Jay Feldman 0:04
Welcome to episode 75 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 will be our first episode of our hormesis series, and we've talked around hormesis quite a bit throughout this podcast, but we'll be focusing on it in this series, because it is a pretty major point of contention between our view and the view of many in the alternative health industry, where hormesis is used to defend various health interventions, things like calorie restriction, intense exercise, various plant compounds like resveratrol, as well as other health interventions, things like cold thermogenesis, fasting, low carb diets, saunas, ketogenic diets, fish oil and on from there, and you'll hear things cited quite often about autophagy or doing things to support mitochondrial biogenesis or uncoupling, and these all tend to fall in that hormesis category. So we'll be explaining the problems with the view of hormesis throughout this series and in today's episode. In particular, we'll be discussing hormesis as an anti scientific defense for industrial pollution and chemical exposure. And specifically, we'll be talking about how the concept of hormesis defends our exposure to toxic chemicals, industrial contaminants and pollutants, as well as ionizing radiation. We'll be discussing why hormesis is a dangerous anti scientific idea masquerading as science. We'll be discussing the suspicious history of hormesis and its current definitional problems. We'll be talking about the important distinction between stress and adaptation, as well as the problems with the terms you stress and distress. To check out the show notes for today's episode, you can head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/podcast we can take a look at the studies and articles and anything else that we reference throughout today's episode. And if you are dealing with any low energy symptoms, maybe that's chronic cravings and hunger, low energy or fatigue, chronic pain or joint pain, weight gain or trouble putting out muscle digestive issues, brain fog, poor sleep, hormonal imbalances, or various other low energy symptoms or various chronic health conditions, things like autoimmune conditions, diabetes, heart disease. If you are dealing with any of these symptoms, maybe you've been taking an approach that falls under the hormesis category, doing things like low carb diets or fasting or cold thermogenesis, or maybe you've been taking alternative routes. But either way, if you are dealing with any of these symptoms or 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 or 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 we have talked around hormesis a lot. It's it's a topic that's come up many times throughout our podcast episodes, and the reason for that is because it's a relatively fundamental lens or concept, I guess you could say concept that is used to defend various interventions throughout the mainstream and alternative. And it's really important because in many ways, it actually directly juxtaposes the bioenergetic view, the idea of being in favor of hormesis. And so most of the things that we see as less than ideal, which we'll talk through, some of those specifics are seen to be ideal from the hormetic from the view of hormesis. And so because of that, it's really important to talk about, there's few other reasons why it's really important to talk about. And so to dig into some of those specifics here, for one this is regarded as one of the main determinants of health and lifespan. So doing you know, from the Those in favor of hormesis, the view is that if you do things that are hormetic, then that's going to help you reduce aging and reverse all sorts of chronic health conditions. It's basically the most like the best thing you can do for your health. And with that in mind, it's claimed to be the reason. And why so many things are supposed to be beneficial. This includes big picture wise things like calorie restriction, like low calorie diets, but also exercise and also cold thermogenesis and ketogenic diets and fasting and saunas, all of these things that are really popular in the biohacking sphere and the just alternative health sphere, supplements like resveratrol and various others that we'll we'll talk through some of the specific cereal, all sorts of different plant compounds that are all supposed to help fight aging. And it's also a topic that has, what, like you could say, it has a lot of research behind it. So I've talked with some people who are very much in favor of the idea and are familiar with that research, and they'll say, you know, how can you discount all of the hundreds of studies that are in favor of this view of hormesis? And so we'll talk about the flaws with the research and the perspective and the conflation of all these different variables that has led to this idea of hormesis, where there are a lot of and we'll get into the details, but there are so many ways to explain the findings of this research that do not rely on this concept of hormesis and actually oppose it. So we'll get into all of that. But it's this is something that really directly affects virtually anything that we want to do in our like, in our lives, as far as health goes. And for reference, as well, I've written a couple of very long articles about it, citing a lot of research and explaining these views in detail. And so we'll try to talk through a lot of the concepts that I touch on there, and touch on some of the research there, maybe in ways that I didn't dig into as much in those articles. But for people who are interested in really understanding the concepts, I would recommend I would recommend reading those as well.

Mike 6:45
Yeah, so I guess we could start off just with like, what actually is hormesis? What is the idea around hormesis? Um, and it's pretty much just, you're going to trigger the body with some type sort of noxious stimuli so the body is forced to adapt, and then that adaptive process is considered to be beneficial. So it's and this goes the idea of hormesis goes along, to some extent, with the ideas that the dose makes the poison with things. So you have this toxic substance in this particular amount, you hit the body with it, and the body has to respond, and in responding it it's beneficial. And so this can be a plant. Compounds could be a toxin. Could be, I think there's been arguments for radiation. It could be an absence of things. So for example, with caloric restriction or ketosis, it's the absence of food being a like a stressor, and then the with, uh, ketosis is the absence of carbs. Well, there's ketosis a little bit a little bit more specific than that, because it's not the absence of carbs from our perspective, is a stressor, but from their perspective, it maybe it's maybe not considered like the absence of cars is considered beneficial.

Jay Feldman 8:01
But it is through stress, like, and people aren't really aware of that, right? Like, they're not aware that when people are saying ketosis is beneficial or fasting is beneficial, it's because it's causing stress. And that's acknowledged, like the people who are who are aware of the research and the mechanisms, they know that, and they'll say that, but a lot of people are not aware that they're doing these things that are intentionally causing stress with the hope that it will have an adaptive, beneficial response.

Mike 8:24
The reason I the reason I'm I prefacing the ketosis one like that, is because I think the general idea that people come at with ketosis is that, or just low carb in general, is that carbs are actually the stressor. And so there's this weird piece where they when you're not digging through the research with it, where you realize that you're moving into a you are moving into a stress state without carbohydrates. And then the benefits are through the mechanisms or up regulations of the stress state. But most people in these and within that dietary sphere, I think, are are believing things along the lines like, oh, removing the carbs. Are removing the stress the carb is and that's not really the case. And the state of ketosis is a stress state. You have to enter into a stress state. You have to deplete the glycogen stores in the body, specifically the liver, to get into ketosis, you have to like you're because the ketone production is to provide the brain with fuel because there is an adequate amount of carbohydrate. So it is legitimately a stress state, and it's moving into backup pathways to reach a certain level. But overall, every single one of these perspectives is through the through the lens of, if I do the stressful thing, the body adapts, and then that adapt adaption process must be or that adaptive process is beneficial, depending on the extent, right? Because even within the Keto, low carb spheres, or, like, caloric restriction spheres, like, there's an understanding that you can't do too much exercise or be put under too much stress when you're in these states, because you, like, may trip your allostatic load. And I think just like that. An understanding there an allostatic load is kind of like the bucket of all of your stress. So if you there's an understanding in these years that too much stress is a problem, but then the question is, becomes, always the dose is the poison? Where is that too much stress? And there's like, I it almost comes to a sense, like, perhaps there's a threshold where, if you're under the threshold of that stress, like, there's benefits, and then over the and I'm not saying that people say this, but it's kind of implied in the argument where, where on if you're under that threshold, your body will adapt and you'll have benefits. But then you have this arbitrary threshold, I guess, where it's like, oh, now you have this, now you have this, like, now you're doing too much so, and it's always about like, managing to be under that threshold, like, if you have a and even when we talked about this with with Judy's articles, like, oh, the people were stressed in the pandemic. So they were, what that if they were on carnivore, so they were craving carbs. And, like, in the stress state, like you tend to crave carbs, but you just need to push through it and, like, do breathing exercises and take some magnesium.

Jay Feldman 11:05
Like, yeah, well, I mean, that's, that's a huge piece of the actual definition, or one of the definitions of hormesis, is that it has to do with that dose response. And the dose response curve, where too much is bad, too little is bad, somewhere in the middle is right. And there's a lot of problems with that thought process that we'll touch on. But yeah, it's, that's like a main feature of it. And as you're kind of alluding to, it's, it's not quite that simple or clear.

Mike 11:29
Well, I think it's juxtaposed to our perspective, or, I guess, the bioenergetic perspective of stress being a cumulative process. But it's weird because the the horm hormesis and allostatic load ideas. Understand the idea of stress is cumulative, but it's like they don't apply it exactly well and or they have to like or you have to make use some weird mental gymnastics to justify the adaptive process without under without incorporating this the the cumulative effect of the stress. It's like a very it's a very weird perspective overall, right? And the other thing too, is, like in the hormetic perspective, you have to find the dose response for every stress that you apply.

Jay Feldman 12:18
And them cumulatively as well. Which is, which is part of the problem. We'll dig into that when we're talking about, like, the process. About, like, the problems with this view. Because, because I want to first just make sure we lay out, like, what it actually looks like and what, what is hormesis in more of an applied sense. Okay? So, yeah. So I want to lay out those, those definitions. And in doing so, I think it's also really, really important to start with, where this idea of hormesis came from, and the history of that, because it it really illustrates how this, how this concept has been it's not been morphed like it has been morphed, but it's been manipulated, intentionally manipulated to appear as a sound scientific concept and defend all sorts of very questionable things. So where hormesis began was, I want to say this was in the 50s, and they were looking at very small amounts of very toxic components, like things that are very widely regarded as toxic, cadmium, methylmercury, arsenic, and that what they were finding was that if you gave organisms very small amounts of these things, that it had some benefits in certain ways. Maybe it reduced tumor growth in certain areas, or, you know, it caused some other benefits. And so this was, and this was, uh, research that was put out by, put out by Calabrese. That's his last name, and he was kind of like the father of this idea. And this was used in as an industrial defense against their polluting the environment, right? They're polluting the environment and introducing toxic chemicals to our food and ionizing radiation that was just a byproduct of whatever was going on industrial at the time, industrially at the time, potentially things like atomic bomb testing, whatnot, and as well as, again, just pollutants that were being that were and still are being released into the environment. And so this was basically being used as a defense of those things, basically saying, Hey, we actually are, are introduced to small amounts of these things. It's actually beneficial. And so one of the primary ones. Do you want to say something?

Mike 14:22
I was going to say, don't worry about that lead in your food. It's hormetic

Jay Feldman 14:26
Exactly. No, exactly. And that's, this is like, a really important thing to talk about. Because when people are currently defending hormesis, they are defending that without, oftentimes without being aware of it. And that's, that's a problem. I mean, at least we would say it's a problem. And I think they would too. I don't think they would actually defend having lead in in their food, but the concept that they're defending in the way they're defending, it does support that idea. So one of the the very first things, in addition to cadmium and arsenic and mercury, that was that was evaluated, was dioxin, TCDD is the is the. And it's an industrial waste product. And so they were studying this, this compound, and they found that it had some benefits. And so here's a quote from an article that is much more recent discussing the problems with this earlier research. And they stated that in some cases, the apparent hormetic response reported in animal studies may be largely an artifact of the evaluation methodologies. So what they're saying here is that these are this earlier research only looked to be beneficial because of the way they were evaluating the research. And as an example, they go on, they say, for example, TCDD has been frequently cited as an environmental carcinogen that produces low dose beneficial effects, and she cites Calabrese. Here they go on, and they say in the carcinogenicity study of TCDD, the incidence of tumors in the liver, lung, tongue and nasal turbinates were increased, and the incidence of tumors of the pituitary, uterus, mammary glands, pancreas and adrenal gland were decreased. So what she's pointing out here is that, yes, there were certain, you could say benefits, and that certain tumor incidences were decreased when they were exposed to TCDD, but others were increased. And in all of those, the research where they're talking about the benefits, they only focused on the decreased things. They only explained that and said, Oh, look at all these benefits. Yet there were all these side effects that were causing worse like worse effects when the entire organisms looked at and so this is the foundation of hormesis. This is the type of research that was used to say that small amounts of stress, small amounts of damage, will cause our body to have greater defenses, and then we're going to be stronger. You know, it's the the no pain, no gain. Idea what doesn't kill you, make you strong, makes you stronger. It's this idea that small amounts of something that is known to be toxic is going to lead to an adaptive, beneficial response, you get stronger, right? And that's morphed like no no longer is it just that we're looking at these things in terms of cadmium, mercury, ionizing radiation. But instead, it's shifted to this, this newer definition, which is kind of the more standard definition, which is that the right amount of any stress or any damage will cause an adaptive response that's beneficial, right? And so that's where people start talking about exercise. They start talking about calorie restriction. They're saying that these things are minorly stressful and makes our body stronger. And that's the definition we'll be focusing on. That's kind of the main one that people are referring to right now, but I do just in talking about the convolution of this concept of hormesis, it's important to acknowledge that there is this new definition that's being used that is very anti scientific, but is being paraded as scientific and is just as much of a of a problem as the earlier research, where what they're saying now is that anything that exhibits what's called a biphasic or tri phasic dose response is hormetic. So I'm going to explain what that means. I'm going to pull up a graph here. Okay, so this is the initial like, the the old version of hormesis, the very first version where they were looking at what you have here in the middle, which is the hormetic zone, where all the way on the left, this is supposed to be an area where a very small amount, a very, very small dose of something basically had no effect. And then when you had the right dose, which was in this middle hormetic zone, that was the dose where you started to see benefits. And then anything beyond that was considered, uh, considered to be harmful at that point. So again, this is supposed to be like a very toxic a cadmium, arsenic, something like that. And part of the problem with this, which I don't want to touch on too much, because, again, there's a lot of flaws with that earlier research that have been acknowledged. But there's what they have, what's called the no L, the Noel, the no observed effect level, and that's beyond the hormetic level. So what they're saying is that there's a point beyond the hormetic level where you're taking in cadmium or mercury or something that, again, a small amount, you have a benefit, and after a certain point, there's just no response at all, which flies directly in the face of all these things that we know that are carcinogenic and are accumulative, like or cumulative over time, that there is that having a higher dose than that is definitely never going to be neutral. Never going to be neutral. But that's, you know, something that's not worth digging into too much, and we'll kind of refer back to later. But then after that, you started to have what's, you know, that second definite definition of hormesis, which looks a little bit more like this. This is looking at exercise where they show too little amount of exercise, and they're saying that causes too low of oxidative stress, and that's not good. Then in the middle, you have this hormetic effect, where you're causing the right amount of stress, right amount of reactive oxygen species and oxidative damage, and everything that you have what's called a beneficial response. And then you have the too much side, the over talking about overtraining, where at this point you've created too much oxidative stress. And so this is the, this is kind of that standard definition. And then, as I mentioned, there's this new definition, which is anything that exhibits what's called a biphasic or triphasic dose. And so that's those graphs that we looked at. Those curves are considered biphasic or triphasic. So you could just have a U shaped curve. Yeah, it's a. Shaped curve. So this is called triphasic, because at different doses, you have three different responses. But just to clarify the difference here with the standard definition, it was only things that caused a little bit of stress or a little bit of damage, or some amount of stress and damage on this curve are hormetic. The new definition completely leaves aside the stress and damage piece and just says anything that follows a U shaped curve is hormetic, and literally, everything follows a U shaped curve. So that is the problem here is that they've created this definition that is impossible to refute, because whether you're talking about the amount of water that you drink, where a certain you know, if you just drink a normal amount of water, it's fine. You drink too little, it's bad, and if you drink way too much, it's bad, because you drown and die. Then they're saying that that is hormetic because it follows the same shape of the curve. And then they backtrack and say, Oh, well, if it's hormetic because it follows this triphasic dose response, it must work because it's causing stress. So what you were talking about mental gymnastics before? And I don't know of anything more mentally gymnastic than that, but that is what they're actually saying now. And I'm going to share a couple of insane quotes and figures from studies that are actually arguing that. And this was when I was doing research from this article. I was just so I want to say upset. It was just like, astounding that this is actually what's being put out there right now. And again, they are muddying these waters so much that if you're going to say that literally everything is hormesis, it's impossible to argue against it, and that's a main part of the problem here. So there's one study where they're looking at the Mediterranean diet and hermesis. And so what they a couple of quotes here. They say the biphasic dose response, characteristic of the hormetic phenomenon can be triggered by multiple stressful conditions or toxic agents, including nutrients. Recent emerging evidence shows that vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals may exert healthy benefits acting in a hormetic like manner through the modulation of stress response pathways, rendering the hormesis concept fully applicable to the field of nutrition. So just to clarify there and well, they clarified in this next quote, they say appropriate daily doses of vitamins are essential and beneficial, whereas their excess can lead to hypervitaminosis following a hormetic U shaped curve, vitamins directly activate cellular and systemic pathways to serve as defense mechanisms against different stressors. So they're doing this mental gymnastics with vitamins and minerals here saying that because vitamins and minerals follow this hormetic U shaped curve, they must be working through stress. And they say defense mechanism pathways. And so they go on to apply this to the Mediterranean diet, which is pretty hilarious, because it's almost the opposite of the ketogenic diet. That everyone is saying is hormetic. So they say the Mediterranean diet can be conceptualized as a form of chronic hormetic stress, similar to what has been proposed regarding calorie restriction, the most thoroughly studied nutritional intervention.

Mike 22:50
And we have an interesting study for the caloric restriction one. But finish what you're saying?

Jay Feldman 22:55
Yeah, quite a few, quite a few. But we'll dig into that. But I just like, just want to highlight here they're talking about the Mediterranean diet, which is like grains and beans and fruits and vegetables and and olive oil and like fish, you know, that's kind of the basics of it is working through hormetic mechanisms. Because, as they're saying, anything that works in a heat shaped curve must be work, must be working through hormesis. And so, in the same way that a ketogenic diet that restricts carbs is hormetic and calorie restriction is hormetic. So is a Mediterranean diet because it contains vitamins and minerals and phytochemicals. So it's become like when you're using the term hormesis like this, it's literally meaningless, which is dangerous when you're also using it to defend chemical exposure, or to defend calorie restriction or to defend a ketogenic diet. So even those who are in favor of hormesis, this is, this is a problem, even from their view. And I want to include one other, one other figure from a study, which is literally a study that is aimed at defining hormesis. And so they, they have a little table here, which is talking about hormetic factors that cause self stress and signaling, which then cause what they call our hormetic effectors. And so if you look at the hormetic factors, they say lifestyle, including exercise, dietary energy restriction, which is calorie restriction, phytochemicals, cognitive stimulation, which what they cited for cognitive stimulation included playing cards and reading a book, or, like, reading newspapers. This was like, it was like a study looking at people in in, I think, retirement homes, something like that. And they were saying that those things are stressful and cognitively stimulating, and that's why you get beneficial effects from them. But that's insanity. It's not worth taking into but then, if you look down a little bit, they talk about environmental exposures, which include toxins, radiation, temperature and water. So water, the amount of water that you're drinking is just is working on the same hormetic spectrum that radiation and toxins are. And then, of course, this is also the same spectrum that includes the nutrients in the in the Mediterranean diet. Post or. A article, and again, like ketogenic diets, cold thermogenesis, all those things. And they talk about how all these factors will then cause energy depletion, free radical production, ion fluxes, which then leads to the transcription factors, NRF, two, foxos, NF, Kappa Beta, on and on, and that causes these responses that they're regarding as as beneficial, including growth factors and reproduction of antioxidants like glutathione and things like that. So this is the insanity of this new definition of hormesis. And again, I feel like it's we're not going to be focusing on that definition beyond now at all, but I just want to highlight how dangerous that is and what what is really going into hormesis nowadays, like how it is being used and how it is being manipulated to defend various anti scientific concepts which are dangerous to us on a public health level. And I'll get to that in a minute too, about how these things are actually influencing public health policy in terms of how much industrial contaminants are allowed in food supply and water, and not from there.

Mike 26:05
So, yeah. I mean, I think it's importa to see hormesis as a lens for which people are trying to view these different effects from so like even looking at the last graph, you're essentially looking at it and saying, all these things have this effect on the body, and it hits these specific factors, whether it's NRF, two, FOXO, whatever it is, AMPK, sirtuins, whatever the pathway is, and then there, and then you have a response. And so, like, and then it's like, okay, so, like, that's where you see things like, even endocrine status was, like, listed as a, like, a hormetic response, or as a hormetic input. It's like, it's just so absurd, like, it's just a ridiculous for, like, lens to look at things through. Yeah, it's like, I think the overarching lens that it would, we would, well, there's, there's layers of of or of depth that you would look at things from, but it's like, the body and the environment number one, aren't set, aren't separate, but they're always interacting. And so you have a whole host of external, similar, technically external stimuli that are always affecting the body. And in the body is always, is always responding to through whatever mechanisms, whatever it is. And so it's like there's, there's a constant energy flow and a constant flux through the entire system that's constantly modulating and maintaining external environment, internal environment, etc. So like to frame everything for this idea of like it must require stress so that you have an adaptation is it's like, it's an absolutely meaningless way to define things. It doesn't, it doesn't really mean anything at all. It's like the body is constantly adapting. Yeah, okay. It doesn't mean that it's constantly in stress. That doesn't mean that you have to move through stress to get an effect. There's a and the reason I think that you get ideas like this is because there's no overarching context that makes sense. So when you come to the perspective, and I don't know if you were going to get into this next but when you come to like Hans Selye perspective or Pete's perspective, discussing the ideas of stress as cumulative and then as the body constantly adapting to stressors that it puts on. But like the goal is not to apply more stress to the system, the goal is almost antithetical to that, which is to provide the system with adequate resources so that it can continuously adapt. So this, these and this, it gets into a philosophical perspective of an entropy versus anti entropy. And so like, the hormetic approach is almost like an anti entropic approach, to some extent, where it's like the this idea of like, I need to keep applying. I need to keep stimulating the system with stressors so that this, I'm like, forcing the system to adapt. And then in the flip side, it's like, the system is always, the system always is going to adapt. I want to provide as much resource as possible so that this, the system can adapt appropriately. And that's where you take Pete's hypothesis, energy and structure interdependent at every level. And just with that in mind, it's like a feed forward cycle. Obviously, it can be. It could. If you break the cycle, you start degrading. And I guess that goes hand in hand with the hermetic piece, because the hermetic piece is about constantly relying on backup pathways instead of letting things run appropriately. But the within the energy, within the bioenergetic perspective of this, it's I'm going to provide as much energy as I can so that I can build more structure and then build more resource. Obvious. And the thing I want to, I want to preface this here, is that this doesn't mean that putting in 1000 grams of sugar a day is providing more energy, so therefore you have more structure. Obviously, the systems do have limits on them to some extent, right? Each each human system, the human metabolic system, has a limit to it. So these ideas are like, first of all, I think the hormetic idea is kind of absurd, but then the second. Piece is that the bioenergetic perspective is almost antithetical to a hormetic perspective, because the idea of doing different things is not to provide the stressor, and it doesn't mean that you're gonna, oh, you're gonna, like, you're trying to entirely avoid stress in your life. And this is, I think, where Hans Selye comes in and Pete. The reason I bring up Pete hanselli is because Dr Pete has discussed him extensively, and his work is integrated into the bioenergetic perspective that Dr peat has built. And Hans describes eustress. And then, so eustress is like, it's not bad stress, right? It's kind of like it you generally means good or Okay, so it's like stress, essentially, that your body can handle. And this is and this is all in the lens of an energetic perspective. So it's your body has enough energy to deal with the demands that are applied. So it's not necessarily that you're under stress. The actual definition of stress in this perspective is a situation where your body doesn't have the necessary resource to actually deal with the demands that are being applied to it. And so that's where you start. Then you move into these backup pathways. And Dr Celia described this through the general adaptation syndrome, which is like his. It's like classic, like extremely famous system, which is alarm, uh, alarm resistance, and then fatigue. And so in that state, the body has a demand that's applied to it. The alarm stage is it doesn't have the resource to to, necessarily, the resource available right away to deal with that stress. So then it resists whatever that the input is, whatever that stressor is, and then eventually, if it has to continually deal with that, it moves into a fatigue stage. And this is where you see the movement into things like, learn helplessness, adrenal fatigue, etc, where you've essentially, you've exhausted the body's resources. So the body, it's kind of like, well, we're not going to if we can't beat them, we're going to join them. So you just kind of, you adapt into that system, and instead of trying to overcome it. And so this whole perspective is entirely anti hormetic. That's it's extremely important that's understood as it anti hermetic. It's not about applying stress, but in effect, it's about applying resource to deal with whatever input or demands or are applied externally, whatever it is, and then also, at the same time, manipulating the environment around you, which is what humans have the capability of. It's an extremely important piece of our cognition is the ability to basically manipulate our external environment to suit ourselves, to or to suit the organism itself. It's about manipulating the environment to mint to minimize those stressful inputs. It's it's not about manipulating the environment to go and do cold thermogenesis such you now you've increased your stress. It's about making sure that your house is at 70 degrees, 72 degrees on a regular basis, so you're not freezing your off. It's a very different perspective,

Jay Feldman 33:01
Yeah, and you're skipping ahead a little bit, which is like, good, because I know that it's hard not to, but I want to make sure that we, like, set the stage for what hormesis is and the physiology underlying it, because there are legitimate arguments there that are, I think, legitimately harmful, as you mentioned. And I want to make sure that we explain those first, explain the problems with it, and then we'll contrast that with why. You know, as you said, it is directly in contrast with the bioenergetic view. It's essentially, essentially antithetical to it. And so we'll then explain what that can look like, as opposed to actually, how you can live in a way that's minimizing stress, and what that means and and why we would or wouldn't want it well, why we would want to do it well.

Mike 33:41
And the other thing too, is that they like the idea with hormesis. It's like they want to look at things like, for example, exercise, like they're classifying as a stressor, and looking at ways in which is a stressor. But the effects may not, the beneficial effects may not actually have to be through stress, right?

Jay Feldman 33:57
No, exactly. Let's get there. Let's, let's, let's get there. Okay, okay, okay. So one thing you brought up that was a great point was the conflation of stress or damage with just adaptation. And I think that is the crux of what's happening with these muddy definitions, right? Where the standard definition being that damage or stress is causing a beneficial adaptive response, and then the new one being that any adaptation is the same as adaptation to stress or damage, and obviously we adapt to everything. So obviously this is a perfectly like scientific, logical concept. It's like a clear appeal to logic, because, of course, we're always adapting to things, and everything has a U shaped curve. So this must, must make sense. But those are different, right? As you're pointing out, there's a difference between adapting to stress and adapting to the other aspects of a stimulus that are not stress, which is, which are called the specific effects. So that's a really great point. I want to circle back to it. But I first want to highlight just because, and this is, this is just kind of like a personal like reading through the all of the. Basis research and seeing what this is leading to, the defense, to the defense of in our daily lives, and what this is allowing various industrial corporate entities to get away with, is something that I just want to highlight again. I know it's a little bit of a tangent, but it's something that I think is worth, worth highlighting. So as as I was saying earlier, these things are influencing public health policy. And speaking of ray of Ray Pete, he has a quote describing some of the history here and describing how this has been influenced by industry. And he states that the idea that a little bit of something harmful is good for you was adopted by the petroleum, chemical and nuclear industries and their agents in government around 1950 and treated as a scientific concept with the name hormesis, when the public was starting to worry about the increased radioactivity of the environment because of nuclear bomb explosions, the US government was actively suppressing information on the increasing amounts of environmental ionizing radiation, but they were even more active in promoting the idea that Small amounts of radiation are harmless and even beneficial. So again, this is kind of setting that stage for for the influence here. And there are a couple of studies that are discussing this, by by burns, and he is explaining why this is so dangerous from a public health standpoint. And so a couple of quotes that he he has here, he says that hormesis defined operationally, operationally as low dose stimulation, high dose inhibition, is often used to promote the notion that while high level exposures to toxic chemicals could be detrimental to human health, low level exposures would be beneficial. Some Proponents claim hormesis is an adaptive, generalizable phenomenon, and argue that the default assumption for risk assessments should be that toxic chemicals Indu stimulatory ie beneficial effects at low exposures. And he says that the use of the term hormesis with its associated descriptors distracts from the broader and more important questions regarding the frequency and interpretation of non non monotonic dose responses in biological systems, and he says that a better understanding of the biological basis and consequences of non monotonic dose response curves is warranted for evaluating human health risk. And what he's describing here is basically just that these factors are not just following the simple U shaped curve, and we need to consider that they aren't just having benefits at low doses. And he states that even if certain low dose effects were sometimes considered beneficial, this should not influence regulatory decisions to allow increased environmental exposures to toxic and carcinogenic agents given factors such as inter individual differences in susceptibility and multiplicity in exposures. Again, they're saying that we should not be allowing low amounts of carcinogenic and toxic components in our environment under this guise, and especially considering that he mentioned the multiplicity of exposures, and there's some details there, talking about how when you consider all of the different factors, and that they're all they're all working at the same time, we kind of talked about this In terms of looking at the entire scope of stress that someone's experiencing, even if you were to say that a low dose of one is beneficial, which is arguable, and we'll argue against that, to say that low dose exposure to all of these things is the exact same is contradictory to the original argument. If you're getting low dose cadmium and low dose lead and low dose mercury and low dose PCBs and whatever else you have a high dose of toxic exposure. And so he says it a little more clearly in another study, which is titled hormesis, a new religion, which I think is a good way to think of it. And he says, he says that cook and Calabrese promote changing the way carcinogens are regulated to accommodate hormesis, recognizing that this would result in a cancer risk assessment value of about 100 to 200 fold higher than currently employed. Hemi quotes, Calabrese. He says previously, Calabrese and Baldwin stated agencies will need to accept the possibility, actually the likelihood that toxic substances, even the most highly toxic, such as cadmium, lead, mercury, dioxin, PCBs, etc, can cause beneficial effects at low doses.

Mike 39:05
Which is categorically false. Um, especially with the some of the newer contaminants that we're seeing there. And they've there, this is in textbooks where they discuss that the they the new technology that they've employed to be able to assess quantities of of contaminants in smaller amounts of solutions, they're finding that even at extremely low quality quantities, some of these, including pharmaceutical drugs, but also PCBs and then also some of the plasticizers by BPA, things like that, at extremely minute quantities, actually have negative effects and have endocrine disrupting properties. So they're seeing extremely small quantities having negative effects from from all because they from all over, uh, host of these substances, but also because they weren't able to quantify some of them previously. So they're quantifying them now. It's. Smaller dosage and still finding negative effects, which brings in the question of these, these toxins in general. And then at the same point, like I would love to see studies, I would really love to see studies where you give somebody low dose Mercury over an extended period of time, and you see beneficial effects, especially when a lot of these compounds are known to be cumulative. So it's like most of the heavy metals are known to be cumulative. The damage from radiation is known to be human cumulative. And the other, the other effect, or the other piece that you brought up, that I think is extremely important to highlight, is that what is the effects of these compounds synergizing with each other. If I take somebody and I give them mercury, cadmium and radiation together, I'm sure the effect is going to be worse than if I was to just give them cadmium or just give them mercury. So there's and I mean it literally, that literally reads like a it literally reads like a propaganda piece, uh, Calabrese is writing reads like a propaganda piece for industry, where it's like justifying, justifying, oh, we can have X number amounts of contaminants in the environment, because maybe they're not bad at these smaller doses. In fact, maybe they're not bad, maybe they're good, maybe they have a beneficial effect. There's a lot of industry like, for example, the calories in, calories out, eat, less exercise, more arguments are, is like, to some extent, and there's, there's, I think, an expose on this where, I think Coke was funding research that was discussing calories in, calories out, and saying that it's not that our our soda, it's not that our crap products are making you fat. It's that you're just a glutton. So it's not that environmental exposure to toxins is making you sick. In fact, the at a certain level that we have deemed necessary, we have deemed okay, they are good for you. So it's like, it's literally, it's almost like propaganda, marketing stuff, less actual research. Because if you most studies that you find, well, I don't think I've ever seen a study like promoting mercury as like having a beneficial hormetic response.

Jay Feldman 42:14
I have a quote. I have a quote right here, if just just for reference. They say, for example, heavy metals such as mercury, spur synthesis of proteins called Metallo metallothionines, yeah, that remove toxic metals from circulation and also likely protect cells against potential, potentially DNA damaging free radicals through normal metabolism. So they're doing it. They are actually defending these things. And you can also like, and then you have all the counter studies, right? That, like with things like that, you also see that very, very low level environmental doses of methylmercury are directly inhibiting energy production, you know, directly causing damage in various ways.

Mike 42:52
The thing is, is their argument is it's, it's a questionable argument, right? Because it's like this toxin stimulates these proteins that have a beneficial like they are clearing that they simulate proteins to clear toxins. Therefore it must have a better beneficial effect elsewhere. It's like the proteins are elevating to eliminate that toxin. They're not it's like you have, you're introducing a toxin, and then you're elevating your response to deal with that toxin. It's just, it's such an absurd perspective.

Jay Feldman 43:25
It's myopic, it's reductionist. And again, when you like, when they look at a lot of this initial research that's saying like, hey, these things are good. It's preventing tumor growth in these areas. But then they look at even just tumor growth, even just that same, that same result in other areas, they find that it increases it and there, that's not even considering the other parameters of damage versus health that can be considered. So, yeah, it's it's Go ahead.

Mike 43:51
That's why I think it's important to see that this is a lens that they're looking at things through, not necessarily a reality. This is like, this is the perspective with which these authors are, are looking at the world and and it is very it is very myopic, because it's the same thing with some of the caloric restriction stuff too, right? Where it's like, if we, if we, so you have a study, right? And if you have the actually, I can show it if you want, or we can, Jay will link it in the description, but you have two different studies, one gives a whole bunch of monkeys good quality Whole Foods, whatever, and then the other one. And then so the the two sets of monkeys in that study, one is good quality Whole Foods, the other one has less of the good quality Whole Foods. And the other study, the monkeys are getting just garbage, corn oil, sucrose and maltodextrin, whatever else, and and minerals and and amino acids. So one of the monkey, one group of monkeys getting as much of that garbage as they want, and the other one is getting less garbage. And so in the initial study I talked about where they're eating whole foods, they found no difference between the calorically restricted groups, no significant difference, whereas in the corn oil. Group, the or the corn oil sucrose study, they found that the rats that ate less garbage lived longer. Rats. Oh, sorry, monkeys, it's monkeys. Yeah. So the if you're looking at things through the lens of hormesis, then what you then you, if you're, if you're myopically looking through the lens of hormesis. Then the argument then becomes, okay, it was because they lowered calories that the monkeys lived longer. And we'll have to figure out like then the justification in the whole foods group is maybe all the plant chemicals in the whole foods group stimulated a hormetic response that led to the like. That led to, like, a lack of difference between the groups, because the like, the and the researchers literally state this in the article. They, or they imply this, and discuss it as like, perhaps it's like they're already getting the hormetic response, so there's no need to then restrict calories, because they're already getting from the plant exactly.

Jay Feldman 45:56
It's redundant. We'll come back to that in a little while.

Mike 46:00
Yeah. So it's like, the obvious answer escapes you, that obviously, in the group that got the monkeys that got corn oil and sucrose and that study, the ones that got less lived longer because they got less crap, not because of some hormetic argument. And that's where you start getting into these myopic, like, mental gymnastics about around things. And it's like, oh, maybe it's because, like, so hormesis is real and calorie restriction is is great. So maybe it's just because we had other hormetic products in the whole foods diet. Like, that's the reason for and this was this, this discussion of this by researchers, was nested inside an Omega three article with caloric restrictions, showing that using omega threes on caloric restriction had worse outcomes than not using the Omega threes. And then again, they waxed the same argument where it's like because they were calorically restricted, they didn't need omega threes because the hormetic effect from the Omega threes was redundant. And then the side effects of lipid peroxidation, of omega threes actually became more apparent then. So it's like, so they've ruled out the risk reward ratio for the Omega threes. Like, the whole line of thinking is so reductionistic. And just it's like, it's myopic, because it's everything is through this one lens. It's like, you're looking at life through this telescope before Mises, and then you have everything you see, it's like, oh, look, there's hormesis over there. Instead of like, considering alternative hypothesis to why things are working.

Jay Feldman 47:29
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And so, so those are great points. And when it comes to hermesis, what I want to make sure that we do that we don't do, is conflate this new age insanity of hormesis with the standard definition. So the standard definition meaning that stress or damage is what's causing the adaptive response that's beneficial, small amount the right amount is causing that effect. And so the things you were referencing in terms of omega threes, calorie restriction, plant polyphenols, those things all fall into that standard definition. Those are not ones that are saying that they drank the right amount of water. And that was hormetic, you know. So I want to make sure that we're focusing on the less ridiculous version there and giving it its fair shot explaining why that one is still not reasonable, even though it sounds a lot more reasonable. And with that in mind, I want to circle back to some of what you were referencing in terms of Han Selye, because, as you said, his work is what founded the entire idea, the entire concept of stress, and our adaptation to stress, and so what? So, what Hans Sally did that was particularly important or new in his character. Characterization of this process is he identified a difference between what are called stressor effects and specific effects. So up until the point that Celia was describing these things, everybody recognized that different factors in our environment affected us differently, and we had different responses to them. We had a different response if we ate a pair versus if we sat down in the sun, versus if we ran a mile, versus if we went to sleep or didn't need anything. You know, these are all different stimuli, and they have different effects. And that makes sense. But what he did that was more or less genius, or however you want to refer to it, is he recognized that there is a constant that all of these factors did have as well, and those are in terms of their what he called stressor effects, their potential for causing stress. And he what he described there, was that the way that they do so is that we have a certain amount of what he called adaptation energy, and that they're able to deplete that adaptation energy. And regardless of what the substance, of what the what the factor is, whether it is sitting out in the sun or going for a run, both of those are going to have some amount of a stressor effect, and that is going to deplete our adaptation energy to an to an extent. And if our adaptation energy is depleted too much, that's where you start to see progression along that general adaptation syndrome, where there's too much of a depletion of energy and we can no longer respond appropriately. And. And this causes dysfunction. And it causes the same dysfunction, whether you just sat on sat out in the sun for hours and hours on end and got really burnt and didn't eat anything or do anything, versus if you went for a run, they're both of those things are going to be depleting that adaptation energy and causing a stress response, a generalized stress response that involved adrenaline and cortisol and would eventually cause dysfunction. And so that's that's where we're kind of lifting off with these things. But one of his distinctions that he made there is has been lost, which is that distinction between stressor effects and specific effects, where now, with this new age version of hormesis, anything that is beneficial is, is the reason for that? Is being the blame for that, or, I guess the responsibility for that is the stress, not the specific effects. So when they're looking at calorie restriction, for example, an example you gave, they're not they're saying that the calorie restriction caused stress. So any benefits must have been due to that stress, as opposed to something else that you mentioned, which is they were just eating less harmful things. Another example would again come back to something like exercise, where the benefit nowadays is all attributed to how much stress you cause, how many calories you burn, as opposed to some unique effects of musculoskeletal tension. And we'll talk about some details there. But do you want to say something?

Mike 51:21
Well, I'm specific to I was agreeing with you because, specific to the muscle effects, the initial theories haven't held. And same with caloric restriction, they haven't held, and they haven't been repeated in humans, the as far as what they thought, right? And it I wanted to point out too specifically into what you're saying, is that there's this idea of conflation of stress and adaptation, stress and adaptation, like inflating the two terms is the same thing. And that's really, that's really, I think, the crux of where people are at with this, right?

Jay Feldman 51:50
Because we adapt to both the stress and we adapt to the specific effects. And those are two very different things, yep. So to become clear on what the what stress is in the definition that we're going to be using, it is, is any time where we're experiencing a deficit in energy, a lack of energy, we know that this is the constant that happens, whether on a keto diet or recovery restricting or whatever else. It activates all these pathways that are involved in in energy deficits, like amp kinase. And this is, again, how all like this is the concept between all factors is that they all require some amount of energy usage. If we eat something, we have to digest it. That requires energy. If we go for a walk, that requires energy. If we think about something, if we have a conversation, that requires energy. And if we become we have a deficit there where we're not we don't have enough quote, unquote, adaptation energy available at the moment to handle that stressor. We enter into a stress state where we respond, we adapt to that stress, and we activate backup energy systems, and we we use stress hormones to do so. So that way we can continue to do that thing, or just to live. And that is what we're that. That is what stress is defined as. And so just because a couple distinctions here to make, one is just because something is a stressor, doesn't mean it will always cause stress. For example, if you have enough adaptation energy, but he called it adaptation energy, I would just consider it as energy, physiological energy. Yeah, yeah. If you have enough energy and you go and take a walk for five minutes, chances are you're not going to have to dig into any stress hormone like stress hormones aren't going to be released. You're not going to be digging into those stress stores, anything like that. You're not going to activate stress. Or if you sat out and and, you know, sat out in the sun, or if you sat and listened to music, whatever, those are, all things that still are like have stressor effect. They use some amount of energy, but it's not enough to actually cause stress. And so that's that is an important distinction to make. And then again, the other one, which is the specific effects versus the stress effects, which we'll dig into more a little bit later, because this is something that can explain how you can still get benefits from calorie restriction or intermittent fasting or a ketogenic diet, despite the fact that they cause stress, not because they cause stress. And we'll talk about some of those details there. The one other thing you mentioned was the eustress and distress. And these were terms that Hans Selye used, and the way that he defined them was that eustress was something that caused stress but was still beneficial, whereas distress was something that caused stress but was not beneficial. And the difference between those two had to do with the specific effects, not the stress. They both caused stress. They could have caused the exact same amount of stress, but let's say one was being exposed to a lot of mercury, and the other was exercising, and he would consider exercising being eustress, because, yes, it was stressful, but overall it's beneficial, whereas exposure to large amounts of mercury, or even small amounts, we would call it distress, because it caused stress. And there are, there are specific effects that are harmful and don't outweigh those stress effects. Like it is, it's not like, like, it's a overall lose, lose there, yeah, and he would call over exercising, also distress where you've caused so much stress there that that stress is going to outweigh those specific effects. Effects. And so what we're getting at here. And the reason why I don't love those terms is because they're confusing. Yeah, a lot of people, when they hear those terms, they think, Oh, it's just the amount of stress that matters. But what really matters is weighing the amount of stress versus the specific effects. And that's where we have to start to dig into the physiology of what actually is going on on a low carb diet in terms of specific effects, in terms of stress effects, what are people saying is so beneficial from all these hormetic factors in the physiological realm, which, as we'll get to all comes to the stress effects, it's not, it's not the specific effects. And that's really the huge piece that's being missed here that really adds a lot of clarity beyond the larger picture of looking at things in these terms of energy, which is also missed.

Mike 55:41
Yeah, I think it's, I think it's important to consider the stress piece as far as, like, from the from an energetic perspective, you know, how much energy is that thing providing, and that's in relation to what your body is capable of managing, right? Because it's it, it, you know, it's arbitrary to have a walk is X amount of energy, X amount of energy in what context for the body? So it's like the perspective is energy demand on the body can in the context of how much energy the body actually has, supply versus demand? Yep, exactly. And then the specific effects are the like off target effects outside of energy they're not direct, they they're indirect effects. So like, like, Mercury will impair energy production, but it's not it's in more indirect, like, it's you're essentially poisoning different enzymes within the body, and then you can't effectively maintain adequate energy production, or you are draining that energetic supply because you have to detoxify the mercury when you're not able to create energy because of the mercury, whatever it is. So it's like, those are the more specific effects. So, like, it's, it's kind of, it's not exactly an equation, but it's kind of an equation where you're like, looking at, okay, how much, how much energy is this thing require? And then what is, what are these other specific effects? So as an example to this with the Keto piece, is the Keto piece especially coming from a standard American diet, and again, it everything is has a relative comparison, and that's where the context becomes important. So if you're coming from a standard American diet of vegetable oils, refined grains, a whole bunch of additives and essentially garbage. And then you move on to a keto diet, and now you're eating grass fed meat, eggs, organ meats, weekly butter, having some dairy, having some green vegetables. Even though you're in a carbohydrate deficit, which you're in an energetic deficit, essentially you fixed a litany of specific effects so and that's from removing the actual damage from some of these other garbage foods on a standard American diet. So, and specifically eliminate or minimizing endotoxin in the gut, pieces like that, which also impair energy production as well. So now you've eliminated a whole bunch of other effects, even though, energetically, yeah, it's not so it's not, it's not ideal. So the question then becomes the extension of the in the next step of this is, and we can, I don't know what you have planned to dig into some of those other pieces, but the extension in my mind is, how can we, how can we optimize all of these different specific effects while also bolstering the body and providing adequate amounts of energy? So it's like, how can we? How can we harness this equation, or how can we harness this entire piece to optimize everything from inject from this perspective, and which is entirely different, of let's just apply stress to the body, because it adapts right? It's like, what is our body's energy supply? How can we increase that energy supply with diet, whatnot, and harness beneficial, specific effects, and then have you stress on the system so that you're you're harnessing in your your essentially streaming through the energy and specific effects that you now have. So that's where, that's the entire, that's the that's the equation, that's the entire piece to get to, which is antithetical, again, to the hormetic approach. The approach is just, you have a stressor at a certain amount, your body adapts to it, and it like the the specific effects can be largely ignored or completely missed because of the myopic nature of the myopic nature of the theory. And so just becomes, okay, what's this dose that I can find for this talk toxic thing, and trigger my body's adaptive response. And then there's kind of some loosely understood idea of like, your body can only adapt so much. So it's like, it's not really defined well, whereas Han Sally's entire approach is defined extremely well. Or, yeah, it's like, defined extremely well, and it gives you a very strong basis for looking at what's going on. And then even in your daily experience, you can notice this, like, you just bring it into a practical level, you feel at a point where it's too much. You know, when you're exercising, you get that point, if you're aware of yourself, where you're like, okay, like, I'm kind of hitting that threshold where, where you're by my bi that's, that's good, or. Or, if you're at work, you know the particular situations that put you under stress. You know, you know your boss talks to you in some different type of way, or you have so many different tasks that you have to do and not enough time, and and then you start getting that psychological stress because you're you're not meeting this particular demand. People know where their limit is. And then you also know, like, okay, and people, this is like, in the it's in people's minds, right? Because it's like, oh yeah, you know, I worked out too many days, and then I was sick, and I still worked out, and then it got worse. So it's like, the idea of accumulation of stress is there, but it's just not linked together with everything. And then when you become aware of that, then you know where your reserves are. And so you know, like, Okay, this is the point where I'm going to start to tap into my reserves, and I really don't want to be there. And then you can also create strategies where it's like, okay, I can put these different pieces in so that even if I'm getting like, I'm tapping into I'm not in my reserves, but I'm tapping into myself. I'm getting close to reserves. Oh, if I use juice and calcium and magnesium and a little progesterone or whatever it is, now I've just i Even though I took three steps back because what I was dealing with that bumped me two steps forward, or my diet is in the right place. So the number of steps that it takes before I hit my reserves is is many fold. It's not two steps. And then I'm in my reserves, and I feel like crap. It's like I got 20 steps before I can get there, because I've managed taking care of my diet and my lifestyle, whatever else. So it's like you can manage all these factors. That's what the model essentially allows you to do, instead of just trying to find these random dose responses for hermetic stressors and hope that your body adapts and not have an idea of of synergy or interactions or accumulation.

Jay Feldman 1:01:44
Right, And as you kind of alluded to there, it's almost impossible to, even if you wanted to measure the exact amount of stress that you were under and compare the exact amount of stress from your diet and the exact polyphenols you took in, and the exact amount of sunlight you had and the walk and whatever like it's considering that is cumulative, it's almost impossible to apply in a reasonable way, but before we even get to those things. So I'm sure there are still people listening who are still

Mike 1:02:10
There's still people listening.

Jay Feldman 1:02:14
If there are still people listening, I'm sure that some of them are still not convinced that adapting to stress, the right amount of stress, is harmful. You know, they might still think that's the case. So I want to talk through that physiology and dig into what that even looks like on the physiological level, the biochemical level, and then really break apart why that's not what we want to be doing, and why, not only is that not what we want to be doing, but we want to orient our perspective to avoid that almost at all costs, or at least as much as we can, not at all cost. Of course, there's no way to avoid stress, and we'll talk about that. About that balance. But as you said, finding the things that are basically maximizing the benefits and minimizing the stress with the idea that there is no actual situation of zero stress, and that's fine, but we want to maximize beneficial and pro energy effects relative to that?

Mike 1:03:02
Well, you're gonna I think it's important to point out here is that you're always like you're always under stress, and that's why that, and that's why Hans posits it. And this is where the terminology gets tricky, but that's where it posits as you stress and distress. The way I like to frame it is that you're always adapting, and then the type of adaptation is dependent upon the type of those type of stress or any specific effects.

Jay Feldman 1:03:26
Yeah. But the problem there is that you're not always under stress. There are a lot of things you can do that are really beneficial, that don't cause stress. There are some that cause stress and are still more beneficial than the stress they cause, and are still there, therefore in that eustress category. But that's, I think the problem there's, there's still this idea that the stress is involved with the positive effect, and it's not. It's just that it is made up for, like it is something is beneficial despite that stress. But also, you can have things that are beneficial with virtually no stress effects. I mean, they're going to have some amount of stress or effects, but without causing any stress.

Mike 1:03:58
So the difference, that's why I was trying to categorize it as, like, bringing to you, or for me, it's more like you're always in a process. Like there's, there's never a stagnant state, right? Because, and the idea that comes out of here is like, Oh, if I just eliminate all stressors, or or adaptation, whatever, it's like, yeah, then you're dead. You're not constantly adapting, then you're dead. So it's like you're the point is that your body is always in flux.

Jay Feldman 1:04:21
Yeah, there's always a balance. There's always, it's always being balanced with supply, yeah, yeah, right. And so yeah. And I think the point that you're trying to get at is everything that we do, you're like, highlighting that point, everything is going to have a stressor effect. Everything is going to require energy for it to exist in our like, in interaction with our bodies, some a lot more than others, but we that's unavoidable, and that's an important point to make, but we still want to minimize it, which is...

Mike 1:04:50
So we want to minimize the negatives, the distress pieces, the pieces that require more energy than we than we have available, and also have. Of just terrible specific effects, like, yeah, we're not gonna, we're not gonna market our Mercury supplement anytime soon, just so everybody knows.

Jay Feldman 1:05:09
Not quite yet, we haven't even figured out the right dose response. But the other piece there too being that you can also have something that is you stressful, like intermittent fasting or clerk restriction, but that doesn't mean it's a good thing to do, right? Because we can get those benefits with less of a stressor effect. So that's the other piece there too, and that's why we'll talk about that application in detail. All right, we're going to wrap up that episode there and pick back up in part two. If you did enjoy 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. To check out the show notes for today's episode, head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/podcast where you can take a look at the studies and articles and anything else that we referenced throughout today's episode, and if you are dealing with any low energy symptoms, whether that's chronic cravings and hunger, low energy or fatigue, chronic pain, weight gain, digestive symptoms, brain fog, poor sleep, hormonal imbalances or various chronic health conditions, and maybe you've been trying to improve these Using a hormetic approach, using things like fasting or cold thermogenesis or ketogenic diets or various plant compounds like resveratrol. And maybe you haven't had the success that you were hoping for, or maybe you are not taking that hormetic approach, but you are looking to resolve these symptoms or conditions. Either way, 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.