Jay Feldman 0:04
Before we jump into this episode, I've got some really exciting news. The brand new energy balance solution group coaching program is up and running. I've created this program because for one I've been entirely booked up with one on one clients, and my wait list keeps growing, and I want to be able to help so many more of you. And with that in mind, I've designed this program for you to be able to get the same results as the one on one coaching, but also to be able to do so at a fraction of the price. And I've really gone out of my way to keep the program affordable. And I'm really so excited about how this program has been going so far, the results that people have been getting have seriously been phenomenal. So I'm really excited about that. I'll just tell you a little bit about what the program includes. First thing is that there is a video library in that program that includes videos that are geared toward helping you implement the bioenergetic approach with very clear action steps and tips. And this includes videos on how you can restore your gut health, how you can lose weight without destroying your metabolism, how you can boost your metabolism, how you can have amazing restorative sleep and lots more. And I continue to add videos to this library every month. In addition to that video library, there are also a handful of resources, including a sample meal plan, a food guide, a calorie and macronutrient cheat sheet, and several more. There's also a private community where you can get support between the group coaching calls, both from me and from everybody else participating in the program, and then lastly, and you know, the highlight of this program is that there are two small group coaching calls every single month for you to be able to get personalized help, and I have been keeping these coaching calls rather small so that you have time to get that personalized help, ask questions and get the support that you need and the guidance that you need. So really excited about this program to find out more, you can head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/solution, so again, to find out more about the energy balance solution group coaching program, head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/solution, all right. So with that in mind, welcome to episode 87 of the energy balance podcast, where we teach you how to live without constant hunger and cravings, fatigue, brain fog, poor sleep and all sorts of other low energy symptoms by maximizing your cellular energy. I'm Jay Feldman. I'm a health coach and independent health researcher, and joining me again today is my good friend Mike Fave. Mike and I have been studying health and nutrition together for a long time now, and Mike also draws on his experiences from working within the healthcare industry. Today's episode is part two of our series, discussing Robb Wolf's perspective on the bioenergetic view, and working to explain and clarify some of those misunderstandings, and trying to bridge that gap and find some common ground between the different views that we hold. And in this second part, which will be the final part of this series. I did just want to mention that toward the end of this episode, we were running out of time, and so we kind of had to keep things a little bit shorter than we would have liked. But maybe we'll dig into these topics in more detail, if that is something that you guys would like. But in this episode in particular, we discuss whether low carb diets increase cortisol over time, whether tolerance to stress is improved on low carb diets, why being overweight or obese is not a sign of excess energy, how the bioenergetic view incorporates evolutionary biology and how this differs from the ancestral health model, and also what we think of Paul Saladino interpretation of The quote, repeat diet. If you are new to this podcast, then after listening through today's episode, I'd highly recommend you go back and listen to episodes one through seven, where we took some time to explain and explore the foundations as far as the bioenergetic view of health is concerned. To check out these show notes for today's episode, you can head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/podcast where you can take a look at the studies and articles and anything else that we referenced throughout today's episode and with that, let's get started.

Mike 4:22
Now. I guess the next piece to jump into is the idea. So there's a, there was an idea from Rob that the the low carb keto diets don't really cause this increase in stress hormones, like, like a Cushing's like state or like, like, drastic increases in elevated cortisol, and go ahead.

Jay Feldman 4:45
Right? Well, and so we've been discussing that same piece, right, the stress, the low blood sugar side of things, in terms of glucagon. But what you're what we're going to get at here as well as it's not just glucagon that's the problem in these states, and we kind of already framed it as. Yes, that is just the first layer of stress response, and we're already starting in that first layer. And because of that, what we see in these states is more of a susceptibility to stress. After that, we're not as resilient to a stressor, and we lead to the stress hormones much sooner. And the deeper stress hormones, the catecholamines and cortisol. And I'm just going to share a couple studies showing that. And then I know you have some talking about more of the sensitivity to those things also shifting. Yeah, so Rob did make the point, and we kind of already acknowledged it, that in the short term, yes, you have these increases in stress hormones, but it's just because you're shifting in once your fat adapted, you're fine and so, and at that point you're not going to see, you know, elevated activity in terms of stress hormones. But what these studies are suggesting is is not that. And so this is a quote from a study titled long term fat diet adaptation effects on performance, training capacity and fat utilization. And they state that they're posing a question here. First they say, What is, then, the mechanism for the higher mental effort needed to sustain exercise during fat rich diet adaptation, and this is a reference to showing higher perceived exertion to exercise when you're on a lower carb, higher fat diet and they state that previous studies of short and long term adaptation to fat rich diets reveal a significant higher catecholamine response as well as heart rate during submaximal exercise compared with when a carbohydrate, rich diet was consumed, thus indicating that both short and long term fat diet adaptation induces an increased activity in the sympathetic nervous system during exercise. So again, showing an increased stress response in when facing a stressor, when facing increased energy demands. And again, this is because we've already started. We're already in stress. We're a very mild state of stress, or more mild state of stress constantly, if we're on low carb, and then it's much easier to dip into those deeper levels. Whereas when the carbs are available, we'll a use the available carbs. B will use the stored carbs. And those things will first rely on just nothing, and then it will rely on glucagon, whereas they're already in that high glucagon state. And the next quote here is suggesting more of the same.

Mike 7:06
Before you go, I was just going to add that you're seeing the increases in catecholamines in these states because you need to liberate more free fatty acids from your tissues to meet the demand, because you don't have that glycogen on board. So you're and again, this is always the same deal. You have a you have a stimulus on the system where you don't have the energetic supplies to meet the demand, so you need to upregulate these adaptive or stress hormones to supply that substrate to meet the demand. So what you're seeing in this, in those in that study, is essentially that you're already have one foot in the door of not having enough substrate, so you need to use more hormone to liberate that substrate.

Jay Feldman 7:47
Absolutely, absolutely and you made me think of something that we've referenced in the past in terms of why we don't want to have too low of a fat intake in terms of our diet. And that's that in the same way that low blood sugar triggers stress response, low free fatty acids triggers a stress response. So you're not able to just avoid stress responses because you're running on fat that still, as you're saying, anytime we need to liberate that from storage that requires stress responses. And in this case, we're digging into those catecholamines way sooner, because we already have the glucagon elevated. Yep. And so this next study is, you know, this next quote is basically saying more of the same. It's from a study titled low carbohydrate diets and men's cortisol and testosterone, systemic systematic review and meta analysis, and they state that 27 studies were included with a total of 309 participants. Short term low versus high carbohydrate diets moderately increased resting cortisol, whereas long term low carbohydrate diets had no consistent effect on resting cortisol. Of course, this is what Rob has been talking about. And the next piece they say is that low versus high carbohydrate diets resulted in much higher post exercise cortisol after long duration exercise, which is just over 20 minutes. And this was in both the long term and short term, is that they were noticing this higher post exercise cortisol. So again, just coming back to the same idea that we are less resilient to stress and much deeper in that stress pathway to begin with, and so we'll be increasing catecholamines and cortisol to a much greater extent when we're on a low carbohydrate diet. Yep. And as you were saying, also, this is why we see this like we've seen this. You know, a lot of times people come from carnivore or other versions of low carb diets, fasting glucose goes up and up and up. Cortisol goes up and up and up. Over time, thyroid goes in the tank. All of that is is due to this excess stress, excess glucagon, and then later on, excess cortisol, reduced thyroid activity, all that.

Mike 9:35
Yeah, and you're seeing like I've seen tons of clients come to me and their glute, their cortisol, isn't out of reference range, but it's in the top of the reference range. And that's that's important to point out. So are they Cushing away? No.

Jay Feldman 9:50
But it's still excessively high cortisol. There's a lot of steps before Cushing's.

Mike 9:55
Well, and they have the symptoms of it too. It's like, I can't sleep at night, you know? Or like waking up at four or five o'clock in the morning every day, and I can't get back to sleep. It's like, that is a that is an elevated cortisol response like that is hand like, that's textbook elevated cortisol response it's like insomnia, and then also the manic moods and whatnot. So like, you see, you see that, you see that in these different states. And then the other thing that goes with this as well is and a lot of these, the Keto and whatnot and whatnot states, you see the elevations in blood glucose. You see over time, you see the elevations in blood lipids, like those also go hand in hand with glucagon and cortisol. If I gave if I gave you a glucocorticoid drug, I would give you hyperglycemia and I would also produce a hyperlipidemia. Those are side effects of those. So could is this always the case in the low carb keto diet? No, but we definitely know that glucagon is a culprit here, and I'm sure that the cortisol signaling, which we'll discuss in a second, is part of that as well. And the other thing is, we, you saw it as you directly saw it for yourself when we, I didn't have that, that same response to you do, but your cholesterol when we, when we were like 20 what 2122 years old in in college, was like, What is like? Suit like in the high two hundreds or something, or?

Jay Feldman 11:18
It was like 278 I think, was the highest I got it.

Mike 11:22
And we see that with other clients now too, like I have clients who I'm working with whose cholesterol is in the three hundreds, coming off carnivore. And then it's like, do they need a statin? No, they need to eat more carbohydrate, get their get their insulin sensitivity working, lower that glucocorticoid response, lower that glucagon response, and then increase their thyroid function. There's a whole bunch of other sensing factors that are involved there, with some of like the the more specific, like gene expression stuff. But overall, it's the same. It's like same thing we have every time like we work with somebody who's coming from from that piece, they come with high cholesterol. You changed their diet. Within a couple months, their cholesterol is back down to pretty much normal limits. And it wasn't because we gave them a statin or red, red yeast rice extractor, something to inhibit the HM, HMG, COA enzyme.

Jay Feldman 12:16
Yeah and it's also not. We're not doing this because we think that cholesterol is going to clog up the arteries either, just for reference, it's not, we're not subscribing to that outdated idea either. I'll reference back to our our discussions on cholesterol, or previous episodes or series we did on cholesterol, just for people who are, yeah, wanting to understand more about that, I did want to say I've seen clients with the cholesterol of over 400 you said over 300 but, yeah, it does that. And I also wanted to mention, I've seen these very clear stress symptoms on the low carb diet in people who are very particular about getting enough sodium. You know, they're taking salt tablets and doing a lot to get enough sodium, and that has not been enough to stop that stress response. And that's because sodium doesn't make up for the energy deficit that's there, even though it does help to reduce the adrenal response for other reasons, but so I just wanted to throw that in, because I know that's something that Rob talks a lot about, but I want to move forward and have you shared that study about the response, the sensitivity to cortisol, and with that, also, I wanted to mention there's a lot of studies showing that there is an increased sympathetic activity and increased sympathetic sensitivity to stress hormones on a low carb diet, and you're going to share part of that reason why.

Mike 13:27
Yeah, so the study is dietary macronutrient content alters cortisol metabolism independently of body weight changes in obese men. So I just want to point out here that it wasn't they weren't on like, a necessarily high protein diet enough to be problematic, which was, I think, that 35% threshold, which was actually discussed in the meta analysis that you just went over, in terms of the urea cycle. So in case anybody wants to look at what we're saying, there it was in the meta analysis that Jay just discussed with exercise, carbohydrates and cortisol. So basically, they had these two groups. They had a high fat diet and a high fat, low carb, medium fat, medium carb protein was kept the same at about 29% and then their percent of fat in the high fat low carb diet was 66% and the medium fat, medium carb diet was 37% fat. They had 5% carbohydrates in the high fat, low carb, and then the medium fat medium card, they have 34% carbohydrates, so they're having a they they're on essentially, or almost on, a ketogenic diet. They have enough fat and they have low enough carbohydrates. Their protein isn't, isn't excessively high, although maybe a little bit higher than ideal for a keto diet, perhaps. So what, essentially, the study gets to is what you're gonna what we're seeing is that, and I'll read these quotes, and I guess I'll explain in obese men, a high fat, low carbohydrate diet increased whole body regeneration of cortisol by 11 beta HSD one, and reduced the rate of inactivation of cortisol by five alpha and five beta reductases. Is the increased 11 beta HSD, one activity in the high fat, low carb versus medium fat, medium carb diet was independent. Uh, in independent of differences in energy consumption and weight loss. The same effect was observed under fixed feeding, approximately isocaloric conditions and the medium fat, medium carb diet induced substantial weight loss without altering the 11 beta HSD, one activity. Moreover, the effect of high fat, low carb, Culver, heart rate diet was already apparent after one week of the diet when weight loss was minimal. Then they further say low carbohydrate intake appears to be the key factor responsible for alterations of glucocorticoid metabolism. Protein Intake was similar between the diets compared with baseline. Fat intake was only marginally higher on the high fat low carb diet, whereas carbohydrate intake was substantially lower, so about 1400 kilocalories per day lower. However, carbohydrate intake was also lower than baseline on the medium fat medium carbohydrate diet, suggesting a threshold of reduced carbohydrate intake to mediate this. The effect this is supported by fasting insulin concentrations, which were decreased by the high fat, low carb, but not the medium fat, medium carb diet and ad libitum study, and might directly alter hepatic 11 beta HSD, one and five alpha and five beta reductase activity. So what we're essentially seeing here is that being on a low what, and this is quite important, they basically are saying that it wasn't that the diet was high in fat, it was that the diet was low in carbohydrates, and the low carbohydrates led to an increased regeneration of cortisol by the enzyme 11 beta HSD one. So that's the enzyme that takes inactive cortisone at the cell and reconverts it into cortisol, and then the the enzymes that degrade cortisol, which are five alpha reductase and five beta reductase. For anyone who's interested, five alpha reductase is the evil enzyme that creates way too much DHT, that makes you bald, but it also happens to degrade cortisol. What you're seeing is that the inactivation of cortisol in these low carbohydrate states is it is increased so or a decrease. So basically, the body stops deactivating cortisol and increases the regeneration. And this is at the cellular level. So even if your plasma cortisol levels were fine, even if they were, you know, maybe mildly elevated, it's the same thing with the higher thyroid hormone situation. What's going on at the cell. Well, you're seeing a decreased deiodinase enzyme function at the cell in the low carbohydrate diet. So you're seeing a decreased conversion of active thyroid hormone from t4 to t3 and then you're seeing an increased regeneration of cortisol by the 11 beta HST one. And then you're seeing a decreased degradation of cortisol by the five alpha and beta reductase enzymes. And what changed this the most was specifically the carbohydrate content of the diet. And why is this important? Because, again, the concept of stress that we're looking at here is that stress is a function of a lack of energy substrate or energy available at the cell, given the current level of demands. So when you stop providing when you stop providing carbohydrate, you lower the anabolic hormones insulin, and then you increase the catabolic hormones of cortisol, and you increase the the upregulation of cortisol production decreases degradation. So you can keep that signaling going, because you don't have enough carbohydrate on board to meet the demand. So again, it's coming down to that basic piece, and even if you're cortisol, which Rob is pointing out that the the stress hormones aren't necessarily elevated on in ketosis like sure, they're not elevating. You don't see cushingoids, but they could be norm. They could be higher than nor higher in range. And then at the cellular level, here we're seeing them elevated. So that's quite important as well, and it goes hand in hand with the thyroid piece as well. Oh, there's no hypothyroidism in in low carb ketogenic diets, it's like, there's not, not from, like, a classical definition with TSH, but when you're seeing at the cellular level, yeah, it's the same thing with cortisol, right?

Jay Feldman 18:54
It's the equivalent of a doctor saying that you have a TSH of six, but it's not hypothyroidism until it reaches nine or 10, you know, yeah, for the reference range they're using, which I've seen, I think I've seen people with tshs of, like, eight or nine, and the doctor's just like, oh, not till it hits 10 or same thing about, like, the youth thyroid, six syndrome, the impaired conversion. It's like, oh, you're not hospitalized. Like, bedridden, bedridden. So you must have enough t3 you're fine. You know that's you're just saying, like, this is essentially the equivalent in terms of cortisol. Like, just because you don't have Cushing's doesn't cushioning doesn't mean that you don't have cortisol issues.

Mike 19:25
Yeah. And again, it's what is happening at the cell is driving the systemic processes. And so the lack of cellular energy is driving the signaling processes to say, hey, we like, we don't have enough carbohydrate here, guys, we need to start producing it. Okay. How are we going to produce it? Okay? Glucagon, okay. Adrenaline, okay. Cortisol, okay, growth hormone, growth hormone, etc, like you guys need to upregulate. We need to start breaking down tissues, and then also the whole body shifts in terms of gene expression and metabolism. Just be like, Look, we don't have enough cortisol. The brain really needs it. Or we don't have enough glucose, the brain really needs it. Okay, all of us are gonna just oxidize fatty acids, because if we try to all oxidize glucose, we're gonna just burn through our muscle tissue. So like this is coordinated response that you're seeing in a large scale, and being the low carb diet, is driving into this coordinated stress response. It literally is using the same hormones, including glucagon, which you cannot deny is elevated in these states, to drive this, this response towards, or this response of not having enough carbohydrate, which it would be the, ideally, the primary energy source, which is why you have a whole hormonal cascade that regulates its utilization, etc.

Jay Feldman 20:42
Yeah. I wanted to just quickly summarize the just for anyone who like, just to make sure it was in clear terms. As far as the study you mentioned and one other thing. So you mentioned the DHT, that five alpha reductase, which is inhibited here, increases DHT production. You were being facetious about that being a bad thing and driving hair loss. So I just wanted to clarify that for for the listeners. But yeah, so basically what we're seeing, just to clarify in that study, is basically you're seeing less degradation of cortisol and increased conversion from inactive versions like cortisone to cortisol in a low carb state. So even if there's the same amount of cortisol circulating, you're seeing higher cortisol activity of the cell. Just wanted to kind of summarize that succinctly, and then want to move on to discussing in more detail the situation of energy deficiencies. But first, real quickly, there was one other piece I wanted to mention, which was just talking about the fluctuation on low carb diet, or on a carbohydrate rich diet, a high carb diet or moderate carb diet. Rob was kind of saying, like you have to deal with these fluctuations of stress hormones. We've already talked about how the fact that that, the fact that that does happen on a low carb diet just as much, but to a worse extent, even if you're not experiencing it and aware of it because you're already in a stress state. So it's hard to like, you don't always recognize that your stress hormones are increasing further at that point, but you'll definitely recognize it once you're in a heart a higher carb state, and those stress hormones are down, you'll certainly notice that when they do come back up. If you're, you know, driving huge amounts of energy demands without any any fuel supplied. And I did want to mention also that it is more damaging and more harmful in terms of stress to have those fluctuations when you're in low carb diet, as we've discussed, it involves higher levels of stress hormones, but also, since you're needing to get those carbohydrates, largely from amino acids, can lead to a lot more muscle wasting. So there's a great cost to those things. So just wanted to highlight those things as well. So the next piece that Rob discussed here was essentially the part of kind of the foundational perspective from the bioenergetic view is that people are deficient in energy on that cellular level. And he said, Hey, everyone's overweight and obese. So how could they possibly be lacking in energy? They must have excess energy. They clearly have excess energy because they have excess body fat. Do you want to show the exact quote, Mike, if you have it?

Mike 22:59
So the what Rob says it's the bioenergetic thing that you need lots of energy to be able to repair cells and stuff like that. I guess there's something to that. But when I look around the world, the vast majority of people don't seem to be lacking in energy. They seem to be flush with energy. So I don't think that the vast majority of people are running out of energy. I think that they have an energy excess, as evidenced by folks carrying around too much body fat. I'm not an insulin hypothesis camp.

Jay Feldman 23:24
Yeah, exactly. We aren't going to touch on the the insulin side of things, because it's just kind of not here nor there, not really relevant. But so what are you saying here? Which is a very, very common perspective, I would say misconception. We would say misconception, which is that people who are in a state of having excess body fat have excess energy. And part of this is a nomenclature issue. Part of it is a misunderstanding, or just not really a piece, like a piece of fat gain that's not really discussed, or just parts that are glossed over and kind of ignored, or just not even acknowledged to have any sort of sort of existence. And so the first thing that we need to do in terms of nomenclature is separate what we mean by energy from calories and substrate. So when we're talking about energy from the bioenergetic view, or really anytime we're talking about energy in terms of the human body, we should be talking in terms of ATP and other things that allow for work to be done. That's literally what energy is. You can make the argument that there's more to it than just ATP. We've kind of talked about that in the first episode in our podcast, with the structuring of water and other things that have that adsorbing effect on the cellular protein structure that allows for the structuring of water, and that allows for that is the actual energy. But we can just simplify it to ATP levels. ATP equals energy. And the there's a misconception that when somebody is gaining weight, what's happening is they have converted all their fuel to energy, and they have to ATP. So it's so food comes in that is digested. It becomes fuel in terms of carbohydrates, fats, protein, there's so. Converted to ATP to energy, that now our bodies don't need any more ATP, and so they start storing the excess as fat. And that's not actually what happens. Instead, what typically happens is that the there's an inhibition, there's a problem in converting that fuel to energy. This is talked about all the time, including in the low carb space, in terms of mitochondrial dysfunction. That's what we're referring to. Metabolic dysfunction is not being able to produce energy from the fuel that's coming in. And so what that does this is what happens to people who are overweight, who have diabetes, who have fatty liver disease, they're in this sort of state, and they're not ending up with excess ATP or even adequate ATP. What's happening is the fuel is not being efficiently converted toward energy. So there are build ups of the fuel, and then it gets stored as fat. So you end up in a state where you have excess fat storage, excessive body fat, and low energy. And this is bad on all levels, because it means that you have less energy available to function. You have to turn down your thyroid activity, turn down the reproductive hormones, all of that. It also means that you're perpetually hungry, because the main thing that's going to determine whether you're actually responding to your hunger, hunger signals or, I mean, I guess you could say the main hunger signal is energy availability, so you're going to remain hungry in that state. And that's why overeating occurs, essentially, kind of the main driver. And you're going to be getting body fat, storing body fat at the same time. And so I have a graph here, a graphic that depicts this in a very kind of clearly, like simple way, clear to understand. And it's from a study titled decreased energy levels can cause and sustain obesity. It's a great study discussing basically this situation where obesity and being overweight is a situation where the food that we're taking in is not effectively converted to energy, and that's why it's being stored as fat. That's why you have excess hunger in this situation, and that's why you have so many other issues, and you have low energy, right? The people who are obese are not bouncing off the walls. They aren't wanting to go for a run. They're, you know, normally, very active, generally, and it's also because of a lack of physiological energy. But so we see it very clearly in this graphic. We have the food coming in, which is the equivalent of the fuel, and then that fuel is going to be directed toward energy. Some of it will be stored as fat, and then there's also going to be some fat being liberated to be used as fuel. And so we see on the left side here, this is kind of a normal state where we're not gaining or losing weight. That fuel is being converted to energy rather efficiently maybe some small amount will be stored as fat, but some amount will also be released as released as fat, and we're fine on the other side, on the right side here, what we're seeing is a state where the conversion of fueled energy is inhibited, and so there's much less fuel being converted toward ATP, and much more getting stored as fat. This is the deranged metabolism state that not only are people in when they're gaining weight, but the vast majority of people are in and what happens for the vast majority of people who are not gaining weight, but maybe are relying on excess exercise or low calorie diets or fasting or low carb is they're still in this state, but they're forcing the burning of that fuel to energy instead of being stored as fat, using these other means, Using these stress means so that they're not getting the fat storage, but you're still ending up with a relative lack of energy, because the energy you are producing is being wasted for exercise or your cold thermogenesis, or whatever it is that you're using to waste fuel. So this is, and we've talked about this extensively. I'll link to other episodes and we've discussed this whole process, how it relates to fat loss, how it relates to virtually every condition, but basically this is the focus, I would say, from the bioenergetic view, is improving the conversion from fuel to energy, which means that you have the energy available to properly function, in terms of all of your of your organ systems, your digestion, your reproductive systems, cognitive function, all of that. And the vast majority of people who are walking around and who are in these degenerative states are in the state of low energy. And so that is why rectifying this problem helps to resolve those issues. So that's basically the, in large part, the perspective that the bioenergetic view is coming from. And of course, if that's not understood, then it's going to not make much sense to want to be doing things to increase energy and reducing stress. But this is really kind of a key part here to understand, yeah.

Mike 29:10
The it's a conflation that's like, a major conflation that's been propagated extensively inside the like, even in the literature, where there's this idea that calories equal energy, and when you just go from when you just say calories equal energy, without understanding the entire process that that happens from the from a calorie being converted, and it's not even calories, right? Because it's really breaking down into carbs and fats and proteins. But there's and that's the to con. It's weird too, right? Because it's like, if you're going to be in a camp where you're looking at, like, low carb versus high carb, or something like that, to conflate calories as energy is, like, a huge it's just a weird thing to do, because you're you're focusing on energy, on what substrate you're using for energy, and. The benefits, the pros and cons of that substrate for energy. Now, there were caveats made by Rob here, so I don't want to mischaracterize him, but the in terms of talking about the different substrates, and he was talking about in neural regulation and satiety, but I think it's even beyond neuro regulation and satiety, like you're what you're really looking at here is what is the process of converting a fat into energy, into ATP, and the carbs into ATP, and then having to do protein into ATP, and then deter and then trying, from there, you're looking at that, and then now you're making a determination, okay, what is this on the cellular level? What's this on on the overall like massive level, like the systemic level of the body, and then trying to determine, Okay, what is optimal? Like, clearly, we, I mean, we're coming from a distress perspective, which is important here, but going specifically into the into the obesity perspective, it's really important to understand that the obesity situation, especially, and I've talked about this before, if you wanted to look at like calories, calories in, calories out, for an obese person, in the weight gain that they're having, I think you would see that it doesn't line up like you're not going to see that their supposed metabolic rate should be x, as per the calculator, and then their actual food intake is x. So therefore they would gain they would be over x number of calories over their metabolic rate, so they'd be gaining fat, I think. And in my experience, that hasn't been the case. Hey, my experience there's been like a lowered food intake. Now the food quality isn't good, and then still having fat gain, which again, and I think that the the idea that Rob was discussing it was a mischaracterization of the bioenergetic state, because we're not talking about just having at tons of food. You need to just have granulated sugar all the time. It's we need to have foods and adjust our lifestyle and the things that we're doing to optimize the flow of or production of energy from food into ATP so our focus is less calories eight and calories and ATP are equal. It's what is that whole process in the center of taking this food and converting it into ATP, and how do we optimize it? And what are the blocks that are going on there? So for people with with with obesity, and discussed in this study, the blocks are inflammatory markers, inflammatory compounds, etc, directly inhibiting, I think they're talking about econotase, which is an enzyme inside the mitochondria that in or in the Krebs cycle, specifically, that involves the conversion of both glucose and fatty acids into energy. So that gets blocked, and then you just have substrate. So what do you do with the substrate? You just store it so you that's, it's, you're, it's essentially a massive shunting process. So people in the obese state are actually have way are, are in the opposite end of the spectrum of what we're shooting for from a bioenergetic perspective. So it's like comparing them is completely like two entirely separate things, like they're not even close to the same thing that that we're talking about, and it's because of that conflationary idea. So getting into the concept of understanding you have substrate, and then you have energy and ATP, and they're not the same. The substrate can be converted to ATP, but there's multiple factors in that central process that can alter that conversion into that's where the that's where the magic is is in that centerpiece, that conversion process. That's what all of these hours of podcasts and arguments and debates and everything else is like, really, that's where everyone is kind of focusing in on now. And that's where the idea of bioenergetics, which is not like a, I know it's like a hashtag now, but like in research, it's discussing the flow of energy substrate to energy. That is, that's all that it is,

Jay Feldman 33:49
Yeah, yeah. Fueled energy substrate to energy, Yep, yeah. I don't know. I don't know who you're referring to all the people who are discussing things from that view. But anyway.

Mike 34:01
Well, it's like the the researchers, like they talk about the idea of bioenergetics or anaplerotic substrate and this and that, and...

Jay Feldman 34:09
Yeah, I just mean it's very largely, like, not acknowledged in mainstream research or mainstream or alternative health perspectives or anything like that. But yeah, so the next and a very important piece here that Rob mentions is basically that the PD view, the bioenergetic view, ignores the ancestral model and evolutionary biology. I'll let you, I guess, share the quote real quick. Sure.

Mike 34:38
Let me get to here. The quote is, so this is Rob's Cody says. But I think that they end up purposely just ignoring evolutionary biology, which is kind of like, How the f do you do that? How does any credible person discuss health at all and not have some steeping in the evolutionary biology of this stuff?

Jay Feldman 35:00
Yeah, that one. So in short, I would say that there is the bioenergetic view does not at all ignore evolution. I think the biggest thing here is just not marketing it as ancestral eating or something, because I think it's a piece of the picture, but by no means the only thing to consider, and that's because of some variants in the view on evolution, both in terms of the actual, the actual process of evolution, and also the lineage of of humans, and what exactly that means for what we should be eating. And so the, I think the couple of things that are kind of being suggested here is that, from, again, a lot of people are saying, you know, from the low carb view, say things like, we naturally would not have had food available all the time. So fasting is evolutionarily consistent. It's what we would have been doing. Same thing with carbohydrates. We didn't have carbohydrates available all the time. So it's normal. It's It's again, evolutionarily consistent. It's what we would have been doing to avoid carbohydrates, or not having them. And, you know, in whatever capacity. And there are a handful of issues here that I guess will kind of break down one by one. The first you kind of alluded to this earlier, is just this different perspective on on evolution, what is optimal versus what we might have adapted to. And when you're coming from it from the Neo Darwinistic genetic determinism model, what you basically are left with is that whatever, whatever we are genetically determined and adapted toward is ideal, so and any variation from that is not ideal. That is worse, and that's because we randomly got to wherever we are now genetically, and we had environment that was compatible with that. And so we because, because of that, we're stuck with whatever was kind of evolutionarily determined through this genetic determinism model. And if that didn't involve a lot of carbohydrates or it involved a lot of fasting, that's what we have to stick with, because that's what our optimal health was built around, as opposed to a view that involves a two way street between the environment and genetics and heredity and evolution, where the availability of things in the environment that changes the environment, the energetic availability of the environment had a has a directing input in terms of what's going on genetically and hereditary and evolutionarily, where if we were In an environment that could have supported greater brain function, and for long enough, it would allow for greater brain function over time, greater complexity, and that will lead to shifts in terms of epigenetics and genetics and on from there, and actually shifts in terms of speciation and evolution. And so, if you're and so we again without but this is like a huge, huge discussion. We've talked about doing a series on these different views of evolution before, and we certainly will, but it's way too much to kind of dig into now, but just kind of sharing here, there's not an ignorance of evolution. It's rather just some differences in perspective here, and to be at least a little bit more specific, and provide an example or two and some evidence to support it, basically the idea that we're suggesting in terms of carbohydrates is that having an energy rich environment that allows for us to produce a lot of energy that involves carbohydrates is something that a was key in the development of where we are now, and having large brains and all of that, but also is something that allows us to further complexify and improve along those lines, Even if, let's say, for for all of the development. And this likely was not true, but let's say for all of development, we only had 100 grams of carbohydrates available for per day, per day from fruit. Now, if we have 200 grams available, that does make that worse. It actually could mean that that could allow us to continue to improve in terms of complexity and function. So that's kind of the general piece here. But in terms of some more specifics, I do think it's also worth considering that when looking back at our lineage and our development and evolution, it likely was in an environment that was largely carbohydrate rich. Of course, we don't know exactly what things were going on, but based on evidence now, I think that that can largely be argued, and there's a few reasons for that, the first couple that I'll say so, and this is there's an article by Denise minger, and it dispels the idea that any fruit that was available in the past was very, very low in sugar and carbohydrates, and discusses the fact that the wild fruits that would have been available actually were very dense in sugar, and So they actually would have provided a considerable carbohydrate source. Another piece that's not often talked about is honey, but when you look at modern day hunter gatherers, honey is a huge source of carbohydrates. There's a study. I'm not going to read the direct quote, but they look at, I'll cite it. They they look at all current hunter gatherers in warm cloud. Climates, and all of them, except for one, consume honey. The one that doesn't consume honey is because they're they're in the Philippines, and they spend most of their time on boats, so they can't really collect honey from the boats. But anyone else, like any other cultures, that have honey available, use honey as well as as a major carbohydrate source. So those are two of the main sources that would have been available in terms of carbohydrates. And when we consider that the vast majority of our evolutionary heritage occurred in tropical, warm climates, we would have had those things available, ideally, most likely, year round. And that, you know, when we consider the millions and millions of years of evolution through apes, I mean, so just for reference, the kind of the class, what is it? It's out of its genus. It's probably genius that we're in, which was humans and like other bipedal organisms, separated from chimpanzees between four and 7 million years ago, according to, you know, the typical data now. So that's a really long time of development for us to have in these warm climates where there's likely carbohydrates available. And even with all that in mind, if we consider when there's actually the emergence of of modern day humans, which is estimated, you know, 300,000 400,000 years ago, we really didn't leave any tropical warm areas until around 30,000 years ago is like, is basically current estimates. So for the vast majority of our biological evolution, it was likely occurring in in environments that were very carbohydrate rich. So these are, again, we can there's more to discuss here, but just kind of putting these out as as small talking points for how this view can still incorporate, how the bioenergetic view still incorporates an evolutionary perspective. And the last point I'll make here is that the there's also some good evidence that this is what is allowed for the development of our brains. And this is looking at things like the expensive tissue hypothesis, and looking at apes as well. And so when you look at apes, which, of course, were part of that that family, there is a strong correlation between fruit consumption and brain size, where normally the apes that are are consuming much more leaves and stems and into indigestible carbohydrates and relying on much more fermentation, they have smaller brain sizes compared to the ones that have a lot more fruit kind. More fruit coming in. And this is basically you can predict the intelligence and brain size based on the diet in these terms. So that's an important piece to consider here. And then we have the expensive tissue hypothesis. And then I'll let you go, Mike. And I'm kind of trying to speed through these last points here, but so I'm going to share a couple of quick quotes here describing the expensive tissue hypothesis in some clear terms. And so this is from a study titled The expensive tissue hypothesis the brain and the digestive system in human and primate evolution. And they state that the expensive tissue hypothesis suggests that the metabolic requirements of relatively large brains are offset by a corresponding reduction of the gut. The splenching organs, liver and GI tract, are as metabolically expensive as brains, and the gut is the only one of the metabolically expensive organs in the human body that is markedly small in relation to body size. Gut size is highly correlated with diet and relatively smart, small guts are compatible only with high quality, easy to digest food. The often cited relationship between diet and relative brain size is more properly viewed as a relationship between relative brain size and relative gut size, the latter being determined by dietary quality. So what they're saying here is that when we have high quality, easily digestible diet that allows us for to expend more energy on having really great, complex energy, expensive brain, and wasting much less energy on our guts. And this is something that might be normally acknowledged by the low carb crowd, because a lot of times animal foods and meat are pointed to here. But this also includes fruit as a really easily digestible carbohydrate source, or honey as well that don't require fermentation and large intestines or anything like that. And so the the last quotes here I'll state are from a separate study. And this study is titled, effects of brain evolution on Human Nutrition and Metabolism. And they state, you know, that same thing where the relative size and morphology of the human GI tract also reflects our high quality diet. Most large bodied primates, primates have expanded large intestines and adaptation to fibrous, low quality diets. Humans, on the other hand, have small gut volumes for our size, with relatively enlarged intestines, small intestines and a smaller colon. And then they state that the large, metabolically expensive human brain is partially offset by the consumption of an energy dense and nutrient enriched diet. This relationship implies that the evolution of larger hominid brains would have necessitated the adoption of a sufficiently high quality diet, including meat and energy rich fruits, to support the increased metabolic demands of greater encephalization. And so this is what we're getting at here, the evolutionary perspective here that is directly entwined with the. With the bioenergetic view?

Mike 45:01
Yeah. I mean, you basically covered all of the points. And we've covered these in other episodes as well. So I don't have too much to add there. The only thing I would just say is that the vast majority of the ancestral communities, diets, whatnot, hunter gatherers, that we're seeing are not just like in ketosis. Um, and I think that's, I think that's a really huge point to point out as well. It's not like, you know, the hats aren't walking around in ketosis all the time. The what is, there's a the Catawbas aren't walking around in ketosis. You know, the pop the populations that Wesson a price study, weren't walking around in ketosis. Now, not all of them were hunter gatherers, but the ancestral communities, like, there's a few that were functioning in ketosis to a large extent, and that was most likely the extreme northern populations, the Eskimos. But even then, there was question as to how long they were actually in ketosis, degree of the ketosis that they had. And then they also have specific metabolic adaptations as well. So I don't see like I got...

Jay Feldman 46:03
Well and that was recent, right? That was within the last 30,000 years of our evolution. So I think to argue that that is ideal just from the evolutionary stance is is questionable. Yeah, and as you're saying, is very uncommon, and they had costly adaptations to be able to do that. Also, even if they were doing that, that doesn't mean it's optimal or ideal kind of as you were saying. Also, like, we can look at the Hadza, but just because they're subsisting in whatever environment they have with their current food available doesn't mean that that is an ideal diet for the human species.

Mike 46:33
Yeah, and you're my point being, is that, like you talk about, there's this idea, oh, we need to be evolutionarily consistent, but it's like ketosis, like being ketosis on a regular basis doesn't seem to be evolutionarily consistent, like, I'm not seeing the argument for that at all from previous cultures, whatnot, etc. What you're seeing is most cultures have carbohydrate content. There's a wide range of carbohydrate consumption and still having a degree of health and health span within these different populations. And a lot of them, aren't really approaching ketosis. And the ones that are, there's dispute about whether they were, I mean, the Messiah weren't really in ketosis. That's something that's been discussed and and talked about. And so yeah, and Rob did have an offhand comment to those things after he said that, to be fair, inside the inside the transcript. But the the other thing that I want to just briefly touch on, because I know we're wrapping up here, but the the the physiologic mechanisms that we are discussing here and going over are direct representation of our evolutionary history. It's the body trying to basically create systems to deal with the environment that we are functioning in. And if you're looking, if you want a direct insight into what went on evolutionarily, etc, over a period of time, you start to see the the these changes in these adaptive hormones, whatnot, and things centering around energy production. Then you start like, from all angles of this evolutionary consistent approach. You're seeing it not to rely on ketosis and low carbohydrate diets, etc. There's multiple mechanisms to go into there, and we discussed some of them earlier today. There's quite a bit more. But it I just like, it's not that we throw out the evolutionary consistent perspective, at least from our our end, because we came from that to some extent, we're just not, you know, we're just not seeing that the evolutionary consistent perspective is one that's in, that's one that's in, that's ketosis, and then just, or low carb, yeah, or low carb, or necessarily low carb. And, you know, then he didn't mention Paul Saladino, but Paul Saladino is not doing ketosis or or low carb, but he's evolutionarily consistent, and he's not bs.

Jay Feldman 48:41
Yeah, just so, just real quick before, because I do want to just have, you know, we'll comment on that. But I wanted to mention, also, again, our closest relatives that are extant are the bonobos. And they, we talked about this in the recent episode talking about fructose and uric acid, but their diet is at 60% fruit, pretty much year round, with huge amounts of sugar and fructose, and that is fueling their brains. And you see that again, that throughout all apes, the ones that are most intelligent are having the most carbs. And so you'd have to suggest that we acquired a divergence, if you want to suggest that we should be eating low carb. And interestingly, when you look in the animal kingdom, the there, again, you don't really see the carnivores being the the ones with the big brain, big brains. But obviously it's not quite that simple. There's a lot of other factors that that need to be considered there, but that's kind of a side piece. But you mentioned the Paul Saladino thing, and so I don't know if you wanted to share Rob's quote there as we wrap up. But what he I mean, he was basically just saying that the Paul Saladino version of carnivore looks like a repeat diet and seems like a good interpretation of it, kind of paraphrasing. It's basically what he said. Yeah, but he was saying that it still has an orientation toward ancestral health, and so Paul is essentially. Be making his way toward a full on, bioenergetic diet. He's close to being there. He's just a bit high in the protein and steaks at the moment, but he's bringing in the raw dairies, eating tons of fruit, you know, 200 plus grams. And I, you know, I wouldn't be surprised if the protein comes down over time, and the carbs tend to come up a little bit as well as those protein needs decrease when we have enough carbs, but he's just, he's like, it's, he's all of the things that he's saying in terms of his his approach to health are taken from the bioenergetic view. You know, he's basically saying a lot of them word for word, and it's fine, but it just like, it sounds like it's just more digestible to people in the low carb camp, because he talks about it being animal based, and coming from a carnivore perspective, even though it's not carnivore or keto, and is really a bioenergetic approach that is slightly more toward the protein. But I think the other thing that's more digestible about it to someone like Rob potentially, is is that he's still eating organ meats, and he's focusing on nutrient density, as if those things are ignored by the bioenergetic view, and they're not at all. It's just we don't brand I mean us personally, but also most people in this view aren't branding themselves in that way, because it's not the central kind of piece that we're focusing on, even though it is absolutely a part of it. Right? When we talk about eating organ meat, pretty...

Mike 51:17
Organ meat, pre shellfish, dairy meat, those are all the highest nutrient dense foods and then, but we just also get carbohydrates haha.

Jay Feldman 51:29
Right? Like, Paul, yeah,

Mike 51:32
Well, Paul's just like, it's Paul, like, was in the Keto carnivore. He added, like, trashed his hormonal function to some extent. And he saw with other clients as well. And then he added in carbohydrates fix things. And then he just, like, it seems to be like he just shifted his the needle, which, that's the learning process, right, to some extent. I mean, I'm not it's no shot against Paul either, but it's just like the things that he's espousing that are now evolutionarily consistent are things that we have been discussing, like, low linoleic acid intakes, and not even us. Like, Dr Pete, before we were even born, was talking about this stuff. So I don't want to, like, make it be like, Oh, Jay and I were talking about this. It's like the the ideas have been, have been out there discussing the importance of stress metabolism, low linoleic acid, PUFAs, etc, etc, nutrient density for decades, before any of us ever came around and branded it as anything. So it's just Paul is just finding these other things and then now, like Mark marketing them or or marketing them as evolutionarily consistent, etc, etc, etc, based, animal based, yeah, but the tenants, there's tenants inside the low carb keto community that we 100% agree with, but we there's a divergence around, you know, the low carb keto aspect, and that's what we obviously honed in on here. But like, nutrient density, avoiding anti nutrients, avoiding digestive irritants, things like that, like we're in 100% agreement there. And those are things that that, and I'm not saying that Rob said that Jay and I have never discussed those. He specifically discussed Pete and Matt. Matt Stone, um, but we, we've consistently talked about it, and Pete has consistently talked about it. I don't know Matt Stone's view, so I can't speak for that.

Jay Feldman 53:17
Right? I mean, Ray's talked about that a lot, right? Rob. Rob mentioned he wasn't sure if there's a concern around anti nutrients, phytates, oxalates, whatever, in the bioenergetic view. And there absolutely is. Ray's talked really, I mean, very much so about that, even talking about concerns in certain fruits that aren't grown in ripe conditions, things like that that I haven't heard. I'm not sure if Paul has mentioned those, but, but the point being, he's very much clued into that, and talks about the digestibility of things, the endotoxin piece, which I think he has talked about more than anybody else, and really brought to light and explained so much as far as what's actually going on in terms of gut health. So yeah, I mean, that's absolutely been a huge part of it. And it's like, again, no dig against Rob for not knowing that, just wanting to share that and again, help to bridge that gap, which I hope, I hope this episode is has done, and maybe will lead to a further conversation along those lines. Yep. All right, that's going to wrap up this episode and this series, discussing robbels perspective of the bioenergetic view. If you did enjoy this series or today's episode, please leave a like or comment if you're watching on YouTube and if you are 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, you can head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/podcast where I'll link to the studies and articles and anything else that we referenced throughout today's episode, and as I had announced in the introduction to this episode, the brand new energy balance solution group coaching program is up and running. I'm really excited to share this program with you. The feedback so far has been really, really great. And as I mentioned earlier, there. Are a ton of really valuable resources throughout this program, including a video library, resources like a sample meal plan and Food Guide and calorie macronutrient cheat sheet. There's a private community, and there are also two monthly small group coaching calls for you to get personalized help. And I've also, as I mentioned, really made an effort to keep the pricing of this program affordable and also to allow you to get the exact same results that I get with my one on one clients as I've been really entirely booked up at the moment with my one on one clients, and that wait list keeps growing, so I've created this program to really be a solution for that as well. So to find out more about that program, head over to Jay Feldman, wellness.com/solution, and with that, I'll see you in the next episode.