Today Carlee Hayes joins us to talk about the wonderful cutting-edge technology of continuous glucose monitoring (CGM)—including a look at my private medical information as Carlee evaluates my journey with CGM from a few years ago, as well as the most recent one that occurred a few months ago.
Carlee is the senior nutrition manager for Nutrisense, and as you will hear, CGM goes far beyond the occasional snapshot that we get when we check our fasting blood glucose and the doctor tells you “you’re ok” (or pre-diabetic). This is a 24/7 technology that allows you to see, throughout the day, all the different variables that affect not only your glucose levels at any time but also your ability to regulate glucose.
As you listen to this episode, you will see why I believe this is such an important thing to do for yourself—it’s a total education in the impact of your dietary habits, as well as your exercise and sleep habits and how they affect your ability to regulate glucose and manage insulin, making it an ideal tool for behavior modification, which of course, has a hugely positive impact on your health, happiness, and quality of life.
TIMESTAMPS:
Your bucket list should include glucose monitoring because you learn so much about the variables in your life that affect your ability to achieve metabolic health. [00:47]
Analyze in real-time how your glucose levels respond to food, exercise, stress, and sleep. [02:14]
The reading that you get from this patch on your arm goes into an app on your phone 24/7. [06:09]
What is really good about this program is that the user has direct contact with an advisor at any time. [11:07]
What are we looking for besides just fasting glucose? One thing we look for is variability. [13:28]
When we are talking about individual meal responses, the app calculates a score based on that meal. If we have a spike in glucose, do we want a steady slope back down to baseline? [23:05]
Reactive hypoglycemia symptoms are feeling hangry, irritable, and shaky. [27:57]
How the choice of foods in your meal affects the impact on blood glucose. [30:20]
What are we actually burning based on what we are eating? [36:07]
When you eat too much food and don’t burn enough calories, you have energy toxicity. [39:19]
Our insulin sensitivity is closely aligned with our body’s Circadian rhythm. It might be just the timing we have to tweak. [42:46]
Is a lower reading of fasting blood glucose better? [47:57]
Brad engaged in the Nutrisense program he was able to find a way to have a little bit more flexibility in his diet, but it didn’t impact his glucose in a negative way. [54:14]
Do we have a certain limit on how much protein we can assimilate at one time? [58:45]
Identify the foods that you want to start eliminating and identify your goals. It does not have to be overwhelming to make some changes. [01:02:09]
Sleep is just as important as your diet. [01:03:53]
LINKS:
- Brad Kearns.com
- Brad’s Shopping page
- PrimalEndrance.fit
- Nutrisense
- ATP (Adenosine triphosphate
- Atomic Habits
- Carlee Hayes
LISTEN:
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B.Rad Podcast:
Brad (00:00:00):
Welcome to the B.rad podcast, where we explore ways to pursue peak performance with passion throughout life without taking ourselves too seriously. I’m Brad Kearns, New York Times bestselling author, former number three, world ranked professional triathlete and Guinness World Record Masters athlete. I connect with experts in diet, fitness, and personal growth, and deliver short breather shows where you get simple actionable tips to improve your life right away. Let’s explore beyond the hype hacks, shortcuts, and sciency talk to laugh. Have fun and appreciate the journey. It’s time to B.rad.
Brad (00:00:47):
Hi, listeners. Please enjoy this wonderful interview with Carlee Hayes. She is a senior nutrition manager at Nutrisense, and we are going to talk all about the wonderful cutting-edge technology of continuous glucose monitoring, including a little look at Brad’s private medical information where she evaluated my journey from a couple years ago and my most recent journey from last month.
Brad (00:01:15):
And we talked through some of the spikes on the graph and the interesting insights that I learned, uh, going through yet another Nutrisense experience. And I strongly encourage you to do this as a bucket list item, if nothing else, because you learned so much about the numerous variables in life that affect your ability to achieve metabolic health and manage your glucose levels successfully. So this is so many steps beyond the occasional snapshot that we get when we check our fasting blood glucose. And the doctor says, you’re okay, or you’re pre-diabetic, or whatever. S o this is a 24/7 technology that works with the smart phone and a patch you place on your arm and you get to see throughout the day all the different variables that affect not only your glucose level at any time, but what’s called your glucose variability, your ability to regulate glucose and your standard deviation.
Brad (00:02:14):
In other words, the total amount of variation off of your baseline values. And it’s, again, an education in the impact of your dietary habits, your food choices, the foods that you combine the meals that you prepare, the time of day that you eat. Also your exercise habits, the effectiveness or the reasonability of your training program, in particular your sleep habits, and how minor sleep disturbances affect your ability to regulate glucose and manage insulin, insulin sensitivity as it’s known. So I think you’re really gonna appreciate this show with Carlee. You’ll probably be inspired to go sign up for Nutrisense. Again, the technology is awesome, but I think the true magic is where you get to engage with one-on-one support with an expert dietitian for the entire duration of your stint, wearing the continuous glucose monitor patch. And that’s where, boy, you can interact with someone in real time.
Brad (00:03:13):
You can get all this information and you don’t have to do it forever, right? But you’re gonna be zapping your arm with your smartphone regularly, a few times a day, and the patch lasts for two weeks. And then you can go and, and renew or take a break and come and do it every so often, but so much value and helping you with behavior modification and making the positive healthy lifestyle changes when you see that feedback in real time, such as, going for a walk after dinner, widely recommended to manage glucose response. But we nod our heads and then go sit down and watch TV. So now you can see what’s going on right there on your smartphone. And Carlee Hayes will tell you even more details about all matters of metabolic health beyond just the technology of the continuous glucose monitor.
Brad (00:04:02):
Thank you. Here she goes. Carlee Hayes, we are going to talk about all things glucose monitoring. I’m so glad to connect with you. I’ve had such a wonderful and lengthy relationship with Nutrisense from the very beginning when Dan was just starting this new company. And so I would love to have you introduce yourself a bit to the audience and, and also talk about the growth of the company and the movement in general, where now when people see a patch on the back of your upper arm, they, actually might even know what it is <laugh> in real life rather than, Hey, there’s something on your arm. Let me pull it off for you.
Carlee (00:04:40):
Yes. Yeah, that’s been a really cool and interesting shift, but definitely one that we’re all working towards. And yeah, like you mentioned, my name is Carlee, and I am a senior nutrition manager at Nuitrisense .So I have been with the company since, oh gosh, September of 2019, and that’s right, right when we started to first take on members and kind of help them understand their glucose and that company. And this company, although they are the same Nutrisense company, are so different now. We’ve grown so much in the past couple of years. It’s just been such an exciting journey to be a part of. Just like you had mentioned, I think back in 2019, the only people that knew about CGMs were maybe biohackers or people that were just in this health and glucose space. And it’s been really beautiful to see that expand. And now it’s more applicable and known by people of all different audiences, right? So it’s not just biohackers that are experimenting or maybe on a keto diet and want to understand their glucose and their ketones together. It’s just people trying to utilize this data to achieve a variety of health goals. So we have a lot of people that use it to help support their weight loss goals or maybe fine tune their diet to manage another chronic condition. Really the options and the benefits are endless. So it’s been super exciting to see this really great data be in the hands of more people as time goes on.
Brad (00:06:09):
I think most listeners are familiar, but I just wanna quickly, kind of escalate the technology here where we’re all familiar with going to the doctor once a year, getting your checkup, getting your blood test. You get a reading called fasting glucose, and if your fasting glucose is too high, the doctor says, well, you know, you’re heading toward pre-diabetic or you’re officially pre-diabetic. We’re gonna give you some drugs. Quit eating so much junk food, whatever. And then you can go and for many years I’ve been able to buy a blood meter where you can prick your finger and stick the strip into the machine. The keto, uh, enthusiasts are fr fond of this because this is a way to measure ketones, and as well as glucose and diabetics have been using this for years where they have it out at their home because they need to in their doctor gave it to ’em.
Brad (00:06:55):
And then the greatest breakthrough is this continuous glucose monitor. People call it CGM, and that’s where you put the patch on your arm and then via the wonderful smartphone app and other makers that have the the technology to, to read, uh, get the readings from your app. But I want you to talk in more detail about how this is a amazing 24/7 reading that’s being accumulated as you zap the patch over the daytime, and then how it goes into the app, and just tell us what’s, what the app is all about, especially the readings beyond just this one snapshot in time of what your glucose is when you submit to the blood test.
Carlee (00:07:41):
Yep. Great questions. And yeah, so this is, I know you do a little bit of video, so this is what it is, right? This is the reader or the actual device. And I like to call it an easy button, right? It’s a very, very small device. It looks like about two or three quarters stacked on top of each other, and you do insert it into the back of your arm. And then that starts to read your blood sugar in the interstitial fluid all day long. 24 hours a day for 14 days is kind of the model that we’re using right now. And what’s cool about that is that there’s a lot of data that you don’t see when you’re going to the doctor, right? Just like you had mentioned, it’s a one-time snapshot into your blood sugar. So you go in, you’re fasted, and then you see what your blood sugar is doing in that moment in time.
Carlee (00:08:29):
And while that can be helpful, it really just doesn’t tell the whole picture of what’s going on throughout the day. So this little device, as you mentioned, you scan with your phone, and then on the app, all of your data shows up in your graph in real time. And that realtime component is what’s probably the most important and motivating thing about it, right? Cause I think if you are trying to achieve any sort of of health goal, this data can be helpful for you. But if you don’t have access to that real-time data, that motivation to make changes can be a little bit more challenging, right? We all know we shouldn’t eat certain things <laugh> or metabolic health or to achieve a weight loss goal or whatever your goal might be. But it’s really hard to remind yourself of that when you don’t see the impacts of that decision for months, years, decades.
Carlee (00:09:19):
Maybe you’re just monitoring a number on a weight scale. That’s not motivating, that’s not real time motivation. And so when you’re able to see, okay, I make this decision, I eat this food and this is what happens in my body, and you’re able to connect that to why it’s important, then you’re able to make informed decisions and have that, I always like to call it like a sticky motivation. It’s a sticky behavior change because you’re able to see how your choice in that moment impacts your health at that time. And that’s what’s so beautiful about it. But when you’re going again to your doctor, you’re getting that one blood sugar reading, and maybe you’re getting an A1C as well, right? A lot of people have that kind of in their yearly exam or, or whatever. And that is showing you your average blood sugar over the course of about 90 days.
Carlee (00:10:08):
And that’s helpful too, because you can see kind of on average what your blood sugar is doing. But what you’re missing is when it’s going really high or when it’s going really low or how you’re responding to meals, you’re getting the big picture, but not those little snapshots of time that show you in real time how your body’s responding to your diet or other factors in your lifestyle. And when we think about chronic disease management or just preventing chronic disease, maintaining metabolic health, lifelong, we know that 80% of chronic lifestyle related diseases think diabetes, pre-diabetes, heart disease, can be prevented or at least delayed if we act early enough. And the problem or the problem we’re trying to solve is that we don’t have the data to act early enough. And that’s kind of the, the pain point that the CGM solves because, and then you’re able to see it, you’re able to make changes and kind of get the power back in your hands to know what you need to work on. And it’s less of a guessing game.
Brad (00:11:07):
Well said. It is beautiful to have the advanced technology, but I think the true, uh, benefit of the program is that you have the technology and then you also have one-on-one support from experts at your beck and call anytime in listeners. I’m not joking when I say, I will fire off a, a chat in the app and say, um, Hey, I’m curious. I’m looking at this graph from yesterday, blah, blah, blah. And someone will almost immediately, I mean, I don’t know, a few hours, whatever, but you’re in constant contact with an expert that can guide you through, especially on your first couple journeys with the, with the sensor on your arm. The sensor lasts two weeks and then it dies, and then you get, get another sensor, or you wait a while and you know,, re-up again. But that’s, I think when you have the, the one two punch there of the incredible 24/7, data and someone helping you decipher it and give you some friendly guides and reminders that, oh, cheesecake at 11:30 PM <laugh> that you wrote in your journal there, that might, uh, adversely affect your sleeping habits and your glucose man management.
Carlee (00:12:19):
Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I think that’s kind of the thing that makes really unique is that sure, you have an app and that provides insights and it shows your data and your averages and all those things that we’re monitoring. So even without the dietitian, you still get a lot of data in there, but applying that to your goals and really understanding the nuances of that data can take time, right? It’s just like learning any new data or new information. It takes time to really understand it and to break that down into the actionable steps that you need to take to achieve whatever your goal is. And we have a team, love our team. We have a team of dietitians that are trained in metabolic health, which not all health professionals are as, as knowledgeable, but they can understand your glucose and kind of relate that to your goals to show you what the most important or like the biggest bang for your buck changes would be based on what they’re seeing. So yeah, it’s kinda like a metabolic health expert in your pocket, and they’ll respond to you within 24 hours on weekdays and also respond and kind of reach out on the things that they’re seeing proactively as well. So that’s really cool.
Brad (00:13:28):
So before we hit record, you were saying how you went into my records and looked, compare and contrast from, my earlier years on the glucose monitor to my most recent journey. And we’re definitely gonna get into talking about that. The listeners of this show are familiar with me talking about my recent experiment to back away from fasting and eat more carbs and eat more food in general. But as the company has grown so much and you are accumulating this massive database of 24/7 blood glucose values from thousands and thousands of people, what trends do you see in the metabolic health of the modern citizen and the countries that you serve with your, with your program?
Carlee (00:14:08):
Yeah, it’s a great question. And yeah, I think it was cool just to look at your data and see, okay, this is what your glucose was in 2021, and now we can see what your glucose was in the end of 2022. And compare those two and see where you are in your journey with metabolic health. And that’s really cool. I think for most people, you probably don’t have to wear a CGM forever. I think some people don’t wanna wear a, you know, something in their arm for all time, and that’s totally fine, but it’s a great check-in point to see how you’re doing in this season of your life with your current diet and your current lifestyle factors. And then if everything’s looking good, you can try it out a year from now and just keep that constant pulse on how you’re doing and how your body’s progressing, and just make sure you’re, you’re staying on track.
Carlee (00:14:51):
As far as overall trends that I’ve seen, I think we, we can get into this, but the trend that I’ve seen is that all trends vary. Honestly. There’s a lot of bio-individuality when it comes to glucose control, and that’s where I think it makes personalizing your diet and your lifestyle habits just that much more important. You can go online and see convincing evidence to try one of thousands of diets, and it can feel like maybe that’s the right one for you. But until you see how your unique body is responding to that diet, you don’t know whether it’s working. You can assess how you’re feeling, you can assess your labs every six months or one year. But really, again, that’s only giving you a snapshot. So the trend that I’ve seen is that everyone responds differently to sometimes the same exact foods mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And so titrating your diet based on your individuality, can lead you to the right path and help you find a diet that’s gonna work long-term for you.
Brad (00:15:49):
Yeah, that seems to be the emerging trend overall in the you know, progressive health scene that now we’re talking so much about individuality rather than making these broad, sweeping proclamations that the plant-based diet is morally superior and more healthy, and you’re not gonna get disease and everyone else will. All that nonsense is finally getting sorted out. However, I often kind of, uh, recoil when we, when we get in this direction because, um, you can overdo it to the extent that we forget that we’re all homo sapien species and we respond to certain inputs for our genetic switches. And so I always like to start the conversation saying, look, if there’s processed food still hanging around in your diet, we need to take care of that matter first before we even talk about individuality. We need to get your individual ass cleaned up, and then we can go into, um, you know, scrutinizing, and maybe you can mention how, you know, you said some people you know, respond adversely to bananas and and some people respond adversely to pineapples and all those interesting nuances.
Carlee (00:17:04):
Yeah, yeah, for sure. There are some universal truths that I would say without even looking at data. I could probably estimate what would happen. So one of those, and I know you’ve talked about this in a lot of your shows, is that processed foods, processed carbohydrates, processed grains will typically always have a larger response in glucose. So it does not matter if you are super insulin sensitive or not. Typically, those are going to be your largest shifts in glucose. And when we’re looking at glucose, one of the things we want to minimize is really, really big swings or dramatic shifts in glucose. And you’ll hear the term, you know, you’ve talked about it as well on your show. It’s the glycemic variability, the amount of swings or like huge shifts that you’re having throughout your day, because those can really impact, first of all, how you’re feeling.
Carlee (00:17:56):
If you’re having huge shifts in blood sugar based on what you’re eating, that can impact how you feel. So glucose is your metabolic substrate. It’s basically a sign into how your body’s utilizing and metabolizing the energy in your body. So the foods you eat, how well are we converting those into energy? How well are we able to tap into that storage and utilize it to fuel our body throughout the day? And if you’re having these large swings or spikes, glucose spikes as you’ll hear them called, that could be a sign that maybe you’re eating foods that don’t, ooh, well for your body, or you’re not burning through or utilizing that fuel as appropriately as you should be, and without question processed carbs, processed grains, added sugars, those are all gonna cause those larger shifts, which over time can cause inflammation, oxidate, oxidative damage, microvasculature damage, right? So all those things repeatedly over and over and over again and the standard American diet are what can result in those metabolic health outcomes that we’re trying to avoid. So that’s number one. You hit the nail on the head universally. We all could probably make some changes that help us in that, in that regard.
Brad (00:19:05):
I noticed you had a very careful choice of words in that recent passage that you just said and took care to explain that we have the detrimental extreme glucose spikes or a pattern of too much variability. And I think a lot of people are getting exposed to this technology. And what I perceive is somewhat of a misinterpretation at times where, um, people seem to somehow formulate this goal that they just wanna have a flat line on the screen all day long. And so, I just did a recent post, you, you talked about it before we hit record, where I said, Hey, people look at these glucose spikes on my, on my graph, guess what? That was a freaking workout. It was a delicious meal of healthy, nutritious foods. I’m expecting the glucose to go up when I consume calories. And then what we’re looking for, and maybe we can, as I’m asking this long question, maybe you can flow into also talking about the key metrics that we’re looking for besides just fasting glucose.
Carlee (00:20:10):
Yeah, great point. And I think there’s always more nuance. So I agree. I’ve had multiple people that just want that flat line glucose curve, and I think in the keto community, there used to be this perceived notion that that’s better. But what we know is there seems to be a diminishing return when it comes to glycemic variability. We know that lower fluctuation is typically better, but the nuance to what that looks like is just different from person to person. And zero spikes does not always mean that you’re in a better state. We do know that a higher average glucose is worse for your body or your metabolic health than a higher glycemic variability. So there’s a lot of, um, important benefits or reasons to keep those glucose spikes down. But our body’s supposed to have glucose increases that is normal, right? So if you think about a normal functioning metabolism, right?
Carlee (00:21:01):
We eat foods, we eat a meal that contains maybe a little bit of carbohydrates, I heard that you’re including a little bit more tropical fruit, more carbohydrates in that way. So we expect to see a glucose spike from that. That is normal, that is a normal healthy part of a functioning metabolism. And when that happens, what we expect our body to do is to have that glucose increase and then in insulin is secreted from the pancreas, and then glucose is taken up by the muscles and utilized to fuel our movement or stored if we have excess. And then we return back to that baseline glucose within about two to three hours. And so that’s what we call a normal glucose curve, or you’ll hear it called as a postprandial spike postprandial response, which is this big, long, lengthy cool word for after meal, which I love to say.
Carlee (00:21:50):
But, that is one of the metrics that we are looking at to understand your insulin sensitivity, your metabolic health, and just how your body’s responding to your diet as it is right now. And when we look at all of those labs that you get at your doctor, we’re not seeing that, we’re not seeing how your body’s responding to foods or how quickly it’s returning down to baseline. Mm-hmm. We know that that is one of the first places that you can see any signs of metabolic dysfunction. So we don’t, you know, go from a normal healthy metabolism to high fasting glucose in a week, a day, a month, right? It happens where we have these larger responses, these larger spikes in glucose, and we repeatedly excrete more insulin to bring that glucose down. But when it’s happening over and over again, that can stress our insulin. We have a little bit too much insulin secretion and we become resistant to that insulin, and we can see that in those postprandial responses before we ever see it in our fasting glucose or our A1C, right? So I think that’s one of the coolest things about the CGM is that you’re able to see in real time how your body’s handling those meals and then make changes to optimize what you’re seeing. But yeah, I’m glad you brought that up.
Brad (00:23:05):
So we’re talking about the importance of a appropriate fasting glucose number, like we’re all familiar with and going to the doctor and hoping it comes under a hundred or whatever the recommendation is. And then we’re describing one’s ability to, um, return to baseline, I guess you would call it glucose variability. And then there’s some other important metrics. Maybe you can describe the standard deviation that is you guys place great importance on which is shown for you right there on the app.
Carlee (00:23:34):
Yep. Great question. So when we’re talking about those individual meal responses, our app calculates a score based on all of those. So what that score takes into account is, okay, how high did you go in your spike after that meal? And we wanna keep that below a certain threshold. Those higher values over time repeatedly can cause damage and can ultimately result in that metabolic dysfunction. So again, not one single spike that’s high is gonna do that to you, but it’s more of a pattern of eating over time. But when we put all those pieces together, right, how high you’re responding, how low you’re going, and how big of a shift is in that response, that is what your standard deviation is a great picture of. So this is a picture of your glycemic variability or how much your blood sugar is shifting throughout the day.
Carlee (00:24:26):
So it’s possible that, you know, you have a normal fasting glucose, but you’re eating maybe a standard American diet and you’re having huge glucose spikes. And what can happen sometimes is that you have a large shift in glucose and then a large drop back down to baseline. And it’s those larger shifts over time that add up and can make you feel really cruddy, but also result in, um, all of those things that we’ve been talking about. So standard deviation is a picture of that glycemic variability, how much your blood sugar shifting, are you staying in a nice controlled even range for your body to maintain homeostasis, or are you shifting a lot and then your body’s having to overcorrect time and time again to keep glucose in that ideal range.
Brad (00:25:14):
So when you say obviously, we can all conceive of the idea of going and having a Slurpee and getting a huge glucose spike as an adverse health consequence of consuming processed sugar, what have you. And then after we after we ingest the I should say that it’s not just food and we’re gonna talk about that later, but after we get that glucose spike, do we want kind of a steady slope back down to baseline or is it appropriate to see a pretty quick drop back down to baseline? And then my second part of the question is do we not want to ever go below baseline? Like we don’t want to go from, uh, a hundred to one 40 after the meal and then down to 78, uh, as a consequence of the, the insulin response? Or do, do we wanna see the person going back down to theoretical 100?
Carlee (00:26:11):
Yeah, good question. I think there’s a lot of variability with all of these things. So preface that every time we talk about these, uh, your responses may vary. So I always wanna preface by saying that, but yeah, I think you want your return back to baseline within about two to three hours of eating. You started that meal and you were right around 100 and that was kind of your baseline glucose. We’d hopefully return right close to that within about two to three hours. So usually that looks like a moderate shift. So we, in our app and what we recommend based on the, the research that, that we’ve seen so far is we want a shift of no more than about 30 points if at all possible to maintain that optimal level of variability. So for instance, yeah, like you had mentioned, if you are starting at 100 and then you spike all the way up to 180, that’s a really, really large shift.
Carlee (00:27:00):
And so it’s those large dramatic shifts that can make you have low energy or kind of fluctuating energy cravings, but also it’s a lot of work for your body to get glucose back down to that baseline value after that larger shift. So we do not want to ideally go below that pre-meal value. So a lot of times that’s what we call reactive hypoglycemia. And so if you think about from the, the Slurpee example, that’s a prime example of when I would expect to see a reactive hypoglycemic response. So it’s those larger dumps of blood of sugar into the blood that kind of trigger your, your insulin to say, oh shoot, oh shoot, we gotta get this down, let’s get this down right now. And there’s no protein or fat to kind of blunt that response. So your insulin goes to work and immediately drops it down quickly, and sometimes it can overcorrect and cause you to go below baseline.
Carlee (00:27:57):
Now if you don’t feel pretty or you feel fine, you don’t have hanger, you don’t feel shaky, you don’t feel irritable, that might be okay. That might be because you are active after the meal and your body’s using that glucose and dropping a little bit lower. But if you’re experiencing those symptoms and feeling, I always, I always feel hangry if that ever happens to me. You feel cranky, you feel irritable, but you also kind of feel shaky. Maybe you just ate but you feel like you need to eat. Again, those are symptoms that, that could be reactive hypoglycemia. And so that usually is a sign that maybe the amounts of carbohydrates or the type of carbohydrates that you had was not a great match for your body at that time. But usually we can mitigate that by trying different types of carbohydrates, adding in protein and eating that first.
Carlee (00:28:47):
Mm-hmm. There’s a lot of things we can do to, to kind of mitigate that, but if you do have that response, I always like to say you’re riding the blood sugar roller coaster the whole rest of the day. Right? A good example of this is the Standard American diet, we wake up and we have a coffee with a bunch of sugary creamer in it, right? So you’re breaking your fast with that liquid carbohydrates and that’s gonna cause your blood sugar to shoot up and then come down. And what happens when you feel down here, you might want more food and you might have that same repeated pattern all day long riding that blood sugar rollercoaster just trying to keep it stable.
Brad (00:29:25):
So poor metabolic health is evidenced by a rollercoaster type experience, which typically plays out in one’s energy, mood, appetite hangriness and so forth. And then excellent metabolic health. Well, there’s I think more than one attribute we should talk about. One of ’em is an appropriate fasting glucose level, but <laugh> and then eating healthy diet helps. But I’m thinking back to like my son high school basketball player and his teammates would come over and have a hot fudge sundae and then they’d have another hot fudge sundae an hour later. And because of their youth, their incredible activity level and their receptivity of, of glycogen reloading, let’s say after practice, if they were all on CGMs, you would probably see an acceptable 30 point spike after the first hot fudge sundae, back down to baseline, maybe another 30 point spike after the second one.
Brad (00:30:21):
Um, but we have all these factors that are, um, you know, revealed in the data from your smartphone app. And so I think maybe now is a good time to expand the conversation beyond our food choices. And maybe, but before we go for a moment there you talked about protein and fat and so maybe a quick comment about how the choice of foods in your meal can affect the impact on blood glucose, starting with the Slurpee pure sugar hit. That’s gonna be a big one. But then if you had, for example, a Slurpee with <laugh> two steaks, uh, and you know, butter, uh, buttery up, baked potato, whatever, um, you’re gonna have things that have a longer burn time, same with complex carbohydrates, and that will kind of potentially manage the extreme spike that we don’t want to see.
Carlee (00:31:14):
Exactly. Yeah. The composition of your meals matters so, so much. So I don’t know if you remember the diet, if it fits your macros. I think that’s a really great example of how we just failed to take into account how our body processes different types of macronutrients and how a normal kind of balanced diet should look. So as a general rule, if we’re looking at carbohydrates, the more processed that carbohydrate is, the usually quicker it’s going to impact our blood sugar, but also the, the more drastic response in blood sugar we’re going to see. So the more that food has been processed, you know, it’s just sugars that don’t need us to break them down, as in the case of the Slurpee, or maybe it’s a processed grain that’s been largely kind of broken down mechanically before we ingest it, that’s not gonna take a whole lot of work for our body to turn that into fuel. And a good example of when this might be beneficial, right? If you have that low blood sugar level, if you are reactive hypoglycemia, you feel that like intense low blood sugar, what do they tell you to do at the doctor’s office? They tell you to drink juice, drink soda,
Brad (00:32:24):
Have it pike it up again.
Carlee (00:32:26):
Yes. And there’s a reason for that, right? That is going to chew your blood sugar up and get you into a safe place more rapidly than anything else. And that is because carbohydrate digestion starts in the mouth. We have have this enzyme that starts breaking that down immediately before we even swallow that food. So that means our body doesn’t have to work very hard for that to be converted into blood sugar. And we see that larger increase and you can see that in your C G M in your data, which is really, really cool. Now, if we are doing carbohydrate foods that have a lot of fiber and they’re not broken down, they’re in their whole states mm-hmm. <affirmative>, that’s gonna cause our body a lot more time and effort to break that down. And that’s a good thing. We want to work to kind of break that down to allow that slow digestion and that gradual increase in blood sugar versus this large shot
Carlee (00:33:17):
from the, the Slurpee, if we’re gonna go back to that, if we go to protein, the protein doesn’t necessarily have a huge spike in blood sugar. It does have an insulin insulinogenic effect, which means if we combine carbohydrates, those dense high fiber carbs like sweet potatoes, fruits, maybe starchy vegetables, those sorts of things, if we combine those with a protein source that can slow down how rapidly that blood sugar is increasing. So one of the best hacks you can do is to start any meal that you have with a really good whole food source of protein and then have your carbohydrates after that. And that can just prime your body to accept that carbohydrate and to have a more gradual increase in blood sugar. Same sort of thing with fat. So fat doesn’t necessarily cause an insulin spike immediately, but it slows down the digestion or the release of glucose in our body as we eat them.
Carlee (00:34:14):
So a good amount, like a small amount of fat with our meals is really, really awesome for keeping blood sugar stable. But if we have, I think, processed foods, fried foods, foods that are high in both starch and fats, that can cause a really, really slow response in blood sugar, which is not what we want if we’re not returning back to baseline within two to three hours. Mm-hmm. That means our insulin is having to work overtime in a long period of time to get back down to baseline. So you really have to think about all those different components when you’re planning your meals and then experiment to find, you know, the right ratio for your body.
Brad (00:34:53):
Yeah. And outside of the pure, uh, macronutrient values, I love how Jay Feldman Energy Balance Podcast talks about how when we consume these lousy, heavily processed modern foods, they inhibit our body’s own ability to generate energy internally, Consuming processed sugar and packaged foods prompt the release of endotoxins from the digestive tract. And so all of a sudden we are inundated with calories that are not easy to burn for energy and interfere with our own ability to burn energy. And that’s what you see on the graph where your blood sugar is. There’s too much sugar floating around the bloodstream for too long because of the nature of the food being, uh, nutrient deficient process and containing chemicals, preservatives, and things like that. And I think that’s a really important add-on when we maybe get too obsessed with counting, uh, the number of carbs we’re eating in a day to stay in the ketogenic range,, but we’re having, you know, seed oils and, you know, processed fats that interfere with our ability to burn fat. Um, we’re probably gonna have some, some bad numbers even with, uh, diligent adherence to calorie counts.
Carlee (00:36:07):
Oh, 100%. And I think another thing to consider too is it’s not just amount. You know, if it was as easy as counting math and having a certain amount of carbs, and I think we’d all probably be at a better place, but we also have to think about oxidative priority, right? What are we actually burning? What are we triggering our body to burn based on our, our, you know, movements and based on what we’re eating? So I always like to think of it as, you know, glucose is our primary source of fuel. So if we have that available at all times, we are never going to prompt our body or have the need to tap into fat storage. It’s a lot harder for our body to access fat storage. It’s a lot harder for us to burn fat as fuel. We can do it.
Carlee (00:36:49):
And that’s where you hear people talking about becoming fat adapted and kind of getting into that fat oxidation a little bit more easily or more readily. And there is a lot of validity to that, a lot of useful tips that can come from that. But I think, uh, an easier way to think of that is if you are always in a fed state with carbohydrates. So if you’re grazing, and this is something I noticed from your podcast that I listened to as well, is you used to just kind of nibble throughout the morning, right? And then now you have more distinct patterns of eating you eat at specific times. I think you are allowing your body to rest, digest, reset in between those meals, and that’s helping your body burn through that glucose and then reestablish that oxidated priority to tap into fat storage if needed, which can ultimately help with your body composition goals.
Brad (00:37:37):
Yeah. If needed. And I’m thinking of Jay Feldman again, where he’s advocating that glucose burning is, uh, a preferred state to fat burning, which is a completely controversial and unpopular notion, but he’s got me thinking about it more. And, um, I really appreciate how you described it there too, because you said if necessary. And so there is a, you know, widely touted goal of developing metabolic flexibility as Mark Sisson coined it. And that means that your body is really good at burning whatever energy it needs at a particular time for the needs in front of them. For example, I’m talking about my glucose spikes that coincided with my workout. It wasn’t eating, I was probably fasted when I went in there and saw that thing shoot up to 143 because I was trying to do some extra sets of sprinting.
Brad (00:38:26):
And that’s exactly what I want from my body is to dump glucose into the bloodstream so that I can perform and, you know, burn that ATP while I’m, I’m running in circles around the track. So we have, um, all kinds of demands placed on the body. And I think I’m teeing up a really important question where I’m gonna put Carlee on the spot here. And that is if one is healthy, energetic, athletic, does the best they can to lead an active lifestyle, maybe they like cold exposure, maybe they like the sauna and they’re doing sprint workouts and resistance training and getting a lot of cardio hiking in on the weekend, even if it’s raining in the Pacific Northwest, they’re, they’re going for it. Let’s picture that person. And then let’s picture the typical modern citizen who generally, suffers from what
Brad (00:39:19):
Dr. Layne Norton calls the main concern is energy toxicity, which means eating too much food and not burning enough calories regardless of what, even if it’s healthy, nutritious food. But we have a lot of people who aren’t active enough eat too much food in general. And now we put, both parties on a C G M, there might be some potential for confusion with the data as I just described, where I did my workout and I saw a big glucose spike and whatever. So I wonder if you guys at Nutrisense and your own personal opinion as well, do you have a strategy? Remember a listeners, these people are interacting all day long with different users and trying to get to know them and, and provide helpful tips, but is there a different strategy and a different thought process based on your status that you bring to the table, so to speak?
Carlee (00:40:11):
Yes, 100%. And that’s where I think having that real human there to talk to you about all this stuff is so critical, because if you’re just looking at data, it can be really easy to miss those little nuances. So in our app, first thing you do, a new member would fill out a really comprehensive goals questionnaire to understand, or just to jot down maybe their health history, their labs, their goals, maybe their activity level, all that good stuff. So all that information goes to your personal nutritionist. So they kind of have this background information about you, and they’re not just looking at their data. They know who you are and they can filter your data through that lens. The other thing that’s really important, and I don’t think, I think people don’t like to track what they’re doing because it takes time and it’s tedious, and I get that 100%, you don’t have to do it forever.
Carlee (00:41:02):
But I think if you’re trying to understand if you are metabolically healthy or not, you have to log everything at least for a certain amount of time. Because if you’re logging a spike from food and a spike from exercise, I’m gonna look at those completely differently. So if you have a spike from exercise, just as you had mentioned, that can be really normal. That can be a way that your body is protecting you to make sure there’s energy available to fuel your movements. And that’s not insulin mediated. So I don’t worry about that one, you know, over and over again leading to insulin resistance. That’s not, that’s not the thing that I’m worried about. What I would look at from that spike would be, okay, are you fueling appropriately beforehand? Are you staying below 180 because we know spikes of exercise below 180 aren’t really a concern.
Carlee (00:41:48):
Are you recovering afterwards? Are you hydrated? Do you have electrolytes? Right? Those are all levers we can pull at to understand that spike and then to optimize it to improve your performance, but also just to make sure that’s a normal healthy spike from exercise. Hmm. If you are spiking to 180 from a normal mixed macronutrient meal, like hamburger and sweet potatoes and salad, right? If you’re spiking that high to that meal, that might tell me that there is maybe an issue with glucose tolerance. And that can mean a lot of different things. It could mean that you’ve been on a carbohydrate restricted diet for a really long time and your body’s just having trouble kind of efficiently breaking down those carbohydrates and utilizing those for energy because it’s used to using fat for energy mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And so that’s a much different problem than, yeah, I’ve been eating carbs my whole life and I’m just having really large responses to these carb meals that should produce a normal response.
Carlee (00:42:46):
And in that case, that might tell me that there is an issue with insulin resistance, or maybe we need to do some further testing or do some carbohydrate experiments to see what types of carbs you do well with and what amounts or times work best for you. There’s also, and you kind of alluded to this at the start of this session, is the timing that you eat, that meal plays a huge role, right? We have our insulin sensitivity is really closely aligned with our body’s circadian rhythm. So the further we get to the middle of the night, usually the worst we’re gonna respond to meals because as our melatonin production goes up, insulin sensitivity goes down. So you might respond really, really well to sweet potatoes at noon, but then spike super high to sweet potatoes at 11:30 PM And so I’d look at that spike a lot differently because really it might be just the timing that we need to tweak and kind of work on an earlier eating window. So again, I know that’s a lot, but there are just so many factors to piece out. But that’s where we always tell people to approach this with a curiosity mindset. Hmm. You’re not gonna learn everything in one day, but approach it with curiosity, experiment. Like take one factor and then manipulate it and see if you can change it based on that. And if not, we can try something else. And that’s, I think, the beauty as well.
Brad (00:44:05):
Yeah. If you’re watching, listeners on YouTube instead of listening, you can see how often Carlee smiling and she’s so excited. So I’m so glad you’re in this career because you’re, you can tell your passion is there. And for me, I’d have to report that it’s been such an amazing journey to get into this. Because at first when I started I was like, okay, yeah, sure, I’ll try it. You know, Dan, the founder of the company hit me up and Okay, I’ll put this thing on. Yeah, this is cute. It goes on the phone, but I’m so healthy and athletic and fit and I eat such good food that, you know, I’m not gonna learn much. Okay. <laugh>, the number of reference points I is so awesome. And you just mentioned a few. Um, I, I’m looking at my most recent journey and noticing it was around the holiday time.
Brad (00:44:52):
And not that I derail my diet just because it’s holiday time. I actually didn’t do that much, uh, indulging of anything. But I stayed up later than normal because, uh, we’re socializing with family and all this fun stuff is happening. And boy, you could see that glucose just start ramping up, right? In concert with my usual bedtime of 10:00 PM. And you talk about the realtime education of seeing what’s going on in your body when you depart from, you know, optimal lifestyle practices. So I’m putting in on my checklist, staying up too late will cause a sustained glucose spike and, you know, not the desirable return to baseline. And then secondly, the most amazing slap in the face I got was when I contracted Covid. I happened to be on the C G M at that time. And, you know, there was two things.
Brad (00:45:41):
One, I kept forgetting to zap it cuz you have to zap it every eight hours, people, a minimum or you’ll lose spots on your graph. So you’re gonna get 24 7 data, but you can’t, you have to remember to zap the smartphone before you go to bed and when you wake up and at one point during the day, so I had all these gaps and the second one was just this complete lack of ability to regulate glucose in a healthy manner. Like I’ve been able to probably my whole life. But when I succumbed to illness, man, the whole system goes haywire.
Carlee (00:46:08):
Oh man, we, as you knew, I told you, we started in 2019, so right before Covid hit everywhere, right? And before we even kind of knew anything about Covid, we were looking at this data and thinking, why are all these spikes coming down? I’d be like, I can’t explain this increase in glucoses. And now looking back, that was such a cool experience because we got to see how your body is reacting to this, you know, foreign virus before we even really knew anything about it. So, really good point. And I think that’s, it’s important to note that it’s normal for your body to do that, right? If you have a cold, if you have flu or some sort of illness or inflammation, your body responds by reducing insulin sensitivity, increasing hepatic glucose outputs and all that’s for a reason, right? We want that fuel.Again, that’s your fuel, your energy. We want that fuel available so that we can fight off that illness. We have the fuel to act and to fight. But the unfortunate thing when you’re looking at that is, yeah, it’s gonna show that your glucose is higher.
Carlee (00:47:11):
So usually that will show up as like an increase in your average, or maybe you’re having these giant spikes to meals that you normally do well with. And that could be just because your body’s not as sensitive to insulin and it’s kind of deploying, other things to have that glucose available in case it really, really needs to use it. And that’s where I think when you’re monitoring it, that can sometimes be discouraging, but just knowing that there’s a silver lining, your body’s doing that for a reason mm-hmm. <affirmative>, and we can, of course, mitigate it by, you know, not having Sprite and saltines like is is pretty normal when you’re Oh yeah. You know, having bone broth and having, you know, just a lot of fluids and electrolytes, those things that we know are gonna be nourishing but not cause those glucose spikes. I think it can be motivating to stay on the right path when you’re, when you’re in that space.
Brad (00:47:57):
Back to the very square one, when we talk about the familiar reading of fasting blood glucose, do you have any insights on whether lower is better, as has often been the obsession in the, the keto and the low carb community?
Carlee (00:48:12):
Yeah, there’s a lot of debate on that, of course, but there has been some really con convincing evidence that, you know, a fasting glucose between 70 to 90 is ideal or optimal. So, with fasting glucose, I always say that postprandial glucose and glycemic variability, I’m gonna look and I’m gonna put more effort into understanding those, optimizing those. But that doesn’t mean that fasting glucose isn’t an important metric and it doesn’t mean anything. There has been some research that fasting glucose consistently above 90, can increase your cardiovascular risk. So there is, you know, some evidence to support that promoting that lower fasting glucose in the morning has really, really great health outcomes. But when it comes to fasting glucose, there are so many different factors that influence that metric. Specifically, it can be challenging to understand your specific fasting glucose. So for instance, that morning value or your average glucose is also really highly influenced by stress and sleep more so than some other values you might look at.
Carlee (00:49:18):
So if you are under chronic stress, um, and I don’t just mean like emotional stress at work, I mean maybe you’re doing all these little micro stressors like hmm, um, we’ve also seen, you know, people that do extended fasting for really, really long periods of time, and maybe that’s stressing your body. You see this gradual increase in fasting glucose and that’s also been kind of cool, um, to monitor and to see. Hmm, but also if you have chronic, you know issues with sleep or maybe your hormones are kind of out of whack, um, you’re drinking a lot of alcohol, all of those things uniquely impact fasting glucose. So it’s important to look at it not just again, from that one moment in time, but look at what your fasting glucose is doing from day to day, week to week to kind of get that big picture of which factors might be influencing yours.
Brad (00:50:05):
Yeah, it’s kind of cool that you can measure it, but I don’t think that’s too cool to see a devoted faster seeing an upward trend in fasting morning glucose. And I’m talking about myself here because when I went into the deepest research for, uh, writing the Keto Reset Diet with Mark Sisson back in 2017 when keto was super new and we had to figure out what this thing was, and I was pricking my finger so many times the day I got scar tissue on my middle finger, I had to switch fingers. But I was really devoted to the ketogenic macronutrient guidelines, uh, kind of outta nowhere, right after a lifetime of certainly healthy eating, but not doing this devoted restriction, and then also trying to sustain my high intensity training schedule and be a pretty devoted athlete and be in the older age groups.
Brad (00:50:48):
And so now I’m reflecting back on the data that I, uh, secured from that experiment. And I remember, uh, waking up and pulling these really high fasting glucose numbers, 118, 121, 110 98, 117. And so, um, it’s widely regarded that if you’re over a hundred, you’re could be considered pre-diabetic. And I knew that that certainly wasn’t me, but now I can reflect on what was going on there. And you mentioned it a little bit where there’s a stress response where your body is prompted to make more glucose because I know I’m gonna go out there and do another badass workout, however, I didn’t eat that many carbs the previous day or the day before that. And so again, it’s, it’s data and then reasoning with that rather than just looking at a number blindly. For example, if I’d gone into the doctor and had a glucose test, they would’ve said, Hey, you’re pre-diabetic, you know, quit eating so much food and start exercising more.
Carlee (00:51:46):
Oh my gosh. Yeah. We started to see this sometimes, um, you know, people would go in for, uh, and this happened a lot when we worked with a lot of keto folks, right? So you get so adapted to utilizing fat as your primary source of fuel, that your body again, like loses the ability to efficiently process carbohydrates or glucose, for fuel. And that is not, for most people, not a permanent thing. You can reverse that. You can improve your efficiency with burning carbohydrates. But we did see that for some people that had been on a long-term keto diet, so usually at least one year, but most of the people had been on it for three plus they would see this gradual increase in their fasting glucose. And that’s just because the body would have to kind of pump out its own glucose overnight to keep that steady level of glucose for organs that need it, like the brain.
Carlee (00:52:34):
And again, we don’t think that this is a harmful thing, right? If your doctor was just looking at this number without any context, it could definitely be, you know, diagnosed as such. But what we noticed and what we’ve really come to learn is that that increase in fasting glucose does not also coincide with an increase in fasting insulin. And that’s the difference there, right? If you are actually insulin resistant, you’re typically going to see that fasting glucose increase. And also you’re fasting insulin increase, so you’re, you know, releasing more insulin, but your body’s just resistant to it. But with keto folks, your glucose is rising, but your insulin’s dropping because you just don’t need it. It’s that supply and demand situation where you just don’t need the insulin because you’re not processing carbs,
Brad (00:53:18):
Right? And I think it can be overdone because insulin plays a valuable, important role, especially delivering nutrients to the cells in supportive recovery including, uh, uh, everything that you need, uh, from the protein category, from the carbohydrate category, turning it into glycogen. And so in my small example, I’m referencing, um, stacking too many stressors, including the stressor of diet and not consuming sufficient carbohydrates to fuel my high performance workouts, as well as, um, being in the older age groups and doing these crazy workouts. So, that was just, you know, a personal anecdote. It doesn’t mean that these restrictive diets don’t deliver tremendous benefits. One of ’em, like you mentioned, taking a break, giving your system a break because you’re fasting every morning, that can help with things like leaky gut. Uh, it can help you stay away from, uh, processed foods that you typically consume for breakfast.
Brad (00:54:14):
And so, um, it’s widely, you know, celebrated to engage in these practices. But maybe, you know, as we wind this up, I’ll, I’ll reference my e experiment in the recent year to tiptoe or take big steps away from fasting in the interest of striving for optimal cellular energy status at all times, thereby having a huge bowl of fruit every morning and a huge protein smoothie. And then making an overall concerted effort to consume more calories in support of my performance and my recovery exclusively. And then you did take some, uh, compare and contrast to my different trips on the Nutrisense. So maybe you can, maybe we can share with the listeners, whatever you found digging into my private medical information.
Carlee (00:55:05):
Yes. Happy to share that if that’s good with you. But yeah, when I looked at your data, and I can, I can pull it up here, but, what I saw is that, and what I thought was really interesting is the big changes in your diet, which we would expect to see in your glucose, is that you increased your carbohydrates, right? You increased the calories, you’re consuming, you increased the amount of carbs and the types of carbs you’re consuming are typically more high glycemic carbs. So you had mentioned, you know, like mango and some of those other tropical fruits are more of a place in your diet than they were previously. But when we look at your data, what’s cool is that your mean or your average glucose kind of remained the same, right? Um, your sleep average remained the same. So that had a very minimal impact on your baseline glucose.
Carlee (00:55:51):
Um, and then I also saw that your variability, your standard deviation was pretty similar for both of those. So what that tells me is that you were able to find a way to include more carbohydrates in your diets, maintain your body composition, but it did not impact that glycemic variability that we hold so close to our hearts for metabolic health. And that is really the beauty of it, right? I think carbs get a bad rep because they have the biggest impact on glucose, but like we touched on, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Carbohydrates are protein sparing. So they in ensure that you’re replenishing your fuel sources and letting protein be there to rebuild and repair everything that it needs to rebuild and repair. So I think that was the big takeaway for me is that you were able to find a way to have a little bit more flexibility in your diet, but it didn’t impact your glucose in a negative way. And I’m curious to hear what you think of that, or you noticed that as well.
Brad (00:56:47):
That sounds great. I appreciate that, that description. And, certainly, like I mentioned, I’m going for performance and recovery as my main goals and my main, objective to age gracefully and, uh, avoid disease is to maintain that functional muscle strength, that power, that explosiveness, and that endurance all these fitness attributes by any means necessary, as they say. And in this case, it means getting sufficient good nutrition from my diet. Now, what would be really fun is like on my next Nutrisense journey, I could go slam a bunch of heavily processed food and, and seed oils and, and see how poorly, um, my glucose regulation becomes because I’m ingesting this crap even if I remain active and, and sleep well, and all the other things remain the same. So I think what we’re getting at listeners is, you know, it’s a multi-pronged approach here where you can get this feedback at all times if you have a lousy night of sleep. Maybe we should pause on that one and you can reference some of the amazing research where even one bad night of sleep is going to, is going to throw you into a spin and you’re gonna have some sad faces on the, uh, on the app instead of smiley faces.
Carlee (00:57:59):
Yes. Yeah, 100%. And I think the other thing before we move away from your diet and the things that have changed, the other thing that stood out to me was that you, it seems like, and you can correct me if I’m wrong, it seems like you’re having more frequent meals. So instead of maybe waiting till midday, you are, you know, having more frequent and kind of more balanced meals. So you’re having a good dose of protein in the morning with your bone broth and everything you’re adding in your smoothie, and then you’re having a more structured high protein, with some fruit meal at lunch, um, and same sort of thing for dinner. So there’s a couple of things that I think might be important to share based on that change. And that’s your timing, your carbohydrates after your movement, when your insulin sensitivity is going to be at its peak, which is what I encourage everyone to do, right?
Carlee (00:58:45):
You want your carbohydrates, you love carbs. If you love fruits, especially those higher glycemic fruits. Time them after your intense workout or even before so that you’re more primed and ready to accept those carbs and utilize them because you’re insulin sensitivity is at its peak. Hmm. The other thing is that you’re having protein more often, and there’s been a lot of studies that show if you, you know, space out your protein a little bit more, so having a bolus, you know, every couple of hours, three to five hours versus, you know, ohma style meal meal where you’re having a large bolus at one time, that can impact your muscle protein synthesis in a really positive way, so you’re able to build more muscle and then just repair after that workout a little bit better. So,
Brad (00:59:32):
So is it so that we have a certain limit on how much protein we can assimilate at one time at one meal, and so we, we better off not trying to eat a hundred grams at one meal or, or some giant thing. Is there a is there a limit to that?
Carlee (00:59:49):
Yeah, there’s been a lot of debate over that topic. You know, we used to hear, 25 to 35 grams of protein at a meal is all you can process. And I think just like everything that’s bio individual, everyone probably has different amounts of protein that they can tolerate. At one time, I’ve had some people do omad and have 120 grams of protein and they love it and they do really well. Um, there’s been a general kind of rule of thumb that, you know, maybe 0.4 to 0.55 grams per kilogram body weight per meal. Mm-hmm. And that’s helpful in itself is best digested. But I think that’s just something you kind of have to play around with yourself. And then I think the big thing is just getting the amount of protein that your body needs. There’s so many people that eat just females specifically that eat too little protein and are RDA for protein is just lower than it needs to be. So I think the first step would be identifying how much protein that your body needs, and then splitting that up based on however many meals you’re having a day, just to ensure that you’re getting enough to promote that rebuilding and repair.
Brad (01:00:52):
Yeah, I was, uh, amazed to learn more about this. It’s really coming into the forefront now that there’s widespread, suboptimal protein consumption and the RDA is admittedly the survival level. And so that’s fine that you’re, this is how much you need to eat so you don’t waste away and shrivel up and die. But the same for, uh, when I open it up for, um, you know, optimal carb consumption, optimal consumption of natural nutritious fats, as well as optimal protein consumption to support a healthy, active, energetic lifestyle. That’s where my most, you know, my past year has been really illuminating where if I can find ways to consume more nutritious food, and again, nutritious food only with never any justification to put junk food in your body, even if you earned a hall pass from a really vigorous workout, it still can cause problems. But if you can, if you can optimize your, your lifestyle for activity level and fitness, then the, you know, the diet supports that rather than trying to back into this somehow by seeing how few calories you can eat or how restrictive you can be so that you don’t gain weight, you’re, you’re gonna get tired and you’re gonna turn down important metabolic dials.
Carlee (01:02:10):
Yep. Couldn’t agree more. I would add a caveat though, just from working with so many people that some people are moderators, they, you know, if you tell them they can’t have something, they’re gonna go full ledge onto that. And some people are abstainers and it seems like you, your mind does well with like, Hey, this is off my plan, I’m just not gonna include it. And I think there are two different subsets of people. And if you are an abstainer, that’s awesome. Like power to you, that is amazing. If you are a moderator and you do well with like a moderation, just start slow, right? Like identify the foods that you wanna start cutting back, start slow, and then you can get to a place where you’re really just eliminating those from your diet. But just thinking of that in the gray terms so that you don’t feel, I work with a lot of people that sometimes feel just kind of down or like hopeless because they feel like there’s no way I can ever eliminate every single thing from my diet. I think just as you had mentioned, like identify those things, identify your goals, and then start small and start to pull those pieces back so that it feels like you’re not eliminating everything all at once. So
Brad (01:03:09):
That’s my excellent. Yeah. Not to get overwhelmed, because I think that’s one of the ways that we routinely fail with our goals and objectives is we set them too high, then we get discouraged. And, and of course the example of diet is the most eliminating of all where, oh, now I’m, I’m worthless. And so I might as well just hit that pint of Ben and Jerry’s because, I flunked my diet once again. And so yeah, those little, those little wins that we can go for and perhaps a, a certain category, like, okay, I’m gonna ditch sweetened drinks and only focus on that as my, as my dietary optimization goal for the next two weeks. And then, you know, build on the success rather than, um, try to try to have too long of a to-do list. Yeah,
Carlee (01:03:53):
I love that. And then adding to your topic on sleep, I, this cannot be discounted. I think that’s such an important thing to bring up because when we look at the pillars of health, I think sleep sometimes gets disregarded or it gets thought of as a less important pillar or one that, oh, we’ll get to that later. Right? But I think one thing that I’ve noticed just from looking at so much data is that, that pillar of health is just as important as your diet. So even just one night of sleep had you had mentioned, or one night of, um, you know, fragmented sleep can drastically impair your body’s insulin sensitivity for the whole next day. So I think that’s where it’s important to look at your data and then look through the lens of, well, how is my sleep? How is my stress? What is my diet doing? How’s my activity? So kind of working through those factors and identifying which one might have had the biggest impact. And then you can pull kind of some, some levers to, to change that up and to optimize it over time.
Brad (01:04:51):
Pull those levers people, like the number one bestselling book right now in the world, atomic Habits, James Cleary talks about setting this really low bar that you can easily jump over and then celebrate that victory and then, you know, inch forward over time with stuff that’s doable and sustainable and not overwhelming. And again, back to the, the the app and the data, you know, seeing that you had a good day and you did what <laugh>, you know, you did what you set out to was get adequate sleep, you made some healthy choices with your meal times, you went for a walk after dinner to mitigate that postprandial spike. And there it is right there. The numbers don’t lie. And it’s a wonderful tool for behavior modification. Perhaps, uh, like you alluded at the outset, maybe that is the, the number one, you know, contribution to the planet that, that Nutrisense can offer is we’re gonna get people to change their behavior in real time and really see it and, and feel it viscerally.
Carlee (01:05:51):
Yep. And then as James Cleary would say, stack those habits up, right? Good one, stack another one on top of it. Don’t look at it as the whole thing needs to change at once, but maybe identify where your weakest point is and then you can continuously add to that. And that’s, I think, where the beauty of this can take us, which is exciting and why I’m such a, so happy to be a part of it.
Brad (01:06:11):
So where is this movement headed, Carlee? Do you see the potential for 180 of the 340 million Americans wearing a patch at any one time? I mean, is it gonna be complete widespread implementation? I know that the mainstream medical system dragging their, their heels on everything per per typical, uh, but they now offer this technology and it’s available to people who are in the pre-diabetic category. But again, there’s no support with one-on-one experts. That’s certainly not sustainable by, you know, insurance model. But, uh, are we gonna blend someday to where <laugh>, you guys are gonna knock on the door of Kaiser or something and say, Hey, you want to, um, <laugh>, you want our little dream team to come in and, and help you reduce your diabetes numbers, which by the way, are going to bankrupt the US Treasury by the year 2060, according to data cited by Dr. Doug McGuff. Imagine type two diabetes alone, no other diseases, but just type two diabetes. The growth rate and the cost of caring for patients long term is going to bankrupt the country unless we do something to stop the, the traumatic spike in cases.
Carlee (01:07:20):
Yep. It’s, uh, it, it truly is an epidemic and I think a lot of times, you know, we get pushback from maybe the diabetic community that this shouldn’t be used in off-label circumstances
Brad (01:07:32):
Oh, so sorry about that. I’m gonna cry.
Carlee (01:07:35):
Yeah, and I, I feel for it. I understand where they’re coming from, but I think we are in a place right now that if we do not do something drastic, if we don’t change the trajectory of where we’re heading, we’re nobody’s gonna like where we end up. So that’s where I think and there’s a lot of really great CGM companies out there that are also doing this, but we’re trying to, you know, get CGMs recognized for these off-label purchase purposes of prevention and metabolic health promotion versus that reactionary approach that our medical system always takes. We’re trying to kind of just build awareness around how powerful this data can be and hopefully just be a part of the movement where, you know, maybe not all of those people will have a CGM, but a good, good majority will understand, you know, what value they can get from this data and be open to trying it, um, and hopefully get those costs down so that it’s something that’s accessible to every single person.
Brad (01:08:26):
That’s such a funny term off-label. I’m going off-label with my CGM man. I can’t believe I got a, I got it on the black market from Nutrisense. Yeah. So, I mean, might as well go off label before you go on the records as a another, uh, statistic. Um, so people, now’s the time, you know, I got a sweet deal for you if you want to go sign up for Nutrisense. Um, but tell us how we can further connect with you and what the company’s doing. Carlee?
Carlee (01:08:52):
Yes, it’s awesome. Well, if you wanna learn more about us, uh, we’re really active on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter. So even if you are not really interested in wearing a CGM and you just wanna learn more about glucose, we’re always just posting really cool things there. So follow us at Nutrisense.io and then if you wanna learn more or try a CGM for yourself, you can visit us at Nutrisense.io. And then for me, look me up on LinkedIn, Carlee Hayes, and I’m happy to connect on there as well.
Brad (01:09:22):
Carlee Hayes, everybody. Thank you for listening to the show. I love sharing the experience with you and greatly appreciate your support. Please email podcast@brad ventures.com with feedback, suggestions, and questions for the Q and A shows. Subscribe to our email list at bradkearns.com for a weekly blast about the published episodes and a wonderful bimonthly newsletter edition with informative articles and practical tips for all aspects of healthy living. You can also download several awesome free eBooks when you subscribe to the email list. And if you could go to the trouble to leave a five- or five- star review with Apple Podcasts or wherever else you listen to the shows, that would be super incredibly awesome. It helps raise the profile of the B.rad podcast and attract new listeners. And did you know that you can share a show with a friend or loved one by just hitting a few buttons in your player and firing off a text message? My awesome podcast player called Overcast allows you to actually record a sound bite excerpt from the episode you’re listening to, and fire it off with a quick text message. Thank you so for spreading the word and remember B.rad
