Theresa Piela
Welcome to the bio energetic view. I'm your host, Theresa Piela joined as always by Jay Feldman and Mike Fave. And today we have Kate Deering joining us. I think most of our listeners know exactly who you are, but for those who don't, Kate, can you tell us who you are, how you got into this space and a little bit about your work these days?

Yeah, well, it's exciting to be here with these guys or all of you. Gosh, I've kind of been in this bio-energetics space for probably 15 years now and kind of found Pete when I was about 38, 39 at the epitome of me kind of hitting a metabolic wall and finding another answer. And from that, I got into his work and realized the complexities of it and thought, how can we make this a little bit easier for most people to understand?

And from that, I did write that book, How to Heal Your Metabolism, to kind of give people an introductory understanding of Ray's work without over-complicating it, because there's kind of a simplistic understanding of it, and then there's the over-complicated details of it. ultimately, it always comes back to the same answers, in my opinion. So hopefully, that's kind of how most people can understand it a little bit better. So, yep, that's a little about me.

Wow, that was amazingly brief. Thank you.

You know, I'm here to brief it out.

Okay, podcast lover, so we can close it out now.

Well, yeah, and just to hop in here, mean, Kate, I think your book is the first introduction to repeat for so many people and a really easy one to share with people too. It's, you said, a kind of straightforward way for people to apply a lot of the concepts. So I think it's probably, as you said, Teresa, I'm sure a lot of our listeners are already familiar with you, but it's great to have you here and sharing your expertise and thoughts and opinions with us here as we go through some content talking about hormone therapy and low carb diets and nutrient needs and all of the rest.

All the things. Yeah, and I'm like, you know, I definitely deal, and I guess you guys too, I definitely deal with a pre and post-menopausal group. So a lot of times when there's a lot of noise going on right now, certainly online, in social media, and as probably all of you probably know, it's kind of like hormonal replacement therapy is making a comeback. And maybe some of it's justified.

I think most people aren't understanding all the nuances behind it all, so I think it's kind good we're talking about this stuff so that people can at least know all sides of the story and not just this kind of single view of everyone should be taking it at this point.

That's a perfect transition for us because I would love to dive into maybe more of the Western typical model of hormone replacement therapy and what people maybe need to know and maybe some other perspectives to keep in mind from a more bio-energetic approach. So let's jump in with
this clip.

"Real talk, hormones are never gonna be enough. And so I think sometimes we're so focused on the HRT conversation because it was done dirty for a long time, right? And so now we're like talking about HRT all the time, but I have to remind people like you have to eat your fiber, you have to exercise, like you have to limit your sugar intake. Like just because you have HRT doesn't mean that suddenly you are totally protected from Alzheimer's, from cardiovascular disease, from all of these negative changes, like osteoporosis. It's one tool to help you, but you
have to have a full arsenal in that kit to really support you."

Alrighty. So I mean, a lot of these clips are pretty typical on Instagram, especially YouTube. I've noticed they're starting to come up quite a bit. Kate, I'm wondering, do people send you these and ask questions when it comes to your coaching practice and helping people navigate through all of this? Where do you begin, especially when there's so much noise and conflicting messages around HRT?

Yeah, I mean, I do get a lot of these these days because people are like, what about this? Should I be on hormone replacement therapy? Everyone is making me feel like if I don't get on hormone replacement therapy, I'm going to have osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease. I'll probably have dementia. You know, literally my life is going to fall apart as I know it if I don't get on. So it feels a little bit fear based right now. Some of that noise is that way. So yes. And I tried to, on some level, break it down to them because first, have to just kind of understand how estrogen's working and we have to understand other hormones that are involved and they have to also understand the individual that we're putting these hormones in because the data certainly does show, certainly observational trials that women that are on, they actually refer to it as menopausal hormonal therapy or MHT now, that they have better health outcomes and that's what's getting so blurred right now. And so these women are seeing,
improve bone density, they're seeing some level of maybe they're having less neurological issues, maybe they're having some partially heart protective things going on with them. So they're all attributing it to these hormone replacement therapies because women that are taking it are having better health outcomes. And we have to first ask the question about the people that are taking these hormones. So one of the health biases we know about women are taking hormone replacement therapy is they're normally more educated, they normally have better access to healthcare, they're normally also probably doing other things that might also help with health promotion. So if we're comparing that to the general population of a population that's not having these hormones and maybe they're not sleeping well and they're stressed out and they're doing nothing to people that are on hormone replacement therapies and maybe eating better and doing other things, yeah, you're going to have better health outcomes. So we have to at least take that into consideration when looking at these things along with a lot of other things that could be having these effects on them and trying to understand why they're having these effects on them.

Well, I'm curious, mean, I know most people find you because, you know, you're always talking about how dangerous sugar is, right, and that we should limit it, but I know that's still a misconception here that, you know, eating well is limiting sugar, it's a certain type of exercise, it's a lifestyle that looks a certain way. Can you talk a little bit more about what eating well would look like in this context for someone that might be premenopausal or starting to notice shift?

So what I definitely see in premenopausal or even in menopausal women is they are most likely becoming less glucose sensitive. And the question is, is that because they have a lack of estrogen, maybe a lack of progesterone? Maybe there's a little bit of that involved, but normally these individuals also are starting to live in a very adaptive stress state. And so when they start to live in this adaptive stress state, meaning they're kind of energy controlling hormones are no longer probably thyroid, but more so adrenaline, cortisol, glucagon, they are gonna become less sensitive to sugar. So they are going to have that experience, but it's not because they need more estrogen, it's because they're living in a very stressed atmosphere and not understanding what their body's physiology actually needs to kind of mitigate the stress response so that their body can respond better to carbs and sugar. Instead, they're usually then...

The next approach is I'm eating a low carb diet. Okay, well that might look better on a blood lab. And they might inherently even feel a little bit better at that point. But that approach then doesn't make them feel good. And then the low carbohydrates might end up prone them to more anxiety or more sleep issues. Or as they go into menopause, more hot flashes. And so now they're having, experiencing all these hot flashes that are contributing to poor sleep. They feel bad. You know, they feel like they want to murder their husband or the partner, whoever that is.

And that is going to decrease their quality of life. So then they go to their doctor, their doctor says, let me give you on hormone replacement therapy because we definitely know that that will lower the hot flashes. And that overall experience of having less hot flashes is going to basically increase and improve their quality of life. They're also going to sleep better. So for those reasons, they're going to feel better. Is it because they really needed more estrogen or did they need to address the things that were actually creating the stress response that they're becoming more sensitive to, and that's why they're not feeling bad. And I would probably tell you it's the latter, right? So yes, these things that happen in a woman life and time in general, and because they're having hormonal irregularities and because they have a diminished effect, because they're gonna have also less progesterone during this time period, and because the hormones are very irregular premenopausal.

Yeah, they're going to feel more sensitized to stress in general. So it doesn't take them as much to feel the effects of stress. And when you have and you're closer into that stress cycle, then you aren't going to be as glucose sensitive as you might because you're having it in the stress cycle. the answer in a normal way is, hey, we've got to kind of address your life and see if we can kind of reduce some of how your body's dealing with these stressors. And then also go, what does it really look like? to mitigate the stress response. And the biggest component that's going to mitigate that is getting enough carbohydrates into the system, right? And if they're having a hard time getting them into the system, then we might need to assess why is that happening? Is it because there's a lack of nutrients? Is it because there have other issues, GI levels of endotoxin? Is there excess of estrogen? What is it that's inhibiting that process from happening? And then look at those things and then going from there.

Mike, do you want to jump in a little bit and tell us maybe about some of the concerns with using estrogen or, you know, the more standard approach with estrogen creams or internal supplements paired with maybe a progestin? Can you talk to us about that?

Mike Fave
Sure. So I think I would agree across the board with what Kate had said. And I also do agree with some of the components that Dr. Jolene Brighton had mentioned. But I think it's important, like the general context here is that hormones in and of themselves aren't just going to be the final solution for a lot of people's issues, a lot of postmenopausal women issues. I think it's one piece of the overarching puzzle that can move the needle for women. And then I'm going to talk a second about specifically what we're talking about with hormones. But I think fundamentally, when I talk about hormones with people, with both men and women, I see them as signaling molecules. So they are components that tell cells and tissues what to do. And then from that, with that perspective in mind, the cells and the tissues actually need to have the appropriate resources to respond to those hormones. that, in this circumstance, that's gonna be making sure that you have adequate micronutrient, you have adequate macronutrient and some of the other lifestyle components are dialed in effectively so that the cells and the tissues respond effectively to those hormones overall. And so that's why it's not just going to be you put hormones on board and everything's solved. It's going to be you organize the nutrition, your nutritional foundation, you organize what's going on with sleep, you organize what's going on with movement, you organize micronutrients, vitamin and mineral status, and then you also then bring the hormonal components on board. Because one thing that I see happen with women with hormones is sometimes it's really hit or miss. Sometimes they start using progesterone, estrogen, whatever the hormone is, and they get a really bad response or sometimes it's a good response. And I think the first most important piece is getting the context under control and then add those in on top. So I tend to add the hormones in as I'm already organizing some of these other components. Now, in terms of some of the hormones specifically, if you, at least from my reading of the research, when you look at some of the dynamics, when you're talking about estrogen therapy,the only estrogen therapy that has really been shown to have a lot of these benefits or at least in the vast majority of studies is only the transdermal stuff. And it's very, very low dose that you see. And the way, when I'm looking at this type of stuff and I'm looking at labs, a lot of women who are postmenopausal that I'm looking at and I ratio their progesterone to estradiol value, they are shifted towards estradiol already. Even though both progesterone and estradiol are low.

They're shifted almost entirely towards estrogen across the board. So just throwing estrogen on board, I think is questionable in that circumstance. And the first steps with hormones, at least when I'm looking at things, is I'm telling you to say, okay, let's look at progesterone, let's look at DHEA, let's look at pregnenolone, let's consider what's going on potentially with testosterone, let's look at what's going on with thyroid function, because a lot of post-menopausal women are dealing with thyroid issues. And then you get to that next step and say, okay, now what's going on with this balance with the progesterone and the estradiol. But as an example, my own mom, she has a clotting disorder and she went to the doctor and they put her on oral estrogen ASAP. And it's like, they're trying, and I'm just like, this is, I had to go back and forth with the practitioner and be like, this is inappropriate. She has a known clotting disorder and she's on an oral estrogen and there's no support for using the oral estrogen for her. She doesn't need an oral estrogen. She's hypothyroid and she needs progesterone when you ratio the values in her labs. Then you can talk about estrogen later on, but it's definitely not going to be any of the oral stuff.

So for me, it's doing it in a systematic approach, making sure the foundational components are covered first. And these other hormones, I think, are more central and more important because there are the, when you look at the hormonal risks, the higher risks are with the estrogens. That you get the clotting and you get the carcinogenic risks from the estrogens. When you're looking at progesterone and DHEA, prognanolone, and even appropriately dosed testosterone, that's a whole other story because women are getting pelleted with really high testosterone levels. I think that's problematic.

But when you look at those hormones, typically the downsides for them are much lower and they have a variety of benefits and they are opposing each level of stress. They're opposing the stress systems across the board and the other hormones. Well, it's kind of a mixed bag when you start to look at some of those components. So I'd say that's a, when I'm looking at the hormones, that's what I tend to look at. And I have the foundation first. And the last piece I want to mention in here that's really important is when there you go through some of the studies and Dr. P has mentioned this many times.

When you go through the studies, when they're talking about progestins, or they're talking about progestins, they're not talking about bioidentical progesterone. And you really gotta dig in the papers to try to see, well, what are you talking about here? madroxyprogesterone acetate. It's like, well, that's not what you wanna use because the outcomes from the synthetic progestins and progestins are not good at all. They're pretty terrible. Whereas the ones when you look at bioidentical progesterone, at the worst, it is neutral.

And at the best, has benefits across the board for a variety of components. And if anybody's going to use estrogen, they really need to have progesterone on board bioidentical because it is protective of the effects of estrogen if it's even needed in that circumstance. So there's multiple pieces with the hormonal picture. I think the HRT is making its comeback now because of some of the new studies. But I think some of the studies that I've seen are even like basically saying the same things that we saw before. Even some of the newer studies like, look, like oral estrogens is not a good idea. We know this. And then synthetic estrogens are not a good idea. And then a progesterone still keep the like synthetic progestins progestin still keep coming out negative. And then when you look at the other hormones, like yeah, DHEA and progesterone and testosterone and progenital and have almost all of these same benefits that you would see from even using the estrogen based therapy. that's how I tend to look at it.

And that's usually how I'm looking to address things. And I will look at labs. I'm looking at that ratio between progesterone and estradiol. I'm looking at the hormonal systems. And I'm making sure the foundational components are dialed in. Because a lot of times, that stuff's out of whack. By the time I have gotten post-menopausal women, she's gone through like 50 diets, cycling up and down with her weight, lost a bunch of lean muscle tissue. And then the hormonal systems are completely out of whack. And it's like, OK, there's quite a few things that we have to get under control here. And it's not just, boom, slap your hormones on, and there you go.

Well, thank goodness for you, Mike, for helping your mom out. I'm sure she's grateful too, to have someone that understands this and took the time to think about it in a more rational way.

She had already had a pulmonary embolism from taking birth control. And like that's in her health history. So and she tells everybody about it. So it's like the fact that you decide that oral estrogens is a good idea for this person is terrible. That's a terrible recommendation for somebody like that. know, again, it's just because like, estrogen is safe. It's only the synthetic ones are bad. It's like, no, even the non-synthetic estrogens orally dose have these problems. But yeah, for my mom, I told her that before she started. But, you know.

Your family members don't listen to you.

Does she have a uterus? Does she have a hysterectomy?

Does have a uterus.

So they did put around some level of progesterone then.

Oh, I put her on progesterone. I told her she had to go on progesterone first and then I looked at her thyroid panels. I was like, you may want to talk to your doctor about getting a prescription for thyroid because her problem was she was hypothyroid. So she was gaining weight and she was losing some of her hair and stuff like this. And she went on the thyroid, she lost the weight, she felt a lot better. I fixed up her diet, covered her micros. And was like, hey, you may want to use some progesterone because your balance is really skewed towards estrogen.

Obviously with hypothyroidism you can typically see that because of the change in metabolism. And then, yeah, then she went to the, when she went to go get the script from this natural doctor, the natural doctor like convinced her about taking oral estrogens. And then we had the battle, I had the battle a little bit between, because my mom doesn't know and she's just, she's like, well, the doctor says and you say, and I don't know what to do, so Jay, I'm curious, say someone has dialed in their lifestyle, they've increased their carbs and they're still in a state that is not ideal for them. Would you ever consider using estrogen as part of their therapy.

Jay Feldman
Yeah, it's a good question. So, many of the women who I'm seeing who are peri or postmenopausal are seeing symptoms, right? There's this conglomeration of symptoms that we see involving hot flashes involving naturally more irritability, sometimes weight gain, sometimes more of a tendency toward bone loss, you know, that happens slower, know, slowly over time. And obviously there's this desire to be free of those symptoms and estrogen has been that promise. And you even hear it a bit here. They're like, these things aren't going to totally protect you against osteoporosis. You still need to do a bit of the diet. And it's like, that's not that we're really far from what the literature is showing here. It's not saying you take estrogen therapy and you're totally protected against heart disease or osteoporosis. You know, when you're looking at those clinical trials, some of the more recent ones that are even the ones showing support for it.

You're talking about a very small change in subclinical atherosclerosis with no change in calcium, scores and, you know, no difference in plaque built up. Like we're talking about very small differences here that I think are getting incredibly blown out of proportion when people then go to their practitioner and they're being sold this as the solution for their health and for all their symptoms. And to be fair, it does often help with the symptoms like hot flashes and like some of the other stress symptoms that Kate was alluding to that women tend to become a lot more sensitive to once peri and postmenopause come on. But if we're effectively addressing the lifestyle, normally that severely reduces those symptoms. And it's something where I think there's been a lot of, I mean, if we even back up, there's this assumption that what we're seeing during that time is all due to estrogen deficiency, right? There's no more estrogen. We see it in the blood. It's all gone. And so that's why you're seeing all these symptoms, but the reality is a, there's still estrogen in the tissues. The idea that this is an estrogen deficient state is, totally missing the fact that most of the estrogen that's going to be produced in that situation is just not going to be making it into circulation, but there's still estrogen being produced in the bones, in the heart and elsewhere. It's not an estrogen deficient state. And you can't look at the blood to really identify that, especially at that point. And there's also in that assumption that this is an estrogen problem, they're forgetting about how important progesterone is as an anti-stress hormone. And so when you lose that progesterone, you are going to be way more susceptible to those stress symptoms. And you're going to notice hot flashes when your blood sugar drops, when you might not have noticed that before, or when stress comes on. And while estrogen can help support or prevent some of those symptoms, or at least improve some of those symptoms in some women, a lot of times it'll come back to bite them later on.

The symptoms will come back later on, or there will be unintended side effects or consequences. And then the other piece as well is that we can get those same benefits, not only from addressing the lifestyle, but if needed, providing a bit of progesterone, which can be incredibly effective for those things. It's not as immediately effective because we're working through more of an anti-stress mechanism. It's a much slower effect, which is the same thing we see for bones, for example, for osteoporosis, where estrogen does have this benefit of growth in general. It's basically a growth hormone.

One of its primary functions, really its primary function. And for the bones, it can lead to growth quickly. it does have benefits in protecting against bone loss, but progesterone can do that also really effectively, but it just takes longer. It's a slower process in terms of the way that it stimulates the osteoblasts to promote bone building. And pregnant alone could do a similar thing as well. It helps to prevent the bone breakdown and increase the building of bone. So we have this kind of dichotomy where like many other stress hormones, you can provide cortisone, example, or prednisone and see an immediate anti-inflammatory effect. But that doesn't mean it's something we want to do. It doesn't mean it's something that's going to be a long-term solution or B not coming at a long-term cost. And we see that parallel situation here where if we needed to go with hormone replacement, so to speak, or just hormone supplementation, leaning into the progesterone pregnant alone side, I think is a far better route to go for
all of these concerns, again, assuming that we've, we have gotten to that place where the foundations are, are in place. If you're looking for guidance and understanding how to create a sustainable bio-energetics diet and lifestyle so that you can lose weight or resolve any other health issues you might be working on, then head over to jfeldmanwellness.com slash call, where you can sign up for a free call with a member of the J. Feldman Wellness team who can provide you insights on your individual health issues and make sure that you get the support that you need on your health journey.

Whether that's one-on-one coaching, group coaching, or the do it yourself energy balance course, we've helped people reverse everything from insomnia to fatigue and brain fog, as well as severe digestive problems and everything else in between. And we'd love to help you do the same. So again, head over to jfeldmanwellness.com slash call to sign up for a free call. but I think what we're seeing here with this clip is just one of the conglomeration of, this media frenzy right now about the magic of estrogen and the reality is so far from that. Even when they, you manipulate the studies to find a very specific scenario, a very specific subset of women where this is providing some benefit and then you do a controlled trial to test it and they're not seeing these incredible benefits that they're finding in some of the observational data or when they reevaluate some of the older studies. And so I think there needs to be a lot more care there and the idea that this clip even needs to be here saying, don't forget about diet and exercise when you're doing your hormones. Tells us how far skewed that whole industry has gone.

Yeah, absolutely. think again, there's this idea still, I mean, we want it to be easy, right? We, like Mike was saying, slap some hormones on and we're good to go. And I think so many of us, well, maybe not us, so many people still fall for the idea that there could be this prescription that could normalize and neutralize their suffering. Kate, I'm wondering when you're researching and sharing your knowledge,If someone is still convinced that estrogen might be a helpful support or solution for them, how do you teach them? Like, do you meet them where they're at and start to describe to them maybe some of the downsides or some of the dangers of using a supplement, an estrogen supplement?

Very good questions. there are some metrics that you can assess because estrogen will actually naturally lower metabolism and lower thyroid function and lower thyroid conversion. So for a lot of women, and they'll actually reach out to me with some of my posts and they'll be like, hey, there are some of things I've actually experienced that I feel better taking estrogen, but I've noticed that I'm much colder. My hands are colder my body temperature is colder. I go, well, that says something. It's actually having an inhibitory effect on how well you are producing energy, because it's just one of the things that it does. So assessing your body temperature is a great way to see the effects of estrogen. Now, if they are also on progesterone, and it depends, because a lot of women postmenopausal will take progesterone every single day. So that could counteract and...

Kind of inhibit some of those effects of estrogen. And that's basically what progesterone does. It's kind of the counter balancing hormone. It's not inherently balancing because you actually will have a lot more progesterone that has to balance out a little effect. mean, you don't need a lot of estrogen. It has a big effect. So you need a lot more progesterone to balance out those effects. But as long as it's there, you don't seem to get as many of the negative effects of the estrogen, but some still do.

And so, and some women now aren't even going through menopause, they're perimenopause, and they're already being put on hormonal replacement therapy to kind of make them feel better through that process. temperature is definitely one of them. Another one is to measure their prolactin levels. I have seen this numerous times with women on hormone replacement with estrogen, their prolactin levels are way, way too high, way high. And, you know, and depending on like when they actually get on, you know, some of them are like on a patch and they take it you if they put the new patch on, they'll get a bigger kind of metric or number right after that. But you do start to see higher prolactin levels. And prolactin A can tell you more about what's going on in the tissues as well, but it does seem to increase with increase, prolactin will increase with increased estrogen levels. Which always makes you ask the question because prolactin will elevate and it will start pulling calcium out of the bone. And so certainly we know that estrogen is being promoted as this miraculous thing to help women with osteoporosis and inhibit them from getting it. And it doesn't really do that. It can certainly, as Jay said, slow down bone breakdown. The osteoclasts do slow down. It doesn't improve osteoblasts, doesn't really improve bone building. So you really don't see a lot of better improvements in there as far as with the estrogen. It can certainly slow down that process, but...the question becomes it could also be having these other mechanosylical effects on your body like increasing prolactin, which could actually be creating some bone issues. Bone density isn't the only way we can measure how good your bones are. Like bone strength and the micro architecture of your bones, they all matter. And so it could also be creating some other effects in your system that you're unaware with. I always like to tell women things like, look, there are certain...

Illnesses and disease that women are more prone to. Hypothyroidism. I think we have like a 10 times greater chances of being hypothyroid. Autoimmune issues. We have a far greater chance of having an autoimmune issue. Gallbladder issues. Gaven your gallbladder removed. Dementia. As women age and men age, we have, I think, a 60 % chance of greater of having dementia. And some people will say, well, that's just because women live longer.

There is a part of that, but when we look at it with the same ages, we still have a much greater chance of having these kind of illnesses. When women are between the ages of 25 and 40, we have a, I think, 40 % greater chance of having a stroke. So why? Why is that happening, right? What could be fundamentally happening in a woman that doesn't happen in a man? And we have a ton more estrogen exposure 10 to 20 times more estrogen exposure over our lifetime than a man does. And so we need to take that into consideration. And because why would all that be happening? So if we just look at that molecule and we test it on these short-term trials or we do these observational trials, short-term, it could show a lot of benefits. It definitely shows it lowers cholesterol and lowers LDL and maybe it offers some level of vasodilation to your vessels.

So we get all of these, like, look what all these things that's doing. It's a little bit excitatory to the brain. So women will think they're sharper, they have better cognition. But what is it doing after 20 years of exposure, in addition to maybe you're still under stress, because you're actually still not fixing the problem, you're just taking this hormone? What is that looking like? And we don't know.

And so I think it's important that they know everything and they can like kind of assess their own physiology. And the other thing I think when women do start taking it, one thing I hear is, well, what I took initially, I was on the lowest dose and then that kind of stopped working. So I had to take more and then that stopped working and then I had to take more. Now I'm feeling colder, but at least I don't have hot flashes, right? So what is really going on is kind of, and so if you have a look at other metrics, then they can kind of see like yeah, maybe this isn't the right path for me. And I'm not gonna tell them not to. I mean, I'm gonna give them information. You gotta make that choice for yourself. But let's look at everything and kind of assess it and see what, know, we want your system to work better, ultimately. And is estrogen really fixing that?

So ideally, would someone ethically be better off just using a bioidentical progesterone?

I think that can depend. I think like Mike alluded to that if we assess the diet and do all those things first and set the foundation, then you certainly could try. If you're post-menopausal, I think it's still very important to cycle the progesterone. But yes, that could offer a beneficial effect. I think it's a lot safer for sure, because we know that progesterone has a lot of these pro-menabolic effects and is a lot safer for an individual. So for some women, they...For some, and I'm not saying all, but some women seem to might need a low dose of estrogen in addition to it, right? If all things don't work that way. So I have seen that and that they seem to do better with a little bit of estrogen, but if we're getting all the things else corrected, a lot of time they don't need it. And definitely if we improve thyroid function.

So I'm thinking of, did you want to jump in?

Yeah, I wanted to jump in here just to, just to give, guess, like a 30,000 foot overview for like women who are listening, the way that I tend to think about this. And I think it aligns pretty much with what Kate said, but step number one, if you're having issues is look at some of the lifestyle components. Look at your diet, look at your micros, organize these components, right? Get that stuff under control. Step number two is I would really hone in. Like what I do is I then look in, I have some the diet and chronometer, where are the gaps? Then I'm putting, making sure I'm covering the rest of those microbes. Is vitamin D deficient? Is calcium status off? Is magnesium dialed in? Do they have MTHFR or do they have a need for B vitamins like thiamine or whatever the thing is covering those gaps? Then the next piece after that is looking into hormones specifically for postmenopausal problems. There's other problems, sure. There's other things to address, but for the hormones and the first step, at least for me, is usually progesterone, prognanolone and DHEA.

So get those things and I do progesterone first and then bring the other components on board afterwards. After that, if a woman is still having symptoms, then I'll look and say, okay, what about testosterone using a low-dose transdermal testosterone? Does that help shift some of the symptoms? And then after that point is when you get to, okay, is a small amount of low-dose transdermal estradiol needed in that circumstance? And so that is at least for me, that's the flow I'm working through. Of course, there's thyroid issues. Correct all these components.

But in my experience, most women don't need to get to that last step. Most women will stop somewhere along that way. They're not gonna have the hot flashes. They'll feel much better overall. Energy's better. Things are set up properly. They start to lose some of the weight that you usually there's like this weird switch menopause hits and like boom, 10 pounds. Don't know where it came from. Don't know why I got it. And then you get those things under control. And then yeah, a lot of times you don't have to make it into that last step and you could still reap the rewards of not having the hot flashes and having better energy, getting body composition under control, all of these elements. And also with bone mass. I I've had women who I worked with who had breast cancer in the past, so they could not use estrogen. The doctor did not want them to use any hormones at all. They didn't want them to use estrogen at all. And it was through micros, exercise, and setting up the diet appropriately that the DEXA scans bone mass scores actually improved.

Just from that alone, without the hormones. Are the hormones helpful? Yes, they can be helpful and it's not just estradiol. The other hormones are all helpful for the bones as well. But just through those components, the Z-scores on the bone improved significantly from being in osteopenia, getting back up into the lower end of the osteoporosis, getting the lower end osteopenia range. So you can see these things change without having to use the hormones. And then that's for me, that's the flow that I tend to look through and you're gauging every step of the way. And ideally you're checking the labs as well. You want to see prolactin, as Kate mentioned. You want to see thyroid profile. You want to see progesterone. You want to see estradiol. You want to see testosterone. You want to see that cortisol, the DHEA ratio and their individual values to get a full sense of what's going on and also look at metabolic function. What's going on with A1C? What's going on with insulin? To get a full picture of where the problems are that need to be addressed and then put things under control.

That's the 30,000 foot overview, some of the testing. And I think those are some of the things that the progression that I would, you if anybody's listening to like this specific setup, that's what I would say. Like, hey, like work through that progression and see how you feel through that progression and do it one. I do it one step at a time, put progesterone on board, see how you feel, titrate the dose upward, find a dose that, okay, I feel good on this dose. I don't have any symptoms. I'm good. See how you feel with DHEA. See how you feel a little pregnant alone.

Then test out if you need to testosterone and go from there and do them individually so you can gauge your response to each component and find the appropriate dose for you because there's a lot of individuality and what a woman's going to respond to with some of these hormones. Some women feel I've had quite a few women feel great with DHEA. They bring on five milligrams a morning five milligrams and eating your 10 and 10 with a progesterone. It's like the game changer in their body composition and their energy levels things like this. Some women they felt way better with pregnenolone and progesterone or some women just It was great with progesterone and I've had someone where they didn't want to go as high on progesterone because they didn't feel as good when they got to a higher dose. They felt good on a lower dose. You need to play with each component a little bit. When I see in the clinics is you have the hormone clinics popping up all over the place. It's like boom pellets, estrogen, testosterone pellets and then maybe we'll give you an oral progesterone and then it's like a high dose right away. You're stuck with it for the next three months and I think that could be problematic as well.

Regardless of what the studies are saying for people. Because I've had women come back, like I'm feeling having all types of weird symptoms after this pellet and then it eventually tapers off. So yeah, I just wanted to add that so people can see the track, at least the track that I like to run through.

Jay, do you have a similar track? In terms of adding things, I know you add things in slowly one at a time, but do you have a similar approach when someone comes to you wanting support in this matter?

Yeah, definitely. know, as Mike mentioned, you know, first step when we're talking about that approach is, the foundational things. And sometimes that gets us about to where we need to go. And if there's more room for improvement after that, then, you know, of course we can consider those hormones and we want to tweak those based on the certain symptoms we might be experiencing. You know, if we're concerned about an excess estrogenic state, we're seeing high prolactin or, or another marker that we're seeing that people might already have that they don't have to go out of their way to get would be HDL. I'll see women using hormone therapy or specifically estrogen therapy, their HDL is 70, 80, 90, a hundred or higher. And that's definitely a sign of an excess estrogenic state. Not something we want to be encouraging. So we could, you know, use something like that as an indicator. And then we want to be aware of that with the hormones, you know, in a state like that, DGA and testosterone can aromatize. They can become estrogen. And so we'd want to be careful with those.

Whereas on the flip side, Pregnenolone has a more anti-estrogenic effect and inhibits aromatase. So it prevents the conversion toward estrogen. And that's part of the reason why if you were to use DHEA and you we wanted to make sure it wasn't converting to estrogen, we could use Pregnenolone at the same time. So yeah, I mean, there's a number of factors like that, but I think also it ends up being a scenario where the veil kind of gets lifted, think without, largely without the protection from progesterone. And so on one hand, that can be an opportunity to recognize maybe there's some improvements we can, or room for improvement that we have in terms of our sleep hygiene or in terms of our blood sugar, or maybe we're using some supplements that are overstimulating. I mean, that's a big one that I think gets uncovered around that time. Once we have that veil lifted where, you know, and women are noticing the hot flashes and insomnia and irritability, reducing a lot of the overstimulating supplements can be a big factor. High dose B vitamins, excess thyroid, which these are things that can be really beneficial when, used in proper doses, doses, but when in a state like this, these can be contributing to a lot of stress effects, know, caffeine, coffee on an empty stomach, especially not paying attention to having good balanced meals throughout the day. So those are things that I think often crop up and I normally, you know, emceeing and helping people work through first and then, yeah, looking to that extra hormonal support if needed, if we're still seeing, some of those lingering symptoms and yeah, very similar approach in terms of the hormones.

Okay, well again, thank goodness for you guys because I'm listening to you speak and I'm like, that's a lot to manage thinking about dialing the progesterone, dialing the pregnenolone, dialing the DHEA, then adding the testosterone. For a woman that's listening and thinking, my gosh, I feel terrible. I haven't slept. Like Kate mentioned, I want to kill my husband. What would be supportive initially? This person, they're losing it. They're feeling miserable and maybe they feel very confident with the fact that they've dialed in their nutrition. They feel like they're doing appropriate strength building exercise and they feel completely lost when it comes to speaking with their doctor. Maybe they even have lab tests to show. Kate, what would you recommend to someone like this?

So someone has their nutrition dialed in or they think they have their nutrition dialed in.

Great question, maybe we can dive into that a little bit more. You know, there's, everyone has a different idea of what's ideal, even in the bio-energetics space, know, we've, Jay and Mike have shared their differences in terms of Mike really thriving on more fruit and sugar, Jay being more of a mixed starch and sugar burner and just understanding the differences there.

Because I think it's How would someone, yeah, how would someone even know that they have their nutrition dialed in, they're hitting their micros, but things are not lining up, they're not feeling great.

Yeah, so I mean, probably first I would say if you are losing it and having a ton of symptoms and don't feel well, I would probably conclude we probably don't have our nutrition the way it should be, right? Because certainly I need a lot of people who are like, I'm super clean eating. And I'm like, I don't know what that means. And then I find out what that means. And it's like, I'm eating a ton of maybe meat and vegetables and maybe they're not eating a lot of processed food, but maybe they could be eating about 100 carbs a day.

Maybe they're not eating a lot in general. So everybody has their definition of what healthy means. So first I would want to know, what does that mean to you? And then I would try to help them understand, okay, if you're not feeling well and this is what we're eating, then we obviously should change something and this kind of assess. And then I would ask them, like, how are you feeling through the day? Are you waking up hungry or not hungry? If you eat, you know, how long is that meal lasting? So a lot of these people are waking up and they're like, well, I'm not hungry when I wake up. So I don't want to eat anything.

And so I don't eat anything till like 11 after I've like worked out and worked for two hours in front of my computer. And then I feel like I could eat something. So I start there and go, look, if you're already not feeling well and you have no appetite in the morning, I'd probably also assess like what is your body temperature in the morning, what your pulse in the morning. And again, some very stressed individuals can certainly wake up warm, specifically almost in these peri-mental puzzle and if they're having night sweats.

They feel like they're on fire in the morning and they're sweating. they're just like, Kate, my metabolism is really high. I'm just sweating all the time. And I'm like, that is not a sign that your metabolism, it can be, but if it's kind of a regular, like you're experiencing with hot flesh, it's normally not, right? It says that you're very highly sensitive to stress at this point and your body's responding with these kind of cortisol zaps, probably low blood sugar all day long. you're...your body's presenting it with these hot flashes that are kind of telling you you're getting zaps of stress hormones all day. And so we would definitely look at how they start their day. Like we need to reassess how your day is starting. you haven't been eating for eight to 10 hours. Your body's going to be looking for some sort of fuel. And if you don't give it to it, it's going to just go into a stress response to try to find some for you. So we kind of need to reevaluate the morning and what that looks like and how to slowly kind of shift them.

So their body starts getting used to some food in the morning. And it's not immediate, we like start slow, maybe add calories as they start to feel better and their appetite starts to increase. But look, we need to fuel you when you're doing things that need fuel. And a lot of people don't do that. They're like doing half their life or half their day with nothing in them. They're totally burning and as they think, well, I'm just burning body fat all day. Well, I'm like, well, that's not actually happening, right?

Your body does need some level of glucose through the day, right? Your nervous system needs that, your red blood cells need that, you know, and unless you're in a state of starvation or on a ketogenic diet, you need a good percentage of carbohydrates through the day. And even if you're on a ketogenic diet, you need some. So we need to find a way to kind of mitigate their body being in this chronically stressed space. And as I always say, people look, your stress hormones elevate to raise your blood sugar.

The only other thing that will raise your blood sugar is inherently carbohydrates or glucose. for your stress hormones to not do that, we need to give you carbohydrates and or glucose so that we can stop your system from trying to make its own. And that's gonna help calm the system down. So I always start there because if we don't start the day off properly, then we're kind of trying to play catch up all day long.

And then looking at like slowly building up their carbohydrate kind of level, right? If you're only consuming 100 right now, I'm not gonna give you 300. That will not feel good. And you know, certainly a lot of people, and I'm sure I know you guys find this, they find this approach and all of a sudden they went from 100 to 400. And then they didn't change the amount of fat they consumed. And then they're wondering, why am I gaining so much weight? And I'm like, because you're eating 2000 more calories and your body isn't equipped to handle all these.

So you start slow, move them slow, and then slowly get them more acclimated to using those carbohydrates in the morning so that they start to feel better. And my approach is always like, look, we're going to move slow and steady. So, right, if you're super overwhelmed and can't handle a lot right now, here's one to two things that we're gonna work on so that we can start presenting and giving you a little bit more space so we can create a little bit more resilience so that when you get there, now we can add another thing in.

And then, so it never feels like you're doing so much or doing over because that's not gonna work either. know, giving someone 25 things to do at one time is gonna just make them do nothing and it's gonna feel too much. So we work within the space that's available to them. And then as it increases, we add more to the point that, you you build their resilience up enough that they can, or so you build their resilience up enough so they can start to manage more stress because the goal is not to live life stress-free.

The goal is to live life, have stressors in them, good, bad, or whatever, and then teach your body to be able to become resilient enough to deal with those things so you don't crash down every time these happen. But also understanding when stress is higher that you probably need to be more protective of yourself. Eat better, pay attention to your sleep so that you can deal with these stressors. Unfortunately, most people do the opposite, are less care to themselves.

Maybe that's the estrogen. It's making them reckless. Right, Jay?

Totally.

Yeah. And that could be a big part of it. And you know, you're the lack of carbs could certainly be a factor that I know you're bringing up Kate, which I think is a good transition to the, to the next topic here, the next clip talking about things that maybe we should be considering if we're having carbs to our diet. And I don't know. We'll go from there and see what we have to hear here from the primal bod.

Alright, you guys ready? Brace yourself.

The RDA is bullsh-t you guys, just like calories. The RDA was invented after World War II, and the test subjects were unhealthy, deficient people who ate plants. The test subjects were not tested for their insulin levels. Nobody gave a sh-t about that back then. The more insulin you produce, the more your needs of vitamins and minerals goes up. Those people needed a lot of magnesium.

They needed a lot of vitamin C, needed a lot of zinc, they needed a lot of potassium, they had to process the carbohydrate plant matter that they were taking in. You don't need a lot if you're not hyper producing insulin.

Okay, I always have to take a deep breath because some of these influencers make me sweaty and a little stress. And Kate, I want to thank you for providing information in a way that feels empowering and is relaxing to take in. And I know for so many people that are new to the space or even have been in the space for a while, it is nice to still learn and maybe take in new perspectives and a deeper understanding of things in a way that doesn't spark more fear and stress.

So I After watching this clip, I'm wondering what your immediate reaction was.

There's so many words I have other than this individual does create a lot of fear around everything specifically carbohydrates specifically fructose specific I mean she attributes anything that raises insulin is is that promoting and bad for you and That can't be further from the truth

Right? And so, and then this clip in general, it's this like, well, these people were eating carbohydrates, plant-based, and so they needed more minerals because they were trying to process all these things. And I'm like, what? Right? Like, you do need more minerals and more nutrients if you actually are running at a high metabolic space, right? When you have more energy demands or more energy coming in or more fuel coming in to process that fuel will take more nutrients.

You can't have a nutrient deficient diet and expect to work properly just with a ton of fuel. So yes, the requirements of everything will go up. And so the thought that saying, be me and just eat fat, you won't need as much nutrients and that's a good thing, literally doesn't make any sense to me. so when you are creating more energy, you will just need more of everything, essentially.

I always kind of put it into this analogy. If you had a conveyor belt moving your fuel to make energy, you're going to need a lot of workers along that conveyor belt to change the molecule, to move it to the next one, to make your energy. And those are all those workers or your enzymes, they're all needed with nutrients to make them work properly.

And so for them to work quicker, right, if you're wanting to turn that conveyor belt up to make more energy, then they all need to work more. They're going to require more from them. So to have a high rate of metabolism, you're going to need a high rate of nutrition. That's just how they go together.

Yeah, I like to think of the analogy, just like the burning fire. And I think it was, I don't know who originally described that to me, but I love the imagery of, you're adding more logs in and it's burning faster and you're feeding it. It's going and you're getting more of a return because you're feeding it. Mike, I'm wondering when someone is increasing their metabolic rate, they're feeling better, they're feeling more energized and they might be worried that they're burning through their micronutrients too quickly.

Are there certain things to keep in mind, certain foods or even, yeah, just certain frames that they should be aware of while they're becoming more metabolically robust? I think in general, think covering the micros across the board is going to be important. And I have specific targets that I shoot for, for a variety of different micronutrients. But for some of the ones here, when you are having carbohydrate and also fat, so it's kind of a Primal Bod's perspective here. I don't know her actual name, but her perspective here is... That's her handle though, right?

No, I checked her birth certificate before the call. That's her name.

Okay, okay. So then I got it right. It's when you use any source, you require micronutrients across the board, fats, proteins, carbs, et cetera. And if anything, the perspective here for her is weird. It's the diet she promotes can't hit all of the micronutrients. So then she has to shift the argument and say, well, since, you know, my diet doesn't hit all the micronutrients, but you don't even need those micronutrients. That's only for people who eat carbohydrates. And it's just a very like weird, fallacious argument to put into place and say, well, because my diet, the assumption here is because she's doing fine on her lower carb, carnivore-esque, whatever diet she's running, and she can't hit the RDA targets, then the RDA must be BS. And the thing that gets even worse here is that the RDA targets aren't that high. They're not really that high. And they're not even optimal targets. They were just targets to make sure that people didn't have deficiencies.

So it's like,I think it was the average daily intake that was required for like 97 to 98 % of the population. So they had nutrient sufficiency. It wasn't how much thiamine or vitamin D or magnesium or calcium do you need to optimize for bone mass or for your immune function or for your vascular function or et cetera. It was just how do you not get rickets? How do you not get like overt bone breakdown from calcium deficiency or move into like a shifted acid base balance? These are the things that they were looking at.

So to even make this argument is for me, it's ridiculous to try to sit there and say, it's actually the RDA is BS is actually lower. If she was saying, Hey, the RDA is BS and these targets are actually higher. would be been more amenable to the argument. The next thing is, is that this idea that it's just because these people in this timeframe, they were eating plant foods and they had carbohydrates and the insulin is driving the this problem is like again, like this fallacious insulin doesn't drive that. Just having insulin in general doesn't mean that you need to have more micronutrients because of insulin. That's not an argument. There's nothing being said there. When you have more substrate fuel sources, carbs, protein and fat coming into the system, you need to have micronutrients present to turn those things into energy. Whether whether there any of those three. So it doesn't matter which one it is. If anything trying to run a high protein diet and rely on gluconeogenesis, which is something that she promotes, is worse for micronutrient status because it is more wasteful because you have to first take the protein, the amino acids, and convert it into glucose and then detoxify the amino group through the area cycle. So you're like, and this is why the energy production from protein oxidation, the amount of energy that's yielded is less than carbohydrate and it's net negative at the liver for ATP. So it's like to... It's like the least efficient way to go about it. So it's even counter to her argument. It's her perspective is contradictory to sit here and say, you need more insulin and the insulin drives. It's like any substrate uses it. And the way she's the way she's promoting to get your carbohydrate through gluconeogenesis is arguably worse for energy production and micronutrient status across the board. So it's it's a very weird perspective, not to mention that the people in this timeframe, what that were where the RDA was set up during this time there was significantly less obesity, diabetes, and metabolic health concerns related to insulin resistance. So to try to say like, these people are just all had hyper insulin levels, I think is incorrect. I'd say on average people in that period of time had better metabolic status across the board and lower rates of these diseases than we see today. And maybe it's maybe argue that the micronutrients are even higher because in, in, in states of insulin resistance, it's the micronutrients are helpful. There are studies showing a variety of different micronutrients improving features of insulin resistance and metabolic dysfunction. I mean, it's one of the strategies I use to help people improve their health. So to try to make this argument that we should be having less just because your diet can't hit it, I think is a disservice to people in general. And the argument be like, you need to have more micronutrients to correct metabolic dysfunction on top of making appropriate dietary changes to not only improve the response to insulin, because the problem is not insulin, the problem is the response to insulin. And that's through issues in the cell with the metabolic flux of substrate. So you need to correct that and micronutrients are part of the problem. So shifting the argument to RDAs or BS and we should be having or implying that we should be having less, I think it's just like the whole perspective is just the net negative. It's just to support this idea that well, we should just be on these low carb diets and we can't...

Since we're on these low carb diets and it's kind of hard to hit these targets, well, you know, then the RDA is BS and we should be lower in the micros. It's like, it's a very weird perspective to take across the board. Yeah, I don't know where she got this stuff. Cause I couldn't, tried to find papers to be like, does insulin increase micronutrients or it's like, there's nothing supporting it. It just instates insulin resistance. Higher amounts of vitamin D were helpful. Higher amounts of magnesium were helpful. Not that the insulin is just increasing requirements.

The derangement may, but I only get just through insulin.

Yeah, I'm not sure where she got these ideas either. think they're out of they're out of the thin air. brings them in. insulin. yeah, let's just make a video and I'll wear our jacket. It looks furry. Believe me.

She's primal in her jacket.

That's right, a primal jack.

It's not the way it at Burning Man.

That's right.

Jay, when you found this clip, what was your immediate reaction? I mean, with the ideas coming out of thin air, which one stood out at you the most as being maybe the most ridiculous or the most even problematic when these are being shared? And I mean, these are really popular videos on Instagram. I mean, this one, I can't remember exactly how many views or likes it had, but in the thousands.

Yeah. And I mean, we've, we've talked about this and so many other clips, but it's, it's so frustrating and like dishonest on their end to be creating these kinds of clips and just be making things up. And it's even, it's so disappointing, so sad to see that people don't, they don't know the difference, right? They aren't, they don't know that there's no evidence, mechanism, any reasoning why this would be true. like they just don't, they don't have that understanding going in. And so they see this and they, they believe it. And that's, mean, it's criminal, honestly, I don't know. But, it's, it's, again, it's one of those. It's one of those things where someone brings up a concern with the diet and there's no actual, like they can't explain it away. And so, or they can't, know, there's no retort against it. So they have to say, well, the, the parameter you're using is wrong. Right.

On a low carb diet, you're going to have lower T3, you're going to see lower testosterone, but that's, you just don't need as much T3 because you're not doing glucose metabolism. Forget about the fact that T3 also affects stomach acid production and immune function and testosterone production and cognitive function and all of the rest. Like that's not important. It's because you're not wasting it while burning glucose. You don't need the T3. And you have that same thing here. It's like, yes, it's really hard to get enough magnesium and vitamin C and potassium on a carnivore diet or basically impossible, but you don't need those because the reason why you think you need them is because people were eating toxic plant matter. And there's just no, there's no basis for it. the same as if it's as if someone who is a vegan on the other side was saying, yeah, my diet is deficient in B12, but you don't actually need B12. Like that's a myth that was based on people who are eating meat. But if you're not eating meat, you don't need B12. It's like, well, that's just, just look at anything related to B12 and human physiology, you'll know that that's not true. You don't just get to make those things up. So yeah, I mean, that's, that's the, I think the bigger framework, but, but the reality is even the opposite. So, you know, like you, Mike, I was trying to see, there anything to suggest that insulin is going to cause the wasting of nutrients, especially the one she said, magnesium, vitamin C, zinc, potassium to process the carbs, anything like that. And it's, I mean, there's, there's nothing pointing to that, if anything having glucose and having insulin helps with the retention of magnesium and potassium and sodium, like, and calcium even as well, all of the electrolytes, which is why you see people getting really major problems with cramps on low carbon carnivore diets. And I didn't realize how severe those issues were until I've talked to some people who have experienced them where they're like waking up in the, in the middle of the night with like these really intense cramps. Some people will describe it as like some of the worst pain they've ever experienced. Like it can be really intense and the lack of insulin and carbohydrates.

Is a direct is directly implicated in the deficiency in those things. There's, it's not a situation where they don't need the magnesium because they're on low carb. They still need the magnesium and they're not getting it and it's, and they're not retaining it. So not only are you getting less in your diet because you don't have good nutrient sources there for these specific nutrients, but then also you're not retaining it. You're excreting it, you're losing it. And so, it's really, I think the opposite of what she's saying here. And she's not even pointing to, I guess you could say the one clear micronutrient that you do need more of when you're utilizing carbs versus fats, which is thiamine, vitamin B1, which you need for pyruvate dehydrogenase. Like that's the one you could point to. could say, you don't need as much thiamine on a low carb diet, but obviously it doesn't fit with the narrative she's trying to put forth here because she's trying to talk about these other, these other nutrients. But yeah, there's, there's really no basis for what she's saying. And there's this other straw man that she brings up, which is that these people were eating plant matter or they're eating carbs.

And so they were hyperinsulinemic. had excess insulin levels. And this is something that I see repeated everywhere. It's a ridiculous straw man. And you wouldn't know that, you know, when you're in this space, like when you're in the low carb space, the carnivore space, you're, you're inundated with that content and everyone's telling you those other people, they don't know that eating carbs raises your blood sugar and raises your insulin and that that's bad for you. They just don't know. Like they've, they've never thought about that. They haven't recognized that this is causing hyperglycemia and hyperinsulinemia.

And it's just so far from the truth. It's such a, again, such a dishonest straw man. The people who were, as you said, Mike, the people who were, were testing during the, when they were looking for RDAs were certainly not hyperinsulinemic. They were certainly not insulin resistant. And the images and videos that they showed in this, like in her presentation here in her clip were not of people who's who appear that way. And this conflation of eating carbs and insulin resistance, hyperinsulinemia and hyperglucose, glycemia.

It's just ridiculous. None of us are saying you should eat carbs and become hyperinsulinemic or hyperglycemic. But what we are saying is you can eat carbs and have healthy levels of insulin and glucose and be insulin sensitive and eating carbs is actually an important part of that. And so, yeah, it was just, it was just this other kind of throwaway comment she had and is in it just all over, as you said, Kate, like it's all over content is like that. And I, yeah, hopefully someone who is, who is coming from her following, we'll see this and and begin to question some of those quips that she has a little bit more.

She does seem to get about 50 % haters and 50 % aggriers on her when you do read her content. She definitely gets a lot of people with like, are you talking about? But you know, sometimes things go viral just because they're crazy.

Yeah, controversy is exciting. People are getting their dopamine hits on Instagram and they can't stop do want to just add one point here and this is something that I think this goes with the myopic views that we see from these different camps is that this hyper focus on just insulin being the problem upfiscates people from looking at all the other potential concerns like even if insulin would be lower on this diet people then and then you have to make these arguments about micronutrients but you don't have the micronutrients

And seen multiple carnivore clients come with micronutrient imbalances. PTH is rocked all the way up, which means their calcium status has been low for a while with a high phosphorus intake. And then on top of that, their copper status is terrible and their iron status is overloaded. And then because they've been eating tons of meat and then magnesium status is typically not so great. And then, you know, there may be some issues with some of the B vitamins and some of the methylation pathways because you won't get some of the methylated B vitamins. You'll get B12, but depending on how you set up the diet, you may not get adequate amounts of folate, especially because you had this shift with carnivore now where you have low, like no organ meat carnivore because the organ meats are what causes the problems on carnivore. That's why Paul Saladino-Switch or whatever else people are saying. So I see these problems, like people are missing that perspective and then even missing the problems with like what changes in the microbiome with carnivore.

So it's the carnivore, the low carb stuff. it's, think there's benefits to some of these diets. Like people do get some benefit because of some of the changes and then they get wrapped up in the benefits. And then you have somebody like this who just blouse this benefit out of the insulin. Like you're just gonna lose weight, whatever. And then you don't get the fair perspective on what are some of the other downsides that you see with this. Instead, you get a double down rationalization on why some of these other problems that you could have with this diet aren't actually problems because the RDA is BS. It's like, would, think it's better. I would rather see just a fair perspective. like, yeah, I felt better on carnivore. I lost some weight and, you know, I was, my digestion got better, but I'm pretty low in some of these micros. How do I fix these micros that I'm low in? Or maybe why do I need to be carnivore to have these effects? I think those are better questions instead of being like, oh yeah, the RDA is BS. I think some of the rationalizations and the, the narrowing tunnel vision on a particular component, I think, creates some of these long-term problems. And people in the different dietary camps go into the reddits or whatnot, and it's like, I'm not doing well. I'm having all these cramps on carnivore. I'm always dehydrated. I have to add all these potassium supplements or whatever the thing is, right? That's where LM &T came from. That's where with Cole Robinson's Snake Diet, he has snake juice, is because people are running the diets.

And when they do the heavy fasting and they do this stuff, they're like, okay, well, you need more of these electrolytes because you're going to have cramps. You're going to be dehydrated, whatever the problem is. And it's like, well, why is that happening? Let's take a look at that so you can figure out like, okay, maybe that will indicate that there are some issues here. So I think that, you know, this stuff is highly problematic because of the myopic views and because of the discounting of all these other things instead of taking a honest look and be like, okay.

It's kind of hard if I just eat rib eyes to hit some of these micros. Like what else can I do? think that would be the better question instead of just coming out and arguing for lower micronutrient status below the RDAs, which is just an absurd argument across the board. So yeah, that's, and I say this just because I've had quite a few clients that ran into these issues. I had to correct. Like I've had quite a few guys with iron overload and low copper status, and I've had quite a few people where methylation status out of whack or their PTH.

And their calcium status was terrible on carnivore and they're electoral. lot of people with electrolyte issues that you then have, like those are things that's like, all right, we're to have to pick up the pieces. You can still have your steak. We're going to have to add some other things in here and fix some of these specific issues. So that's a, I wanted to point that piece out. And I guess one last, just my last point here is for any, for just for everybody listening, when you think about when, or at least when I think about the diet, I think about a ladder. So you want to know your energy intake, how much energy do you roughly need?

What your macros are gonna be, you know, there's gonna be some personalization between protein, carbs and fats. What's your fiber source? How much fiber are you gonna have? And in what foods are you gonna hit all those tiers? And then what's your micros after that? So I go through this process and there's individual components with each person. If Jay runs carnivore and he's heterozygous for hemochromatosis and he's iron overloaded, well, he probably doesn't need to eat red meat four times a day. That may be a problem in this circumstance. So there's gonna be some individualization there.

But I tend to look at the diet from like this full spectrum and go through all of those components. Instead of just like, insulin, this or that. Like you wanna get all, make sure you're covering all the bases. Again, like a multi-strategy approach I think is the best long-term. then tweaking it in to your context.

I think you're a little confused here. My fair 10 is 700 but that's ideal because the RDA was based on these these wimps these dweebs who weren't eating any weren't eating any red meat so yeah, high ferritin is good because if you ever bleed out, you'll survive.

Or you start menstruating, you will also survive.

Great.

Yes, exactly.

We should probably just add too that the other state where you actually require less nutrient intake is just a low metabolic state or a hyperthyroid state. You actually don't need as much because you're not making as much energy. So if that is what you're going for, then that's what you'll get.

And all the side effects that come with that.

Yes. You mean feeling amazing as you can't stand up off your couch and you can't

As long as all you have to do is sleep all day, you're fine.

I'm glad, I'm really glad you brought up fiber because I know she's framing in plants as these like really terrible, dangerous foods. And yeah, we know about the concerns of maybe some of the anti-nutrients in certain vegetables or plant foods if they're over consumed. Kate, I'm wondering, do you have a specific frame or approach when it comes to fiber, especially in context of hormonal health? metabolic health, mitochondrial function? Is it different for everyone? How do you frame that?

So my take on fiber, there's always context in it. Like I honestly don't have an issue with fiber. And I think when somebody is healthy, they can, in my opinion, you can pretty much eat anything on some level and be fine, right? There's always this dose dependency on how something's going to affect you. And I think if we start to think that way, what I've experienced is there's far less food fear.

And then the stress of eating in general, which I feel like a lot of people are experiencing these days, goes down. But in a system that's really compromised, shoving a ton of fiber in there to try to improve bowel health isn't normally the remedy that I would go. Because I always see your bowel as this kind of complex muscle that requires energy to function properly. And when the body is severely stressed, the gut seems to be one of the first things that starts to lose function. And primarily because you don't need gut function to be alive, right? We can survive with really bad gut function, unfortunately. So that seems to be compromised. It seems to slow down, it gets constipated. And as I refer to it, it becomes de-energized. And you see it all the time, certainly in hypothyroid people, low metabolic rate or people that don't eat enough carbohydrates that...

Again, if we think about what needs, how our cells and all of them need to run, they need the proper energy source to energize. And your bowel is a one big muscle all the way through that goes through periostalsis and needs to be energized. So I would always look at how can we get your bowel to become better energized? What does that look like, right? Me shoving a bunch of debris in there in a system that isn't functioning properly might not be the best decision at that point. And that can people, let's just say, someone that has a horrible ultra processed diet that might actually be a decent amount of calories and be having digestive problems go from that to like a highly fibrous diet and see improvements 100%. You know, when we compare those two status, you're gonna see improvement. But in a severely stressed individual, that doesn't seem to work as well. Their bowel isn't operating properly. Maybe they're just not eating enough or they're eating the wrong foods or not eating enough carbohydrates in general.

So then we might want to look at what can we give them that is the easiest chance for them to utilize as energy. And for a lot of those people, it's having carbs that don't have a lot of fiber in it, that your body doesn't have to work that hard to extract the fuel that it needs. Now, that doesn't mean you need to be eating 10 gallons of orange juice a day, but it might mean that eating cooked fruits or fruits that are more available versus the higher starchier.

grainy or foods, those might be better options for you initially to help support your gut function. That is certainly my experience. And then as someone's gut starts to function better, then yes, you can add these other foods in there and they seem to not all, but a lot of people can then tolerate them. And because again, we want to move you towards a space where you can tolerate to some degree anything.

That's how I want to get to people. And never so they can categorize, I can never have that, that's poison. I'm like, well, you you can, and if you're healthy, you'll be fine, right? We're trying to build up your resilience to it. But we just always have to understand what our current state is then. And so typically, like I said to a lot of people, look, if you've had a really stressful day and you are more prone to constipation and maybe didn't sleep well, so you're backed up that day, then going home and eating is super high, starchy meal might not be the best thing for you. And that might create some irritation for you later on either at night or during the next day. So maybe eating something lighter with easier to digest carbohydrates to help facilitate some more bowel movement with a light walk will help facilitate you to have a better movement. so at that time, you know, again, fiber wouldn't be used as much in certain contexts, but then when someone is healthy, you can certainly use it and would be totally fine and they can process it.

But also the other caveat is, you know, there are certain fibers that we tend to use in this diet, specifically like the raw carrot, red carrot salad or bamboo shoots or well-cooked mushrooms or even well-prepared oats that can help as well and don't seem to be as detrimental to the GI and kind of help move it along without creating any additional problems.

Thanks for flushing that out. know it's a, that's another trend I've noticed recently. First it was the really high protein and now people are like, we're wrong. It's not the protein. We need tons and tons and tons of fiber. as, thank you Kate for just unpacking that a little bit more. As we know, it's not always the solution, especially if someone, if their gut is not moving freely and regularly, we don't wanna cram more stuff in there that's just going to irritate it and maybe cause even more issues with slowing things down. All right, Jay, for the listeners that really loved this conversation and maybe they're kind of new to the bio-energetic view, they're starting to dial in the foods that work for them, they're finding what works for them. Do you have any advice or anything you'd like to share for them continuing this conversation that we started today?

Yeah, well, and especially if somebody's maybe new and they're coming interested in alternative perspectives regarding carbohydrates and this idea that, we're actually aware of concerns with hyperinsulinemia. And if you're conflating that with eating carbs, you're missing the picture. know, maybe they're starting to, you know, someone who's, who's recognizing maybe what they're hearing from the primal bot isn't the full picture. You know, we can, and then tying that in with this discussion about fiber and anti-nutrients and concerns with too much and concerns with certain types of plant foods. mean, we can be aware of the concerns with carbohydrates regarding not only excess fiber, anti-nutrients foods that tend to be much harder to digest, feeding not even just fibers, but fermentable carbohydrates that feed bacterial overgrowths, which are really common and are part of the reason why when a lot of people take out carbs, can be having such incredible benefits, brain function, skin, autoimmune issues, there's a couple of reasons, but one of the main ones is getting relief from a lot of hard to digest foods, feeding bacteria, creating a lot of lipopolysaccharide or endotoxin production, and then that causing a lot of downstream negative effects. I think there's value in recognizing where the benefits might come from in something like a low carb diet, but also recognizing that we can include carbohydrates and keep a high metabolic rate and get the nutrients that of course are going to be missing on a, on a carnivore diet without the stress that's involved without those negative effects and the things that we see people experience over time, right? The, the anxiety, the poor sleep, the libido, the energy all, all crashing over time. So yeah, I mean, I think that's more so the space that, that we all operate here is, and all of us, of course, coming from a place where were low carb, we recognized that, I think part of it too is recognizing that the general narrative, the mainstream perspective that we're all told, like there are some things missing there. That is definitely not the whole picture. And we're not saying, Hey, let's go back to that. It's just the food pyramid. That's the solution here. Rather, we're recognizing there's definitely some real problems there, but that doesn't mean low carb is the solution. So I think that's how we've all landed to where we are.

Yeah, absolutely. And I won't put anyone else on the spot unless they really are dying to add anything before we close out the conversation today.


Just speak to specifically the perimenopausal menopausal women because certainly they get to that stage and they start and they do they they aren't as glucose sensitive they become a little glucose intolerant at that point and it's not because your your biology has changed forever it is something that actually can be repaired and fixed if you start to understand how your body is functioning if we understand start to understand the current state of our physiology better then we can understand how to get out of that space. There is a path to get out of it, which most people don't talk about. Most people in most dietary approaches actually aren't actually talking about what your body's doing in the stress state versus what it should be doing in a healthy state. Most just say, this diet and it will make you feel better. And to some degree, they're all correct because a lot of them do make you feel better, but they're usually not addressing the underline, how should your physiology work appropriately?

And this is what this approach will do. And this is when you do understand that there is a path out and it can be path out at any age. know, the fact that you just went through menopause is not a reason you can't shift. You still can. It's a very plausible approach. so I want people to know that, well, cause a lot of people I think listen to this and like, well, I'm post-menopausal and that doesn't work for me. And I tried carbs and I got high blood sugar. And I'm like,

That is all true and I'm sure that did happen to you. And so now we need to understand your physiology better, where your current state is, so you get a better path to get out of there. Because you just need a different path for you, but you can get out.

That's hopeful to hear for anyone listening. Maybe we have some listeners in there thinking about this in terms of their moms who maybe are struggling right now or just, you know, losing some of the function that they once had. So I'm glad that we can understand that. Yes, there is, there's hope. There's ways something to try no matter how complicated things are, no matter what age someone is, no matter how.

Distorted their metabolism might be, there's always that ladder that Mike mentioned. Well, not the nutrition ladder, but that is a part. So Kate, thank you so much for joining us today. I really enjoyed getting to chat with you live. Where can people find you? Keep up with your work and learn. Just stay connected with you.

Well, they can find me on Instagram or Facebook at Kate Gearing Fitness, or they can go to my website, KateGearing.com. Certainly they can go on Amazon, buy my book, How to Heal Your Metabolism. And I'm about two months out of finishing the second book, which will just kind of be a deeper dive into all of this stuff that feels like in the last...15 years, all the questions I've probably gotten, probably seen is a way of interpreting and giving all those in one place.

Awesome. I didn't know you were coming out with a second book, so I'm excited about that. Thanks for sharing that.

I don't recommend writing them.

Yeah. Well, thank you for that advice. None of us will be writing books. 

Mike, where can people find you in case they're interested in learning more about your work?

Mike Fave
Of course, they can find me here on Bioenergetic view  and Energy Balance. They can also check me out at my own YouTube channel at MikeFave and also my website at MikeFave.com.

Awesome, thanks. What about you Jay?

Yeah. So, feel free to check out any other of the videos we have here on the J Feldman on this channel, bioenergetically podcast, energy balance  podcast. And also my website is Jayfeldmanwellness.com. Tons of free resources there for listeners to check out.

Awesome. And you can find me at Living Roots Wellness on Instagram or my tapping app and community at Tapping with T. And thanks everyone for listening today. I hope you enjoyed this conversation and we will see you next time.