Jay Feldman 0:05
Welcome to episode 73 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 will be part one of a short series where we will be refuting nutrition with Judy's article titled thoughts on the repeat diet a review, and in today's episode in particular, we'll be discussing why our brains favor glucose as their fuel source, why fat is less energetically favorable as a fuel compared To carbohydrates. The problem with reducing the bioenergetic view to the quote, repeat diet the amount of carbohydrates our bodies can handle before storing them as fat, whether consuming carbohydrates causes Alzheimer's disease, and whether the raising of our blood sugar and the production of insulin is wasteful and harmful. Today's episode was inspired by a listener question. If you have any questions you'd like us to answer on a future episode, you can send those into Jay at Jay Feldman wellness.com that's Jay at Jay Feldman wellness.com or if you're watching on YouTube, feel free to leave those questions in the comments to check out the show notes for today's episode, you can head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/podcast where I'll be linking to these studies and articles and anything else that we referenced throughout today's episode. And if you are dealing with any low energy symptoms, maybe you're coming from a carnivore based diet, and you're dealing with chronic cravings and hunger or low energy or joint pain or poor sleep insomnia. Maybe you're dealing with various digestive symptoms or brain fog or low libido or other reproductive or hormonal imbalances. Maybe you're dealing with weight gain or having trouble putting on muscle or losing body fat, or if you're dealing with any other chronic health issues, whether those are autoimmune conditions or other chronic health conditions like heart disease or diabetes, or if you're dealing with any other low energy symptoms, 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 lack of energy, and I'll 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 this article by Judy Cho was actually brought to our attention from a Q A somebody had asked a question. It was Ben he had asked, or he had said, I think it would be interesting if you could debunk some of the points made in this article from a prominent card of carnivore advocate on your podcast. And this article is titled thoughts on repeat, a review, and it's by Judy Cho from nutrition with Judy, she's a carnivore, low carb advocate, nutritional therapist, and yeah, I figured it would be good to take some time to discuss our thoughts on the article, and some of the points made because it's pretty relevant a to people coming from carnivore and who are curious about repeats, views, or just in general, these, you know, I think it's helpful to to kind of have an understanding of the physiology and some of these potential counterpoints, more or less. And I do want to make it clear that none of this is personal toward Judy at all. We were just discussing the points made in the article, just the content of the article and yeah, just keeping it about that. And I do want to say as well, before we dig into some of the details here, is that she did have a disclaimer at the top of her article, which I think is worth mentioning. So she said, this is my opinion based on preliminary research of Ray Pete's body of work and my client experience in a clinical setting on thyroid health. This is not to disrespect Ray Pete, the person I've not read probably even a fraction of the research and writing he has done. And to that I can say that my opinions may not correctly depict his point of view, which I think was is a helpful for us to know going into this is that these this is coming from someone who does not have a deep understanding of of Ray P's point of view, or the bioenergetic view of health. And that definitely does, I think it definitely becomes clear as we're as we go through this article, and it also explains part of the reasoning. Were some of the arguments made in this article, which the points here tend to be very much surface level counter arguments, and in this article in particular, there's no real substantiation with any sort of evidence or references. There's also a lot of conflation of different ideas, some straw mans that are created. A lot of kind of correlative ideas, like a correlation with the assumption of causation, a lot of kind of presumptions, and several there's a lot of appeals toward, you could say authority, I mean, just a lot of things that are not actually based in the physiology of what's going on. And I think probably part of that is because that the understanding of these things from the bioenergetic perspective is not really there so and just like just as a couple of examples of what I'm describing, we'll talk about details here, but I just want to pull a few quotes just to kind of support that, or as evidence of this, is there's some quotes, like she says, too much glucose is not good for anyone. And another quote, she says, so if we are sugar burners, what does that do to our heart and brain that prefer fat as a fuel source? Could this be a cause of Alzheimer's? After all, they are starting to call Alzheimer's type three diabetes, and then the the last one is just I'm going to mention here is that we know by now that if we are sugar burners, all the fat we consume mostly gets stored as fat. So they're just claims like this throughout the article that are not substantiated, are not really based in any sort of actual physiological reasoning, and are just made as assumptions and are appealed like there's an appeal here, that we all just know these things to be true, regardless of where they're actually coming from. And so we'll so we'll talk through some of the actual physiology there and why a lot of these sorts of statements are not accurate. And I think part of the reason why there's a lot of these like that, they're these sorts of arguments are made in this context, is because, from the carnivore space, I think there's a lot more comfort in comparing carnivore versus, like veganism or plant based and so there's a lot of resorting toward like anti plant based concepts here, as opposed, you know, and and that really has very little to do with the bioenergetic view, which accounts for that. It accounts for a lot of those issues with a vegan diet, for example. So, yeah, I mean, it's relatively weak and anti it's relatively weak in in, in any substantial argument against bioenergetic view. But regardless of all that, let's, let's dig into some of the details here, unless there's anything you want to add prior Yeah, just doing that.

Mike 7:41
I want to say that I don't this isn't an argument against the bioenergetic point of view, or even an argument against any of Pete's works. It's an argument against some sort of filtered cliches about Pete's works, or the bioenergetic point of view. It doesn't get into depth about any of this particular elements. It doesn't address anything very specifically. It's, it's extremely surface level, but it's not even of the actual content. So it's like, the it's not refuting, it's, it's the whole article is essentially a large straw man, because the ideas discussed aren't like, they're very, very loosely the ideas that Pete has discussed, and a lot of them are interpretations of Pete's ideas that have been put out into the diet cultures. And the other thing I want to point out here is that this is in these different niche areas of carnivore versus paleo versus keto versus veganism versus fruitarianism. They're all trying to argue a diet, or some like some prescriptive approach that is relatively dogmatic about pieces and is not very nuanced in its understanding of things, and have established spheres around them that are perpetuating these like they're essentially dogmas, whereas the from Pete's work specifically, it is not a set paradigm, that this is just what it is and you just follow that. It's not a dogma. It's a living, breathing, organic, unfolding approach that is context based, which if you're going to address Pete's work at all. You have to first understand the point of context, and then the nuance within that context, and then at the at the other in conjunction with that, there's also the idea of principles, as opposed to, like all carbs are bad. It's kind of like understanding the actual physiologic principles behind the oxidation of carbohydrates, and then the different context with which that has relevance, and then its importance within those different contexts, and then trying to understand and make an argument from there. So it's like it's making an argument, or it's not even making an argument. It's a series of observations based on understandings of things, and then trying to create the best possible. Approach from those observations, whereas the other carnivore, paleo, keto, plant based types of spheres are trying to, at least in my opinion, graft these, I preset ideas onto reality and then somehow make them work. It's very, I think it's a this, the parrot. It's difficult, if you're from that frame of mind, from that sphere to make arguments about a bio energetic point of view, because the entire meta paradigm of the bioenergetic point of view is completely antithetical to the meta paradigms of some of these other communities. And again, this is specifically around repeats work. And it's not around the ray Pete forum. It's not around the ray Pete Facebook group. Those are all their own separate entities that are loosely associated with Ray Pete's ideas. And a lot of a lot of the information in those areas doesn't really get to the depth into the core of Ray's ideas. So they're not representations. If you want to really understand Ray's work and what Ray says and what he talks about, you have to go and read his work and listen to him speak directly. And it's not just one podcast. It's endless numbers of podcasts and time, because the breadth of his work is extensive. And I just want to quote Pete here really quick. It's not going to be a perfect quote. It's actually more of a paraphrase, but I think at one point, I think this was with Danny. Danny had asked Ray, like, what like, like to establish some type of guidelines. And Ray's response was something along the lines of trying to establish guidelines. Like, from Ray is like, trying to like, like, have a lever in a swamp, and the it's the point there is, it's, like, with Ray's stuff, it's constantly unfolding. So there's, it's gonna, it's gonna be very difficult to establish, like, hard line guidelines with things. So it's kind of a difficult argument between the two spheres, a difficult, difficult contrast between the two spheres.

Jay Feldman 12:01
Yeah, absolutely. And in her defense, she does kind of disclaim that, right, like she acknowledges that she is not aware of the or doesn't have a deep understanding of that depth, and that shows and so, yeah, I mean, those are all totally valid points. And I think you brought up a good point too that I wanted to mention as well, which is that you do see this. I guess what I was, I was thinking of it as kind of like a top down versus bottom up, when you're looking at the various diets, like the various kind of dogmatism there, versus the bioenergetic view where. And I'm sure every everybody who is in whatever way of thinking they're in probably thinks this. So take it for what it's worth. But I think often, when you're looking at something like carnivore or veganism, you're starting with some sort of principle and so this is what I would call top down. You're starting with some sort of major principle assumption. So for carnivore, let's say it's the assumption that our ancestors all ate mostly animal foods, or something along those lines, and then kind of building things down from there. Or for veganism, it's like animal foods are toxic and create acidity, when the argument is, yeah, they ferment rot in your gut and...

Mike 13:10
Heart disease and cancer and whatever else.

Jay Feldman 13:12
Right, so there are these assumptions that are made, as opposed to what I would say. And again, maybe this is looking at things through kind of rose colored glasses, because this is the side of things that we that we personally think and align with at the time or at this current moment. But I mean, I think that the bioenergetic approach is much more bottom up, much more based in physiological principles, and then gets built up from there. And that describes exactly why it's so difficult to argue against it on a surface level, it just doesn't make sense, because the surface level points are so far removed from the actual point of the perspective, like what actually defines the perspective, or what actually the perspective is built on?

Mike 13:58
And yeah, yeah. I just want to give an example for what you're saying, and just quick, just to show what you mean by bottom up versus the top down. So as you said, with the top down, for like, carnivores, all plant foods have toxins, and our ancestors ate mostly animal foods. And then vegan is you have the animal foods cause XYZ disease they brought in the colon, whatever it is, but from like from the bio energetic perspective, it's the the and this is why it's hard to categorize the work, because it's so broad, looking at so many different things. But it An example would be you look at the effect of calcium and vitamin D and magnesium on parathyroid hormone, and then you also look at the effect of parathyroid hormone on the metabolic metabolism and on the vasculature. And then the next step is okay. Parathyroid hormone can cause vascular calcification over an extended period of time. It can cause inflammation. It can basically decrease your bone mass. It has it synergizes with other known negative hormones and then vitamin D cow. Museum magnesium all help to lower parathyroid hormone and keep it at levels that have been shown to not cause those problems. So then the principle from that is okay, consuming adequate amount of calcium, consuming adequate amount of vitamin D and consuming Adam and adequate amount of magnesium can help lower parathyroid hormones. So we can lower the chance, the risk, the possibility of developing this vascular calcification. So it's looking at all of these different pieces and then trying to figure out, you know, how they all work together. But it's the one thing that's important, and this separates it from the biohackers that we currently have now, is that it comes from the the the general, central point to the whole piece is that metabolism, like optimizing metabolism, is key. And it's raised hypothesis that energy and structure are interdependent at every single level. So you have this overarching kind of, I guess the easiest way I see it is like the sun that is providing all the light, or the lens with which you're looking at everything, and shining the shining the light on what you're trying to uncover is that idea that energy and structure interdependent upon every level, and then afterwards you're looking all the different pieces are you're figuring out through there, and that it serves as kind of A guidance system for you, as opposed to, like, having this idea of all carbs are bad, or all plant foods are bad. It the principles, like the the overarching lens with which you look at things through is a different level of understanding of, I guess, the situation, instead of just all these things are bad, it's kind of like what we're trying, what's the ultimate type of goal, and what what's provides the outcomes that you want is going to be optimizing energy metabolism. So I think that's the real big difference with the bioenergetic approach versus when you get into the actual these other approaches.

Jay Feldman 16:58
Yeah, absolutely. And so you gave that example regarding parathyroid hormone and and vitamin D, magnesium, all of those different factors. And as you said, that's a level up, or several levels up even from that, from that initial point of energy and metabolism, and so that being kind of the the ground that we're building on. And then as you drew from, there is the effects of parathyroid on or parathyroid hormone on our metabolic function, and what that represents and all. So you did a good job of tracing it back. But I think the key here, and this is what we talked about in episode one of the podcast, and why we started there, is because it does come back to that energy component, the interaction between energy and structure and how energy is the core of our being, of our health, of our function. And so when you're looking at the question of of whether carbs or fats are better, or whether you're looking or when you're looking at whether fish oil is a good idea to take, or anything else, which these are all things that are brought up in this art in this article, which is why I mentioned them, we need to like from the bioenergetic view. You need to consider these things from the energetic perspective. First, how do they affect us on that on that level of energy production or availability, and build up from there. And that is not done throughout this article at all, which is why it ends up being somewhat surface level and missing basically the entire perspective. But that doesn't mean that there's not surface level arguments that are worth discussing here.

Mike 18:29
Yep, yeah. I don't have anything to add to that. Yeah. Great.

Jay Feldman 18:32
Perfect. So another thing that so one thing that Judy does in beginning, which is, which is another kind of point to add in her part, or something that I think was an important thing to acknowledge, at least to some extent, was this concept that there is no real repeat diet. So do you want to start us off there?

Mike 18:55
So the quote I have from Judy's is from his large body of work. Avid fans have essentially made a list of foods that make the repeat diet. Since there's no definitive list, his avid followers can easily remove some foods and selectively pick and choose from his teachings. Fair enough. And so she that's period. And afterwards, she says, fair enough. And then in parentheses, she writes, bulletproof excuse, but fair enough. And this, I want to, I we wanted to touch on this, because this is, this kind of, is an example of what we were getting at just in the beginning there where it's not, there's not a diet in the sense that, like, you need to eat these foods, and that's it, it. You know, you need to avoid all all plant foods. You need to avoid all animal foods, and just making these kind of blanket characterizations about what you need to do the the bioenergetic perspective is you have the starting idea with Gray's hypothesis that energy and structure are interdependent upon every level. And then you try to look in the research and in your experiences and. Your environment, and just like be aware and observe what's going on and then make adjustments and try to understand how these different things interplay and how they interact. And this is the point that Ray discusses often with context, where different things are different components or pieces or inputs into a system, adjust the system dependent upon what that system's context is. So it's about understanding these different principles in their different contexts, and how to apply them with the overarching lens of energy and structure interdependent at every level. And that's why this isn't a diet. That's why there's no repeat book like The Paleo, whatever, whatever paleo care. I don't know any other paleo books, whatever it is like where there's just, this is what you need to do. It's kind of like it. It's an unfolding process. And raise, at least from what I've seen from way Ray the perspective, is about trying to determine that. And again, this is my interpretation of Ray's work, but it's trying to determine that context for these different components, and then, like looking at these different pieces and trying to search for, I guess, like some levels of objective truths in the context of which those objective truths make sense. For example, the parathyroid hormone. Another example is like carbohydrates, lowering cortisol, or like the polyunsaturated fats in large amounts inside the tissues, leading to oxidative stress. Like these are observable phenomenon, consistently and and so essentially, it's like you see the effects, you see how how it's developing, and then you make you. You make extensions from there, and then you experiment with it, and you play with it, and you see what that means in different contexts for you. And then you kind of develop your own paradigm. And it's so like the peat perspective, for me is, and from my understanding, is more about trying to determine the principles and trying to understand these overarching principles, which include the idea of context and nuance, and include the ideas of individuality, and include the ideas and the importance of energy, and like the rays hypothesis, and then making, like, taking these, all these various lenses, and then making my decisions through that lens, instead of a lens of, okay, I'm not going to have plant foods because they're toxic. And just like writing off the whole piece. Now I just before, before I before I finish here, I just want to say I know that this perspective is more difficult to put into practice, to some extent, because of the level of nuance, where it's so much easier to just cut out all plant foods and like, call, okay, that's it. It's the plant foods in the short run, at least. But I think in the long run, it's actually easier, even though it may feel more difficult because there's more effort than just cutting out all plant foods. But I think in the long run, the ultimate and easiest way to through any process is through your own awareness and through your own experimentation and trying to figure out the nuance of what works for you, instead of trying to find some blanket, let's just cut out all plant plant foods, because plant foods are toxic, and our ancestors ate the ATE animal foods, whatever it is. And the other piece I want to add here with Ray's perspective is there's not really paradoxes inside the perspective, there's just pieces and relationships that haven't been fully explored and discovered yet. So while something may seem like a paradox in the current moment, when you have to the goal is to try and rectify the relationship so it doesn't so it's not paradoxical. Instead of just completely discounting it from your your mentality. It's about trying to literally figure out, okay, what piece Am I missing here that explains this relationship?

Jay Feldman 23:49
Yeah, and so what you're saying there's, it's a perspective that should encompass the result of any dietary practice or supplement or lifestyle intervention, whatever it is, it should be able to explain those things. What this is not is a template to say that this is what you do. And again, this is an extension of what we were discussing earlier. And I think the reason why it's worth mentioning here is because there's a little bit of dismissiveness here, right? Like this is not, this is a bulletproof excuse like that. There's no repeat diet. But it's not an excuse. The point is that the bioenergetic view, which I'm kind of saying, is the same as, like, Ray Pete's perspective, which, you know, and that's kind of my, again, my interpretation there. But as you said, like his main principles are basically that that he's described things like the idea that energy and structure are interdependent at every level. So, but again, the point here is that this is a perspective. This is a understanding of physiological principles. This is not a diet. The diet is an extension. Anything that you would do would be an extension based on those principles. And as you said, that allows for context and nuance, and it also explains by someone, why someone would do really well on a carnivore diet for a period of time, or why someone might do well on a vegan diet. For a period of time. It's not saying that there are it's not just saying that, like, X food is bad, so don't eat it. Like, there's way more to it than that.

Mike 25:12
Yeah. It's about, it's it's about getting into, to, to a large extent, getting into the grays and trying to stay out of, like, the black and white types of thinking around things. So that's and any the pieces within Ray's perspective that are that people tend to think of as black and white, and we'll get into some of those. The reason there could like they're not necessarily black and white, it's you have when you're looking at the the thinking that Ray is is considering it's not like, if I'll give an example for something like fish oil, when you take a study on fish oil and you see some type of benefit in the sense of, like, oh, it lowered inflammatory markers, or or whatever it is, it's what is the context of how it's doing that. And so when Ray looks at the con, at least from what I've heard him speak. And then, even without having to categorize Ray just from like my understanding of what I see the context is like when you look at a study where they provide fish oil to rats and it protects them from ulcerative colitis, but they subsequently develop sepsis afterwards. Then, yes, they didn't have an inflammatory response, but the lack of inflammatory response was from some degree of immunosuppression, which is not in the long run, is not the ideal way to go about lowering the inflammatory response, especially when you consider the other options available at our like the other options at our disposal to lower the inflammatory response. So it's about figuring it's about navigating those pieces and figuring those pieces out, and like understanding things on not only a micro time scale and context, but putting that inside a larger context, and adjusting the time frame with which that context is is considered. So it's okay, what's, what's the long term play of continuous consumption of large amount of fish oil over time. What? What is the change with that? What is it, in the grand scheme of the body systems, overall, in terms of metabolism and energy production and whatnot, instead of just focusing on the inflammation or just focusing on the lowering of triglycerides, like, for example, as we discussed in the fatty liver podcast, when we talked about fish oil, lower triglycerides by causing oxidative stress inside the hepatocytes, so they couldn't adequately produce triglycerides and LDL cholesterol, which is not ideal. That's not a good that's not a good mechanism of action. So it when you start to have a broader context with which to view these things, and you can zoom in and out of the context to whatever level is appropriate, and zoom in and out over the different time scales, then that gives you a much richer understanding of something. Instead of just there's this PubMed article that shows that fish oil lowers, lowers, like triglycerides and LDL cholesterol, so therefore it must be good. That's it's like, Okay. How is it doing that? And even in that fish oil study, where they cause the oxidative stress inside the parasite, the researchers perspective was narrow, to the extent that they were saying, How can we use fish oil so that we can have this effect in the liver but not have oxidative stress outside in other areas of the body, like...

Jay Feldman 28:24
Right, we only want to cause it in the liver.

Mike 28:26
Yeah, it's such an absurd perspective on in, like, the overall context that's and that's for lack of having the larger, different degrees of context.

Jay Feldman 28:35
Yeah, and you had mentioned the time scale, and the time scale is a way that you can see those mechanisms play out. But the real key there is, how is, as you and you mentioned this too, but how is the fish oil causing that anti inflammatory effect? And then, as you said, when you see the downstream, the effects down the line, the long term effects, that elucidates that. It shows that it was doing it by immunosuppression. It wasn't doing it by some beneficial effect, or same thing with the liver side, you know, non alcoholic fatty liver disease, and causing oxidative stress. And then you see the effects of the polyunsaturated fats in the progression of fatty liver disease. And when you're looking at a big picture, it doesn't seem too beneficial. So, yeah, those are great examples. And the rest of this article we're going to be talking through is basically examples like that. So with that in mind, I'm going to jump into those that. Okay, yeah, go ahead. Okay, so Judy's, I'm pretty sure the first section, or one of the earlier sections, discusses, well, it's titled energy source and cellular energy, although, in reality, it doesn't discuss anything on the energetic level, has nothing to do with energy production in any sort of detailed way. It just kind of skims over and makes broad assumptions, kind of like I described earlier. And so I'm going to share some of those quotes, but the first of these having to do with basically sugar or glucose oxidation versus fat oxidation. Sugar burning versus carb burning. There's our sugar burning versus fat burning. So. And a few of the claims that she makes here and why they don't really hold much water. So one of the things that she's discussing in terms of energy, more or less, goes into sugar versus fat burning, or carb oxidation versus fat oxidation. And she states the brain is the most energy demanding organ in the body and requires fat for survival. Too much glucose is not good for anyone. One reason is that both the heart and brain prefer fat as their fuel source. In fact, all cells require fat for proper structure and functioning. So I mean, obviously the evidence here is kind of circular. This idea that too much glucose is not good for anyone. It's just kind of the assumption that's thrown in there. And then a couple other I mean, there's this assumption that the brain requires fat for survival, which isn't necessarily not true, but it's not actually discussing anything in terms of what the fat like, like, what the brain is using for fuel at that point. And then she says that one reason is that both the heart and brain prefer fat as their fuel source. There's no source here, and we're going to talk about the details of why this is absolutely not true for the brain and is mostly true for the heart. And then she says all cells require fat for proper structure and functioning, which is true. I mean, we require all nutrients, like, like, all micronutrients, all macronutrients are required for our bodies to function. But that doesn't really say anything about their whether we want to be using carbs or fats as as a primary fuel. It's kind of No, no real, uh, argument there. But I did want to talk about the heart and brain preferring fat as a fuel. It's something that she basically uses as her or that in this article, is used as the kind of main argument for why we want to be using fat as a fuel. And it just kind of like continues to circle back to this idea, and in terms of the heart, it is true that the heart generally runs on mostly fatty acids, not entirely, though, typically, the heart's using about 70 to 90% or getting about 70 to 90% of its total energy from fat, and then the rest would be supplied by glucose. So it's like 10 to 30% one thing that's interesting to note there, though, is with this idea that fat burning must be better in general, because some organ uses it as its fuel. It's interesting that the there's a this piece of evidence that in diabetes, which is a situation of poor glucose metabolism, the heart is using less glucose and more fat as a fuel. Like the heart is preferring fat as a fuel even further. And you tend to see that systemically, where the situations where the body tends to prefer fat as a fuel are like degenerative states. So it's again, this is not necessarily directly evidence against it, but it's just interesting that you want to be incur like the idea that you would want to encourage fat utilization as the as the main fuel is is ironic. I guess you could say, considering that that's typically what happens in metabolic disease, is using fat as a fuel and basically reflecting that same state. And there's a reason for that, which we've discussed many times, in terms of why we want to use carbs as a fuel in addition to fats, more or less. Link to those episodes, but we'll talk about some of those details now, because it becomes particularly relevant with the brain. So the brain is made up of largely lipids. There's a lot of cholesterol in there, and there are fats in there for structural purposes, but the brain really does not use fat for fuel almost at all. Maybe very like there are very tiny amounts, very particular instances, but the brain pretty much universally, cannot use fats as a fuel. And she says this many times throughout the article, and I just don't, I guess there's just like some confusion as far as what's actually going on there, but largely the brain is using one of two fuels. It's either using glucose or it's using ketones, and ketones are not fat, so just to make that clear, and ketones are only produced when there's a lack of carbohydrates and we're under a lot of stress. But even when that does happen, only at absolute most, like at an absolute maximum, our brain can do 60% of or get 60% of its energy requirements from ketones. So it's still at the absolute minimum, like if you're fully starving or on a full low carb diet, which is, you know, those states mimic each other, then the brain is still using at least carbohydrates for at least 40% of its energy requirements. But when you're not under starvation, you're not producing ketones, it's using glucose and carbohydrate metabolism for basically 100% of its energy production. And there's really great study discussing this in the title the of the study or the article, is one. Why does brain metabolism not favor burning of fatty acids to provide energy, reflections on disadvantages of the use of free fatty acids as fuel for brain, or maybe for the brain. And I mean, it says very clearly right there that fat is not used for fuel. I don't know where that's coming from, but they have a few quotes here that I want to share that I think very clearly explain why the brain does not use fat as a fuel, and the larger context here in terms of energy, which is that why fats are much worse at producing energy, at least when we have high energy demands, and they're much less efficient at doing so. So they say here, we draw attention to three particular problems, and this is problems for the brain using phasor fuel. First is ATP generation linked to beta oxidation of fatty acids, demands more oxygen than glucose, thereby enhancing the risk for neurons to become hypoxic. So point they're saying there is just that. In order to use phasic fuel, you need more you need more oxygen. Second beta oxidation of fatty acids generates superoxide, which, taken together with the poor antioxidative defense and neurons, causes severe oxidative stress. That's point two, and this is going to be a key one, which is that in order to use fats for fuel to produce energy, it produces much more reactive oxygen species and oxidative stress. This is due to a difference in the FADH two to NADH ratio that's produced when you burn or oxidize fats, as if you will, compared to carbohydrates, or when you oxidize carbohydrates, you have much lower FADH two to NADH ratio, and that leads to much less reactive oxygen species produced at the electron transport chain. We've talked through this in a little more detail before, and I have several articles discussing it, so I'll link back to those. But for those of for people listening who don't understand exactly what that means, it's basically just that, because of the differences in the way that carbs and fats are burned as a fuel, fats are much less efficient. They produce much less oxygen or much more oxidative stress per ATP that's produced. And I'll come back to this, I think later on, or we'll come back to this later on. But a lot of times, people will cite, when they're saying that fat is better, they'll say, cite that for every gram of fat, you can produce way more ATP than glucose. But what they don't mention at all is that the rate of ATP production has nothing to do with the amount of potential ATP per gram, and has everything to do with how well we can oxidize that fuel, how rapidly we can do so, and the amount of ATP we can produce without oxidative stress. Because when we have more oxidative stress, it's incredibly damaging to the cellular structure. All those fats that she talks about that are in that structure, among other things, proteins and DNA and all that. And so we can't have too much oxidative stress. And when we do, we have to shut down energy production because it's so dangerous. It's basically like a a car engine that is just putting out a ton of pollutants into the air and ton of exhaustion. Very inefficient.

Mike 37:57
You're also, you're also comparing a six carbon molecule to a multi carbon, like, more than six carbon molecules. So, like, if you want to compare apples to apples, compare apples to apples. Like, it's, it's a very different it's a very different comparison,

Jay Feldman 38:13
Right. One, the important point here is, again, that the weight of those molecules is irrelevant to how much ATP can be produced at any one time, and they acknowledge this in this article. That now I'll get to that quote in a moment. And moment. But yeah, so because of this situation, and well, I'll continue reading these quotes, because it becomes clear that, obviously, fat is a very inefficient fuel relative to glucose, which doesn't mean we don't ever want to be using fat as a fuel. It's just great for when we have very low energy demands, and it's much worse, clearly, for producing energy, at least producing a lot of energy. So the and so this is their third point, which is that they say the rate of ATP generation based on adipose tissue derived fatty acids is slower than that using blood glucose as a fuel. And they did kind of put a couple stipulations in there, which has to do with where you're getting the fuel source from, but, but they'll explain in a moment as well that that's only so relevant. So they talk as well about the there's a lack of fatty acid oxidizing enzymes in the brain, which is just a suggestion that the brain is developed not to be using fats as a fuel. Most of the enzymes are geared toward losing glucose oxidation. And again, there's a reason for this. As Judy mentioned, our brains are extremely energy demanding. They only weigh about three to 4% of our total body weight, and they use as much as 20 to 25% of our total body's energy every single day. And as such, they need to produce a lot of energy, and they and they're, you could say, relatively fragile, where they don't have a lot of defense against oxidative stress. And because of that, they need to use the fuel sources that are not going to produce a lot of oxidative stress, and that's going to be glucose or ketones, if you're in an extremely physiologically stressed state where you're producing them, but the last quota. Want to share from this article states, quantitatively, it's been estimated that the rate of ATP generation based on the carbohydrate oxidation is in the range of point five, one, 2.68 millimoles per second per kilogram of body mass. In comparison, the rate of ATP generation based on tri triacylglycerol fueling is approximately two to three fold lower at 0.24 millimoles per second per kilogram of body mass. So just to translate that, the important point here is basically that the production of ATV from fat is two to three times lower rate wise, the rate of ATP production from fat is two to three times lower than carbohydrate oxidation, than the rate of at production from carbohydrate oxidation. So very clearly, again, just exemplifying that if you want to be producing a lot of energy in a very efficient way, glucose needs to be the fuel, and that's why your brains use glucose or ketones, which, again, are oxidized very similarly to glucose and very a similarly to fats. Fats, it's it's very clear that fats produce a lot of oxidative stress. Don't produce a lot of ATP per rate of reactive oxygen species production. So this directly flows into a couple other quotes I want to share of hers before we before I'll let you add in some points Mike, which is that she says we know by now that if we are sugar burners, all the fat we consume mostly gets stored as fat. The body rarely accesses the fat, and whatever glucose we don't use up also gets stored as fat. And then this next quote kind of ties in directly, and she says, if you eat this way, make sure you're metabolically healthy and that you're cycling between sugar burning and fat burning. Otherwise you'll only be able you'll only be using the sugar as energy and store away most of the good fats you're consuming. One way to check this is by checking your ketones occasionally. If you can never register if you never register ketones, I'd be concerned if you're eating lots of carbohydrates, over 200 grams daily, while also eating a high fat diet, such as eating rib eye would be considered a high fat in this context. So again, these things are so far removed from anything related to the bioenergetic perspective, for the most part. But what I wanted to discuss here was that this idea that you can first off, only be burning carbohydrates or fat, this is something that is spread in the kind of repeat sphere as well, as well as all of the low carb spheres. But our bodies can be running at both fuels at the same fuels at the same time in different tissues, potentially even in the same tissues. In other words, your muscles can be oxidizing fat as a fuel at rest, and your brain can be oxidizing carbohydrates as fuel. And so you can be burning both at the exact same time in different areas. And this is there's some studies also looking at what's called the respiratory quotient, which deter which is a representation of how much fat versus carbs you're oxidizing, and food quotient, which is the ratio of fat versus carbs in the food and proteins involved there too. But we're not going to talk about that as much. It's not really used as major fuel. And what they basically find is that the respiratory quotient, meaning the percentage of fat versus carbs that you're burning, generally reflects the food quotient, the amount of fat carbs what you're eating. So this idea that if you eat certain amounts of carbs, you're never going to burn fat is not true. It's just blatantly not true. And instead, if you're, for example, eating a diet that between fat and carbs has, let's say, 40% fat and 60% carbs. You're going to be burning about 40% fat and 60% carbs. You're not going to automatically store all the fat you take in as fat. It's just there's no basis for for that presumption. And by the same token, too, if you're burning mostly fats and you're taking carbs, it doesn't mean that you store every single gram of carbohydrate. Of carbohydrate that you take in as fat, either. And I don't know there's some so many assumptions built in here. One that I also see a lot is that when you're taking in fat, the assumption is that, or when you're only fat burning, the assumption is that you can't actually also store fat as if it's only a one way pathway, but you do like all the extra fat that you take in also gets stored in fat as fat until it gets oxidized or released or used as something else. One other thing I wanted to mention again, coming back to this what seems like a misunderstanding between fuel uses and maybe not understanding fat versus ketone production or usage as a fuel is she mentions, or it's mentioned in the article, that one way to check how much sugar versus fats you're using is by checking your ketones. And if you never register ketones, the the assumption here is that you're not oxidizing fat, so then you shouldn't be eating high fat. And ketone like ketone production is not irrelevant to fat burning, but does not say anything about how much fat versus carbs you're burning. You can be burning a large amount of fat and not be producing any ketones at all, and that's just because ketones are only produced when you have so few carbohydrates that you basically can't supply enough. Fuel for the brain that you then have to drive ketone production. So if, for example, let's say your baseline carbohydrate requirements were 150 or even 200 grams, which is more likely, if you're taking 200 grams and also 200 200 grams of carbohydrates and also 200 grams of fat, you're going to be burning a lot of fat, and you might not be producing any ketones, because you have enough carbohydrates, for the most part, to supply what's needed there. So, yeah, there's really no basis for those ideas.

Mike 45:30
Yeah, there's no, there's no basis for for the statement at all. Just, it's so I just want to touch on a piece here specifically about the idea of, like, if you have too much sugar, it's going to make you get fat. Or if you the body doesn't require that much sugar overall, in general. And so I'm going to read quotes here. One of the things the quotes that I have here is the first one is in the adult brain, neurons have the highest energy demand, requiring continuous delivery of glucose from blood in humans, the brain accounts for about 2% of the body weight, but consumes 20% of glucose derived from energy, making the main consumer. So it's what the and then they give us an amount of glucose consumed by the brain. So we have 5.6 milligrams of glucose per 100 grams of human brain tissue is required per minute. Now, the average brain weight of the of an adult male is about 3013 136 grams, and for an adult females, about 1198 grams. So we'll go with the human male, and we'll assume that it's Jay's brain. So we're going to be at, we're going to be about 1400 grams. So we got a an extra 60, extra 60 or so grams in there. So just when you, when you break all this down, you come out with about 112 or 113 grams of glucose per day required for for brain function. So in carbo on having carbohydrates in general, the requirement is about 113 grams per day of glucose to supply your brain overall. Now there's with that in mind. So we have a baseline 113 grams a day of carbohydrates that doesn't take into consideration the carbohydrates that's required for mucus production inside the intestine, glycogen storage, which I'm going to get to in a second. And that glycogen storage becomes important because the liver is storing glycogen for the brain and for some of the other organs and the muscles can also store glycogen. So she actually says at one point here, glycogen, the stored form of glucose, is mainly stored in the liver and muscles. It doesn't require a lot of sugar to fill these stores. That's why, even as a sugar burner for decades, we can produce ketones in a matter of two days. So that was Judy's quotes right there. So the first piece I want to discuss before I even get into the specifics of glycogen, but the fact that you can start producing ketones in a matter of two days shows the importance of maintaining adequate glycogen stores and how fast your glycogen stores can be depleted. So in two days you can deplete your glycogen stores and then subsequently not have enough carbohydrate to to supply glucose to the brain in the form of glycogen, or have enough glycogen to provide glucose to the brain, and so then your body is forced to rely on ketones. So what this is saying overall is that the body actually significantly requires glucose, like very essentially, requires glucose, and the supply can run out pretty quickly to the extent that ketones, you can start producing ketones within two days once you deplete your glycogen stores. So it's not like the fact that you can produce ketones within two days is not an argument against consuming carbohydrates. It's an argument for consuming carbohydrates, because the glycogen stores can be depleted rapidly you want to keep them replete, especially in light when we look at the fact here that the brain requires about 113 grams of glucose per day for its for its optimal function. When you start dipping into ketones and whatnot, now you start moving into backup system and sub optimal levels of or sub optimal provision of glucose for the brain's function.

Jay Feldman 49:19
Yeah, yeah. And that comes at a cost. And we've talked about this extensively, where when you start to do that instead of a lot, it's not like you just end up with the exact same amount of energy production as you would otherwise, but instead, you start in introducing all these breaks on the system that come from the stress hormones that are produced in order to to conserve fuel. You know, we've talked again and and I can reference these episodes and studies and things where a when you're in a fasted state, or when you're fasting, when you're starving, I really should say when you're when you're in starvation state, our metabolism will decrease in order to conserve fuel so that we can live for longer and do. Way that it does that is by reducing the amount of energy we produce, and that's mediated by the stress hormones. And we also know that a low carb diet mimics starvation and fasting in that exact same way. So by removing those carbohydrates, yes, you make up for the difference of absolute minimum requirement with ketones, but you're reducing the overall amount of energy being used in the long term, and that basically results in lower levels of functioning. The other piece here that I wanted to mention, so you were talking about the brain requiring about 110 grams of glucose per day based on that study, there's some interesting research looking at the livers glucose production in fasting, and basically, if you extrapolate the data, what they show is that during a fasting state, the liver is producing about 180 to 220 grams of carbohydrates per 24 hours, which is probably much closer to our actual minimum glucose requirements, because, as you mentioned, There's areas other than the brain that require glucose, and there are also uh, also, that's that number for the brain could be potentially on the lower end of uh, depending on that, whether it's 20% 25% of the total metabolic rate and and on from there. But the other point that's important to mention here is that after the first few days of fasting, so to speak, or starvation, that amount will decrease considerably, and part of that's due to ketone production, but part of that is also due to the conservation of fuel and energy. And so again, that 180 to 220 grams is more reflective of someone who's using a lot of carbohydrates, you know, at least some amount, at least 220 grams worth, as opposed to someone who is adapted to a low carb diet where they're that would not be their requirement initially, you know, because they would be relying way more on fat and way more on on ketones. But as you said, Judy's quote talking about how quickly we deplete our own glycogen stores to the point that we produce ketones, is the suggestion of how much glucose we actually do use and require when we're on a carbohydrate containing diet,

Mike 52:08
Yeah, so in specific, in the so the next piece, besides the actual So, all we're always talked about there so far is the glucose requirements on a daily basis. But we haven't really, we haven't dove into the actual amount of glucose or carbohydrate, because the amount of carbohydrate that can be stored in the body overall. And the thing is, is even though the carbohydrate is stored as glucose, there's, I guess there's an assumption here that if you're taking in fructose, like it's kind of worse for the liver, which we've seen before, but the liver will just convert the fructose to glucose and lactate and send it out to the body, and it can be oxidized. And if it's converted into glucose, it can also be stored as liver glycogen, which fructose is actually more efficiently stored as liver glycogen than glucose, and then also can be sent out by glucose in the bloodstream and stored as glycogen in the muscles, or oxidized for fuel, whatever it is. So it's not like both fructose and glucose are going to have effects as far as spilling glycogen. So it's not just you don't it's not that you just have to have glucose. But I'm just going to read a quote here, and it's just talking about, and we, I, we talked about this in in one of our Q and A's, but it's talking about glycogen storage. So in this in this study here, what they essentially did was they they took a series of participants and they had the participants consume a restricted diet, high in fat, low in carbohydrate, and follow an exercise program so they're essentially depleting their glycogen. Then at halfway through this period, they were admitted into a respiratory chamber so they can monitor the respiratory quotient, and that was for 10 days. And the respiratory quotient, As Jay mentioned before, tells you how well you're oxidizing carbs versus oxidizing fat. And the way that this works is that carbohydrate oxidation produces more CO two. So when you start changing the ratio of oxygen to CO two inside the respiratory quotient, you can get a sense of how much carb oxidation you're having versus fat fat oxidation. And so after, so after the being in the chamber for 36 hours, they switched them to a high carbohydrate, low fat diet, and they then they ingested that for seven days. And so essentially, they they put, they took these individuals, they put them on a low carb, high fat diet to and then had them do exercise. So they depleted their glycogen stores. And then afterwards, they put them on a super high carbohydrate, low fat diet, and they want to see how much glycogen that they can hold. And so the the one thing I want to mention is, as contrary to what Judy's initial point was, as far as like, if you were burning fats before and then you start eating carbohydrate, you'll just burn fat when they started eating carbohydrate, the quote here is, with the onset of carbohydrate overfeeding, there was a dramatic increase in carbohydrate oxidation from seven. 84 plus or minus, 40 grams per day, to 398 plus or minus, 87 grams per day. So the body rapidly increased carbohydrate oxidation when provided carbohydrates, instead of just shunting it right to fat. So that's the first point. And then the next point to discuss here is as the this is another quote, as the diet passed from a hypocaloric, high fat, low carbohydrate diet to a hyper caloric, high carbohydrate. So not only were they high fat, just pointing this out, they were also hypocalorics. They were low calorie, so low carbohydrate to a hyper, hyper caloric, high carbohydrate, low fat composition. There was not only a large increase in carbohydrate oxidation, but also in glycogen storage with successive with each successive day, the amount of carbohydrate that was stored decreased, even though the amount that was that was ingested increased. After four days of overfeeding, the glycogen stores had become saturated, and it was calculated that they had increased by 770 grams. So that's not a small amount of carbohydrate. And not not only that, not only that, but they drastically increased their carbohydrate oxidation as well. And the body adjusted once they went into the hyper caloric state, and they're basically showing the amount of carbohydrates that they are able to ingest after depleting glycogen at being at like 500 grams before they started to be converted into fat.

Jay Feldman 56:24
So what you're refuting here, just to be clear, is this first statement she makes, which is that glycogen is mainly stored in the liver and the muscles. It doesn't require a lot of sugar to fill these stores. So that was kind of part one, and then the other part talking about basically that anytime you're burning more than 200 grams of carbs, basically everything's gonna be stored as fat, more or less. I mean, it was just saying, especially any amount of fat that you take in is gonna be stored as fat. But also, there's this kind of assumption throughout that, that there's not that our sugar, our sugar requirements, or glucose requirements, are very, very low, and so it's very, you know, any extra carbohydrate is going to be stored as fat, yeah.

Mike 57:01
So basically, what they're they're showing that as you increase your carbohydrate requirement, you're going to increase your carbohydrate or, yeah, your intake, you'll you'll increase your oxidation, and then you can increase your glycogen storage. And then, from what we discussed so far, we're at what about a 200 gram requirement for carbohydrate on a daily basis to to optimize your, um, your carb. I guess that wouldn't even be optimizing, but just as, like a bare minimum, right, right.

Jay Feldman 57:30
Yeah, exactly. And, and. So, as you mentioned there, we can store huge amounts of glycogen, even in an average person. Normally, about 500 grams is cited as as total glycogen stores about 400 grams in the muscles and hundreds muscles and 100 grams in the liver. And that's a lot. And as as Judy mentioned, in as little as two days, you start to produce, you know, ketones. And that's because it does require a lot of glucose to fill those, uh, those stores, because we use a lot of glycogen on daily glycogen, or I should just say, glucose or carbohydrate on a daily basis for for energy production, assuming that we are taking in carbohydrates. Yep.

Mike 58:06
And the last piece I wanted to point out here, and this is, this is specific to her statements on glucose for the brain, but there's some quotes here, and it it says glucose is required to provide the precursors for neurotransmitter synthesis, and then the ATP, which you discussed, ready to fuel their actions, as well as the brain to energy man, it's not really related to signaling. So I just wanted to point out here that the glucose in the brain isn't it's not only about glucose for energy production. The glucose is also important for the synthesis of different neurotransmitters and neuroactive compounds. So there's another quote here, because of because of entry of neuroactive compounds, ie, glutamate, aspartate, glycine, D, serine, into the brain is highly restricted by the blood brain barrier. These compounds must be synthesized from glucose within the brain. So even if you weren't using glucose as a fuel source in the brain, which, as you pointed out, you are and you're always going to be using glucose as a fuel source of the brain. There's no evidence to support that the brain oxidizes fat and prefers fat as a fuel. It's literally glucose. And then ketones are a different story, and are in essentially a starvation state. There is where most of the times are being produced, but you're still going to need that glucose for synthesis of different amino acid or different they are amino acids, but neuroactive compounds, neurotransmitters. So it's that's the same argument that she was making for FADH, oh, you need fat for structural properties in the brain. It's like you also need glucose for that. You also need glucose for structural properties, drought or signaling properties throughout other areas of the body on top of energy metabolism. So there's just it, there's it's an unfounded statement. There's literally no evidence to support the brain preferring fat for fuel. And then also the other statements were unrelated to the overall picture of what I think she was trying to get at.

Jay Feldman 59:59
So, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And those, a couple of those other main points again, being that it doesn't require a lot of sugar to fill our glycogen stores, and that, you know, all any extra glucose we take in is getting stored as fat, those sorts of ideas. And also just that, again, or any fat that we take in when we're getting at least 200 grams of glucose is going to be stored as as body fat, those sorts of things. Yeah, one thing that you did mention was carbon dioxide, and so I did just want to acknowledge that that is another reason for the less the reduced oxidative stress from ATP production from carbs versus fat is increased. CO two production, 50% more is produced with carbohydrate oxidation, and that also reduces oxidative stress, reduces reactive oxygen species by increasing oxygenation and the rate of metabolism. And we did a series discussing the importance of CO two so I'll link back to those episodes.

Mike 1:00:52
Yep. Are you going to continue with the the blood sugar piece here? Because I want to just directly address the quote about the Alzheimer's disease and carbohydrate oxidation. So the quote from the article is, so if we are sugar burners, what does that if we are sugar burners, what does that do to our heart and brain that prefer fat as a fuel? So we already debunked the idea that the the heart or the brain prefers bad as fuel. Could this be a cause of Alzheimer's? After all, there's there's they are starting to call Alzheimer's type three diabetes. So diabetes, first of all, isn't caused by by eating too much carbohydrate. But the next piece that I want to discuss here, and this is specifically in relation to Alzheimer's disease and glucose utilization by the brain. So the quote that I have here is one of the earliest signs of Alzheimer's disease is a reduction in cerebral glucose metabolism. And both human studies and animal studies suggest that disturbed glucose metabolism is associated with Alzheimer's disease progression. And furthermore, they said dysregulated glucose metabolism in metabolic disorders such as the obesity or type two diabetes mellitus has been linked to Alzheimer's disease progression and cognitive impairment. However, a large clinical trial could not demonstrate a beneficial effect of aggressive glucose lowering on cognitive outcomes in diabetic patients. So essentially, what they're what you're seeing here is that Alzheimer's is characterized by decreased glucose utilization inside the brain. So it's actually a a problem of the brain being able to use glucose, and as the disease progressed, it technically gets worse and then also aggressively trying to lower blood sugar levels in obesity and diabetes through the generally accepted mechanisms in mainstream medicine, which is a whole host of drugs, Metformin, the GLP, one drugs, any the sulfonylureas, whatever they are, hasn't improved outcomes or hasn't improved Alzheimer's. It isn't like isn't showing a beneficial effect. And the one thing that I want to talk about here is that, as we mentioned a little bit previously is that both diabetes and obesity are characterized by higher amounts of free fatty acids and fatty acid and lipid mediators in the blood, and impairments and utilizations of the tissues by glucose, of the tissues of glucose. So like the tissues are having a more difficult time oxidizing glucose effectively, and the basically, there's a lot of fat floating around in the bloodstream, which both of these things fly in the face of the idea that we want to be optimizing fat burning over sugar burning, especially in this case, for the brain, and then also trying to pin glute utilization of glucose by the brain as a possible cause for Alzheimer's disease, just because They're calling it type three diabetes is not an argument, and it's not substantiated by anything. In fact, the research is showing the opposite, where you're seeing that dysregulated glucose metabolism inside the brain is what is part of the pathology of Alzheimer's disease.

Jay Feldman 1:03:54
Yeah, basically that an inability to burn carbohydrate is the problem, is the pathology. So to suggest that you don't want to be doing that is suggesting that is, is the pathology like that? Is the suggestion that you want to be creating this metabolic dysfunction, and that that's a good thing, even though that is what you're seeing in things like type three diabetes, so to speak, in Alzheimer's, or actual diabetes, which, as you mentioned, that it's another thing I wanted to so there's two things I want to say here, which is one, that these things are not caused by having too much glucose or by burning too much sugar or anything like that. Instead, as you said, deficiencies in those things are what's driving it. And as you mentioned, as well, carb intake is not causing an inability to metabolize carbs. This is something we've talked about in more detail, and so I'll link to these Situ to the episodes and articles explaining why carb by taking carb, why taking carbohydrates does not cause insulin resistance, it doesn't cause diabetes, because that is what a lot of people in low carb space suggest. And. Uh, it's, yeah, it's something that's directly related to everything we're talking about, but just kind of a whole separate conversation that we've already had. So I'll link back to those, those times where we've explained why instead, is really the opposite, that not having enough carbs would drive that that pathology and the problem is an inability to use the carbohydrate, not too much carbohydrate.

Mike 1:05:20
In fact, the the low carb, high fat diets cause insulin resistance. They This is known. They cause insulin resistance, and it's because you basically have an excess of fatty acids and bloodstream and a decreased amount of of of blood sugar coming in on a regular basis. And most tissues are oxidizing fatty acids instead of oxidizing glucose, which has different effects on specifically insulin signaling and then also insulin sensitivity of the cells, because they're being flooded with the fatty acids, which will increase the reactive oxygen species that's being produced during oxidation and cause help to promote the insulin resistance. This is literally the effect of burning an excess amount of of fatty acids. So, yeah, that's, it's and again, this all comes from the idea of, like, Oh, if you high blood sugar. Is the problem with these states is that you have high blood sugar. And it's the problem with these states is that you have high blood sugar because you're not able to oxidize the sugar that you have available, right?

Jay Feldman 1:06:18
The blood sugar is a symptom. The elevated blood sugar symptom, and and another piece here, beyond the high free fatty acids and all of that, is the lack of energy and the resulting high stress hormones, which are also major drivers in that pathology, which ties in directly to this next concept that Judy talks about in this article, which has to do with blood sugar regulation and the relationship with stress and carbohydrates. So she includes a few quotes here, and this one is actually this. First one is a quote from her book that she quotes in her article. And so she says, when someone consumes too much sugar, their body goes into an emergency state. It has to prioritize shoveling away sugar in the bloodstream. The body prioritizes life or death matters and focuses on clearing excess sugar from the blood so it uses up essential nutrients to produce insulin, to clear glucose from the blood and fructose from the liver. There's a couple other quotes that are along the same line that we'll share in a moment, but a couple of points I just want to touch on here from this quote. So first you mentioned this idea that this is life or death matter, that the that the body's going to an emergency state when blood sugar is elevated, and that if it's not cleared, you'll, you'll die, and so you have to clear this out with essential nutrients. I just wanted to say for one, you don't die if you have, I mean, like, obviously, if you have, like, way too much blood sugar, like sugar in your blood, I guess eventually you die. But this is not something I'm suggesting is a good thing or anything. But people with diabetes walk around with blood sugar levels of 200 or 300 and they're alive.

Mike 1:07:51
I've seen people at 500 and having normal conversations with me. Now the problem isn't that their blood sugar is that high as much not using that sugar.

Jay Feldman 1:08:00
Right, and that's why it's high in the first place, and it's just a symptom of the problem. And the reason why they're not using that sugar is not because they don't have enough essential nutrients to produce insulin. That's really the amount of nutrients required to produce insulin is minimal.

Mike 1:08:17
It's a peptide hormone. It requires amino acids, yeah, in case anybody, like requires amino acid, probably some marginal amount of vitamins and minerals in the pancreas.

Jay Feldman 1:08:27
Yeah, and that's not a limiting factor. Like essential nutrients for insulin production is not a limiting factor in diabetes, in elevated blood sugar and insulin resistance in any metabolic condition. But yes, there are mechanisms in place to clear blood sugar from our blood, and that's so that it's not to clear it because you're clearing it, you're clearing out something toxic that's in our blood. But instead, our blood is just a transportation highway to transport nutrients, and so in order for the carbohydrate to go from the food that you take in into your digestive system and then into the actual, actual cells to be used. It has to go into the blood, and then it has to be transferred from the blood to the tissues in the exact same way that fat has to be transported. It's not literally the exact same but you take in fat from your food, it gets digested, it goes into the blood, and then that gets transported into tissues to be used.

Mike 1:09:23
Or waste resources producing bile acids, to digest and emulsify the fatty acids that you're going to absorb. And it also has to waste resources producing lipoproteins, which are also proteins. So they're strings of amino acids. Insulin is a string of is a string of amino acids. So it's just like, it like, yeah, there's not, there's no argument there. Both things require resources to function appropriately.

Jay Feldman 1:09:51
Yeah and obviously, you're kind of saying wasting resources in a like, in a manner, right? Because I just want to clarify that for listeners, in case they're mature, because it's. Extremely minimal. Obviously, the amount of energy we produce from these things is way more, and the nutrients we get from these things is way more than required to use utilize them in the first place. Otherwise we would like die if we were using carbohydrates for fuel, if we if it took more to use them than we got from them, more or less.

Mike 1:10:17
The one point I just want to bring out here is that, first of all, there's only two areas of the body that really require insulin to take up carbohydrate, and that's going to be the muscles and the fat the rest of the the rest of the body can take up, or a large majority of the rest of the body can take up glucose without insulin. And the it's really the glute for dependent areas, which is the muscle or the fat tissue. And I just want to point this out here, that both the muscle and the fat tissue have to, at least from my perspective, are have to use insulin to drastically increase their uptake of glucose, because they're not prioritized to increase glucose, because everywhere else is prioritized first and then the body is basically has very delicate and calibrated mechanisms to regulate what areas are going to get glucose. So it's kind of like when you eat something that has carbohydrate, your intestine and your liver and your pancreas are all signaling, okay, this is how much carbohydrate we have coming in. And then this is how much we're going to put to liver glycogen. This is how much we're going to put to our other organs and tissues. And it's like, oh, we have this excess here that we don't have to use in these other areas. So we're going to put out a specified amount of insulin to move that the that carbohydrate to the muscle and the fat, and the fat being for storage for later point of time, which is physiologic, not a pathology. It's very normal, and it's actually desired insert in most circumstances the pathology, they'll be to use a different story. And then for the muscle, it's like, oh, we have, we have enough, we have enough carbohydrate here to fill the glycogen stores. Like it's a regulated system to calibrate a nutrient, an energy source, coming in. It's not, it's not wasting resources. It's done on purpose.

Jay Feldman 1:12:07
Right, right? And as you said, it's most tissues are take, like our tissues that use that the most amount of glucose. Don't require insulin to take up that that glucose in the first place, like they'll use central nervous system, right? Exactly like our brains, like our livers. And as you said, yes, if there's like beyond that, then we'll be storing a lot of it as glycogen, and then, yes, beyond that, we'll be storing some of it into the fat tissue. And it's, as you said, That's not pathologic. It doesn't mean you're going to be gaining body fat, because there's always flux through the fat tissue, substrate coming in and then substrate leaving. And at the same time, you talked about how we can store as much as 500 grams of glycogen. Well, even, as you said, up to more like 800 or in the study, I think one person was storing as much as 1000 grams of glycogen, and that's between that's in the liver and muscles. So at the point that they were storing that much glycogen, yes, they were also storing some of it in their fat tissue. But in most people who are just normally depleting glycogen from their liver and muscles as they're going about their days, you've got a lot of glycogen to refill, a lot of glycogen storage space to refill before you're storing it as as fat anyway, and again, before that, there's all the other areas that are immediately using a ton of glucose, like our brains and micro deliveries.

Mike 1:13:22
And up regulate the use of glucose as you as you take in more carbohydrate, your body will up regulate as carbohydrate oxidation, and then it also will up regulate your hormone systems. We're providing adequate carbohydrate will optimize androgen and progesterone production, and then also thyroid function. And then those are anabolic processes that allow you to use that glucose for other things besides just storing fat or oxidizing it. And then thyroid hormone up regulation itself can up regulate heat production through the brown fatty through brown fat, and then and increase energy expend expenditure from the food you're taking in in general. And they see an overfeeding that thyroid function increases and then increases heat production through ground fat, increasing the carbohydrate and fat oxidation in the body overall. So it's not just this. It's not just the stale, stagnant system that you have. You take in carbs, you take in fat. They're either they're either oxidized or turned to fat. There's so many other mechanisms for like, increasing oxidation of one or the other will increase with the amount that's coming in, and then increasing storage as glycogen. Or it's like, in a very adaptive fluid system, it's, it's not this, like, stale either you oxidize it or you turn it to fat. Idea that's very two dimensional and distorted view of what's actually going on.

Jay Feldman 1:14:39
Yeah, absolutely. And I want to talk about you had alluded to the effects of carbohydrates and blood sugar regulation on the hormonal system, and I want to talk about that next, but I know you wanted to mention the drinking Mexican coke and clearing that carbohydrate from the blood that quote.

Mike 1:14:57
Oh, yeah. So if our blood sugar has about. Four grams of sugar at any given time. How do the foods listed above impact the blood? Even drinking one Mexican Coke is 39 grams of carbohydrates. That's nearly 10 times the range that's considered normal for the blood. Imagine what your body has to do to remove the excess sugar in the blood, and then imagine doing that every single day for multiple meals and multiple snacks a day. That can't be good.

Jay Feldman 1:15:20
That was a quote, by the way. This is a quote from

Mike 1:15:23
Yeah, that's a quote from the article. It's, and it's such an absurd quote from multiple perspectives like it, I don't it's, it's, it's like, kind of mind blowing that this quote, because it just doesn't make sense at all to me, especially when you consider the like, the mechanism of the body in general. For example, when you drink a Mexican coke and you take in 39 grams of sugar, that 39 grams of sugar doesn't hit your bloodstream all at once, your gut modulates your gastric emptying, so that you're regulating the amount of carbohydrate that you have going into the system in a metered, tapered fashion, so your carbohydrate content can sit inside the stomach for a period of time before and slowly drip into the small intestine. And the intestine can regulate and titrate the amount of carbohydrate that's coming in, so you don't get 39 grams at once Second of all, once it goes into once the carbohydrate gets across the intestinal epithelium, when it moves to the different glute receptors and then gets into portal circulation, it then goes to the liver, and then the liver processes. It goes to the liver, and also there's a stimulatory response to the pancreas. So while you're dripping this carbohydrate, the liver and the pancreas are determining how much sugar is going to be pushed to your fat or to your muscles, while your red blood cells in your blood use the sugar as an energy source and in the brain and central nervous system and other organs take up what they need because they're not insulin dependent. So you're never gonna have 39 grams of blood sugar, of sugar hit your blood all at one time and then drastically dysregulate your blood sugar. That's an impossibility. What's your I guess it's possible. You inject it, but it's an improbability. I guess is more. I guess...

Jay Feldman 1:17:01
It's never gonna happen in a real physiological like in a real practical situation.

Mike 1:17:06
Yeah, so it's just like it that context. It's doesn't even make sense. It's literally a fictional context to think about things from. It's you drink the coke, your body meters out the amount of carbohydrate that you're going to be ingesting at the intestinal and the gastrointestinal level, and then your liver and your pancreas, and then all the other factors and tissues in your body are regulating what's going on with that carbohydrate and keeping it within the specified range. That's why a diabetic who has a severe blood sugar dysregulation only goes to a small amount of adjustment, milligrams per deciliter. They're over 100 milligrams per deciliter, instead of being below the 100 milligrams per deciliter fasting. Or they can go over 200 milligrams per deciliter. Um, when eating or whatnot, it's it's a it's an extremely small amount compared to this amount. It's not 40 grams of sugar hitting your bloodstream at one time. It's just..

Jay Feldman 1:17:59
Right, even you're saying, even when you're severely diabetic, or exactly diabetic, you're still not seeing that situation.

Mike 1:18:05
And again, the thing is, those mechanisms, while they may not be working perfectly, they're still going on. The problem with these diabetic states is that these cells are not taking up that sugar. The body is like. The cells are kind of like whoa, because of a host of factors that we've discussed before. So again, the problem isn't the amount of like, Yes, could the blood sugar in the excess sugar in the bloodstream, possibly be a problem over the long term? Of course, that no one's arguing that. The argument is more why is it elevated in the first place? And it's because those cells aren't up taking the sugar, and that's the actual legitimate problem. They're not uptaking, utilizing the sugar appropriately, that is a legitimate problem, not that you have X amount of blood sugar in your bloodstream at one point in time.

Jay Feldman 1:18:47
Right, And as you said, you could make the argument that having extremely elevated blood sugar a symptom of the problem can also come with side effects, yes, and that's again, still debatable, but a different conversation, or in a different argument, than just increasing in blood sugar being the problem. And yeah, as you mentioned, this is just basically a fictional situation that could never happen. And then the the argument based on that is to imagine what your body has to do to remove the sugar, and then imagine doing that every single day for multiple meals and multiple snacks that can't be good again. We're just kind of creating these hypothetical creating a hypothetical situation, and then leaving our like...

Mike 1:19:31
Fictional hypothetical situation, and then trying to make extensions from that. It's like, we don't have to imagine what the body does with the blood sugar. We know what it does with the blood sugar, and it's nothing that you suggested in your hypothetical argument. It's just you're not your fictional hypothetical argument. This might as well be like a child story book discussing blood sugar instead of actually looking at what's specifically going on. Yeah.

Jay Feldman 1:19:56
All right, we're going to end that episode there and pick back up. In part two, where we'll be discussing why low carb diets are inherently stressful, how carbohydrates oppose stress and decrease the stress hormones, why carbohydrates are essential, and why their intake plays a vital role in our endocrine systems, whether most people have hypothyroidism, how carnivore diets can cause hypothyroidism, and whether carnivore diets are ideal for our gut health. If you enjoyed today's episode, 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. Today's episode was inspired by a listener question, and if you have any questions that you'd like us to answer on a future 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, head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/podcast where I will be linking to all the studies and articles and anything else that we referenced throughout today's episode. And if you are dealing with any low energy symptoms, maybe those are related to a lack of carbohydrates in your diet, if you're coming from a low carb or carnivore diet, or that could be caused by various other issues that could be inhibiting your ability to properly produce energy. And this could be symptoms like chronic cravings and hunger, low energy or fatigue, joint pain, digestive symptoms, brain fog, poor sleep, hormonal imbalances, trouble losing body fat or putting on muscle or virtually any other chronic health issue or low energy symptom. 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 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.