Switch the B.S. meter to the “on” position, and listen to the wise and powerful Dr. Cate (DrCate.com) address many myths and misconceptions about keto and other ancestral health practices on this hard-hitting show.
Brad has avoided caffeine his whole life so he wouldn’t “fry his adrenals.” Dr. Cate calls BS. How about eating in the evening – that makes you store fat, right? Probably doesn’t matter that much, says Cate. We know lots of conventional wisdom that has been shattered in recent years by thought leaders in alternative health like Dr. Cate, Mark Sisson, Robb Wolf, and the rest. Now it’s time to get further nuanced with Cate’s examination of some of the stuff even super cool progressive health folks might be stretching reality on.
One example is trying to go keto when you aren’t starting out as a healthy fat burner. Everyone talks about the “keto flu” as something to endure and tolerate on their journey to the promised land. This is simply not true. Of course, we get deep into Cate’s pet crusade against refined high polyunsaturated vegetable oils, called out as the single worst thing you can ingest. These toxic, highly reactive vegetable oils inflict damage at the DNA level immediately upon ingestion to the extent that Dr. Cate says they are, “literally no different than eating radiation.”
Speaking of vegetable oil, you can even generate ketones eating a crap load of toxic vegetable oils. You’ll get a keto gold star, and you’ll also feel fatigued and be inactive, and develop insulin resistance, fatty liver, and increase your risk of stroke. This may counter the recent popularity of “dirty keto” where you are “allowed” to eat a bunch of junk food as long as you hit the requisite macros.
Oh yeah, you know those headaches that happen during a busy, sugar crash burnout day? This pattern can become a serious matter whereby you suffer from frequent mini-strokes when your brain is deprived of oxygen due to overconsumption of carbs and the brains over-reliance on sugar. Prominent author Dr. David Perlmutter calls Alzheimer’s “Type III diabetes” due to the close association between insulin resistance and cognitive decline.
Good news shared by Dr. Cate is that you can reverse early brain problems and stroke risk by transitioning to a more nutrient-dense, lower sugar, and especially keto friendly diet. This is no funny business, as Dr. Cate offers the stat the typical western diet derives 66 percent of total calories from the big three main most offensive modern foods: sugars, grains, and refined vegetable oils. Dr. Cate is not afraid to call out entities like Harvard University for aggressively promoting nutrient-deficient diets for decades, spurred by corporate influences and the almighty dollar. This is highly disturbing, and greatly inspiring to take matters of health into your own hands.
Listeners, you can’t get any better than Dr. Cate when it comes to learning about breaking science and the practical application of simple, do-able, sustainable health practices free of hype and gimmicks and promoting of longevity. Enjoy the show and get things straight.
TIMESTAMPS:
When you’re insulin resistant, pre-diabetic or diabetic, it’s very difficult for your body to produce ketones even while following a ketogenic diet. [05:16]
Snacking on fat foods will help keep you away from craving sugar. [07:57]
There’s no such thing as a healthy snack. [09:34]
If people feel bad when they are fasting, it’s called hypoglycemia. [13:04]
Our body makes ketones for the brain. [14:02]
Most people are not healthy enough to fast for very long because they have this toxic fat and their body is going to resist burning fat and insist on burning sugar. [16:43]
Some studies show that a ketogenic diet made out of vegetable oil instead of good fats, you really get fatter. [18:18]
If you are working towards a keto diet but you are hungry for a snack, you have to honor that hunger signal. [19:34]
Having frequent headaches when you are carb dependency eating pattern, could be a bad sign. [20:33}
99 percent of people who are overweight have a metabolic problem as a core issue that needs to be resolved before they can really regain control. [29:33]
Cate talks about the deceit that came out of Harvard studies on nutrition. [31:13]
Basically, if the American Heart Association says it’s “heart healthy,” it’s probably a red flag! [33:48]
Calories do matter. {38:57]
Alcohol is a precursor to acetate and ketones are also a precursor to acetate. [41:58]
What is the benefit of caffeine? [44:27]
How do supplements play a role? [49:54]
We are in a human experiment, eating junk food and seeing how fast we die! [58:31]
Many doctors hand out nutrition information that is incorrect. [01:01:01]
What helps longevity? [01:03:44]
LINKS:
LISTEN:
Get Over Yourself Podcast
Brad: 00:00:08 Welcome to the get over yourself podcast. This is author and athlete, Brad Kearns, discovering ways to be healthy, fit and happy in hectic, high-stress, modern life. So let’s slow down and take a deep breath. Take a cold plunge and expertly balanced that competitive intensity with an appreciation of the journey. That’s the theme of the show. Here we go.
Brad: 00:03:08 Hey listeners, more from Dr Cate Shanahan. I hope you thoroughly enjoyed the first show where we got to know all about her background, especially the four pillars of the human diet. And now we keep rolling. We had some great momentum at a wonderful stay at her home in Connecticut and I said, let’s throw down and call this show Dr Kate setting us straight. So we get into some of the conventional notions, especially about the ketogenic diet as well as many other topics including supplements, uh, the use of caffeine, uh, the pros and cons of using caffeine cause I’ve stayed away from caffeine my entire life. And then she basically said that all my belief systems were bullshit and that caffeine may be just fine for me to indulge in.
Brad: 00:04:03 So maybe I’ll start drinking coffee. I don’t know, on those mornings when I’m a little tired. Anyway, uh, regarding the Keto thing, I think setting everyone straight is really important because the runaway success of the Keto genic diet has brought in a lot of hype and misinformation. Most particularly the distinction between stuffing your face with high fat foods in the name of going Keto and doing Keto correctly, which is stimulated by the burning of stored body fat, not ingested body fat straight up. Wow. Enjoy the show. She’s going to set a straight is a very important show to listen to, especially if you are deep into the health scene like I am and always willing to try the latest, greatest diet supplement, even fitness practice that’s going to get you a 5% advantage. That kind of thinking. Of course you could have worse problems like being a lazy ass that won’t get off the couch, but I think we need to check our enthusiasm sometimes and run it through Dr Cate’s bullshit meter, which is on fire during this show. Enjoy more from Dr Cate Shanahan in Connecticut, but not for long. She’s moving to Florida. Whew?
Brad: 00:05:16 Here we go. Hope Rolling. And this is picking up the conversation from last night’s wonderful dinner by our gourmet chef, our catered meal by Luke who happens to be in house. He’s an inhouse, uh, just at your disposal frequently. And that great meal from the create local Connecticut, uh, market and the quality meets one of the, one of the highlights of living here. You said, uh, but we got into a sorted matters of interest and I’m asking you some point blank questions and you’re like, bullshit. And then they asked you another question. Bullshit as well. So this is like the bullshit meter is turned on. We’ve got a red light. We could turn on the neon sign. Um, first topic Keto and the incredible hype and popularity of the Ketogenic Diet. There are some do’s and don’ts. It turns out and there’s some misunderstandings, misinterpretations. So where do we start? Turn on the mic.
Cate: 00:06:11 I guess you could start with, you know, you don’t need to follow a ketogenic diet to get all the benefits of ketones and for your body to produce ketones, right? Cause your body will naturally healthy body will naturally produce ketones from your body fat. When you go long enough between meals that you are sourcing your body fat as a source of energy, it only happens, you can only do it if you’re healthy enough. If your metabolism is not in this unhealthy state that we call insulin resistance. Or if you’re experiencing hyperinsulinemia or prediabetes, which is kind of the same thing, gone a little bit farther down the road of disease and then diabetes, which is even further down the road. So when you’re insulin resistant, prediabetic or diabetic, it’s very difficult for your body to produce ketones even following a ketogenic diet. So this is why, um, a lot of folks feel like they don’t do so well. I know on a ketogenic diet probably because they really need sugar, they’re not healthy enough to, um, be able to produce ketones. So, so there’s not quite ready for it. So that’s why with “The Fat Burn Fix” I’m gonna have them get ready for, for that.
Brad: 00:07:23 And just, well, you helped us work through the Keto reset diet protocol where we had this first phase, “The 21 Day Metabolism Reset” where it was like, hey, ditch grains and sugars and bad vegetable oils before we even talk about this Keto stuff, because we want you to get skilled at burning body fat. So if you try it without the requisite skills in place, what’s going to happen? In other words, oh, I’m going to do Keto, I’m going to cut my carbs. So how many carbs? Oh, 50 grams a day. Okay, I’m going to jump from point A to point B. What happens?
Cate: 00:07:57 You might feel kind of bad like it is what they call the Keto flu, right? Sometimes they’ll come, it can come from that. Um, but so would a lot of people do to get by with that and still be following a ketogenic diet is, is to snack, right? So they’ll snack on high fat and protein foods, which can definitely help because it’s not necessarily gonna help you produce ketones or lose weight, but it helps you get away from this dependence on sugar.
Brad: 00:08:24 So the justification for dumping a giant glob of butter in your coffee or a hitting, hitting the bacon really hard four times a day is that it’s keeping you away from the dark side of retreating back into sugar. Or hopefully it is because you’re satiated with your, I always say you just have a handful of macadamia nuts. If you’re thinking, if you’re dreaming of the cliff bar in the afternoon and that can be a, a, a uh, a stop gap.
Cate: 00:08:50 Yeah, I mean that, that might work. Yes, absolutely. But if you’re trying to lose weight, having, you know, a handful of macademia, it’s can have 200 calories, you do two handfuls, that’s 400 suddenly now you’re talking about if you’re my height and you’re trying to lose weight, that’s, that can make it impossible to lose weight. So if you’re not able to make it that full span of time between meals, then you want to have, um, you know, s a much, you want to be very careful about how much calories you actually consume as part of the snack. And so that’s why I like, I have a whole protocol for it in “The Fat Burn Fix” that I get people through it. Um, without having to do that. Cause I want to get people off snacks basically.
Brad: 00:09:34 Yeah. So what’s the, uh, what’s the, what’s the issue if you’re snacking in a healthy manner and eating Keto friendly snacks?
Cate: 00:09:44 Right. Well, so, so truly there is no such thing as a healthy snack. I a healthy snack oxymoron because back on that for a moment, because it’s always going to be better to get your metabolism healthy enough so that you can burn body fat and you don’t need snacks, right? So if you snack your possibly preventing that from happening, Right, you’re preventing yourself from dipping into your body fat. And you know, burning body fat is absolutely essential to producing ketones.
Brad: 00:10:16 Oh, but wait a second. What about my powdered ketone supplement or my bacon and butter regimen?
Cate: 00:10:23 Right? So like, so the idea of having a ketone supplement to lose weight is, is rather nonsensical. Um, it’s, it’s, you’re gonna get the benefits, the brain benefits and the energy boosting benefits of ketones. So that it makes sense on that level, but not to help you lose weight because ultimately to lose weight, you have to burn your body fat. That’s why my next book is called “The Fat Burn Fix”. We’re talking about body fat. We’re not talking about, you know, fat that you just ate because why burn fat that you just ate. The Sung can help you lose weight. You have to burn your body for that.
Brad: 00:11:00 Again, we’re just trying to progress toward this state of metabolic flexibility where we’re burning body fat and dialing in whatever desired body composition we want is a piece of cake. It’s like a, I call it putting your hand on the dial on saying, yeah, I want to drop three more pounds. I’m just going to turn the dial and then make it happen. So if you’re progressing toward that goal, I think supplements can come into play if they’re keeping you away from the dark side. Same with the snacking, but have that thought in the back of our mind that this is not, this Keto thing is not about stuffing your face with fat bombs and instead you’re looking, you’re envisioning a, uh, a wonderful reality where you’re just so good at burning body fat that you can give or take a meal.
Cate: 00:11:44 Yeah. It’s like, that’s why I liked the way you talk about metabolic switches and stuff like that. And um, because what you’re trying to do is you’re just trying to revive your metabolism. You’re trying to get your metabolism so that you can burn your body fat, your body fat will give you ketones. So even if you’re following like a 90% carbohydrate diet, you can still generate ketones, right? Just as well as somebody following a 90% fat diet. If you’re metabolically healthy and flexible,
Brad: 00:12:11 You do so by not eating for a time period the longer you go. So Mr carb dude who eats sweet potatoes for breakfast, a quinoa for lunch, and whenever, even though I’m vegan person who’s in a high carbohydrate intake pattern, but it’s getting good at fasting, having these compressed eating windows, whatever the practice is, they can still enjoy the benefits.
Cate: 00:12:35 Absolutely. I mean it’s a common thing with it. You know, when people are sick is a common time where people fast, right? So
Brad: 00:12:42 You told me when I was, I was concerned about my mo Keto numbers and I said, Cate, what’s going on? I’m fasted for 18 hours. I did a sprint workout at night. I pricked my finger. It was 0.3 and you said, well, you know, people would come into the ER with the flu, have high skyrocket ketone values because they haven’t eaten and they’re sick and all that. So she basically said, don’t worry about it.
Cate: 00:13:04 Exactly. That’s exactly right. The, the, the body will produce ketones. If you go long enough without eating, it’s, it’s inevitable. But many people, um, can’t go that long without eating because they start to feel bad and they start to feel seriously bad. In a way that we’ve, we’ve actually, it’s so common, we have a name for it that we call it hypoglycemia and, um, which means literally low blood sugar, but it, it is your blood sugar’s not literally low necessarily. It’s just relatively low. In other words, you need more than your bloodstream can deliver to your brain at any given time. So your brain is not getting enough sugar. And even though your blood sugar might be technically normal, your brain’s not getting enough because your bloodstream just simply cannot carry that many calories and sugar. It can’t carry that much energy in sugar. We’re supposed to be mostly fat-based for, for most of our, our energy.
Cate: 00:14:03 Um, and so this is what ketones really are for. I mean, the reason that we make it this one reason that we make ketones one for one, organ the very special organ, the brain, um, and, and that’s why our body makes ketones. Other organs, our muscles can use ketones. But the reason nature needed to invent ketones is for the brain because the brain is protected by this thing called a blood brain barrier. And the blood brain barrier prevents big molecules from getting into the brain. And fatty acids are big. And so what all that ketones are is basically partly, you know, pre-sliced fatty acids and the liver does the slicing. So you can think of it like a fatty acid is like, uh, the whole chicken and um, the ketones are like the chicken nuggets. You can just, the little very special spoiled can just kind of, you know, pick them up and doesn’t need forks and knives and all that difficult stuff with other cells have to deal with the brain that needs the nuggets. So it just, the ketones diffuse [inaudible]. And um, as a sugar does, but fat can’t do that. So that’s why nature invented ketones for the brain.
Brad: 00:15:13 So what is the advantage of generating ketones via the burning of stored body fat? Because you’re in caloric deficit because you haven’t eaten versus jumping into this dietary pattern where all your meals are hitting your macros and they’re 75% fat and only 20% protein and 5% carbs. What’s the, what’s the difference in terms of health benefits? We know the difference in weight loss benefits is you’re going to lose weight if you’re fasting or eating in, in caloric deficit versus if you’re stuffing your face with bacon, butter and the fat bombs all day. But if there’s any other concerns or yeah,.
Cate: 00:15:49 you don’t make ketones out of the bacon and butter, you make ketones out of your body fat.
Brad: 00:15:54 You don’t make it out of ingested fat?
Cate: 00:15:56 Not necessarily. It’s much a much more rare time or much lower concentration of ketones. So it’s all regulated by hormones, right? What your, what your liver does with your fat is regulated by hormones. And when you are, when you’ve just eaten, your hormones are such that the fat that your body gets that would be broken down into ketones were you at fasting where your hormones different actually gets converted into cholesterol so that, um, you know, the bacon and butter that you just ate is going to be converted into cholesterol and raise your cholesterol and have your doctor freak out. So I’m not that your doctor should freak out, but that’s a whole other story. But, but so the, it’s actually a faster, easier way to get into ketosis just by fasting.
Cate: 00:16:43 But as we’ve mentioned, most people are not healthy enough to fast for very long because they have this toxic fat and their body is going to resist burning fat and insist on burning sugar and make them feel really crappy if they, um, stop eating carbs or just stop eating right cause you, if you feel hungry or hangry or whatever, you can eat some butter or bacon, then then you can use that for the other cells in your body and the other organs they can use that fat and that’s, that preserves whatever sugar your liver is making by gluconeogenesis out of the protein you ate for your brain. But, um, it’s a stupid way of doing it honestly because why eat protein for your brain to get sugar? That’s like a waste of animals.
Brad: 00:17:34 because you’re strictly limited in your carbs.
Cate: 00:17:37 Exactly.
Brad: 00:17:39 Your brain still needs the sugar. So it’s going to get it from breaking down muscle tissue in the case. If you’re not eating enough protein in your to some crazy diet, then you’re going to feel tired and emaciated,.
Cate: 00:17:48 right.
New Speaker: 00:17:49 It seems like a common common screw up is just not progressing toward this goal of skipping meals and fasting. Most people aren’t doing keto because they want to lose weight.
Cate: 00:18:00 So, so Keno, you’re ready for Keto once you, um, are no longer needing to fast and then right. And you can follow down. I’m sorry, you’re no longer needing to snack when you can make it between meals. Snack. Yeah.
Brad: 00:18:13 What about skipping breakfast? You’re able to last until noon or something.
Cate: 00:18:18 Yeah. Then you might be ready for eto at that point in time too. And so Keto is good. It has a purpose, but it’s, it’s not everybody’s ready for it at right off the bat. And the purpose of course, Keto is to reduce help reduce the insulin so that you are, you can reverse your insulin resistance a little bit. You know, somebody and reduce that insulin spikes and the insulin spikes, you know, accelerate the whole process of developing diabetes from insulin resistance. And all this, so you’ll, you’ll, you’ll stop that. But the underlying cause is still this toxic body fat, which you have to, um, continually be aware of so that you don’t eat more vegetable oil and, and eat, you know, just build up more toxic body fat. There’s actually a study that shows that following a ketogenic diet that is made out of vegetable oil, um, yeah, instead of really good fats. Um, it when you, when you give animals vegetable, they’ll produce tons of ketones, but they actually get fatter on the same amount of calories because they feel so awful that they don’t move. So they just sit there all,.
Brad: 00:19:23 relevant to the human. Yes. I think that’s very bad.
Cate: 00:19:26 They get fatty liver, they get insulin resistant and they just don’t, they’re not active so that they just get fatter.
Brad: 00:19:34 So could it be an intermediate step to be stuffing your face with fat because you just want to get away from the high insulin producing diet? And Are we okay transitioning over to, uh, I remember when I first transitioned to Primal, I switched. my giant bowl of cereal that I’d had every morning since I was a kid over to this big huge omelette everyday. Yeah, that’s great. Yeah, absolutely. And then afterwards, after a year, I realized when I woke up that I wasn’t even hungry for the six egg omelette with the avocado slices on top that I had every single day to, to get away from my cereal. And then, so when that awakening comes for the person out there who has this ambition to, to go Keto and get all these benefits, they can just kind of work steadily toward that goal of realizing that they don’t need to snack. But you were saying a off, off the air, like if you need to snack in, you’re hungry. It’s just a sign that you’re still working toward better fat metabolism and, and it’s, you have to honor the, that the hunger signal.
Cate: 00:20:33 Yes. He shouldn’t just try to power through it because you could actually, you know, if you get headaches, uh, particularly, you could actually end up getting serious brain problems like even a small stroke.
Brad: 00:20:46 Yeah. So on the show, you talked about the MRIs showing that the people get these, getting these sugar headaches or these depletion headaches are similar to that of the patient with the stroke. Now does that mean if I’m in the carbohydrate dependency eating pattern, I get headaches, I report frequent headaches. Am I messing up my brain? Yes. Like stroke personally. I’m sorry. Yeah. I’m sorry. I couldn’t hear very well in the headphones, did you say? Yes,
Cate: 00:21:08 Yes. And definitely. Oh, that’s, that’s scary stuff. Yeah. Actually it really is. You know, we should be paying more attention to these headaches instead an end to the whole concept of hypoglycemia. It’s a serious problem. And um, and it, it can have serious consequences. And I’m not saying every time you get a headache, you’re, you’re gonna get like a lesion on your brain. But it is an indication that your brain is living very close to the edge there without getting enough energy. And I mean, what is a stroke, right? With stroke is a sudden occlusion of blood and an artery that stops the flow of nutrients to the brain. Well, these headaches that are occurring due to energy crises are occurring because the brain is not getting enough. Maybe it’s oxygen or oh, maybe it’s um, maybe it’s energy, maybe it’s sugar. The brain’s not getting enough of something to operate and um, and it can actually end up being a stroke because when the brain is operating, you know, let’s say your, you know, I don’t know, let’s say you’re trying to do your taxes. So let’s say you’re an accountant and it’s tax season and um, you’re concentrating, you’ve got all these papers piled up on your desk. You can’t take a break. You’re getting a killer headache because you’re using your brain as like any other organs, like a muscle, exercising muscle. It needs more blood, but it’s not getting it. That’s why you get the headache. And so when your brain needs more blood, than it gets, it very well could end up causing a tiny little small stroke.
Brad: 00:22:39 So if we’re living in a pattern of frequent headaches, bad dietary habits, and you add up a thousand headaches, we’re looking towards global brain degeneration and Oh, am I aware of some, is there science showing the connection between the high sugar diet and the increased cases of cognitive decline? I mean, are people touting that kind of association because the glucose is burning dirty as well?
Cate: 00:23:03 Well, definitely. So those people who, um, study this, uh, like, uh, David Perlmutter and Dr. David Polar is kind of on the leading edge of this at least, um, you know, publicizing the studies that have been done. He doesn’t, I don’t think he does any studies himself, but he talks, um, about some really good science and, um, he, uh, has keeps showing that, um, keeps sharing the research where people are developing prediabetes and prediabetes so strongly correlates with Alzheimer’s that he cuddles. He calls all timers type three diabetes. And you know, I wouldn’t say it’s totally reasonable because if your brain is dependent on sugar and you can’t produce ketones, then you are going to get a lot of these tiny strokes and that’s going to permanently damage some areas of your brain and can lead to Alzheimer’s. Um, and that said, a lot of times the brain can still regenerate at any age and a lot of times people do dramatically better when they change their diet. And in fact you can see arterial blockages that are 100%, um, clear up when people change their diet on an MRI.
Brad: 00:24:09 How long does it take to notice those effects or reverse some of the damage of high sugar eating?
Cate: 00:24:14 So this is just an anecdotal story. In this particular case, um, I think it was 35 weeks that between MRIs, like we don’t know how long it really took, but we know that there were three, five weeks between and one showed a 100% blockage and the other one showed a normal looking artery. And it was the, along with it. Um, there weren’t a cognitive tests done, but the, the MRI was done because the doctor that does these MRIs has an MRI machine in his office. Um, just to test visceral fat. Actually he was doing that. He noticed so many people reporting the brain function was improving. He started doing brain MRIs and um, as soon as he started you found this, you know, one guy who had a total blockage and then 35 weeks later he’s a completely different, you know, mental state feels like his brain actually works for him again and, and, and there was no blockage and in a major artery, this was like the middle cerebral artery or something. That’s a big important artery [inaudible] brain. And um, and it was a miracle. It is a heal. He had essentially a major artery blocked and now he doesn’t. And there was no stent, no surgery, no cardiac surgeon or neurologist saying, I’m gonna, you know, open your brain and rewire stuff and router, rooter, arteries. It was all a hundred percent natural. The body doing what it does when supported by a healthy diet.
Brad: 00:25:34 This, this was like a pretty extreme dietary transition where the person went Keto for a number of weeks or,
Cate: 00:25:41 well actually the goal wasn’t really so much Keto. The goal was stop eating vegetable oils, um, and you know, eat whole foods, eat plenty of vegetables and, and get lots of, you know, whole, whole food protein sources, which includes the fat, you know, fatty fish and fatty cuts of meat and not to just eat a normal diet. Basically, you know, a human diet and um, and, and that’s what did it
Brad: 00:26:06 Fantastic. Let’s do it. Do, do it the right way so we can envision this intermediate step of perhaps needing to stuff your face with fat if you come from a world of metabolic damage and all that. And just to keep that satiety going and I guess keep energy jumping right into the bloodstream while you’re someday working toward becoming a good fat burner and a good faster.
Cate: 00:26:29 I feel like I’m sort of just the Keto Diet a little too much, but I use it a lot because it’s very helpful for people who have carb addiction and sweet tooth and stuff like that. You get away from that association that you have with your own habits and then your brain truly has learned to associate sugar and glucose and sweet tasting carbs with energy and its own function being better, being improved. So when you get away, you know when you’re healthy enough to totally drop out your carbs and your sugar and you do that for an extended period of time, your brain starts to rewire itself. Your taste buds start to rewire itself. And that has to happen for any diet to become sustainable. Because until you enjoy your diet and tell you become somebody who craves healthy foods, you’re always going to be living, you know, one stressful day away from heading back to the popcorn and cheese cake and cookies and you know, piles of stuff that you know is bad for you.
Brad: 00:27:27 I’m sorry my, my ear piece wasn’t working in, did you say popcorn? Oh mercy. That’s, that’s tough.
Brad: 00:27:34 Now, just, just for fun. I’m gonna, I’m going to say hypothetically speaking, maybe when, uh, when the, when the popcorn machines going, I really, really enjoy it cause I restricted grains extremely for the last 10 years. Pretty cold turkey on any form of grains, but the popcorn is leaked back in there. So is this, is, is this a constant sort of the, the presence of these, um, whatever they are, high-glycemic foods, the humans wired to enjoy those. And so working through that and, and emphasizing the other foods is going to work to a certain extent, but I’m always going to have like a soft spot for sure. Popcorn or something.
Cate: 00:28:13 Yeah. It’s natural to, to like the sweet thing. Exactly. But you know, I mean I looking at you and knowing you, um, I don’t think anybody would say you have a problem with eating too much popcorn. Right. and knowing that you also crave actually truly healthy food than you do eat a lot of, yeah. I mean, it’s not like you, we had a big dinner yesterday and, and you had for dessert, something like a busted up [inaudible] yeah. So you have it under control as long as it, and that’s what the key really is. The key word there is control, right? Like as long as the popcorn’s not controlling you and you’re controlling the popcorn, you can have your popcorn.
Brad: 00:28:54 And I suppose if someone admitted, Oh, you know that the, the, the pint of ice cream controls me. I haven’t five out of seven days a week. That’s probably underlying, there’s an underlying condition that’s not, you’re a stupid sorry ass loser, but you got something wrong that’s, that’s pushing you toward there, and they’d be accelerated appetite hormones and things like that, that the person like Carrie Tom says, it’s not your fault as his quote about obesity and so forth. It’s because of the hormone dysregulation and the profound cravings for high sugar foods coming from inability to burn fat or the toxic and ingestion of toxic vegetable oils.
Cate: 00:29:33 Exactly. So, I mean, 99% of people who are overweight have the metabolic problem as a core issue that needs to be resolved before they can really, truly, um, regain control. The kind of control that they need to have in order to, for the diet to become a new lifestyle, which is what you have to do. You can’t just follow a ketogenic diet for six months and drop 90 pounds and then expect to get back to regular American standard American diet because that’s gonna be more vegetable oils. I mean, I would say that you could, if we had a normal food chain, the state, the sort of food chain that we had a hundred years ago where there was actual food available in the grocery store, but that 66% of the average Americans caloric intake comes from three ingredients, sugars, refined sugars, flours and vegetable oils, right? So that leaves 33% for nutrition. No wonder people don’t feel good.
Speaker 2: 00:30:27 66% is just you three ingredients. Jeff’s giving you calories to burn in a dirty manner because they might’ve country’s not activated. Right? Right. And very little else. Just shortening your lifespan, I guess. Right.
Cate: 00:30:43 And that’s what’s happened because we have, you know, for the first time now I’m in recorded history. We have children with a shorter lifespan life expectancy than their, their parents. And so thank you very much Harvard. That’s what you’ve done. And telling us to avoid saturated fat and you know, cut salt and worry constantly about your blood cholesterol numbers and don’t eat eggs or anything like that. So that’s, that’s Harvard. That’s the legacy of um, you know, the, the Ivy League Medical Association
Brad: 00:31:13 And the other pillars that we’ve, we sort of automatically or inherently respect due to, I guess you’d say branding and brainwashing, but it’s, it’s a pretty serious accusation. You, you told me Harvard is bought and sold and everybody knows it and when that coconut oil thing came out, and I think it’s pause for reflection where we don’t have time to think critically about this stuff. So we’re going to go to our, our resources, but then it turns out, um, they are cherry picking information. You mentioned the Minnesota, what was it called? The Minnesota Heart tudy that Minnesota Cardiac [inaudible],
Cate: 00:31:48 Minnesota coronary experiment. Yeah.
Brad: 00:31:51 Google listeners. Interesting. As previously suppressed data or in terms like that where you’re like, these people were doing, you know, the high profile scientific experiment and now we’re finding base suppressed data. That’s pretty crazy stuff.
Cate: 00:32:06 Yeah. Yeah. Well we did actually .
Brad: 00:32:19 Get kicked out of Harvard for that supposedly. Maybe not. Exactly. I mean, no joke. Maybe you just get promoted to a tenured professor.
Cate: 00:32:19 It’s the corporate relationships that run everything and so.
Brad: 00:32:21 doing the person’s research so they have to sort of toe the line.
Cate: 00:32:25 Yes, exactly. And that’s the problem is that um, you know, follow the money. It’s a cliche, but, uh, we haven’t done it when it comes to nutrition science and, um, you know, some, there’s like one journalist new social to working in this space. Um, and uh, you know, she has done an amazing job of, of trying to catch people. Um, these are a lot of older people now who, uh, were part of this whole coverup and stuff that has happened over the past.
Brad: 00:32:54 They don’t have a lot of goals. Essentially though somebody really, Huh?
Cate: 00:32:57 Yeah. Yeah. Know a lot of them are dead now cause they, I mean this was done so long ago, right. But, um, when she was doing the interviews, uh, a lot of people, she tried to interview her, we’re kind of like duck and cover. They were like, I can’t talk about that. Like gag order type stuff, you know, CIA level, you know, black ball. Just I don’t want my family to get killed sort of scenarios because the edible oil industry kind of is big as big oil right when it comes to nutrition that is big oil and they run a lot of the research and um, they basically run these institutions of so-called higher learning and medicine.
Brad: 00:33:37 So when we see that heart healthy on the label of the vegetable oil, you told me the price tag this was into to get on to get the heart healthy terminology on your food label.
Cate: 00:33:48 Yeah. Companies pay $750,000 for the heart healthy check. So like Kellogg’s and um, you know, the people who make honey nut cheerios, they bought that. Um, and that was the price tag, you know, 15 years ago. I imagine it’s gone up now. If they still have that now they have or they may have something else, but there’s always some way to earn money by um, trying to say you’re healthy and having the American Heart Association, um, you know, say that they improve. So basically if the American Heart Association says it’s healthy, it’s probably a red flag that should we get it?
Brad: 00:34:20 Well that’s a nice pop off comment, but we also have to go back to what the last 50 years have taken the advice of the American Heart Association and seeing the rates of heart disease, obesity, cancer climbing to the point where now the kids are going to live less likely than their parents. So where wherever you stand on the sides of the debate in your previously, uh, near and dear beliefs, we obviously have a major massive problem here in modern society where a large portion of the people are trying to do the right thing. I mean, we have the junk food. If a stupid lazy loser who sits on the couch, plays video games and eats crap and good luck to them. But all these people who are working out in, in a devoted manner and shopping and watching their calories and looking at labels that say heart healthy, that’s the part where there’s the extreme concern that we’re being brainwashed and manipulated due to corporate interests.
Cate: 00:35:14 And they end up eating the same three ingredients that the stupid lazy guy on the couch.
Brad: 00:35:20 Those right versus, right, right. The deep fried onion rings. Wow. Okay. We’re checking off our bullshit meter box and oh, just back to the Keto story. So it seems like there’s this common notion that if you just stuff your face with enough fat, you’re gonna make a bunch of ketones and you’re going to the higher number, the better. And you’re shaking your head going, no, no, no, no.
Cate: 00:35:44 Right? So, I mean [inaudible] you, ketone production in the liver is regulated by your hormones. And so the, the state of your hormones that has to occur is low insulin, which you’ll get, you know, more readily following a lower carb diet than a higher carb diet. But how also has to be high glucagon and you’re not going to get that when you’ve just eaten. So, um, and, and even just a little bit of food will bump up your insulin level enough that shuts down ketone production because the body has to prepare to store the fat, right? So that’s the real thing is that your body is getting ready to do something different with the fat that it receives. The liver doesn’t know where the fat came from. It’s just receiving fatty acids. But it does know how many it’s getting at once and what else is coming along with it. And that is a signal of what to do with it. So if it’s getting a whole ton, it’s going to start making cholesterol particles so that it can go to the body fat for storage. And if it’s just getting a little bit in dribs and drabs and it has little bit of insulin and a lot of Glucagon, then it’s going to start breaking up the fatty acids that it gets into little pieces, snips, sipping them up into ketones.
Brad: 00:36:59 So it’s never ever, ever going to get a whole ton of extra fat if you’re not eating. Because as, as human, uh, metabolic function is going, like you’ve taught me a wonderfully, the body makes exactly what it needs and no more of anything ever including ketones. So for fasting, and we’re asking ourselves to perform at peak cognitive task at our desk, or we’re walking on a three hour hike or we’re an athlete who’s highly fat adapted and is going for a tempo run of an hour and hasn’t eaten in 12 hours. We’re making whenever we need to get through the performance so to speak, but no more.
Cate: 00:37:38 Right.
Brad: 00:37:39 In contrast, when we eat the six egg Omelet, we’re slamming down a bunch of calories that we certainly don’t need at the time. Then we’ve got to go to work. And so you’re saying make cholesterol rather than make ketones because of handful of macadamia nuts and our three fat bomb balls.
Cate: 00:37:57 Exactly. So the, the body figures that when you’re getting a whole bunch of stuff coming in, well first of all, it’s got to store it. So it has to, it has to slow down ketone production and it’s shift over into a more cholesterol production. Um, and, and it also figures that there’s probably going to be enough nutrition for the cell, most of the cells to use that, that whatever sugar the liver can produce or whatever sugar was in the food is going to be good enough for the brain so it won’t need to produce ketones. So it’s just, if you, if you kind of like think about, well, why does the body do what it does and what does the body need to accomplish, then it really helps you come up with a lot more logical and reasonable explanations for how things are.
Brad: 00:38:40 Um, I think Peter Attia mentioned that you can also make glucose from ingested fats, the glycerol or from stored fats. So in other words, if you’re not
Cate: 00:38:51 fat adjusted. Yeah. So they all have, they’re all triglyceride. So whether it’s you ate it or your body has it that absolutely.
Brad: 00:38:57 And you’ve made glucose. So if you’re not good at burning fat, you’re not good at fasting, but you decided to go Keto and you bought some random book, not the Keto reset diet according frequently from Dr Cate Shanahan, whatever you want to youtube video. And you start just stuffing your face with fat three times a day or five times a day or having the snacks and just loading up on fat. I have a great anecdote from, uh, my, my friends, a friend who showed up at lunch and whipped out a stick of butter and sliced the butter. Every time she took a bite of whatever was on her plate, she just threw more butter on. Why? Because I’m going Kito right? So if we, if we have this flawed approach, we’re defeating the purpose.
Cate: 00:39:40 Well, yeah, I mean, so many calories that, and how are you going to lose weight if eating extra calories and, um, you know, calories do matter, right? There’s a lot of folks talking about how calories don’t matter. No calories do matter, but they’re not the only thing that matters. So it’s far from the only thing that matters. But um, it’s important to realize that you can eat too many calories on a ketogenic diet very easily because that is so rich in calories. So, um, you know, if what you’re trying to accomplish is weight loss, then that’s definitely a flawed approach. If what you’re trying to accomplish is more nutrients from butter and you’re getting grass fed butter, well then it works for that.
Brad: 00:40:21 If you’re just blindly trying to enjoy the von benefits of high ketone numbers on your meter and you’re, you’re striving to do that through massive ingestion of fat, purposeful ingestion of extra fat, you’re heading down a dead end road, it sounds like.
Cate: 00:40:37 Absolutely. I mean, it’s much more efficient, too fast, you know, and that’s a better way to produce ketones if you’re healthy enough. If you try to do that and you don’t feel good, then you’re not healthy enough and you should do something else right. Like you’re just not ready for, for those high numbers. Just right now, that’s all. Uh, so you mentioned Glucagon, not glycogen Glucagon, which is the counter-regulatory hormone of insulin. So you’re saying when you’re eating any sort of meal, the Glucagon is going to spike?
Cate: 00:41:06 Yeah, so no, I’m sorry. Glucagon is going to drop. You need to have glucagon at a certain amount in order for the enzyme that produces ketones in your liver to be activated.
Brad: 00:41:16 And Glucagon’s role is, like I said, counter-regulatory. So it’s bringing, it’s taking things out of storage and putting them into the bloodstream for energy.
Cate: 00:41:24 Correct.
Brad: 00:41:24 The opposite of insulin. Yes. Right. So when you eat anything, glucagon phones, correct. The pin doesn’t matter. The macronutrient could be at 100% fat snack or Macadamia. And that’s what you’re mostly fat.
Cate: 00:41:38 Right.
Brad: 00:41:39 You’re going to suppress glucagon and thereby inhibit ketone production.
Cate: 00:41:45 You’ve got it. Exactly.
Brad: 00:41:47 Where do the supplements fall into that? So if you ingest directly your mainline, the ketone drink, you’re going to shut off internal ketone production cause you just got some within the supplement.
Cate: 00:41:58 So yeah, that’s a really good question. I mean I don’t know how ketones themselves regulate so cause we haven’t really studied that. Like we know how sugar regulates these enzymes. We know how fat regulars were not protein, but I don’t know how I personally off the top of my head don’t fully know. I would imagine it’s the same as just like any eating it like actually I would imagine is very similar to alcohol because alcohol is basically a precursor to acetate and ketones are also a precursor to acetate. There’s two carbon molecule that, oh,.
Brad: 00:42:30 so now I can drink to tell them get get my Keto.
Cate: 00:42:33 You get the benefits, you get the benefits of ketones from alcohol. You won’t necessarily see ketones at a high level in your bloodstream, but you get the same benefits in terms of energy for your brain because your brain loves alcohol.
Brad: 00:42:45 Not surprised. Right. bullshit meter turning on that wave cycle in your brain, does your brain burn alcohol efficiently? I mean,
Cate: 00:42:54 well, so what happens is that your liver has to process it. So alcohol as alcohol is not good, right? It’s a solvent. But what happens is your liver at if you drink slowly, your liver processes it to ask to and can make ketones out of it or can make fat out of it. Um, uh, and a lot of other stuff it can make out of it. But, um, but so if your liver, if you’re, let’s say you’re drinking at this perfect rate where you don’t really get too much of an alcohol buzz, most of the alcohol is quickly converted into acetate. Your brain is then going to be experiencing the benefits of ketones. And I truly believe that a big part of why people like alcohol is because it gives you this energy benefit to your brain of ketones. It of course, it also is a solvent and a social has like all kinds of social lubricant effects, which are wonderful for a lot of folks. And you know, that releases dopamine and whatnot. But, uh, but you know, you have to really moderate it because it is a solvent and can be toxic.
Brad: 00:43:57 So if you’re sipping red wine throughout your evening at the art gallery, your brain is making wonderful insights. Looking at the abstract paintings.
Cate: 00:44:06 Yes. And you are most, um,.
Brad: 00:44:08 Did you make up that term alcohol as a social lubricant? That’s very nice. Descriptive term. I feel a little lubricated here. Okay, well meet that audience to process the rest of that.
Cate: 00:44:23 I stole it from somebody. I have no idea who I’m.
Brad: 00:44:27 so now with our rapid fire bullshit meter turned on my on get some of the topics cause you’re kind of tripping me out throughout the morning here. And um, I was talking about my aversion to coffee based on my longstanding belief, uh, highly informed that I am, but I, I didn’t want to ingest a central nervous system stimulant this dates back to when I was an athlete because I want to experience my full fatigue level every day as an athlete. So it informed my training decision accordingly. I didn’t want to slam myself with a coffee and heavy metal music and go out there and pedal when I really was kind of tired and dragging and stiff and that was my thought process. Did I, I didn’t want to pay the price later. And you’re going, yeah. Yes. So what do, I mean, what do you think about that?
Cate: 00:45:13 So caffeine is kind of miraculous in that it, it like magnifies the, um, effect of your adrenaline. But if you are super tired and you don’t have any adrenaline and then it’s going to have no effect,
Brad: 00:45:26 caffeine is not going to have any effect. It just not going to pick me up if I’m already down.
Cate: 00:45:31 Yeah, right. Oh, you know, this is your metabolism follows the textbook rules.
Brad: 00:45:37 What are all these Nick Nolte sayings in, in the Woody Allen movie where he’s staggering around until he gets his car? Cause obviously he looks trashed. Like people were saying, I can’t function without my coffee.
Cate: 00:45:46 Well, so what happens is your body’s very smart. If you always have coffee say at seven in the morning, your body says, okay, I’m not going to produce so much of whatever, like cyclic amp or whatever thing that it, your cells are getting energy from the, the adrenaline or I’m not going to even produce that much adrenaline, I’m just going to wait for the coffee. Right? So it’s you habituate to it. If it’s a, if it’s a, a ritual kind of a thing. So then you become, you know, temporarily dependent on it. And if you go cold turkey, you’re going to feel bad for a few days, but then things will restore and you’d be fine again or you just cut down gradually. You’ll never notice anything.
Brad: 00:46:24 Is it a time of day thing or is it just the general ingestion of the substance of your body or biological clock is used to the jolt.
Cate: 00:46:31 Yes. Your, your, your body and your, um, these circadian hormones are very tied to time of day and biological clock. So they keep track of what time it is and what time you were getting your coffee and, and they, um, turn up and turn down accordingly.
Brad: 00:46:48 So it will magnify the effect of a adreniline. And is that, is there any adverse, uh, the effects to that?
Cate: 00:46:57 If you have like, um, you know, like a tendency to get cardiac palpitations, then you can get more palpitations but they’re not considered dangerous. Um, beyond that, no. The, the most of the problem that people have from caffeine is from the other stuff that comes with coffee or tea like that. Theobromine and like Zia Xanthan and uh, some of these other molecules that actually kind of upset the stomach a lot or over activate the nervous system in the stomach. So get really grumbly crampy stomach. A lot of people get that kind of thing. Um, some people get like, uh, breast cysts or cysts in their skin from caffeine for some reason. I don’t really know, but I’m sure it has something to do with, um, the, the caffeine itself and uh, and or just like the other ingredients in coffee, so they have to avoid it. But you know, beyond those, those kinds of complications that some people have, for the most part, it’s, it’s a pretty wonderful substance. That’s I think, isn’t it like the most like beyond it might be water. Cause I know there are people that don’t drink water.
Brad: 00:48:05 Your dad drinks anything lives on caffeine, does these midnight work binges and then goes back to sleep and then drinks more caffeine, drinks more coffee.
Cate: 00:48:14 He’s either drinking coffee asleep or doing crossfit. That’s his lifestyle. And he’s been that way since I’ve known him, which has been awhile. So
Brad: 00:48:25 and he’s an example of highly productive longevity. He’s in his seventies and he’s still working hard and working out hard. So somethings going okay for him.
Cate: 00:48:32 Caffeine can’t be that bad.
Brad: 00:48:35 Could you use it as a uh, you know, a performance enhancer if it’s time to go to your workout at 5:00 PM after a long difficult day at the office and you’re not quite feeling jacked up or at 3:00 PM when it’s time to work on your presentation for tomorrow and you’re just dragging ass a little bit.?
Cate: 00:48:52 Yeah. So maybe right. Like it depends if you are able to produce adrenaline that, you know, if you get enough adrenaline going on your own, then it magnifies that effect. But if you just are so wiped that you don’t really produce enough adrenaline, um, then it’s gotten nothing to magnify and it’s not going to help.
Brad: 00:49:11 So it’s not independent. It’s not an independent, it’s not like aspirin or whatever.?
Cate: 00:49:16 That’s not like, that’s not,.
Brad: 00:49:17 it’s not in that same category. So it’s going to take some raw material to mold it.
Cate: 00:49:23 Yeah.
Brad: 00:49:23 Okay.
Cate: 00:49:23 So those things work because they are neurotransmitters and they directly stimulate the nerve. The socap the way caffeine works is, um, the, the neurotransmitter is adrenaline and caffeine magnifies that signal. [inaudible]
Brad: 00:49:36 I suppose you would say there’s no good, uh, outside source of neurotransmitter magical energy that’s not gonna put you in the, you’re not going to lose teeth eventually.
Cate: 00:49:47 Yeah. The eye, those, that seems like dangerous territory when you’re giving yourself no transmitters. Yeah.
Brad: 00:49:54 Okay, good. The, onto my next category was supplements. The supplement world, the multibillion dollar supplement world. One of my favorites. PS vaunted to help, uh, suppress the, uh, flow of fight or flight hormones when you’re in an overstated, overly stressful state, such as a day of jet travel, jet lag, a heavy training where you’re kind of wired on that fight or flight aftermath. And you’d really rather start the recovery process, start kicking into parasympathetic function rather than sympathetic dominance. And the story sounds wonderful to me. Um, but you’re, you’re smiling again. Like, wait a second. Okay.
Cate: 00:50:34 So your pancreas digests that PS so that it’s total BS, but time it’s tough. So yeah, your pancreas was lie paces ?and lie paces?. The job of lay paces is to help you digest triglyceride and um, and fat and fat and separate fatty acids from other molecules. So there’s a specific kind of lipase that the pancreas produces that breaks down, um, the, uh, the Lecithins and which is, uh, p s is a type of lecithin or it’s a, yeah. Um, it’s, it’s kind of like fatty acids bonded to something other than glycerol and, um, and it breaks the fatty acids off and so that it’s not ps, by the time it’s been digesting, gets in your blood stream, it’s not that anymore. You have like ethanolamine and two fatty acids.
Brad: 00:51:27 Is that the case for quite a few supplements where you’re just swallowing something that’s going to be a just plunged into an acidic bath in the stomach and rendered uh, irrelevant. Useless.
Cate: 00:51:42 Yeah, exactly. Because unfortunately, um, you know, for people who spend a lot of money on supplements, but I, I, you know, the, um, so many people where we don’t learn to cook and so it just seems so much easier to swallow a pill that’s going to have these miraculous effects. But what they are doing is they’re selling you stuff that your body makes out of food. And if you eat it, even if you eat it in the food, you know when you eat eggs, you get a good amount of phosphatidylcholine, but still your body probably picks it down and has to reform it, you know, so, so that it, um, and it may or may not elect to reform it. It may take those fatty acids and do something completely different with it. Or I may break down the ethanolamine and turn it into something completely different.
Speaker 3: 00:52:31 You can’t control what the body’s going to do once you give it these raw materials. But most supplements are [inaudible] or stuff like that. Like alcolene is another example. It’s stuff that your body, your cells need to make this and they need to make it. And if you’re eating it and giving it to your body, your body doesn’t want to be told what to do. A lot of these things have regulatory effects on the cells. And so when you eat that sort of thing, if your body couldn’t digest it, you would be in big trouble. So it’s a good thing that you’re, you’re wasting your money on your supplements because if you weren’t, you would, you know, bad things would happen when you’re regulating your cellular, your metabolism, and your cellular activity by what you eat, because that’s not how it’s done. The cells need to be in charge of what they’re doing, not your, not your, your supplements that you’re taking.
Brad: 00:53:18 So what do you mean it’s a good thing that you’re spending the money on this stuff?
Cate: 00:53:22 That’s a good thing that, that your body, that you’re wasting your money on stuff that [inaudible] that it turns out that it’s a waste of money. Because if it actually tied in fast, it could be bad,
Brad: 00:53:30 right? So if I get the message from a functional medicine practitioner or whomever saying, you’re, you’re, you’re training so hard, you’re depleting your B vitamins. And so you need a B complex as well as in it manganese and you need this one and you need that one because we’ve identified you and some somewhat repeatable, but say it’s a blood test or whatever. That’s the usual protocol, right? You get tested and they say, Oh, you need some more iron. If it’s a a straight up MD and looking at your, your CBC or if you’re going to a Wu doctor and they’re going to pick out these other things that are going to magically heal you are we do we have a percentage of of bs on that whole, that whole thought process and that whole protocol of taking targeted supplements.
Cate: 00:54:12 So if you’re replacing something that your diet is deficient in, then that’s a good thing. If you’re replacing something, if you’re eating something that you’re, you’re getting enough of already, it’s not really doing very much good.
Brad: 00:54:26 any bad way.
Cate: 00:54:30 No, I mean not if it’s close to balanced, right? If it’s way in balance, which most of them are, then it can be bad. And we know that like vitamin a increases the risk of certain kind of lung cancer, you know, so there’s
Brad: 00:54:44 the calcium magnesium balance too, right? All the old ladies are taking calcium and they’re depleting magnesium accordingly because they’re over overdosing.
Cate: 00:54:51 Yeah. Or their bodies just can’t use it without the full compliment of stuff. So it ends up in their arteries. And so, you know, there’s that u shaped curve right at your, it’s bad if you don’t get enough, but it’s bad if you get too much. And this applies to, to, you know, all the essential nutrients, acids, vitamins, minerals.
Brad: 00:55:09 Do you think that we’re good at identifying deficiencies? So if I go in and spend hundreds of dollars on some fancy pantsy tests,
Cate: 00:55:18 no, we’re very bad at it because the reason is simply that we can’t measure what we need to measure. And so you can be peeing, spitting, and um, you know, donating blood for these tests, but you really need to measure the tissue concentration and nobody’s taking biopsies.
Brad: 00:55:36 Can we do that to a live person without much trouble? I know you can go take a muscle biopsy and see are fast twitch, slow twitch, but it’s super painful apparently. And, and, and who was prohibited and all that.
Cate: 00:55:46 And it would also be worthless because we don’t know what the normal levels are since no one’s done it. The first few people to start normalizing. Okay.
Brad: 00:55:56 So really, um, there’s no good way to determine.
Cate: 00:56:02 there’s one good way.
Brad: 00:56:04 Check all four boxes and eight the four pillars of world cuisine.
Cate: 00:56:06 Measure what you’re eating and.
Brad: 00:56:09 how do you do that?
New Speaker: 00:56:10 So well, my favorite app is the chronometer. They should be like giving me some sort of additions, free ad space on their site cause I direct everybody to chronometer C–H-R–O-M-E-T-E-R. That’s the funnest app to use for just like it gives you all your vitamins, minerals, amino acids and stuff like that. I just type in what you ate and see what you’re regularly deficient in day after day. And that’s probably something you should supplement.
Brad: 00:56:34 Uh, so the RDAs are pretty respectable.
Cate: 00:56:38 What’s the best thing we have?
Brad: 00:56:39 Right? We don’t have any better. Right?
New Speaker: 00:56:41 So what Genova labs is doing, which is very interesting, is they’re creating their own sort of database out of like what is the spectrum of the population? And there they’re calling the middle of the road. There are normal, it may not be, but that’s how they define whether you’re good or bad. And in a world where we eat mostly junk food and, um, you know, our metabolism, we’re 90% of the population is insulin resistant. I’m not sure that that’s very, you know, valuable. What they want to do is they want to normalize it to those few percentage of the population that doesn’t have insulin resistance, but they’re normalizing to their whole population. So
Brad: 00:57:17 let’s, let’s, let’s go check the Olympic athletes and mobilize to that. I mean, it seems like if you took the most exceptional health specimens, like the, the, the 107 year old guy that cut my hand yesterday and drunk driving from upstate New York world’s speed golf championships to here in southern Connecticut. Uh, Mia Moore and my girl, read a news story about this guy who was getting lauded for his, uh, longest Guinness World Record, oldest barber. And it’s like, wait a second. Newberg is on our route to Dr Kate’s house and we stopped off and this dude came you a haircut at 107.
Cate: 00:57:53 Yeah. From the 50s. Right. And I look like Don Drake.
Brad: 00:57:56 He, he got me good. It took his time, but something that guy’s doing is working and everyone kind of, you know, they, they default to, oh, he’s lucky he has good genes. Let’s write that off. And uh, I’ll, I’ll cross my fingers and hope my fate isn’t a disaster. Like it has been for people in my family tree. And I think that’s what your life’s work has been about as to second guess this kind of notion and say, Hey, look, we, you know, if you’re not eating the four pillars and you’re getting two thirds of your calories from, from crap, you’re, you’re tempting fate, right?
Cate: 00:58:31 Absolutely. There’s no way you can be as healthy as you should be if that’s your diet. And an importantly, there’s no way you can have children who are as healthy as they could and should be if that’s what you’ve been eating. And if that’s what you feed them,
Brad: 00:58:46 it’s a lot of damage done for the first 18 years where your kid ate too much crap and now some things we had a window of time there. Like your brain development. Yeah,
Cate: 00:58:55 absolutely. But I mean like autism, right? Just you’re born with that you can do a lot better when you fix your diet. You can do, you can have remarkable turnarounds when you fix your diet, but you are starting from a different baseline, you know, tragically. Right? It’s, it’s, there’s opportunities that are lost all around this country, you know, for the past 50, 60 years thanks to Harvard, thanks to the lie, the, that created this experiment that we’re all living now where we’re eating 60% of our calories from absolute junk.
Brad: 00:59:24 What was that quote? Uh, I mean you, you characterize it as um, the great human experience. Really. It has been an experiment to see how many people die. I forget your exact words. It was pretty gnarly.
Cate: 00:59:38 Well, yeah, I don’t know what I said, but I mean it is, it is an experiment that we’re all living in and it’s an experiment to see, you know, um, w how much chronic disease we can create. You know, how long we can keep people with chronic diseases alive. And while we continue to foster the development of more chronic disease, we want to keep them alive with PR, with prescriptions, right? So we let them to keep eating their junky diet that’s making them sick and invent prescriptions that keep them from dying so they can remain consumers of our crappy diet. And all of our pharmaceuticals make profit. That’s the segment that we’re living in. And it’s very dystopian. It sounds dystopian and it is dystopian. I mean, it’s completely, this is my, that’s my life as a doctor is, is like opening people’s eyes to that reality so that they can opt out of the system altogether. And unfortunately, you know, people have some, you know, fortunately people have a sense that that’s happening and they’re going more to alternative methods. And unfortunately there’s just as many shysters. And the alternative medicine world as there are, you know, I mean, doctors don’t go to medicine to become shysters and people don’t go into alternative medicine to become shysters, but they just don’t dig deeply enough into their profitable business models to question whether what they’re doing is really beneficial or could it be, you know, very often beneficial.
Brad: 01:01:01 Right. And just just to, um, just to frame this, it seems like there’s not a lot of, uh, lying devious cold hearted people, but they have blinders on and they’re not thinking critically and therefore they’re buying into, um, the, the conventional notions. Dr Timothy Noakes is a great example where he’s, you know, tearing out pages of his previous bestselling book because he’s open minded and willing to accept a new paradigm, which is the, the, the fat burning paradigm rather than the carbohydrate paradigm in relation to exercise physiology and endurance performance where, and the gay, you remember you said follow the money. So at the Gatorade sports science institute, it’s not hard to follow the money because it’s called the Gatorade sports science institute. And these are people that are highly educated, highly trained, doing their life’s work to see how the body metabolizes certain different types of sugar when you’re out there running a marathon so you can get the best energy, but no one thought about the faster study, which is only a few years old, where it’s like, oh, long distance insurance athletes don’t even need sugar at the extreme examples, they can go on fat and ketones if they don’t throw those gels down their throat every 20 minutes,
Cate: 01:02:08 right. If they’re fat adapted. Right? Yeah.
Brad: 01:02:10 It’s a kind of a more peaceful way to, to look at it. But boy, to my shout out to like a this physician world who dispense dietary advice, I just have to, I just have to raise my hand and go bullshit. Because if you’re, if you’re, if you don’t know what you don’t know, that’s the most number one ranked, most dangerous worst than the shyster who’s spouting off and you know, uh, just uninformed or even devious. But wow, how do we, how do we turn this around? How do we tell the doctors to shut their mouth when it comes to dispensing nutrition advice, for example?
Cate: 01:02:47 Yeah, exactly what I mean, what you have to do is you have to have yourself a compelling enough story that people believe it. And so, you know, I usually start my consultations with people by telling a story like, here’s my philosophy so that I can elect so that people, I mean can elect to decide whether it makes sense to them or not. Right?
Brad: 01:03:08 Well if you go a strict hardcore Vegan, and so you’re, you’re departing from the 66% eating shit and now you’re going and having your lentil soup and your brown rice, um, I imagine any departure from standard American diet is going to generate fabulous, wonderful results. Okay. Now the follow up question and being like, are we looking at trouble a year later or two years later because you’re not getting the glycosaminoglycans from the meat on the bone and you’re not getting the organ meats. And so you’re going to kind of wind wind down the benefits and you’re gonna start feeling depleted?
Cate: 01:03:44 Well, I know you want to feel depleted so much as you just won’t feel as good as you could. Right? Like I guess, you know it’s, it’s kind of more like, um, it’s a way to age faster, right? If you need something that you’re not getting, you’re gonna age fast and.
Brad: 01:03:59 we have no reference point. Right? Cause we 80 I mean we do have reference point. Jeanne Calment from France is the world record holder. I intend to beat her. She’s 120. She died at 122 years old. Go look at her on Youtube. She has an interview when she was 119 sharp as attack and then ordering her a wheelchair person to, to move her along if the interview was over. It’s beautiful. The Bosh and she said, yeah. So we have reference point and then we think eight speaking to two thirds, we think 80 is impressive. Longevity. Two thirds of our potential is just fine. And so that, that’s seems weird to me when we know that a human can go this long.
Cate: 01:04:39 Well, not everybody can cause it really depends on your connective tissue.
Brad: 01:04:43 So like you do tissues,.
Cate: 01:04:44 a big longevity is the determining factor of your quality of life as, as you age, your as what holds you together, right? It’s what makes up your joints. It’s what makes up your skin. So if you’re somebody that has skin that looks pretty good, chances are that your joints also look pretty good. I mean, it’s not 100% there, but, um, but chances are that it cause it what you want is joints that last, and of course, very, very important is your arteries, right? We can’t really see these unless we do an ultrasound. But does that killed camera tissue or they’re made out of connective tissue. So arteries, skin joints are made out of connective tissue. Okay? So they’re, they’re not, they’re not skeleton, but they’re made out of like Collagen and cartilage and that kind of, um, supposed to be elastic.
Cate: 01:05:32 He stretchy, sturdy stuff and they’re supposed to not have aneurysms. And if our connective tissue isn’t that good, they develop aneurysms and they bleed and we die. Um, and, and, um, if our connective tissue is not good enough, then our joints hurt, you know, way more than they’re supposed to as we age. And we don’t exercise as much or exactly. So it can be a vicious cycle and shuts us down. So, so there are some people who are just that truly genetically lucky and you know, blessed basically with this fantastic connective tissue. We’re all supposed to be that way. Mind you like that’s supposed to be an, and it’s something that we, um, get with birth with our birth certificate, but because our diets have been sort of screwing for generations now our, you know, our genes aren’t at their full potential anymore.
Brad: 01:06:24 Didn’t she have the cutoff date of 1950? So if you were born before that and you were raised on these home prepared traditional meals, you’re, you’re way better off than the postwar baby baby boomer who was eating TV dinners instead of grandmother’s bone broth.
Cate: 01:06:43 Exactly. Exactly. That’s right. Yeah.
Brad: 01:06:45 Do our best to catch up by consuming the four pillars of world cuisine. Cate Shanahan “Deep Nutrition”. Thanks again. This was going to be a short show, but we got into it and I appreciate, yeah, you’re, you’re doing great stuff. Go get the book. Where else do we connect with you? [inaudible] to tissue Dr K. Dot Com.
Cate: 01:07:04 Dr K. Dot Com. Yeah, but mostly I’m in clinic, you know, working with people every day. Just me
Brad: 01:07:12 fighting, fighting the battle on the front lines and also I think that’s what, that’s what I like about it is you get that special insight where you’re not just sitting in a lab doing research or sitting in a a beautiful office writing books, but you’re also dealing with real humans and getting coughed on like you, like you said, making sure that you have your fermented foods to to ward off illness in the winter time, all that stuff. Right. All right. Thanks for listening everybody. Dr Cate bringing it.
Cate: 01:07:36 Thanks Brad. It’s been fun.
Brad: 01:07:42 thank you for listening to the show. We would love your feedback at getoveryourselfpodcast@gmail.com and we would also love if you could leave a rating and a review on iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts. I know it’s a hassle. You have to go to desktop iTunes, click on the tab that says ratings and reviews, and then click to rate the show anywhere from five to five stars and it really helps spread the word so more people can find the show and get over themselves because they need to. Thanks for doing it.
