Theresa

Welcome to the bio energetic view. I'm your host, Teresa Piela joined as always by Jay Feldman and Mike Fave. Today we'll be talking about if Dr. Ray Peat had it all wrong, potential reasons why someone might be bloating from carbs and how to add carbs back in following restrictive diets. So let's get started with this really interesting clip. I think we all had pretty strong reactions to it. Just seems as strong as a...

It's a nice way to put it, but Justine Stenger, she's a, she calls herself a cellular health expert. And that's, have you guys noticed that's trending right now, at least on Instagram? I'm not sure about other social media platforms, but I think a lot of people are like, we were wrong. It's all about light, which I think we can agree with in some ways that light is essential and important, but let's

Let's jump off from here. 

Justine Stenger

I thought Ray Peat had things all figured out. You know, when someone sounds so intelligent, precise, so well referenced that you actually stop questioning the lens that they're using, that was me. I was fully bought into the idea that carbs were essential to lower my stress, to protect my thyroid, protect my brain and prevent catabolism. But here's what I didn't see. Okay, there's already a lot right there.

Theresa

Mike, I'd love to hear what you're thinking.

Mike

I do think that carbs are really important to protect us from cannibalism. I think that that is absolutely essential here. Jokes aside.

I think that Dr. Peat was right on all of these things that she's saying. So carbs are essential for keeping, lowering stress and keeping it low. They are essential for optimizing thyroid functions so that you have active, you're converting your T4, which is your thyroid hormone into the active thyroid hormone of T3 while keeping your reverse T3, is kind of a, you can think of the antithesis of T3 low, allowing the liver to do that effectively. And then I do think that to minimize catabolic

processes, carbohydrates are essential. So lowering glucagon, cortisol, adrenaline, as we talked about. So Dr. P was right here. I don't know if she's like opening with this. We'll see what she says after, but I at least, guess TLDR is not going to refute any of these things. So I would just say, yeah, he was right on those things and he continues to be right on those things. So that's my take on this first piece.

Theresa

Okay, Jay, anything to add?

Jay

Yeah, I think that there's something really important that she mentioned. She mentioned, you know, this idea that she never questioned the lens through which Ray was looking through and then described the lens as the idea that carbs are essential for lowering stress and improving thyroid and brain function and preventing cannibalism. And the idea that that was Ray's lens for health tells us that she is not at all familiar with Ray's work. She

If she is familiar with it, she took away a very diluted version of it that missed out on 90 plus percent of it. Because if that was your takeaway, you really weren't reading very much or reading very closely or listening very closely because Ray's perspective goes far beyond that. The bio-energetic perspective goes far beyond that. And the last thing that Ray's ideas really were was a dietary perspective that said, you're supposed to eat this amount of carbs or something like that. It encapsulated so many other things. that includes things that she's going to talk about it not including like light and light exposure, being something that Ray talked a lot about, like structured water and the redox state, which she discusses inaccurately later as we'll get to, but Ray discussed all those things. So this isn't like such an uncommon scenario to see the kind of person who jumps from one bandwagon to the next because they aren't actually understanding what the information is that they're being exposed to. And so they have some diluted takeaway, like I'm supposed to eat a lot of carbs. And then maybe they don't feel as good because that was their takeaway. And then they say that this person was wrong and now they're jumping to the next thing. so I think we're already seeing the lens through which she is seeing Ray's work. And there already says a lot.

And she continues to demonstrate it as we continue on with this clip.

Mike

Yeah. Just to add really quickly, or my first thought when I heard her speaking was, tell me you haven't read Ray Peat's work without saying I haven't read Ray Peat's work. then I... Well, yeah, that's exactly what she just said is not even that she may not have read it. It's either that or she doesn't understand it. But the framing here of like, Dr. Peat says these things in a frame as if that's not true.

She said like he said these things, but these things aren't true. I already don't like opening with that perspective. As you talked about, Jay wasn't Dr. Peat's lens, but at the same time, those other point is the things that he said there are true. Those are portions of his picture and they are correct. And so it's a mischaracterization, which for me, later on is when I really,

Like when I talk about the lens piece because like the level of mischaracterization she gets into is insane. But yeah, she like gets Dr. Peat's lens wrong from the offset, the like total picture. And then the things that she tries to imply are incorrect, are actually correct. And then goes on to not refute those, which is like, it's it's insane. It's insane. Like doesn't even address these components.

Theresa

And nothing against Justine. I think, I mean, it does seem like she is trying to help, but maybe not with the best understanding. But let's, let's watch a little bit more of this. Jay, tell us more about light and...

Well, actually, no, Mike, with your frustration, I think you need to speak now.

Mike

Again, like it's just the same thing as like Ray was just a biochemist. He doesn't understand physics. It's like, have you read a single paper, an article that Dr. Peat has published? Did you not see where he talks about the importance of energy metabolism and electromagnetic radiation being created in the mitochondria structuring water to put the cells in a gel like state and inciting people like May Wan Ho, Gilbert Ling, Gerald Pollock, Harold Hillman and then

questioning the mechanized analogies that have been used to describe biological processes and talking about the cultural state or context in which those arose and then where the next step of things should actually go based on these perspectives and seeing the system as Holistic crystalline structures constructed via gel state of water that's controlled by energy metabolism. It's like and he's literally when he talks about metabolism, he's talking about

the flow of energy, flow of electrons through the mitochondria. He's not even, he doesn't even get into it, into the discrete like just these biochemical packets of water type of thing. He's the one person who I've seen directly bring that stuff into question and say, hey, this like mechanistic perspective of, or this biochemist perspective is not necessarily reality. And he's, he cites multiple people and talks about this type of stuff. So to frame it as that,

is like, I don't know who she's talking about. She's saying Dr. Peat, but this is nothing to do with Dr. Peat. And then I guess it's like trying to create a contrast. I mean, like all this other perspective that he never discussed is like, he was the forerunner of discussing these things. And I guess this electromagnetism stuff, maybe it comes from Jack Cruz, but Jack Cruz didn't even to any extent get close to creating the same picture and perspective and bringing things together that Dr. Peat has.

So it's just like, don't, you know, she doesn't mention Dr. Cruz by name here, but this perspective I think is, comes from his stuff, which is just not even on par, not even close to the work of doc, of what Dr. Peat described and the multiple, historical, scientific and cultural references he puts together to explain everything from where did this idea come from? What was the culture at that time? How did that shape the science at that time? What does that mean now? What are these other thinkers saying? And like,

integrating things in this massive lens. the other thing too with this is that what Ray gave us wasn't just have milk and orange juice. I know that some people take it that way, but what Ray gave us was a massive picture across multiple disciplines of physiology, of culture, like so many different areas integrated to try to understand what's going on in the body, what's going on across society.

and to give a perspective for people in general. So to just say, it's just about carbs is like, or it's just about, you know, he's just a biochemist. It's like, yeah, you either didn't read Ray's work or you read Ray's work and you didn't understand it at all. Or you just listened to some other people talk about Ray's work and then thought you understood Ray's work. But this is not talking about Ray's work in any capacity. for me, it's like,

It's a non-starter from the jump because it's like none of these statements are even close to true. And you can go read a couple, like two articles from Dr. Peat on his website and you would see that immediately.

Theresa

Jay, what was your reaction when you found this clip?

Jay

Yeah, I mean, very much the same, right? Kind of this, yeah, I mean, this, kind of accusatory suggestion that Ray didn't understand the relationship or relevance of physics to health and physiology when that wasn't the case. And as you said, Mike, sounds like she's, you know, a Jack Cruz follower. and, know, Jack cites the people who Ray cited for, you know, in regard to the relationship between physics and physiology, like Gilbert Lang.

And as you mentioned, Mike, there's a number of other people who Ray cited and whose work that he discussed, and that was integral to his picture of health. so if she obviously wasn't aware of that, then it doesn't sound like she was very much aware of Ray's work. yeah, I mean, that's really the kind of broad picture here. The other thing I do want to say, she talked about light and water, and these are all things that Ray discussed quite a bit. again, I...

just an entire kind of straw man here. The ironic part, which we'll start to get to is that she talks about how, you know, raise a biochemist, not a physicist. And then everything else she starts to describe is all biochemistry for the most part, 90 % of it. And it's described incorrectly. So, that's, yeah, that's what we're in for next.

Justine Stenger

Glucose metabolism pushes electrons through complex one, which is the leakiest, most reactive oxygen specie prone entry point within the electron transport chain. 

Theresa

Okay, so we should be avoiding carbs if we want to stop our leaking, correct Mike?

Mike

I mean, again, this is the same thing. Tell me you don't fully understand mitochondrial function without saying I don't fully understand mitochondrial function. To say that, because she goes on here and she starts talking about fats. And she wants to say complex one is leaky. And this actually goes to another episode that we covered where we were basically talking about Chat GPT's take on complex one, complex two and where ROS is produced. But complex one becomes leaky when fat oxidation is pushed so that coenzyme Q gets over reduced and then complex one can't drop off electrons at coenzyme Q. So to say that carbs are not good because they're oxidized or because their NADH they produce moves through complex one or like because you have a shift in NADH to FADH ratio so you get more electrons moving through complex one from NADH and therefore we should, what she goes on to say,

fix our redox so we can oxidize fat means that she doesn't understand what's going on at the electron transport chain or the differences between carboxidation and fat oxidation, reverse electron transport, over reduction of coenzyme Q, et cetera, or that the changes in the metabolism where you oxidize more fats actually produces more ROS than carbohydrates do on a regular basis, on you know, on per unit basis. So it's really like, again, like,

It's this whole argument that she's presenting. Dr. Peat doesn't understand it. He was just a biochemist. He doesn't know light, magnetism or physics. Let me cite biochemistry incorrectly to try to refute Dr. Peat's work after I completely mischaracterized his entire perspective. Beforehand, it's like, I don't know, it just, it's insane to me. Like the whole take is, like there's not, every piece of the take is either a mischaracterization or incorrect.

So again, this is not a shot at her personally. I don't know anything about her personally, but about the information and statement she's making here. Yeah, like there's serious glaring issues here on multiple fronts for anybody who's familiar with cellular biochemistry and also Dr. Ray Pease work.

Theresa

Hmm? Jay, what do you want to add to that?

Jay

Yeah, mean, Mike really summed it up. think the most important thing here is that there's this kernel of truth that she mentioned, which is that complex one is the main site of reactive oxygen species production in general, but that's in the context of fatty acid oxidation. So what she's kind of trying to get at is that there are different amounts of reducing equivalents produced under glucose metabolism versus fat metabolism. Again, this is all biochemistry, as Mike said, not physics, but anyway. So when we're metabolizing glucose,

produce more NADH, far more relative to FADH2 compared to fat oxidation where we produce far more FADH2 relative to NADH. So as a result, there's a favoring of electron drop off at complex one with glucose. It's not a hundred and zero in terms of percentage. It's just a favoring of that versus with fat metabolism. There's a favoring of electron drop off at complex two and at ETF instead of complex one. And in the state of

the glucose metabolism, have more electrons being dropped off at complex one, but you have less rate of oxygen species being produced there. Whereas with that metabolism, you actually have more ROS being produced. This is shown very, very clearly. Obviously this isn't some controversial piece. It's very clear biochemistry, but in that context, that's where you see more ROS being produced at complex one and at other complexes too, like complex three and at the electron transfer flavor protein as well.

Yeah, there's like this kernel truth that's then totally misapplied. And we see that continuing on here in the, in the next piece when she tries to tie this back to the general redox state. If you're dealing with low energy symptoms like chronic cravings and hunger, low energy and fatigue, joint pain, weight gain, digestive symptoms like bloating or issues with motility, brain fog, poor sleep or insomnia, hormonal imbalances,

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Jay

So again, to sign up for that free energy balance mini course, head over to jfeldmanwellness.com slash energy.

Theresa 

She's trying. I'm going to give her that.

Jay

Very generous.

Justine Stenger

Peat called sugar anti-stress, but in reality, it just props up a broken redox state, one that can't handle fat because the mitochondria are too compromised. But when you restore redox, the system runs much cleaner on fats. Complex two entry is tighter, it's more coherent, and it generates way more ATP with much less damage. 

Theresa

Okay, let's break this down a little bit. Mike, can you dispel some of this chaos for us and just...

Start from the beginning there.

Mike

The thing is like part of this is just word salad where she's not actually saying anything like complex two is tighter and more coherent. Like that doesn't mean anything. There's nothing actually being stated there to make like that means anything physiologically. Right. So there's a couple of word salad moments in there, but the, some of the big things to keep in mind here are that you're, if you, your default state when you're under stress and you're not eating carbohydrates, when you're

starving, whatever the circumstances is, is to burn fatty acids. So you're not going to be stuck in a state where you are oxidizing glucose as your main substrate and you can't escape that. That's not what happens. And people who have metabolic dysfunction, type 2 diabetes, impaired glucose tolerance, obesity, etc. What you wind up seeing is they take their glucose and convert it towards lactate. So they're not even bringing it into the mitochondria. And then there maybe they're not oxidizing fatty acids super well.

but their primary mitochondrial energy source is going to be fatty acids. So it's like this, it's this flipped perspective where we're going to be like, you can't use fats well because carbs are in the way. So we don't really want to use carbs when it's like, it's complete opposite. this, that's not, that's not the fundamental problem here. And then on top of that, because the fat produces more ROS and changes the, the, the membrane potential.

significantly what winds up happening is you actually get you need more oxygen and you have less ATP production per unit of per unit of oxygen consumed because you have more uncoupling because of these effects. So you have less efficient ATP production from fatty acid oxidation than you do from carbohydrate oxidation and most people have metabolic dysfunction are stuck in fatty acid oxidation with either it could be incomplete fatty acid oxidation. It may not be working appropriately. You could have mediators of fat

fat breakdown products in the mitochondria mucking things up. That's fine. Not arguing against that being part of the case, but it's not because you're stuck oxidizing glucose effectively. So this perspective like is like just fundamentally incorrect on multiple different levels. So before she gets to physics and magnetism, my recommendation would be to go back to the biochemistry and then go and read Ray Peat's work. And then you can have a constructive critique of the perspective, but this is not it.

This is not, the biochemistry here is not correct, again, in these statements, and neither was her characterization of Ray's work. So again, I don't know her as a person, but like purely informationally, this stuff in this clip is incorrect.

Theresa

Hmm? Jay, what else is standing out to you here?

Jay

Yeah, well, just to zoom out a little bit, because you mentioned redox and a lot of people in that kind of sphere talk a lot about redox and I don't think it's well understood, at least based on what she stated here, she doesn't understand it. So what redox is, the redox state is the balance between reduction and oxidation. normally we use different markers to identify the redox state. So one of the ones that we talk about lot is the NAD plus to NADH ratio.

And so when the NAD plus to NADH ratio is higher in a more oxidized state, the NAD plus to NADH ratio is low, you'd be in a more reduced state because NADH is the reduced form. And you can look at that with different, there's other kind of redox pairs that you can look at in the mitochondria and the cytosol to identify what the redox state is. But what she stated was that if you restore redox, it allows for proper fat burning. Whereas if you use sugar, it props up a broken redox state. And so she's describing redox

this redox state as if it's something independent of mitochondrial oxidation of fuel, but it's directly related to that. there is no, the state, the redox state is a product of what's going on metabolically in the mitochondria and elsewhere, as opposed to being the driver. Like you can't fix the state and then have good metabolism. Like the redox state is a direct product of what's going on metabolically. So I think there's just like this. And again, it's used as like a buzzword where all you need to do is you fix your redox by getting more light exposure and fixing your circadian rhythm. And then you can metabolize fat properly again or something like that. that demonstrates a lack of understanding of what influences the redox state. So that's the first thing. Now, as Mike said, the other huge problem here is that the utilization of fat as a fuel inherently leads to a worse redox state than utilizing carbs as a fuel. It inherently leads to a lower NAD plus to NADH ratio and greater ROS production due to the nature, due to the biochemistry that she was incorrect about here, that is in the nature of fat versus carb metabolism. And as a result, you see increased fat utilization as a fuel in insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome and other degenerated chronic

dysfunctional states as one of the drivers of the poor redox balance in those conditions. And we see a low NAD plus to NADH ratio in all of these degenerative states. And what you then see is if you block fat metabolism, it actually improves the redox state and improves mitochondrial function and then resolves, you know, reduces the insulin resistance, improves insulin sensitivity, reduces the metabolic syndrome. So it's not that glucose props up a broken redox state

and fixing the redox state that allows you to utilize fat as a fuel. It's that if you're stuck utilizing fat and improperly utilizing glucose, you can't effectively oxidize it for energy. You are as a product of that going to have a poor redox state, if you want to call it that, a more reduced state, a low NAD plus to NADH ratio. And that is then going to cause a number of downstream health effects. But fixing glucose metabolism is the essential piece to fix that, to reverse that state. And so

as Mike said as well, that's also the sensitive piece, right? When we're in these degenerated states, it's the glucose metabolism that's the problem. The fat metabolism increases, the lipid oxidation increases. So we've got a lot of things totally backward here. And then she closes it out. I mean, not the end of the clip, at least the section by saying that complex two entry is tighter and more coherent and generates more ATP with less reactive oxygen species production. And again, it was kind of like Mike said earlier, where it's like, me you don't understand biochemistry or the electron transport chain without telling me. Like this is a really clear example of it because there's a number of problems with the extrapolations here, but just on its surface, one of the key differences between complex one and complex two is that complex one, when you drop off the electrons and it then get passed on to ubiquinone, it pumps protons across the gradient to increase the gradient there, which we then use to produce ATP. That doesn't happen when you drop.

electrons off at complex two, there's no proton pumping. So by definition, dropping electrons off at complex two is less efficient in terms of ATP production and you don't create the same proton motive force that you need to produce ATP. So it's just insane for her to be saying that. I think it all just comes back to this idea that she came back to earlier, which is she read about how complex one can be a site of Ross production. then she

said, relative to that, complex II isn't, but she obviously has no understanding of how complex II actually functions in relation to ATP production. And then the next part is that when you're metabolizing fats, actually a lot of the electrons are dropped off at the electron transfer flavor protein, which works just like complex II. There's also no proton pumping and it also comPeats for ubiquinone. So not only can you still have the same reverse electron transport that causes ROS production at complex I, but you also get ROS production at the electron transfer flavor protein. So at the place where those

Electrons are being dropped off, which is basically parallel to complex two. So it's, it's just totally on its head. It's just totally backward. And obviously said with such conviction and, I don't remember how she closes this out. But then when you see the comments and people are like, my God, I never knew, you know, that this was the case, but thanks so much for sharing this. it's, know, it's like hard face palm, you know, it's, it's really frustrating to see something like that. that's just so, just so fundamentally incorrect.

Theresa

I mean, that's honestly the state of health and wellness on social media. And I do see the innocence there. People are so unwell and so desperate. And if something feels like it is this cohesive worldview where all of a sudden health is accessible on the other side, right? There's something enticing about that, especially if maybe...

they tried to do the quote, repeat diet and felt terrible because it was oversimplified. So they find someone like this and think, well, she must, she must've figured it out. You know, she, she, she's got the answers when clearly, you know, you can say a lot of things and not say much at all. Mike, do you have anything to add before we finish her clip?

Mike

No, I think that her understanding of the mechanisms about as clear as the vitamin A toxicity people, which is another camp that people run to from bioenergetics where it's like, this, this diet that I think this is a good thing to actually discuss. Ray Peat's diet in quotations. Don't know what in the comments, this rate me Ray feeds diet in quotations didn't work for me. Therefore everything that.

he discussed and talked about is completely wrong. And it's blight and magnetism from what this lady says, or it's vitamin A toxicity or whatever else from what Grant Genereau says, or maybe it's root cause protocol, or maybe I need to do the sugar diet. I think all of that is, and this is not blaming people, because Ray's work is extremely in depth, but that was not Ray's work.

Two quarts of milk and a quart of orange juice. That's not the summary of Ray's work. And I think people will try that. It doesn't work for them for multiple reasons. We've talked about those many times. We can talk about them as much as we want. And then it's like, well, Ray was wrong. Ray Peat wasn't right. And I think that was just Ray on some interviews where people were like, what can I do? And him not knowing a single thing really about their context, I mean like, well, here's a really easily digestible, relatively easy to find cheap diet that'll give you a bunch of micronutrients and protein and carbohydrates and low polyunsaturated fats. It's like super easy recommended. And you can just add this into what you're already doing. It wasn't here is the Ray Peat diet. People made the Ray Peat diet after that by just pulling Ray's interviews. So just because like,

that doesn't work for you doesn't mean that Ray's whole message and perspective in lens is incorrect. think the lens, when you really look at Ray's body of work, it's amazing. Are there things that maybe aren't fully flushed out or maybe there's some minor disagreements with different areas here and there? Sure. But the full picture of Ray's work is huge. It's massive. And the dietary iterations that come out of that afterwards are just, they were just like recommendations off random podcasts. Cause Ray was doing random.

podcast for decades. know, he was on radio shows. He was doing podcasts. He was, he was on YouTube channels and like his message was just people just come on to ask him like Ray, I have this problem. do I eat? And it's like two quarts of milk and a quart of orange juice. That was basically what he would say. But when you really read his work and go through stuff is very different. So I wouldn't say Ray Peat's diet didn't work. Therefore he's wrong. And I need to go in this direction and like listen to people who are

Speaking to the fact that Ray, the diet didn't work for you, but not really understanding the full message, which is for us, like the goal is to take Ray's principles, use them, apply them appropriately to that individual person's context, which you can't do on a podcast. Somebody calling in and being like, Hey Ray, I have this rash. What do think I should do? It's like, I don't know. When did it start? What did it, you know, what are you eating? What's your lifestyle? What are all these things? There's so many integrated components.

He's like, you know, did you fix your diet? You could try a little progesterone. Like he's just like whipping some stuff off the cuff on a podcast about somebody he doesn't know anything about. So I think it's important to put that in context because I see people getting a bastardized view of Ray's work from people who are like trying to like translate some of this stuff to people and then it doesn't work out. And then they completely abandon that perspective. And I think it's actually a disservice that that happens. I would. For me, actually don't, I have a problem with that because I think Ray's fundamental picture was so helpful and extremely broad and extremely useful and very in depth. So yeah, that's for me, that's this stuff I think is a product of that, but not actually from Ray's work itself.

Theresa

Yeah, I personally get a pretty intense reaction because without Ray's work, I don't think I would even be alive. And I think it was taking the time to see how wide and how complex of a view he had and how it wasn't just a diet he was promoting. was a, I he wasn't promoting anything. I mean, that's kind of the beauty of it. He was...

here to teach us all how to think and slow down enough to be our own, to think critically and pay attention to our life and not have some dogmatic set of rules govern how we approach health or weight loss or the rash that we have. yeah, think there's, I mean, we all have a special place in our heart for Ray, but it can be, yeah, it's a little tricky when.

when someone isn't really fully understanding what they have offered us and how much they have given us in a world of wellness that is just letting so many people down.

And I mean, his, the, the recommendations that Ray would give, like, as you were saying, Mike, the recommendations he would give the applications were the least important part of like that. Like I think a lot of people took that away because maybe it was the simplest. was, well, I have a similar issue. So I will try what he suggested to this other person, but the framework was so much deeper and far more important. And the applications can vary a lot from one individual to another, depending on that full scope.

And he, as you were saying, Mike, it's he'll, you know, he would get this question and he doesn't have the full scope. He has a sliver of the, of what this person's experience is. And so he's throwing out some ideas. He's spit balling based on what could help, but I don't think anybody could do that effectively on a large scale. Like it's just impossible. I'm sure a lot of people have benefits from his advice there, but the advice in those scenarios was not raise work. That's for sure. And all of us have.

I've with people who have said, I've been doing the repeat thing for a long time. I've been in the bio-energetics space for years, or I've watched your podcast for a long time. And it's like, okay, great. I'm looking forward to seeing where we're at. then they share what they're doing with their diet or their supplement stack or whatever it is. it's like, okay, there's a lot of work to be done here, right? There's a lot of gaps. that's not to be...

insulting or anything like that. Like that's what we're here for. We're here to help people who are trying to implement these things and still struggling. And, and it can be challenging people. Circumstances are really challenging. So, you know, we want to each perceive, think and act and, try to improve our own situation. And sometimes we can use some help for that. But what I'm trying to get at is it's not surprising to have somebody like this who says, you know, I did it. I did the repeat sort of thing. And I'm sure if we were to take a look at what she was doing, it was

not the fundamentals. was, I'm sure, just the surface level takeaways that can lead a lot of people astray because they're not actually considering other principles and how it works for them and experimenting carefully. I guess let's hear how she closes this out and go from there.

Justine Stenger

So what did Ray Peat really do for us? He gave people with a broken metabolism a dietary roadmap. And I don't want that for you. What I want for you is for you to rebuild your electrical terrain so you finally know what it feels like to live inside a metabolism that actually works. gosh. Okay. I'm a little angry now, but I'm going to take a deep breath.

Mike

Theresa, why don't you start us off with your thoughts on this one?

Theresa

Yeah, well, like you guys have been saying, just to completely distill it down to, it's just a dietary approach, doesn't give any respect or it just shows a lack of awareness to what he actually offered. I mean, he, I, I'd never even heard about structured water and

redox potential until I started learning from him and paying attention to what he was saying. And yeah, mean, the podcasts were great in the sense that you could get little glimpses and then maybe follow a trail of interest when you actually took the time to see where his research was going. But yeah, my anger is coming from the fact that, I mean, his dietary tips I thought were

profoundly helpful because he never was saying, hey, this is going to work for everyone. Here are some basic ideas that are a little bit contrary to what we're getting from a naturopathic doctor that's telling us to cut out sugar and dairy and have a limited diet that's deficient in pleasure and forever creating these cycles of more stress.

challenged that in a beautiful way that I think gave a lot of people with pretty severe chronic illness hope that they didn't have to feel like their life was becoming smaller and more regimented and like they had to be extra careful and they had to basically take on the identity of being a sick person because there is nothing else for them. think, I mean, one of my biggest takeaways from Ray's work is that the body wants to heal and when we start paying attention to all of the inputs, not just food, so much more than that and start playing around with them, the body will heal and you can start getting lived experiences of that. it's, I think it's one of the most remarkable things to have that unfold and in a way that your confidence comes back, the will to live starts to feel stronger than ever before. There's a sense of

excitement and inspiration and magic that comes back and it can't just be simplified to this dietary roadmap that fixes a broken metabolism. That's just hogwash. So yes, Mike, that's what I'll say about my anger.

Mike

I just think it's disrespectful to mischaracterize somebody, distill their decades of work down into, he just gave you a dietary roadmap, get all the biochemistry wrong, and then tell the person, I want to give you this electrical terrain or fix your electrical terrain. It's like, look, you can have a disagree with Dr. Peat, fine. That's fine. I think it's completely reasonable to disagree with anybody on any reasonable basis. But if you're going to do that,

You need to actually look at what their argument is, what their perspective is, and then make specific disagreements with, with those things. Obviously this is a short, you can't really disagree with all of Dr. Peat's perspective in a short, but I wouldn't even try to do that because it's just going to open the door for us to come in and be like, look, like, you don't know what you're talking about with this perspective, especially to distill everything down into just, you know, he just gave you a dietary roadmap. He gave you a.

He just gave you this guide on what to eat, like that was it. There really was nothing else there, but I'm gonna give you this electrical terrain. I'm gonna fix your electrical terrain. And it's like, how are you gonna fix your electrical terrain? You don't even understand the biochemistry.

You don't even understand like what's going on from a redox potential. You're throwing words around. so yeah, for me, I would be, you know, if somebody said, Hey, Ray stuff didn't work for me. didn't tolerate X, Y, and Z. And here's why I think this is the case. I'd be completely fine with that. I don't have a problem with that. I think that that's fair. I think a lot of people don't don't do well with some of the implementations that Ray recommended.

But I also don't think Ray was making recommendations for everybody. I don't think Ray was really a clinician. Ray was a big picture guy, a researcher, somebody who was aware of putting pieces together, making the map, connecting the dots. And then he was kind enough and humble enough to disperse that out to people instead of putting it behind, know, like you, the research paywall or whatever the thing is. Like he would just go do the podcast for free. He was like one of the earliest people to be out there.

giving out this health information on podcasts for free, talking to people, but you know, he wasn't in a clinic doing this type of stuff. It was just like, he was reading papers, synthesizing things. So the clinical application stuff is actually the least important stuff that Ray talked about. And so even with that, to distill that down to, it was just a dietary roadmap. Like it's just so disrespectful to the body of work that Ray actually created. And then,

to get everything wrong that you talk about as a refutation to it is like even worse. It's like you can go in and make some arguments around some specific points and be okay, fine. Yeah, like there's some things here. Okay, yeah, maybe this, this, what isn't like the best strategy here. That's not the best strategy there, but like to go in and try to refute and get everything fundamentally wrong and then completely mischaracterize somebody's like decades of work is extremely disrespectful. And that's why for me, that's why I'm coming.

down pretty hard on it. Usually we try to, you know, keep it like really friendly and, and, you know, this is not a personal attack on her. I don't know anything about her, but like this, this clip itself, I think is extremely disrespectful and it's, and it's off base and completely wrong. And also raise like go back, reread Ray's work. Like that's my recommendation would be go back for her and re actually reread Ray's work.

understand the perspective and then come back and tell me that is a dietary roadmap. know, then we could talk about it. Then we could see what the deal is. I think this is the same thing that we're seeing here with calling Ray's work just a dietary roadmap. I think it's very disrespectful and indicates a complete lack of understanding or basically a lack of not ever really even reading the work. It's one of the things, it's either understanding or not reading. That's the only way that this take could be given like this.

Or if Ray's work is just delivered as this diet and she tried, you know, the gallons of milk, a Coke, some liver, some oysters and felt terrible, then yeah, maybe,

That's what I'm saying. She didn't read then she didn't really read raised work She listened to maybe there's like Instagram influencers who are talking about a pro metabolic or rapey diet And she tried it but she didn't actually go and read raised work exactly if that's completely fair a lot of people do that and again raised work is difficult But then don't make a post Talking about raised work make a post talking about the Instagram influencers and the pro metabolic diet and the bio energetic diet and whatever else, but don't then go and say that Ray Peat doesn't know if you haven't read his body of work. That for me, that's where I have the problem. This influencer, this pro metabolic diet, this whatever this thing is fine. But to then cite this other guy who maybe you didn't read it or you didn't understand it, if you don't understand it, that's also fine. You can say, I'm trying to understand Ray's work.

You know, chat GPT is telling me X, Y, and Z about what you guys are saying or what Dr. P is saying. And it doesn't like, it's not lining up. Can you guys help me out? Can you tell me where either you're wrong or chat GPT is wrong? That's all completely reasonable. I'm, I think people should check everything we're saying. People should ask chat GPT. They should ask some other person who they trust their perspective. They should read it themselves, whatever they want to do. That's completely fine. But don't.

This is like, I don't, don't, I either don't understand or I didn't read it and then I make this post talking about how this other person is completely wrong and that is, I think, a huge problem. And it's mischaracterizing that person's entire perspective. So people are gonna come out and, well, Ray didn't, he was just a biochemist. He actually didn't know anything at all about physics and all he did was give us a diet. That's the takeaway here. you actually have to fix your redox potential and burn fats or whatever the takeaways are from this post.

Theresa

Jay, did you get as angry as Mike and I did?

Jay

of course. Yeah. yeah. I mean, I, I think Mike sums it up all there. do want to mention, cause you said, you know, ask chat, JBT, we, were referencing or alluding to a previous episode we did where somebody was asking chat, JBT and trying to verify some of the things we discussed, make sure to listen to that. Cause there were also a lot of cautionary, we had a number of cautionary suggestions when it came to utilizing chat, JBT. So definitely make sure not to use it without care and caution. but yeah, I mean I think you stated it well. mean, if you feel like what you're doing isn't working, continue to explore, continue to try new things. know, Ray definitely never just provided a dietary roadmap. And that was a part of his paradigm was considering everything from your sleep and your circadian rhythm to non-native EMF exposure to, you know, your light environment. So consider all those things. That's important. If that's what she's going to teach you with her electric terrain program, that that's, you know, you can consider those things and

within Ray's framework as he did too. But yeah, mean, just such a huge mischaracterization here. also this idea that the high carb diet is somehow working to keep your metabolism broken or something, you know, and not fixing the underlying state. I mean, I don't want to beat a dead horse. We obviously explained this a number of times, but it's so backwards on its head. You know, when you're

you're in the state of a poor metabolism and a poor redox state and you're not utilizing glucose well, that's why in a low carb diet is often what people go to when that doesn't fix the underlying state. That's working with that broken metabolism. anyway, yeah, I think I don't have too much else to add. do want to say, Mike, you were talking about Ray and his advice and helping people. And he gave advice so freely, like on those radio shows, on different podcasts, emails.

He was, it was incredible. The amount of emails he would respond to for free and just helping people. And, and you're right in that he wasn't a clinician and that he wasn't like working with someone, looking at all their lab work and going from like A to Z in that way, but he would help people for years. You know, they would do back and forth, like email correspondence. And he was absolutely. We're like applying his framework with people in all sorts of different situations and,

spending a lot of time and energy helping people just out of the goodness of his heart, which, yeah, I mean, obviously just an incredible human being. And Mike and I did an episode talking about him. It was maybe episode 92 of the podcast. It was soon after he passed away. So anyway, I highly recommend that listeners check that one out too. Yeah.

Theresa

Well, it's pretty cool to see some positive success stories here. And JX2938 shared a couple weeks back that they were tempted to do the sugar diet, but they decided instead to just increase carbs and keep protein at 20 % and fat 20 % or lower. And they're feeling good so far. They notice feeling better with the lower fat. And I mean, I know a lot of the times we're answering questions when people are in pretty

sticky situations, but it is nice to hear that people are slowing down, paying attention, making some shifts, and then finding some benefits. Jay, do you want to comment a little bit on their experience here?

Jay

Basically, the intention here is we have tons of comments from people asking questions or dealing with all sorts of issues, but also there's a lot of comments from people having really great improvements and sharing that with us. So we just wanted to highlight some of those and we'll do that with our Q &As just to share with people the benefits and improvements they might see with implementing some of the approach. So that was all and then we can hop into the Q &A.

Theresa

Perfect. So, Kami K. Lund mentioned, I'm bloated, but not from fructose. I bloat from every carb except strained OJ, honey, and sugar. And I'll just assume she is asking for some help since she commented on this video. Mike, what? I mean, you guys have talked a lot about this in some of your podcasts and your recent video on why carbs would make someone bloated, but just for people that are tuning in just for this episode.

What's going on here if someone's experiencing that? And I'd say I run into this a lot with newer clients that are, you know, maybe coming off of carnivore or a really restrictive low carb diet and carbs are really not working for them. What do they need to know? And what's maybe a gentle roadmap out of this place?

Mike

I think a lot of people coming from those diets do experience varying difficulties with adding in carbohydrates. I think part of it is where you were before. There's a lot of people who I've worked with who had digestive issues and then went geocarnival or low carb to try to solve those digestive issues and it may help with symptom management in the meantime, but then things can kind of rear their head when they come off those diets after they...

Determine that it wasn't gonna work for them for whatever whatever the different reasons are and so one thing I want to point out for people is when you go into a keto diet carnivore diet, etc It's understood that there's gonna be a period of time of adaptation to that diet such that people like okay The first three weeks may suck a little bit you're gonna get some the keto flu or whatever the thing is and so I'd also Give people a perspective that when you come out of those diets. There's a transition on multiple levels

from being lower carb to adding in a bit more carbs. Because you have to, as we just talked about with Justine, there's a difference in metabolism of carbs at the cellular level. There's a difference in the hormones overlaying that. There's a difference in the digestive track and how it's absorbing and processing the nutrients that are coming in between having a really high fat, high protein or higher protein, low fiber diet versus having a, you don't have to be low fat, but higher carbohydrate.

you know, moderate protein, moderate fat diet with much more fiber. So a lot of things have to shift with these diets. Plus there's a mindset shift and logistical shift that occurs as well. So you're not just adding in carbs a lot of times. You are overhauling the diet and having the body go through multiple transitions. So this is something that I think is important to keep in mind when you're doing, like moving through this process. It's not like, yeah, I just throw carbs back in and everything's going to be like it was, you know, before.

That's it. It's not a problem. For some people, sure. But other people, it can be very difficult, especially depending on their starting place and what happened while they were keto and carnivore and how long they were on those diets. Keto, carnivore, low carb, all that's, I kind of am grouping all of those together here. Now, what I think happens for some people with keto and carnivore, they, what happens is a lot of people, when they move into this diet, if they had problems before some of them get better or they didn't have problems, but they wanted to lose weight or something like this, they eventually will develop some type of digestive issue. A large portion of people do. And I think this is because of the high animal protein intake, the high fat intake with the increased bioflow from the higher fat intake, the lack of fiber intake and the lack of carbohydrate intake altogether, plus the shift in micronutrients. So all of these things change multiple components in the body. So the high animal protein intake,

plus the high bile acid intake and the high heme iron intake from red meats without the fibers, without the carbohydrates. This can basically select for pathogenic bacteria inside the intestine because you're selecting for bacteria that thrive on heme iron, amino acids, fatty acids, and bile acids because that's what's getting left in the gut. A lot of these diets don't really have much fiber. On top of that, the lack of fiber can lead to

decreased production of short-chain fatty acids in the colon, which can deplete the mucus layer, and then this will allow bacteria to get access to the epithelial layer of the intestine. So you have a shift in the microbiome towards pathogenic species, plus you have a change in the mucus layer thickness with access to the intestine by these bacteria, and then also you have the lack of carbohydrates themselves can adjust the hormonal function and also adjust the transporters

for the different carbohydrates in the small intestine so that your carbohydrate, your ability to absorb carbohydrates decrease. then also this can potentially adjust transit time if thyroid function and some of these components start to get shifted. Also the shift in the stress hormones can change what's going on with the immune system between TH1, TH2 balance through the upregulation of cortisol and adrenaline which also has some degree of immunosuppressive effect. I think all of this comes together.

And it winds up creating kind of a perfect storm for some people digestively where they just start to, they basically stop tolerating things. So at first carnivore, keto, lower carb, feel better because you eliminate a lot of things that cause digestive issues. But then over time, depending on how you run the diet, these things start to rack up and then invariably people tend to get sick one or two times digestively throughout the process.

And then afterwards things aren't the same. Their tolerance to foods aren't the same. They have to keep restricting the foods more and more and more so that they get less carbs, less fibers, less components. And that's usually why you see a transition from low carb to keto to carnivore. Is it like you keep anying up down the line. If you do get to that point, what happens is you have a lot of shifts that you have to make. So, and what I typically do with clients that I'm working with is I start to use, and as Cammie mentioned here,

carbohydrate sources that are digested very high up. So, right ideally towards the duodenum. So that you don't have a lot of carbohydrates, fibers and components reaching the ilium and seql area as well as the colon because that's typically where the dysbiosis bacterial overgrowth or bacterial dysbiosis or microbial dysbiosis starts to take up residence. From there you want to try to start to optimize digestion again. You want to titrate your carbohydrates up.

so that you can start to improve the intestinal absorption and the transporters. You wanna start to optimize digestion, make sure stomach acidity, make sure bioflow pancreatic output is going okay. A lot of people can develop bile acid issues during this timeframe with bile acid, bile absorption or lack of output. There could be a lot of these components going on. You wanna make sure in this timeframe that you rebuild micronutrient status. So that would be the next step.

Because a lot of times these diets can lead to issues with micronutrients, calcium status, copper, iron status, potassium intakes, all these components that can shift things in the GI tract. And then after that, if for a lot of people will do fine from there. Things are great. Things get a lot better. They can start expanding their carbohydrate sources, start expanding their fiber intake. But some people still have problems there. And I think some people actually develop biofilms inside.

the intestine with dysbiosis, usually the worst area is around the ileum and the cecum, where that's where you usually have the most biofilm formation. It leads to bio acid malabsorption. It leads to intestinal dysbiosis in the colon. It can drive some of the small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. In that case, what you're gonna need to do is probably beat back on the dysbiosis with antimicrobial herbal compounds. There's multiple ways to go about that with longer term options and then more acute.

options that are a little bit stronger depending on the person's tolerance. So I think all of these effects, the shifts in the diet, well initially helpful because you minimize all these negative digestive components. I think over time beat up on the GI tract quite a bit for some people and put them in a state where they start bringing carbs back in that they have multiple areas where they have to troubleshoot now because things aren't like they were before. And that's usually the process that I'm working through to recover things as well as

I think this is some of the core elements of why people are having these problems is from those dietary changes themselves. And a lot of times this does take time to manifest. For some people, they could be on it for a couple years before it hits. Some people, it's going to be a couple months. Some people aren't going to feel well from the low carb stuff or carnivore from the jump and they'll get off of it within a couple weeks. Because again, there's individual tolerance to some of these components. We have different hormonal systems a bit, different microbiomes, different digestive capacities, etc, etc, etc.

glad you mentioned the antimicrobials too for those biofilms and some of them are biofilm busters that also work to be antimicrobials. So I think that's important too, because some people will be taking really strong antimicrobials. I mean, some of the herbs can cause a significant die off, but they're not even really getting to the core of it if the biofilm is at a certain level of density or it's been proliferating for quite some time. I think, yeah, something to...

Keep in mind if someone is doing these protocols and they're not feeling like it's budging much. And just before we continue on, it's just echoing what Artemis was saying. We're already touching on it, but I just want to give them some air time. They were sharing how, I've heard you mention how some of us coming out of keto may have some issues with fruit. Can you guys expand on that? Thank you, Mike, for getting us started there and how to manage the transition out of keto and the consequences of it.

This person was sharing how they're having serious issues with digestion. Similarly, lots of bloating, painful gas, loose stools, or constipation. Really common, so if you are experiencing that, you're not alone. Fatigue on and off, and this started while they were on keto, and then reintroducing carbs has only helped a little bit. So hopefully we'll be able to keep flushing this out a little bit for some helpful tips on the journey out. Jay, what do you want to add to this scenario?

Jay

Yeah, so interesting scenario here. mean, just firstly, as we've been discussing here, there's a lot of ways that we can have issues when bringing carbs in. And we have discussed this a number of time on prior podcast episodes for energy balance. I would take a look at episodes two through four, episode 19, which was specifically on transitioning from a low carb diet to a bio-energetic approach. Episode 117, which was talking about fructose malabsorption and smother.

considerations for fruit consumption and how it can impact digestion. So take a look at those things so that we are understanding the fundamentals there and we can make sure that we're consuming the types of carbohydrates that are least likely to cause issues. And that's kind of where, know, Kamiya landed, right? She landed on orange juice, strained orange juice specifically, honey and sugar, super easily digestible, really very little in there that tends to cause an issue for people.

Which is great. And for some people, they do have to get that restricted for, you know, in order to be able to consume enough carbs without it negatively impacting their digestion. But ideally, and if we do it carefully, you know, we can expand and, can start to consume other forms of carbohydrates. And if we're having a lot of trouble doing so after we've taken out the worst offenders and we're kind of limited on our choices, then what we would want to do is consider some of those underlying factors. lot of the ones that Mike brought up, like

microbial overgrowth alongside some biofilms. Also just a general metabolic suppression. So low thyroid can be a major driver of these sorts of sensitivities. And in that case, we might just need to focus on kind of the broader metabolic state and just stick to carbohydrates that we digest really well so that we're getting the nutrition we need to get our thyroid state up, our metabolic state up. And then that should allow us to get to a point where we're able to tolerate more.

But again, we might need to address potential microbiome issues, motility issues, which could be independent of the microbiome, bioflow issues, stomach acid, digestive enzymes, those things that Mike had touched on. In this case of Artemis, the most recent one, the fact that he had mentioned that some of these digestive issues started while he was still on keto, the bloating, painful gas, loose stools, constipation, fatigue, that would tell us that it's not just a microbiome.

issue in relation to carb consumption, but also there probably are some issues related to stomach acid, bile flow, maybe overgrowth of bacteria that tend to like bile acids and fat and amino acids. So something like a hydrogen sulfide overgrowth could be a possibility. So that would be the direction we might want to head for this individual. then of course, take a look at those other podcast episodes where we talk through this all more detail. And yeah, I'm sure we'll be able to...

Right the ship.

Theresa

Yes, back to the boat metaphors. All right, let's wrap up here for today. Mike, where can people find you if they want to harass you, work with you, find out more about your work?

You

No harassing, but they can find me here on the Bionergetic View and Energy Balance as well as on my YouTube channel MikeFave and my website MikeFave.com.

Theresa

Jay, what about you? And no one's allowed to harass Jay because he's been... Okay, okay, you heard it here.

no, I'm up for it.

Jay

JayFeldmanWellness.com, that's the place to have tons of free resources there, information about programs and all the rest. And of course, on my YouTube channel here as well, where you can find the Bioenergetics View, Energy Balance Podcast, and some other videos as well.

And you can find me at livingrootswellness.com or on Instagram at livingrootswellness or for my tapping app Tapping with T. All right, everyone. Thank you so much for tuning in today. I hope you had a great time as we did and we'll see you for the next episode.