Jay Feldman 0:12
Welcome to Episode 71, of the energy balance podcast, where we teach you how to live without constant hunger and cravings, fatigue, brain fog, poor sleep and 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 discussing how much weight gain can be attributed to increases in glycogen storage when adding in carbohydrates to your diet. We'll be talking about at what point weight gain would be a sign of an underlying metabolic issue, and we'll also be discussing the best ways to get calcium if you're not eating dairy, potential ways to improve your tolerance to dairy the best form of calcium to use as a calcium supplement, and which calcium containing vegetables might be worth including in your diet. 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 leave those in the comments if you're watching on YouTube. To check out these show notes for today's episode, head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/podcast you can take a look at the studies and articles and anything else that we discuss throughout today's episode. And I do have an announcement to make, again, in case you missed it, which is that Mike's new website is live. You can find it at Mike fave, np.com That's Mike fave, np.com and over at his website, you can take a look at the content he's creating, and he's also offering consulting. So you can contact him there if you're interested. And as always, you can take a look at my website, at Jay Feldman wellness.com where you can take a look at my articles and the podcast and other content, as well as my services. And if you are dealing with any low energy symptoms, maybe those are symptoms that we'll be discussing today. As far as weight gain goes when adding in carbohydrates to your diet or any digestive symptoms, especially in regard to dairy, or if you're doing with any other low energy symptoms, like chronic pain or fatigue or brain fog or poor sleep or hormonal imbalances. Or if you're dealing with any chronic health conditions, whether those are autoimmune conditions or diabetes or heart disease or any other chronic health issues. 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 are really caused by a lack of energy, and I'll also walk you through the main things that you can do from a diet and lifestyle perspective 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, let's get started.

All right. So Tara asks if part of the reason why some gain weight following this plan is because of the need to refill glycogen after following a low carb diet. How does one know when glycogen has been refilled and working properly again? Also how much weight can really be attributed to that? So this is a common question, or something that's commonly discussed, especially for people who are coming from a low carb diet, or even just a lower calorie diet, or a situation where someone was exercising a lot, where there can be significant fluctuations in glycogen storage from when you're coming from a low carb diet, or a low calorie, high exercise diet, and then adding in a lot of carbs and potentially decreasing exercise. And that can account for some amount of weight gain. And often, part of the reason this is discussed is because when someone is specifically on something like a low carb diet, and then maybe they binge on some carbs on the weekend or something, they'll notice a big jump up and weight and then, and that's not always because of glycogen, but that can be because of glycogen. And then they they might realize that they that when you know, a couple days later, the weight comes back down. And so this isn't a change in body fat that tends to be more of a change in glycogen and water content, or it can also be a situation that has more to do with gut irritation and bloating and water retention due to that. But regardless, when somebody is adding in carbs from a low carb diet, they will refill glycogen stores that have been depleted. For people who don't know, glycogen is the stored form of carbohydrates that we store in our muscles and we store in our liver. Those are the two main areas. And so when we are on a low carb diet, it does decrease our. For glycogen stores, or, yeah, especially for exercising as well, and then adding in carbs will increase those glycogen stores. And so this can account for a small amount of weight and of weight increase. And we'll talk about the specifics there, as far as how much weight this could actually account for, but it's something that's often cited for potentially more weight than it actually accounts for when someone's gained, when someone gained some weight, when adding cars back. So I guess it's probably best to to talk about exactly how much weight we can how much weight gain can be accounted for by an increase in glycogen storage, and then we'll go from there.

Mike 5:40
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so the first thing we need to know, well, I guess there's, there's, this is two pieces here. So the first piece here is, what adds nuance to this ideas, is that as far as glycogen and weight is that glycogen is generally stored with water, so you had not the weight gain has not, doesn't only, is not only counted by the increasing glycogen, but it's also counted by the increase in water. So you need to know how much water is added and how much glycogen is added. So luckily, there's research out there that tells us there's about a one to three ratio. So for every one gram of glycogen, there's three grams that comes along as water. There is some minor variation in this depending on the circumstance, but the most commonly accepted value, or ratio, is that one to three. So we know that there's about one to three. One gram of glycogen comes to three grams of water. So the next piece that we need to understand is, well, how much glycogen does the what? How much glycogen can the human body hold, per se? And there's some interesting feet over feeding studies on this. And essentially, the number came out to be roughly 700 grams of glycogen is kind of like an upper limit. They can get a little bit more than that. But I would say we'll stick with 700 grams, because your glycogen content will obviously depend on how much muscle mass you have, how big you are as a person, how large your liver is, all that type of good stuff. So but just keep nice, round, even numbers. And based on the study, 700 grams is about what we what we would see, and that 700 so we have 700 grams. Of glycogen. And then, since we have three grams of water for every one gram of glycogen, then we would have 2100 grams of water, um, all together, that would leave us with 2800 grams of water and glycogen combined. And this is roughly six pounds of excess weight. Now, with this said, there can be more water that's stored in a different process or in different way. Maybe the water is associated with some type of glycoso, amino glycan, which is a protein and a carbohydrate bound together, like you see in mucus or things like that. But I would say after like, six maybe 10 pounds is an absolute max. It's not like, it's most likely not just like water weight anymore, unless there's some type of inflammatory process or some type of heart failure, or you have, like, you're like, ascites or something, something's more serious, like that. If you're like, seriously gaining weight on you know, if you're like, gaining weight precipitatively, precipitously over the course of multiple months, and you've gone up 1520, 2530, pounds, I would really start to consider that you are most likely actually gaining weight, putting on body fat, and not just putting on water. The different than other. Another stipulation here, I want to add is that if you are somebody who's coming from being underweight, if you had gone on keto or in carnivore, or because you had an autoimmune disease, or you're coming from an autoimmune disease, and you're severely underweight, your body is going to, first of all, you're probably going to have a period like a refeeding type effect, where you're going to be extremely hungry. And I wouldn't say to suppress that hunger in that refeeding period, but what I would say is to choose the foods that you refeed with carefully, and we, I think we touched on this at another episode, so maybe we'll link to it as far as, like, refeeding from those situations. But in those circumstances, the body's has a lot of things going on. So like with eating disorders or any type of underweight scenario, you basically have to rebuild those tissues, that includes bone, that includes muscle, that includes connective tissue, that includes glycogen, the whole host of processes need to go on there. So if you're gaining weight in that perspective, it may not necessarily be all glycogen and or it may not only be fat, it could be other tissues as well. So that if you're have at a normal body weight, you. And you're coming off of a low carb diet, and you're you put on like, between six to 10 pounds, like kind of quick in the first two weeks or so, especially if you're not, like, massively overeating, then I would say most likely that could be attributed, to large extent, to water weight. But if you continue to put on after that, then I would say there's, there's something going on. And the the solution for that, and the adjustments for that is adjusting what types of foods you're eating, and as as well as, depending on the situation, quantities of those types of foods. And I say this specifically from a bioenergetic perspective, because I see a lot of people come to the pea sphere and they want to pound tons of milk with sugar in it, and ice cream and, um, like gummy bears, and all these types of, all these, all these types of foods, and a lot of these foods in excess or in large quantities can, in fact, put weight on you different people's tolerances to those foods, different quantities those foods, and then having large amounts of granulated sugar, not having adequate amounts of different vitamins and minerals nutrition in general, can lead to states where you you are putting on tons of weight. And this is especially the case if you're coming out of a state of eating excessively low carbs, or you're coming out of state of low calorie dieting, or one meal a day, or intermittent fasting. There I my preference for moving people in the right direction is to have a reverse dieting strategy where you're essentially progressively adjusting calories from nutrient dense foods that are easily digested and absorbed consistently over time, instead of just like opening the floodgates and you know, it's all free. Now, carbs are good. I'm going to eat all these different types of carbs, whatever it is, so I prefer, like, a more controlled, consistent approach, to allow your body to adapt to the food, make sure you're not irritated by any different foods based on the state that you're coming from, and then to slowly ramp up over time, to allow your digestion to catch up, and then to allow your metabolism to catch up to this increased food input.

Jay Feldman 12:17
Yeah, yeah. So to back up just to the glycogen piece here, as you mentioned, for somebody who's drawing up to 700 grams of carbs, which is that study you're referring to as an athlete who were pretty lean, that would be on the high end. And then someone who's on a low carb diet does not have zero grams of glycogen. So at most here, you mentioned that 700 grams of glycogen storage would result in about six pounds of weight. So if we were to say, you know, maybe more like four or five pounds could be more reasonable as far as actual glycogen gain, probably even more like four glycogen and water gain. And so, as you mentioned, when somebody is first introducing a lot of carbs, some amount of that of weight that might be increased will be due to glycogen replenishment. But we're not talking about that much there. There are other, as you've mentioned, there are other things that any weight gain can be attributed to that are not body fat. So you mentioned things like bone and muscle and the, regeneration of various tissues and things, and so that's all worth reiterating. The other thing is actual food weight, right where? For a while, if you were eating a low calorie diet, or if you're eating like a mostly meat diet, let's say the actual weight of the food might be much less compared to what you're eating now, and maybe it was much less liquid all of those things. I mean, obviously, you know, if you were to drink a couple bottles of water, bottles of water and stop on the scale, you're gonna be a couple bottles of water worth of weight heavier. So the actual amount of food that you're eating is also going to influence a weight shift if you do start to increase the amount of food, just simply in food weight. So what we're getting at here is that if you're initially gaining five to 10 pounds in a very short amount of time that can largely be attributed to things that are not body fat. And in reality, it takes a pretty decent amount of time to actually put on body fat. You're not putting on a pound plus with body fat a day. So that's kind of part one, and then you kind of jumped onto part two, which is an important part too, which is that if you are gaining more than that initial five to 10 pounds in a short period of time, where you are continually gaining more weight in a long, longer period of time, that's suggestive of something else being off. For someone who's very underweight, it could be a really good thing in that case, and maybe not something that's off, maybe just healthy weight that needed to be regained. And other than that, it can be a sign that things are often maybe you're eating foods that are for whatever issue causing you to gain body fat in a way that is less than optimally healthy, in which case you mentioned a bunch of different strategies or things to consider those are all important, and I'll link back to all the weight loss episodes that we've done. Uh, that I would take a look at, as well as the a couple of episodes talking about introducing carbs back in from like a from a carnivore diet. And those would all be good things to consider if someone's in that situation.

Mike 15:11
Yeah, the other thing I want to add to is that all that carbohydrate that you're adding in currently does not just go straight to glycogen as well as you increase your carbohydrate intake, you, oh, a couple things happen. First of all, you're going to decrease if you don't have, like, serious metabolic derangement, you're going to decrease your fat oxidation. You're going to increase your carbohydrate oxidation. The study that I'm pulling this information from literally discusses drastically up regulating carbohydrate oxidation from 74 grams per day to 398 grams per day. So just by changing, and this was this, again, was an athlete, but just by changing the carbohydrate consumption over, over a period of, you know, a couple days can drastically adjust the amount of carbohydrates that your body oxidizes, and that means actually uses for energy. The other piece is there is it'll they so it's using the carbohydrates for energy, turning them into glycogen. Those carbohydrates have a helpful effect of sparing protein. So in this same study, protein oxidation actually decreased. So and once it decreased to a certain amount, it it didn't completely eliminate it altogether, but it eliminated it large, to a very large extent, and then it kind of maintained itself. So there's, there's like a whole bunch of beneficial effects going on there, with the decreasing protein oxidation and going to glycogen, producing energy. And then the other thing that carbohydrates do, and this one's kind of interesting, is that the amount of glycogen that your body stores is up regulated when you increase your carbohydrate consumption. So your your body has it or is responsive to how much carbs you have coming in. And it's it adaptively adjusts. And this is one of the issues that you get to when you start talking about calories and calories out, because if you just thinking of it as a static equation, you lose the fact that the body adjusts to the different nutrients and how much protein are you taking, and how much carbs are you taking, how much fat you're taking. What are their effects on those hormones? What are their effects on disposal? Is it increasing carb oxidation and increasing glycogen storage. And then, is it also increasing thyroid hormone function? Is it sparing protein so you have more amino acids available for lean tissue development? Is it, you know, is the is thyroid is increasing thyroid upregulation, up regulating heat production, through, through brown fat, whatever it is, there's multiple there's multiple adjustments here. So just something, it's a little bit tangential, but just something interesting to see. But the effect of increasing carbohydrates has, like, multiple effects on the utilization of carbohydrates and adjusting their metabolism. So and another thing to point out here is that if you're coming from that low carb state, and you're coming from that, you know, the Keto state, or the low calorie state, you're going to actually have metabolic adjustments in this period of time, as your body is adapts to this new stimulus. So it may take a couple days, not only if your intestinal tract to upregulate. It's the different the different glucose transporters, glute five, blue two, whatever it is, also up regulate. You know, amylase in your in your saliva, upregulate digestion of the carbohydrates overall. Then your liver can increase its liver glyco the liver glycogen storage. Or your muscles can increase glycogen storage. Your body can start to adjust how it's going to oxidize those carbohydrates, lower the fat oxidation, spare protein. So it's doing a whole host of different things, and that take time to unfold appropriately. And it's it kind of like it. That's why I like the gradual approach, because it allows you to to make that slow adapt, adaptation for a personal anecdote. I remember when we first hopped off our low carb, keto, intermittent fasting, cyclical low carb type of stuff, and we would just go, like, there's days where we would just have binges because we were so carb hungry. And I remember like, I would be like, quite bloated from the amount of carbs I was having during that period of time, and like at currently, that amount of carbs wouldn't bother me at all. But in that period of time where I had been eating keto and low carb and intermittent fasting and having high calorie and low calorie days needing excessive amounts of protein, in fact, compared to carbs when I was when I went to go take in those cars, my body wasn't used to it. They hadn't there had those adaptations to that carbohydrate metabolism had, admit, adjusted. So when I did throw in, like, what was considered high amount of carbs for me at that point, which maybe was like 200 grams, maybe below more than 200 it was like, whoa. Like, that's like, way too much carbs. Like, I'm sleepy, I'm. This. I'm, you know, my my carbohydrate tolerance is terrible. It's like, now I'll do like, 400 grams, 400 what days I've had 500 and like, doesn't phase me, like, I just feel normal. So there's, there's definitely those adjustments. There's definitely an adjustment period. It's important to keep in mind.

Jay Feldman 20:19
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And that's one of those things that I, you know, we've definitely discussed in those weight loss episodes, where, as you mentioned, it takes time for our metabolism to catch up, largely due to, I mean, it can be due to various issues. It could be due to excessive stress metabolism for a long period of time, which suppresses thyroid activity. Especially you see that on a low carb diet, you know, and also the reproductive hormones being suppressed. It can also be due to various gut issues that have come about, nutrient deficiencies, all of those things can, can be issues as far as our capacity for carb oxidation. So, yeah, those are all things to consider. And I do know, and even in some of the carb refeeding studies, they were seeing over 400 grams of of carb oxidation a day, even when having a considerable amount of fat intake too. And I'm pretty sure I've seen studies where on high carb, low fat diets, you're seeing above that as well. So it can definitely get pretty high up there, depending on what our needs are. I mean, which obviously makes sense in in terms of our bodies being able to adjust to the substrate that they're taking it. So

Mike 21:28
I want to point out too that in these studies, there is de novo lipogenesis, so the liver will make some fat from those carbohydrates. And I know like everybody that I or not everybody, but a lot of people that I talk to assume that that is a bad thing, like that's It's so terrible to make fat from carbohydrate. It's like, there's an assumption already there. It's like, at least from my perspective, I think that's physiologic, that's normal. I think you know, if you're going to go on a really low fat diet, your body does require fats for a host of different functions. So if you have an excess of carbohydrate, it's going to try and adjust and create, at least from my perspective, it's an intelligent mechanism. It's going to adjust. And the excess carbohydrate, it's going to move towards fat, whether that fast going to be stored for another point in time, or that fat is going to be stored, or the fat's going to be used for some other process, whatever it is, you know, powering your muscles at rest, whatever, whatever that actual function is. And so, yeah, so I just want to point out that I don't think that the physiologic de novo lipogenesis is a problem. I think a path of pathologic de novo lipogenesis. Maybe it's not a problem, but it's definitely part of a pathology, and it's indicating that there is a problem. So I think that it's important to delineate between having a regular de novo lipogenesis, because you're eating a lot of carbs in general, and you're, you know, you're, you're having an you're overfeeding, you're basically eating over your maintenance calories. And it's not on based on calories and calories out and like a static formula. But if you want to talk about it, calories and calories out in terms of, like, an adaptive fluid formula that's adjusting with all the multitude of factors, then yeah, if you're over feeding, you will probably have some de novo lipogenesis, and you probably will have some storage of fat on the body. I don't think this is what's causing obesity. And I think there's a whole different story behind that, a whole bunch of different physiologic mechanisms. And that's where you draw the line. It's like, okay, that's pathology, and this is, this is physiology, and the physiology, the normal physiology, is fine. The pathology is okay. There's something going on here that's forcing the body, or the bot not forcing the body, but the body is deciding to create an excessive amount of fat because of XYZ condition that it's currently dealing with.

Jay Feldman 23:49
Yeah, I mean, in normal, quote, unquote, normal amounts, you're not seeing very much de novo lipogenesis from carbohydrates. In these overfeeding studies, where you're seeing maybe 1500 calories of in, you know, excess beyond what they were eating before. And, you know, eating 800 plus grams of carbs a day, then you can see considerable amounts of conversion from carbohydrate to fat, which, as you said, is normal, in the same way that if you had huge amounts of fat, you would store it as fat, and that can still be responsible for weight gain if somebody's doing that. And as you said, that's part of why you want to do these things gradually, as opposed to just adding in an extra 1500 calories per day all of a sudden. So yeah, and, and we, you know, we outside of that, I mean, it's just a matter of of you know, there will be excess de novo hypogenesis If you're not using carbohydrates well, for various of, you know, various reasons that would inhibit carboxidation, as we've discussed. So as long as those things are addressed, it shouldn't really be a concern. Is basically what you're saying, which I agree with. Yeah. Yeah, all right. So blonde, Billy blonde asks, Can you talk about calcium in a future episode, it would be nice to know, what are the options for people that are extremely allergic to dairy? I've tried all types of dairy for years now, including raw goat milk, Keffer yogurt, etc. It keeps giving me issues. Actual powder. It gave me digestive upset, is calcium supplementation a big no, no. This is a good question. I think we've gotten a few different questions like this on on some of the YouTube videos. And what I will say is that ideally, we want to be getting calcium from our diet, if we can. And we've talked about this in the past, and I'll linked up. So it's talking about milk and dairy as a whole, where there can be a lot of reasons why someone is not doing well with dairy. There's digestive reasons where a lot of people don't digest the lactose very well because they don't have enough lactase. And that can be tied to low thyroid function. It can be tied to SIBO, which is also tied to low thyroid function. So you can have gut issues that basically prevent you from being able to actually break down the lactose in the dairy well, and that will go on to feed bacteria and increase endotoxin and cause discomfort and all sorts of reactions. So in that case, you want to take out dairy and then work on addressing the gut issues and thyroid issues, and then you might be able to introduce dairy back in and be totally fine. Now, there are also cases where somebody might have issues with other aspects of the dairy. Maybe it has to do more with the proteins, like a reactivity to the whey or casein, which, again, that could be something that can improve over time, as well, as far as our general reactivity toward things, how allergenic foods are that can improve over time, our general reactivity to those things can improve over time. But there are certainly instances where, even in those where even after addressing a lot of the general metabolic things, someone still doesn't do well with dairy. And in that case, it can be tough to get enough calcium. And again, what I would say here is to look back at those other episodes. I'll link to talking about dairy, because there's a progression of things that I would try if someone is not doing well with dairy, starting with trying different types, maybe focusing more on cheeses that are much lower on the lactose, and on from there, but in the context that somebody is not doing well with dairy, regardless of those other issues, we do have needs for calcium, and so you still want to make sure that we're getting enough. And at that point, the question is, what do we do to get calcium? And so a lot of times, one of the suggestions is eggshell calcium, which some people do totally fine with. And it's basically a calcium carbonate from eggshells that you heat up and then you grind it up into a powder. And you know, I'd say, generally, that's fine if, if you're able to have that without any digestive upset or any other symptoms, that would be a good version for for a calcium supplement, as well as other forms of calcium carbonate, which, again, if you have them without any digestive irritation or anything like that, it would be fine. I would recommend, if you are going to have those to have them away from food, because the carbonate, part of the calcium carbonate, will buffer stomach acid. It will decrease stomach acid. So we don't want to be having, for example, a protein heavy meal when we're taking that, it's almost like if we were to take baking soda can buffer that stomach acid and makes it harder to digest protein. So if you are supplementing with a calcium carbonate type supplement, then you want to make sure you're taking that away from food. But those would all be things that can work. And I'll say also that Mike is I know that you don't do particularly well dairy, and so a lot of this applies to your situation. So you've tried some different calcium supplement. Calcium supplements. So I'll let you dig into some details there. As far as what you found works and or has worked for you, and why that might be.

Mike 28:52
Yeah, So as far as the dairy situation goes, I think the the best option for somebody who's having an aller, an allergenic, allergic reaction to dairy. The and the biggest problem I see with dairy isn't as much to lactose. I think a lot of people can actually become okay with lactose over time, because the microbiome will adjust. And in the body, I think adjusts a bit depending on, you know, depending on the individual's genetics towards lactase persistence or anything like that. And then if lactose is the problem, then you still have yogurt. You still have cheese. I mean, Pecorino Romano is absolutely delicious. I'm just gonna put that out there. But I would literally put, if I could eat dairy, I would throw that on any of my any, all of my food, every single meal that, and maybe ketchup, um, as far as, as far as refined taste.

Taste of a toddler haha, the taste of a four year old. But um, I think that the biggest issues I see with people with dairy is the. Reaction to the casein and not tolerating casein well. So there's two types of reactions to the casein. There's one which is with the A one casein, where the casein is actually degraded into, I think it's beta casein, morphin seven, and that is that has a very potent opiate effect, meaning it signals the same type of effect that morphine or Percocet or Dilaudid or heroin all signal. It's not the strength and potency and the direct interactions with the different opiate receptors, whether it's like mu, kappa, whatever the other ones, whatever they are, I don't remember them off the top of my head for this, but as essentially, whatever the interaction is with those receptors, might be a little bit different. So it may have a little bit different so may have a little bit different of a profile, and that opiate effect can cause symptoms like constipation, lowered motivation. If it's really potent, for some people, or they're in like quite a bad state, it can lower dopamine pretty significantly and allow prolactin arise. And then I guess it's plausible that it may induce some type of gyno and very susceptible people overall. I think a lot of that also depends on the state. But so you have that first situation where it's like, you don't tolerate the a one casein very well. Okay, so the solution to that is a two casein. And what that means is moving away from cow milk in most situations and moving towards either a two casein or moving towards a two cows, yeah, a two, well, a Yeah, casein from a two cows, right? Or having, like, goat products. And because, then the reason I say go like, there's camel, there's buffalo, there's all these different things, but goat is probably, like, the most easily available in the supermarkets now compared to, I mean, if you can find camel milk, please send like, you know, if you find a camel milk and Whole Foods, send me a picture. But the I that would be the easiest option, if that is the actual problem. And then the other thing you can do is, if that is a significant problem, moving towards more heavily fermented cheeses with might be able to mitigate that, because the bacteria can pre digest some of the casein protein and perhaps eliminate some of those peptides. So that is, that is an option. Now, if you are actually allergic to casein, like, you have either a like an IGE mediated allergy, which is like a, like a potent allergy, or you have a type four, like hypersensitivity reaction, where it's like a kind of a delayed reaction to it, and it just the reaction is kind of weird. It can give you weird symptoms. Then I would say you could try a cheese that degrades the protein, like pre hydrolyzes it because of the bacterial enzymes and the degradation products. And then if that doesn't work, then I would then, then it would be to basically eliminate dairy. So for me, I have eliminated dairy because I've tested positive for allergies to it, and I get an allergic response. It's quite funny, because I'm actually lactase persistent. So you would think, if I'm lactase persistent, genetically like that, I can digest lactose. No problem that I should technically be able to eat dairy. But, you know, such as life, right? So essentially, in that case, then the next step I would, I would move towards, would be using something like, like, the quote, like any calcium carbonate source. The reason I think both you and I agree with the calcium carbonate source is because the some of the other calciums, like calcium citrate or calcium citrate malate, we've talked in the past that citric acid is definitely problematic, but some of the calcium bonded to some of these organic acids can be quite irritating to the intestine, or the citric acid can be contaminated. So I've never reacted well to those, to those specific types of calcium, but I have reacted well to one specific type of calcium, and that's coral calcium. So the calcium sources, the calcium carbonate sources, that I prefer to look towards, are animal product based calciums. So that could be like an oyster shell, calcium, a scallop shell calcium, a the coral calcium, or the eggshell calcium. Now for the eggshell calcium, specifically, I think a lot of people have problems with it, because it doesn't get ground up very fine, because this is what happens when I did it. I didn't grind it up very fine, and then it was like eating sand. So that was definitely that definitely didn't work. It irritated my intestinal tract, pretty spirit, especially because mine is quite easily irritated still, just based on the story, my past story, and everything, you know, all that type of stuff. But so the the coral calcium. I actually I tried calcium carbonate after that because, you know, it was more finely ground. I thought I have a reaction, and it just bloated me and made me feel uncomfortable. But then I tried coral calcium, which is a calcium of fossilized coral, basically above ground, fossilized coral. And that coral calcium has the calcium in a. Different in like a matrix, essentially. So it's like a matrix of the different proteins and other minerals and the calcium altogether. And I think, for some reason, and then also the corals actually has different types of proteins and compounds in them that they're actually talking about extracting from the coral at this point. I think there's, like, some research talking about extracting heparin from some types of coral, which is interesting. So overall, I think that having the protein in that matrix made it much more easily, easy for me to digest and assimilate, because I responded great to the coral calcium. I haven't had digest fish, had constipation, I haven't had any type of bloating, nothing like that, and so, yeah, so that that was, that was kind of the best option. The reason I didn't go for oyster shell or some of the other ones, is because they can be contaminated with heavy metal. Sometimes depends on where you're getting the oyster shell calcium from. So I would say the best bets, the best calcium as far as supplement goes, would be their eggshell coral calcium, and if you tolerate calcium carbonate, then you know that that's good, but it does have a high kind of Gi side effect for a lot of people. So the next pieces of the next sources of calcium, after dairy, eggshell and coral calcium, or a calcium carbonate, would be something like a brassica vegetable. So that could be and it the there's a couple problems with this, but Nebraska vegetables, if you cook them down pretty well, you make them digestible, like if you boil broccoli or kale or something like that, that can give you an appreciable amount of calcium. The only problem with that is that, for example, if you wanted to get all of your if you wanted to get one gram of calcium a day, you'd have to eat one and a half pounds of cooked kale. So and kale comes with a whole host of goitrogenic compounds, especially if eaten on a consistent basis in large quantities. So it's, I wouldn't say it's an ideal option. That's why I would lean towards the other varieties. And then some of the other options you have available are, if you were to eat like fish that had the bones still in and they were soft enough to eat like sardine sometimes. But again, it's hard to make that the main source of of your calcium, because it can come with large amounts of omega three fatty acids. And despite what you think about omega three fatty acids, large amounts of them in most situations, have not proven to be helpful. Even if you think that they're they're absolutely necessary. So it's kind of like calcium is kind of one of those hard ones. And I would say that the best bet, or the best, my best experience, has been with coral calcium. And then the last thing I want to add, which is, I think it's not contradictory to what you're saying, but if anybody's looked at some of the things I've talked about in terms of setting up a meal where you leave a 15 minute gap between when you have your fruit and your juice versus when you have your your protein and whatnot. I actually like to put the coral calcium in in my juice. So I'll make a smoothie. It'll be like a frozen fruit and some or and some fresh fruit and some juice all together, and then the calcium carbonate from the coral, calcium reacts with the actual juices, because you have a very acidic environment with a very basic substance, and it gives it like a like a nice carbonation. And I haven't found that to impair my digestion very much, and I think perhaps the reaction might help with that. So I generally with people I rec, I work with, I recommend to put in, you know, calcium and magnesium in their juice, if they're gonna and then wait to 15 minutes and then have their meat and their vegetables and whatnot. The other thing I want to talk about here is, I'm pretty sure there's a study showing that when you take in the calcium carbonate and you like, there's a lag time where the stomach actually adjusts to the calcium and it produces more acid. So it may be helpful to have the calcium that 1520, minutes before. And I'm theorizing, because I found that I've been fine doing that, and just i There's a study showing that, and then basically the reaction, like basically creating the carbon dioxide from the calcium carbonate interacting with the acids and the juice. It's all theory, but I kind of just theorized after I was like, Oh, wow, I'm doing fine with coral calcium if I put in my juice 15 minutes before a meal.

Jay Feldman 39:11
Gotcha. So as long as, in this case, it seems like, or at least in your case, as long as it's separated by at least 1520 minutes, it's fine. Well, I should say 1520 minutes prior to having the the protein.

Mike 39:23
Yeah, exactly. If you do it at if you do it after, then you not if you eat your protein, and then you have your calcium and your juice, not only are you buffering your stomach acid with the calcium, you're diluting it with the juice. And it's just, if you want to have a meal, sit in your stomach and feel really full for a period of time. At least my experience, that's a great way to do it.

Jay Feldman 39:44
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, cool. I don't have anything else to add for that one. Yeah. As far as the leafy greens go, and like the brassica vegetables, I know you're saying it's probably not going to be too effective. Far as a primary or sole source of calcium, which I agree with. Of course, it can be helpful from, you know, as a supplemental source for calcium.

Mike 40:10
The greens, just to point out, with Nebraska too, they their absorption is actually quite good for calcium. The problem is, and this is where the kicker comes in, is that you have to wait to basically eliminate the vast majority of the goitrogenic compounds. Is to boil them. And boiling these foods generally leeches a portion of the minerals. So it's kind of like you're kind of at, like it's kind of a loss either way. And as far and as far as other vegetables, any of the vegetables that are super high in oxalic acid and supposedly high in in calcium, like spinach, they are not good sources of calcium. They do not absorb well, they do not get incorporated well, and the oxalic acid can actually cause issues for sensitive people. So I actually recommend, in most cases, to stay away from from those foods, those types of leafy greens, if you're trying to eat them for calcium or magnesium or zinc, because a lot of the minerals in there just get bound up and you they're relatively minimal compared to what you would get from other sources.

Jay Feldman 41:18
Which would fall which leafy greens would fall into each category.

Mike 41:22
So in Nebraska family, you have broccoli, kale, Brussels sprouts, collard greens, bok choy, I think kohlrabi, and yeah, spinach. I forget the name the actual like classification for spinach, but it's in a separate family, and so there's spinach, and I think swiss chard are actually in, like in that other family, and they're super high in oxalate. So the oxalate, that's that oxalic acid, will bind up, not only the calcium, but also the magnesium, manganese, Inc, and it's just, it's kind of a loss with those. I mean, they may have some beneficial effects in the microbiome, like, but I wouldn't say that they're like, a super nutrient dense option overall. And there's quite a few studies basically showing that the oxalic acid isn't good for for maintaining, like, absorbing and using the calcium, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And again. That doesn't mean that, like, there isn't some benefits to spinach, if, for certain people that tolerate, I just think that it's not a great source of nutrients. How people like to promote it as because, because of the digestive I guess that the more of a binder than a digestive inhibitor. Plus, I've had a lot of people have kind of bad reactions to the oxalic acid, so some of the high oxalic acid foods, like will give them joint discomfort and things like that.

Jay Feldman 42:50
Yeah, yeah, I've seen that. I've seen that as well. All right, we're going to wrap up this episode there. If you did enjoy it, please leave a like or comment if you're watching on YouTube and if you're listening elsewhere, please leave a review or five star rating on iTunes. All of those things really do a lot to help support the podcast and are very much appreciated. And today's episode was a Q and A episode. 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 feel free to leave those in the comments. If you're watching on YouTube to check out the show notes for today's episode, you can 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 are struggling with any low energy symptoms, maybe those are related to the symptoms that we discussed today, as far as weight gain when adding in carbohydrates to your diet, or maybe you're having trouble digesting dairy or having trouble getting some calcium sources into your diet. Or maybe you're dealing with any other low energy symptoms like fatigue or joint pain or brain fog or insomnia or hormonal imbalances, or if you're dealing with any other low energy symptoms or any chronic health issues or conditions, whether those are autoimmune conditions or diabetes or heart disease or any other chronic health issues, 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 symptoms and conditions are really caused by a lack of energy, and I'll also walk you through the main things that you can do from a diet and lifestyle perspective 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.