Jay Feldman 0:04
Welcome to episode 81, of the energy balance podcast, where we teach you how to live without constant hunger and cravings, fatigue, brain fog, poor sleep and other low energy symptoms by maximizing your cellular energy. I'm Jay Feldman. I'm a health coach and independent health researcher, and joining me again today is my good friend Mike Fave. Mike and I have been studying health and nutrition together for a long time now, and Mike also draws on his experiences from working within the healthcare industry. Today's episode is part two of our fitness versus Health Series, and in this episode, we'll be talking about whether intense exercise and endurance training should be avoided for optimal metabolic health. And more specifically, we'll be discussing how to determine how much exercise is right for you, why working out regularly is not enough to make up for sitting all day, why fitness and health are not synonymous. Whether lactate production, breathlessness and fat oxidation due to exercise should be avoided at all costs, and whether intense exercise and being highly active is always more harmful than helpful. This series was inspired by a couple of listener questions. If you have any questions that you'd like us to answer on a future episode, feel free to send those into Jay at Jay Feldman wellness.com that's Jay at Jay Feldman wellness.com or feel free to leave those in the comments. If you're watching on YouTube to check out the show notes for today's episode, you can head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/podcast you can take a look at the studies and articles and anything else that we referenced throughout today's episode. And if you are struggling with various low energy symptoms, maybe you're dealing with weight gain and you're trying to lose weight as far as exercise goes and just trying to figure out the right amount for you. Maybe you're dealing with constant hunger and cravings, low energy or fatigue, joint pain, digestive symptoms, brain fog, poor sleep, hormonal imbalances, or various other low energy symptoms or chronic health conditions like autoimmune conditions or diabetes or heart disease. And if you are dealing with any of those low energy 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 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, let's get started.

The other side of of all these things. I know we're kind of trashing excess exercise a little bit, but I don't want it to sound as though we are anti exercise or anti movement. And there's also some great research describing the benefits of activity, especially in contrast to sedentarism. And I think that this is where the most benefits come from, and this is where the research shows that the most benefits come from. Is the difference between being sedentary, where you're largely sitting and not doing much all day, versus being lightly active throughout the day. And there's that is where you see the biggest shift in health effects in a positive direction, and you see this regardless of intense physical activity. So another way of saying that is that if you're sedentary all day, and you have one hour where you're intensely active, 30 minutes where you're intensely active, you go into a workout that is not enough to make up for being sedentary the rest of the day. And if you're not sedentary, the rest of the day where, where you're just walking a little bit more frequently. You're up on your feet, moving around more again, basic daily activities, gardening, doing dishes, cleaning a house, whatever it is those all are looked at and are seen to have a ton of benefits, even if you're not doing any intense exercise. And again, I'm not saying all intense exercise is bad, either, but the most important thing that that is pointed to in the research, and that makes sense physiologically, is at least being generally lightly active. It accomplishes the musculo fascial benefits of being lightly active and also avoids the negatives of just being stagnant and sitting all day and that, yeah, I think that that is the other side here that we need to highlight, or that's important to highlight is, is that the most important thing? And again, there's, there's a balance, there's a middle ground that we'll get to. But I would say on the other side, as long as we're lightly active throughout the day. We're walking, stretching, whatever feels good. You know, doing light activity throughout the house, as opposed to being sedentary, that's that's going to lead to the most benefits. Yep, yeah, I agree.

Mike 4:54
And then if you I think, I think participating in exercise, or I. Activity that you genuinely enjoy is also quite important if you're going to participate in like, and I made the example earlier, like, I love going to the gym and doing a workout. However, the other thing keep in mind is, number one, I enjoy it so it doesn't feel like unless it's like that, and then that's marginal. I enjoy it, and I also have created it in a way where it's, it's not, you know, depending on the situation, it's not over overly taxing for me. I'm not completely out of breath the whole time. I'm not, you know, I'm not just completely dead, although sometimes I'll, you know, sometimes I do kill myself, but it whether that's, and we've talked about this before, whether that's taking up a martial art, playing a sport with your friends, tennis, whatever it is, baseball, softball, on Saturdays, soccer, you know, if you're in Europe or football, whatever you want to, however you want to call it, whatever it is, if you're enjoying that with Friends, and it's like, I think that that's also important to do on a regular basis, if you want to do exercise, and then if you wanted to get involved in, you know, some solo pursuit, whether it's lifting or anything like that. I think that that also has beneficial effects. But again, just there's obviously limits to that. Some of the and, yeah, yeah. And then some of the there is levels to exercise, which we've kind of already discussed, where you get to be too much and you actually get to be harmful for yourself. So just important to keep in mind that could be something like running a ridiculous number of miles every single week.

Jay Feldman 6:37
Yeah, yeah and it's that balance. We'll kind of dig into that in more detail, because there's, there's some other factors that go into that and how we can determine where that balance is. But before that, I want to get to the second part, or Yeah, the second part of Lindsay's question, in terms of lactate production, fat oxidation during intense exercise, because I think that's important also, before we talk about why, while we're talking about the harms of excess exercise, that doesn't mean that all intense exercise is bad. It doesn't mean that we that anytime that, again, as I know sometimes people will talk about in the pro metabolic space, I don't think that anytime that you get to a point where you're breathing heavily or you have to breathe out your mouth, that that is bad and or harmful, necessarily. In the big picture, I think it can still be more beneficial and it is harmful. And so I think that there are some nuances to get into there in terms of these factors. And so the first being, we did a series discussing carbon dioxide and discussing lactate production, and talked about the problems with lactate production, but it's important to highlight that that is a problem largely when there is no stimulus forcing lactate production, but rather when you're just kind of not able to function normally, and not able to normally oxidize glucose all the way through because there are various blocks on the system that lead to excess production of lactate, and even in that state, the lactate itself isn't great. It has some negatives, but it's really more simple, more of a symptom of a problem than the underlying problem itself. And the major problem is that you're not able to properly produce energy, so you end up with low energy, low CO two, and all of the other problems that come with that. But if instead, you're driving lactate production because you have a very, very high, very, very short term energy demand that cannot be met with aerobic metabolism, where you have to go through a bunch of glycolysis and end up producing a bunch of lactate as a byproduct that isn't necessarily so harmful. It's actually not such a big deal. What ends up happening is if you can handle it right, if it's within the like, a good range. And of course, that's kind of the greater context of of where that balance is. But I'm just saying it's not inherently a problem when it's in, when it's in a short term, instance like this. And what basically happens is that the muscles run through glycolysis a lot to produce a lot of immediate energy. They also run through the creatine phosphate system a lot to produce a lot of immediate energy. Allows you to sprint. It allows you to do anything that requires really maximal exertion. And then what happens is that lactate that's produced at the muscles ends up going to the liver through what's called a Corey cycle and exchanged and then sent back as glucose. And so what you're basically doing is, for that short term, you're borrowing energy from the muscles, are essentially borrowing energy from the liver, and the liver then pays back that or and then they kind of pay it back. The liver sends the the energy back as glucose, and it's fine. Again, it's we're talking really short term and we're talking about not a pathological state, but rather just a state of very high energy demands that we're able to handle well. Again, as you said, as long as you can handle it, as long as, for example, your liver health is pretty decent and your overall metabolic health is pretty decent. This is not something that is causing any sort of long term. Damage, and in most cases, I would say that the activity itself is probably more beneficial, and those specific effects outweigh the stress that would be caused from that momentary instance of lactate production. Now, as we've been talking about, endurance training, is a little different, where what you tend to see in that state is, is kind of a long term stress state, as opposed to as much of a short term stress state, which just again, is, is kind of like the same thing. It doesn't require as much of the lactate production. It's relying a lot more on fat oxidation as as was being mentioned in the question, yeah, as Lindsay was mentioning. And so again, fat oxidation is a major problem when it's because, when it's happening, because there is no capacity for glucose oxidation. When you either can't oxidize glucose or you don't have enough available, you're going to be causing huge energy deficits in the brain and elsewhere, and that's going to be a huge problem. But when we're talking about the fat oxidizing, sorry, the muscles oxidizing a decent amount of fat for exercise. That's not really such a problem. They're able to meet their needs, as she was saying, within like below the lactate threshold, in that zone, two steady state where, basically you're me, you're able to meet your needs with high levels of fat oxidation. It's not such a problem. It does require the reliance on stress hormones to kind of keep that state flowing. But again, as long as you're metabolically healthy, there is a point where that's not such a big deal, and it's not going to go past that threshold of being helpful. However, it is generally going to be more taxing than short bursts of activity. And so it's and especially in in typical endurance athletes, it is a situation where you tend to go past it and that you just again, requiring so much energy and so much stress that is very hard to make up for it. It doesn't mean you can't to a certain point. There might be a point where you actually can't.

Mike 11:51
Itjsust not ideal, especially compared to, like, the anaerobic activities that you could be doing, yeah, yeah, I would lifting or sprinting or or stuff like that.

Jay Feldman 12:04
Yeah, there's a lot of things that are kind of a blend, right? I mean, when you're hiking, for example, or doing a slightly more intense walk, or, as you mentioned, martial arts, you're going to be kind of oscillating between maybe periods of where you're more in the anaerobic state, and others where you're maybe more in an anaerobic state and relying more on fat oxidation. And again, I think that it relies more on someone's individual metabolic state and how much energy they have available, how much, how effectively they're producing energy, how much fuel they're taking in, up to a certain point where it is just really, really hard to meet the demand without coming at the cost of of other things. And so I think up until that point, as long as, as long as it's not coming at the cost of energy going elsewhere, I think it's okay, but sometimes that can be kind of tough to determine. And also, I think a lot of people overdo it in the athletic sphere because of these notions that we talked about, where more is better in the larger sense.

Mike 12:57
Yeah, I I think, personally, I'm less of a fan of, like with sports, you'll oscillate through various as you as we discussed, or as you just discussed. You'll oscillate through the various metabolic states. But I think, like being at that steady the steady state, the steady state cardio level for an extended period of time, I think is less ideal where you're literally just maintaining in that the fat oxidation zone, low level for however long you're going to be doing it. I think that because even if you were to, even if you were hiking, or even if you were swimming, like with friends, or whatever it was, you have the opportunity to just stop, whereas in the and you could stop in these other opportunities well, but generally you don't you push to a to the certain level and stay at that level for X number of period of time and and try to either increase the amount of time that you can go there or increase the amount of activity you can do while within that zone. So I think that overall, I think that's the as as far as like exercise recommendation that'd be my least recommended or preferred form of exercise, for somebody who was interested in doing any type of formalized exercise or exercise regimen,

Jay Feldman 14:08
Yeah, I would say that that long distance running, I would probably agree there.

Mike 14:14
Yeah, or even the rowing, even long distance rowing, or long distance, any of the long distance activities, I would say are for, like, extended periods of time of fat oxidation is not ideal, and I'm not. I would say I'm less worried about hitting a lactate threshold than I am about maintaining that over an extended period of time.

Jay Feldman 14:34
Yeah, yeah, I think and again, it's not even as like, there is a cost of the fat oxidation but there's also the involvement of the stress hormones that are required for you to borrow from the future. You know, for you to take out that loan, that's essentially what you're doing, because you're not going to have enough energy available right at that moment for you to run for an hour. You have to be pulling from those stores in a stress state. And so again, one. What we're talking about, along with this too, is just when you're talking about extremely large amounts of caloric expenditure along with stress it's really hard to make up for it, and I do think that is probably confounding variable too, now that we're talking about it in these studies, where it's not only the total amount of energy expenditure that's the issue, but also how it's coming about and when it's coming about due to a lot of stress hormones, that's going to be one of to be one of the things that causes the metabolic adaptation that they're describing. It causes the metabolic depression because, not only because you don't have enough energy in the moment, but because it's anticipating the future, right? We talked about this in all these states where, when you're shifting toward more of a starvation, famine, state stress, state, low abundant state, like a not a state of non abundance. You your body anticipates not having enough energy in the future and not being in an energetically favorable environment, and shifts more toward hibernation, essentially, and turns all of its normal functions down. And potentially, if done in a good balance without driving in without driving the stressor so much, you could still have large amounts of energy expenditure from physical activity and hypothetically not have that happen again. It would require some things that we'll discuss, as far as ways to mitigate the situation. But also, as you're saying, probably is more likely to happen with non steady state activity because of the stress that tends to be induced there. And people experience this as a lot of people will talk about as a good thing, like the runner's high, the endorphins that are released, those are a feature of of that stress state that you're encouraging.

Mike 16:32
So you're saying it tends to happen more with the steady state. you said non steady state. I just want to clarify.

Jay Feldman 16:41
Okay, okay, yeah, maybe I misspoke. Well, I got confused for a second. Okay, okay, then yeah, I must have meant steady state. Yeah, yeah.

Mike 16:48
You have more of the stress response with this, with the steady state, because in order to continuously release the fats, to oxidize, you have to be using the adaptive hormones, whereas with, with the with the when you go into lactic when you're when you're producing lactic acid, and you have to run through the chlorine cycle, you're basically just draining liver glycogen.

Jay Feldman 17:09
Yeah, good. Well, you're right. Like the muscle glycogen isn't being depleted as much, which is an important point, but it goes it does get used. I was gonna say if they both require stress. But one is a short burst versus the others.

Mike 17:23
it's long term, continuous. Yeah, exactly, yeah. Because what is gonna all I was gonna say is that with the anaerobic stuff, with anaerobic, which is just technically, like the short burst stuff, you have to activate things so rapidly, and you start to just, I mean, it's even difficult to drain the muscle glycogen entirely with that exercise, but you drain the muscle glycogen, and when you produce lactate, it goes to the liver, and then you basically, there is some stress hormone associated, but it's usually adrenaline, but it's usually short burst, whereas, like, it's like having a long it's like having a long term drip of a of the adrenaline, versus just that you have it for that experience. And that's kind of done. And then you're constantly oxidizing. You're moving towards the oxidation of the fatty acids on a continuous basis with that, like, if you So, if you were to run every single day, I think that'd actually be for, like, very long distances. I think that'd actually be worse. And I think the studies actually support that as well, that the long distance running and steady state consistently over time is actually worse than doing like periodic sprints or weightlifting or anything like that for cardiovascular outcomes.

Jay Feldman 18:31
Yeah, yeah. And I think this brings us to again, a topic that we've kind of been talking around as well, which is just that fitness and health do not always equate, and we talked about this in terms of hormesis, where becoming better at tolerating a stress and adapting more to a stressor does not make it beneficial. So if you're able to tolerate more and more cold exposure with less stress hormones. That doesn't mean that you're getting healthier, right? Exactly. It doesn't mean that you're getting healthier. And often it means the opposite. And when you we kind of talked about it too, where, if you can't tell that you're dipping into a stress state, that's probably not a great sign. It's probably a sign that you're pretty frequent in a stress state. Yeah, exactly. And so you see that same thing again, with with the endurance type training for sure, where it almost because of the amount of stress induced, it shouldn't be easy and comfortable necessarily, to be doing those things. And if it is, it is coming at a cost. It is we are shifting our adaptation. If you want to think of it as adaptation, energy, like Hansel, you did that. Adaptation energy is being directed toward your fitness in the capacity of an endurance sport, and that is coming at the cost of the adaptation going elsewhere. For example, as we talked earlier, to adaptations that would allow for larger brain. Capacity. Again, it's not that simple. I'm not saying that, that if you just run a lot, you become dumb, like it's, it's nowhere near that extreme, or, yeah, that simple. But there, there is that, that piece of it. And again, it's not only the brain. It's also the organ function and reproductive function and on from there and again, as we talked about earlier, just because, just because the other forms of exercise might be better, the more intense, maybe more things, similar to weightlifting, might be better. That doesn't mean that just having a ton of muscle mass is beneficial either. As we were saying, that tends to come at a cost as well to these other to these other organ systems and to our overall metabolic health and health as a whole. So that's, again, something that we do want to be weighing there. And I think there is a balance to be had, not because of this fallacy, this holistic notion that, or fallacious notion that everything needs to be just in a in a balance, and not too much and not too little. I'm not I'm not saying that, but I think there's a place in between being extremely muscular and having very little muscle that is going to be that ideal state where you're not contributing too much energy to the musculature, and then same thing again. You could argue that same thing with some amount of aerobic fitness as well, where there is a point where it is too much, and there's a point where it's generally going to be pretty beneficial. And, yeah, yeah, I don't,

Mike 21:37
I don't have too much that I was I was debating if we were going to pull pictures up of sprinters versus distance runners, but I feel like that's been done so many times. Yeah, yeah, that's, there's just a there's just a massive difference in body type between the different the different types of training. And I think that it even though it's like, it's maybe not a perfect value. But I, you know, I think it's a good proxy to keep in mind when you're considering the different types of trainings and the effect that they have on the body. The distance runners are, at least in the extreme distance forms. And I was looking at Olympic runners are to basically emaciated, whereas the and it's, I'm not saying that, you know, they're running extreme distances, so that's something to keep in mind. Whereas the sprinters who are running much shorter distances are at least physically, appear to be in much better health, just on a pure Look, just looking at them perspective, just larger amounts of muscle mass, greater amount of body mass in general.

Jay Feldman 22:43
Yeah, I do want to say also, kind of, as we were talking about, I'm sure that there's a kind of cultural influence there. Whereas we were saying too much muscle is not always a good thing either. There's a cost to that. And I think you could probably argue also that the sprinters are too far on that side as well, whether it's just too much muscle mass or, again, too much adaptation toward fitness coming at a cost elsewhere. And I would assume that to be the case. And so I don't want to fall into that, fall into that idea as well. Okay, I don't know. You can disagree. I know. I know what you think.

Mike 23:18
Um, I don't know. I don't know if I, I don't, I don't know, like, what. I don't know where the cutoff is for too much muscle mass versus not enough muscle mass, or being too lean versus not being lean enough. So it's, you know, I don't know where the thresholds are there, right?

Jay Feldman 23:38
That's part of why I just don't want to go based on the esthetics of it, you know, like, what a lot of people would if you pulled people and asked what was, I think, if we look at Olympia, right? Well, if you pulled men and asked what was most esthetically pleasing, or what they thought was most esthetically healthy, or whatever, I would argue that it's most likely going to be beyond the health threshold, and so I don't want to fall into that, yeah, fallacy.

Mike 24:05
But so, like with sprinters, I feel like we are generally, they're not massive. You know, they're not, they're not generally massive. They are. They do tend to be lean, quite lean actually, especially in the Olympic level. But the, I think where you start to see like, the massive, where it's like, it's a lot, it's when you start to see like, because there's the, obviously, the extremes on either end, right? You have people who are running ridiculous numbers of miles every week, who are probably harming themselves. Then you also have people who are working out like Mad Men and taking ridiculous doses of steroids every week, and who are probably harming, well, definitively harming themselves. And then you kind of have, like, you know, there's, it's, where's that? That period in between, that is the, you know, the safe level. And that also has an individual modifier as well, right? Like I'm going to be able to handle, I. Amount of exercise, and you're going to be able to handle amount of X amount of an X type of exercise, and that there's some that's something to figure out individually.

Jay Feldman 25:07
Yeah, which is good transition. I want to talk about how someone can figure that out, because we haven't. We haven't given any clear parameters here, right? In terms of how much muscle is ideal, how much endurance training is ideal, how much anaerobic training is ideal? I think the reason for that is because those are a really hard things to quantify in general, but B are affected so much by someone's individual situation and where their metabolic health is and on from there. So, yeah, it's those are I? Don't feel, I don't know if you do, but honestly, I don't know. I don't know those limits, right? I don't feel comfortable giving certain recommendations there, but I do feel comfortable with offering certain concepts that somebody can use to determine that level for themselves. So the first of those being how somebody feels both while they're training and then after. So if somebody does some amount of exercise and feels wiped out the rest of the day, or if they do some amount of exercise and the next day, they feel wiped out, I think those are both probably signs that it was past that threshold of being ideal. So that would kind of be part one is, is how quickly you're recovering from the exercise. Another, like, one parameter that some people like to use as well is just that you feel better leaving the workout that when you started, as opposed to the feeling after like you need to collapse. And if you feel like you need to collapse, probably too far in that stress side.

Mike 26:43
No pain, no gain. Jay, no pain, no gain.

Jay Feldman 26:44
Of course, of course. You need to be collapsing and puking. That is the only way to be healthy.

Mike 26:52
If you're not, you're not working hard enough. If you're not working 100 hours a week, you're not working hard enough,

Jay Feldman 26:57
Not even working honestly.

Mike 26:59
yeah, whatare you even doing?

Jay Feldman 27:01
Lazy haha.

So the the the that would be, one piece would be just how you feel during and after and how well you were covering. Another piece would be various other symptoms. So we talked a lot about women's hormones, the female athlete triad. And luckily, women have, while they are more sensitive, they have a better indicator of their activity levels in terms of their health. And so having a normal cycle where a woman is ovulating and not having too much in the way of various symptoms is going to be a good indicator of of activity level, where, normally, if you're too far on that level, you'll start to see the kinds of things that you see with the female athlete triad. First you would probably see less ovulation, less frequent ovulation. You probably also eventually see amenorrhea, meaning no no period. So that would be a good indicator for women. For men, it's it can be a little bit tougher from the hormonal standpoint, but again, for both men and women, libido and drive is a great indicator as well. Morning Wood, yeah. And of course, with all these things, there's a lot of other factors beyond exercise that can affect these variables. But in terms of exercise, if you're exercising too much, you might see decreases in those, like, those features of health, in terms of hormones.

Mike 28:27
Yeah, I would say those would be the biggest for me. The one I go by is like, do I like? How much do I feel like doing what I'm going to do? That's a good one too, if I'm really loathing going to the gym or doing something that. So it's not that, it's not that it's necessarily over training, um, it's not that we're saying that, Oh, you're hitting over training. It's, uh, I'm just trying to give some indicators as to, like, being able to modulate the amount of activity that you're going to do. The other thing I want, I would want to keep mine is, if you are going to do start any new activity when you start the first when, when you first begin, it's always going to be a little uncomfortable. Like, if you haven't worked out for a while, and you start working out, or you didn't, haven't played a sport in a while, and you start, you're going to be a little sore. You're going to be a little uncomfortable. There is going to be an initial adaptation that has to take place. And then, so, like, in the start, I would, you know, I'd always, you know, wait a little while before you start to determine that it's good or bad for you, because you're going to have that you're going to have those symptoms when you start soreness, whatever it is. But I'd say that the symptoms that I would keep an eye out for when you are doing too much is changes in appetite, changes in mood, changes in libido and function, changes in sleep, changes in how you feel pre or post workout, and changes in overall, like productivity for other areas of your life. You know, if you start to notice that you're exercising super heavy and you're just you don't want to do anything else when you're done, or you can't do anything else when you're done, like, that's when you and then the same goes for work, right? We were talking about this before. Four where before the podcast was, like, with me with work, it was like, I went back and listened to the podcast and noticed that in some podcasts, I was much slower cognitively, in my responses, and then I was also saying, like, a lot more, which both what I was think was disgusting, but that's fine, but it's in all these different areas you you can take a look and kind of gage based on those symptoms and just how you feel too. Do you just feel tired? Are you just just kind of out of it? Just tired like that? Zest for life is kind of dissipating a little bit. Then it may be that mean that you're doing a little bit too much and just and just cut back. And it's the same thing with any food or dietary approach. You can do it in kind of a structured way where you easy. I guess the easy example is, if you were going to do some type of weightlifting or bodybuilding workout, decrease your volume. Just decrease your volume a little bit and see how that goes. Decrease if you're doing if you have strengths that's involved, decrease the intensity. Change percentages so and if you you can just modulate. You can also a lot of guys. When I was growing up, I used to work out in I was living in New Jersey, and they have huge, huge gyms there, these big golds gyms and whatnot. And I used to work out with guys who were older than me, in their 20s and whatnot. And I was, like, 1415, and they, they didn't read, you know, they kind of read bodybuilding magazine or any of these different types of things, but a lot of times they, like, went in the gym and they had just a general idea of their of what they were going to do, and they would kind of modulate based on how to how they were feeling. And then I Charles Poliquin. I think you introduced me to Charles Poliquin when we were in college, but Poliquin used to say, if you're feeling tired in the gym, just decrease your sets, or something like that. So you can modulate. You can auto regulate on the day with whatever you're doing. And just, you know whether, if you're going to be playing basketball, if you're going to be playing a sport, instead of playing like 10 pickup games that day, just play three and call it a day. You know, whatever your level of activity is, or pickleball, or whatever.

Jay Feldman 32:02
Yeah, yeah. I think that's a great point. You mentioned how you feel going into a workout. And I do want to mention also, of course, if you're really not feeling it, maybe it's a sign to do less, or to not, potentially not go. But I think, as you were saying, sometimes that lack of motivation can be due to other reasons that aren't because you don't have enough energy to work out, or it's not because it'll be too stressful. And so sometimes what you can do in that case is, or at least what I normally suggest, is, go to whatever the workout is. And if you start and you're really not feeling it, you're really feeling like you're not excited or motivated by it, you don't have the energy for it, then stop. But I do recommend still going, then stop or decrease, depending on how, how bad. But I do recommend still going, because sometimes we could just be a little tired from a long day, but actually would still really benefit from the exercise, and we just kind of don't like have the activation energy to get going. So sometimes I do think it's worth still going and then kind of evaluating after that point. Once you're already there, once you have your shoes on and you change your clothes and you drove over, whatever it is.

Mike 33:03
Sometimes driving to the gym is the hardest part of the workout.

Jay Feldman 33:07
Exactly, exactly.

Mike 33:08
He was like, Oh, I gotta do it,

Jay Feldman 33:10
And I and that's like, such a such a commonality, I think so such a common experience. Like, Oh, I have to get my shoes on, I have to change my clothes, I have to get the car drive over

Mike 33:21
So comfortable right now in my bed, right, right?

Jay Feldman 33:25
So, yeah. So I think it's worth at least going and then evaluating how you feel, because there can be other factors. Another thing in terms of tailoring what is too stressful and where the right amount of exercise is to your state is is, I think it's helpful to consider an example of someone who has chronic fatigue, for example, someone who gets really fatigued from really light exercise, or someone who has a lot of joint pain or discomfort for days after exercising, or something like that. I think that is a an example, an illustration of the individuality in these situations and how much our metabolic health can affect our tolerance to these things and obviously, for someone like that, they're in that situation where, if you look at that graph from before that physical activity is taking up a huge amount of the other category, the category of energy going to those other areas. And so that, you know, we we want to make sure, of course, we're doing the things that prevent that in the first place, that we can slowly increase our activity so we at least can get some movement in. But we want to be tailoring it to where we're at at that moment. So if you're not at a point where, if you're at a point where anything more than walking is too much, that's fine. Just Just walk. There's no need to to push beyond that. And I did want to add one other thing in terms of this, of the relationship between fitness and health not being necessarily linear, sometimes being inverse, is that there's no judgment if somebody determines or decides that they want to favor their fitness, their sport, whatever. It is over their health. It's a totally fine decision to make in the same way that a lot of people choose to do that with their work, their jobs. You know, they choose to work a ton of hours a week, and they for them, whether it's making a lot of money or doing something that they feel like helps the people around them, whatever it is they feel like that's worth them, not getting enough sleep or not focusing as much on eating well, whatever else. Of course, it's not the decision that we tend to make, but that's okay. There's no like and I mean it genuinely, there's no judgment there. Someone wants to be an elite athlete and they want to go to the Olympics and accomplish those goals, that's amazing. Go for it. I just think it's worth considering that that tends to yeah, there's consequences, and it tends not to be, you know, it doesn't tend to go to co vary with good health. There's a health cost there. And so, again, I just felt like that was an important piece to add in here. In terms of Lindsay's question, I know a lot of what we're saying is, is that too much endurance exercise can be a problem, and does tend to come at the cost of our health. Again, it doesn't. There's a relative value there. So Does eating at a restaurant where you're eating a bunch of fried food, if you're doing on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. We all have to make that decision in terms of what is worth it for us, in terms of those effects on our health, versus what isn't. And I'm not saying that endurance exercise is the equivalent of going and eating McDonald's every day. So we all have to kind of find that balance for ourselves and and, yeah, determine what's most important to us. Is it the food that tastes really good to us? Is it the social experience with friends? Is it accomplishing whatever goal in terms of their their training at their sport and just recognizing, again, in terms of health, those things don't always go together.

Mike 36:42
Yeah, to know your consequences before and make an informed decision. I think that's the biggest, most important piece and then, yeah, just know what you're getting yourself into. And I think we're just trying to dispel any type of conflation of more is better as far as exercise goes.

Jay Feldman 36:56
Right, yeah. And I think we're just, we're just leaning into that, because so much for the advice is just that the more exercise, the better the athletes are the healthiest endurance training, especially is the best for weight loss and those things, all of those things, are really not the case.

Mike 37:10
If you go by all the mainstream advice, your diet is all whole grains, every like no sugars, all vegetable oils, like polyunsaturated fats, I guess all plant proteins, so legumes, because, you know, and maybe white meat, chicken, no eggs, no pork, no beef, no dairy, because it's bad for you and then you're going to just run yourself to death and probably work and be like, excessively productive, and maybe use an SSRI or something like that, and a statin, preemptive statins, you know, when you start in your 20s. So it's just like essentially an entire culture and ideology around like destroying you, maiming you, to some extent, on multiple levels, dietary, pharmacologically, activity wise. And I guess part of it is to Part of our job, or I guess part of what we've taken to do is to kind of dispel some of these, some of these ideas. So minimally, yeah, another thing is caloric restriction or fasting, or something like, don't eat it out.

Jay Feldman 38:17
Yeah, yeah. And take resveratrol and not Yeah, that formant. Yeah, exactly, yeah. And so I think it brings us to, it's a nice transition, though, for the people who do want to favor more exercise and more intense exercise, even if it dips, even if it is at some cost to their health, maybe it's maybe they don't want to be running six miles a day, but they want to run six miles every other day. Whatever it is, whatever that balance is for each person, again. I mean, both of us enjoy sports, right? And sometimes we'll do it to the point that we know it comes at the cost of our health and we're feeling fatigued the next day or later that day. I've done that, you know, with hiking, for example. I've done it with Muay Thai, and I used to do it back basketball. On if you've done anything like that recently, doing it with work, right? And there's a lot of benefits to those things. There's a social aspect, there's our enjoyment of it, and there's benefits the activity itself. But there are, of course, situations where we dip too much into that stress, and there are things that we can do, or that anybody can do, to help to mitigate that stress as much as possible, and, yeah, prevent it in the first place, even if you are making those choices. And I do want to mention a few other points here where, again, I don't want to frame it as though, anytime you're doing any intense exercise, the stress is always outweighing the benefits, the positive effects, the specific effects, even if you are maybe fatigued later the next day. Again, it's tough to quantify these things and so so much of it has to be qualitative in terms of how you feel and what you notice over time. But there is a place for that intense exercise, even as I was just discussing in terms of a hard Muay Thai. Obsession, which is Kickboxing for people who are unaware, or or, you know, several games of basketball in a row, or whatever it is those there, those benefits can still outweigh the stress, but those things are going to be higher in stress when, of course, there's more intensity and they're going on for longer and I do want to mention also, when it comes to increase exercise, increased activity over time, there are certain developments that also come into play that help to minimize, or at least reduce the amount of stress in response to the same amount of exercise and a good example of this is what's called running economy, which is basically the efficiency that you exhibit when you run. And so over time, as you get better at running, your running economy improves and you become more efficient, which essentially, essentially means that you have to use less energy for the same amount of work, the same amount of result. And in essence, what this does is reduces the energy demand of the exercise, which then reduces the amount of stress that's caused. And so this is there's a couple of important, important points here. One is that our bodies are trying to become more efficient and reduce that energy demand because it's so costly. And that's, I think, indicative of the direction of where we want to go. But it does also mean that the more that we train, the less stressful that exercise will be...

Mike 41:25
If you're able to recover from it

Jay Feldman 41:27
Yeah, assuming that you're recovering well and everything, and that you're actually adapting properly but the other thing too is that a lot of times what happens is that when our economy improves and whatever we did before is no longer as challenging, then we just double it, or increase the amount of intensity, or increase the amount of exercise we do, so we end up with the same amount of stress just we did more work and and again, there's still that same cost there in that situation. But I do think again it's it illustrates like this process, this adaptation of improved efficiency, which doesn't only happen, it happened with running. It happens with anything where our strength improves, for example, which will reduce, you know, the amount of energy required to lift something or cardiovascular fitness improves. Again, same kind of thing where the endurance type activity won't require as much of an energy demand. The fact that our bodies are doing this does suggest that we don't want that. We want to be minimizing the amount of energy demands, again, relative to those other benefits. And it also directly flies in the face, and we discuss this a lot, but this directly flies in the face of the less exercise more idea, and shows how directly that's fighting against our bodies, where our bodies are literally trying not to burn as much energy as possible, not to deplete themselves of energy in an intelligent way, in order to prevent what so many people are trying to do, which is deplete energy through exercising as much as possible and any eating less. And that's part of, again, why there's such a huge cost to that side of things. But yeah, I think that is an important consideration in terms of exercise, where there is, again, it's not all bad. It's not all going to be a stress inducing and as you get better at it, it does produce less stress. And again, that's another reason to start slow, start small, meet yourself where you're at, as you mentioned, Mike, at a point where you can recover really well. And again, using those qualitative, subjective measures that we discussed earlier is generally the best indication of that. And you can look at quantitative measures too. I mean, you can look at your temperature and polls, you can look at your labs and on from there and see what those are reflecting in terms of your health response to a certain amount of exercise.

Mike 43:35
Yeah. So I have three points for this. The first one is that the idea of eat less, exercise more is and the idea of like calories in, calories out, puts the body in this perspective of like a linear, a linear response, where you, if you have it's like a direct cause and effect response. So if you exercise, you'll burn more calories will lose weight, like a kind of syllogism, but the it completely discounts the element. And I think the reason perspective comes from this area is because it's from like, an idea of machine thinking, or industrial thinking, like there's a frame of that, rather than an idea of the like, an organic type of thinking around the body being or like a living organism. So the body is able to adapt and up regulate or down regulate energy production, energy expenditure in multiple different areas in a complex fashion, rather than just, oh, I exercise more, I burn more energy all then I'm just going to lose weight. It's such a simplistic perspective that doesn't take anything into account, and people spewing this stuff, calories and calories out, eat less, exercise more Sure. Is it working? Can it work for some people, yes. But what you find with a lot of people when you start coaching or just if, in general, people are saying, Oh, I tried to do this. I tried to do that. I lost all this weight, and then I put it back. On, or I can't lose weight, or I lost all this weight and then I put it back on, and now I can't lose it again using those same methods. And it's because this the body doesn't just work in this linear pathway where you exercise and you'll lose weight, or you eat less, then you'll just lose weight at a certain point. If you eat less, will you? Will you effectively lose weight? Yes, but it's a losing battle, because you have to keep eating less and keep eating less, and there's only so low that you can go and then there's also consequences and and side effects of having to move through that pathway. And if anybody's interested in what that actually looks like, the Minnesota starvation experiment will give anyone some great, great ideas and and I have clients that I work with who come to me eating at levels equivalent to those for the in the Minnesota starvation experiment. And in fact, most people that I work with that want to lose weight, who, who that have come to me are actually under eating. They're not according to the caloric calculators. What's it? There's the catch McArdle and the Mifflin Saint jaw or whatever. There's like multiple different calculators there based on research. And essentially it says that based on this person's body mass, lean body mass, or body mass in general, which is usually a function of their weight and body fat percentage, or their lean body mass, or just their weight, whatever it is you it, there's specified to eat X number of calories to maintain their weight. So it determines their basal metabolic rate, and that's the amount of that's the amount of calories that they need to eat on every on a regular basis, daily basis, to maintain their weight without doing anything. Most people are eating under that. Despite having movement throughout the day, light movement, some people are exercising. They're still eating under that. And I've had obese people are discussed this before, very obese people with body fat percentages in the 40 and 50% who are who are severely under eating and still gaining weight. And this, I think, is a product from this, this, this linear, reductionistic thought processes around eat less, exercise, more calories and calories out. And then I also have other people who aren't obese and who aren't overweight, who are practicing these methods and have a whole host of other side effects. Because I think there's different predispositions and how people respond to stressors. Some people maybe put on weight. Some people get severe mood disorders. Some people get skin disorders. Some people get have issues with their libido. It really depends on what the person's predisposition is. So I think it's important to understand the body as a having complex regulatory mechanisms in place that can shift metabolism, not only on a general scale, up or down, but in multiple areas, up or down to meet us imposed stressor. So it's very important to understand the stress that you're imposing on your system, and then the ability of your system to recover and respond to that stress. If you have the wrong model in place, then you will not get the outcomes that you want. So that's the first piece. The second piece that ties into this that I wanted to discuss is that a lot of people are how are trying this, eat less exercise, more calories, and calories out approach and or they're trying to go to the gym, and they're and I hear this all the time. I'm exercising, I'm doing this, but I'm not getting the results that I want. And you hear even fitness influencers on Instagram and YouTube and whoever who are saying I wasn't able to look the way that I look, or put on the weight that I wanted to put on, or get the result from exercise that I wanted until I drastically increased my calories. And it's like this. It's this magic revelation for everybody that if they eat enough to support what they're doing, man, my body will respond the way that I want. Now, it's not always the best quality foods, which is a different story, but it's, it's, um, they're, they're eating enough to support what their activity is. And then, you know, it's presented as if it's, wow, this is this. This is crazy. This is insane. This is This is absurd. How could this be that I'm eating all these calories and I'm eating all these foods or and then the assumption is, oh, this person just must have a fast metabolism. It's no, they're not. They're not lowering their metabolism. They're not dropping their metabolism. They're eating the amount of food that's required for them to do what they're doing. They're they're supporting their system. Whereas, in the opposite case, what you get from a lot of people, or from the mainstream, I would say, is that, Oh, you just need to, again, eat less, exercise more, and then doesn't work. Or if it does work, you're just skinny and you don't look the way that you want. You don't have the body composition that you want. So I think it's really important to put that into perspective and to third piece that to exemplify this all together. And this is something that I remember when I was in high school, I found this, and it absolutely blew my mind. But there was a there was a track coach. His name was Charlie Francis. And Charlie Francis trained an Olympian sprinter named Ben Johnson. And there was a whole controversy with Ben Johnson, because I think he was a Canadian sprinter. He had gotten caught to some extent, with steroids, and. Um. And the thing is, what sprinters or what athletes in general, at that level are not using some type of enhancement, I don't know, but I would say my guess, if I had to put money on to be the vast majority are, are using something just because the level that they're performing and the edge that they need to beat the records that have been set, who with people who are already using those substances makes it quite pot, makes it quite difficult to do that on a natural basis. But as far as what individuals are not using or not using, I have no idea. But besides that, the the training methods proposed by Charlie Francis weren't heavy on pushing ridiculous amounts of training. The focus and Charlie, Charlie Francis's methods were recovery rest and having the stimulus and then allowing the body to recover. So he was there was, like the training programs that he had set for Ben Johnson, I think, included, like, three times a week strength training with not so much volume, but an increased intensity, and then he was very heavy on him having days off to recover, and then also having massages on a regular basis to break up any scar tissue and whatnot. And the methods were apparently extremely effective. There was other other athletes that Charlie Francis had had trained, and I think it highlights, and just as an as one extreme example the importance of focusing on recovery and keying in on to recovery, rather than focusing so heavy on training. The goal is to get that minimum effective response and have that on a consistent basis, but allow the body to recover from it so that you can trigger, you can actually effectively trigger the response again in the case of exercise. So those are just a few. I think that's just one key example. And they I think Charlie Francis still has it up, but you can buy, I think he has a bunch of books and stuff. I bought a bunch of. I think I bought his archive. There was an option for that when I was in high school to, like, look through some of his training methods. It was just, it was interesting.

Jay Feldman 52:04
Yeah, yeah. It's a great point. I mean, several great points in terms of the of these relationships between our energy availability, calories, in and out, recovery and on from there. There's a few clarifications I wanted to make. Well, one thing I wanted to mention is, in terms of the reverse dieting type approach you mentioned, where people are eating a lot more and starting to get better results. We discussed that in more detail, along with the all in approach in a previous episode, talking about that all in approach and how we can eat intuitively and things like that. So I'll link back to that episode.

Mike 52:40
We're not saying all in by the way, which is it's we're not, I'm not. I want to clarify that, because I do want to mention that I'm not arguing for an all in approach, because I don't necessarily think that that works either. We are very specific in the approach, in the episodes that you're discussing about how we would mention going about that.

Jay Feldman 53:01
Yeah, yep, exactly, exactly. And so, yeah, that was one thing I wanted to mention. Of course, we something you said earlier on, and what you were discussing was that calories in, calories out, works maybe for a small portion of people. And I think what you were kind of getting at is that in the short term, you can see those things working, but in reality, it's as you described, with all the problems with that approach. It's really only a matter of time. If you zoom out and look at the full picture, maybe part of the picture, it hasn't happened yet. For somebody, often you find that doesn't play out particularly well, either it comes with a lot of symptoms and degeneration or the weight comes back normally both, of course, eating less and exercising more works in the short term for most people.

Mike 53:46
But at least when they're young,

Jay Feldman 53:50
Well, and that's the other thing too, is over time, you respond poorer and poorer to that approach, and you have to eat less and less and exercise more and more to get the same result. And it comes with and it comes with and then eventually it becomes unbearable, and you end up with all these other symptoms during that time as well. You had also talked about the some of the equations for estimating caloric expenditure. I just wanted to point out that while those are helpful for estimations, they're still very much flawed in like the the concept behind them, and we talked about again, why we don't look at things in those terms, in terms of caloric expenditure, calories and calories out before. So I'll link to those discussions because it's a much longer one than and but be quite tangential compared to today. But you referred back to the Minnesota starvation experiment, people eating the amount that that they ate in that experiment, or less, which I see all the time, and I see this all the time, just in general, where you see people who are very overweight and they're just eating very little. And we've talked about this again, a ton, about how the conventional view is just that they're lying what the amount of food that they're taking in, and that's not at all the case. And there's so many of these confounding. Yeah, confounding variables, but just factors that that affect our metabolic rate, that are not accounted for in the calories and calories out idea. And one way that you see this, I mean, you see it a lot when you look at the Minnesota starvation experiment. But the other thing that we pointed out that was so that was particularly notable from that study was that these men who were average weight between 150 and 160 pounds and relatively lean, were eating about 3300 calories at their baseline just to maintain their weight. And now, I think you'd be hard pressed to find people doing the same. And Brad Marshall, who we talked about before, in terms of his Ross theory of obesity, and SED theory of obesity, which we certainly had some disagreements with. We do agree with a lot of his premises, or some of his premises, and one that he's talked about is how people used to be eating way more on a daily basis and had much higher metabolic rates. And he points out a couple of of good studies showing how the metabolic rate has decreased relative to body weight over the last 100 plus years, or even, I think, yeah, about 100 years since. I think there's one study looking between 1919 and 1987 so that was 60 years. I'm sure that between now and then, we've seen dramatically further decreases and and Brad has talked a lot about the problems with PUFA and how those drive a hibernation state, which we agree with, which is a huge factor that is probably driving the decrease in metabolic rate, among many other things. And again, just goes to show and provide some evidence of of how dramatically this calories and calories out approach has got it wrong, and the many other variables that we should be considering if we want to actually lose weight and healthy weight and actually significantly, dramatically increase our metabolism, so that we can be eating 4000 plus calories a day as as maybe we would have been doing 100 plus years ago.

Mike 56:51
I'm pretty sure so a couple points, I'm pretty sure that there was an article. I think I'll have to find it. Where's this? It was a, not a research article, but like a journalistic expose, talking about how Coca Cola had funded research, had funded researchers, scientists and research in general, to promote this calories in, calories out perspective, as opposed to looking at like food quality in general, so that these large companies can continue to sell their straight up garbage products in and then have people blame themselves as gluttons, rather than look at the fact that just the the the large food manufacturers have been destroying the food supply for decades and continue to do so. So it's like it's not the the problem always comes down to, and this is with all of the arguments that this, that these large corporations in upper class want to situate is that, oh, it's the people are just gluttons. It's it's market forces. They they are demanding our crappy products, and they can't stop having them, and that's why they're getting fat. They're just eating too much. It's not that the food supply and the products that we're creating are straight up garbage. It's never that. It's always the individual's fault,

Jay Feldman 58:10
Right? Sorry, just to interject real quick, just to add on that point, the foods that they're manufacturing encourage people to overeat, and not just because they're hyper palatable, as everyone points to, but they're really, really inefficient at producing energy, which means you still have those constant hunger signals. You're storing the food as fat, and you just need to keep eating more and more of it because you're so undernourished and low in energy availability.

Mike 58:36
Yeah, you have nutrient poor industrial additive with hyper palatable palatability that's less expensive than quality foods they have, literally, it's like, and this is what I hate about this stuff, too. This stuff actually gets on my nerves the most is we create this theory that people are just gluttons and they're just going to do the worst things for them. And then we create a system that forces people in a particular direction, and then say, see, look, our theory is right. It's garbage. It's literally garbage. It's circular rat reasoning. We're we're gonna make the garbage food the cheapest that's available, and then we're gonna put heart healthy, whatever labels on it, you know, for the different heart stuff, the vegetable oils and whatnot. And it's way cheaper than quality grass fed butter or quality chocolate. And then you're gonna and then they're gonna have people like you're literally conditioning them to go into that direction, especially because it's hyper palatable, etc. And then you're gonna turn around and say, Oh, look, people are doing XYZ. It's like, No, you are creating circumstances to push people in a certain direction, and then turning around and calling them gluttons, if you look at the trends. And I think I discussed this study on on the podcast with Hans, but I was going through, and you and I have discussed this study before, Jay I was going through this study that was looking at trends in dietary intake from 1909 to 1999 and on one of the graphs, they actually show. So where they show that when the American Heart Association and whatnot and put out all these dietary guidelines, all the fat consumption dropped, saturated fat, monounsaturated fat, and then soybean oil, and the other oils that the American Heart Association, these other regulating bodies, pushed drastically increased. So it's not that people are gluttons and not trying to do the best for themselves. Because if they were, if they were, they would, though you wouldn't have seen the drastic uptick in the consumption of soybean oil, I think, was greater than 1,000% and half a century, and that was from the regulating bodies guidelines. People were trying to do, what worked, what the what the regulating bodies say worked, and then, and then, it actually turned out to backfire, because the regulating body's recommendations were pure garbage. They were literally not scientifically sound, garbage propaganda. And so then they want to turn around and say, Oh, it's because Americans are fat, Americans are diabetic, Americans are x, y and z, because they're gluttons, because they can't control their appetite, because they eat all these foods while they're putting out messages saying, oh, fat, saturated fat and monounsaturated fat is what's causing heart disease. And you know, you all need to just eat these vegetable oils that have never been introduced into the food supply until now, because they lower cholesterol on this cholesterol heart disease hypothesis, and then label all of the the vegetable oils with heart healthy and create all these low fat, heart healthy foods filled with industrial additives and increasing their palatability, etc. And then turn around and say, Oh, the reason you guys are sick is because you're gluttons. That's absurd. It's ridiculous. It's insane. The fact that they and then they like and then to promote calories in, calories out to people. Oh, you just need to. You need to eat less of our junk to lose weight and not have problem health problems. No, you, we don't need your junk period. Take away your vegetable oils. Take away your processed foods. You it's literally useless. You have entire corporations creating useless products. Their entire, their entire purpose is to create a lines of useless products that just make people sick, and then they want to pay researchers off to create hypothesis to justify their useless products. It's, it's like, extremely, I don't know how it makes me angry, like I say it's one of the things that makes me extremely angry, but, yeah, it's just you have that whole premise going on, and then you want to blame the people. And I mean, I even see it in the hospital. It's like people coming in with all these heart problems needing XYZ surgery after decades of eating vegetable oil. And then when they get in there, the doctors turn around say, Hey, Doc, why do you think it's that? Oh, genetics. It's like a series of of crap theories explaining away obvious problems. The reason you have heart disease isn't because genetics, if not, you may have a genetic predisposition, but the level of heart disease, the level of cancer, the level of diabetes, the level of kidney disease, the level of XYZ, whatever elemental P disease that we've created in the past couple decades is only increasing because the diet, and partly because the diet in the country is absolutely terrible. It's out, it's insane, and then they want to turn around and have another theory to explain it. Oh, you're glutton and you have bad genetics. So like it immediately removes the genetics argument, removes any responsibility on the person for taking care of themselves, and then the glutton argument simultaneously puts the puts the the argument as their fault and nothing to do with the regulations and and government guidance. It says, yeah, it's a, I don't know It's ridiculous. It's absolutely when you look at it, it's absolutely ridiculous.

Jay Feldman 1:03:47
Yeah, yeah. Of course, the pharmaceutical companies also being huge, yeah, too, yeah.

Mike 1:03:52
Well, take this that I've Justin Mo, I know I'm going too much, but on the pharmaceutical piece, it's sold to people that if you take XYZ drug, you're going to be fine, like it, we're going to give you this stat, and it's going to lower your cholesterol, and then you're not you're we're going to lower your risk, your risk, not only your risk of heart disease and XYZ from high cholesterol, which it's questionable if that even happens, because the statin studies, when they made, when they put new regulations in on 2004 to basically to eliminate, like the what was it like? Collusion with the pharmaceutical companies and the researchers and they impose stricter regulations. Statins have not been shown to work at all. They lower cholesterol that, yes, they do that, but that lowering cholesterol hasn't shown to decrease mortality or have effects on heart disease. So the studies before that, that were funded by the industry show benefit, and then when they increase regulations, oh, now they don't show any benefit. Yet, everybody's being recommended statins so they can lower their cholesterol and continue to eat however they want to eat, which is really not working.

Jay Feldman 1:05:00
Just one, yeah, yeah. And just say, you know, just to add a little piece there, it does seem like the stands have been shown to be helpful in a very particular, very, very highly at risk population. But we also talked about confounding variables there, or not even confounding variables, but confounding mechanisms, mechanisms outside of cholesterol, that can account for those effects where stands have particular beneficial effects on the gut, yeah, particular, yeah, exactly. They have a particular antimicrobial beneficial effect on the gut that could be entirely responsible for its anti inflammatory effects and and maybe people who are particularly at risk that could outweigh the negatives of lowering cholesterol, but that doesn't make it a good approach to take, even if that is the case.

Mike 1:05:46
Well, I discussed the study previously on this where using statins actually may predispose towards atherosclerosis and heart failure by impairing the production of selenal proteins, impairing the which include proteins like glutathione peroxidase, and then the the deiodinase proteins, which are enzymes that basically create, create a active thyroid hormone. And then also they impair the vitamin K dependent processes, which can lead to vascular calcification. And the last one was they impair the production of CO Q, 10 inside the mitochondria, so they can cause mitochondrial defect, or model essentially mitochondrial failure because of a lack of CO Q 10. So there and then there's associations with statins, with diabetes, and with infection and then. So it's like, but you'll never find you it's you're hard pressed to find studies discussing those mechanisms, although it's there, and then it's just like, oh, there may be an association with increased infection XYZ from these drugs. And I know we're slightly tangential, it's just the point is, is that you have this crap diet and crap lifestyle, and then the pharmaceutical companies want to come by and prey on people and be like, Hey, you take this drug and you're going to be all fine, you can continue living your craft lifestyle, because if you take these drugs, you're going to be just fine. And the thing is, is, will the drugs manage symptoms and perhaps delay disease by a little bit? Sure, sure, no one's going to argue that, but it doesn't stop them the diseases from coming at some point. So it's important to recognize those aren't cures. Those are band aids at best, and a lot of times, those band aids come with a whole host of other negative side effects that may even be worse in the long run. So, and you're not going to hear that. So you have like, this system of just you have, like, the pharmaceutical companies preying on people and making them think drugs are going to solve their problems. You have the food industry creating crap products and then saying when you develop health problems or you get overweight, that it's your fault. And then you have the medical industry justifying any problem that you have as genetics. So if there's no explanation for what's going on, even though that's quite obvious what's going on, oh, it's there's nothing you can do about it. You were born that way. So it's like this three way vice grip on people mentally to create frameworks for them that aren't reality, and then they wind up having terrible outcomes.

Jay Feldman 1:08:11
Yeah, yeah. I will, uh, I'll link back to those episodes where we discuss that in some more detail, and the problems with the the cholesterol, heart disease myth and all that. And obviously this is something we're passionate about. Obviously this is, like the main, the main industry problems that we feel like we're up against and trying to to refute and and help people overcome. Because, you know, I think we both think that these are some of the main things that are keeping people in the dramatically unhealthy state that most people are in. So, yeah, obviously something we're passionate about. I do want to bring this tangent back to the the topic here in terms of athletic performance and the trade offs and where we can find that that balance. All right, we're going to end that episode there and pick back up in part three, where we'll be discussing how we can maximize fitness and athletic performance from the bioenergetic view, while also minimizing the harms and stressful effects from exercise. 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. This series has been inspired by a couple of listener questions. 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, you can head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/podcast 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 those are chronic cravings and hunger, low energy or fatigue, poor sleep or insomnia, joint pain, weight gain, hormonal imbalances, digestive symptoms, brain fog, or any other low energy symptoms or chronic health conditions. Then head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/energy where you can sign up for a free energy balance mini course, where I'll explain how these different symptoms and conditions are really caused by a lack of energy, and I'll also walk you through the main things that you can do from a diet and lifestyle perspective to maximize your cellular energy and resolve these symptoms and conditions. So to sign up for that free energy balance mini course, head over to Jay Feldman, wellness.com/energy, and with that, I'll see you in the next episode.