00:00:00
One of the problems with weight loss goals is saying you need to cut calories in order to get there. Now, I'm not
00:00:05
saying calories don't matter. They are relevant, but not the most relevant. And
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I'm going to talk about evidence to support that. >> If someone is listening at home now and
00:00:13
they have the goal of losing some weight, they want to be in a better physique, be more healthy. Is this
00:00:18
conversation going to help them accomplish those goals? >> I'll make sure that they get what they
00:00:22
need. >> Dr. Benjamin Bickman is one of the world's leading metabolic and fat cell
00:00:27
scientists. And now he's returned to expose some of the myths surrounding weight loss
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>> and the surprising impact that one particular hormone has on our weight,
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brain, and mental health. >> As a metabolic scientist, I wouldn't want someone to think there is only one
00:00:39
way to lose weight. However, I think this is the most practical and simplest strategy, a ketogenic diet. A huge
00:00:47
reason is that when you cut carbs, insulin comes down. And insulin as a hormone is the one metabolic hormone to
00:00:54
rule them all. Insulin will tell every single cell of the body what it needs to do with energy. And insulin is so
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determined to store energy that it is directing calories to be stored in tissues like fat or in the liver
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>> to make you fat. >> Yeah. But there's more. Ketones are the brain's preferred fuel. It can control
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anxiety, improve depression. It can help with attention. In fact, the benefits of
00:01:14
ketones are so extensive that companies are finding ways so you can drink ketones.
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>> And I have a bunch of different exogenous ketone products here, a variety of different brands and a bunch
00:01:23
of other things here on the table. So, what the hell is this? >> If someone is interested in a good,
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smart way of losing weight, try that. >> This is definitely a prop. It tastes
00:01:31
like bleach. >> I'm so sorry. Oh my god. >> So, for 2026 to be the year where I
00:01:36
finally get a grip of my health, and I asked you to make the perfect plan, what would you prescribe?
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>> So, first of all, I see messages all the time in the comments section that some of you didn't
00:01:48
realize you didn't subscribe. So, if you could do me a favor and double check if
00:01:52
you're a subscriber to this channel, that would be tremendously appreciated.
00:01:54
It's the simple, it's the free thing that anybody that watches this show
00:01:58
frequently can do to help us here to keep everything going in this show in the trajectory it's on. So, please do
00:02:03
double check if you've subscribed and uh thank you so much because in a strange
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way, you are you're part of our history and you're on this journey with us and I
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appreciate you for that. So, yeah, thank you. Dr. Benjamin Bickman, at this time of year, the audience that
00:02:25
are listening right now are thinking a lot about health and dietary changes that they can make to make 2026 the best
00:02:31
year of their life to finally be able to kick that habit. And one of the things that's front of mind, I think, for all
00:02:35
of my listeners is their relationship with sugar, with carbs, >> right? And I guess the second order
00:02:43
things that some people might know something about like insulin resistance and all these kinds of subjects. At this
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particular moment in the year, if you had the ear of millions of people as they're coming into 2026, what is the
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most important thing that you would say to them? >> Yeah, that's a great question. What a
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way to um to get things started. In fact, I appreciate you even framing the conversation as if I had the ear because
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you've given me the ear of millions of people. So, I'm going to take it seriously. The way you frame the
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question is really relevant because within North America, you see a a pattern, a rhythm to both weight gain
00:03:19
and even insulin resistance as it is quantified throughout the year where in the winter months people gain more
00:03:25
weight and are more insulin resistant. Almost like the hibernating bear, which becomes demonstrably more insulin
00:03:31
resistant as it gets into hibernation. We non-hibernating mammals actually see an echo of the same thing, albeit more
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subtly. So, it matters now where physiologically we're more inclined to suffer from the consequences of bad
00:03:47
dietary decisions. And of course, with all the holidays, we're more likely to be making those bad
00:03:53
dietary decisions. So, my advice would be to structure your indulgences as smartly as you can. you know that you're
00:04:03
going to be faced with foods that are delicious and dare I say addictive. Don't rely on your own intuition uh to
00:04:13
guide you through eating that know that your temptation to indulge is going to be in some instances perhaps greater
00:04:20
than you can control. So, structure your indulgences. Give yourself a distinct period of time where you know you're
00:04:26
going to embib in these refined starches and sugars. And then, if necessary, recruit help. Have a family member, have
00:04:32
a loved one join you in your plan, and you tell them, "I don't want to gain the
00:04:38
same weight I gained last year. I don't want to amplify the consequences of insulin resistance like I did last year.
00:04:44
Can you please be my my watchman and help me keep track where today is my day of indulgence or two days and then on
00:04:53
that Monday remind me please be my helper um to get back on track. Among the many problems with the modern diet
00:05:01
is the constant carbohydrate consumption. It is the one macronutrient that we have the hardest time
00:05:07
controlling and I would say it's the one macronutrient that has the most disastrous consequences in the form in
00:05:12
which we consume it. Now, of course, carbohydrates is a broad class of food. Some are just fine and some are not. Of
00:05:20
course, we more focus on the ones that are not fine. So, my advice would be structure your indulgences, be mindful
00:05:27
of what you're doing in that you are not doing yourselves any favor. uh and then
00:05:31
recruit outside help because you will not be able to rely on your own intuition to pull you out of what might
00:05:36
become the sort of carbind induced coma. >> Um I did ask thousands of the listeners
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what dietary changes they had planned for 2026 and what they cared about most. Funnily keto came up number one then
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cutting sugar then weight loss then fasting more protein whole foods low carb and calorie control. So this is
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going to be a bit of a road map for me. I'm thrilled to hear that order. Like
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when you put out the histogram and you're looking at the most common responses, the fact that calorie number
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was at the bottom actually kind of thrills me because this reflects that the tide is turning that over the past
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decades, 60 plus years, the singular piece of advice when it came to weight loss and metabolic health was eat less,
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exercise more, which is a purely thermodynamic or a a calorie centric paradigm. just stating nothing else
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matters other than the energy you're putting in and the energy you're putting
00:06:33
out. We can't possibly account for all of the energy in the complexity of the
00:06:39
human body. You can have humans eat two meals that are identical in calorie number. So purely isocaloric
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and there is something called the thermic effect of food. So when we eat right now you and I haven't eaten, we're
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in a fasted state. Our metabolic rate is say humming along here. If we were to go
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get lunch and eat something in the hours following just the very act of digesting
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we have turned up the metabolic engine and metabolic rate would go up a little bit.
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>> Metabolic rate meaning >> meaning the total amount of energy the body is is expending. In fact metabolism
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to I'll come back to this thought in just a second. As a metabolic scientist
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people don't even understand the word metabolism. Metabolism is underwhelmingly perhaps nothing more but
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nothing less than the sum of every chemical reaction happening in our bodies. It's just everything that is
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keeping us alive, that is keeping our neurons firing, my my my muscles moving as I'm animating on the my hands.
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Everything we're doing is metabolism. And so after we eat, metabolism goes up
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a little bit. Again, that's called the thermic effect of food. And if you give
00:07:46
people two isocaloric meals, so exact same number of calories. That's what isocaloric means. same amount of protein
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and yet the they differ in their composition of macronutrients with fats and and carbs. So the meal that is lower
00:08:03
carb and higher fat, those individuals will have a much higher metabolic rate for hours afterwards than the group that
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is eating the high carb, low-fat version of that same caloric meal. And that's
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because insulin insulin as a hormone is the one metabolic hormone to rule them all. It will determine what the body
00:08:24
does with energy at every single cell. This is a principle even many very educated clinicians don't understand.
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They think that insulin only controls blood glucose. That's just the most obvious thing that it does because we
00:08:37
can prick a finger and measure it or slap something on our arm and measure the glucose. Insulin will tell every
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single cell of the body from brain cells to bone cells, liver cells to lung cells, and everyone in between what it
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needs to do with energy. And insulin is so determined to store energy that it will slow the metabolic engine of the
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body down in order to store more. And so all of this is my long- winded way of of
00:09:02
saying how thrilled I am that this is an audience that is shrugging off the old ideas of a calorie ccentric model of
00:09:09
obesity. Because all of these people, everyone's interested in losing weight
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or maintaining weight, which I admire. That's a good goal. The size of our fat
00:09:16
cells matters tremendously. So that's a good goal to want to shrink our fat cells and be healthier. The fact that
00:09:22
they didn't put controlling calories as number one and indeed put it at the end
00:09:26
suggests that the word is getting around that more I would say better more sound
00:09:31
metabolic science is starting to seep through society where they're more interested in controlling their
00:09:38
macronutrients. In other words, their carbs and their fats than they are controlling their
00:09:43
calories. >> My brother called you, didn't he? >> He did. >> My older brother.
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>> Yeah. What did he say? >> Yeah, he's darling. Well, we we had some
00:09:50
wonderful conversations. Um, he was interested as a dad, a middle-aged dad, in in fact indeed checking a lot of the
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boxes you just mentioned, which is I want to be a healthy dad. I want to live a long, healthy life. One of the
00:10:03
problems with weight loss goals is they look at the goal. They look at the weight where they want to get to.
00:10:08
They're looking down the down the road and saying, "This is where I want to
00:10:10
get, and so I need to cut calories in order to get there." So there are two
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there are two variables that come into play when it comes to losing weight. And I've already said said this and I'll
00:10:21
state it again just to be clear. It's a matter of shrinking fat cells. That's
00:10:25
what happens when someone's losing fat mass. It's not that you're losing fat
00:10:29
cells. Indeed, you don't want to. That's a topic for another time. But liposuction is a perfect example where
00:10:35
you are losing fat mass and yet no health marker gets better. None. Even though you've lost, you could go in and
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suck out fat cells and you'd say, "I lost 20 pounds of pure fat. I'm now
00:10:46
going to go to my doctor and get my blood test and I'm going to be so much healthier." And yet nothing is
00:10:51
different. If they were diabetic, they're just as diabetic. So if someone's looking at their New Year's
00:10:56
goals, and when I spoke with your brother, it was an echo of this conversation in a way. I said, "All
00:11:02
right, you need to shrink your fat cells." Most people only look at the calorie control. The problem with
00:11:08
calorie control is that we've seen what it looks like when you only focus on
00:11:13
calorie deprivation. And that is in in a word hunger. And there was this within the US there's been this game show over
00:11:20
the years called the greatest loser. These people one lose a fantastic amount of weight and yet you never see them
00:11:27
again because they gain it all back. So, if your weight loss strategy is based on
00:11:33
cutting calories without addressing insulin, which is the other of the two variables, then you're going to be
00:11:38
hungry. Dr. David Lewig at Harvard, a friend and colleague and collaborator, he published a report looking at the
00:11:45
same kind of dynamic that I outlined a moment ago, two isocaloric or equal calorie meals. And he found that when
00:11:53
they ate the meal that spiked insulin, the what he called I think he called it total energy availability. So they
00:12:00
measured every calorie molecule in the blood. So ketones, you know, BHB, they measured uh lactate, they measured fats,
00:12:08
they measured glucose, and they found that when with the insulin spiking meal, the total energy availability went down.
00:12:15
>> What does that mean? >> Yeah. So in other words, with the increase in insulin, as I noted a moment
00:12:19
ago, insulin is so determined to store energy that it is directing calories to go from the blood to be stored in
00:12:26
tissues like fat or in the liver >> to make you fat. >> Yeah, indeed it would. But the problem
00:12:31
is the brain doesn't have that storage capacity. You know, you could have big
00:12:35
fat cells with lots of energy. You could have a liver with tons of fat and glycogen, which is a stored form of
00:12:41
glucose, ready to go, but the brain doesn't have a big storage reservoir, and yet it has a high metabolic rate.
00:12:49
And so the brain is constantly relying on the energy in the blood that it can use, especially glucose and ketones, the
00:12:56
two primary fuels for the brain. And so when you spike insulin, you lower your glucose and you stop your liver from
00:13:04
making ketones. So the two main brain fuels have gone down, >> which is why you get brain fog.
00:13:10
>> It certainly lead to some mild cognitive impairment, but it would also drive
00:13:14
hunger. And so another group found that if you ate an isocoric breakfast, one low carb, one high carb, the group that
00:13:22
was on the high carb breakfast was much hungrier much sooner. >> And so this
00:13:27
>> Okay. So let me just >> Yeah. Yeah. The way I understand that is >> because I've had a meal that's high in
00:13:34
sugar, let's say, or carbs. >> Y >> insulin has come out, it's grabbed all
00:13:39
of the energy from my blood. >> Yep. That you just ate. >> That I just ate. It's stored it all
00:13:44
away. And because my brain is getting its energy from the blood as well, my brain is being energy deprived in some
00:13:51
way. And so my brain is going >> within an hour or two, you are hungry. >> Yes. Even though your fat cells might be
00:13:57
bigger than they've ever been. So that's the sort of disconnect that you end up
00:14:00
having when you're spiking insulin so frequently, you may have hundreds of thousands or even millions of calories
00:14:07
stored on your body in your fat cells primarily. And yet the brain is saying, "I'm hungry." We shouldn't be hungry. We
00:14:15
have so much energy that we can use, but only if we can access it. And this is where ketones come in. And I hate to
00:14:22
change the topic, but if if a person has fat and they can burn that fat, then they're making ketones. And ketones are
00:14:28
the brain's preferred fuel. Let's just state that with an exclamation mark. And
00:14:33
so if the brain is getting ketones or even if it has access to plenty of glucose, it senses, hey, there's no
00:14:39
energy deprivation. We're fine. We don't need to eat. And that's what these
00:14:43
studies find. And so back to the conversation with your brother, rather than focusing on calorie number, focus
00:14:50
on the other variable, which is insulin. Because if you decide that you're going
00:14:55
to start your fat cell shrinking journey, so with the first step, you could say, well, my first step is going
00:15:00
to be cutting calories. But if you haven't addressed your high insulin, which you have to have if you've gained
00:15:06
weight, it is impossible. In fact, this is worth a tangent for just a moment because I can state this
00:15:13
so emphatically. You could have all the hormones in the human body and tens of thousands of
00:15:19
calories coming in every day. And if you simply remove one single hormone, it is
00:15:24
impossible for that person to get fat. Totally and completely impossible. Now, I am a scientist enough that I like to
00:15:32
avoid hyperbolic language. I don't want to state anything in the extreme. And
00:15:36
yet, in this case, I actually can. I can revel in all of the um the power of this
00:15:41
declaration which is you simply wipe out a person's insulin, it is completely
00:15:46
impossible for them to get fat. In fact, this phenomenon is so real and so learned if not already known that you
00:15:54
have people with type 1 diabetes. Imagine the temptation. Let's say you're
00:15:58
a young woman who faces more pressure than her than her young men counterparts. She just gets diagnosed
00:16:04
with type 1 diabetes and she has become used to eating whatever she wants and being very very skinny. That is one of
00:16:11
the cardinal signs of type 1 diabetes. The person is just losing weight. In fact, the early the ancients thought
00:16:18
that as they were making so much urine because another feature of type 1 diabetes in in an untreated state is
00:16:24
they urinate a lot. That's what the word diabetes means. It means polyura or a
00:16:28
lot of urine for formation. They thought that their flesh, their fat, their substance was turning into liquid and
00:16:35
excreting from their bodies. And so the person, this this imagine this young woman, she's say 13 years old. She is
00:16:41
super super skinny, which she likes because there's such a pressure to be skinny and she can also at the same time
00:16:48
eat whatever she wants. And then but of course she feels miserable and indeed it
00:16:53
will kill her. So, she gets diagnosed with type 1 diabetes and she's put on insulin therapy and two things happen.
00:17:00
She starts eating less and getting fat. In fact, they gain people will gain so much weight that if they're in the
00:17:08
hospital for a few days, they can't leave the hospital with the same clothes
00:17:12
they came in. That's not to say they're leaving and then and they're obese, but
00:17:15
they can have easily gained 10 pounds, 15 pounds of fat. So this phenomenon is known and you have people with type 1
00:17:22
diabetes who abuse that fact and will deliberately underdose their insulin. So they can eat whatever they want. They
00:17:29
could go to a Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner and indulge in all the sweets and
00:17:35
just simply underdose their insulin and be as skinny as they want to be. Now there's disastrous metabolic
00:17:41
consequences, but it's just a testament to the power of insulin. So to finally
00:17:46
answer the question, my advice when I was speaking with your brother and anyone listening, don't have your first
00:17:52
step on your fat cell shrinking journey be low calorie because you will find that in short order, hunger will win.
00:17:59
And so you'll be right back where you started. Let your first step be I'm
00:18:03
going to lower my insulin because as I lower my insulin, I don't have to worry
00:18:08
about hunger first of all. Because if you're just focusing on lowering insulin, you can tell the person, and
00:18:13
indeed I am, eat as much protein and fat as you want because they have little to
00:18:18
no effect on your insulin. So, anytime you're hungry, eat something with protein and fat. Um, and then
00:18:25
if you're not hungry, don't eat. But anytime you're hungry, you don't have
00:18:29
to, it's not deprivation. It's not hunger, but the low calorie approach is
00:18:32
hunger. You're going to be hungry. So lower your insulin by controlling your
00:18:36
carbohydrates and and basically whole fruits and vegetables. Enjoy them. And this is part of the conversation I had
00:18:42
with your brother. >> And he called you and told you that he had had positive results following
00:18:47
watching this conversation and following your advice. >> Yeah. I think he said he'd effortlessly
00:18:51
lost 15 or so pounds uh just without even really worrying about it because you're not having that gnawing hunger.
00:18:58
>> Yeah. He um he didn't tell me he was reaching out to you. So, I actually only
00:19:02
found out that he had spoken to you when he like messaged me one day on WhatsApp
00:19:06
and was like, >> "I've been chatting to Dr. Benjamin Bitcoin." I was like, "How did you get
00:19:10
his email? Like, how did you get his phone number?" So, he must have reached
00:19:12
out. >> He knows people. >> Okay. Right. Okay. He found a way. >> Yeah. He knows people.
00:19:16
>> No, but he looks radically different. I have to say he he's dropped a ton of
00:19:20
weight and um looks fantastic. >> Well, he was already handsome, so I can only imagine what he looks like now.
00:19:26
>> That's the genetic component. Um but but when I look back at the conversation we
00:19:30
had the top comment on our previous conversation is someone saying I was morbidly obese 68 days ago. I was 280
00:19:40
lbs and pre-diabetic. In these 68 days I cut out sugar and flour entirely. And I
00:19:47
reduced my calories to about 1,800 a day. And I'm pleased to know that my high protein, highfat, low carb diet is
00:19:55
the right path and my blood sugar is now normal. >> Yeah. Remarkable. I I don't mean to ever
00:20:03
come across as saying that there's only one way to lose weight and that anyone
00:20:07
listening who uh is interested in weight loss would say, "Well, gosh, it looks
00:20:12
like I have to eat a lot of meat and eggs." And yet, you don't. As much as I
00:20:16
am an a defender of that view, uh I wouldn't want someone to think there is only one way to lose weight because we
00:20:22
could both think of people who adopted a purely plant-based diet and lost weight.
00:20:27
Now, I have some significant concerns with that diet long term, but even still, they could say, "Well, I'm eating
00:20:33
100% carbohydrates essentially, and I've lost weight." I'm not saying calories
00:20:38
don't matter. They do. But it also makes it a hard long-term strategy. And so if
00:20:44
someone can lower their insulin, I' I'd alluded to a metabolic advantage and
00:20:48
I'll just revisit that briefly. I'd mentioned already one of these things,
00:20:52
which is when when insulin is down, the metabolic rate goes up. And my lab published a report um finding that part
00:21:00
of that is through the production of ketones. That when ketones move through the bloodstream and come to our fat
00:21:06
cells, they will increase our metabolic rate in our fat tissue by three times. And we did this in humans. We studied
00:21:13
fat cells in a petri dish. We studied fat tissue from animal models. And then we studied fat tissue from humans where
00:21:20
we actually were pulling biopsies of belly fat from people that were in ketosis or not. And when they were in
00:21:25
ketosis, their metabolic rate in their fat tissue was three times higher than when they weren't than the group that
00:21:31
was not in ketosis. So this suggests that there's an advantage here that comes from lowering insulin. So as
00:21:38
insulin comes down, the person will find that they're just burning weight more
00:21:41
easily. And then one other part of that is when you're making ketones, every ketone has a caloric value roughly
00:21:49
similar to that of glucose. And so what happens now in ketosis or when ketones are up, you start wasting those ketones
00:21:58
from your body that you're breathing ketones out or you're urinating ketones
00:22:02
out. And those are calories that are just coming from your body that would have had to be burned through exercise
00:22:08
or stored in fat tissue. And yet in the in a low insulin state, that is so antithetical to fat storage that the
00:22:17
body just starts literally wasting energy. So every breath they're taking out when they're breathing out ketones,
00:22:23
those are calories just coming out of their body. >> So let's start then with ketones because
00:22:26
on the list of things that my audience said they planned to change for the new year, keto
00:22:31
>> Mhm. >> and ketones was top of that list for someone that's, you know, never heard
00:22:36
the term before. >> Yeah. >> Um, please give me context on on what exactly it is, but also how it relates
00:22:42
to living a healthy, happy 2026. >> Right. Right. Well, I am I'm a great
00:22:47
defender of ketones. I think that they have been one of the more uh misunderstood molecules in the body for
00:22:53
decades and it is thrilling for me to see an explosion of research in this realm looking at the effects of of
00:22:59
ketones in the body. So a ketone is a molecule that the body will make. Um many tissues can make it but if you're
00:23:06
measuring it in your blood it's coming from the liver and ketones are a product
00:23:10
of fat burning. So when insulin is low, which it must be for the body to make ketones, that's why it's ketogenesis or
00:23:18
the genesis or the creation of ketones, to be in a ketogenic state, you must have low insulin. That's required. Um,
00:23:26
when insulin goes down, you have two important things happening. First, starting at the fat cell, then going to
00:23:31
the liver. When insulin is down, the fat cell is breaking apart its triglycerides, which is the molecule
00:23:37
that the fat cell stores as fat. So that's called lipolysis. Lipolysis, lipid breaking or fat breaking. So you
00:23:45
have in a low insulin state, the fat cells breaking down as fats. Now those fats are coming to the liver.
00:23:51
>> So in a low insulin state, you mean if I was fasting >> fasting or low carb?
00:23:55
>> Okay. >> Yep. >> So the minute I'm low carb or fasting,
00:23:58
then I start producing these things called ketones. >> Yeah. Within about 16 hours. So if you
00:24:02
and I went to lunch and we ate a typical kind of high carb type lunch, a typical
00:24:08
lunch with all kinds of macronutrients in it, our insulin would go up and then if we stopped eating then about 16 or so
00:24:16
hours later, we would start making ketones. That's a long enough period of time for fat burning to kind of take
00:24:22
over. And so the fat cell is breaking down its fat. That fat is going to the liver right here. In fact, so here we
00:24:31
don't have a lot of subcutaneous fat on this guy here, unfortunately. So on the
00:24:35
outside in the front of the body or around the middle, we have this fat that we can pinch and jiggle. That's the
00:24:40
subcutaneous fat. So it would be surrounding in this model for those watching, it'd be surrounding the organs
00:24:46
on the outside. That is fat that the body burns very readily. That fat is running to the liver in very short
00:24:53
order. So it goes to the liver and now the liver has some options. The liver is the I say that the liver is the soccer
00:25:02
mom of nutrient metabolism. It knows what to do with everything. Whether it's
00:25:07
lactate or glucose or fats or ketones, the liver can handle all of them. So, the liver is getting a lot of fat from
00:25:13
fat cells. And it has some options. It would say, "Well, I can store this fat
00:25:18
or I can burn it." And and how does the liver decide? Insulin tells it what to
00:25:23
do. And if insulin is down, the liver cannot store fat. it it has to burn it. >> So if I'm fasting, if I've been fasting
00:25:33
say for two days for example or I've not been eating carbs for two days, >> the liver won't store.
00:25:39
>> It will not. In fact, the liver, it is so antithetical to fat storage in the
00:25:44
liver that you have human studies where people have significant fatty liver disease confirmed through ultrasound
00:25:49
measurements and they can just go on a ketogenic or a low carb diet for just a week and if I recall the study
00:25:56
correctly, I think it reduced the liver fat by like 60%. And compared and which was significantly more than the high
00:26:03
carb version and so even it was the same calories. Once again, just further evidence that calorie number, as much as
00:26:09
I don't calories matter, but just they're not number one. They they're
00:26:14
they're they they're relevant, but not as not the most relevant. So, you the
00:26:17
the liver cannot hold on to its fat as insulin comes down. It must burn it. And the liver begins within each liver cell,
00:26:26
the liver is burning so much fat that it's actually it's burning more than it
00:26:30
needs for its own energy. And it's basically, if you'll allow me to speak a
00:26:35
little silly, the liver begins to say, "I'm burning more energy than I need. I
00:26:39
wonder how the brain's doing." And the brain won't burn fat. The brain will
00:26:44
burn ketones. And so the liver starts creating ketones is as its it's its way
00:26:50
of sharing the energy with the brain. So a ketone is, to put it very succinctly,
00:26:54
a product of the liver burning a lot of fat. Anytime you're burning a lot of
00:26:59
fat, you're going to be making ketones. People have heard of the keto diet. Um,
00:27:05
when you talk about the keto diet, there's lots of rebuttals. >> Some people say it's not sustainable.
00:27:09
You can't do it for a long period of time. >> How do you respond to arguments against
00:27:14
keto? >> Yeah, that's that's a great question. I appreciate the concerns. The the stated
00:27:19
concern that they would say it's not feasible. You can say that about any diet. You
00:27:24
really can. And I don't mean to um push aside people's concerns, but you could
00:27:31
say the same thing about someone going on a low-fat, lowc calorie diet. That's
00:27:35
not sustainable, and it never is. They always get off it. And so, anytime a person is making a dietary change to
00:27:42
improve their metabolic health, every diet works until you stop doing it. Uh that might be a maxim that people can
00:27:50
leave with. Um a ketogenic diet because it's not based on hunger. I think has
00:27:55
the potential to work. But we know there are people who've done it their whole
00:27:58
lives, right? There are people who from childhood adopt a ketogenic diet in order to control their seizures or their
00:28:04
their their epilepsy or people will do it to control their migraines. Because if there's one tissue in the body that
00:28:10
thrives in the midst of ketones, it's the brain. you can almost throw a dart
00:28:15
at a board that lists all of these chronic brain disorders, whether it's schizophrenia, whether it's bipolar,
00:28:21
whether it's depression, whether it is um dementia, like Alzheimer's disease.
00:28:26
Every one of those instances, there's evidence to show even things like multiple sclerosis. There's instance
00:28:32
evidence to show improvements in humans with a ketogenic diet. the brain and to say that in a different way the central
00:28:39
nervous system loves ketones. >> I'm just um looking at some of the people who watched our last conversation
00:28:47
and who have left comments on that conversation and there's this one chap here who I'll throw up on the screen
00:28:52
called Shanti. Um he says 35 days of keto for the first time ever started on the 2nd of January 2025. It's now the
00:29:00
8th of February and 8 kg or 17.5 lbs gone. So easy and loving my food choices. I'm having no more than 20 gram
00:29:09
of carbs per day. I am amazed. Not felt this good since I was a teenager. Another 15 kg to go and I know
00:29:19
I'll get there. >> Wow. >> That's roughly 37 pounds to go. So
00:29:23
>> that's remarkable. >> It really really works. >> Well, it does work. But but I don't mean
00:29:27
to ever, you know, neither you nor I are going to tell anyone everyone listening
00:29:32
this is the only way to lose weight. But I think it is the most practical and simplest because the problem with so
00:29:40
many weight loss strategies is that it puts you against your own hunger. And hunger always wins. You have to have a
00:29:48
weight loss journey that doesn't have hunger being a constant feature. Because
00:29:53
if you're imagining this long walk to shrinking my fat cells to what this guy
00:29:56
wanted of almost 35 total pounds, I think is what he's going for. If you're
00:30:00
carrying hunger, it's like it's like a bag. It's like luggage that you're
00:30:05
dragging along on this journey. The chains that you're dragging that are going to make it almost impossible for
00:30:10
you to get there. >> This sounds almost counterintuitive because when people hear that you're not
00:30:14
going to have sugar, they assume that you're therefore going to have loads of
00:30:17
cravings for it. Mhm. >> But the remarkable thing I discovered the first time I went on a low carb/
00:30:23
keto diet is I was walking through this mall in Cape Town where where um I live sometimes and I saw this concession
00:30:30
stand for like cinnamon rolls. >> And I thought to myself like I've not
00:30:35
had sugar for, you know, I've not had a high sugar diet now for a couple of weeks. I'll just go look at it and see
00:30:39
how I feel. And I walked over and looked down at it at a food I would absolutely
00:30:43
love and my mouth would water just thinking about it. I looked down at it and I had the emotional
00:30:49
urge to buy one was completely gone. And it's hard to explain. >> It's hard to explain.
00:30:56
>> Yeah. You you were able to just look at it and shrug your shoulders. >> I felt nothing.
00:30:59
>> Yeah. Yeah. >> And I was and I was really I I found that really fascinating that I had no
00:31:03
urge, no craving, no desire to buy the cinnamon roll >> and it had vanished.
00:31:07
>> Well, this is this is one of the things where I think the future of as ketone
00:31:10
research in humans continues to evolve. I there is already evidence showing profound you can use a ketogenic diet to
00:31:18
help people with eating disorders. This these are there are published case studies on this and I think a part of it
00:31:24
is when the brain is so nourished and consistently nourished >> by ketones
00:31:28
>> by ketones the brain reaches this new level of of indifference to what it
00:31:33
knows might be harmful and and that's in the midst of that answer I have that's
00:31:37
kind of loaded where if you're on a ketogenic diet the beauty is fuel is stable ketones are stable even glucose
00:31:46
is stable you're avoiding the massive um volatility of of glucose. And as much as
00:31:52
so much of of the glucose centric view is only worried about the high glucose, high glucose is harmful that it can
00:32:01
induce the glycation of molecules throughout the body where the glucose is literally binding things and and
00:32:06
disrupting their function, proteins, fats. So glucose is harmful, but so too is the volatility of the glucose where
00:32:13
it's really high, then it's really low, and then it's really high again. That is
00:32:17
a roller coaster of energy for the brain where it's you're force-feeding the
00:32:20
brain all this glucose and now you're depriving it. It's like it's like a form
00:32:24
of abuse on the brain. But when it's a ketogenic diet, it is stable, consistent
00:32:30
energy. And so it's not surprising to me that people find they're able to resist
00:32:34
cravings better because the brain is able to say to the rest of the body, "No, we don't need that. We're doing
00:32:39
fine. We got energy." >> What about the heart? >> Oh my gosh, that's a brilliant question.
00:32:45
So, I would say the brain is number one tissue that thrives on ketones and I'd
00:32:50
put actually put the heart as number two. There is a lot of great research. I would refer people to Gary Lope's work
00:32:56
and others that I just don't know personally, but I know him. He's at the
00:32:59
University of um Alberta in Edmonton. um and he has found and others so I'm going
00:33:05
to synthesize their work collectively that when a person's experiencing heart
00:33:11
failure it's it's a combination of variables where the heart may not be able to contract well enough to eject
00:33:17
the blood it has to work a lot harder for every pump in that case they they have found that the the heart will shift
00:33:25
its fuel to start relying on ketones to improve its function but there was a paper just published this here looking
00:33:33
at a different form of beta hydroxybutyrate which is the main ketone. Whenever I've been saying
00:33:37
ketone, I've been thinking of the molecule beta hydroxybutyrate. When the liver makes BHB or beta hydroxybutyrate,
00:33:45
it actually comes in two forms that are mirror opposites of each other in structure. So the way they're built,
00:33:51
it's referred to as DBHB or LBH. So in heart failure, the heart muscle itself
00:33:58
like the brain starts relying a lot on DBHB as its fuel. Then you would say that begs the question, well what about
00:34:04
the L? This paper that was just found used a pig heart model which is actually shockingly close to human anatomy. So
00:34:11
it's a pretty good um corlary here. They found that with LBH infused into the
00:34:16
cardiovascular system of the pigs, >> which is ketones, >> which is a different form of the ketone
00:34:20
that the liver makes. Yeah. So the liver is making two types of BHB, DBHB and LBHB.
00:34:26
>> And when they profused the cardiovascular system with LBH, they found that the what's called ejection
00:34:32
fraction, so the amount of blood coming out of the left ventricle, which is the part of the heart that's beating blood
00:34:39
everywhere. So with LBH, they found that the heart was able to eject 40% more blood for every beat. But now you would
00:34:47
say, well, it's just because you're making the heart work harder. No, it was
00:34:51
not at all an effect of the heart itself. It was because all of the great arteries like the aorta, right out of
00:34:58
the left ventricle will come the aorta, which is the main avenue for moving blood everywhere. The aorta expanded and
00:35:06
all of the great vessels enlarged so much that the heart was now able to beat out 40% more blood with every single
00:35:12
beat. So when it comes to someone with heart failure, I think they are among the most they should be among the most
00:35:20
interested in testing out the effects of ketones. Uh even as a personal note, I am I tend to be kind of high anxiety,
00:35:28
high performance sort of I'm always thinking of something. No surprise that I tend and I don't sleep particularly
00:35:35
great and so no surprise that I sometimes have higher blood pressure. I one time measured my blood pressure on a
00:35:42
random I went into my dentist and the dentist has now started measuring blood pressure. It was 139
00:35:48
over 90ome and I had never been that high. I couldn't believe it. I'm such a
00:35:52
healthy bloke. How on earth is my blood pressure this high? And I thought, well,
00:35:56
I'm kind of sleepd deprived. I've had maybe a little too much caffeine that
00:35:59
morning or whatever. But it was a concern. And over the next few days, my blood pressure continued to be higher
00:36:05
than it had ever been. And of course, I'm getting old enough that I think these things start to matter. I took a
00:36:11
shot of as an experiment, seeing this paper that was had just been published in 2025. I took a few grams worth of
00:36:19
LBH. I drank it and within about an hour, my blood pressure was like 110 over 70. So, it had this. Now, that's
00:36:28
anecdotal. It's an N of one. Maybe I just calmed down enough, but I saw an almost immediate reduction in my blood
00:36:36
pressure. And it could be because of what they found, which is that all of the vessels that the heart is beating
00:36:42
into, they expanded. And so every with every beat of the heart, the heart was able to eject more blood. And the and
00:36:49
the the wider a blood vessel gets, of course, the lower the pressure is. And so that's that could be the mechanism
00:36:54
that explains in my case why my blood pressure got fixed so quickly. How did you drink that?
00:37:00
>> Yeah. Yeah. So, there are a few different ways. As much as we've been
00:37:03
focusing on uh endogenous ketones. So, I'm pointing to my liver, but here's the
00:37:07
liver. So, when a person is in a ketogenic state, they're making their own ketones, we would use the word
00:37:13
endogenous ketogenesis or they're making ketones in their own body. But it's no
00:37:19
surprise that the benefits of ketones are getting so extensive that now there are companies um that are enterprising
00:37:27
individuals that are finding ways to get into ketosis without having the rigor of
00:37:31
a ketogenic diet. And so you can drink ketones. And that comes in a few different forms. Of course, the form I'm
00:37:37
talking about is just straight BHB in in its two in its two versions. You can get
00:37:43
it in either version, DBHB or LBH. So, that's just you consuming it in the way your liver makes it.
00:37:51
>> If you looked in my kitchen cupboard over there, you'd probably see, frankly,
00:37:54
about 100 different ketone products. Um, obviously, some of them are the same, but there's like 100 different units of
00:37:58
ketone products. And here is my ketone reader, which is where I pick prick my finger frequently.
00:38:05
>> In fact, you'll be delighted um once you get one. Nowadays, they make them
00:38:09
attachable. >> Really? >> Yeah. So ketones are so easy to measure, not unlike glucose, that just like
00:38:15
people have continuous glucose monitors now in Europe, you can get continuous ketone monitors
00:38:20
>> from where? >> Next time you're in the UK, get them. You can't get them here yet. They're not
00:38:24
FDA approved, but there was a company out of Germany um that sent me one uh called Sai Bio, Si Bio, and you can just
00:38:31
strap it on and look at your phone and it's giving you continuous readings. >> Damn.
00:38:35
>> Yeah, it's very very >> That is incredible. I'm literally going
00:38:37
to buy that ASAP. Um, but before I get that, I've been using this little ketone
00:38:43
reader here. >> Yep. >> Which I have no affiliation to at all. Um, and pricking my finger every single
00:38:47
day to see my ketone levels when I'm in a in a ketogenic state. >> You talked about exogenous ketones
00:38:52
there. I have a bunch of different exogenous ketone products here. I know some people use ketone salts.
00:38:57
>> Yep. >> I have two different ketone brands here. >> Yes. Yeah. So, there are there are
00:39:04
different forms. You have two different forms here. and you mentioned one that that ought to be described because that
00:39:09
actually is the type of ketone I was just talking about. So ketone IQ is a ketone precursor where it's a molecule
00:39:15
called 13b butane dial that will come to the liver then the liver will metabolize
00:39:19
it um to to a large degree into BHB the main ketone that we're talking about and
00:39:25
that is the ketone that people want. Um then the other one, this is an esther. What's an esther bond is a molecule that
00:39:33
has a a a chemical bond that is broken when you eat it uh through enzymes. So you digest that where it's one part BHB,
00:39:42
the straight real ketone, and then it's one part 13 butane dial, which is the
00:39:46
same precursor, the ketone precursor and ketone IQ. And so those are two of the three forms, well maybe four forms. And
00:39:54
then the other two are straight BHB where it's either a BHB salt where the BHB molecule is bound to a sodium or a
00:40:02
calcium or a potassium. And you can buy those in the D or the L form or nowadays
00:40:09
it's the straight acid what's called a BHB acid where it doesn't have any of
00:40:14
the electrolytes in it where it's you can get that's what I was referring to a
00:40:17
moment ago when I lowered my blood pressure. I took the straight a straight shot of L BHB and you can get that in D
00:40:24
and L forms as well. >> Okay. So, I've just taken a shot of Keton IQ. >> Yeah. So, that's one3 butane dial and
00:40:30
you taste it. Um, right. It has a particular kind of kick because it's a it's an alcohol molecule that you know,
00:40:35
you feel it like it it's sort of like taking a little shot, but your liver will take that in and then over the next
00:40:41
couple hours it will start converting it to varying degrees into BHB. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to quickly
00:40:49
do my blood ketone levels now and we will see if in 10 minutes time, let's do
00:40:55
10 20 minutes time, there are ketones flowing in my blood. So I've pricricked
00:40:59
my finger. I've put a little bit of blood on this little ketone sensor here and it says that my blood ketone levels
00:41:05
are currently 0.3. >> Yep. >> Yeah. >> So can you describe for me now that I've
00:41:09
just have had a shot of Ketone IQ, which by the way I am affiliated with. I have
00:41:12
um I'm an investor in the company. Um but that's why I brought a variety of
00:41:16
different brands. Yeah. >> Um can you tell me what's going on inside my body now that I've just had
00:41:20
one shot of that? >> Yes. Yes. So now your body is taking in that main molecule of ketone IQ which is
00:41:26
called 13 butane dol and it's going to get absorbed from your guts into your
00:41:31
blood and then from your guts it's going to go to your liver and then the liver
00:41:35
will pull in that molecule and rearrange it into BHB and then and then release that into the into the blood
00:41:42
>> which is ketones >> which is key it will turn it into BHB the ketone. Yep. And now again there are
00:41:47
different forms that you can take whether it's the straight 13b butane dial or whether it's an esther
00:41:52
>> and what's happening from there. So it's now in my blood. What's happening then?
00:41:56
>> Yeah. So now once the BHB is in the blood it um anytime BHB is in the blood
00:42:01
it is both fuel and a signaling molecule. And that last part is often overlooked. We've been over the course
00:42:08
of this discussion talking a lot about or I've been referring to the fact that
00:42:12
it's a fuel for any any cell with mitochondria, which is everything but red blood cells.
00:42:18
Red blood cells are the only cells with no mitochondria. But every other cell of
00:42:23
the body will take in BHB, the main ketone, and use it for fuel. Every single cell of the body, and do so
00:42:30
gladly. the and it's important to compare the BHB the ketone against glucose in many of the biggest tissues
00:42:37
of the body like the muscle or the fat or even the heart glucose can't just come in it needs an escort if you will
00:42:44
or it needs permission and that's insulin so there's this regulating step
00:42:48
there's this this checkpoint where insulin can say all right you can come in or not because I'm insulin resistant
00:42:54
or there's not enough insulin or whatever ketones have no such regulation they just come in if the cell has mito
00:43:00
mitochondria, the ketones going in. So that's one effect where the ketone is
00:43:04
metabolized as a fuel giving the cell literal energy. Number two is the fact that the BHB can bind to the cell and
00:43:13
there are receptors on cells that will sense the BHB then the BHB will tell it to do something.
00:43:19
>> The ketone. >> Yeah. Yeah. So it's it's which is really really unique where you have something
00:43:23
that is both a calorie source an energy source and it acts like a hormone where it tells cells that's the signaling
00:43:30
effect where it tells cells to to do something like a moment ago I'd mentioned how LBH is capable of
00:43:38
expanding the great blood vessels in the body well in that regard it's acting as
00:43:43
a signaling molecule and increasing the production of nitric oxide which is a great visodilator. All these guys that
00:43:50
are taking nitric oxide drugs like Seialis for whether it's erectile function or nowadays guys are taking it
00:43:56
to have better blood flow and perform in the gym and have a better workout. Well,
00:44:01
LBHB might be kind of the way forward where if you can signal something else but get the same effect without the
00:44:08
consequences or the side effects that you get from seialis then that might be one of the strategies and use of LBH in
00:44:15
the future. So, that's been about 5 or 10 minutes and my blood ketone levels
00:44:18
are now at 0.5. Um, and they're continuing to climb just from one shot of Keton IQ. Some people ask me about
00:44:25
sex differences in the ketogenic diet or a low carb diet generally. >> Some people are concerned that low carb
00:44:32
diets or ketogenic diets are especially useful for men but might have a different set of complications for
00:44:39
women. And we did have a female expert debate on the show where I asked about the ketogenic diet for women and the
00:44:46
sort of consensus was that it should be treated differently for women. >> Yeah. Yeah. I app I remember I I tuned
00:44:54
into that and I respect it tremendously. I I really appreciate the view that a lot of these gals have advocated for
00:45:01
which is that women are not just small men. The differences between male and female of course are enormous. Um that
00:45:07
doesn't mean there are differences in everything. So women are very unique when it comes to hormones. They women
00:45:15
experience a rhythm of hormones that there is no equivalent in men because of the the reproductive burden if you will
00:45:22
or responsibility that a woman has where she will see changes in hormones that can reach thousands of times differences
00:45:28
like progesterone levels can change by a thousand times over the course of the ovarian cycle. Estrogen levels will
00:45:34
change by multiples. men just don't have that kind of volatility. Those female
00:45:39
sex hormones do influence metabolism, but then it matters tremendously which um phase she is in of her ovarian cycle.
00:45:47
So if she is in the the first follicular phase, which is a low progesterone, higher estrogen state,
00:45:53
>> what's the first follicular phase? >> Yeah. So in the in if you look at the
00:45:56
female fertility phase, um it is like a 200piece orchestra. It is so dynamic. Whereas men's fertility is like a
00:46:03
barberhop quartet. It sounds nice, but it's very simple. So, in the first phase
00:46:08
leading up, so she's just had her menration end, now she's starting the beginning of a new cycle. That first
00:46:14
phase is called the follicular phase, which is when her ovaries are having some follicles or a future a little egg
00:46:21
getting bigger. One will end up becoming the dominant one, but that is creeping in higher higher levels of estrogen. And
00:46:28
then she will ovulate with at with the ovulation that what was a follicle in her ovary now becomes what's called a
00:46:35
yellow body or a corpus ludium. And so it's called the ludial phase and that is
00:46:40
defined by very high progesterone and progesterone changes things. So where I think the conversation in women is very
00:46:47
relevant and fascinating is that in the first phase in her follicular phase she is a fat burning machine. You can
00:46:54
measure she will get into ketosis faster than her male counterpart and she's
00:46:58
burning more fat than her male counterpart. In fact, this is one of the few clinical values where there's a male
00:47:04
version and a female version. This isn't very common. Many of the typical metabolic type markers, whether it's
00:47:10
glucose or insulin, triglycerides, LDL, cholesterol, they're the same across the
00:47:14
sexes with the exception of free fatty acids. So earlier I had mentioned that when insulin is low the li the fat cell
00:47:22
is breaking down fat. It's breaking down that fat as free fatty acids. So the
00:47:27
free fatty acids in a woman are about 40 or 50% higher than in a man >> during that first phase.
00:47:34
>> Yes. Especially during the first phase and that's because she's burning more
00:47:37
fat and that helps her get into ketosis faster. So if you this has been shown in
00:47:42
studies take a male and female have them start a fast she will get into ketosis faster than him.
00:47:48
Now during during >> just during that phase or >> especially during the phase yeah I I
00:47:53
don't know that they compared and controlled for the ludial phase but it's
00:47:57
worth noting where I think um fasting and ketogenic diets start to change. So it'll keep going up. Yeah.
00:48:05
>> So just another reading point8. >> Yep. >> Is ketosis considered what.5?
00:48:11
>> Technically, but frankly I actually call it ketosis at.3. the moment you can
00:48:16
detect it on one of those blood meters that I'd say you're in ketosis and I
00:48:19
think 0.3 is the lower limit. So 0.5 is a little bit of an arbitrary cut off but
00:48:23
that is the classic view. Um, so in in that in that ludal phase with high progesterone, progesterone is a hunger
00:48:30
hormone. And so if she's trying to do a fasting protocol during and her cravings
00:48:35
are going to be higher and her uh she's going to be hungrier. And so that's
00:48:39
where I think the conversation's very important is that during her ludal phase
00:48:44
after she has ovulated, it's going to be harder to stick to a ketogenic diet. And that's where I think
00:48:50
it might be prudent for her to be a little generous with herself. um where uh it might get a little more difficult.
00:48:57
Now, however, some of the concern with women and ketogenic diets is misplaced. And I would be remiss if I didn't
00:49:04
mention a study that answered this question very well in with regards to cortisol. In fact, I'll state this now.
00:49:10
I already chatted with the team. I would love to see you bring on a scientist in
00:49:15
the UK named Dr. Isabella Cooper. She has published a series of studies in women that are fascinating because of
00:49:23
the the intervention that she's done. She's taken women who had been adhering
00:49:28
to a ketogenic diet as part of their normal life. Then for 21 days they have to adopt the typical high carb diet of
00:49:35
the standard UK guidelines similar to the US about 55% carbohydrate decidedly not ketogenic for 21 days. So more than
00:49:43
long enough to detect changes and then they go back to their diet for 21 days and they have blood tests again. And so
00:49:50
these are healthy women who go from a ketogenic diet to a high carb diet back to a ketogenic diet. And when they
00:49:57
looked at cortisol, when Isabella and her group measured cortisol levels, no statistically significant change at any
00:50:03
point. There was just noise and no trend. Some gals had their cortisol go down. Some had them go up. But as a
00:50:11
group there was it was just a big messy flat line. >> And what does that mean?
00:50:16
>> That takes a lot of wind out of the sales of of people who say that a ketogenic diet is a unique stress on
00:50:23
women because people want to invoke and they'll say, "Well, cortisol goes
00:50:26
through the roof and that's sign of a significant stress." And yet Isabella's
00:50:30
own data show that cortisol levels aren't different. that there is no unique cortisol related stress state of
00:50:38
a ketogenic diet. So I think it's relevant because it just brings a little nuance to the conversation. Not to say
00:50:43
men and women are not different. They absolutely are. But I do believe the the view that a ketogenic diet is uniquely
00:50:51
stressful in in women but not men, I think is uh overblown. And and again, I'm relying on Isabella's own data to
00:50:58
support that. So, coming into 2026 and I want 2026 to be the year where I finally
00:51:05
get a grip of my health, where I finally become the person that I know deep down
00:51:10
I could be and I desperately do want to be. And I asked you, Dr. Ben, >> to make me a plan,
00:51:17
>> the perfect plan, the perfect diet. I know everyone's different, so we're
00:51:20
gonna have you gonna have to play with me here a little bit, but >> the perfect plan for 2026,
00:51:27
>> what would you prescribe as a diet, lifestyle choices? Okay. And I'm going
00:51:32
to write it down. >> Yeah. Yeah. So I would um at the risk of sounding too self-absorbed
00:51:38
uh I this is I'll kind of describe my own approach as a metabolic scientist but please everyone listening appreciate
00:51:45
that I will I'm inserting my own constraints because my approach is kind of that of a guy who knows a lot but is
00:51:52
also constrained by my demands in life but I think a lot of people fit into that category. So Stephen if you want to
00:51:59
look like a freckled bald wrinkled man this is what you can do. All right. So, first of all, zero to little to no carbs
00:52:07
for um breakfast and lunch. >> Okay. Little to no carbs for breakfast and lunch. Carbs for breakfast and
00:52:13
lunch. >> Yep. You wake up in the morning. Anyone who's wearing a continuous glucose
00:52:17
monitor will find that their glucose levels naturally rise in the morning and that coincides with a mild state of
00:52:23
insulin resistance every morning because of changes in cortisol and other hormones. So my view is don't doubly
00:52:30
load to the glucose that's already happening by eating in the morning with starchy sugary stuff. So be very strict
00:52:36
with all of your meals up until dinner. >> So just on point one so I'm clear.
00:52:40
You're saying no carbs but is there anything that I should be having? >> Yeah. So any if a person wants to as
00:52:46
much protein and fat as they'd like and I would say especially for lunch, let
00:52:50
lunch be your biggest meal. >> Okay. So let's go through those three points. Yeah.
00:52:54
>> Um why as much protein as I can. Yeah. Protein and fat. >> Okay. Why?
00:52:59
>> Yeah. Because they won't have an insulin effect. And that's the key. Like my
00:53:03
approach to staying lean at 50 years old and having my wife like what she sees is
00:53:08
keeping my insulin low and and still not being hungry all the time. And so protein and fat are the two
00:53:14
macronutrients with carbohydrates being the third. But protein and fat have little to no effect on insulin. Fat has
00:53:20
none and protein may have a modest effect depending on some other variables. So you want to keep insulin
00:53:26
low. >> So what would would that breakfast look like? >> So for me, I actually don't eat
00:53:29
breakfast. Uh and and again, this plays into I'm extremely mindful of my family.
00:53:34
So that's going to come back again when we get to dinner because we've left that
00:53:37
meal untouched for now. >> In the morning, I make breakfast for my kids every morning. Uh and it's
00:53:43
something I remember from my childhood being raised by my dad and he every morning it was just structured. And I
00:53:50
think all of my siblings and I have thrived in life in part because of the structure we had at the beginning of
00:53:55
every day where we would all eat breakfast together. We would read scriptures very briefly. We'd have a
00:54:00
family prayer very briefly and just review the day. And I think that was my dad's way of kind of surviving with so
00:54:05
many kids just to sort of check in with everyone. >> You had nine siblings.
00:54:09
>> Yeah. Yeah. There's nine of us. Yeah. Uh and so we have uh I I'm very big on
00:54:14
that. So breakfast is dad's domain and my wife cheers me on. Um, so I make breakfast for the kids and I am sipping
00:54:21
on a cup of yerba mate the whole time. >> Why? >> Yeah, in part because I like the taste.
00:54:26
There's a good GLP1 effect. So, it helps me feel a little more satiated. Um, and
00:54:32
it's just a habit. It's a little bit of a perk, a little pickme up. I don't
00:54:35
drink coffee. I drink yerba mate instead. >> What is herb mate? >> The brand that I get is called Una Mate.
00:54:40
And it's a it's a leaf. It's a South American tea basically. And you can get
00:54:45
it in any number of ways. This is just a really convenient and good way to get it. So I'm sipping on a cup of it would
00:54:51
be someone drinking coffee or tea. I'm taking yerba mate tea. Um so I don't eat
00:54:55
for breakfast. I find that I'm not generally hungry for breakfast anyway. And so I may as well keep my fasted
00:55:01
state going a little longer. So that's what works for me. And then I would encourage people to have a big hearty
00:55:06
lunch because if you have a big hearty lunch, mostly protein and fat, it makes it easier to taper off later in the day.
00:55:13
Especially in the evening if people are noticing that they have significant cravings especially for carbs because
00:55:19
that's the only thing anyone craves in the evening have a bigger lunch. See if
00:55:23
that helps. >> Okay. >> And then sometime around either before or after have a good resistance workout.
00:55:30
I have my resistance workout in the in fact Stephen I even have to go a little earlier. So, my first thing in the
00:55:36
morning is I go on a ruck at 5:00 a.m. I have my weighted vest and these 15lb kettle bells and I hike one mile up a
00:55:44
hill and one mile back every morning at 5:00 a.m. And then I get a little work done and just some personal kind of
00:55:50
reflection and meditation time, if you will. Then the family wakes up. I'm making breakfast. The family chaos
00:55:55
begins. I'm sipping on my yerba mate. Then I go to work. About 10:30 or 11 is
00:56:01
the good time for me. I go down to the gym on campus and I do my very brief, very effective, I would say, um,
00:56:07
resistance training and then I go into the sauna for 12 to 15 minutes, but in the morning I've done a little ice bath,
00:56:14
too. I didn't mention that. I have an ice bath on my back patio, a Maroska Forge, and I love it. It is spectacular.
00:56:20
Um, so then I do a sauna session after my workout. Then I go eat my big lunch. >> Why are you doing the ice bath in this
00:56:27
one? Yeah. So, I do I do an ice bath in the morning because it helps me sleep better in the evening. I'm a terrible
00:56:33
sleeper. And especially in the northern hemisphere in the winter, the sun isn't
00:56:36
coming up till 9:00 or so, 9:00 a.m. And by shocking my body, I get this jolt. And I think it just helps get my clock
00:56:46
ticking. And so, by the time evening rolls around, I'm tired and I'm ready
00:56:50
for bed. >> Okay, I'm just doing my ketone test to see where it is. We're probably about 30
00:56:55
minutes off me taking that ketone shot. We'll continue with your day in just two
00:56:58
sec. And I'm now at 0.9. >> It'll keep going. Yep. Yep. So, you were
00:57:04
08 0.9. Next one will be one, but it looks like it's starting to curve a little bit,
00:57:08
>> which isn't surprising. You went up pretty quick and then it's going to
00:57:11
curve for a bit. >> And what's going on in my body right now that I have 0.9
00:57:16
>> K? Yes. So, that is a unit of measurement called the mill moles. And so, it's looking at the number of
00:57:21
molecules basically in a given amount of of your blood. And so you took in that ketone precursor, the liver converted
00:57:28
it. It's just continuing to convert it into BHB. >> BHB being ketones.
00:57:32
>> BHB being the main ketone. Yep. >> Okay. Yep. >> And that's making me
00:57:36
>> Well, it's going to make you sharp. Okay. >> So, your brain is now using those
00:57:39
ketones. Your heart would be using the ketones. Um, and your reliance on glucose as a fuel for your brain and
00:57:45
your heart would be going down. >> Wouldn't my hunger be going down? >> Oh, yeah. Yeah.
00:57:49
>> So, I'm going to be less hungry. But also the benefits of BHB in the brain
00:57:52
are are myriad where it's been shown to be an anxolytic. So it can control anxiety. Uh it can control it can
00:58:00
improve depression. It can help with attention, >> memory. I >> memory. Oh, certainly with cognition.
00:58:05
Yes. >> I've read I read about the studies on dementia patients that >> Yes. That is it is incredibly we're
00:58:10
entering a kind of dawning of an era of ketone research where the number of NIH and NSF funded ketone related projects
00:58:18
is wonderful. It's thrilling to see where it's going to be a wonderful decade of a
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pipedive.com/ceeo. >> So let's go back to the perfect day, the perfect, the perfect lifestyle for 2026.
00:59:34
So then do my resistance training at some point after I've had my breakfasts.
00:59:39
>> Well, yes. So whatever for me, I I do body weight based exercises. So, I don't
00:59:43
like having a big belly of food. And so, being in a fasted state, my view on exercising, even that's a debate. Do you
00:59:50
exercise fasted or do you exercise with fuel? Um, like you take a bunch of carbs
00:59:54
and stuff. My view is it's dependent on what your goal is. As a middle-aged guy,
01:00:00
my goal is not performance. It's not going out and sprinting and showing power. It's to live a long healthy life.
01:00:07
And so, it's a more metabolic focus. If your if your interest is metabolic, then
01:00:12
I think fasting fa exercising in a fasted state is very smart. If your goal of the exercise is performance, like
01:00:19
you're a collegiate athlete or you are, you know, you're an elite rugby player
01:00:23
or something, okay, then don't exercise fasted. Take some fuel before you go
01:00:28
work out. So for me, I've done my early morning ruck, my personal kind of reflection time, ice bath, yerba mate,
01:00:37
and then my midm morning workout. >> Just on that point of exercising fasted,
01:00:42
>> why is that better if your goals are longevity and health, >> right? Because it's just going to help
01:00:48
you continue to burn fat and improve maintain your insulin sensitivity. >> Okay, fine. So, I have my midm morning
01:00:55
workout, then I have a nice big lunch, then I have my afternoon productivity, and then I get to dinner, and dinner is
01:01:02
the main social meal within my home. Um, and so I have dinner with my family. And
01:01:07
that is carb lunch. Whatever the family's eating, I'm eating. I have I have daughters and as a college
01:01:13
professor I've seen enough young women struggle with eating disorders that I
01:01:17
always worried would my incessant talking about diet somehow stimulate eating disorders and I've never wanted
01:01:24
to become obsessive about it and so I have dinner with my family whatever it is if it's pizza I'm having pizza if
01:01:31
it's pasta I'm having pasta um now my wife happens to see things kind of the
01:01:35
way I do so it's usually meat and vegetables in in some mix and and that's
01:01:42
my dinner and then ideally I'm done. >> What time are you having that dinner?
01:01:47
>> Yeah, that's about five or six. >> And you you avoid eating late.
01:01:52
>> Oh yes. In fact, I would submit Stephen, if we were to look at any one thing
01:01:57
someone could do, I would say anyone who says, "Ben, what is the one thing?" If
01:02:03
I'm putting a question in your mouth, I'd say stop snacking in the evening.
01:02:06
Anything you can do to not overeat and go to bed hypoglycemic or elevated or spike your blood glucose levels, do it.
01:02:14
>> Why? >> That's when people at their weakest. People, you and I could be hanging out
01:02:18
all day walking past a plate of cookies and not be tempted at all until 7 or 8:00 p.m. It's just human nature. And
01:02:26
yet that is one of the worst times to eat it because when you go to bed hypoglycemic, it activates a part of the
01:02:32
nervous system, an aspect of the nervous system called the sympathetic nervous system. That's also known as the fight
01:02:38
orflight. So when someone we hear a car crash right nearby or we hear a gunshot,
01:02:45
then our immediately our heart starts beating faster and harder. Our body temperature climbs and we're stimulated.
01:02:52
hypoglycemia will have that effect. And that is terrible timing because when you're going to bed, you're wanting to
01:02:58
rely on your what's called your parasympathetic nervous system. The part of your the aspect of your nervous
01:03:04
system that is calming, it's lowering your heart rate. It's slowing your
01:03:08
heart. It's lowering your blood pressure. It's helping you calm down to sleep better. Hypoglycemia
01:03:14
throws that into opposites. So then you're going to bed, you're lying there
01:03:18
wondering why your heart is beating so hard, why you are so hot and uncomfortable, and it's because you just
01:03:25
spiked your blood glucose with a bunch of sugar. >> Is there anything else?
01:03:30
Is there, you know, for people that are focused on that 2026 goal of finally becoming the person that they know they
01:03:35
can become, is there anything else you would say to them? Is there any tools they need to buy? Is there any other
01:03:41
tricks or tactics or hacks? >> Yeah. Yeah, I do think that they could if they were adopting this diet, it's
01:03:46
definitely going to put them into ketosis. That can take a little time to adjust. So, very relevant to our earlier
01:03:53
conversation. I do think exogenous ketones can help a person transition into relying on a ketogenic diet more
01:04:00
readily. And anytime a person's losing weight, they run the risk of losing some
01:04:06
lean mass at the same time. And we, my lab just published a paper about two weeks ago at the time we're filming
01:04:13
this, finding that in humans in a weight loss protocol, if they were drinking BHB
01:04:18
or exogenous ketones, they were able to retain more muscle mass, more lean mass in the midst of the weight loss. So,
01:04:25
there could be some strategies like that. But I would also add that there are some non um physical ones as well.
01:04:32
If someone's trying to say, I'm going to be the best version of myself, then
01:04:36
start reading more, too. Read more books. You'll be the best. You'll be an
01:04:41
even better version as you're losing weight. Um, and your brain is firing on
01:04:44
more cylinders than ever before as it's fueled with ketones. Challenge your brain. You had mentioned dementia
01:04:51
earlier. Ketones are a therapy for dementia, but so too is challenging your brain in the form of um making it learn
01:04:58
new things. So, read a good book. >> This woman contacted me on the on November the 11th. When you do a
01:05:04
podcast, you get lots of feedback. you get like tens of thousands of people sometimes per episode
01:05:08
>> and I can imagine you looking through everyone finding gems. >> I actually funnily enough I do look at
01:05:13
the comment section because it's it's a place where I really trust the feedback.
01:05:16
So people that comment on these videos like I really do trust them because they are typically listeners. They've kind of
01:05:21
been with me on this whole journey. So when they have feedback when they have you know good or bad feedback on the or
01:05:26
constructive feedback we pay attention. >> Well Stephen I'm pleased that something
01:05:30
brought me back. So the comments can't have been too negative. No, they were
01:05:33
really I mean they were unbelievably positive. But I got this one from on LinkedIn from a lady called I'll keep
01:05:40
her anonymous. Let's just call her Mrs. L. >> Okay. >> And Mrs. L said, "Hi, Stephen. Thank you
01:05:46
for the great work you do and the information, insights, inspiration you provide. On keto, my husband lasted 8
01:05:53
hours on a keto diet and was unconscious. It turned out he had a neurodine cancer called insulum."
01:06:02
>> Oh. Oh, yeah. Yeah. No. a neuroendocrine cancer called insulinoma. >> I said that's exactly what I said.
01:06:06
>> Yeah. Yeah. Did I hear a niner in there? Yeah. Something. >> And if the paramedics hadn't intercepted
01:06:12
with glucose, going keto would have killed him. >> Yes. >> He's amazing. We have three children and
01:06:17
he volunteers for 50 >> more every weekend. We don't want to lose him.
01:06:23
>> Sorry to share this sad story, but it's not the first time I've seen one of your
01:06:27
posts or one of your guests talk about ketosis and what's worked well. And in this
01:06:32
case, it was fatal for him. Yes. So, I hope you don't mind, but I wanted to share this with love, respect, and
01:06:38
kindness to hopefully give food for thought, no pun intended, of how you decide to use your platform and to
01:06:44
provide further context and nuance. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> What works for you and thousands of
01:06:48
others might not work for everyone. I believe it's super important that we share this information and inspiration
01:06:54
carefully and in a way that exemplifies a growth mindset, not a fixed mindset. for example, not fixed one diet or one
01:07:01
way of working for everybody. If you read this above all else, please know I'm sending this with the utmost respect
01:07:07
and kindness and hope. Best >> love it. Yeah, what a thoughtful what a thoughtful message.
01:07:12
>> Yeah, it is very thoughtful. I appreciate I appreciate any kind communication by the way because on
01:07:17
social media it is so easy just to become the worst version of yourself without fear of any consequence. So, she
01:07:22
happened to describe a person who would probably be the the worst individual. So
01:07:27
an insulinoma, she describes a neuroendocrine cancer. An insulinoma is an insulin secretreting tumor. So
01:07:35
usually it's the pancreas, which for those watching is here. Again, imagine that a part of the pancreas is expanding
01:07:41
with a tumor, but it's filled with cells that make insulin. So it's a bunch of
01:07:46
beta cells, which are the cells that make insulin. And this is a guy who can't stop making insulin.
01:07:53
Suffice to say, if you now cut your carbohydrate consumption and you're continuing to make tons of insulin,
01:08:00
which is not normal, so this is a very much a disease state, and I appreciate her stating it as such. It's a cancer,
01:08:06
it's a tumor of the pancreas. So, what would have happened in him, he cuts the
01:08:11
gluc, he cuts his carbohydrates, but he can't stop making insulin. So now it's
01:08:17
actually back to that diet that you and I that I mentioned at the beginning of our conversation where the people were
01:08:23
eating a high carb version or a low carb version of a diet. When you spike insulin, you lower both glucose and
01:08:30
ketones. And that's what happened to him. He would have become hypoglycemic and he would almost never make any
01:08:36
ketones because he always has high insulin. M >> and so he would have been depriving his
01:08:41
brain of its two fuels in uh lowering the glucose by pushing it into muscle and fat and blocking the liver from
01:08:49
making ketones. So he's the worst person anyone with an insulinoma. Of course
01:08:54
neither you nor I are giving any medical advice. Um but if a person has an insulinoma that's like the worst person
01:09:02
to adopt a low carb diet. They have to eat carbs because they're always making
01:09:06
insulin. They can't stop. What's interesting is it it appears from what she's written that her husband found out
01:09:12
that he had this >> Oh, because of adopting the diet. >> Yeah. >> Oh my gosh, that's remarkable. Yeah. So,
01:09:18
a person could test this early though, Stephen. So, just what you've been doing
01:09:22
now over the past period of time by pricking your finger, if a person worried that they had an insulinoma,
01:09:27
they could just on a random morning uh or fast for fast for 12 hours or so and measure your glucose. Um, if you have a
01:09:36
continuous glucose monitor, even easier. Look at your glucose. Because in you and
01:09:40
I, if we fast for 24 hours, our glucose levels stay normal. They just run along like nothing's happened. In a person
01:09:47
with an insulinoma, they're getting lower and lower and lower and lower all constantly because they can't stop
01:09:54
making insulin and it's always driving their blood glucose levels lower. So, a
01:09:59
person could determine that on their own. This would have been a guy who anytime he fasted at all, he would have
01:10:04
started to feel miserable >> cuz she says in the message, "My husband
01:10:08
lasted eight hours on a keto diet and was unconscious. It turned out," which
01:10:12
suggests that they found out >> and we hope the husband's doing well. >> Yes.
01:10:16
>> Boy, an insulin is a big deal. My hope is that they would be able to identify
01:10:20
the location of the tumor. Um, and you can What's cool about cancer is that cancer is such a sugar eater. It eats so
01:10:27
much glucose that you can inject glucose into someone that has a little bit of radiation to it, not harmful, but then
01:10:35
you can do an X-ray and see where does all the glucose go and it would be going to this little lump on the on the on the
01:10:42
pancreas. And so hopefully they can cut it out. >> What does that say about cancer and
01:10:46
sugar? >> Oh my. Yeah. So you I know you've had the authority on this. So everything I'm
01:10:50
about to say is me quoting Dr. Thomas Seaff Freed who is he needs all the attention in the world as he has
01:10:56
resurrected uh an almost 100-year-old view of cancer being a disease of glucose and sugar
01:11:02
metabolism the Warberg effect it's called but Dr. Thomas Seaff Freed has been a champion of of bringing this view
01:11:09
into the modern era by finding that cancer cells rely on glucose as their fuel primarily. He also identifies
01:11:16
glutamine. But if you can deprive the cancer cell of its fuel, normal interventions even like chemotherapies
01:11:22
which have terrible rates of success, they become suddenly much more effective. >> In fact, my part of my motivation in
01:11:31
adhering to a ketogenic diet is is cancer related. when I my mom passed away from cancer as a boy and it's been
01:11:37
one of those diseases that's always scared me a little bit and I think all right my statistical likelihood of
01:11:43
getting a cancer in life is going to be higher than average because of a first-degree relative dying from cancer
01:11:49
so one of the reasons and I've already outlived my my my saintly mom now one of
01:11:54
the reasons I adhere to a ketogenic diet is I want to do what I can to try to kill any little budding cancer cells by
01:12:00
starving them of their glucose that they want >> remember when we had him on the show
01:12:03
remember the BBC obviously weren't very happy that I had him on and said that it
01:12:06
was uh >> no >> it was misinformation. >> Oh my gosh, isn't that unfortunate? So
01:12:12
he is the leading authority I would say in the world on cancer metabolism and it's such a shame that his finding and
01:12:23
let let me he might have explained this already but I just want to explain to everyone as a scientist how thrilled I
01:12:28
was to see what he'd done and how disruptive it was to the convention. And let's ad let's admit what we think we
01:12:34
know about cancer isn't working. Cancer rates continue to climb. Cancer mortality continues to climb. Clearly
01:12:40
the old views aren't working. He took tumor cells and then so cancer cells and
01:12:46
then moved over the nucleus because the traditional view is that it's a disease
01:12:51
of mutations and all of these genes are in the nucleus the the kind of brain of the cell. He took the nucleus from a
01:12:57
cancer cell, put it into a healthy cell, and then you would think if it's a disease of the nucleus and all of those
01:13:03
genes, mutations, this cell should have cancer now. And yet, it didn't. It was a
01:13:07
totally normal cell. It didn't matter at all that it now had the nucleus of a
01:13:10
cancer cell. However, when he took the mitochondria from the the energy factory of the cell
01:13:17
that's so disrupted in cancer, he took the mitochondria from the cancer cell,
01:13:22
put that into a normal cell. Now, it was a cancer cell. But what a disruptive view. It proves
01:13:28
that it's a mitochondrial problem more than a nucleus problem. And then it suggests it it adds evidence to his view
01:13:35
and th others of us as well that cancer is a metabolic problem. >> So when when you know publications like
01:13:42
the BBC attack my guest for saying such a thing or for you know for me having them on the show and suggest that it's
01:13:48
like misinformation or dangerous information. >> How how how do you inter how do you
01:13:52
interpret that cuz >> oh it's so discouraging. Um I I interpret it as we've seen echoes and
01:13:59
shadows of this in the past five or six years um with the pandemic and everything related to it where science
01:14:06
can be very inconvenient um to various entities and institutions. Um and we see scientists who will
01:14:14
compromise themselves to try to receive the funding and the adoration of those institutions and entities.
01:14:23
But it is anti- it is it is an attack. Science is a the pursuit of truth. I I I was blessed to do my dissertation work,
01:14:31
my PhD studies with a wonderful man named Lionus Dome. I will love him forever. Um one of the things he taught
01:14:38
me, I'd come to him with discouraging results. The hypothesis that I'd had
01:14:43
with regards to fat and insulin resistance, it was not supporting. The data were terrible in this particular
01:14:50
line of experiments. And he wasn't he was unflapable. He wasn't upset. He
01:14:55
wasn't angry. He said, "Ben, don't be upset. That's truth. We are seekers of
01:15:00
truth." That's what scientists are. What a glorious thing to get paid to seek
01:15:06
truth. It doesn't pay that well, but it it's a glorious job nonetheless.
01:15:12
That is what Dr. Thomas Seaf Freed is doing. And when I think you have a big entity like the BBC telling a scientist
01:15:19
who's simply stating his own findings that have been peer- reviewviewed by other experts in the field, it should be
01:15:24
beyond it should be he should have every platform in the world to talk about this. Every scientist ought to and it
01:15:31
ought to be scrutinized. Scientists should never think they know the truth. Even the declarations in the past few
01:15:36
years of believe the science. No, that is anti-scientific. Science is is con a scientist must be so
01:15:45
humble that he or she is constantly prepared to dump their hypothesis if they've been shown to be wrong.
01:15:51
>> And I guess it's important for those ideas to be out there for you to even be
01:15:54
able to scrutinize them and challenge them, >> especially in something like cancer
01:15:58
where clearly what we're doing isn't working. And so let's welcome new ideas.
01:16:03
And his evidence is incredibly compelling. It's it's so discouraging to hear, but but it is also Stephen perhaps
01:16:10
a manifestation of a broader opposition to anything low carb. You just utter the
01:16:16
word ketone to a dogmatic and conventionally trained dietician. Oh my gosh, you are tempting their wrath. They
01:16:25
will it's it's like the more the more educated a person gets, the more rigid
01:16:30
they become from time to time in their ideas. You should never see that in a scientist. A scientist by our by our
01:16:38
through our training, we should be humble enough to admit that we don't know everything.
01:16:44
>> I remember when um they contacted me, the journalist at the BBC, and said,
01:16:47
"We're going to write the story about, you know, the misinformation spread by
01:16:50
these guests." And I looked at what they had said and this and they made this
01:16:54
little documentary did this article and they had found that 0.0 Zero zero 1% of our total recorded hours
01:17:06
of conversation and transcripts contain things that they thought were could be disputed.
01:17:12
>> Oh my god. >> And they felt with 0.00 one they would write this big breaking
01:17:17
news story in this article. And I remember thinking oh like that was the day that I that I felt I understood.
01:17:23
>> That was the day that I felt I understood how the system works. >> You could you peaked behind the curtain.
01:17:27
I got to see behind the curtain and I was like, "Oh, I thought, >> you know, I thought that um these like
01:17:33
cuz it's like a big brand and I've grown up looking at it. I thought like they
01:17:35
are so concerned about rigor and the most important thing and balance." And I
01:17:41
said to the I said to the journalist, I said um of what you found 0.001 because they said you've got a right to
01:17:47
reply. So that was my reply. >> They >> and of course they wouldn't have
01:17:50
published that. >> They took it out. They took my response out because it was too d it was too like
01:17:55
you know. Yep. And then obviously the other thing they pointed at another guest that I'd had on and said, you
01:18:00
know, you also had this person on and I so I went on I just typed his name in and the word BBC and they'd had him on
01:18:06
too. >> Oh my god. >> And in fact, when he had came on this particular doctor and he had said his
01:18:11
points of views, the journalist at the BBC had just basically said nothing and that was the end of the segment. When he
01:18:17
said it to me, >> then all of a sudden it's a problem. >> No, I read out the rebuttal from the
01:18:22
British Heart Foundation. I read out all of the rebuttals to what he just said, but of course the BBC published this
01:18:28
article saying that I'd had him on. They had had him on too. They' never
01:18:30
rebuttled him. I did. And they and so this was the moment that I thought >> you're becoming disruptive. To be
01:18:35
honest, I suspect a part of it is you are the embodiment of a new media. You know, I I think even beyond the science.
01:18:44
So if this had been in the US, I would have speculated that a part of the their concern would have been that you are
01:18:49
sharing, you're platforming someone who is bad for their bottom line because so
01:18:53
much of the income that nudes that media outlets get in the US is from drug company ads. In the UK, you don't have
01:19:01
that. Drug companies don't um aren't I don't think they're allowed to air ads
01:19:06
on normal channels. In the UK, I think is to a degree happening everywhere. your platform is probably bigger than
01:19:14
many of theirs and they might feel that's threatening. >> It's interesting because I try and
01:19:19
remain as objective as I can. So in those moments, one of my strategies is to try and understand what the signal is
01:19:24
versus the noise >> and to take all of this noise and figure out exactly um what really really
01:19:29
matters as it relates to my genuine mission, which is for the audience that decide to tune in every single week and
01:19:35
day and month to get really great information to improve their lives. Yeah. and uh to to be able to strive at
01:19:42
the things that they care about striving for, whether that's business or entrepreneurship or whether it's their
01:19:46
health goals or fitness or finance or whatever. And the thing I actually took away from it is that there is a lot of
01:19:51
information um when you're pursuing science. >> And so the one of the best things we can
01:19:57
do because we know we're going to continue to have lots of different voices on the show is to continue to
01:20:01
provide more context on what's what's being said. So, one of the things we've
01:20:04
we introduced this year, which I really love, is on the screen during these conversations as you're talking about
01:20:10
different complicated words or you're talking about different studies or whatever it might be, those studies will
01:20:16
be appearing on the screen for the audience to see. >> And I think I think this is a first in
01:20:20
podcasting. I don't think anyone else any of the major podcasters have done done this kind of thing. But that is
01:20:25
something I actually took away from it. I thought, you know what, we can give our audience even more context so that
01:20:28
they have a fuller picture. >> That's brilliant. So, you know, every cloud.
01:20:33
>> Yeah. Yeah. No, it's certainly an opportunity to iterate and say, "All
01:20:36
right, how could we do it better?" Not everyone's going to not everyone's going
01:20:39
to take that approach, though. >> Always. And, you know, like it always come the question I was asking myself is
01:20:43
like, "What are we here to do and what is our mission? And what would further
01:20:46
the success of our mission?" And that's one such thing. So, for people, I had a
01:20:49
lady contact me the other day. She said, "I listen on Spotify. I didn't realize
01:20:53
that you were doing these like pop-up things on screen." But, um, >> but they're there. And also, I mean,
01:20:59
there definitely is a reason to watch. >> Yeah. And in the description as well,
01:21:02
there'll be there'll be a link to context as well that you can check out.
01:21:07
>> But getting back to it, um, so 2026, you've given me the sort of daily
01:21:11
protocol to follow. Is there anything else that we've missed cuz I really want
01:21:14
to make sure that people listening achieve their 2026 health goals. I And you know what those goals are because
01:21:19
people message you. >> Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's always it's almost always weight loss in
01:21:23
some way, shape, or form. No, I think that protocol is smart. I mean we didn't
01:21:26
talk I mentioned a little bit about the role of exogenous ketones um which I am an advocate of uh and I would say if a
01:21:34
person is able to maybe just sort of look at what other supplements they might be interested in like omega-3 if
01:21:42
they are looking to gain muscle and they're working out and doing some resistance protocols definitely I would
01:21:48
say if you're not eating omega-3 rich sources of foods like fish then get a good omega-3 supplement. Omega-3 helps
01:21:55
with muscle building in a very meaningful way. It's It's not just one of those It's not just something you
01:22:00
take for heart health. >> We were talking before we started recording about vitamins.
01:22:05
>> Mhm. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So, I was joking with you about how I was listening to
01:22:10
this conversation. So, everything I'm about to explain, people know that I am
01:22:14
I'm not an expert. As much as I'm a metabolism expert, that allows me to
01:22:18
talk about this somewhat intelligently. So, let me lay the groundwork here. So, I was listening to a discussion of a
01:22:24
rancher, a person who's growing livestock. And of course, just to help the business, you want these animals to
01:22:30
get as big and even fat as possible and then get them off um to to you know, just make your money. They found that
01:22:38
I'm going to I'm going to mess up these numbers a little bit, but I'm going to
01:22:41
be closer than than someone might think. >> I'll put them on the screen. So they
01:22:44
found that for roughly every six pounds of feed they would give an animal. So for every six pounds of food, you could
01:22:51
expect one pound of growth in just normal a normal feed of normal just a mix of the the soy, the corn, whatever
01:22:58
they're eating in in pigs or cattle. And then if you start adding B vitamin complexes, like a bunch of B vitamins,
01:23:07
and then the higher that gets, you can go from 3 L pounds of feed is enough to get one pound. All up to the point where
01:23:14
they could find that they could give the animals for every two pounds of food they would eat, they would gain one
01:23:19
pound. So they had effectively tripled the efficiency with which the animals were able to get fat off of a given
01:23:25
amount of food. So, one of my concerns as a scientist is the degree to which part of our obesity epidemic might be
01:23:33
the degree to which we are consuming too much vitamins, especially B vitamins. And the irony there is that people take
01:23:41
B vitamins because they want their metabolism to be more efficient. You'll hear that term. And yet, when it comes
01:23:47
to weight loss, you actually don't want efficiency. You want inefficiency. Let
01:23:52
me invoke the analogy of an engine. So, let's imagine that we're sitting in a
01:23:55
car and we are in drive. We're in gear. We press the accelerator and we see the
01:24:01
RPMs going up. That means we're burning fuel. The engine's revving. And because
01:24:05
we're in drive, we're moving. So, we're actually driving. So, we're getting work
01:24:10
done. That's what we would say is efficient. And an inefficient metabolism is actually more conducive to weight
01:24:17
loss because now you're revving your engine, but you're in neutral. And so,
01:24:21
you're not going anywhere. you don't have to get any work done. So, this
01:24:24
would that's maybe a little step too far with the metaphor, but B vitamins are
01:24:30
essentially making potentially the mitochondria and the cell be so efficient that it's storing more energy
01:24:38
better rather than burning it and wasting it. >> Storing more fat. >> Storing more fat. You see echoes of you
01:24:42
see hints of this in human studies where when they take high doses of niacin in various clinical trials,
01:24:48
>> what's nice? It's one of the B vitamins or many of the B vitamins, but do you
01:24:51
see substance in humans of of that supports this view where high doses of some of these vitamins do result in
01:24:58
weight gain? Now, they're not really wellont controlled studies, but nevertheless, combined with the animal
01:25:04
data, it does suggest that there's something about maybe people taking too many of these B vitamins and they're
01:25:10
getting fatter for every calorie consumed because the body is just storing it too easily.
01:25:14
>> And you're talking about taking too much. You're not talking about
01:25:17
>> taking too much. I'm not talking about like reaching the daily minimum, but
01:25:20
people are going like two or three or four times beyond that nowadays because everything is fortified. You'd mentioned
01:25:26
one of the people in the comments mentioned that they cut out flour. Flour is heavily heavily fortified with B
01:25:32
vitamins. And so every time we're eating it, we're getting B vitamins from
01:25:36
everything. And usually it's coming with processed carbohydrates. So one more
01:25:39
reason because you're not going to get an overload of B vitamins from just steak and eggs. It's going to be
01:25:44
something that's been packaged because it's been fortified with these B vitamins. So, one of that might be one
01:25:49
of the reasons why people are getting fatter than ever. >> I've got this uh pen in front of me. Do
01:25:54
you know what this is? >> That's a GLP-1 medication. >> A Zmpeek.
01:25:58
>> Ompic. Yeah. >> I've got an Ampec pen right here. Now, you've told me lots of different ways
01:26:03
that I can lose my body fat in 2026, but couldn't I just jab myself with this
01:26:09
and my hunger will evaporate and I'll lose fat. So that works until it doesn't. By that I mean we have really
01:26:16
really good data now. So briefly on GLP1, although I know your audience is probably very familiar with this by now.
01:26:22
GLP-1 is primarily a satiety hormone. It'll tell the brain that we're done
01:26:28
eating and it will slow down the intestines significantly. So you'll eat food. If you and I were to go eat lunch,
01:26:34
again, I've used that a couple times. Our food would be in our stomach for four to six hours maybe. If we injected
01:26:40
ourselves with a GLP-1 drug, which puts an artificial amount of GLP-1 in our body, boom, we sh it in. It's some we
01:26:48
grab a piece of fat and jab it in. Then it would it slows down people's intestines so much that they'll have
01:26:56
food sitting in there for 24 hours. So, one of the things people talk about is what's called ompic burps where they
01:27:01
just have this kind of belching bubbling gas because the food is sitting in the stomach for way longer than it's
01:27:08
supposed to. So, no surprise the people are less interested in food. GLP-1 tells
01:27:14
the brain they don't need to eat as much and slows down the intestines. Now,
01:27:17
however, I said it works until it doesn't. There the main thing it helps people do
01:27:24
is eat less carbohydrates. It controls cravings particularly. But there was a human paper that found when they
01:27:31
followed people for 2 years. It was a beautiful figure. At about 6 months, they found that sweet cravings dropped
01:27:39
significantly. A huge reduction in their cravings for chocolate and sweets. At 12
01:27:44
months, it creeped up a little bit, but it was still noticeably below where it started. At 2 years, it was right back
01:27:50
to normal. So at two years on the drug, the effects of having them not be interested in that plate of cookies now
01:27:58
it's gone. >> What's going on there? >> So yeah, it's it's diminishing returns
01:28:02
as to invoke a principle of economics. Doing the same thing again and again and again starts to work less and less and
01:28:09
less. This we see this manifested in innumerable different ways of medications. So why do our clinicians
01:28:16
why does the doctor tell us to make sure we take our full dose of antibiotic? Because if we don't, we give it just
01:28:22
enough for the bacteria to become resistant to it. And now next time we would need two times the amount of B of
01:28:29
antibiotic we had. So it's it's natural for the human body to become less
01:28:35
responsive to a stimulus. And that is so much GLP-1 activation that it's no surprise that the body starts to say,
01:28:42
"Hey, you're screaming at me too much and I'm going to become deaf to your
01:28:45
signal." So it starts to work less. And in the UK and in the US about 70% of people get
01:28:53
off the drug of their own valition at two years. They get tired of being on the drug because it's basically like a
01:28:59
constant state of nausea. That's that's kind of how you'd say it works that if
01:29:04
you're feeling always a little nauseous, you just don't really want to snack on
01:29:07
something and people get tired of feeling nauseous. But another two-year study, two years appears to be kind of a
01:29:13
magic timeline, found that of of every every pound they lost, 40% of it was from lean ma from fat-ree mass.
01:29:23
>> What does that mean? >> So that means 60% was coming from fat, 40% was coming from not fat, including
01:29:30
muscle and bone. It would be water as well, but muscle and bone. And that matters because imagine if we have an
01:29:36
older woman. Let's imagine a 60-year-old woman who wants to lose weight and goes
01:29:40
on a drug. If she's lost weight now and then two years later wants to get off the drug
01:29:45
like 70% of people do, she will her fat mass will come right back, but her lean mass may never come back. That muscle
01:29:53
and bone may be gone for good. >> Who is it for? Who who would you recommend definitely does that does it
01:30:00
uses it? And for how long with what other supplementation? Yeah, my my recommendation of the drug is to not
01:30:09
currently it's being used for weight loss where people just say here, jab yourself with this and you're going to
01:30:14
lose weight. Um, and it works. They will absolutely lose weight. But again, the concern being that you're going to uh
01:30:21
lose a lot of lean mass at the same time. So my best use of that drug would be using it with two distinct purpose,
01:30:27
two two ways, but for one purpose, which is this is a drug that's going to help
01:30:32
you learn to control carbohydrates because that's the one macronutrient that people are addicted to. They're
01:30:37
addicted to carbs. We eat too many carbs. We're a carb crazed culture. So my view is use these drugs to help
01:30:43
people cure their cravings for carbohydrates. >> But then when I stop taking it, isn't it
01:30:47
going to come back? >> Well, so that's it then. So then you use it in two different ways. One, you use a
01:30:51
much lower dose than is currently used. what we could call a micro dose, if you will. Um, so use a lower dose and you
01:30:57
cycle it on and off. So what I think people should be doing, and I'm going to
01:31:02
talk about evidence to support this in just a second, go 90 days on the drug at a low dose while receiving coaching or
01:31:09
counseling on how to use a low carb diet because they will find it easier than ever to control their carb consumption.
01:31:16
Then at the end of 90 days, wean them off the drug and say, "Let's see if
01:31:21
these habits have stuck." Very often they have. I know many, many people, and
01:31:25
again, we're going to be publishing a report on this. I'll touch on that in
01:31:28
just a second, who they've done 90-day cycle of a lowdose GLP-1 coupled with
01:31:32
coaching on how to do a low carb diet, and they find that their cravings are gone and they don't need to be on the
01:31:39
drug anymore. Some people will find that it lasts for a while, and the cravings start to come back. All right. Well,
01:31:44
let's cycle you back on and try again. Let's find out what didn't work this
01:31:48
time. So, we're about to publish a report. Anyone who wants to see a little more about this, I just encourage them
01:31:53
to go to my site, insulinq.com. >> I'll link it below. >> Great. Um, but we have done a a
01:31:59
collaborative work with a group in Idaho, a clinic in Idaho, where they have done just this. They have people
01:32:05
getting low carb counseling with a cycled do low dose of GLP1 and the results vastly outperform those who just
01:32:12
rely on the drug. Better fat loss and better retention of muscle mass. >> And when you say low carb counseling,
01:32:18
that's just >> it's just people like me, you know, me saying, "Stephen, I'd like to go on a
01:32:22
low carb diet." You saying, "Okay, great. Let's talk about how you can do
01:32:25
it best." Kind of a little bit like what we've been doing, but basically just
01:32:28
like a diet coach. >> Okay. >> But the results have been fantastic. Um,
01:32:33
literally outperforming just the drug trials alone. >> Over what period of time?
01:32:37
>> Yeah. So, it's now been we have people who have been two to three years.
01:32:41
>> Yeah. We'll publish that soon. It's not submitted yet. >> All I had to do was brain dump. Imagine
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01:33:46
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01:33:52
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01:34:45
I have a bunch of other things here on the table that my team have got me and they didn't tell me why they've got me
01:34:50
these which I think is useful because this means that I can ask questions that the viewer might have. What the hell is
01:34:55
this? >> Yeah. Yeah. So alulose is >> for anyone that can't see it's a white.
01:34:59
>> So if you you could lick it. Lick your finger. You could put it in. It's going
01:35:02
to taste a little bit like a kind of diluted sugar. It's just a sweetener. >> Okay.
01:35:07
>> It's not quite as sweet as sugar. If it is actually alulose maybe. >> I'm so
01:35:11
>> Maybe it's not. Definitely. >> Oh, I'm so sorry. >> This is definitely a prop. It tastes
01:35:16
like bleach. >> It's not bleach, is it? >> No, it tastes awful, though. It tastes
01:35:20
like um >> Oh my gosh. Sorry. >> They labeled it alulose, but it tastes
01:35:25
like the thing that you use to clean your clothes. >> Baking powder. >> Oh, it's baking powder.
01:35:29
>> Okay. So, at least it's not going to kill you. Oh my gosh. If it were bleach,
01:35:32
you need to go rinse your mouth. >> That was the end of the podcast. >> Oh my god.
01:35:36
>> Yeah. Ben Dickman kills Steve Bartlett. >> Okay. I didn't know that. I'm so sorry.
01:35:40
So, >> Alulos. Alulose is a it's a sugar replacement. It's what's called a rare
01:35:45
sugar. Um, by that I mean it exists in nature. It is a sugar-like molecule. It tastes sweet and yet it it is non-
01:35:54
metabolizable. It it doesn't get taken into the body and it's not calories you
01:35:58
need to worry about. But what it does in the context of this discussion is that it will go further in the intestines and
01:36:04
elicit a significant increase in GLP-1 production. So, this would be one of the ways that someone listening who may be
01:36:10
even on a GLP-1 drug and thinking, I need an exit. I want to get off this drug. I can't afford it or I feel
01:36:15
miserable. I'm tired of the nausea. Um, using alulose either as a sweetener in a
01:36:20
coffee or a tea or your baking or whatever is a way to increase your GLP1 naturally. So, is your mate that I'm I'm
01:36:27
drinking now that I start every morning with that has been shown. We've published a couple reports on that. That
01:36:32
works as well. >> And what foods have also in them? Yeah, alulose is not something that you're
01:36:38
going to get naturally. It has to be >> added. >> Yeah, it's added. But there are some
01:36:42
like there are some yogurts now that have it. There are a few supplements that will use it as its sweetener and I
01:36:48
encourage that development. It's a good sweetener to use. >> Okay. This other chemical that my team
01:36:52
have got here, which is again, it's a a white powder. >> I'm not going to try it this time just
01:36:57
in case it's something awful. >> Um says has a label on it that says collagen peptide. Yeah.
01:37:02
>> Why have they got this? >> Yeah. So collagen peptides are another
01:37:05
way to increase GLP-1. So that would be another signal here that if someone is interested in a good smart way of losing
01:37:11
weight, I am a fan of collagen. There was in fact just a paper just published this week finding that a mix of collagen
01:37:18
and various amino acids um was very effective at enhancing skin integrity and the collagen in the skin. So I'm a
01:37:26
fan of collagen peptides. Are there any supplements that we haven't mentioned
01:37:30
that you're a big fan of in terms of weight loss? >> Yeah, I'm I already mentioned a Go BHB,
01:37:36
so an exogenous ketone source. Uh I do take collagen um as well. Um it's called
01:37:42
iron feather. I love it. Um but also omega-3 in addition to other habits like the the yerba mate, which I love and
01:37:50
other things like that. I don't call it a supplement as much as just a habit.
01:37:53
>> What about creatine? >> Oh, yes. Yes. I I'm I I can't believe I
01:37:58
didn't mention that. I'm very much an advocate of creatine. In fact, we have a
01:38:01
study going on right now on it, which I'll come back to in a second. Um yeah,
01:38:05
creatine has been um it's kind of the new thing where its traditional use had
01:38:10
been in muscle and then now all of the hot evidence is coming out in the brain. So in the muscle evidence, there's two
01:38:18
things to note. In fact, the first one is generic where creatine, not that you're asking this, but people may
01:38:24
wonder how it works. Creatine will be taken into a cell and it creates this pool of potential energy called creatine
01:38:32
phosphate. Now, earlier I'd mentioned ATP and I'm holding up three fingers
01:38:37
because of the three phosphates on that ATP, the triphosphate molecule. When we say contract a muscle or a nerve
01:38:46
is sending a signal, you're breaking ATP apart. You're splitting off one of those
01:38:50
phosphates. Now, you're left with a diphosphate, ADP. In order to recycle or
01:38:56
regenerate the ATP, you need another phosphate molecule. And this is where creatine comes in because creatine has a
01:39:02
phosphate now that it can come and give to the ATP. rapidly recycling ATP >> which means
01:39:08
>> so you're able to restore the energy in the cell sooner >> which means for me on a daily basis
01:39:12
>> on a daily basis would it' be two things uh in the two tissues of interest one
01:39:16
you can get more work out of your muscle in a given unit of time yeah >> so if you wanted to have a very
01:39:20
effective 30-minute workout your rests could be much shorter because of your ability to regenerate ATP or recover but
01:39:27
then the newest area of research is what's happening in the brain where creatine has been shown to increase
01:39:33
brain energy and there are some incredible human studies finding that you take people with cognitive decline
01:39:39
or some form of early dementia. Give them creatine supplementation and over the next few weeks their cognition will
01:39:46
improve. So, as much as you have the gym bros who are taking it for muscle, which
01:39:50
I'm sympathetic to, I want big healthy muscles, too. Um, more than anything,
01:39:54
you and I, we're not getting paid because of our muscles. We're getting paid because of our brains. So, you and
01:39:59
I are taking creatine to have bigger, better brains. But in order for the creatine to saturate the brain, you need
01:40:06
more. And that's been some of the newest focus where you can get away if you're
01:40:11
just taking it for muscle purposes, five grams is enough of creatine monohydrate.
01:40:16
And if you want to get it to work for the brain, you need 10 or 15 grams. So quite a bit more.
01:40:21
>> I heard this from another guest I had on the show and I was really shocked um
01:40:24
because I didn't think about creatine as being something that could really elevate my cognitive performance. And
01:40:30
from the studies that I've read in the research ahead of this conversation, I
01:40:34
read that creatine helps your brain stay sharp, especially when you're in a low
01:40:39
sleep >> Yes. >> mode or when you've been working very very hard. So that's a study. There's a
01:40:44
human study that to sleepd deprived people deliberately had them take creatine versus the placebo and then do
01:40:49
a series of cognitive tests. No surprise, the sleepd deprived people on placebo did very poorly. They're so
01:40:55
tired. They're lethargic. the creatine treatment group performed much better.
01:41:01
>> I heard this and I thought, "Wow, so when I'm like jetlagged or underslept, I
01:41:04
should be taking my creatine." >> Yeah. And so, as an underslept dad,
01:41:08
you'll get there soon enough. Um, I take creatine every morning. It is literally
01:41:12
the first thing I I drink. >> It's hard for um I've noticed just in my
01:41:16
friendship group when I've talked about creatine, it's sometimes hard to
01:41:19
convince women to take creatine because there's a sort of prevailing stereotype
01:41:22
that it makes you large. >> Yeah. Yeah. I wish um cuz then I'd be jacked. No, no, it doesn't. In fact, I
01:41:29
think you could make the case that a woman relevant to the cognitive aspects of it should be focused on it more than
01:41:36
men. So, there are few chronic diseases that women suffer from more than men and
01:41:41
Alzheimer's disease is one of them. So, this is a disease that will affect women
01:41:45
almost double or even triple the rate of it affecting men. In so far as the latest evidence shows that at higher
01:41:52
doses, creatine helps with cognition, I think every woman, middle-aged and beyond, should be taking creatine daily.
01:42:00
And indeed, on the higher end of that dose, because that's the dose you need
01:42:04
to help your brain. >> And I read from one particular study, I think you talked about this on your
01:42:08
YouTube channel, that creatine increases strength by up to 10% and power output by up to 15% and reduces muscle damage
01:42:16
by 20 to 40% after intense exercise. >> Yeah. So creatine both acts as an energetic source and it changes gene uh
01:42:23
transcription. So there's evidence to show that creatine in muscle stimulates
01:42:27
what's called myiogenic genes. Myiogenic genes are those genes that promote muscle protein synthesis and muscle
01:42:33
growth. So creatine both energizes the muscle and promotes growth of the muscle. Now a woman may say, "Well, I
01:42:41
don't want to get big." You can't get big. The female a female body does not
01:42:45
have the right mix of sex hormones to get big muscles. All that will happen is she'll have wonderful healthy strong
01:42:52
muscles. She does. No woman ever needs to be worried about getting too big in muscles. It doesn't happen.
01:42:56
>> Why do vegetarians and vegans need to pay more attention to creatine? >> Right. That is Yeah. So creatine is one
01:43:01
of the many things, if you'll pardon me for saying it, that a vegan would need
01:43:05
to pay attention to. Um so creatine is a molecule that you can eat. So, if someone's getting a lot of red meat, you
01:43:13
could make the case that they don't need to supplement, that they're getting more
01:43:15
than enough. But if you're not eating red meat, you may not be getting enough.
01:43:19
And I'd say you probably aren't. And there's reason to get it >> and
01:43:24
>> to supplement. >> Does creatine have an impact on blood sugar levels?
01:43:27
>> No. >> Blood sugar spikes at all? >> No. >> I would say if someone ever notices, if
01:43:32
they're taking a scoop of creatine and they see, then it's probably because you
01:43:35
have some maltodextrin in your creatine powder. Do you know I I had my um blood levels done a couple of weeks ago and
01:43:41
the doctor said to me that I should be careful because they're seeing high levels of creatine in my kidney.
01:43:47
>> Okay. Yes. So what they would have said is they would have seen high levels of
01:43:50
creatinine. >> That was it. >> Yeah. But that's important for people to
01:43:53
know because that's one of the long-standing attacks against creatine has been a high level of creatinine.
01:44:01
>> That was it. >> So creatinine is the metabolite of creatine. So when creatine has lived its
01:44:06
life and served its purpose, it gets converted into a molecule called creatinine which is actively secreted
01:44:11
from the kidneys. Now it's a waste product and the kidneys happily dump it out. Now in an average person, if
01:44:18
someone has if you came in and you did a urine test and we found your creatine your creatinine levels were really
01:44:23
really high, we would worry, hey, is this a sign of kidney damage? Are your kidneys allowing too much to get
01:44:29
filtered? And and it might be a sign of that. However, if a person's taking creatine, it is absolutely guaranteed
01:44:37
that they're going to have more creatinine coming out, and that's just because they're metabolizing more of the
01:44:42
creatine. There's no reason to be worried about it. >> You talked about a 5-year study that
01:44:47
found zero kidney changes in athletes taking up to 20 gram of >> which is significant
01:44:53
>> creatine a day. >> Yeah. There's no evidence. I'm unaware
01:44:56
of any study that has shown kidney damage on creatine supplementation. It is what we call in science an artifact
01:45:01
where you see a little hint of a problem and assume it's it's actually causing a
01:45:07
problem when it's actually just a manifestation of just what you're doing.
01:45:10
>> Ben, I'm going to ask you to close your eyes. >> I'm ready.
01:45:12
>> Okay. And I'm going to ask you to embody what I'm about to say. Okay.
01:45:17
>> So, suddenly now you are a let's say 35year-old man and your name is Dave and you have
01:45:28
one kid. You have a little bit of extra fat around your midsection that you're
01:45:34
trying to lose. You've been listening to this podcast for a while. You've heard
01:45:38
lots of things. You haven't managed to make huge amount of progress. Sometimes
01:45:41
you try and then you bounce right back >> and you're you're kind of at your wit's
01:45:45
end. You really really want 2026 to be the year that you finally prove to yourself, your family, for the sake of
01:45:51
your kids and inspiring them to live a happy, healthier future. That you can make a change and you can become the
01:45:58
strong, healthy, sexy >> dad that your family wants you to be and that you want to be. You want to finally
01:46:06
prove it to yourself after all these years of struggling, trying, failing. What is what is it that that guy or that
01:46:16
woman needs to hear to close out this conversation today, Ben? >> Yeah. Um, I appreciate you mentioning the the
01:46:26
the kid. I think you need to have a reason because making change is hard. You have
01:46:32
to have a reason that is that is motivating you to do it. That goes beyond yourself. That's I should add
01:46:38
that that you'd mentioned a handful of internal motivations. You want to feel
01:46:41
better. you want to look better. Those are all valid, but sometimes it's not
01:46:45
enough. Have an external reason. And when you're a parent, you have a reason.
01:46:49
You have a child. You're living for your child. So, have a reason for doing what
01:46:54
you're doing that goes beyond your own motivations and that touches someone else's life. And then two,
01:47:01
you need to find a way to control your cravings. I think the more I look at the debates around obesity and weight loss,
01:47:09
um, which is so central to looking and feeling better, the more I think you have to learn to control what you're
01:47:15
addicted to. And so I would say start with the simplest habit and and change it. So, if this is if if Dave, the
01:47:25
35-year-old dad of one, if he finds that he is starting to drink alcohol in the evening and then he's doing other things
01:47:34
too that he doesn't like, stop doing that. Um, and recruit outside help. So,
01:47:39
start with one habit you know you should change and change it. And then that can
01:47:44
when it comes to changing diet, which is among the hardest things to do for many
01:47:47
people, I would say eat a big lunch. Some people don't want to make small changes because they don't feel
01:47:55
consequential enough. It doesn't feel like it matters. >> Yeah. >> You know, and this is one of the things
01:47:58
again I've learned from interviewing so many people is that >> all of these habits are like at some
01:48:04
level interconnected. >> And actually when you change one, you influence another.
01:48:09
>> I totally agree. >> And actually huge change in life starts with small steps.
01:48:15
And so cutting out the alcohol for example, that's going to have knock-on effects in other areas of life, right?
01:48:22
Even like sleep or >> he will sleep much better. Yes. So multiple studies show that with cutting
01:48:27
people have a have a mistaken view of alcohol when it comes to sleep where they they fall asleep faster but then
01:48:34
they sleep worse throughout the rest of the night. So there's >> which then means what?
01:48:37
>> Yeah. So that men So then you wake up the next morning and you're lethargic,
01:48:41
you're tired, your cortisol will be higher, you will be more insulin resistant. So, higher insulin levels
01:48:46
throughout the day, >> which means you're going to have cravings, >> which means you'll have cravings. And
01:48:50
every calorie you consume, you're going to be more likely to store it. So, then
01:48:53
your body is more efficient at getting fat on any given amount of calories. So, even even something as simple as
01:48:59
alcohol, which you and I haven't discussed at all, and and maybe Dave isn't an alcohol drinker, but many
01:49:05
people are, uh, that is it has this patina of helping a person's sleep, and yet it absolutely does not. And sleep is
01:49:12
a massively relevant variable when it comes to uh metabolic health and weight loss and just feeling well.
01:49:18
>> What about stress? That's a protagonist in the story that we haven't talked
01:49:21
about, but I know it dovetales into ketones and >> Oh, it sure is. Weight loss.
01:49:24
>> So, in fact, it's a perfect segue because sleep deprivation, I believe, is
01:49:28
the leading cause of stress. And stress is one of the three cardinal causes of what I call fast insulin resistance.
01:49:34
When the body becomes insulin resistant in like hours, stress is one of them. and poor sleep is the main cause. And so
01:49:42
in this case, a person could look, let's say Dave is not sleeping well. There are
01:49:47
actually the problem with stress is that it's hard to define that they're going
01:49:51
to bed and they're not feeling very great and they're worried about stuff
01:49:54
and and if I were to tell him, Dave, reduce your stress. >> Well, now he's even more stressed
01:49:59
because he doesn't know how to do it. This is where I think another opportunity for some smart
01:50:03
supplementation can come in where there are these adaptogen like molecules in nature like ashwagandha. So I just tried
01:50:11
an ashwagandha source in the form of a little gummy, a goalie gummy and it had enough like a full kind of therapeutic
01:50:17
dose of ashwagandha and it's in the form of a delicious little gummy you know so
01:50:21
you don't have to take this bitter tasting powder from an ashwagandha root you can take a gummy and then you sleep
01:50:27
a little better because it's been shown in humans to improve sleep latency improve improve sleep architecture and
01:50:32
it could be one of the mechanisms is that it's just suppressing your cortisol
01:50:36
response. So if if Dave or anyone is feeling that that would just be one more strategy to address your metabolic
01:50:44
health that you would sort of t take the small steps you can the little wins and
01:50:50
maybe he's saying all right I need to sleep a little better. I'm going to cut
01:50:52
my alcohol. I'm going to take a little a couple of these ashwagandha gummies
01:50:55
before I go to bed and not eat before I go to bed so I don't go to bed hypoglycemic. You'll start to sleep a
01:51:01
little better. You'll wake up the next day ready to kind of win the day. Is there a relationship with ketones and
01:51:06
stress? >> Yeah, there is in that ketones help. So, ketones are more and more called an
01:51:12
anxolytic. That's a technical term for reducing anxiety. It has been shown to
01:51:17
be a direct effect. So, BHB, the main ketone, acts as a signaling molecule and will come to the brain and reduce the
01:51:24
stress hormone signaling. >> What is the most important thing we didn't talk about that we should have
01:51:28
talked about, Ben? Um, >> as it relates to that person who's looking to make a change once and for
01:51:34
all, >> one thing I would add, if if we go back to the middle-aged guy who's just trying
01:51:40
to be the best version of himself, part of it might be his testosterone levels and and that is worth getting checked.
01:51:47
So, as much as we focus, you've had in the past very good conversations about
01:51:51
women's health, including menopause, men have their own version of it. um albeit
01:51:56
more modest, but we could more technically call it andropause, the male version of it. But there is a steady
01:52:02
reduction in testosterone levels. And if he finds that he is tired and he's gaining weight, get your testosterone
01:52:09
checked. If it's actually low, lose a little weight and the testosterone will
01:52:13
boost. But if you need help, there are supplements that can even help with testosterone production that go that you
01:52:19
could use before full-on testosterone replacement therapy. Um, but ice bath, an ice bath, I know guys who've doubled
01:52:27
their testosterone levels by doing ice immersion, cold plunge, and then a workout after their cold plunge. That's
01:52:34
a wicked awesome combination. >> So, there are a couple of tests that we've mentioned today. So, I just want
01:52:39
to summarize some of those tests. Can people check their insulin levels at home?
01:52:44
>> No. >> No. >> Not not really. There are some tests that have been marketed for at home use,
01:52:49
but they're quite cumbersome, and I would say they're not really ready for
01:52:52
mainstream yet. Okay. So, they have to go to a doctor and get their test. You do.
01:52:55
>> And then the testosterone, you can't check that at home either. No. I guess
01:52:58
you could could you get sent something in the post? >> You can. Yeah. So, there's companies in
01:53:02
the US, uh, Blok and Joy, for example, there's other services you can use where
01:53:06
you go online, sign up, and they send you either a phabotamist or a little thing nowadays that you just snap onto
01:53:12
your arm, press a little button, and it'll fill the tube with blood, and you
01:53:15
just ship it back. >> Are there any tests that you recommend my audience get done?
01:53:20
>> Yeah. Yeah. I would say I am an enormous advocate of measuring insulin. If I
01:53:24
could change any policy within the United States and and worldwide, it would be that as much as every blood
01:53:31
test you and I will go into a blood test every time they'll measure our glucose
01:53:34
and our lipids like cholesterol and triglycerides, they'll never measure insulin. If I could have one change in
01:53:41
the US and the UK and everywhere else, I'd say add insulin to that panel because once we get insulin, we can
01:53:46
measure the fasted level and a person wants to see it at around 7 microunits per mill or less. That's a really really
01:53:53
good sign. So you look at your insulin alone, but then with insulin and glucose, you can do something called the
01:53:59
hom ha the hom score and that's a really good score of where you fall on the
01:54:06
insulin resistance spectrum. And do you recommend that people try and wear a continuous glucose monitor, which is a
01:54:12
device that costs $ 20, $30, you can get it on everywhere online that stays on your arm for 14 days and it it monitors
01:54:19
your glucose levels, say your blood sugar levels. Do you recommend people do that?
01:54:22
>> I do. I I think that the CGM a CGM is one of the best ways for a person to
01:54:27
make their own changes. So, if you put a CGM on your body, you're able to look at
01:54:31
your phone and see what's happening in your blood. >> A CGM being a continuous glucose
01:54:35
monitor. >> A continuous glucose monitor. you're getting a continuous measurement of your
01:54:38
glucose levels. I have seen more people make changes of their own valition when they just are wearing a CGM and they
01:54:46
don't need someone to be nagging them. You know, you're you have that internal
01:54:49
motivation because you see what's happening in your own body. >> For anyone that's never tried it, I
01:54:53
highly recommend it. You I'll link a CGM below in the comment section. Um I don't
01:54:57
have an affiliation to any CGMs, but when you eat something within minutes, usually you can see on your phone your
01:55:04
blood sugar levels rising. And it's for me it was a really important and informative 14 days with the CGM on my
01:55:10
arm because it I got to try things that I have every single day and understand my blood sugar relationship with those
01:55:17
things. So I got to try tomato ketchup and then I got to try a Coke Zero and then I don't know cheese and bananas and
01:55:24
fruit and I got to see within minutes how much blood glucose was in my blood and and that informed going forward for
01:55:31
the next couple of years the decisions that I made in my life. >> Yeah. and people who the nice thing
01:55:36
about it is you can stack it with other technologies like let's say you're
01:55:38
wearing a Whoop. >> Yeah. >> AD. >> One of the cool things with the CGM is
01:55:43
the ability to stack it with other wearables. Well, where let's say that a person notices that they with wearing a
01:55:48
Whoop that their HRV is suggesting that they're stressed. And then you look at
01:55:54
that at the same time as your CGM. You may find that what's causing you to feel
01:55:59
stressed could be your hypoglycemic spike. And you wouldn't have known that if it weren't for the CGM. So, I think
01:56:04
there's a lot of utility in stacking some of these wearables. Someday they're
01:56:08
all going to be in one. Yeah. >> Um, and they'll crack the code of doing
01:56:11
that. But, I think it really does lend insight. I made one of the biggest changes to my sleep by wearing a CGM
01:56:18
where I would sleep terribly. I'd be monitoring my stress and find that, wow,
01:56:23
every time I sleep really poorly, my blood glucose, I'd spike my blood glucose in the evening. I'm going to try
01:56:29
cutting that out. And sure enough, I it was the single greatest change of my sleep habits.
01:56:34
>> Ben, we have a closing tradition on this podcast that the last guest leaves a
01:56:37
question for the next guest, not knowing who they're leaving it for. The question
01:56:39
left for you is, if you could have anything in the world for the rest of your life, what would it be and why?
01:56:47
And you can't say your family. >> Ah, okay. I was going to ask for that
01:56:52
clarification. Okay. If I could have any one thing, an item that's not a person,
01:56:57
um I would choose to have my uh my scriptures, these holy scriptures, um that I I read
01:57:06
every day. I believe a lot of my happiness in life has come from my uh my religious conviction and my belief in a
01:57:14
higher power and my faith in God. As a scientist, it seems like too many people want to describe faith as a negative
01:57:21
thing. But everything we do is based on faith. Every action we take is a is a faith in a hope that the consequence
01:57:27
will be one we want. And so for me, it would be my scriptures. Just my way of meditating and pondering my position in
01:57:35
the greater universe and my connection with what I believe to be a God, a loving heavenly father who cares about
01:57:43
me and that I can go to when I feel like I need help. that goes beyond what I can
01:57:46
do with my own hands. >> What do you think this is all about? This life, what do you think the point
01:57:50
of this all of this is? >> Oh, that's a big question. Um, I believe it is to show our heavenly father that
01:57:57
we are capable of more that I have very much a very clear um worldview that we have a loving heavenly father that we
01:58:05
existed in a premortal state and that our bodies this mortal experience is an experience for us. We've been given this
01:58:13
much power. These bodies give us some power. We have power over life. We have power over death and all the temptations
01:58:20
that can come from addictions and habits that are unique to this mortal tabernacle. I think we've been given a
01:58:26
period of time to show that we can wield power and control ourselves. just assuming my my my religious view is
01:58:37
very much that just like my as a as a father my great hope is that my children will grow up to be wonderful mothers and
01:58:44
fathers that I want them to be able to pattern their lives after what they see in my wife and me. I believe that we
01:58:50
have a heavenly father and a heavenly mother actually that the we have these divine parents who want nothing more
01:58:55
than for their children to grow up and be like them. And I think this is just like my children will have to leave the
01:59:01
home. If I coddled them and protected them and only let them stay in my home, they'd never learn anything. They'd
01:59:06
never grow up because mom and dad are doing everything. This I think mortal life is our divine parents opportunity
01:59:13
to show to to help us grow up and then the time will come for us to pass on and we will come back to them. Hopefully
01:59:21
showing that we are ready to continue to learn and progress and be more like them.
01:59:25
>> To what end? For what reason? >> To mimic what our heavenly parents have
01:59:30
been able to do where they they have been able to create a world and populate it with their spirit children. I want to
01:59:36
do that too. I you and I before we started recording I joked about how much I miss babies. I desperately and I do.
01:59:42
It is an ache in my soul that my children are not little cuddly babies anymore. Now they're darling children
01:59:50
nevertheless. But I miss babies. And to me, heaven is my wife and I whom I love having a family that never ends. and and
02:00:01
that we're able to give life to this countless number of future children. Um that someday we'll
02:00:08
be born on a world just like us. That's a pretty cosmic grand view. But to me,
02:00:13
the purpose of life is to show Heavenly Father that we are worthy of more and not just end into a nihilistic blackness
02:00:23
when we die. >> Thank you. We're done. >> My pleasure. If there's anything we need, it is
02:00:34
connection. Especially in the world we're living in today. And that is exactly why we created these
02:00:39
conversation cards. Because on this show, when I sit here with my guest and have those deep, intimate conversations,
02:00:45
this remarkable thing happens time and time again. We feel deeply connected to each other. At the end of every episode,
02:00:51
the guest I'm interviewing leaves a question for the next guest, and we've
02:00:55
turned them into these conversation cards. And we've added these twist cards
02:00:59
to make your conversations even more interesting. And there are so many more twists along the way with the
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conversation cards. This is the brand new edition. And for the first time ever, I've added to the pack this gold
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02:01:17
cards. So get yours now before the limited edition gold cards are all gone. Head to the link in the description
02:01:22
below. Heat. Heat. N. I see.