Jay Feldman 0:12
Welcome to Episode 55 of the energy balance podcast, where we teach you how to live without constant hunger and cravings, fatigue, brain fog, poor sleep and all sorts of other low energy symptoms by maximizing your cellular energy. I'm Jay Feldman. I'm a health coach and independent health researcher, and joining me again today is my good friend Mike Fave. Mike and I have been studying health and nutrition together for a long time now, and Mike also draws on his experiences from working within the healthcare industry. Today's episode is a q&a episode where we'll be talking about whether Mike is losing his hair and whether hair loss is caused by lack of energy. And we'll also discuss why symptoms don't always clearly reflect our energetic state. And then lastly, we'll talk about whether we can or should eat based on our genetics, and the flaws in the idea that genetics determine our health. If you have a question you'd like us to answer on a future Q and A episode, you can send those in to Jay at Jay Feldman wellness.com and that's j, A, y at Jay Feldman wellness.com or if you're watching on YouTube, feel free to leave those questions in the comments, and if you're new to this podcast, then after listening through today's episode, I'd highly recommend you go back and listen to episodes one through seven, where we took some time to build a foundation as far as the understanding of the bioenergetic view of health is concerned. To check out the show notes for today's episode, you can head over to Jay Feldman, wellness.com/podcast we're all linked to the studies and articles and any other relevant things that we discuss throughout today's episode. And if you're dealing with any low energy symptoms, whether that's chronic cravings and hunger, low energy or fatigue, chronic pain, weight gain or trouble, putting on muscle or any digestive issues or gut inflammation or any other gut symptoms or brain fog or poor sleep or insomnia, or any hormonal imbalances and any related symptoms there, or if you're dealing with any chronic health conditions, whether that's an autoimmune issue or heart disease or diabetes or any other chronic health condition, then head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/energy, where you can sign up for a free energy balance mini course, where I'll explain how these different symptoms and conditions really come down to a lack of energy. And then I'll also walk you through the main things that you can do as far as diet and lifestyle are concerned, so that you can maximize your cellular energy and resolve these symptoms and conditions. So to sign up for that free energy balance mini course, head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/energy, and with that, let's get started.

But yeah, moving on to the next question, which is actually a question for you Mike, which was anonymous, which was saying that I noticed Mike lost hair since your second video two years ago. Surely, if the body is producing enough energy, hair should not be lost.

Mike 3:07
So I think the first thing that we have to like clarify here is that prior to doing like, and you know, all the other podcasts, I did not shave my head. And recently I did shave my head. And I think shaving my head sort of revealed where, I guess, essentially, where my hairline was in here. So, um, yeah, so this is sort of, I guess, the way it looks on camera, and the way everything is is kind of deceiving to where I was before, or at least having how I had my hair before, like at a longer length and like it would go over to the side, was deceiving to where my hairline actually was. So as far as my hair, it's been pretty much, it fluctuates back and forth. And I have pictures from different time periods over the course of the years where you can see where I was drinking a lot of milk when I was at one point, my hair was actually probably worse than it is now. And then at a certain point, I got out of whatever stressful situation I was in, and I can go into some of that a little bit. And my hair actually grew back a little bit for a period of time. And then I went into working night shift as a nurse and staying just like being on a night shift altogether, and started to recede a little bit. So it's been, I've had, like, a fluctuation of my hair, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Um, as far as, like, my family goes in predisposition, all of my mom's brothers, or most of my mom's brothers, because one of them is, some of them are her half brothers. I think they actually, they actually lost their hair with, like, at like 20, like, slick, bald at 2022, so right now I'm 26 and I still have, I still have my hair, so I'm kind of like, while, you know, yeah, I'm ahead of the game. No pun intended. It's not the genetics defines everything, but that's my previous position, is to lose my hair and I even before I got into all the peat stuff, I had run a 23andme genetic test and then plugged the data into Prometheus, which is a database that compares your specific, raw data from your genome and the different SNPs to the associated factors with those SNPs. So essentially, what came out of there is my predisposition was primarily towards hair loss every I didn't really have any predisposition towards anything else. The only no cancers or anything like that. It was pretty much hair loss. And then at a certain age, I popped up for prostate cancer, and usually seeing the research hair loss and prostate cancer going together so and then you also saw it in my family. No one's had prostate cancer, but there's been quite a few people with hair loss, and that's on my dad's hair is he has. He actually has a decent amount of hair for his age. He's 60, but he's lost a decent amount of hair. And then my uncles on my mom's side have, pretty much are slick, bald under so I had the predisposition. The other thing is, I started losing my hair when I was, I think, in high school, after I had gotten my gallbladder removed, I had went through a period of time where I was trying, I was listening, I think, to Dr Mercola, so I was, like, trying to eat a raw diet, like mostly raw vegetables and juicing and stuff like that. And then it was also eating a lot of nuts, and I was eating a lot of beans, and I got, like, pretty severely sick when I was in, when I was in high school, to the extent that I was at my height. Now I'm six two, and right now I'm 195 pounds. 190 pounds, but like, 45 pounds at 62 in high school.

Jay Feldman 6:57
So you cut out for a second, Mike, you're at around 191 95 now and then, what were you at?

Mike 7:00
And then, when I was in high school, in high school, when I had gotten sick, I was down at like 145 but my my freshman year of high school, I was close to 180 so I had lost just 40 and I wasn't like I was lean, so I had lost like 40 pounds of body, body weight going on this and it wasn't a vegan or vegetarian, it was mostly plant based, vegetarian, but I was eating eggs and chicken and fish, like I wasn't cutting those things. I was eating sardines. I was eating chicken. I was eating eggs for breakfast, but it was just a lot of nuts, a lot of nut butters, a lot of beans and a lot of raw vegetables and juicing, because that's at that's at this point in high school I didn't know as much as I knew now, and that's that, I mean, this was part of learning that stuff. I was testing diets out. I was seeing what worked. I tried a whole bunch of different diets. I tried a bodybuilding diet, and I started looking at Mercola stuff, and it was raw, and I see the plant based stuff before it became before this stuff was even a thing. I was always interested in diets and nutrition and what have you, all these different areas research. So I was like, looking. I was looking at some of the research. I was looking, I was listening to what Nicole was saying, different bloggers, and essentially, I was like, trying it. But that stuff made me, like, pretty ill. So the timeline wasn't in high school, I was doing a bodybuilding diet for a while. About I got up to about like, 175 180 pounds. That was probably freshman and sophomore year. And then I switched over to, like, the raw stuff, because I was, I was like, well, maybe this is better. Like, people were staying there feeling this. They were feeling that. And then I got, like, pretty sick, like, actually, really sick. I wasn't able to eat. I was eating like, one meal a day in the evening, and I was still working out every single day, and still playing basketball, like, for two teams. And so I just started, like, degrading, and I just lost a lot of weight, and I went down to 145 and I felt I was, like, really sick. I was just like, doubled over in chairs for hours. And eventually I went to the I went to a GI doctor, I went to my primary care, and he didn't know what's going on. And then, so he referred me to a specialist, which was the GI doctor, and he basically wanted to tell me that everything that I had going on was just GERD. And so he scoped me, like, two twice, and basically they didn't find anything. And so he's like, Oh, you just have GERD. But I didn't have any burning, and the pain wasn't in my, like, in my epigastric area. The pain was on the right side. So then, like, after going to this guy, probably, like, four or five times, and him then telling me it was stress, and, like, trying to just write it off and all this type of stuff, they sent me to a cardiologist. And then, basically, like, at this point, my body temperature was really low because I was juicing, like kale and stuff like that, and eating tons of nuts, and my heart rate was, like, resting in the, like, low 40s. And so the cardiologist, like, when I went to them, he was like, Wow, your heart rate's really low. Like, something's going like, like, it's like, too low. And then, like, maybe it's just because you're an athlete, all this stuff. But I, like, wasn't feeling well at all. And then I went to a they basically sent me over to a. Surgeon next a general surgeon, because basically all of them were like, We don't know what's going on. We don't know what's wrong with you. Like, you seem fine overall. And then the surgeon's like, Oh, you have a gallbladder problem. And when he told me at this point was that I had, he said that if he took out my gallbladder, I would get, everything would go back to normal. I would feel fine, and then, basically, my gallbladder will eventually grow back and, or, like, the specifically, the biliary ducts would adjust for not having the gallbladder and, like, create a pouch to hold my bile, and then I'd be fine. This is what I was told. So I agreed to the surgery at this point, because I was in really bad shape, I was actually really hesitant about it, so I went to an alternative practitioner. So I, like, signed up for the surgery, then I went to an alternative practitioner. After, when I went to the alternative practitioner, He charged me for all, like, extensive testing, and he didn't, I didn't really know what the testing was at this point, and my parents didn't know either, none of none of them, were medical. And he then he put me on, like, I remember us taking like 10 supplements, like five times a day, and I wasn't feeling better yet. Like I wasn't feeling better at all, actually, because I still continued doing the dietary stuff I was doing. And so then I basically, like, I was just getting sicker and sicker, and I was like, getting worse, and I wound up having the surgery. So at this point, I hadn't started losing hair yet, but I had gotten, like, really ill, and I'd lost a ton of body weight as particularly, like, when I was in my my developing years, right? Like, this is like, like, 15, 1617, and so then after the surgery, I was like, pretty sick for a month or so. I just didn't I didn't do well. And then after that, I had changed my diet. I realized that the problem was all the stuff that I was eating. Because while I was like, I wasn't going to school for that entire month or so, I was just at home reading, just trying to figure out what exactly was going on, and so I, like, changed my diet and then over, but my digestion at this point had gotten pretty compromised from the surgery I wound up, and I didn't realize it until a couple years later, but not having my gallbladder really impaired me. And then, like, I had a lot of scar tissue developed in my abdomen, and then the doctor also left staples in in where they removed the gallbladder. They stapled off the biliary duct. And so I was having, like, after this, I started losing my hair. This is like a cup, probably a couple months after the surgery, I started to lose my hair in these areas, um, and you can see, like in photos, when I'm like, probably 17, 1617, after the surgery, my hair in these areas started to get pretty light like so it looked more blonde. And that was basically it was, it was going away because I had shaved my head after and I my head was shaved through high school. This is just what we did, like playing basketball and stuff like that. And so basically, I am, I was losing it. I didn't realize it until college, and I was having all these digestive issues, and I was having, like, weird insensitivities to foods and a whole host of things after it, basically, I eventually realized, and I still struggle with it, is that number one, I've got testing done. I'm allergic to the titanium staples I have on my liver, so the only way to deal with that is to have them removed. And then I started to really understand what bile does in the intestine and what bile does in general, and its importance for health. And basically I had developed, like, in after that, I had developed, like, all this digestive stuff. And that's because I had, number one, I had I had a lack of bile, and the number two, I had adhesions all over the place. So like, I have, like, tightness in my in my abdomen, and when I would get stressed out, it completely locked down, and I couldn't breathe, and I would get very bloated, and I feel extremely uncomfortable. So eventually I went to a practice Active Release practitioner, and I, and he, like, started to do some work. He broke up a lot of the adhesions. And then I was at during that time, I was basically researching on how to break up adhesions, how the fascia works and all, and that's where I got interested in that. And then I started doing it to myself. So I've gotten a lot better there, but still, then I got tested for the allergy to the staples, found out that I have the allergy, and then as far as the bile stuff, like that one, I still haven't really figured out, because I don't react well to bile supplements, and I don't and I don't have the gallbladder, so I don't have a concentrated source of bile. So like, my digestion is pretty much chronically impaired, and it's pretty sensitive to a lot of different things. So, and that's why I've had to learn so much about diet and learn all the different interactions and how the systems work and and the microbiome, and like, how things are supposed to function in the small intestine versus the colon. And so even now, like, if I eat certain foods, um, it'll change my bile composition, or it'll increase my production of bile. So. Extent, and then if it leaks into my colon, I can get, like, pretty severely irritated. And then that irritation, like, I still have some adhesions left in my abdomen that I can't really get to, um, and basically, when my colon gets irritated, it clamp it causes contraction of the muscles around it, and it'll clamp down my whole abdomen. And so I've managed the process to a large extent, but I still continue to struggle. And basically the symptoms that I get from that, besides digestive stuff, is like, this is what goes this is my hair. Basically here. I don't lose it in the back. It's just sort of this frontal region. And so that's just been an ongoing process for me, and that's sort of been my biggest health struggle. Is after, like everything related to after having that surgery, and the complications of it, not having to file the staples, the adhesions from abdominal surgery, and then just besides that, while dealing with all this stuff, like working as a nurse in the hospital for about a year and a half, almost two years, I was on night shift. And so when Jay and I first started doing podcasts, I was on a night shift schedule, and so I was just like, like, we'd be doing podcasts at like, what was it like after I stayed up all night long? Like, at six o'clock in the morning, so or seven to eight o'clock in the morning, we would start doing them. Because I would never, when I was a night shift, I would never switched back to day shift. I just stayed on night shift the whole time because flipping back and forth, forth really messed me up. So there was that. And also, like working in the hospital, the people don't realize nurses only work three days a week, but what we do is we it's usually supposed to be 12 hours, but your shift, if anything happens, could run 1314, 1516, sometimes it worked 20 hour shifts if there's emergencies with snowstorms and whatever else and that stuff. I mean, technically, it's illegal to work a 20 hour shift, at least where I was living. But that stuff took a huge toll on me as well, while trying to figure out everything that was going on with my digestion and so that has always been the nursing thing. And then, like the surgery, have been things that have continued to, like, provide stress despite all my dietary strategies and supplementation. And the other thing is, like, as far as sleep schedule, took me a long time to recover from being on the night shift schedule. And then, even currently, like with the nursing schedule, if I have to go work as a nurse, then I have to get up at 5am and do but I won't get home until nine or 10, and then I usually around 9pm and then after, relax and I eat at 11, and then I won't go to sleep until one, and I wake up the next day at five and go to work again and so and I just worked however many hours, like, doing stuff like that still provides, like, kind of an element of stress that until recently, I wasn't able to get rid of, right? Because I needed to work to make money, so I just sort of dealt with it. So there's been, like, probably years where I haven't, like, had a consistent sleep schedule. I'll some days, I'll sleep three hours or four hours, and other days I'll sleep eight or nine hours or 10 hours, and it just flip flops like that all the time. And then with current projects I'm working on, sometimes I'll sleep two hours, or I'll stay up all night still, then I'll the next day, I'll be work at a regular day. So I'm kind of all still all over the place with sleep schedule. So I think I don't know if that gives context to, uh, like, my hair loss, but it hasn't, haven't been losing. I haven't really been losing that much over time, it's been fluctuating a little bit back and forth, mostly in how much goes from here from here. When I shaved my head, it became more apparent. And then I still have other things my lifestyle that I haven't like, perfectly figured out.

Jay Feldman 18:43
So, like, yeah. I mean, a couple of the huge points there, a like, the hair, like, it's not as simple as you just lost hair in the last two years, because, as the, you know, as you mentioned, it's fluctuated a lot, and it's actually, you know, just because you shaved your head, it just looks like you can just see things that you didn't see before. But the other huge thing that you're getting at here is that not only are we not perfect now, which we know that we're not, we know that we don't know everything, and we know that there's still things that we're doing that can be further optimized. And not only So, so not only that, but also we've definitely made a ton of mistakes in the past that have come at various costs. And then on top of that as well, there are certain scenarios where we still choose to sacrifice our health in different ways for other things that we feel are, you know, priorities or goals or whatever it is. And obviously that's not ideal either, and that's a choice that we may make in different contexts. So I think those are, like all important points. And you talked a lot about all of those things.

Mike 19:47
I just, I think it's like, while I can condense the story into a couple minutes, like, there was years of time where I was, like, like, digestive wise, like, severely struck. Lang, and then there was also, like, and thinking, and you were there for that. When I was in college, like, my family had, like, a ton of issues as far as parents getting divorced and all that stuff. And that stuff actually, like, severely sped up my hair loss to like, a huge extent, um, and just like, made those, those things were, like, those extremely difficult times, but stress, like each time, like the surgery, and then all the digestive issues after, and then with my family, like, completely collapsed, like all those things, they each time, like, aged me a little bit and like, had an effect on hair loss and had an effect on because I remember, like, when we were in when we were in college, like, I couldn't grow a beard, I didn't have a single ounce of chest hair, like, I didn't like we, like we, both of us, didn't like we just looked like, like boys. And then I guess, like, I had all the digestive issues and everything, and then my family started having the issues. And I just remember like, like like, when all that was going on, just like, I started growing a beard, I started getting chest hair, I started losing my hair. Started, like, things started going wrong. We were on like, a zero carb diet for a little while. Like, all of these experiments took their toll over time. And it's like, what you guys get from us now is, like, years of like, I started experimenting with diet and stuff when I was 13, like, 12 or 13, when I got in the gym and started reading bodybuilding stuff. And then just like, went from there. It's like, you're getting like, culmination of trying keto, trying carnivore, trying plant based, trying raw, trying Mercola stuff, trying whoever's stuff. And then sometimes, like, some of the experiments went, like, horribly wrong. And then also, like, the consequences of not knowing enough in those times went horribly wrong, and sort of just like figuring it out as we went right, like constantly adapting to what was going on, like trying to figure out, like, strategies and how to deal with everything. So yeah, there's definitely like, as far as like, think in the past years, my life, from high school through college, up until now, like, hasn't necessarily been low stress, right? Like, when I was in high school, I was having health issues, my parents were having tons of issues. And then when I was in college, my family issues, even though I wasn't living with them, got like, like, exponentially worse with, like, a whole I don't want to talk about them specifically, but like, a whole bunch of stuff going on while we were in school. And then afterwards, like, trying to manage what was going on, digestive wise and health wise, with working night shift and trying to do everything as far as, as far as, like, nursing and handling nursing and working the environment of nursing, even though I was, like, kind of diametrically opposed to everything that they do. Like, I just remember going to work everything, just loading it, just being like, God, I have to go to this again. Just like having my days off and being like, I just worrying about it, like, my first day off, just waking up and being like, I have to go back in three days, like, just and I, the thing is, like, I'm not saying this is this is unique to me, because I know other people do this. And so, like, when we talk about strategies and healing and this and that. It's like the things that I've been doing have been I have allowed me to handle that stress so much better, but all the metabolic stuff has allowed me to like, I still function. I can still read articles all day long. I can still put out a podcast and two hours of sleep and and do these things. Now. Is it ideal? No, do I recommend people do some of the stuff that I've done, definitely not do I recommend people work night shift. No, I really don't. But sometimes, like, like, sometimes things are unavoidable, right? Like, when I got out of school, I needed to make money, and so, like, it was either work in the nursing home and work 16 hours, like, four days a week, or it was work night shift and have, like, less stress so and like, get paid a little better. So I had to make a decision, and that's just like, Yeah, I had consequences for some of my decisions. Right?

Jay Feldman 23:49
Exactly, yeah. Unfortunately, we can't always make, like, we don't know. We have to make those choices and sacrifices sometimes and along the way too. Both of us recognize the cost of those things and are always trying to improve our environment so that we don't have to do those things. But that's, you know, part of that is just the reality that we live in. And we'll, we'll take some time in the future, we'll, we'll really dig into both of our stories a little bit more and kind of highlight some of those things, because I do think that's that's really valuable. But to circle back to this question a little bit more specifically, because there is something else I wanted to talk about here. Talk about here, which is, you know, there's a lot of I guess, anytime that anybody is looking for somebody else's health advice, they're always trying to evaluate whether they're healthy and whether they can walk the walk or whatever. And as this question was pointing out, like, isn't the relationship between having enough energy and hair loss, and I'll extend that to any other symptom. And I mean, on one hand, I just want to mention there tends to be an excess focus on hair in the bioenergetic community, and I think that's just because of Danny roddy's focus on it and him being such a big part of this community. But I think it's important to put that in. Context, as well, as far as the relationship between energy and any and any other symptom or issue, where, as we've talked about, yes, any of these things comes down to a lack of energy as as the kind of baseline problem, whether it's, you know, an issue with skin or hair or digestive or, you know, liver health or or reproductive health, whatever it is, all of it does come down to an energy deficit, but you were also mentioning a little bit about predispositions, and that matters as well when we're evaluating any symptom. And so there's variability between people as far as what will what symptoms would be exhibited at different degrees of energy deficits. And as we talked about, neither of us are perfect. We've experienced anywhere from severe to very minor energy deficits throughout our lives due to various things that we've done, sacrifices, we've made, mistakes, that we've made, whatever it is, and you share some of those, and we'll dig into our stories a little bit in the near future, but considering that different people will experience different symptoms, even at the same level of energy deficit and even at the state at the same level of physiological stress. And you've talked about this, seeing this in patients and the hospitals and things where you might see somebody who has some really severe degenerative states, like, really severe health issues. And maybe you can, you can, like, touch on an example here, but yet they'll still have like, a full head of hair.

Mike 26:27
Well, yeah, I've seen that. You want go ahead, go ahead...

Jay Feldman 26:30
Well, so I'll let you share in a second. But just using that as an example to to suggest that just because one person exhibits a symptom at a certain level of energy deficit doesn't mean that they're at the same level of health as somebody else who's experiencing that symptom. You know, might take somebody else way way more severe of an energy deficit and way more other issues would, you know, they would experience way more other degenerative states and and symptoms before experiencing hair loss, or they might never even experience that hair loss, you know, so the so somebody could be extremely unhealthy, and they could have all these chronic health issues but be fine. And then somebody else could be pretty healthy. They might have just minor energy deficits throughout the way, and yet they could still lose their hair very early on. And so in either scenario, if we were in a perfect environment, a perfectly supportive environment, that led to energy surpluses always, then these symptoms would never be experienced for anybody. But that isn't the reality that we live in at the moment. Of course, we're always trying to create that reality and get closer to that reality for ourselves and for the people around us, but the reality is that we're not in a perfect environment, and so, you know, but we still could be in a pretty good environment and experience various symptoms. And again, that doesn't mean that the environment that we've put ourselves in is necessarily worse than somebody else who isn't experiencing the symptom. I hope that made sense, but I was just trying to put some, you know, create some context here, as far as the tie between energy and symptoms, but also the individuality and variability and how symptoms and conditions can manifest, and what that what that like, whether a symptom is really reflective of somebody's energetic state or to what extent it can be.

Mike 28:14
Yeah, I mean, then the other thing I want to point out here is that, like, so Well, my symptom was to lose my hair, right? And, and just to give an example of predispositions, like, my symptom is to literally lose my hair in this fashion. I'm not losing it in the back. It's still there, but it will continue to just make I get the u right. I haven't, like, maintained low body fat percentages entire time, like, there hasn't been a single time where I've haven't had abs or anything like that, or maintain my musculature, even though I don't sleep, or I whatever's been going on, and I so it's like things hit people differently, right? Whereas I'll have, I have other friends who their predisposition was to gain tons of weight, but they have full heads of hair. Or I have other people who have their maintain their abs, and they're lean and they have full heads of hair, but they have like serious skin issues like terrible acne or psoriasis or eczema or things like that. So everybody has some sort of predisposition how they're going to present. The way I like to think about it is like a chain, and your metabolism is a series of links in the chain, and then, basically your symptom is whatever was the weakest link in the chain, right? So me having hair loss, or the prostate thing, whatever is, is that those are my weak links. If my chain has a stress applied to it, those are going to be the links that are going to break first. So that's for me. It's like, this is an like, what's going on my hair is an indicator of what's going on something. It's like a thermometer, a barometer what's going on a little bit with my health or my stress. So I know, if, like, if I start to shed a lot, then I know that something's going on. Versus if I don't, if I like, my hair is fine, then then I know I'm okay if it starts to grow back in, which sometimes it doesn't, I know, right? Right? Um, so, like, it'll fluctuate. Like, when I know when I work in the hospital consistently, like, I start to lose my hair more, and I can feel it like, at the end of the shift, I start getting itchy in my scalp, and then I, like, hair starts coming out. So you can get a sense of what's good for you and what's not good for you with your with the things that you have going on. Like, for example, my girlfriend has psoriasis every day that she works in the hospital. That night, when she gets home, the psoriasis, which tends to be on her legs, will flare. Whereas, if she has, like, 3456, days off, like her, psoriasis will completely go away. So there's and there's other factors in there, right? Like, she has some food allergies that she developed, she actually developed the psoriasis after the pandemic for covid, because she was working X number of days a week in, like, pretty stressful conditions, having to gown up fully, just like it was a bad deal for her. And then she she hadn't had psoriasis before, and then all of a sudden, she had gotten, like, pretty sick, something like gi wise, not covid, and then she develops her eyes after that. So there's and now that's her barometer, like, what she feels she had a particularly stressful day at work. Her legs were flare. So everybody has their different their different predispositions. And as far as the hair stuff goes, I know there's such a focus on it in the peat community. And like, I've seen people like, they rail on Georgie because he doesn't have hair. Like, he's lost a lot of his hair. His hair is gone. I've even seen people like, rail on Pete. They're like, oh, like, look at Pete. Like he's pretty he's balding, or like he has the U hairline and he doesn't have any teeth. And it's like, you don't know what the first of all. You don't know what experiments or what stress they went through in their lives that caused those issues, right? You don't know what people's story is. And you know, like, just like where they are now is not just what they're doing right now, it's a reflection of years, their lifetime, of accumulated effects. So that's something to keep in mind. But also, I've been in the hospital, and I've seen guys with full heads of thick black hair with full blown type two diabetes that had led to kidney failure. They're on dialysis. They've had strokes and heart attacks and they have cancer. I've seen guys like that. I've I had conversation when I worked at a rehab in New Jersey for a little while. Uh, cute care rehab. So for like, like, pretty sick people, and like, I told the guys, like, man, your head is your hair. Your hair is better than mine. And he was, like, 70 years old, and he had all this stuff going on, like he had had a kidney transplant. Like he that profile I just described was him, um, and I just like, your hair is better than mine. And he was like, well, your kidney is better than mine. So basically it was like, that's like, people's disposition, and are pretty different, and they respond differently. And I've also seen, I've had patients. I've had a couple patients, like they were 50 years old. There's this one African American guy I worked with. The guy was like, 50 years old. He was muscular, like, completely ripped. He like, had a full head of hair, like, just the guy was, like, looked like a physical specimen, right? But he had HIV, hepatitis C. He had had like, three or four heart attacks. He had stents placed on his heart. He had colitis, like, he had all this stuff going on, but from the outside you would never know, like, you could never see it, and that he was, like, completely debilitated by everything that was happening to him. But he, like, looked great. And I told I was like, man. I was like, I want to, I wish I would look like you when you were 50 years old. And he, like, he didn't really have much to say about that, but I was like, what's the what's the secret? And he's like, KFC, so he literally said that. It's kind of funny. You can cut that out if you want.

Jay Feldman 33:51
But no, no, I think it's, I mean, that's exactly like what we're talking about, right? Kind of like these layers of symptoms and layers along the chain, and how individual it is for different people. And as you said, like the things that he was doing were obviously leading to a ton of degradation, yet he was extremely muscular, extremely low body fat, perfect hair, right? Do you say he had good hair?

Mike 34:08
So, oh, yeah, he had a full, full head of hair, yeah.

Jay Feldman 34:11
So, and that individual, like those links, changed people to people and at certain times and at certain layers, whereas you mentioned, like, you might have a certain symptom that you can use as a barometer. And if somebody kind of goes beyond that, if they're if that part in the chain kind of breaks down, and they've already diverted so much energy away from it, they'll start to experience further symptoms and further levels of degradation, and that'll be kind of their new barometer of where they're at. And that doesn't mean that those things couldn't all potentially reverse, but the deeper that those things kind of go, the farther it is to reverse, and the harder it is.

Mike 34:46
They snowball.

Jay Feldman 34:48
Exactly

Mike 34:49
Problems snowball. They start as like little things when you're younger, and then, if not addressed or or managed or taken care of, then it just gets progressively worse. And modern medicine. Will essentially pick people up once you actually have a structural issue. And but the problem is, is that structural issues are far preceded by issues that are that you can't see on a scan. Sometimes, like, I've had patients who've gone to the doctor. That one guy, I saw him in home care, he had gone to the doctor for years. Like, four years, he was going to the ER multiple times a year with severe abdominal pain. And they did multiple CT scans, and MRIs of his abdomen didn't find anything. And then I, when I was seeing him, he had just got the last time he had gone to the ER, his pain had gone, like, like, really bad again. They basically did a scan and they found pancreatic cancer, and I was seeing him because they had just done a surgery to remove part of his through his gallbladder, his pancreas, part of his liver and some of his small intestine. And I just And then, like he couldn't eat, right? So he had him on a feeding tube. And I was seeing him to set up the feeding tube, do the wound, care for the surgery, and show him how to use the feeding tube. And it was like he had had symptoms and problems for years before, but it didn't show up structurally. So people's predispositions, roll, roll, roll, roll, roll, over time, if they don't adjust them, and modern medicine picks them up when it's like a lot of times too far gone, and that's when you start seeing interventions like surgery and things like that.

Jay Feldman 36:17
So yeah, yeah. And those things aren't, I mean, again, to clarify, it's not like it's too far gone, and that, I mean, depends on what they do with the surgery, right?

Mike 36:26
Well, taking out everything they took out like he's, there's, he's not going to replace this pancreas, right,

Jay Feldman 36:31
Right, But what I'm Yes, of course, but what I am getting at is, like, from the health standpoint and the presentation of these symptoms and conditions, do you think it's possible to recover all of those layers all the way back up? It just requires a good enough environment and enough time in that environment and and again, there are limitations in our current reality, so that might be harder to attain, depending on on how deep it is, or you might just only be able to fix a few of those layers, not be able to get all the way up. But if the environment's good enough, there's no reason why we can't regenerate in that way and recover.

Mike 37:04
Yeah. And I think, I think it's really important to realize, too, that things that are happening to people is not just what what they did last week or what they did last year. It's like a lifetime of effects, right?

Jay Feldman 37:16
And before that too. I mean, like in your like, your parents, nutrition and maternal, you know, and in the womb, and, yeah, go ahead.

Mike 37:23
That's what I was gonna get to. It's like, you like, what did your parents eat? What did they do? But also, did you get breastfed? Were you formula fed? What did you eat as a child? Did you did you grow up on Captain Crunch? Like, I know when I was a kid, I was pounding captain crunch, and I know I was slamming Lucky Charms when I got home from school, and I still have three good meals, right? But I still ate a ton, a ton of junk food. And I know, like, that's the same thing for a lot of my friends, same thing for my girlfriend, same thing for my sister, same thing for my dad. Like, you have, like, what would you grow up on? Ice Cream Sandwiches. That's his response. It's like, ice cream sandwiches and oatmeal cookies, like, that's so it's like, you have like, generation, and then when I asked my dad, like, what you do through his 20s, he's like, I drank, and then he had me in his 30s. So it's like, those, those effects carry over.

Jay Feldman 38:13
Yeah, well, and as, I mean, the bigger picture here, as you're getting is now you're seeing so many more symptoms and serious conditions happening younger and younger. And, you know, yeah, I mean, there's, like, we want to talk about epidemic of of chronic health conditions. I mean, that stuff's happening younger and younger because it's, it's all, it's continued adaptation that's happening over generations. And as you're talking about, not only was our nutrition pretty bad, and we had, you know, started having our issues earlier, you know, when we were young, but obviously our parents and up from there, and all the symptoms they experienced, conditions they had, and, yeah, those things get passed down. And the while this sounds dark, it sounds like hopeless, the alternative is, is not the alternative, but there's, this is a two way street, and you can push everything the other way, everything really helpful that you're doing to support your environment energetically, or support yourself energetically by creating a favorable environment, not only helps you regenerate, but also helps, you know, push things the other direction, and helps it so that everyone that you're affecting beyond you, and you know, your children and on from there, will then be moving that other direction, and we'll be able to move forward. So it's not like a, it's not a, what's the word? I don't know, like a, it's...

Mike 39:30
Not a destiny.

Yeah.

Jay Feldman 39:35
All right, so Dominic asks, I read a lot of stuff about genetic eating and genetic predispositions and the influence of eating habit and diets. Is there such a thing? I'd love to hear your opinion on that topic. So just to start here, we talked a little bit about this in terms of the idea of ancestral eating. And I guess it's a parallel idea, right? Like we're supposed to eat something based on our genetics, and then with. The idea of ancestral eating. It's like we're supposed to eat something based on what our ancestors ate. And we talked about some of the problems with that idea in a previous episode, so I'll link to that. But the premise is basically that just because there's something that we're adapted to or something that's available, it doesn't mean that it's ideal. And so even if we want to look at things ancestrally and look at what certain people ate at a certain time. There's value in looking at what they ate based on what was available, but it's also worth keeping in mind so that just because that was what they had available and those their choices, that does mean it was ideal for their health. It doesn't mean that they had to make adaptations that led to decreased energy availability, or I should say, adaptations as a result of decreased energy availability that came at some sort of cost to structural integrity or complexity or various other things that happen when we have to adapt to a sub optimal environment. So I think that just a helpful context to have first is whether we've whether we're looking at an ancestral community, or you're looking at kind of modern human genetic differences in individual variations. Just because somebody is more adapted to eating something doesn't mean that that thing is ideal even for them, necessarily, and it doesn't mean that putting them into a better energetic environment might change well, it will definitely change that kind of genetic predisposition, and that's the whole realm of epigenetics. And again, one of these days, we'll do a podcast talking about evolution and that that'll tie in with genetics, because it's such, such an important topic, that kind of weaves a lot of these comps concepts. It's, it's one of those kind of big picture ideas. But the important thing here is that our adaptations to our environment are mediated through genetics, and this happens through epigenetic changes. So when we're looking at someone's individual genetic variation, if you want to think of it that way, which isn't just determined by genetics, but genetics is a part of it. When we're looking at someone's individuality, there, they have adapted. You know, there have been adaptations that have basically been passed down over time that have made them you know, maybe they're more likely to have issues digesting starch, or maybe they're more likely to produce a lot of LDL in response to eating more saturated fat, or something like that. And there's various reasons why they might have some sort of adaptation in this way. But that doesn't mean that that one person necessarily should be avoiding saturated fat or something like that. Instead, by creating a favorable environment energetically that should lead to adaptations, to that energy surplus, to that increased energy, which should lead to a closer to optimal, or a better epigenetic, like front or like, I guess, like a better landscape, like a better it's, it's hard To pinpoint it, because right, like we're, we're since we're cohesive, systemic organisms, but basically creating a picture that is closer to increased structure and complexity and involves greater energy, and so that's going to that's going to be imposed, or that's going to be shown in various different ways?

Mike 43:25
No, I just think that the I see, like the initial idea of genetics is one that there's a fixed genetic code, and it's like that code dictates everything. And I don't think that that's actually the case. And I think that they're slowly moving away towards that. What I think is that the organism the environment, are constantly interact, interacting with each other, bi directionally. So the organism is affecting the environment, the environment affecting the organism, and then that the genes and a whole bunch of other systems, like hormonal profile and like states of the cell and energetic state of like while the organism is developing, and particularly for humans in the womb, it like dictates a whole host of different adaptations and effects that that can come about in that in the baby or the new organisms that's created. So it's not just like there's a genetic code and then that's expressed and that's it. It's like there's this constant interplay, this constant interaction, this constant adaptation over time. And it makes sense, right? Like you would want your environment currently is going to ideally help to set up the system for your for your children, right? You're, you're going to pass on some levels of adaptation to that environment. But the thing is, is, with all this genetic eating and genetic predisposition stuff, as far as like, we don't even know that much about this bi directionality and how epigenetic genetics and how genes and how this and that work and like. So you have this idea, well, first you have to get rid of or first you have to reconsider that. There's this, like, this one genetic code, and that's it. And that's like, what you're seeing research now. I feel like epigenetics is slowly creeping toward this idea of BI directionality and and, like Pete has talked about, like, remodeling of the genome and all these different elements and and things like that. But so it's like, if you have a bi directionality, just the proposition of, oh, then you're only supposed to eat this one type of diet. I don't think necessarily makes any sense, like, if you hold that first principle in line and the next, this idea doesn't make any sense anymore. But the thing is, is, and something that you pointed out is just because those, those were the diets that you were eating or in that period of time, because, like this, genetic eating is essentially the same thing as, to a large extent, as the ancestral diet, especially in light of the idea of epigenetics. So it's like just because your ancestors were eating this certain type of diet doesn't necessarily mean it was the ideal diet. It just means that's what they had available at the time. And with our current like technology and resources, obviously there's much more available. And we can, we have, we can start then that's what we're doing, is you can pick and choose diets and see how different factors interact with each other, and how they adjust, and how it interacts with the individual. And some of the genetic, some of the genetic ideas behind eating. It's like, they're very reductionistic, and they just look at this one pathway. It's like, oh, you have amylase so you can digest starch, whereas this person can't. It's like, well, is that true? Can that person not digest starch? Right? It's like, what's C? And then that's sort of like, where you start to test and see how you interact with some things. Like, some people though, it's like, I can digest white rice just fine, but I can't digest grain starches. Like, okay, so that's that was how it expressed in terms of your number of copies of amylase. I feel like what's more helpful for getting a an idea of a dietary strategy is having an understanding of physiology and the certain principles applying those and then experimenting on yourself, instead of just like looking at these reductionistic ideas of, oh, you have this gene, so you should eat this. It's like that extension, right? It's very difficult to make that extension, especially considering how little we know about all that stuff. It's they were in 2000 or whatever it was. Oh, we're we sequenced the human genome, or we're going to sequence the human genome. It's like, what has come from that so far, we know all the genes in the human genome, and we haven't done anything with it.

Jay Feldman 47:19
That was supposed to unlock everything. That's supposed to give us all the answers?

Mike 47:24
Yeah, and I think it's and, like, we've had, what, like, 100 years of the idea of the gene and genetics, and it hasn't necessarily, like, hasn't given us so much. Because I think the fun fundamental principle there is kind of flawed in that it's that you have this unchangeable, unmutable genome, instead of having this bi directionality. So I think it there. A lot of it has to come down to experiment, right? The other thing is you have, like, for example, my baby sister is half Filipino, half Italian. What's her genetic diet going to be? What's her ancestral diet going to be? Those are two entirely different diets. Those are two entirely different genetic patterns. My girlfriend is Puerto Rican, and I'm Italian. Like, what is, what is our children's diet going to be? So you have a lot of that stuff going on, and it's just, I don't know. I find these, like these dietary, this genetic dietary, or, like this idea of ancestral diet stuff, just it doesn't make a whole lot of sense if you change some of your foundational beliefs or understandings or principles around what's going on with genetics. And I think a lot of people, especially in these spheres, are starting to agree or or starting to understand or accept epigenetics. And it's like, if you do that, then a lot of these other things start to fall off as making too much sense.

Jay Feldman 48:43
Yeah, exactly. And so you kept talking about this bi directional relationship, which is huge, and I think that's such a fundamental point. And what you're really talking about there is the the contrary position is that it's genetics first, right? Like your everything is cemented into your genes, and there is no changing that, and it's entirely random. And so you know, if you were just in this group of people who happen to have these certain genes, you're just stuck with that, and you have to kind of abide by whatever is supposed to be optimal based on that genetic profile, as opposed to this idea that, this idea that your environment influences your genes, and that's huge. I mean, that completely changes the game. And as you're saying, that makes it this bidirectional relationship, where instead, we can actually shift towards a more optimal genetic disposition by improving the energetic supply of the environment and availability inside the body. So that would be, so that's what you're saying, is that that is more, I wouldn't say objective, but that's, it's kind of independent from what you were adapted to. And it's instead creating this, this kind of optimum that you can try to adapt towards.

Mike 49:57
You're constantly in flux with your adaptation. You're. Constantly at adapting. There's never a point where you're not right, right? And genes are just part of that exactly. They're part of the system, right? And and so like, while you may have predispositions towards something based on whatever happened, ancestrally, like, I think that's fine, right? You know, I don't digest very well. Neither does my dad, you know, and my mom's brothers lost their hair, and my predisposition is to lose my hair. But it doesn't mean those things are straight jackets. It doesn't mean that, it doesn't mean that it's like my mom ate accident, like my mom does fine with dairy, but my dad doesn't. It doesn't, like, how do you how are you going to know? Like, a lot of it, I think, comes down to figuring out what works for you. And I think there, I don't think that these genetic eating profiles give you a good baseline to start with. I think a better, more objective baseline to start with is your subjective feelings and and experiences with the foods that you eat, and really paying attention and honing in on how you're feeling about different things, and then also, like having an understanding of some of the principles, exactly, yeah, exactly in that, in the context of understanding some of the principles. So like, where my family's from, like, I technically shouldn't, I technically shouldn't do well with pineapple juice, right? What are pineapples in Italy, or, like in Corsica, in whatever, the 1400s right? There wasn't a thing. There was chestnuts, goat milk and honey. And it's like, me, chestnuts and ghost milk aren't necessarily great friends. So, you know, there's a lot, I think there's a lot to be said. And then, yeah, I think the genetic diet stuff is just even more reductionistic, right? It's like, oh, you should be eating mostly XYZ is, are there probably some helpful things there? Sure, I don't doubt it, like, I'm not, I don't want it completely right at all. But I think it has to be, like, filtered through a large picture context. And then also, I, I find it hard to believe that you can base your whole diet just off that, just off the these reductionistic pathways that we don't even have fully mapped out well.

Jay Feldman 52:08
And why would you want to, yeah, like, like, the the case;

Mike 52:13
One piece of the picture,

Jay Feldman 52:15
sure. Yeah, yeah,

Mike 52:18
yeah, if you even wanted to go that route, because I think for a lot of people, once you start to really trust your intuition and trust how you feel and get a sense of some of the principles, then you can make your decisions without having to get all this genetic testing done. Yeah.

Jay Feldman 52:37
Yeah, definitely. All right, I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you did, please leave a like or comment. If you're watching on YouTube and if you're listening elsewhere, please leave a review or a five star rating on iTunes. All of those things really do a lot to help support the podcast, and are very much appreciated. If you have any questions that you'd like us to answer on a future Q and A episode, you can send those into Jay at Jay Feldman wellness.com that's j, A, y at Jay Feldman wellness.com or if you're watching on YouTube, feel free to leave those questions in the comments and to check out the show notes for today's episode, head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/podcast where you can take a look at the studies and articles and anything else that we referenced throughout today's episode, and if you're dealing with any low energy symptoms, whether that is chronic cravings and hunger, low energy or fatigue, weight gain or chronic pain or digestive inflammation or other gut symptoms, or maybe brain fog or insomnia or hormonal imbalances, low libido, any of these low energy symptoms or any chronic health conditions. Then head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/energy where you can sign up for a free energy balance mini course, where I'll explain how these different symptoms and conditions really come down to a lack of energy, and I'll also explain the main things that you can do to maximize your cellular energy and resolve these symptoms and conditions. So to sign up for that free energy balance mini course, head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/energy, and with that, I'll see you in the next episode.