Welcome to episode one of the Energy Balance Podcast. I'm Jay Feldman of jfeldmanwellness.com and joining me today is my good friend Mike Fave of sapiensystems.com. Today we're going to be talking all about energy, basically why we view health and our physiology and our environment in terms of energy and then how this relates to all sorts of different symptoms or chronic conditions that you might be experiencing.

 Anything from fatigue to brain fog to gut inflammation and bloating or weight gain. Basically how we can correct all these things by looking at health in terms of energy. So we'll be talking about that, the different things that affect our cellular energy production and usage. We'll also talk a little bit about calories and why we really don't want to be viewing expenditure or the foods that we're eating in terms of calories, why it's not all that relevant and why it can actually steer us the wrong way when we're trying to get our energy back. And then we'll talk a little bit about the different types of energy production and which ones we want to favor in order to basically get our health back and also the different hormones that govern these different types of energy production. To take a look at the show notes for this episode, head over to jfeldmanwellness.com/podcast and there'll be links to different studies or articles that we talk about throughout the episode. And if you are struggling with any of those low energy symptoms or chronic health conditions that I mentioned earlier, or if you're just looking to improve your health, get your energy back, head over to jfeldmanwellness.com slash energy and sign up for a free mini course on energy balance talk through the different foods that support our energy production and which ones to avoid that inhibit energy production and some other things that you can do to help get your health back by looking at things in terms of energy. I also wanted to mention that if you're watching on YouTube, there won't be a video for this episode due to some technical difficulties, but I will be including the video for future episodes. And with that, let's get started.


So basically what we're talking about is the influence of energy on our health and how the energy that we produce on the cellular level influences every aspect of our health and how we want to focus on that as a lens through which we can adjust our environment, adjust what we do so that we can improve our. So  energy is the basis of everything, Function, everything all together.

Right. And so that's also considered to be what's called the bio-energetic view of how... okay so this is the symbol for people. as like, energy as the foundational aspect of health and physiology in general. That is the guiding principle.

Right. And so when we're talking about energy here, we're not talking about like a spiritual energy. We're talking about cellular energy that we're producing in the mitochondria of ourselves.

Mike
Okay, so not good vibes.

Jay Feldman
Good vibes help. But yeah. But yeah, so we're talking about this, energy that's being produced on the cellular level. A lot of times people talk about that in terms of ATP, but there's other compounds that hold energy as well. But the idea here is basically that we are producing energy from the food that we take in and potentially other aspects of our environment. And that's then what allows all of our cells to function. And then all of our organ systems on top of that. And then creation our whole bodies really. And so all these symptoms that everybody's experiencing or people might be experiencing like fatigue or gut issues, brain fog, low libido, irritability, all sort of like mood issues, depression, weight gain or body fat gain, I should say. All those things come back to this energetic level that, is able, like when we don't have enough energy, that's what ends up leading to these sorts of symptoms. And then by correcting these energy issues, that's how we can restore proper health.

Yeah. Cellular energy provides the basis for all functions essentially. So without cellular energy, you don't have anything. And so then a gradation or a decrease or increase in cellular energy can change the different functions that you have. And I think it's important to stipulate here that it's not just about sticking in as much energy into the body as you can. There's like, there's multiple aspects that can affect cellular energy and energy production and energy utilization. So yes, you have inputs into the system as energy going into the system in the form of carbohydrates, fat, whatever else. But then you also have things that can affect the ability of the body to use those inputs going in. So example with a lot of people, and I think for the car, the crowds that are doing carnivore or keto or anything like that, they find that they do better because they have less things inhibiting their cellular energy production in the form of lack of irritating foods and endotoxins from bacteria fermenting different things in their gut. So while they don't have as much energy going in from a carbohydrate standpoint, they don't have things that are blocking that energy production if they have some type of dysbiosis in the gut. So as an example, I guess.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, well, so let's get there. So let's talk about kind of this dichotomy. On one hand, we have our energy supply, which is the amount of energy that our cells are producing based on how much food is coming in and how effectively they're converting that food to energy, which there's a lot of factors that affect that as you were talking about a couple of them. And on the other side, we have our energy demands, which are all of the things that our cells use this energy for.

And so, on a larger level that could be like exercise or just our thoughts, our emotions, like typical, you know, our baseline functions, our heart, you know, beating, our organ systems working, our digestion, all of those things require energy. And so we have these, these like two sides, we have the energy supply side and the energy demand side. And as we were talking about earlier, where energy is really at this fundamental view of our health.

What we want between these two factors is we want to have excess energy. And we'll talk about why that doesn't mean gaining body fat because people talk about calories in and calories out and having excess energy, they talk about that as if that's gaining weight, but that's not actually energy. So we'll talk about that in a second.

To clarify, you have an energy input on one side and an energy demand on the other side. And then in the center, you have things that can affect your ability to use the energy that is being in.

Well, not exactly. So we have, we have fuel on one side because, because when, when we're taking food in that, that food isn't already energy, it's, it's fuel and we have to convert it into energy. And then at that point we have the, the relationship between energy supply and demand. So we'll, we'll talk about that in more detail, but let's first just start and talk about like what, because when people think energy surplus, they're talking, they're thinking gaining body fat, but we're not, that would be like a fuel surplus where the food that you're taking in is not being converted to energy. So you end up storing it as fat. but in reality, what we're talking about is, is having this excess energy, which we use to function better. And we use to rather than degenerate or have all these symptoms come up, we use to heal and regenerate. So that's kind of this larger goal is that we want to make sure that we're maintaining a higher energy supply than our demand so that we can lead towards this regenerative side.

And on the other side, you have like this degenerative side, which is, you know, we could talk about it as like a starvation state or a hibernation state or like a survival state where when we have less energy available than energy that we're using, it shifts our bodies into the stress state where they start to conserve, like it's a fuel conservation and energy conservation state where we start to depress all of our functions. So that way we can try to survive for a longer period of time.

So depress our functions because if you have an energy demand greater than the energy supply, the energy has to come from somewhere. So it's gonna come from somewhere you basically have to use adaptive stress hormones to pull that energy from your body structure itself. And so you have to basically shut down or decrease function so that you're not using as much much fuel that's stored within you or as much resource stored within you.

It's not a bad thing. It's just not optimal. Like it's an intelligent system. It's just not. The goal is not to function, be functioning in that pathway unless absolutely necessary.

An analogy that I use sometimes is thinking about a house and that we have to keep this house warm and it's winter outside and the winter represents our energy demands and the heat is our energy supply and when we don't have enough heat to keep ourselves warm, we can't let ourselves freeze essentially. So we need to get that. We need to get fuel from somewhere. We need to be able to produce more heat. So if we're running out of firewood, we have to start breaking down parts of the house, the chairs, the tables, the walls, whatever it is and start using those for fuel for the fire so that way we can stay warm. And so that's our bodies in this energy deficit state where we still need to be able to function. So we're gonna start breaking ourselves down in order to do that. And at the same time, we're also gonna slow down all of our functions so that we can just barely survive, just get by on our minimal energy needs. We'll keep the thermostat a little bit lower. What's that?that we don't completely tear the house down.

Right, yeah, we still need a fire, but it's just gonna be a little bit of a smaller fire so that we don't destroy the house like all at once. But when that happens, it comes at a cost. We start degenerating and we start to function less well, and that's when we have all these symptoms, all these conditions come up. Which is a perfect then segue to what we want is the opposite of that. We wanna have excess energy so that then we can start to rebuild and use that energy towards reversing all those things. So if... depressed brain function and depressed digestive function come with an energy deficit, then if we have the extra energy, we can reverse those things. We can start to function better. Our reproductive systems can come back. our libido can come back. We can start to clear out any infections that we might have in the gut. We can start to put on muscle mass, let's say. I mean, there's so many different factors here, but we basically get to move back towards that state of health as opposed to that like hibernation or starvation state. Yeah.

Exactly.

Yeah. and so, so then of course the question is like, how do we do that? What are, you know, does that mean that we just need to be eating more? Is that, you know, cause that's what we talked about earlier was, or mentioned was this calories in calories out idea where is it, okay, well we just need to eat a ton more food and then, you know, we'll have this higher metabolism, but it doesn't work that way because the fuel that we take in then has to be converted to energy. And that's a somewhat complex process, but what's complex about it is how many different factors affect that process.

So just because you eat some food doesn't mean it's going to be converted to energy. It could then be stored as as fuel, like as fuel for later as body fat.

And that's where I was getting at with the middle factors affecting the conversion of energy to meet the demand.

Yeah, the conversion of fuel to energy to meet the demands.

Which is why it really depends, well, I guess we'll go into the factors, but.

Yeah, well, yeah, so why don't you talk about just like, let's just run off a few of those factors that can affect that process.

You want very specific factors or just?

No, general things. mean, like we, there are certain nutrient requirements, without talking about all the intricate details, like we need to have certain nutrients in order to be able to complete that process.

But the most basic level, need certain vitamins and minerals as co-factors to be able to run the conversion of the food that we eat into actual energy. So certain D vitamins, magnesium, different minerals, things like that, just in general are basically required. So without those, you can't convert what you're eating into energy. basically like trying to drive your engine without any oil. It's not going to run appropriately.

So you need those things as like a base element. So just in the most basic level, you need to have an energy input coming in your carbohydrate, and you need to have nutrients to be able to use nutrients to be able to use that carbohydrate in general. And then building from there, then you have, I guess, other factors that can then directly inhibit that process, regardless of whether or not you have the nutrients and the carbohydrate available.

And I guess the biggest one that we're seeing now, is related to like gut issues and things like that directly shutting down the conversion of whatever you're eating into carbohydrate. And then obviously the other one is certain toxins in the food supply inhibiting the ability of the body to convert the carbohydrate into energy or whatever you're running into energy.

And when, so when you have gut issues, like whether it's some sort of infection or an overgrowth, all sorts of metabolic toxins are produced. So a few of these would be endotoxin, which is also called lipopolysaccharide, or you have like D lactate or histamine, all sorts of different factors that then directly block the energy production process.

Thank you.

That is their function as like as a product they are supposed to be metabolic inhibitors and I mean I think that that speaks to the core and the importance of energies function in all living organisms. know, creating toxic products to sort of inhibit another organism it directly targets energy production and things like that. Exactly.

And we'll talk about all those like in each individually and more depth later on, but at least kind of to lay the foundation there, I think that that's solid. And the other thing too, I know you mentioned a couple of times, like carbohydrates being used for energy production. And of course we can use fats and we can use ketones as well. And the reasons why we might want to use one or the other more or why certain ones are ideal compared to others is like a whole other topic that's pretty in depth, but.

Yeah, mean, an issue that a lot of people have, especially with carbohydrates, is that they aren't converting those carbohydrates to energy very well. And so they end up relying on these backup systems of fat or ketones because they can't use the carbohydrates effectively because of all these factors that are blocking the process.

And some of the biggest issues with the carbohydrates that many people eat isn't the carbohydrate itself. Carbohydrate is such a ubiquitous source of energy in the environment that bacteria are coveting them as well. So if you have some type of bacterial issue in the intestine, you're competing for carbohydrate utilization. And when the bacteria are acquiring the carbohydrate, they're converting it or producing metabolic products that are shutting down your metabolism, which is the main issue with a lot of the different carbohydrates and I think explain some of the reasons for the current trends that we see in low carb, high fat, and things.

And then a lot of the food toxins that you kind of mentioned with certain like certain plant foods, not that all plant foods are bad, but just certain ones have certain toxins that can inhibit that process and cause digestive issues. And there's also different types of fats, like especially the polyunsaturated fats are pretty good at blocking this energy production process. So and then there's there's a lot of other factors, too, that can help to drive this process or block it. So light exposure, psychological stimulation can both help to support it depending on the type of light and depending on the type of psychological stimulation. mean, we know that things that are stressful and being in an environment of helplessness or learned helplessness that those end up driving hormones and driving stress systems that block this process. it's, you know, it's lot to unpack. by looking at things through this lens, it then becomes clear as far as which aspects of our environment we want to shift or optimize in order to the production or to improve our energy availability or increase the energy supply as much as possible to best support our health and then to minimize the energy demands that aren't supportive, you could say, so that then we have as much surplus energy as possible to then rebuild ourselves and regenerate.

So essentially, basically what we want is just to recap it and try and put it into very basic terms, I guess, we want to have energy supply in, and at least enough to surpass our demand to some extent. But we also want to limit the things that are inhibiting that conversion of the energy supply in into the body's usable energy fuel to energy is the way I like to put it just because and it's an important actually made an important clarification sorry to cut you off but yeah the the energy that's stored in food we have to convert it into energy that our bodies use which is is different between species and between different organisms so we have to convert the energy that's stored in food in food which we call fuel into a usable energy for us in the same way that you would put gasoline into a car and that has to be combusted or put through an engine, all these things happen to make it so that the car can use that energy to have the correct fuel and have the correct engine in place and not have all the nutrients, all those things in the correct view.

We want the correct fuel. We don't, and we want to be able to at least at the minimum match what our demand is, ideally have more, and then eliminate the things in the center that are inhibiting the conversion of that fuel into energy, and then up-regulate the things in the center that allow us to convert that fuel into energy. That's the base, despite all the complex, whatever we're going to get into, that's the basic idea. Provide the right fuel have it and have it convert into energy by decreasing the factors that inhibit it and increasing the factors that increase that conversion into energy. Also not have a demand so high that you can't meet that that you can't meet it with the fuel and conversion to energy.

Yeah. And a lot of people do have really high demands. So let's talk about that for second too, because that's something that a lot of times the things that demand energy, we look at in a positive way. So exercise is one of the most common ones where not saying that exercise is bad. think there's a time and place for exercise and it can be very beneficial. but people look at it as, you know, if some is good, then more is better sort of thing. because it uses energy, because it drives these energy demands.

But when we Increase things that use up all of our energy that's less energy for ourselves to use for everything else So if all if all of our energy is directed towards exercising Then we don't have as much energy for our brains to function or for our digestive systems to function or for our immune systems to function or anything else and so we want to make sure that we have the quote-unquote right amount of exercise and then the same would go for other factors that Drive our energy demands.

And there's a lot of them too, just as many as that support our energy supply. So this could be psychological stress. That's a huge, huge demand of energy. Not to say that all psychological stimulation is bad, but excessive amounts of psychological stress definitely require a ton of energy. And there's some really interesting studies about that too. I saw one recently that was saying that watching a movie is the equivalent of moderate exercise because of how much energy the brain uses.

And it's true if you want to think of it in that regard, but a lot of times we don't consider that. We're only considering the calories we burn, which there's lot of issues with thinking about things in terms of calories. we don't consider the energy that we use from our mental function. We just think about it as far as how many steps we take and how much we exercise at the gym. But all of these things use our energy. we want to make sure that we're, as far as the things that do use energy, we're doing the ones that help us the most and getting rid of the ones that don't help us or that don't support this overall system that leads to energy surpluses.

Yeah, and I just want to clarify it. This doesn't necessarily mean that exercise or emotional stimulation or the usage of energy in general is a negative process It's not about not using energy It's about having enough fuel and energy available to constantly stream energy for the activities that you're going to go through or for the things that you're just gonna have To do part of like to live in general is to use energy. There's no way around it. So the question in here isn't to not do these things. The question is to find a level of these things that's appropriate. The idea of if this is good, then more is better is often propagated in our society. then ideas around exercise and steps and some semi-useless expenditures of energy have been automatically placed in a category of this is good. It's automatically good. It's like if you get 10,000 steps in a day, it's automatically good.

Without the consideration of other factors going on, you know, how much did you sleep? How much did you eat that day? Did you already work out? What was your what was your emotional stimulation like that day? Did you do something you enjoy? So like taking just focus on these things in like in like a very basic idea and this is this the problem There's no nuance in the calories in calories out model doesn't take into consideration all these factors and like it creates this perception where if I'm taking in a certain number of calories if I want to lose weight or maintain my weight, then I need to burn a certain number of calories. And the only variables that are often placed in the paradigm are food calories in general and then exercise expenditure calories. the model is not reality. It's not how the body works. It's not how food works. It's not really how exercise works. None of those things are, the model is wrong.

So going under this, and a lot of people, this is, lot of people find that they fall in this model and they basically lower their intake and increase their expenditure. And then they wind up realizing, well, I can't follow this. It's not working for me. You know, I can't stick to this. And they flip flop back and forth because they want to look good and they want to feel good. But at the same time, they feel like it's one or the other. They can either look good or they can feel good.

If they want to look good, they have to starve themselves, they have to exercise more, they have to do all these different things. And then if they want to feel good, then they can eat what they want. And because the model is broken, those two things seem to be opposite of each other. But if you look at reality, or as close to reality as we can get with the understanding, then you realize that they're not separate and that they should be going together.

So if it's not working, then perhaps it's because it's not the right thing to do. Perhaps it's not reality. Perhaps this is not the correct model. So the point that we're trying to get at here is that when you have enough energy and you're not limiting energy and you take into consideration all these other factors, then this idea of calories in, calories out from dieting and exercising just falls by the wayside. And you'll start to realize that you can feel good, you can maintain all these general functions that you have.

And the question is less of how many calories are you eating a day and how many steps are you taking or how many miles are you running or anything like that. But it's more along the lines of what foods are you eating? Are you enjoying your life? How are you functioning? Are you enjoying the exercise? Are you having stimulating accidents? Things like that. So the problem is the model. And what we want to discuss here is things that change that model or not even change that model.

We're providing an expansion of that model or a different model, whatever you want to call it. But the idea here is the model that we currently have is broken. And at least I don't think that it works. I can't speak to you. I don't think that it works. I haven't really seen it work. But I have seen looking at things in a different way and seeing how understanding how things work in a different way have changed the variables that can be put in and the outcomes that can come out of those situations. So we don't have to sit here and say, well, I can either look good or I can feel good.

Yeah, I mean you brought up so many good points there. I definitely think we're looking at things completely alternatively from the typical calories in calories out model, which is heavily flawed just from things that we said. There's a few other factors too. I do have an article that I write about all this extensively or wrote about all this extensively, so I'll link to that. You brought up a few good points I want to touch on too where you mentioned sleep as far as a huge factor. And then one thing that you didn't mention was

Uh, well, you did mention light, also goes along with EMFs, um, which is just another factor that can be a considerable energy demand that, um, a lot of times people don't think about, but, but yeah, I mean, the, the entire calories and calories out model, um, it doesn't work. And because it doesn't work on a physiological level. And one of those main reasons is because we adapt. So as you said, somebody can be eating less and less food and yet their weight doesn't keep going down and down.

You know, they can be eating as little as 1200, 1700, 700, 800 calories a day and still not be losing weight. And, you know, of course, this doesn't mean the calories. Right. Yeah. They're using that much less energy because they're in this star starvation type stress state and they're using less and less energy, which is not accounted for in the calories in calories out model. you could say that you can adjust for that and that then you're just miss calculating calories out. But that's the whole point is that both
going down and down and down and down that calories out is dependent on innumerable amounts of factors, including how many calories come in in the first place.

And this is not to mention that we don't function on a calorie system. So as I said earlier, the food that we take in, can measure it in calories, but that doesn't mean that it produces the equivalent amount of energy in our bodies because A, how much energy gets produced from that food depends on all these things we've talked about, but also we can't use certain types of fuel as well.

And we can't produce as much energy from them. And the same with that, if you put different types of gasoline in a car or different oils or whatever, if you put corn oil in a car, I don't think you're gonna produce much energy from it, even though that corn oil has thousands and thousands of calories. You could say an equivalent thing for us. I've talked about different things that we don't consider food that have calories. So if we were to drink gasoline and we put the corn oil in the car instead and we drank the gasoline, I don't think you'd be producing much energy from it, even though that has a lot of calories or if we were to eat wood or anything else that we don't digest or can't produce energy from, calories are not how we operate on a physiological level. We don't operate on a calorie system and it ignores our digestion and absorption of things. It ignores how well we convert that food to energy. It also ignores all of the factors that affect how much energy we produce and use, which is all of these metabolic factors that we're talking about and operate on a hormonal level through thyroid hormones and stress hormones, reproductive hormones, all these things that affect both sides of the equation. it's, it's to say like succinctly, it's not an accurate model of how we operate.

I think two points that you brought up there are important. The first one is that because you have a constantly adjusting, like the body is an intelligent system. So the body is going to adjust the amount of calories it expends based on the amount of calories that are coming in just in general. Then you have a moving target constantly. So it's like if you were going to run a race against me, me and Jay were going to run a race or Jay and I were going to run a race. And every time I took two steps, Jay took four steps faster than me.

So I could never catch Jay. He'll always be ahead of me because he's running faster and he's taking more steps. It's basically the same thing that's going on with your metabolism when you start lowering calories. Once you keep lowering calories, lowering calories, lowering calories, then your expenditure is going to always... After you reach the first threshold, you lose some weight, then your metabolism is going to drop and then you maybe lose a little bit more weight and then your metabolism is going to drop. But after a certain threshold, your metabolism is going to just be below the amount of calories that you can consume, you're essentially in starvation. Like you couldn't consume that little calories, you'll start to have problems, like serious problems, like legitimate health problems. mean, if anybody ever checks out the Minnesota starvation experiment, you can basically see this directly where they lower their calories and you start to see all these functions in their bodies go wrong. And know, psychological function, they're starting to see things, they're starting to hear things, digestive function, immunity goes down because all these functions are just like as you don't have enough energy to come in, as you don't have enough money to pay the workers in the factories, you start having to close down different departments because you can't fund these people. they're not going to work for you. You don't have the resources to give these people money. So they have to go away. You have to lay them off. And so it's the same thing that happens with the different functions in the body to some extent. Obviously, it's an analogy, but to some extent, you start decreasing functions. You start losing different functions.

Then the next point that I think that was really important that you brought up is the idea of the calorie in and of itself and using calorie, using like calorie as like the basis of energy for food is sort of a like, it's a symbol as, as much for food or it's like, it's akin to money. So if somebody was to ask you, you know, what, how much does a, how much does a watermelon cost in comparison to a car? You could make quantifications with money.

But in terms of value and usage of those two different items, you can't really compare a watermelon and a car. They have completely different functions. They do completely different things. Their values are in completely different realms. So to quantify them based on the idea of money, yes, it's a useful concept. We all find it very useful. So if I want to buy a car, I don't have to give you 100,000 watermelons.

But besides that, when you come to look at things in reality, it's a skew, it's a symbol, it's just a factor to transfer back and forth. It's a fungible characteristic. So when you start looking at things like calories in, calories out, you start looking at calories of food, you mentioned, like corn oil versus gasoline or anything like that, there's much more to the process involved. And the different foods have different aspects and different components and different abilities.

So, to be converted or used into energy. And some of them even like corn oil itself directly inhibits energy production. you can eat less calories of corn oil than you would have coconut oil, but the corn oil is gonna affect your metabolism in such a way that you're gonna put on weight, whereas the coconut oil will do the complete opposite, where you're gonna actually lose weight. So to like look at things just purely in terms of calories is not reality in general at all. that already has the model at its skew.

And then taking into consideration that you have a constantly moving target with metabolism to try and adjust just the basic input and output as an idea of calories, it doesn't make sense at all. The calories are just a quantifying molecule or a quantifying concept. It's just that we can say we can have some sort of comparison in terms of quantities of food. But besides that, it doesn't really tell us much of anything else.

Right, well, and we didn't even mention what a calorie is, which is for people who don't know, it's the amount of heat that gets produced from burning something. we obviously are not furnaces. Like you can think of us metaphorically in that way, which is not the best metaphor, but we aren't literally lighting the foods that we eat on fire and taking the heat energy that comes from them. And yet that's what we're measuring things as if we're doing.

it's obviously very flawed because that says very little about how well we can use the fuel. So we talked earlier about wood and gasoline, which obviously if you burn them, they produce a lot of calories of heat, but we can't do anything with that. yeah, just kind of is the underlying reason why calories really have nothing to do with our physiology. And you can use it as a very, you can use it as an estimate or like as a guideline for how much you're eating and how much potential energy you could produce.

Yeah, it's helpful for guidelines, it's helpful for comparing things, but to a point, we definitely, like for right now, we don't really have a better system for comparing things like that, but there's very limited use for it. And it's definitely not, it shouldn't be used the way that it is being used. Yeah, no, I definitely agree with what you saying earlier too, that you touched on the Minnesota starvation experiment and they experienced like really incredible, incredibly terrible symptoms in response to eating less. Um, and for them eating less was 1800 calories a day. So for, you know, that's obviously not that little compared to what a lot of people eat. Uh, but yeah, they were eating about 1800 calories a day and their libido's were gone. They were hallucinating.

They were having all sorts of like psychological problems. You could say, um, they had no energy. couldn't like, move very well, they were weak, they lost a ton of muscle mass. It had completely degenerated them. And it took them years to recover of eating tons and tons of food. It's a really fascinating experiment that maybe we'll just take a whole episode to talk about at one point. But yeah, it just goes to show what the effects of simply eating less are. And that's why what we're talking about is a completely different paradigm. We're talking about looking at things in terms of how well we can produce energy from them.

Or even beyond that, we're looking at how we can effectively produce the most energy possible and how we can have the greatest energy surplus as possible by preventing excessive energy demands on the other side. And that does remind me of one thing that we didn't mention earlier was that there's a couple different ways that we can produce energy. And so we have on one hand, this kind of optimal energy production, which is driven by certain hormones, but those are almost besides the point, but it's kind of like the energy that we produce when things are functioning properly and when we're meeting or exceeding our energy demands. But then we also have this stress induced energy production, like we said earlier, when we're taking parts of the house and putting those in the fire. And that only happens when our demands are exceeding our supply. So in both scenarios, you have energy being produced, but in one side, in the stress side, it leads to further degeneration and further issues. And we want to minimize that and maximize the energy that we're being that we're producing without the stress. Just to kind of reframe.

They send signals. When you have a situation where you don't have enough energy to meet the demand and you start breaking things down, that sends a signal to your body that you don't have enough energy. And when it sends that signal to your body, then your body starts to manipulate metabolism downwards. Because it goes hand in hand, like the process of liberating different stores of tissues and stuff like that and relying on certain hormones causes your body to essentially say, we're out of demands. We need to start lowering down metabolism. So those hormones that affect this particular function, such as cortisol, adrenaline, things like that, aldosterone, when they are released and they have their particular effects, they have a wide range of effects. And some of those include directly lowering metabolism or affecting different functions in a down regulatory fashion. Whereas something where you have enough energy present and you have enough you're like using these other constructive hormones, I guess you could say, or something like thyroid hormone or having androgens or progestogens or something like that running forward. When that is present, then you start to see an anabolic effect in the body where the body will start to grow and these upregulate different functions in different areas. And so, for example, you know, the easiest example is if you have a lot of androgens present, then you're going to build a decent amount of muscle tissue.

You're going to have a good libido, you're going to have that your mental function is going to be on point in terms of the termination and different things like that. Or women, their different hormone production can increase their sexual characteristics and things like that. So they have like a, each pathway sort of go, has a feed forward loop in its own direction when you move in that particular pathway. And when you don't have enough energy or if you do have enough energy, those are direct signals to your body to move in either direction. It will move you off the mark.

And so that's why, you know, when we think about weight loss, which a lot of people are interested in or anything like that, it doesn't make sense to keep lowering down calories and putting into deficit and then keep bringing you down and down down down and down. Because you essentially dig yourself into a hole with that. And then yes, at some point you have to get out of the hole. Or unless you just want to have health issues or have different problems. So then you have to come to this other side. And there may be a period of time where your body's going to be like, hey, you know, I have excess energy coming in, but I haven't had it coming in for so long. So I'm going to want to store a little bit to start. I'm going to want to put on maybe a little weight to start. And then eventually, once you get yourself out of the hold and you start moving in a positive direction, and then you start to see the functions come back. And then eventually, your body's like, OK, we have energy. We're good. And it'll start to upregulate the metabolism. So there's a little switch. And depending on what energy you have coming in and if you're able to use that energy of course, know, because that's part of what at least when I listen to us speak, they get the sense that if I just put in enough energy, then I'll be fine. If I just eat it, if I just eat enough, I'll be fine. it's like eating enough is very important. And there's, there's, that's like very paramount to the system, but it very much depends on what you're eating as well, because it's not just a, and this is what we were talking about in terms of like putting calories in or, or even a lot of people putting carbs in.

If you're just going to dump in a bunch of refined carbohydrates to try and raise your energy system, over time you can run into issues because of the modifying factors that we have in the center. And so I think that it's important. I mean, at some point we'll get to the modifying factors. But you need to increase your energy input, but you also need to make sure you can use that energy. So it's not just a blind dumping of energy.

Or dumping of fuel. Dumping of fuel. Yeah. Yeah. No, yeah, I agree. mean, a lot of there's, as you said, there are so many factors that affect that conversion from fuel to energy. And it's, this is what happens in yo-yo dieting, right? Where somebody eats very, very little, they lose a bunch of weight and then they start taking in a bunch of fuel. But there are so many stress systems in place and stress signals in place that have dampened the conversion of fuel to energy. And this is adaptive. As you've mentioned, this is, we do this when we're starving so that we can hold onto body fat. So at the next time we have a famine.

We have body fat, body fat stores to allow us to last longer and survive longer. So, if you were to just, if you're very little depressor metabolism, all of that, and then you just ate a ton of food, put in a ton of fuel, there are still so many things inhibiting that conversion of fuel to energy that weight gain is common. And so you want to make sure that you're doing things to improve that conversion. So that way you don't gain body fat.

And an important thing to note here is that the conversion of fuel to energy, we can't store energy as fat. What we do is store the fuel as fat. Basically body fat is just a fuel storage. And once we convert the food to energy, the energy has like, we can't reverse that process really more or less. So the idea from the mainstream is that once you have enough energy, then you automatically start directing things towards body fat, which doesn't end up being the case.

Yeah, so the idea here is that the solution is not simply to just pour in a ton of fuel. You need to make sure you fix the factors that are inhibiting the conversion of fuel to energy. And one of those factors is simply eating less. So eating more is necessary. But if you just eat a ton more all at once, it's not going to give the systems enough time to shift in the other direction. Yeah. Is a simplified way of saying.

So do you want to go over some of the factors now then? Just basically.

Well, we, I mean, we touched on them earlier. We touched on the polyunsaturated fats. touched on, yeah, nutrients and the metabolic toxins that are produced from gut, dysfunction, like gut infections and things like that. And I think there's also like fat intake versus carbon take, there's protein intake. Like there's so many different factors here that, you know, that's what, that's what the whole idea, the whole point that..

So people have an idea, know, because everybody's probably sitting here like, what do I do now that I know this? It's like, right. That's why I was just you just did touch on them anyway. The basic ones. And the thing that I think is important to notice is with some of those things, like it will take time to get rid of some of those inhibitors, like, for example, stored poop or if you have a gut infection, addressing that is important or if any sort of like if you became very hypothyroid from eating a bunch of raw broccoli or anything like that, like it takes time to reverse all these things. So like it may not happen over like overnight for lot of people may take like a few months or few weeks or so, depending on the situation.

Yeah. And there's other factors too, like maintaining blood sugar, know, eating certain time, like meal timing, the amount that you're eating, fasting versus versus not fasting. so I don't want to start and be like, well, these are the certain foods you should eat. Here's when you should eat them. I mean, every one of those things is such an in-depth topic that that's what we're going to be talking about on this podcast. So let's, I kind of like to lead this as an overview, but basically is the idea that if you do the things that improve the energy supply or increase the energy supply relative to the energy demand, that's going to allow for an energy surplus, which is going to allow for better health. And that that is the key to reversing all of these different symptoms that we see, all of these conditions, whether it's diabetes and insulin resistance or autoimmune issues or fatigue or brain fog or gut infections or wanting to lose weight, know, too high body fat, all the, you know, infertility, like fixing reproductive hormones.

All of those things are affected by this process and we'll take the time to talk through exactly what to do and how, like, and why throughout the rest of the podcast. That's, that's the whole goal, right? Yeah.

Sounds good.

All right, that's going to do it for today's episode. I did want to mention that we didn't talk as much throughout this episode about the research supporting this energy paradigm, this bioenergetics view that we're coming from. We did talk a little bit about the Minnesota starvation experiment, but there's really a ton of research out there showing the connection between energy, bioenergetics, our mitochondrial function, and virtually every chronic condition or symptom or really just our health in general. So I will be linking to a couple of articles and relevant research in the show notes for this episode. And these are also things that we'll be diving into further in the future. So if you did enjoy today's episode, please leave a review or like us wherever, wherever you're listening. It really makes a huge difference. It helps us make a greater impact and reach more people, help more people get their energy back.

If want to find more about me, can check out my website at jfeldmanwellness.com and you can check out Mike's website at sapiensystems.com and you can also check out the show notes for this episode with all the links to the research and articles. You can find those at jfeldmanwellness.com slash podcast. And if you are dealing with any of those low energy symptoms or chronic health conditions that we were talking about, Head over to jfeldmanwellness.com slash energy and sign up for a free mini course on energy balance that will walk you through a lot of the things that we weren't able to talk about today as far as how you can support energy production and avoid the things that block that process. So again, head over to jfeldmanwellness.com slash energy to sign up for that free mini course. I hope you guys enjoyed today's episode and I will talk to you next time.