. That's the idea behind cold plunging. It's the idea generally behind hormesis. That's what the idea of hormesis is. And this includes not just things like cold plunging, but classically it was like mercury, arsenic, cadmium, things that are inherently toxic and will kill you. But the idea being, if you just provide them in a small enough dose, then you can find this optimal range where your body says, you know, I'm going to mount a defensive reaction against this and be stronger as a result. And then since then, it's been extrapolated to tons of different things like exercise and fasting and low carb diets and calorie restriction. and Mike touched on this earlier with stress effects and specific effects. And I don't want to weigh this podcast down too much with the, the details of this, because we went through it in a four part podcast series on the energy balance podcast. think it was starting with episode 76, but if you just search hormesis, you'll find it somewhere in the seventies, maybe a 73, but it, but in any case, uh, the idea being that the stress from these things is not actually beneficial.

The stress leads to adaptations, but those adaptations are actually things that are going to degrade our function over time in an effort to prepare us for future stress. So if we're constantly dealing with intense cold from something like a cold exposure, the way our bodies adapt is that every day they're going to allocate less resources toward immune function, digestion, cognitive function, reproduction, because they're expecting that they're about to face more and more of these really intense stressors that they need a ton of energy for.

And that's why they require such massive increases in adrenaline and also cortisol and glucagon shown in various studies and, and, know, up regulation of fatty acid oxidation, all the things that were set are beneficial that are really just intense stress responses. And so, and that's what that adaptation of stress is it's preparation for future stress. And it actually something that comes at the cost of health. And that's very different from the effects that are called the specific effects, which are everything that's not the stress.

So when we take something like exercise, for example, there's a ton of specific effects. There's tension put on the musculoskeletal, musculofacial system. There's increased circulation, increased lymphatic flow, tons of different factors that are all beneficial and have, you know, are unique to exercise. And yet there's also the stressor effect where it depletes energy and can cause stress. 

And that stress side is actually never beneficial, but those other things can outweigh the stress. When we take something like cold plunging, for the most part, we're really just getting really intense, severe stress. And it's going to be coming at a cost and that adaptation, the adaptation to that stress is not something that benefits, benefits us in the longterm and is not the way to better health. don't want to stress ourselves to better health. can't actually stress ourselves to better health. So, and of course, as most people know that in the chronic degenerative states, these are states of intense physiological stress to begin with a lot of oxidative stress and inflammation, and typically a lot of environmental stress as well. 

So that would kind of be the short of it from my end. don't want to dig too much into the physiology because it, it gets, you know, we can get into the weeds very easily.

Mike, anything to add here?

Mike Fave:

I think it's just important with this overarching concept to kind of define stress and it's to put some of the things that Jay was mentioning in context. Cause a lot of people are like, what's stress, right? Like there's not really a clear idea. It's like this fuzzy concept. I think when you define it the way that we've typically defined it and discussed it and this is, know, tailing off stuff that Dr. Ray Peay has talked about. Like this was his general, his general perspective.

But stress is a mismatch between energy supply and energy demand, right? It's very simple. So you have either an excessive energy demand or a lack of energy supply. And a variety of factors can play into this. So for something like cold water exposure or cold therapy, you have a really high energetic demand immediately because you have to regulate your body temperature because if you don't, you will die. Like these four organs need to be maintained at a particular temperature.

in order for metabolic function to happen at a reasonable rate so that the consciousness and all these functions can be maintained. So you need to actually drastically up-regulate your metabolic function through these stress hormones, which adrenaline, cortisol and glute-gun's job is if you either don't have enough supply or you have an excessive immediate demand is to meet that demand.

And the thing is, is these come at a cost. These things come at a cost because in order to meet that demand, they're degrading your own stores, they're shifting metabolism, they're making all types of changes to allow you to deal with this particular stressor acutely and also chronically. And then it's like, the problem is, is the trade-offs that they make in those timeframes are actually damaging to the system, right? Because if you're going to supply this energetic substrate, fat is going to come from somewhere, glucose is going to come from somewhere, amino acids is going to come from somewhere, and then the shifting of supply, right? Not supplying the blood flow and the nutrients to certain tissues like the gonads or the GI tract, well, those tissues are going to suffer long term. So we're basically making a trade off here with this stressful events a lot of times. And so I think when if you look at stress this way, it starts to make much more sense. And that's where it can start to apply to a variety of contexts from a psychological perspective all the way to a physiological perspective with things like exercise, cold exposure, etc.

But it's like in those, even with psychological, if you have a lot of stress, have family, like stuff going on with your family, you have stuff going on with work, you know you're not sleeping, whatever the deal is, not sleeping, you're not applying enough resource, recovery, and then with the psychological component, have an excessive demand. So you're just like kind of balancing the scales, you're trying to make sure the scales are balanced, and these things push the demand side really high.

And to the point that would be arguably a level that you would not be able to effectively recover from with continued exposure because of how high the demand gets. And so this is what we're trying to understand is like, how do we get somebody to lower their demand and to make sure that they have enough supply so that their system can actually regenerate and start to rebuild instead of constantly breaking itself down? And that's why we're trying to provide this nuanced perspective. And this clip is absolutely hilarious providing it like.

This is way more, I think way more helpful for a lot of people than study sometimes, because like, oh, this actually kind of makes sense. it, it like puts it into a good perspective for people, but we're trying to weigh those scales that the system can then start to recover. So you're not in this breakdown mode or this like austerity survival mode. And then the one other piece I want to point into this is that you don't have to get like be excessively stressed to get a specific effect.

You don't have to kill yourself to get an outcome. And it's like, there's this assumption that those things go together. Even with exercise, it's like no pain, no gain. It's like, actually, a lot of the research with exercise is showing that adequate rest and adequate nutrient timing and an appropriate application of stimulus, not necessarily pushing all the way to failure every single time, provides the benefit because you have less stress while maintaining a specific effect. if anything, the out and the specific effect is the tension on the musculature that has  the mechanotransduction is the signaling saying, hey, you need to grow, like build more muscle tissue because we have had the stimulus and it is stressful because it requires energy. But the idea that we need to force that stress to get this outcome is where it's like, it's like we're getting into like a logical thing where it's like that's conflation actually that you need to have stress to drive it. So it's logically incorrect. And then that plays out physiologically as well where we actually don't need to push the stress super heavy to get these particular outcomes that we're looking for, we can have them while minimizing the stress and optimizing for a specific effect. And so hormesis, I think comes out of this logical conflation that you need to do damaging things so that you then have a response. it's like, you can up-regulate antioxidant defense and parasympathetic activity without being super stressed out. 

Like you can do that in other ways without the same cost. And that's the ultimate outcome is how do you create a system where you actually optimize for the specific effects, these benefits that you're looking for without causing this heavy stress burden at the same time. the thing is we're always gonna have stress. We always have an energy demand at all times. The question is just whether we get into what Dr. Selye called distress, which is where we have that imbalance. And so we're really looking to make work. If you don't have stress, you're dead, right? Because you don't have any metabolic demands anymore. They're always gonna have this stress on the system.

We're trying to manage it effectively and that's where you know, you have the idea of this allostatic load, this bucket of what our stress is, weighed against like what are our capabilities in managing these types of things. We don't want to be raising the stress, the load bucket and depleting the supply bucket. We want to make sure that we were at a good spot so that we can actually build our resilience over the long term. Or at least that's my perspective. I don't know if you guys see it any differently.

I really appreciate that imagery actually, and it got me thinking more about people that might not realize that they are making some significant trade-offs because they've only been sold the benefits. So whether it's cold plunging or I was thinking about clients and myself included who were on SSRIs for quite some time and they were only sold all of these amazing benefits. And Mike, like you were mentioning not.

not really understanding what's being drained in the process. And I like the idea of reconfiguring the way we think about it and not making health something that has all of these trade-offs that we have to suffer and grind our way towards. Because if something can alleviate stress, I would argue that that's going to be more health promoting in so many different ways and have rippling effects. And it's more of a win-win situation.

And not to sell it like it's rainbows and butterflies either, but kind of in terms of the stress approach, we're helping to reduce the cumulative effect and maybe turn down some of the processes that have been turned on because of what we were doing unintentionally or intentionally. So again, back to that, the common theme of awareness and perceiving, thinking and understanding and taking time before integrating things too and understanding that there's more than one side to the story. So if something is sold as this is the cure-all, this is, you know, cold plunging. At first, when I first heard of Wim Hof, I remember, I even thought like, this sounds incredible. This could fix almost everything I deal with and giving it some time, understanding that we need to think about the system and not just the immediate effect and that feeling of euphoria that, yep, stress hormones can definitely, definitely bring up for us.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And I mean, with his breathing method as well, it's the same thing. It's just sold as this end point, this outcome. then you look at there, you know, then he had studies done on it and basically they show you basically cause this immense stress by causing hypoxia for, you know, blowing off the CO2 and then preventing the tissues from being able to take up oxygen. And then you end up with this immense stress and sure you get these anti-inflammatory effects as a result, but not only at what cost, but what is.

When you look at the actual true entire scope of the outcome, it's not like you just had this benefit and these negatives. would say overall, was the decrease in inflammation is a part of the negative. It's a part of that outcome. And as you're saying, Theresa, it's not just a matter of trying to say, okay, we're going to cold plunge. So let's make sure we have enough energy available to try to make it so that there's as little stress as possible. But rather considering the fact that A, something like that is really never going to have much in the way of benefits.

as opposed to something like exercise where while it is stressful, there's a lot of beneficial specific effects, but also the idea that that doesn't even need to be in the picture here. If we have a lot of energy available, that's what allows our body to regenerate and complexify and increase in terms of function without needing to induce some sort of stressor. Like that doesn't have to be a part of the equation here. doesn't have to be a situation where we have to do the really hard thing to get to better health.

We actually just need to provide the building blocks and our bodies do the rest. That's, that's the whole point. This, this idea that we always have to be in a fight against ourselves and put, make ourselves do really hard things. And we'll be talking about this in the next episode, but you know, we need to avoid food for a period of time because that's the only answer. either that or it's willpower. And it's just this constant fight, I think is not only missing the point and not actually driving health, but also is a really tough way to live. And I know all three of us have lived that way at different points and it's.


My eyebrows doing that. They grew back, my hair doing that. Don't do what we did, I would say, one thing I want to point out is like, it's not about doing the hard thing, it's about doing the correct thing. And it's figuring out what is that specific thing that you need to do. And it doesn't mean that it has to be hard, nor does it mean that it has to be easy, but it's like, what is the specific outcome that you are looking for ultimately, and then what is the correct path to get there? That's the fundamental most important question. Not like, well, I have to suffer like sufferings required. It's like for some things, not necessarily.

For other things, yeah, like if you want to build a certain amount of muscle mass, like you have to dedicate time in the gym doing that. Like if that is your particular goal. So it really comes down. Again, that's just one example, but it will come down to certain things. If you don't want to be super stressed out and you're coming out of a hole where you are really stressed out, like you have to have, you know, three or four meals a day. You're going to have to eat. You're going to have to sleep. Like there are requirements for these things.

And then some people that may be considered hard, if they're calling for eating one meal day, takes time to adjust to that. But it's not necessarily that doing something hard means that it's the right thing. It's more that you need to figure out what the correct thing is that allows you to reach your goals and your outcomes appropriately. Right? Because the one big thing that I think gets missed across the board is like, oh, I have this study and I see that this is the outcome.

And then it's like, well, how are we getting that outcome? Right? It's the same thing we talked about with berberine. It's like, well, berberine lowers blood glucose. It's like, well, how is it lowering blood glucose? Are the cells processing the glucose better or are you just wasting it away by forcing glycolysis because you're blocking complex one? And it's like, okay, well, that's not really like, yes, you see, my hemoglobin A1C is lower and this is better. But it's like, that's not how you want to go about it per se. The other effects of it, fine. Like the fact that it helps clear out the gut and strengthen up the berries so don't have endotoxin leak, great. But the idea that like from a mitochondrial perspective, this is having the benefit by forcing glycolysis and impairing energy metabolisms like that's not really like even though you see this outcome of lowered glucose, the process of how that's occurring is problematic. And so we want to be clear on when we are implementing something, not only what is our outcome, but how is it working? And that's that is a I think a piece that gets very heavily missed with this perspective as well. So you want to

First, lay out what is my goal, right? What do I wanna do? Then you wanna say, what is the best way that I can get there? And then what are the tools I'm gonna use and how do those tools work? That's, think, the, like really the process that we're looking to work through here to figure out how do we, how do you get somebody's health better, lower their stress, improve their blood glucose, et cetera. Doesn't mean that there's not like work or actions involved, there is, but it doesn't mean that they don't always have to be stressful. And I think.

There's this no pain, no gain mentality. And it's like that also like maybe in some circumstances, sure, but not for every single circumstances that required. you like wearing that as a badge of honor at sometimes is actually like counterproductive to what your goals are. If you're trying to look for this thing that's hard and if it's not getting you in the direction, just because it's hard doesn't mean that you're progressing. Do you want to be, that's why I think it's less about like, oh, I'm doing this hard thing and more about.

Am I pushing the right buttons at the right times in the right ways for my outcome and trying to figure those specific things out and being clear on that and less about like, is it hard or not? know, because that's something that I think gets ingrained in the culture. like, if I'm doing hard work, if I'm doing all these hours, then I must be going somewhere. And it's like, not necessarily. It's, are you doing the right work? Are you doing the right thing at the right time for the right outcome?

Well said, I think we can all relate to that and starting to dissolve some of the ways our culture has maybe impacted us and confused our approaches to things and thinking more about like you were saying so beautifully, like intelligent action, like what's moving you in the direction that you want gracefully and honoring your body as opposed to beating it down and forcing it to suffer and torturing it or what, you know.

Maybe hopefully learn sooner rather than later that there is another way of doing things. That's my hope. All right. So let's wrap up here since we're a little bit short on time and we'll just add the Q &A to the next episode.

Theresa Piela:
Mike, where can people find you?

Mike Fave:

They can find me on the Energy Balance Podcast as well as on my YouTube channel, Mike Fave YouTube. And then you can check me out at MikeFave.com. 

What about you, Jay?

Jay Feldman:
All right. So my website is jayfeldmanwellness.com. Tons of free resources there that listeners can go check out. And then of course, my YouTube channel is J Feldman Wellness, where you can find this podcast and others and other videos.

Theresa Piela:
And you can find me at Living Roots Wellness on Instagram or tapping with T community and app. All right, let's close it out here.