The Paleo DietÂ â Robb Wolf on Paleolithic nutrition, intermittent fasting, and fitness

Nicki: It’s time to make your health an act of rebellion. We’re tackling personalized nutrition, metabolic flexibility, resilient aging, and answering your diet and lifestyle questions. This is the only show with the bold aim to help one million people liberate themselves from the sick care system. You’re listening to The Healthy Rebellion Radio. The contents of this show are for entertainment and educational purposes only. Nothing in this podcast should be considered medical advice. Please consult your licensed and credentialed functional medicine practitioner before embarking on any health, dietary, or fitness change. Warning, when Robb gets passionate, he’s been known to use the occasional expletive. If foul language is not your thing, if it gets your britches in a bunch, well, there’s always Disney+.

Robb: As Jim Carey might have said, all righty then. Welcome back folks.

Nicki: All righty then.

Robb: Welcome back wife.

Nicki: Welcome back. Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of The Healthy Rebellion Radio. What shall we talk about in our opening segment here, hubs? Do you want to talk about Harry Potter and the ways that

Robb: Oh, yeah.

Nicki: … Harry Potter leads to-

Robb: Magic is real, folks. Magic is real.

Nicki: Yeah. We are currently on the fourth book of Harry Potter, which is the Goblet of Fire. We recently finished the Prisoner of Azkaban. And for those of you who are Harry Potter fans, you will know that one of these spells that Harry learns in the Prisoner of Azkaban is how to repel a Dementor, and which is like these soul sucking-

Robb: Monsters.

Nicki: … monsters that guard this prison, and anyway.

Robb: Don’t give away too much for the two people that haven’t followed the books.

Nicki: But he learns a spell toward them off because he’s particularly sensitive to these Dementors and the spell is, Robb?

Robb: Expecto Patronum.

Nicki: Expecto Patronum. So, this was… What was this? Thursday?

Robb: Thursday. Yeah.

Nicki: Last Thursday. And we drop the girls off at jujitsu and then we go and usually lift or do a sauna at the Montana Athletic Club while in their jujitsu class for an hour and a half. And we dropped them off and we were driving-

Robb: It was a very snowy day.

Nicki: It’s literally like three miles away.

Robb: Yeah, it’s not far, but legit snowy day. Like one of the snowier days we’ve had.

Nicki: Yeah. And so, we’re driving, we round this one corner where we’ve seen several people in this one ditch and there’s a gentleman there who his car is in the ditch, and he’s on the phone and we stop and we’re like, “You okay?” And he’s like, “Yeah, I’ve got someone coming.” So we’re like, “Cool.” We drive on. And then we’re on this very straight, straighter than straight road, and we’re 500 yards from the turn to the-

Robb: From the promised land. Yes.

Nicki: From the turn to the club. And Rob goes… He simultaneously-

Robb: Well, I have a tendency to out of nowhere grab Nicki’s quad, and I pinch between the vastus lateralis and the VMO, which is some spectacular tickle.

Nicki: Trying to make me laugh.

Robb: Yeah.

Nicki: He goes-

Robb: I did this while canting, Expecto Patronum.

Nicki: Expecto Patronum, and he grabs my thigh, and I’m like, “We’re going off the road.” He veered the-

Robb: The car just went-

Nicki: … ever so slightly off into this super fresh powder, and it slopes a little bit. There’s a little bit of a ditch. Not very steep, thankfully, but we’re floating in this powder, and yeah, we ditched the car.

Robb: We did.

Nicki: But the funniest part, I was just laughing. We hit this, there’s a chained fence.

Robb: We had not even finished crashing, and I said, “Well, fuck, that didn’t work.” Because it’s supposed to ward off… It’s supposed to be like-

Nicki: Dementors.

Robb: … the thing. Well, it wards off ultimate evil. I’m like, “Dude, that didn’t work at all.”

Nicki: It was just literally the timing of it was like Expecto Patronum.

Robb: And we’re off.

Nicki: In the ditch, so we learned our lesson. Robb is no longer allowed to cast Harry Potter spells while driving.

Robb: So, now it’ll be spell less VMO vastus lateralis pinching from here on out.

Nicki: Yeah. So, anyway, that was our exciting news from last week. Scroll up a little bit. I want to… We have some announcements because our reset is coming up inside The Healthy Rebellion. Actually this Friday, the January 14th, which is the day this episode releases Robb and I will be doing the kickoff call for this winter 2022 reset. And then next week will be the seven day carb test for those who want to participate in that. Again, that one is completely optional for folks who want to see how their body responds to particular amounts and types of carbohydrates. And then the following week, beginning on January 24th is the actual 30 Day Rebel Reset.

Robb: And you should join that reset just to help celebrate my 50th birthday, which is also January 24th.

Nicki: That’s right. That’s right. So, anyway, the last day to join and participate in the actual reset is Robb’s birthday, the 24th at midnight. But if you’d like to participate in the seven day carb test and just all of the gear up stuff, then you’ll want to join now. And you can do that at join.thehealthyrebellion.com. We always have a really great group and lots of good stuff in store. So, that is about ready to rock and roll. Let’s see any other… I’m trying to think if there’s any other newsy stuff from inside the rebellion, things that we need to mention.

Robb: We have our cold shower reset going-

Nicki: That just wrapped up.

Robb: … or just wrapped up.

Nicki: And we haven’t announced our newest book for the book club, but that will be coming up as well. And I know we have some upcoming workshops with the Basis New York folks there and Grayson Strange. So, that’s coming up as well inside the rebellion.

Robb: Cool.

Nicki: What do you have for our news topic today?

Robb: It’s from a website called Fee, and it’s kind of a libertarian econ, politics, culture, history education. They cover a lot of different topics, but this one is Why the Bastardization of the Scientific Method Is so Dangerous, and the sub tagline, when married to power, an exultation of science can have disastrous effects. The author, a guy named Mike Roberts goes through and details some points out of history, including Nazi Germany, Stalin, Pol Pot, and others who have used science and a bastardization of the scientific method as a means of resting power and control away from the governed, the extended elements of governance, and to consolidate it into a very small group or single individual. He goes through and talks about what the scientific method is and is not. And it’s one of these things that I continually dumbfounded. Like when you see people say things like follow the science or the scientist is settled. There’s just-

Nicki: Or when people criticize me, they’re criticizing the science.

Robb: Or the flip side of that. Yeah. That’s a whole other just holy narcissist Batman ICD 10 level narcissistic personality disorder. But the very, very few things that science is settled on. I haven’t followed the inner workings of physics for a long time. And I don’t know if it’s been hammered out it that… So, we understand gravity. We can predict gravity with remarkable precision so long as the system isn’t super complex, you start getting above two or three elements and you start getting some error that’s involved in the whole thing. But gravity is pretty well describable as to what it does to the physical world, but we’re still, I think, and some of the physicists out there will correct me on this. Again, I just haven’t stayed up on this. There was some thought that gravity causes a deformation in space time. And that, that is kind of… It’s almost like a well, or a hole. When things roll downhill there’s a thought that there may be some sort of wave particle interaction with gravity.

Robb: There’s this thing that we so take for granted and that we can so precisely describe its effects on our world, but there’s still elements of it that we don’t fully understand. The science is not entirely settled. And depending on how the universe plays out for us, there may be pieces of it that we’re never able to fully peel back, that we’re never able to fully describe the why. We may be able to describe how it works and how it influences things, but the deeper question, well, why does it do that? We may not be able to do.

Robb: And so, this idea that any science is settled is just the most antithetical thing to science and the irony that there are whole movements of it proclaiming this. It would be hilarious. It would be kind of an idiocrasy type movie and funny were it not the fucking world that we are living in, and that where we have to share this planet with these idiots. But we do and continue to share it. We will, unless we all die or the planet gets wiped out. And so, we need to push back against this stupidity.

Robb: There are certainly topics, and I’ll piss somebody off with this. Topics like homeopathy where there’s a claim around an effect on the world that we of in, and science has… Put it this way. There are things that are claimed of which there is scant evidence to support the ideas. Maybe homeopathy is a good one to pick on in that regard. There have been studies that look at it, can’t really find an effect. If it were to work, it would be completely counter to any and all understandings of the physical world that we have. There’s this idea that water has this kind of memory depending on what stuff has been in it. If that’s the case then all the water that we consume has been feces and urine at some point. And so, I don’t know how you detangle that from your sore throat tincture that you’re putting together, but there are some things that we… Absence of evidence doesn’t prove that something isn’t true, but you start bill building ever better cases with better probabilities and whatnot around like, okay, well, this idea is probably not accurate and whatnot.

Robb: I’m not too sure what my point is above and beyond that. This is a solid accessible piece written more from the economist perspective, but definitely delving into the broader scientific method. And Mike Roberts is both a chemical engineer. I believe he has a Masters in both chemical and mechanical engineering from Ivy league schools. So, smart guy, really understands scientific method, and is also a solid student of economics. And so, I think that this is one of these pieces that if you are floundering around with, well, how do I push back against this idea that the science is settled? This is a good place to build that basic understanding. And if you have somebody that is banting that idea out, this is a good one to nudge into their inbox or social account, or what have you for them to peruse and most likely dismiss out of hand. But if they happen to be that 30% within this mass formation thing, which Nicki found an article that was hilarious, Reuters has dispelled the notion that there is a mass formation.

Nicki: Reuters has, they found a couple of scientists to claim-

Robb: Fact check.

Nicki: … to fact check it, and it’s fact checked to be false, which I think is-

Robb: Which is so meta. It’s like this mass formation psychosis suggested this whole cross section of society is seeing the world in an inaccurate way. And then you have a fact check that says that that’s inaccurate. It’s just… It’s incredible.

Nicki: I haven’t read this piece that you were speaking about here, but do you think that if somebody shared this with somebody… What it’s occurring to me, and I can’t remember who shared this in the rebellion, but somebody was mentioned lots of people have had different gatherings over the holidays, and meeting up with family members and relatives that they haven’t seen in a while. And one woman related that she was having a conversation with her mother and her mom just threw up her hands and said, “Well, you and I just believe in different facts.” And so, I’m just wondering would… Given that you’ve read it and I haven’t, would somebody be open to reading this or do you feel like this would be another, well, that’s just your facts, and I don’t believe your facts. My facts are different.

Robb: I’m going to anger some people who are probably more my tribe than not. So I’m going to throw something out here and ideologically, and I think epistemologically, I am now probably more in line with most people who are religious Christian. I just seem to have value systems that overlap with folks like that. But some of the things like the creationist museum where this guy Ham hoarded all this money and made this replica of Noah’s Ark and when our contemporary animals were hanging out with dinosaurs and stuff like that. It’s pretty preposterous. The science doesn’t really support that, and I don’t want to attack folks’ religious beliefs, but the Dalai Lama had a statement, which was when our religious beliefs don’t comport with science, then the science has to win.

Robb: I think that that’s a pretty reasonable thing, and it’s not from a value perspective. The thing about science, it doesn’t provide values. It provides facts and descriptions of the way the world works. And then we have to figure out what we value. Do we actually value freedom? And do we value the life that is worth living when we have a world that is a little dangerous and there aren’t completely nerfed edges to everything. I was seeing some back and forth on this continually, like the fact that COVID is a contagious disease in so many people’s minds changes everything, and my rights stop because somebody… If I get COVID, then somebody else could potentially get COVID and die. I just see a lot of problems with that. I could kill somebody driving. Somebody else could kill me while driving. It’s a really dubious, slippery slope.

Robb: So, again, back to this. There are folks that insist that the planet is 6,000 years old, and they will radiocarbon dating and microwave background, echo of the big bang, all the stuff somehow gets explained away. And there was a book Darwin’s Black Box where these folks that were intelligent design people suggested, well, there’s irreducible complexity. Like when we look at living systems, you get to a point where the motor element of a flagella apparatus can’t be any simpler than this, and it was 142 amino acids. And then they found one that was 140 amino acids. And then one that was 138 amino acids. And then they found another procaryotic organelle like structure that looked a lot like subunits of parts of the flagella motor unit. And then there was this other thing that had some other stuff.

Robb: So, there were pieces of both these things that existed in simpler organisms. And this stuff seems to support more of an understanding of the evolutionary process. Now, the evolutionary process, in my opinion, does not outright say that there is no God, and man wasn’t created out of the soil, and whatnot, but it might have been on the timeline of hundreds of millions of years and through an evolutionary process. And not exactly like this straight out of the book of Genesis type of interpretation.

Robb: My whole point to that is that there’s almost easier… Although religion is pretty emotionally charged, but there are folks on both sides of that equation that it doesn’t matter what you throw at them. They’re entrenched and dug in. I came at that intelligent design thing, really, really looking for, desperately wanting to find the spark of God somewhere someplace because the heat death of the universe is a big fucking buzz kill. So, I am not the person going into that in a Charles Dawkin-esque way trying to just be a dick to creationists, but I’m just incapable of bamboozling myself if the evidence seems to point in a different direction.

Robb: Now, it doesn’t mean that I’m right about everything, but if I’ve just been… If the trail is leading in a particular direction, that’s just where it goes. And so, I know, again, that was a long drawn out deal as to the dinner table conversation. I don’t know if this is going to convince somebody, but it walks through… I guess something to do would be to walk through this because it walks through what is the sign scientific method, and what isn’t the scientific method? And then what can the scientific method delineate for us? And what are the different layers of understanding, and knowledge?

Robb: There’s a whole group of people that… And it’s funny, this has existed within nutrition for a long time and the evidence-based nutrition crowd. If there’s not a randomized control trial on something, then it’s complete bullshit because it’s just anecdote. The existence of the universe is anecdote. We don’t have a randomized control trial on it. We’ve pieced this stuff together via inference from the microwave background radiation, and the apparent expansion of the universe, different points in the night sky moving away from us for the most part. And some things moving away from us at greater than the speed of light. These are the realities that we have to deal with.

Robb: I don’t know that they’re inarguable, but it’s the… What’s up for debate is what does it mean? What’s our interpretation of it? But there’s clearly some sort of background radiation that would be consistent with the energy leftover after a rapidly expanding singularity. And even the singularity idea of the universe beginning is changed. But anyway, I’m just fucking rambling now. So, Nicki’s looking at me like I’ve lost my mind, and I probably have.

Nicki: No, no, no.

Robb: I think that at a minimum, this is something to start having a conversation around. It’s like, this is some really basic scientific method stuff, how it works, when it doesn’t. It details historical examples, and it’s always funny because whatever side of the table one is on, it’s always the other side of the table that the Nazis exist on, of course. I think the kind of woke mob branch COVIDians I think are pretty Nazi-esque as to, as far as I can see this because from my perspective I just want people… Like really, the vast majority of this stuff boils down to, I think people should have choice around things. And there are other people who are saying, “No, you don’t get to have choice because your choice is too potentially injurious to the people around you.” I guess in some ways that’s a valid and powerful position.

Nicki: No, it would only be valid if we had a sterilizing vaccine.

Robb: True.

Nicki: But the fact that these vaccines are leaky and you can acquire-

Robb: Well, there are people though that are like, even if there’s that dumb and dumber thing. So, you’re saying there’s a chance. If there’s some scintilla of a chance that disease burden would be decreased, that the potential for death or illness would be mitigated so we don’t overwhelm these hospitals, and our dear medical workers, and I’m being facetiously dramatic here. They will push back on that and say, “Anything to save a life,” Nicki. And this, again, turns into this-

Nicki: We don’t know that it’s saving any-

Robb: We really don’t.

Nicki: All cause mortality looks to be increasing.

Robb: There are some concerning things around that.

Nicki: I know we’re rambling here, but there was another member of The Healthy Rebellion that I believe lives in Quebec, and she shared that Quebec is looking at taxing unvaccinated people extra because of their disproportionate cost to the medical system, but that’s… And the whole comment thread that ensued was there’s a lot of health and lifestyle circumstances, which increase cost to a system. And so, why are we choosing this one arbitrary thing because it’s the popular thing to jump on right now. If you’re unvaccinated you are the other, and the that one-

Robb: The star-belly sneetch.

Nicki: The star-belly sneetch, and anyway, I know we’re going off on a tangent, but this ties into, I came across… Actually, I’m making my way through Carl Sagan’s book, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. Can you scroll up please? The other direction. Thank you. The other up.

Robb: Oh, you know what’s funny about that. Your mouse is set the opposite of mine.

Nicki: Are you serious?

Robb: Yeah.

Nicki: Okay. So, when I say up, you go down, and when I say-

Robb: Yes.

Nicki: Okay. Well, that explains it.

Robb: Yeah.

Nicki: But anyway, this quote from Carl Sagan’s, Demon-Haunted World, which I’m only, gosh, probably a third of the way in, but it’s just talking about… And this was written-

Robb: ’97.

Nicki: ’97, just about the scientific illiteracy that-

Robb: And again, this was 1997.

Nicki: Yeah. And so, let’s jump forward a couple decades and here we are. But anyway, the quote goes, “One of the saddest lessons of history is this. If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge even to ourselves that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” So, I don’t know. I came across it and pasted it in here because it just seems very relevant to all the things.

Robb: Well, it’s one of my favorite books, and it’s one of these seminal science literacy, and really critical thinking books. The interesting thing is for its time, again, circling back to the religious topic. For its time, a lot of what Carl Sagan, and people like Richard Dawkins really railed against interestingly was some of the, what I would consider to be the anti-science position of the religious right. Particularly, within the United States. And interestingly to me over say the last 30 years, as far as I can tell the religious right has mellowed for the most part with many, many, many of these positions.

Robb: When I was in high school, it used to be the really religious kids that would finger wave and well, you’re going to go to hell if you don’t do this, that, and the other. And now it’s the woke mob that because I’m white and male and heterosexual then I’m just literally the ultimate evil and I have visited untold horrors upon all of humanity, and et cetera, et cetera. So, what’s fascinating to me about Carl Sagan’s warning in this book. I think so much of the concern around the religious right is gone now, the for now. And this is something that I’ve talked about also is that if the world can continue to bludgeon, and push in this weird progressivism to alienate people, then you could have a resurgence of really a nasty flavor of religiosity. But at this point, what I find is that most people just want to have their religious faith and they want a free place to do it.

Nicki: They want to be left alone.

Robb: They want a modicum of autonomy around that. And they just want to love each other and love their families. And the vast majority of the friends that we have are quite religious and wonderful people. I’m frankly a bit jealous of their worldview because it’s a little more easy to go to bed at night with this idea that there’s something good awaiting all of us at the end of this lifetime versus at some point the universe is just a hair above absolute zero, and it was all for not.

Robb: That’s a pretty buzz killing of a proposition there, but it’s interesting that all of Carl Sagan’s warnings as far as I can tell are still true, but they ironically now largely apply to the woke progressive mob who has lost its mind and has turned science into a religion and wields it as a cajole in a way that these weird science creationists like Paul Ham with The Creation University could have never done because they were never on the inside. They were never going to be on the inside, but we have people like Tony Fauci, and the CDC, and the FDA, and all these August institutions the appeal to all be in on all this stuff ranging from suggesting that nine year old boys can have periods to all kinds of other stuff that is just anti-science and is… There’s no reason to be mean and nasty towards people because of the way that they want to live, but at the same time, there will be hurt caused by suggesting that there’s absolutely no biological difference between men and women, and on and on and on. This isn’t the topic of this conversation. So, we’ll skirt around that. But yeah, I mean, the Carl Sagan piece, and if y’all have not read The Demon-Haunted land-

Nicki: World

Robb: … or world, I would strongly recommend it.

Nicki: Okay. That’s our lengthy intro.

Robb: Yeah.

Nicki: The Healthy Rebellion Radio is sponsored by our salty AF electrolyte company, LMNT, and LMNT wants to help you say thank you to the heroes in your life with a gift of salt. So, think about someone in your life. Someone who’s been there for you when you needed them. It could be a teacher, a mentor, a coach, a first responder, maybe even a parent who helped take care of your kiddos when you had something urgent come up and needed quick coverage, maybe a coworker who covered a shift for you so you could be with someone who needed you. These are just some examples of everyday heroes. You can nominate them at drinklmnt.com/giveasalt. That’s drinklmnt.com/giveasalt. You nominate them and LMNT will hydrate them.

Robb: Did you make that up?

Nicki: I wrote that.

Robb: You nominate, we hydrate.

Nicki: No, no, I didn’t do that.

Robb: Oh, okay.

Nicki: That was-

Robb: That’s pretty slick.

Nicki: I don’t know who that was, either Kristen or Mike. I don’t know.

Robb: Okay. Somebody smarter than us. Okay.

Nicki: Somebody smarter me. Yes. All right. We’ve got two questions this week, folks. The first one from Ryan on brain fog. Hi, Robb, I’ve been noticing more over the past few years, the phenomenon of brain fog. It seems to most often set in after eating breakfast, which is a rotation of eggs, sausage, and cheese with the occasional bread and oatmeal. Plain eggs is the most frequent breakfast. My question is, are there other foods besides gluten known to cause this fatigue/fogginess like maybe eggs and dairy, and how long does it typically take to set in. Most mornings when I experience the fogginess, it is accompanied by an irritable mood. Important to note that this was never an issue until after high school when my diet changed to include significantly less breads often going a week or more between consuming glutens and obviously getting older too.

Robb: Yeah. I mean, I’ve talked about this a little bit. So, there’s several things that can cause brain fog, like general dysbiosis, fog map issues. Some people with just some of these lectin issues with specific foods or protein, but it definitely seems to be in this mass cell activation pro-inflammatory process. And this is finally what drove me to mainly remove eggs from the rotation because I had assumed for years that despite eating low carb, and feeling generally better, I would just have these periods of time where I just felt terrible. Ironically, it was usually after breakfast, and it would hang with me for about half the day and then not infrequently we would have lunch or dinner was also some sort of an omelet frittata. And then I would feel bad after that, but I started suspecting that eggs were a problem. And then I pulled them out, and felt better.

Robb: And then I think I’ve told the story of introducing duck eggs and I felt better for a while. And then one day ate duck eggs and spent the better part of six hours on the can just like the Moctezuma’s Revenge type deal. And so, I’m super reactive to eggs. I’ve worn a continuous glucose monitor to look and see if this is a blood glucose issue, and it’s definitely not. It’s not altering my blood glucose, but there’s definitely a brain fog associated with this. And again, I don’t know what branch of the immunological process is happening here, but I think dairy is a possibility. Eggs are a super high possibility, nuts are a possibility, and eggs are just so easy for breakfast that I think it’s one of those things that we easy to overuse them, gut issues can set in then. And so-

Nicki: And they’re in a lot of things, too. So like if you’re eating meals that have… Like meat loafs or casserole, they’re a very common ingredient in things. But Ryan, it seems like a really easy experiment for you to do would be to take a couple weeks and just ditch the eggs and either have leftover meat from the night before, or maybe make a batch of hamburger patties on a Sunday then you can have those throughout the week along with if you want to have sausage with it, or just sometimes we’ll just do hamburger patties for breakfast.

Robb: And you know Nicki hates me for this. She doesn’t eat many of them, but I will get one of the Costco sleeves of pre-pattied frozen hamburger patties because I don’t have to thaw it out individually.

Nicki: Because Robb doesn’t like taking the time to patty the patties in the morning.

Robb: Well, Robb cooks 95% of our meals and-

Nicki: You do. That wasn’t a dig. It was just a statement.

Robb: Okay, Doctor Vouch. So yeah, to streamline that like a chunk of fish, just having things handy that is an alternative to eggs. We will do pork chops.

Nicki: Pork chops are a nice breakfast.

Robb: A good one, the kids eat them well, hamburgers. If I’m on the ball, and I remember to take the hamburgers out the night before, or I’ve got enough time to thaw them out, but a brick of hamburger that is like minus 32, it takes a while for it to get up to a spot where I can thaw it out properly. So those pre-pattied burgers although not the tastiest in the world can be handy in the pinch.

Nicki: But it’s also where you can make them in the night before or make them on a Sunday and make two or three pounds of them. And then you have them to eat on throughout the week.

Robb: Although folks who have a histamine problem when you cook in bulk ahead of time, that is oftentimes a problem. So, it’s-

Nicki: That’s true.

Robb: Aha, I win. But yeah. So, Ryan, yeah. I mean, I would do some… At the end of his question, I think he was alluding to I should have just continued eating the glutens. I don’t know, man. Maybe you should have. I generally don’t see it super benefit most people, but I think that over consumption of egg is definitely a problem, particularly in this paleo low carb ancestral health space. I fucking miss the days of just eating a bowl of cereal, but I don’t really miss the blood sugar dysregulation I had from that. So, yeah.

Nicki: Okay. Our next question is from Janine on veganism and the next generation. She says a topic I do not hear addressed much is that with veganism on the rise, what is going to happen to the children born to vegans? I have a friend who is an RN and is an internationally certified lactation consultant. And she says, the babies of vegans are smaller, have lower Apgar scores, do not seem to thrive as well as non-vegan babies, but this type of information never makes it to the news. Those babies were denied so much nutrition while developing and once born the mother’s breast milk is less than ideal. Will these kids be able to reach their full potential despite the lack of nutrients that was in their diets?

Nicki: Our 32 year old daughter has been a vegan for four years or so, and is about to get married. She believes the vegan line that it is a perfectly fine diet. I have a degree in anthropology and there has never been a healthy vegan society since we came down from the trees. My daughter does not believe me. I am an NTP. All I know about nutrition is wrong according to her. She feels, my course was taught by pro-meaters, and therefore they had an agenda. What will happen to our society, if there are not enough intelligent people left to be able to make the hard philosophical decisions that need to be made to keep this ship floating?

Robb: Well, like all turds, it will sink, but Janine, it’s funny. So, we talk about this a lot in Sacred Cow, and Diana Rogers talks a lot about it in the book, and there’s basically a compare and contrast between vegan, vegetarian, and then mixed diet children populations. And they have massive failure to thrive in these non-meat eating cultures. And even the cultures that have dairy consumption. Dairy isn’t a great substitute as a singular protein source for meat and seafood and things like that. It has a tendency to bind different B vitamins. It definitely binds iron. So there’s immunological challenges there. It combines zinc.

Robb: My position, and this is going to sound horrible. We had somebody write in about some of my comments about I just want to see the world burn down because it’ll affect other people more than than us. But my position on this has been everybody out there ready to pop out some kids go vegan, and go hard. Like super hardcore vegan, raw vegan. You don’t need to supplement. Dr. McDougall and T. Colin Campbell say so. You don’t need B vitamins. You don’t need B12. That’s all bollix from the supplement companies, and we just need five, six years of that, and all the bullshit will go away because there will be a trench of children that are so developmentally damaged that you won’t be able to play the smoke and mirror games that they do with standard epidemiological bullshit.

Robb: Janine’s daughter is 34 years old. She was raised with the benefit of living in a modern industrial society with both the benefits and the challenges. And now she’s basically taking an ATM card to her youth and extracting it via a vegan diet at an accelerated rate. And it sounds like she’s getting ready to maybe have a kid, which is going to double down on the extraction. The amount of omega three fats stored in her body are going to be a major determinant of how well the brain of her child develops, and if there’s inadequate elongated omega 3s, it just doesn’t happen. Ranging from zinc deficiencies to iron deficiencies to B vitamin deficiencies, there are milestones both in utero and once the child is born that if the proper nutrition is not provided, that’s it. They miss that milestone. It doesn’t come back. They don’t develop it later. They just never are what they could have been.

Robb: It sounds horrible, but this is just… There’s finally starting to be a little bit of pushback around the cultured meat topic. There’s a few outlets. Like Forbes had a piece. It was like, “This is absolute bullshit.” And Peter Attia had a piece where he had a systems engineer talk about how literally physics in the world we understand would need to change to make the lab grown meat work. But the whole idea of veganism in this “plant-based nutrition” and the narrative around climate change and ethics, and the social justice topics and everything. Everything, the pendulum is 100% swung in this direction that if you’re going to be morally upstanding, battle for this social justice righteousness, and support the planet, then you’re going to be vegan. And you can’t say plant based because that’s just a mealy mouth bullshit thing like say vegan. So, my hope is that lots of people do this and they go real hard. And then there’s going to be a retrospective study that looks at this, and unfortunately is going to be a bunch of really fucked up moms and babies.

Nicki: Well, and what you’re saying sounds awful. If somebody’s listening and they’re like, “Oh my God, Robb, you’re an awful human being for wanting that.” But I get where you’re coming from because then there would be this clear cohort to look at versus what’s happening now where-

Robb: It’s just a slow bleed right now.

Nicki: It’s just pervasive. And so, it’s this slowly creeping across society. And so, it’s not going to be as dramatically defined outlines of the cohort. So, it’s happening anyway, but you’re just saying it would be ideal if it happened in a very clearly-

Robb: There’s some sort of a… I forget exactly what it is, but it’s the trolley car scenario that they roll out in first year college ethics classes where there’s a person on a trolley car. The trolley car is going downhill and you have to either kill the person on the trolley to stop it. Or if you don’t kill that person, then the trolley is going to plow into a crowd of people. And so, it’s this basic ethics thing. And some people come out on one side and other people come out on the other, but ironically we’re in this age of COVID and everything where everybody’s supposed to do their part for the collective, and we’re supposed to look towards the greater good. I do agree with that to some degree.

Robb: So, my point here is that I would really like a concise punctuated exposure of this disaster to a group of people who choose to do it because they’ve got… Actually, you need the means to be vegan at this point and not have it just overtly crush you. So it’s actually not going to encompass much in the way of minorities and the poor and whatnot. It’s going to be wealthier, bougie white people who do this, and it’s going to leave such a mark that you can’t hide this epidemiologically. And then we’ll be able to look back at it and be like, “Okay, if you want your child to be underdeveloped, and lower IQ, and suffer from a host of developmental issues because of missing milestones related to zinc and iron and B vitamins and elongated Omega 3 fats, then eat a plant-based vegan centric diet. And if you want something other than that, then here are all these other alternatives that we can draw from out of traditional food stories.

Robb: But yeah, I mean, the thing is, and I’m glad you fleshed this out. I don’t think I’m a monster. Some people will think I am, but I’ll also be a little bit of a dick and say that the people who don’t get this, they just suck at secondary and tertiary thinking. They’re so mired in the MSN, Fox News, knee jerk reaction-

Nicki: Your soundbite.

Robb: Soundbite bullshit.

Nicki: You did a lot of inflammatory soundbites.

Robb: Yeah, and they’re terrible at stopping and thinking, “Well, what’s the secondary? What are the knock on consequences? What are the tertiary consequences?” The people who don’t understand what I’m talking about there, they’re not good at those secondary things. And that piece that I just mentioned about scientific method is a great place to start piecing that together. And you don’t necessarily have to agree with me. Maybe I’m wrong about this, but this is my idea around this is that Janine’s concern is legitimate. The irony is that in developing countries that don’t have adequate access to animal products, the deficiencies related to development, and this includes IQ and neurological function, height, physical development, they’re identical to what we see in vegetarian and vegan families. They are identical. We see a mitigation on that when the vegan and vegetarian families are able to supplement all the stuff and do it exactly right.

Robb: You don’t see it as severely as we do in these developing country scenarios where the folks are reduced to eating like an 80% starch diet from a mono crop of a starch, and they virtually never get access to any type of dense animal proteins and stuff like that. The type of deficiencies that we see are identical to the deficiencies seen in vegan and vegetarian diets. It’s just in developed countries, you’ve got a CVS or something that you can and go get your-

Nicki: Fortified this and fortified that and supplements. Is there a book? I feel like there’s a book, but maybe I’m making this up where the author compiles stories from lots of people who were vegan and vegetarian and their experience and how their health deteriorated?

Robb: Yeah. There’s some stuff out there. I mean, Leah Keith has some of that. There are some things out there around I that.

Nicki: I feel like there are many members inside The Healthy Rebellion community who were vegan at one point, and their health took a serious turn for the worse, and that was the thing that made them realize that this is probably not the best diet for me to continue following. I was vegan for two years when I met Robb, and had I not met you I probably… I mean, I was thinking I was going to be vegan and do the whole nutritionist thing and consult with pregnant moms. It is sort of a religion. I bought into the McDougall, diet for a new America, the John Robbins, and the whole thing, like hook, line, and sinker. Again, because I didn’t have a solid science background, and they make compelling arguments and cases for their position. And so, it made sense to me with my lack of a more detailed science background.

Robb: Well, even then the science background is tough. A lot of the challenge, veganism is as an intervention or a reset for a lot of people is probably a good move. You’ve been eating a standard American diet, and as a first whistle stop you do something like a minimally processed macrobiotic type deal. It’s probably a good move. It’s just over time, there will be nutrient deficiencies that pop up and god man, the GI problems that end up emerging in a lot of these folks. But as much as I’m railing against it, there are people who go from sick to healthier adopting a vegan diet. But then there’s a continuing timeline where they at 10 years, where they at 20 years, I forget-

Nicki: That’s the thing. I feel like a lot of people that go vegetarian or vegan, I don’t know the percentage, but I feel like a large percentage of them stop that at some point. Again, because health issues, they don’t ever… You’re never vegetarian then go back to eating meat, and then go back to being vegetarian. It’s usually like a one way street out of vegetarianism or veganism.

Robb: Right. I want to say it’s something like 1% of the US population each year goes vegan and then about 1% halts being vegan. And so, kind of it’s this stalemate in that regard. There is this reality that out in the world there’s this virtue signaling element around “plant-based”, and vegan. And so, you get status creds for purporting to eat this way. It is funny that there were some not well designed studies, but studies that suggested that when vegan college age, and a little older people go out drinking that they binge on animal products. They eat steaks and hamburgers and stuff like that. When their inhibitions are low they’re not doing some sort of bukake thing. They’re eating hamburgers. So, yeah.

Nicki: Okay. Anything else you want to say on that one, hub?

Robb: Nope. Probably not.

Nicki: Okay. Well, I think that is all for this week’s episode. Remember to check out our show sponsor LMNT for all of your electrolyte needs. Even though it’s wintertime, you still need to hydrate. You can grab your value bundle box by three and get the fourth one free. Go to drinklmnt.com/robb. That’s drink L-M-N-T.com/R-O-B-B. And remember, if you have somebody that you’d like to nominate for our give a salt program, you can do that at drinklmnt.com/giveasalt. And I hope y’all have a great weekend. Remember to join us in The Healthy Rebellion if you’d like to participate in this year’s winter reset. The last day to join and actually participate in the 30 day reset is January 24th. And if you’d like to participate in the seven day carb test then you should join today because we’re doing the kickoff call here on January 14th. And to join, go to join.thehealthyrebellion.com and hope y’all have a great week, and we will see you next time.

Robb: Bye, everybody.

Where you can find us:

Submit questions for the podcast: https://robbwolf.com/contact/submit-a-question-for-the-podcast/

Keto Masterclass

The keto diet is one of the most effective ways to shed fat and improve your health. Keto Masterclass helps you start keto right, step-by-step, so that you can be successful long-term.

Don’t forget, Wired to Eat is now available!

https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/universities-covid-policies-defy

Covid Policies, Creatine and Kidney Function, Immunity and Caloric Intake | THRR097

Fri, 07 Jan 2022 11:00:44 +0200

Make your health an act of rebellion. Join The Healthy Rebellion

Please Subscribe and Review: Apple Podcasts | RSS

Submit your questions for the podcast here

News topic du jour:

Dishonesty about masking kids results in insanity

To justify masking kids, proponents relied on bio-plausibility, and cited filtration studies, often performed on mannequins. Of course, the physical properties of a mask on a dummy are not the same as asking a child to wear it for prolonged periods of time. If a cloth mask captures 70% of particles or 80%; you still have no idea whether asking a child to wear that fabric mask (and accepting that use will be imperfect) has a net health benefit to that child or others around them.

Universities’ Covid Policies Defy Science and Reason

Parents and students should challenge dogma with data.

Dr. Marty Makary is a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

At these institutions of higher learning and thousands more, science is supposedly held in the highest esteem. So where is the scientific support for masking outdoors? Where is the scientific support for constantly testing fully vaccinated young people? Where is the support for the confinement of asymptomatic, young people who test positive for a virus to which they are already immune on a campus of other immune people?

The data simply do not justify any of it.

For the past two years, this country has imposed extensive, and often unnecessary, restrictions on over 54 million school-age children, even though they are the least likely group to suffer serious consequences of a Covid infection. Instead, we have damaged their education, kept them from seeing human faces, and treated them as vectors without a right to a normal childhood.

College students are not the only young people we have harmed. A recent Brown University study found that “children born during the pandemic have significantly reduced verbal, motor, and overall cognitive performance compared to children born pre-pandemic.” The researchers pointed out that families of lower socioeconomic status were most affected. At the same time, adults have been allowed to socialize barefaced at bars, while children outdoors on playgrounds are still masked. This is nothing short of an abuse of power by adults over a defenseless group.

Podcast Questions:

1. Creatine and Kidney Function [23:04]

Josh says:

Hi Robb and Nikki! Thanks for all you do. The information is so helpful and you are both entertaining to listen to. What is your take on crearine supplements and kidney function? Can creatine supplementation decrease kidney function by increasing creatinine levels or is this just a false indicator as some studies have suggested? https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15273072/

https://pediaa.com/difference-between-creatine-and-creatinine/

2. Immunity and caloric intake [24:52]

Daniel says:

Hi team! I have been following your work for years and have been a member of the Healthy Rebellion on and off.

Recently I have been eating more calories purposely to put on more weight during a strength phase. However, I have noticed that when I am eating more I am feeling more rundown/get sick more often ie sore throat, etc. When I am not eating as much I typically eat in a smaller feeding window and adhere more towards a higher fat/lower carb lifestyle.

When you Google ‘immunity and caloric intake’ it literally seems like each clickbait link opposes the other – one says eating less weakens the immune system, the next says the opposite.

Do you have any opinion or thoughts on this topic? Are the increased calories causing the body to ‘process more’ and therefore create extra work? Or is there no correlation at all and this is just in my head?

For context I am 5’10 74 kg eating ~2800 cals/day to add weight with ~160g protein/day. 38 years old.

Thanks !

Sponsor:

Transcript:

Nicki: It’s time to make your health an act of rebellion. We’re tackling personalized nutrition, metabolic flexibility, resilient aging, and answering your diet and lifestyle questions. This is the only show with the bold aim to help one million people liberate themselves from the sick care system. You’re listening to The Healthy Rebellion Radio. The contents of this show are for entertainment and educational purposes only, nothing in this podcast should be considered medical advice. Please consult your licensed and credentialed functional medicine practitioner before embarking on any health, dietary, or fitness change.

Nicki: Warning, when Robb gets passionate, he’s been known to use the occasional expletive. If foul language is not your thing, if it gets your bridges in a bunch, well, there’s always Disney Plus.

Robb: We are doing this.

Nicki: We are doing it. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to The Healthy Rebellion Radio.

Robb: I haven’t seen you all year.

Nicki: And happy new year. Robb always says that the morning after new year’s Eve, but this year, Zoe beat you to it.

Robb: Zoe beat me to it that little rapscallion.

Nicki: You forgot, and when she woke up, she says, “Morning, dad, I haven’t seen you all year.”

Robb: Well, I was a little distracted this year.

Nicki: We were a little distracted. We lost our Gato on, gosh, it was December 27th, I think, 28th.

Robb: Somewhere around there.

Nicki: Yeah. Thor, who we got in 2015, so Sagan was barely a year old and Zoe was, gosh, probably just about three or a little over three and got him as a kitten and he moved with us to Texas and back here and it was just our really solid mouser, just a good little guy.

Robb: And he was the cat that we thought we had lost and we think ended up in our-

Nicki: In my sister’s RV.

Robb: … in-law’s travel trailer.

Nicki: They swear they never saw him, but he disappeared for five weeks once when we were still in Reno and we just assumed he got taken by a coyote or something because after five weeks, the writing is on the wall. And then one day, he showed up at the back porch and he was filthy and he’s a really he’s part bengal.

Robb: Phenomenal hunter.

Nicki: He was part bengal so he was just this amazing hunter. We’ve had good hunters as cats before, but this guy definitely takes the cake.

Robb: He would catch rabbits larger than himself and then bury them on the sun-facing side of the house and apparently this is what many domestic cats do not display this behavior, so this is still some of his wild Gato behavior coming through and they bury him and let him kind of marinate in the ground for a day or so and then start eating them and it’s pretty spectacular watching something eat another organism’s head that’s larger than his head and he just uses those side teeth and chops through it. But we don’t know what happened to him. We’re not sure if he developed a brain tumor or he got somehow poisoned. He just got…

Nicki: He had come in two days before and he was kind of limping on one paw and so we thought… And then after an hour, he was totally fine. So I thought maybe his paw got frostbite or cold. Maybe he was out roaming around. And so then he seemed fine and then that Wednesday, we came home from jujitsu, well, you and the girls came home because I was running some errands, and Robb found him in the garage laying against the wall crying-

Robb: Panting and crying

Nicki: … and panting. And he had pooped there, which is totally not normal and brought him inside and he was just wailing. And took him to the vet and the vet was super confused. Apparently, neurologically, a lot of the tests that they did showed that he could have been consistent with a rat poison type thing, but not all of them. She was like…

Robb: Is 50% of the things.

Nicki: And then the 50% of the other things was consistent with a head trauma. And if you treat a rat poisoning, it can make the head trauma thing worse. And if you treat the head trauma thing, it can make the rat poisoning thing worse so she was really flummoxed. And so he was at the vet for three hours and then they closed and so Robb went to go pick him up to take him to the overnight vet because he was really not stable. His body temperature was really low and he didn’t make it. He died in the car on the way to the emergency vet.

Nicki: So it was a rough couple days in the Wolf household because like I said, our girls, he was one of their first little animals in their lives and the first time that they’ve lost a pet so.

Robb: Really anything, yeah.

Nicki: Yeah. So very trying. So that was that. But then we had a visit from Dr. Parsley and his girl and had a fun weekend. And our good friends here, the Boons. John made us a phenomenal new year’s Eve dinner and celebration of our anniversary and also new year’s Eve. And so had some good connection, good community. So super thankful and welcoming in this 2022 with flying colors.

Robb: Flying something.

Nicki: Flying something. Let’s see here. I think that’s all of that stuff. I do want to mention a couple of The Healthy Rebellion community announcements. We are in the middle of our cold shower challenge that I’ve mentioned before that’s wrapping up here this weekend. Our kickoff call for our winter 30 day rebel reset is coming up a couple Fridays from now on Friday, January 14th. Actually one Friday from, now that’s the next Friday. And then we’ll do that optional seven day carb test and then the actual 30 day rebel reset starts on Monday, January 24th.

Nicki: So the last day to sign up and participate in that 30 day rebel reset is the 24th at midnight. So if that’s something that you would like to join us in and you’re not already be a member of the healthy rebellion, it’s freedom members, you can sign up at join.thehealthyrebellion.com.

Robb: And I’ll just as a hard sell, the reset by itself which we do three of these a year, most places on the interweb should pay $200 or $300 to do a reset like this and it’s, what are we doing? 30 bucks a month, and maybe we should charge a shitload more, but this is what we’re doing and the community is phenomenal as a baseline. It’s a good… I hate saying safe place, but it’s a amicable place.

Nicki: Well, we get that comment a lot. We get a lot of people saying, “I’m so thankful for this place because I can ask these questions that in other platforms I would be just driven offline or driven into hiding.” So there’s a lot of discussion about a whole host of topics that people don’t feel like putting themselves out there on a platform like Facebook or Instagram.

Robb: And it’s not an echo chamber. There’s definitely a tendency towards kind of a worldview, but there is by no means a complete uniformity. And the funny thing is that people disagree on there and state their cases and then a cheer and celebrate each other as if we were a functional community. So there you go.

Nicki: Like it used to be in the good old days.

Robb: Yep.

Nicki: Yep. Okay. Let’s see. Let’s move on to news topics.

Robb: Just a piece from Vani Prasad which God bless that guy and thank goodness he has not been nixed off of media’s social and other ways, although there’s interesting stuff afoot about social media. Maybe if we all just pulled up stakes and told Twitter, Facebook, Instagram to fuck off-

Nicki: To GFY.

Robb: … and we abandoned them that there would be something magical that would happen as a consequence of that, but we’ll see how that goes. But his piece, the title is dishonesty about masking kids results in insanity, and just pulling a piece out of this very nicely written article to justify masking kids, proponents relied on bio-plausibility and cited filtration studies often performed on mannequins. Of course, the physical properties of a mask on a dummy are not the same as asking a child to wear it for prolonged periods of time. If a cloth mask captures 70% of particles or 80%, you still have no idea whether asking a child to wear that fabric mask and accepting that use will be imperfect, has a net health benefit for the child or others around them.

Robb: And the funny goddamn thing about that is there’s never been a randomized control trial to investigate this. There were some Bangladesh studies that suggested that mass are great for marking in-tribe and out-tribe but almost nothing beyond that.

Nicki: So I’m confused about these mannequins, do they have a hole in their mouth and were they had an airbag that they were pushing through?

Robb: It’s very similar to the CPR mannequin type stuff where yeah. But I mean…

Nicki: So they were forcing air up through the mouth of this mannequin.

Robb: I assume mouth and nose, yes.

Nicki: Okay. I don’t know, it just seems farfetched.

Robb: Well, it’s pretty ridiculous. It’s pretty ridiculous, and you could stack, they had some physicists come in and talked about fluid dynamics which is basically what you’re talking about in a situation like this, but you couldn’t stack the deck more favorably for this kind of mask-centric deal. And I went back and forth on this stuff. When Dr. Fauci first said masks don’t do anything, I’m like, “That seems absurd, they’ve got to do something.”

Robb: And the best deny again in analysis and others’ analysis of that Bangladeshi study that a really well fitting properly applied N95 mask might reduce transmission and disease by about 30%, which is non to reveal but you have to wear it perfectly but you have to do wear it perfectly and you have to do all the right stuff and you can’t be pulling it on and pulling it off and using it as a pirates patch one minute and a face diaper the next. And when we are just talking about your run of the mill cloth masks which are now most of what folks have, they do literally nothing.

Robb: And just as a quickest side, the Bad Gato just did a piece talking about first they came for dot, dot, dot, and talking about people kind of towing the line and all the story, and it was basically a social media post. I think it was a twitter post from this guy who showed up at a restaurant to eat and I think it was in Boston or one of these places that are super locked up and mandated to the gills and…

Nicki: You need to show your vaccine status.

Robb: Yeah. And so I think there were five adults and one child, the child under four, and the adults all had their vaccine proof, but the child did not because the child was under foreign. These folks, even within the insanity of vaccinating children which I think is kind of insane and not well founded in science. And if you say it’s safe and efficacious, we are not yet at the point to have the data to make those statements that may in fact end up proving to be true, but we do not yet have the data to say that stuff particularly when most childhood vaccines are studied for upwards of 10 years before they are generally rolled out.

Robb: Anyway, this parent of the child said to the restaurant owner, “Hey, there are no CDC guidelines on children under four, so you don’t need to vaccinate kids under four,” And they just said, “Hey, our policy is no vaccine pass, we are not serving you so.

Nicki: Did they get up and leave?

Robb: Well, they didn’t get up and leave, they were ushered out. I mean…

Nicki: Okay. Well good, well-

Robb: Well, the restaurant here was not going to serve them. They were like, “No, we are not going to serve you.”

Nicki: I think if I had been sitting in that restaurant, I would also have gotten out.

Robb: I would’ve probably taken a shit on the table and then left.

Nicki: You would’ve spent a night in jail.

Robb: And I would probably spend a night in jail, but I mean, the people who get this get it, and then the folks who don’t, one is really left struggling for… There are going to be some folks that are like, “Oh, I see absolutely no problem with that. The child that was just birthed, the mom should have had the vaccine so that it was transferred to the child and even then, it probably won’t be acknowledged that it was transferred to the child or something like I just don’t know, but.

Nicki: No, the child needs its own vaccination at birth.

Robb: Clearly, clearly.

Nicki: Clearly.

Robb: Yeah, and immediately upon birth. I don’t know, I don’t know. The funny thing about all of this stuff, or maybe it’s not a funny thing, but just it occurred to me is the pushback begins or the pushback starts becoming itself over the top. Some of my thoughts and feelings become over the top because I’m trying to beat the over the top on the other side of this story and that’s not really a great place to go, it’s not a good place to move the whole conversation forward, but I really do think that we’re at that kind of break point that we need to start doing some stuff within the bounds of reasonableness and not spending a night in jail and all the rest of that. So anyway, anyway, okay.

Nicki: All right. I have a second news topic today. And this one was an article by Dr. Marty Makary who is a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and this was featured on Barry Weiss’s sub stack which is called Common Sense. And the title of this piece is university’s COVID policies defy science and reason. And it’s a really wonderful piece talking about a lot of the restrictions and regulations that are at all of these universities and he goes through in details the death statistics, the hospitalization rates for adults ages 18 to 26 or whatever the standard college age is and how little…

Robb: Real danger exists there.

Nicki: Real danger there is, especially when you have to be vaccinated to attend, you cannot be on these campuses without being vaccinated. So the hospitalization rate for a vaccinated individual in this age range is tiny. Anyway, it’s a well done piece, but I wanted to read a couple of snippets from this and again, we’ll link to both of these articles in the show notes so you can check them out later on.

Nicki: So he says, “At these institutions of higher learning and thousands more, science is supposedly held in the highest esteem. So where is the scientific support for masking outdoors? Where is the scientific support for constantly testing fully vaccinated young people? Where is the support for the confinement of asymptomatic young people who test positive for a virus to which they are already immune on a campus of other immune people? The data simply do not justify any of it.”

Nicki: And then further down, there’s another section that I wanted to read. For the past two years, this country has imposed and often unnecessary restrictions on over 54 million school aged children even though they are the least likely group to suffer serious consequences of a COVID infection. Instead, we have damaged their education, kept them from seeing human faces and treated them as vectors without a right to a normal childhood. College students are not the only young people we have harmed, a recent Brown University study found that “children born during the pandemic have significantly reduced verbal motor and overall cognitive performance compared to children born pre pandemic.”

Nicki: The researchers pointed out that families of lower socioeconomic status were most affected. At the same time, adults have been allowed to socialize bare faced at bars while children outdoors on playgrounds are still masked. This is nothing short of an abuse of power by adults over a defenseless group. And that sentence there, we can all go to a fucking bar and drink and talk being right next to somebody on a bar stool or standing crowded while children outdoors are wearing a fucking mask on a swing or on the merry go round or on the monkey bars and it’s got to stop. And it’s time for parents, students college students, the ones that obviously your five year old isn’t going to be making a stand, but we have to push back. It’s gone to far.

Robb: And the thing is there are lots of parents and lots of people, lots of educators that are going to look at folks like us suggesting that we push back against these things that we are monsters, and we’re not, we’re just not in that whole nest.

Nicki: What does the world look like? Okay. So let’s just say that this Brown University study is accurate and that children born during the pandemic are verbal motor cognitive performance is all significantly less compared to people born pre pandemic. What do we have in 20 years, 50 years? What does that look like? And it’s globally, it’s not just isolated to one country.

Robb: Do you want me to say something controversial?

Nicki: I don’t know.

Robb: Well, if it gets too far are out in the weeds, we can nix this one so.

Nicki: Nix what one?

Robb: What I’m going to say next.

Nicki: How are we going to nix it?

Robb: Your dad can edit it the fuck out.

Nicki: Dad’s in Idaho so we’ll have Squatchy edit it I guess.

Robb: Well, Squachy edit it out.

Nicki: Okay.

Robb: Do you remember early in this story, there was this kind of, “Oh-oh, you silly folks, there are cultures that cover folks faces a lot.” Well, it’s not everybody’s face that gets covered, it’s mainly women whose face that gets covered. And the women are still able to see the emotional content of the people around them particularly men who may or may not be abusive or sexually aggressive or whatever. So what’s unimportant in that situation is the emotional content of the person wearing the face covering.

Robb: But the person wearing the face covering still is exposed to and becomes intimately aware of the emotional content of the people around her because those folks pose a significant threat and wield all of the power in those particular cultures. And so this isn’t a uniform thing, and we don’t have lots of examples of uniformity in this, but it was interesting, the lengths that folks went to try to, “Oh, well, this is actually a good thing.”

Nicki: Justify. You know what? I have to read or I’ll see if I remember exactly what it said, but it ties into this, the Gato, boricua Gato on sub stack, he had a post, I think it was either this morning or yesterday where he included a screenshot from I’m assuming the owner of a business and it was basically a notice to all employees that during Zoom calls, so these are all remote employees, during Zoom calls, everybody’s going to be required to wear a mask in Zoom calls. And the reason being is that a member of the team-

Robb: Is afraid of real faces now.

Nicki: … is afraid of unmasked faces. And maybe it was like gets anxiety from unmasked faces. I can’t remember exactly the wording of it. So because one person now has a fear of unmasked faces, everybody who joins these calls for this company has to wear a mask in their own home over a video camera.

Robb: And I guess this is one of those things of well, do you rally to the needs of that in person or not? And it’s an interesting…

Nicki: And there was a commenter that said, “Well, what if there’s people that have anxiety over masked faces? Who do you side with?

Robb: Who do you cater to?

Nicki: Yeah, who do you cater to? Anyway, that was a bit of a tangent, but this Barry Weiss piece is a really great read, it makes a ton of sense all supported by data. And so again, that’ll be in the show notes.

Robb: And funny enough, common sense

Nicki: And common sense, yeah. All right. The Healthy Rebellion Radio is sponsored by our Salty AF electrolyte company LMNT and this is just a public service announcement to remind you that you still need electrolytes even when it’s cold outside. It’s far easier to stay hydrated in the summer. The weather’s hot, you want to cool off, you want to drink something cold, but in the winter you can be just as active but not really have that same level of thirst and I know Robb, both of us in the last couple of days.

Robb: I felt like shit the last couple of days.

Nicki: Yeah. I felt kind of run down or like, geez, what is going on? And we realized we hadn’t had any electrolytes.

Robb: But I just really don’t want to go grab another beverage at the same time so, yeah.

Nicki: Yeah. So we found ourselves dragging and realized we were woefully not-

Robb: Electrolyted.

Nicki: Not electrolyted. So anyway, if that’s you, you might want to grab some LMNT. You can get your value bundle of LMNT where you buy three boxes and get the fourth box free. You build your bundle with all your favorite flavors, and you can do that at drinklmnt.com/Robb that’s drink L-M-N-T.com/R-O-B-B. And let’s see here, we’ve got two questions today, our first one is from Josh on creatine and kidney function.

Nicki: “Hi, Robb and Nikki. Thanks for all you do. The information is so helpful and you’re both entertaining to listen to what is your take on creatine supplements and kidney function? Can creatine supplementation decrease kidney function by increasing creatinine levels or is this just a false indicator as some studies have suggested?”

Robb: Yeah. And there’s a link in there. Creatinine is a breakdown product of creatine, and it can be an indicator that kidney function is going south. But if one is supplementing creatine, if one’s just eating kind of a meat rich diet, if one’s eating a meat rich diet and pretty highly physically active so you have a lot of protein turnover, then we can see higher than “normal” creatinine levels. And I think that this is probably doubly a issue these days because I think folks eat such small amounts of protein that you see an even more profound effect with this, it’s like two different species.

Robb: So yeah, I put in a couple of links in here that kind of talk about this more at length, but it’s interesting there are lots and lots of people with diabetes or diabetic related kidney issues and so that elevated creatinine just rightfully sends alarm signals for many situations, but there’s other situations in which it’s inappropriate for that to be a, a problem or, or to perceive it as a problem.

Nicki: Gotcha. Okay. Our next question is from Daniel on immunity and caloric intake. “Hi, team. I’ve been following your work for years and have been a member of The Healthy Rebellion on and off. Recently, I’ve been eating more calories purposely to put on more weight during a strength phase. However, I have noticed that when I am eating more, I’m feeling more rundown and get sick more often sore throat, et cetera. When I’m not eating as much, I typically eat in a smaller feeding window and adhere more towards a higher fat, lower carb lifestyle.

Nicki: When you Google immunity and caloric intake, it literally seems like each click bait link opposes the other. One says eating less weakens the immune system, the next says the opposite. Do you have any opinion or thoughts on this topic? Are the increased calories causing the body to process more and therefore create extra work or is there no correlation at all and this is just in my head? For context, I’m 5 foot 10, 74 kilos eating about 2,800 calories a day to add weight with approximately 160 grams of protein per day and I’m 38.”

Robb: Yeah. I mean, any type of chronic calorie restriction or calorie excess becomes a stress. And with stress we can see impaired immune function and all the negative things that we really don’t want. It’s interesting that… And again, this is within I think the context of a chronically overfed organism when some amount of calorie restriction or intermittent fasting is introduced as seems to be an improvement in immune function, there’s all this discussion of three days of fasting totally resets the immune system and whatnot.

Robb: And I think that there’s truth to that, but it’s really punctuated. Okay, one dose of three days of fasting has some magic for the immune system. Great. Do we do that once a week, once a month or once a year? And I think that that’s where folks kind of get into problems.

Robb: The flip side of this is that gaining weight and gaining muscle particularly 38 year old person, I think that slow and steady is kind of the way to do that. And 2,800 calories a day isn’t a huge amount of calories, it actually seems a little bit low to be able to get a qualitative shift in weight, so I’m kind of wondering how little Daniel was eating before.

Robb: He also mentioned that when he goes back to normal eating, he’s kind of low carb so I’m kind of wondering if he’s not just eating kind of shitier food under this circumstance too. I’m kind of reading between the lines there and ma is it the total calorie load or is it…

Nicki: Does the food quality change substantially when you move into this kind of bulking phase?

Robb: Yeah. Yeah, because the total magnitude of calorie increase doesn’t seem to be that much, I don’t even know that it’s really in the proper realm to technically gain some weight on. Just eyeballing it, it seems like at least about 400 calories shy but it varies from person to person. But anyway, chronic overeating can and will be a stress so that’s something to think about.

Robb: And also, Daniel, I’m kind of reading the tea leaves here a little bit and I’m thinking that you’re just letting the food quality change significantly enough in this process that maybe that as big a factor is any type of calorie, excess, but don’t know. You could circle back and tell us.

Nicki: Yeah. and if that’s true, then you could also try cleaning up the food quality.

Robb: Maybe one thing, maybe the glycemic load, or maybe you’re adding some wheat or something like that in his context, yeah.

Nicki: Right. And then seeing you could do a little and equals one experiment and kind of improve that if that is in fact something that’s going on and then see if you notice feeling less run down.

Robb: Yep.

Nicki: Okay. That’s all we have for you this week folks. Robb, do you have any other thoughts, feelings, thoughts on the new year? Anything else you want to opine on?

Robb: Cautiously optimistic about 2022.

Nicki: Yeah. I like it. I like it. All right, folks. Thank you for listening. As always be sure to check out our show sponsor LMNT for all your electrolyte needs. You can grab yours at drinklmnt.com/Robb that’s drink L-M-N-T.com/R-O-B-B. Remember to join us at The Healthy Rebellion inside the community if you’re interested in participating in this next 30 day Rebel Reset which officially kicks off on January 24th, and you can do that by going to join.the healthyrebellion.com.

Robb: And somewhere near the end of the month, my training at 50 will see the light of day, but only in The Healthy Rebellion. And that will be my 50 year update so.

Nicki: Exciting. All right, folks. Have a great one, we’ll see you next week.

Robb: Bye everybody.

Where you can find us:

Submit questions for the podcast: https://robbwolf.com/contact/submit-a-question-for-the-podcast/

Keto Masterclass

The keto diet is one of the most effective ways to shed fat and improve your health. Keto Masterclass helps you start keto right, step-by-step, so that you can be successful long-term.

Don’t forget, Wired to Eat is now available!

https://gaiaguru.co.uk/does-cbd-affect-hormones/#:~:text=CBD%20has%20been%20suggested%20to,break%20testosterone%20down%20(4).

Vaccine Hesitancy, CBD and Testosterone, Omega 3:6 While Reducing Sat. Fat | THRR096

Fri, 31 Dec 2021 11:00:09 +0200

Make your health an act of rebellion. Join The Healthy Rebellion

Please Subscribe and Review: Apple Podcasts | RSS

Submit your questions for the podcast here

News topic du jour:

Pre-pandemic cognitive function and COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy: cohort study

“Vaccination is central to controlling the present pandemic, with success reliant on a sufficiently high uptake to achieve herd immunity (Omer et al., 2020).

1. CBD and testosterone [35:01]
Jonathan says:

Hello

I am a 42 year old male, to the best of my knowledge, in good health. I strength train 4 times a week and am looking to keep my testosterone levels optimal. I have no reason to believe my testosterone levels are not good, but am cautious about taking supplements that have a known negative impacts on testosterone.
I am hearing a lot of positive claims for CBD, and believe that you’ve talked about personally using it. Two that are most prominent is: 1. to reduce inflammation and 2. To reduce anxiety.
Do you know what the effects of CBD on testosterone? How does this differ from THC?
Thanks!

Jonathan

“CBD has been suggested to reduce testosterone production by inhibiting the enzyme 17α‐hydroxylase, which makes Testosterone in leydig cells of the testes (4).

However, CBD also inhibits specific cytochrome p450 enzymes in the liver which break testosterone down (4).”

2. Omega 6:3 Ratio When Lowering Saturated Fat [38:19]
Nathan says:
Hi Robb,

First discovered your work in 2009 when podcast episodes were still single digits. My lungs had collapsed 14+ times, I had 3 lung surgeries, and long story short: I put a super rare autoimmune disease into remission thanks to you!
In an effort to make this message easier to process, I’ve tried to ask the question first, then included context below if it’s helpful.

QUESTION:
Dr. Cromwell recommended that I try lowering saturated fats to less than 15% of total calories, keep total fat around 60%, retest in a couple months, then chat with him again. Seems like a good next step. I’ve been mostly eating low-carb paleo + full fat grass fed dairy (keto at times, for mental performance) so I’ve been getting lots of what I’ve considered high quality animal fats…but this recommendation has me scratching my head regarding where I should be getting my ~60% of calories from fat from. I’m planning to increase fatty fish like salmon in my diet, but I’m a bit worried about getting omega 6:3 ratios all out of whack if I cut out much of the grass fed beef, grassfed full fat dairy, wild game, etc I’ve been eating. Egads! Thoughts?

###

CONTEXT:
After listening to your episode with Dr. William Cromwell, I ordered Cardiometabolic Risk Assessment and just got off a great call with him. Incredible person and amazing work he’s doing. Anyway, everything looks good/great except for my cardiovascular risk, which is high (thanks to LDL-C at 174, non-HNL-C at 189, and ApoB at 136). I also have a family history of heart disease at a relatively young age, and though I’m only 34, I’ve been told that cardiac surgery in the future isn’t much of an option on account of the fact that my lung surgeries essentially fused my lungs to my chest wall…so I basically need to just prevent cardiovascular disease in the first place. Given that I tested as highly insulin sensitive on his risk assessment, Cromwell said he’d expect me to do fine with up to 75g of carbs per day (currently doing 40-ish).

p.s., my sister is a fishing boat captain and runs the only all-female crew (badasses) up there. If you and the family ever make it up there, we could get you the family discount (free) to go out on the boat and catch hundreds of pounds of incredible fish to bring back! Great for little girls to see women doing such badass work as well! You’ve made a pretty indescribable impact on my and my family’s health over the years, and it’s hard to thank you enough!

3. CGM sensor and BJJ [45:40]
Jared says:
Hey Robb,

I’m making 2022 the “year of the data” and plan on spending time monitoring sleep, stress levels, etc with a wearable, testing ketones with finger pricks and tracking my blood glucose with a CGM (for at least a month). Any advice on where to place the sensor and how to secure it while rolling? I’m on the mats 4-6 times per week and I plan on using the Freestyle Libre 2 unless you have a better suggestion so ideally the sensor would stay stuck to me for 14 days. Thanks in advance for the insight and also for being a strong voice of nuanced reason during this covid shitshow.

Jared

Sponsor:

Transcript:

Nicki: It’s time to make your health an act of rebellion. We’re tackling personalized nutrition, metabolic flexibility, resilient aging and answering your diet and lifestyle questions. This is the only show with the bold aim to help 1 million people liberate themselves from the sick care system. You’re listening to The Healthy Rebellion Radio. The contents of this show are for entertainment and educational purposes only.

Nicki: Nothing in this podcast should be considered medical advice. Please consult your licensed and credentialed functional medicine practitioner before embarking on any health, dietary or fitness change. Warning, when Robb gets passionate, he’s been known to use the occasional expletive. If foul language is not your thing, if it gets your britches in a bunch, well, there’s always Disney Plus.

Robb: Welcome back, wife. Welcome back, rebels.

Nicki: Hello. Hello. Another episode of The Healthy Rebellion Radio is in progress.

Robb: Nicki was just threatening that she needs to blink twice for help before this one.

Nicki: Yes, I was.

Robb: Here’s your chance.

Nicki: I’m blinking folks. I’m blinking.

Robb: What type of abuse were you dealing with today?

Nicki: All the types.

Robb: Okay. Well, as long I’m being non-discriminatory about how I abuse you.

Nicki: No, you’re not. You’re not. No.

Robb: Yeah. I’m just layering on all the abuses.

Nicki: He was saying that my old factory senses were inaccurate.

Robb: I think I was a bit more harsh than that.

Nicki: Yes. Yes. But alas, we will move on into this episode. It’s freezing here.

Robb: It’s literally freezing here. It’s minus nine degrees today.

Nicki: That’s super cold. Super cold. This episode comes out on New Year’s Eve, so happy new year’s everyone. Happy anniversary house.

Robb: Oh, thanks. You remembered this year.

Nicki: I remembered. I know.

Robb: Aw, that’s cute.

Nicki: I’m usually the one that forgets.

Robb: Yeah. You’ve forgotten most all of them.

Nicki: Well, because you get into the general hustle, bustle of the holidays in New Year’s and it just … I don’t know. I’ve forgotten many a time. Robb has surprised me with flowers and I’m like, “Thanks. What are these for?” But I didn’t forget this year.

Robb: Well, not yet.

Nicki: Not yet.

Robb: Not yet.

Nicki: Not yet. Because it is early that we are recording this on.

Robb: Oh, I am all twitterpated though that you even remember days ahead. It’s kind of amazing.

Nicki: Huh. Let’s see. It’s sort of in flux, but we are planning on making a couple of changes to the podcast this year. Instead of it being kind of so formulaic with five questions every week and-

Robb: What Nicki is trying to say is we’re going to record naked.

Nicki: … No.

Robb: But audio only.

Nicki: We are going to move to audio only, and we’ll talk about that a little bit too.

Robb: For the most part. Yeah.

Nicki: Salty Talks will be video, especially because usually I have a guest or if you’re walking through slides or something, we’ll definitely do video for those. But as far as the actual regular kind of Q&A episodes, sometimes we’ll do the full five questions, sometimes we might only do two or three depending on the question and how long we want to dig into it and also depending on what other topics we want to kind of talk about at the beginning of the episode. We’re kind of making some changes, trimming some things and hopefully it’ll be enjoyable for you all.

Robb: We’re trying to make more fun for both us and you all.

Nicki: And you all. Yeah. And sometimes you just need to change things up, so that’s what we’ll be doing. Housekeeping items with regards to The Healthy Rebellion community. This coming Monday, January 3rd starts our cold shower challenge inside the rebellion led by our rebel Ash Higgs. If you want to get in on that action, just join The Healthy Rebellion. It’s a week long cold shower challenge, lots of great info packed into that course.

Nicki: Again, that’s something you can join inside the rebellion. Our winter 2022 rebel reset also begins in a couple weeks. We’ll do that kickoff call on January 14th, which is a Friday. And that following week we do the seven day carb test, which is optional for those who want to participate in that and learn more about how their bodies respond to particular carbohydrates. And then the 30 day reset officially begins on Monday, January 24th. If you’re not yet a member of The Healthy Rebellion and you want to participate in those two items, just go to join.thehealthyrebellion.com.

Robb: Cool.

Nicki: And then did you want to talk a little bit about kind of your thoughts on what you want to do around social media? We mentioned that we’re not going to do video for the podcast anymore, which means we’re not going to have our video clips dripped out to social.

Robb: Yeah, that’s been kind of the main drivers. We drip a few little hooks for the podcast episode. And I guess we kind of alluded to some of this in a previous podcast about just not really being entirely sure what we’re doing here. With regards to is playing along with the narrative or the … Not really the narrative, but the-

Nicki: The machine.

Robb: … the machine.

Nicki: As Paul Kingsnorth likes to call it in his amazing three part series. Yeah, the machine. And also, one of the reasons for doing the clips, right, is to have a little one minute, 60 second snippet out there on Instagram or Facebook that somebody might listen to and be like, “Gee, I want to go listen to this full conversation.” And we’ve got a year of data on this since we’ve been doing this.

Nicki: And our subscriber numbers for the podcast haven’t really changed in any meaningful way, so I don’t think that, that’s really doing much. We’ve been kind of listening and talking about … Listening to different people, experts in the social media space like Tristan Harris and Daniel Schmachtenberger, and just wondering like what is our place on social media? Is that really serving our business, the Robb Wolf, The Healthy Rebellion, whatnot?

Nicki: And I think for The Healthy Rebellion itself, we have an Instagram page for that, and that I think it makes sense to continue to populate that and try to draw people in. And we’ll still post sometimes on your Instagram. We’re not going to just delete it out of the gate, but I think we’re moving towards that.

Robb: Most likely we’ll open a Substack. And I’m still back and forth on will I do nothing on the Instagram? Will all that stuff just get shot down? Here’s the thing, the back and forth on this is it is a way to reach people. And this is part of the anxiety around being canceled. The irony is if you just shut it off, then it’s effectively the same as being canceled. Only I broke up with you, you didn’t break up with me, and that’s always an easier thing to stomach on some level.

Robb: At a minimum, what I’m going to start doing is anything that I feel like is valuable will go on the Substack. And then I might do a quick screen grab of that, stick it on Instagram and really just provide no analysis and certainly no interaction in the comments there. And not because I don’t want to interact with people, not because I don’t want to help people.

Robb: If folks look back four years ago on my Instagram feed, I spent hours a day answering questions on the front end and then holy shit questions on the back end, because I actually … I think about it like this. 1950s worker man going to the factory, and I have my hard hat on and my lunch pale, and I peck my wife on the cheek, and, “Oh, I’ll see you later.”

Robb: And I actually took the shit on as a job to help as many people as I could. And my kind of rubric was, if I can help enough people, then I’ll figure out a way to make a living out of this stuff that we’re doing. And by and large that worked up until it started not working in that it was just an absolute shitstorm on social media all the time.

Robb: I think before The Social Dilemma came out, but it started becoming obvious about the algorithms that were being used to pit people against one another. Good news spreads okay, but holy shit, bad news spreads so much better. And so it seemed like the only people that would interact with me were the people that there was no way in God’s green earth I was ever going to have a meeting of the minds with them.

Robb: And back in the old CrossFit Forum days, there were people who were really trying to be trolls, but I was kind of renowned for going in and being the troll whisperer and finding some common ground. And maybe not convincing them of stuff, but this was some of the, I think, the reason why CrossFit didn’t just go completely off the skid early on is there were some people like me that were in there and advocating for the more sane elements of it.

Robb: And then it became this thing where you can be articulating sanity, but there will be some person who finds it appalling. And if you’ve got a highly sophisticated algorithm that’s going to ensure that my hopeful sanity gets in front of somebody who’s annoyed by it, then insanity will ensue. And so I’m babbling on about this stuff now, but I just don’t really know how to-

Nicki: We’re-

Robb: … thread this needle, play this game.

Nicki: … going to experiment with this and just see where it goes.

Robb: And it could end up being a gone fishing sign goes up everywhere and people will need a private detective to find me. I just don’t know. I don’t think I’m at that point of my career yet. But-

Nicki: You have things you want to say, and social media is not really the place for it because of the toxic nature and inability to really do long form. And then we have The Healthy Rebellion where it’s the primary focus is getting people healthy, and improving metabolic health, and strength and kind of having that community. But there are some things that you want to say that might not necessarily be appropriate-

Robb: … In some ways it’s-

Nicki: … for there either.

Robb: … yeah, it’s fully people they’re like, “Yeah. Okay, I get it,” or it’s just not … Yeah. Yeah.

Nicki: And so I think the Substack makes sense for you to kind of scratch that itch and be able to say things that aren’t appropriate or aren’t the best fit for either of those platforms. So anyway, yeah, you’ll …

Robb: Keep your eyes open for that. I might even have some shit up around that before this thing goes up. It kind of depends.

Nicki: Okay. Let’s see. I also wanted to … Can you scroll back up please? Thank you. I know this is kind of a long … This is why we’re sometimes going to go to a shorter or fewer questions, because sometimes we have more that we want to talk about kind of at the front end of the episode.

Robb: Well, just to interject there also, it’s interesting that folks are like, “Man, I love hearing more questions about protein, carbs, fat.” And every once in a while we get an interesting one, but it’s super repetitious and we’ve kind of ticked those boxes, and that’s what past episodes are oftentimes for, and they’re very searchable and cataloged, and we have transcripts and everything.

Robb: We will continue to answer questions, but we’re going to be pretty … We’re not just going to grab five questions because we need to fill a five question docket. If there’s not five good questions that came in the previous couple of weeks, then we’re … It’s going to be a shitshow.

Nicki: Well, and also, we’ve been getting some great questions, but some of them are fairly medical and technical. And we’re not sure that this is-

Robb: The right venue.

Nicki: … this is the right venue for that, so some of those types of questions get passed over. Anyway, I had come across an article, or I was reading a Substack article and came across a comment on an article. I think it was Toby Rogers, right before Christmas. And I had shared it with a few people because it was just this heartbreaking comment about a parent talking about her special needs child and how she was struggling with everything going on with regards to the pandemic.

Nicki: And then it was just a few days ago that I was listening to the recent DarkHorse Podcast episode, the unmasking humanity one. And they talk about masks and just all of the damage that is being caused by the mask. You can’t even quantify it. There’s just a lot going on with regards to especially masking children, young children. They talk about all of the muscles that we have in our face that are meant for expression and how we communicate so much with our faces.

Nicki: And when you mask a face, and we’ve talked about this before early on in the pandemic, how we were concerned about that in particular as well. Anyway, Bret and Heather do a great job of unpacking all of that. And then they played a clip from White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, where she was asked by a reporter whether or not the White House had any plans to encourage and easing of restrictions in schools with regards to things like masks. And so they play this like two minute clip of the reporter asking the question and Jen responding.

Nicki: And part of her response was that, “I have a three year old son, and he doesn’t mind wearing his mask at school.” And Bret and Heather go into how absurd of a statement this is. He’s three. Maybe he doesn’t know what he’s missing kind of thing. But anyway, it made me think about that comment that I had read. And I wanted to share it because I feel like reading this type of stuff and hearing it, we have to kind of get back to humanity. And we have to get back to what are these …

Nicki: So much is being done, and so much of it just is up under the curtain or under the carpet and people aren’t seeing it. Unless you are a parent of a child like this, or you’re experiencing this directly, you don’t see it and you think, “Oh, I’m just going to wear my mask and everything’s fine.” I think it is important to kind of highlight some of this stuff.

Nicki: This is a comment by a woman named Juanita. Excuse me. And she says, “I have a very special nine-year-old daughter who is brilliant, beautiful and insightful, yet struggles with everyday tasks, emotional regulation and sensory processing, and now disabling OCD and sadness. Ever since we realized how different she is, I’ve asked myself why. Could it have been the vaccines? I knew enough to postpone the Hep B at birth, but was talked into it when she was two weeks old. Was it having strep four times when she was a toddler, preschooler?

Nicki: Was it the tick bite that she got at three and a half years old, or perhaps all three? School, even preschool has been a hard road for her, but she was doing pretty darn well when schools closed in March of 2020. Every month away she got a little wilder, with angry outbursts over strange things, but was still very happy, until this fall when she became completely overwhelmed by having to wear a mask at school. I got her an exemption, but when she used it, she was forced to distance from the other children and told me she felt like she didn’t matter.

Nicki: She also couldn’t stand being surrounded by a sea of masked faces, whose emotions she couldn’t read. Then the principal canceled morning recess in the interest of longer math time. Within a week, she started painfully obsessing over loose teeth, her inability to swim, the feel of underpants and other random strange things. We thought it would pass, but it hasn’t even when agreed to keep her home and started therapy.

Nicki: She tells me that the longer this goes on, the more she loses hope that she will get back to her normal. Our heavily democratic school system in Fairfax County, Virginia, only cares about zero COVID and magical talismans like masks, not the mental health of my special needs child. The same principal banned her from the class holiday party because we can’t have children attending just the fun parts of public school. The assistant superintendent backed him up and school board members have been silent. The evil is palpable.” Gosh, like …

Robb: Why don’t you read the last part there? I know we’re trying to make this a little apolitical, but this is something that needs to be.

Nicki: Okay. And her last statement is, “I will vote for anyone who ends the insanity that has been our COVID response and will be thrilled to end all school facts mandates if it saves any other families from what we have experienced.”

Robb: I’ve seen this thing probably eight times and it guts me every single time as just kind of a big baseline. The second thing I’ll throw in there is, and this will piss some people off, but I’m just so beyond giving a shit at this point. If you fancy yourself anywhere alone, let’s say the kind of progressive spectrum, and you’re not speaking out against some stuff like this. I mean, if you wanted to follow the science and make a hill to die on, masks are not it.

Robb: We’ve known this pretty well for a long time. We know it better and better all the time. N95 masks worn perfectly with a trained professional might reduce transmission of things like COVID and influenza about 30%. And this is not kids wearing cloth masks using them one minute as a diaper, the next minute as a snot rag. They do absolutely nothing, but yet this has become this-

Nicki: Badge of like …

Robb: … It’s like the Jewish Star, effectively. I mean, within Nazi Germany when they would label, Jews would have to wear these arm bands and whatnot, it is just is completely polarizing us versus them.

Nicki: Right, but in the opposite way. Like , the mask is-

Robb: Well, they used it to identify people.

Nicki: Right. So you’re identifying the compliant.

Robb: And so you’re identifying if you don’t, yeah, you’re compliant versus not compliant.

Nicki: You’re a good person versus a bad person if you wear your mask all the time.

Robb: Here’s my only point with this. There’s going to be blowback to this. My concern always, and the thing that I’ve articulated around this is the blowback may be way worse than what people think. And if you lean a little bit progressive, and you are worried about some sort of legitimate right leaning authoritarian individual coming in, you just can’t create a more juicy environment than the one that we’re in right now.

Robb: And I would say that we’ve had some rather left-leaning authoritarians really trying to take us to task. If Trump had tried to do what has been done over the last year, my God, how people would’ve lost their minds. And not really going to say anything else about that specifically, but just fucking think about that. And I assume most people who are listening to this podcast, we’ve probably chased everybody off who is, I don’t know, not of similar mind on this stuff, which is kind of heartbreaking in and of itself, but these are kind of the talismans and the tipping points.

Nicki: Like this masking thing. And again, if you’re interested in it, Bret and Heather do a great job of digging deep into this.

Robb: Vinay Prasad does a wonderful takedown on this. Well, yeah, there are credible people who speak well to this topic.

Nicki: But we might not know what the fallout from this is for 10, 20, 30 years. This is a period of development, which is critical. And so what happens if a child is in this all masks all the time kind of environment, and what happens when they don’t see faces for … I don’t know how long this goes on, but it’s been two years already. It’ll be a lot of time before we really see how this has affected people.

Robb: What we know for sure is poor nutrition in a two year span of a child’s life can be irreparable, cause irreparable damage. Two years of physical activity can cause massive problems. Yeah, we don’t know yet, but we will know in the future.

Nicki: All right, now we have a news topic. This one we can give a hat tip to one of our Healthy Rebellion members, Nicki. She shared this, this morning actually. And the topic was pre-pandemic cognitive function and COVID 19 vaccine hesitancy a cohort study. And this was in ScienceDirect. You want to dig into that hubs?

Robb: Yeah. And God, I don’t even know where to start on this. I’m just pulling pieces out of this. I would encourage people to read this paper. It’s not that long. In the setup of the paper, there’s a section, “Vaccination is central to controlling the present pandemic with success reliance on a sufficiently high uptake to achieve herd immunity.” And then it links to a paper that they have on herd immunity or kind of a position piece.

Robb: And this is ironic. When the herd immunity drops due to the increase in non-immune individuals either by birth, immigration or loss of immunity to such an extent that the epidemic can again occur, the population has reached an epidemic threshold. It’s ironic that these folks mentioned herd immunity as part of a goal here, because I haven’t heard that as part of a public health goal in two years.

Nicki: Since the very beginning.

Robb: Since the very beginning.

Nicki: It was there in the very beginning and then it dropped off.

Robb: Well, and that it was mainly there as kind of this nebulous, “Well, maybe we can reach herd immunity and maybe we need 70% vaccination,” but there was never anything implicitly mentioned about like-

Nicki: I feel like there was-

Robb: … I’m saying from-

Nicki: … in like February, March, early, early. But then as soon-

Robb: … You think from the mainstream? From like the-

Nicki: … I thought you would mention herd immunity.

Robb: I guess a little.

Nicki: But then once the vaccines it looked like it wasn’t going to take them seven years to take the vaccine-

Robb: I feel like it was-

Nicki: … and that went out the window.

Robb: … 100% oriented on vaccination status though. There was never any word mentioned about naturally acquired immunity.

Nicki: Exactly. Once the vaccines were available, once it was looking like they were-

Robb: So there was a little bit of back and forth. Anyway, it was fascinating to me that this was mentioned as a goal. And it’s particularly fascinating given that these vaccines from their inception have been known to be completely leaky, non-sterilizing, so it’s just ironic that it’s a piece of that. And I did some poking around … This is a different paper from looking at vaccine hesitancy. This is something separate.

Robb: But a quote from that piece “I remain concerned about reaching the most hesitant subgroup of Americans,” said Mejia. “The only way to end this pandemic for real is to get enough people vaccinated that we can reduce the speed of new variants spreading.” It’s kind of two pieces here, the paper that we’re mainly talking about and then this other one talking about, also talking about vaccine hesitancy, which is this claim that the vaccines do anything with regards to mitigating transmission, which does not seem to be the case at all. It might mitigate severity of disease, at least for some people, but that’s as-

Nicki: … Well, if you were using the-

Robb: … generous as you can-

Nicki: … definition of a vaccine that was on the CDC six months ago, where you have like a … It’s a killed virus, and it prevents transmission and spread. And now the definition of vaccine has changed so that it’s-

Robb: Yes and no, but even the influenza vaccine is not a sterilizing vaccine. We don’t have to go that far down-

Nicki: … Got you.

Robb: … the thing. I agree with that. It would’ve seemed insane to do a vaccine mid-influenza pandemic because of the understanding around that stuff. You got to do it ahead of time. The main goal is that it’s going to mitigate severity of symptoms. And it seems to have varying degrees of efficacy even there, but it’s understood that it doesn’t. But all of the messaging around all of this is that it’s going to stop the pandemic, which is a lie. It is false. It is completely false at top of it. Anyway, somewhat at a peripheral, the results from this piece relative to the group. What they did with this-

Nicki: Twice.

Robb: … Yeah, I know.

Nicki: Oh, okay.

Robb: Yeah. They’re looking at, in theory, the cognitive capacity of folks in their relative vaccine.

Nicki: And the conclusion was basically that the people with-

Robb: The dummies were vaccine hesitant.

Nicki: … lower cognitive capabilities were more likely to be high vaccine hesitant.

Robb: Right. Right. Relative to the group who indicated a willingness to have the vaccine, those who were hesitant were more likely to be young, female, from an ethnic minority background and be less well educated. The hesitant were also less likely to carry an array of existing somatic morbidities. They weren’t sick, fat, overweight, diabetic, heart disease, et cetera, et cetera. This supports the present results whereby people with higher educational achievements were less likely to be vaccine hesitant.

Nicki: Okay, so you have young female minorities who are less educated, but they have few or less likely to carry any comorbidities. Could it be that they’ve-

Robb: They actually made an educated decision.

Nicki: … accessed the situation and-

Robb: So-

Nicki: … come to the conclusion that they are at a lower risk of having a severe outcome from COVID?

Robb: … So young, female, no comorbidities. Was there another one in there?

Nicki: And ethnic.

Robb: Well, ethnicity can vary. It looks like some Asian subgroups due to some modifications in the access ports in cells can be at a higher risk. Maybe yes, maybe no there, but … If a woman is thinking about a vaccine or not, and she’s of reproductive age, even folks who are exceptionally low education understand that there are some risks associated with vaccination.

Robb: And so it’s just ironic that … And they paint this as … God, I’m just playing around here. One of the questions I had originally was what is the purpose of this research at all at the beginning? And it would seem to be that-

Nicki: They wanted-

Robb: … oh, look at the dummies.

Nicki: … Look at the less educated people and the bad choice that they’re making versus the good choice that the higher educated people are making.

Robb: Yeah.

Nicki: What else would be the purpose of doing this?

Robb: Yeah. Yeah. Which again-

Nicki: So it’s playing into the sort of othering and tribalism that is just happening at such an astonishing-

Robb: … It is so dangerous. Here’s part of the conclusion, erroneous social media reports might have complicated personal decision making, leading to people with lower cognitive ability being vaccine hesitant, with individuals with lower cognition also experiencing higher rates of COVID-19. And studies conducted prior to vaccine distribution, these new findings are suggestive of a potential additional disease burden. There were so many contradictions in this piece. On the one hand, the people who were primarily vaccine hesitant were young, ethnic, female and low education, and then there was-

Nicki: … Low comorbidities.

Robb: … And low comorbidities. But also in the same paper, they claimed that the people who were experiencing the highest problems from COVID from a social, psychological perspective were basically the cognitively impaired here. They’re saying on the one hand that this group of people who should be the least likely to have problems from COVID are in fact the people that we’re seeing the greatest problems with, which cannot be the case at all.

Robb: We know this to be patently false. There’s this age association, there is a metabolic health association. This thing’s just the hottest fucking mess that I could spend a month digging into it and I don’t know if it’s entirely worth it, but it was … God, I don’t even know what it is.

Nicki: It’s just, this is science.

Robb: It looks very sciencey.

Nicki: It’s the science.

Robb: And within this study, it was conducted in the UK, the cognitive assessments were done up to 10 years in the past. And then these people are maintained in this database and then they will pull them up for different updates. And it was interesting even the way that they assessed relative cognitive function. Some of it I was kind of like, “Okay, I kind of get it.” There’s some math in there. There’s some name as many animals as you can in one minute. But even in that situation, if your English is a second language, you’re fucked.

Nicki: Yeah, totally.

Robb: You could be brilliant and you just don’t have … But you have like a fifth grade level of English comprehension, and you screwed the pooch on that one. It’s just so … I don’t know. Let’s just move on before we really are down to six listeners. Anyway, so we have links to this thing. I would encourage people to read this thing. We have links to it. It’ll be in the show notes. It’s not that long.

Robb: I would just read this thing and kind of ruminate or meditate on what are folks trying to get done with this. What is the end goal of a piece like this? It seems in some ways that there is absolutely no winning with this, other than if your goal is to drive yet another wedge into society. And you made a point before we recorded that so much of this stuff is operating from the assumption that vaccination is the appropriate decision for one and all under all circumstances. That is the operational baseline that these people are coming from. So if you’re vaccine hesitant, of course you’re wrong straight out of the gate according to this, which is-

Nicki: Because there’s no other route.

Robb: … just preposterous. And this has never really been the story with any other vaccination process in history. There were virtually always some degree of caveats or considerations. “Well, maybe it wouldn’t be a good call for this person.” And we didn’t have societal shutdown to affect that process. Okay.

Nicki: Okay. You done?

Robb: I’m done. Jesus, I should have never started.

Nicki: All righty. The Healthy Rebellion Radio, this episode is sponsored by our salty AF electrolyte company LMNT. We do still have some mint chocolate salt left for all you lovers of mint chocolate, so you can grab some of that still. I think we only have a few more weeks though, and I think it’ll probably be Gone.

Robb: It’s like two weeks of stock left. Yeah.

Nicki: Yes. So be sure to get that now. I also want to remind everyone again about our LMNT Give A Salt program, where you nominate everyday heroes of yours, coaches, teachers, firefighters, first responders, anybody in your life who has made a huge difference or is making a big difference in your community and who could use a little salt.

Robb: Let me mention something to that effect. Every once in a while I do go on Instagram and look in the messages, because there are actually some important things that pop up in there occasionally. And one of them was a woman who said, “Hey, I received this package from LMNT, and it’s very nice, but I have no idea why.” And I’m like, “Well, who are you and what do you do?” And she’s like, “Oh, I’m a coach, and this and that.” I’m like, “Well, somebody nominated you via the Give A Salt program.”

Robb: And then she went back and looked at the card that came him with it, and she’s like, “Oh my goodness, yes, they did.” But she was on another planet, because she works in this very marginalized, underserved community, and does it as a love and passion project. And somebody somewhere along the line was like, “This woman is fucking awesome,” nominated her with the Give A Salt program.

Robb: And so she got a bunch of swag, and she got some cool stuff, and she got a card that said, “We care about you.” So this is it. If there’s somebody in your life that you care about, and they’re awesome, and they’re doing good work and they’re underrecognized, fucking go to the Give A Salt program and the-

Nicki: You nominate them and then we’ll-

Robb: … drinklmnt.com/giveasalt and we will send them stuff, and they will be stoked and we will good.

Nicki: … Absolutely. And how many people out there are these sort of silent heroes that are just working away and doing real good in the world, but there’s no visibility to them? Right? These are the people that we’re looking for to brighten their day and make them a little more salty.

Robb: Exactly.

Nicki: Okay. We do actually have some questions today. We’ll probably get like a flood of email saying, “I hate your new format. Go back to the questions.”

Robb: That will be easy. We’ll just shut it all down at that point.

Nicki: Okay. We have a question from Jonathan on CBD and testosterone. He says, “Hello, I am a 42 year old male, and to the best of my knowledge, in good health. I strength train four times a week and I’m looking to keep my testosterone levels optimal. I have no reason to believe my testosterone levels are not good, but I’m cautious about taking supplements that have known negative impacts on testosterone. I’m hearing a lot of positive claims for CBD and I believe that you’ve talked about personally using it. Two that are most prominent is to reduce inflammation and to reduce anxiety. I’m wondering, do you know what the effects of CBD are on testosterone and does this differ from THC?”

Robb: The negative effects of THC on testosterone production both in men and women are pretty well documented and it’s fairly powerful. And this is one of the problems of folks that are really chronic consumers of the chronic that-

Nicki: The chronic.

Robb: … you can end up and stick a really good beer habit with that, and hops and yeah, you have man boobs-

Nicki: And soy lattes.

Robb: … and soy lattes. And it can be pretty powerful. CBD isn’t as powerful and estrogen mimetic, but there are kind of two considerations. And I have a link to a website. It’s not a scientific site, but it’s kind of an industry site talking about CBD. CBD has been suggested to reduce testosterone production by inhibiting the enzyme 17 alpha-hydroxylase, which makes testosterone in Leydig cells and it has a reference for that. I’m not super sure the dosing and all that.

Robb: That’s something that you would have to follow up on, but they do have a caveat here. However, CBD also inhibits the specific Cytochrome P450 enzymes in the liver, which break testosterone down. You have possibly some inhibition on the one hand, but then potentially the maintenance of testosterone being available on the other. But this is still just this really narrow snapshot of this whole thing. Sex hormone, binding globulin, overall estrogen levels, this is we’re doing three times a year-

Nicki: Hormone panel.

Robb: … hormone panel to get a deep dive on what you have going on would be good. The site did recommend cycling off of CBD on some schedule once a month. For me personally, I found no benefit from CBD for any gut issues. I wouldn’t even really say I noticed it improving anxiety. But in this managing my essential tremor syndrome, it definitely has been a huge bone and I’ll have some updates around the essential tremor stuff at some point soon. I’ve kind of made some interesting discovers on that.

Nicki: You’ve dropped it a little bit, but you haven’t really like … I don’t think a lot of people know that you’ve had this, so when you do your writeup, that’ll be helpful.

Robb: Yeah. And I may do a separate Salty Talk on it just so it-

Nicki: I think that would be very helpful.

Robb: … is handled on that too.

Nicki: Yes. Okay. Next, we have a question from Nathan on omega-6 and omega-3 ratio when lowering saturated fat. “Hi, Robb. I first discovered your work in 2009 when podcast episodes were still single digits. My lungs had collapsed 14 plus times. I had three lung surgeries, and long story short, I put a super rare autoimmune disease into remission thanks to you. In an effort to make this message easier to process, I’ve tried to ask the question first then included context below if it’s helpful.

Nicki: So my question, Dr. Cromwell recommended that I try lowering saturated fats to less than 15% of total calories. Keep total fat around 60% and retest in a couple of months, then chat with him again. Seems like a good next step. I’ve been mostly eating low carb paleo plus full fat grass-fed dairy, keto at times for mental performance.

Nicki: I’ve been getting lots of what I’ve considered high quality animal fats, but this recommendation has me scratching my head regarding where I should be getting my 60% of calories from fat from. I’m planning to increase fatty fish like salmon in my diet, but I’m a bit worried about getting omega-6 to 3 ratios all out of whack if I cut out much of the grass-fed beef, grass-fed full fat dairy, wild game, et cetera, I’ve been eating. Egads, what are your thoughts?”

Robb: Yeah. Oh man. Dr. Cromwell is the lipidologist that we primarily worked with at specialty health in developing the Reno risk assessment program and doing all the metabolic assessment of police and firefighters and the other work that we’ve done there. And before-

Nicki: And we talked about the cardio metabolic risk assessment people via the rebellion and also on the podcast before. So people can order-

Robb: … Precision health reports and-

Nicki: … precision health reports. Yes.

Robb: … Yeah. There was a time when I was in the camp that so long as insulin levels are low, then you can’t get cardiovascular disease. And I was bought into that and that seemed reasonable. And then dammit all, Dr. Bill Cromwell makes my acquaintance. And he’s a big fan of keto. He’s a big fan of paleo. He’s not a big fan of super high lipoproteins however, specifically LDL lipoproteins, especially if you end up with elevated Lp(a) or genetic predisposition or other circumstances.

Robb: And he fully recognizes that a type 2 diabetic with a given lipoprotein and cholesterol levels likely at higher risk for cardiovascular complications than a lean mass hyperresponder person. But what’s being generally thrown around out there is that so long as you keep insulin low and you’re all good. And I just unfortunately don’t think that’s the case.

Robb: And I know that there are some folks like Malcolm Kendrick that have this vascular injury model of cardiovascular disease, and I’m very interested in that. But there is still kind of a reality. We’ve discussed this in The Healthy Rebellion a good amount. Let’s say that it’s a story of you do need some vascular endothelial damage to have the negative consequences of this elevated lipoprotein count. Okay, I’m almost 50. How many instances of vascular endothelial damage have I had, either from inappropriate exercise or one dessert gone wrong, or firewood smoke, or diesel fumes while traveling?

Robb: There’s just all this shit. And so I don’t know that one can just absolutely dismiss all this stuff out of hand. And then we have the reality that for some people simply being in the state of ketosis, due to the enzyme systems that are involved in ketogenesis and also the production of cholesterol and lipoproteins, there is this overlap in that area. And this is part of the place that statins end up functioning is inhibiting this enzymatic process.

Robb: What Dr. Cromwell has recommended is maybe an 80% fat diet isn’t a good idea. Maybe we need to drop it below 60%. And the saturated fat specifically seems to have, at least on some people, disproportionate tendency to elevate cholesterol and lipoproteins. And maybe the same story with dairy even to a greater degree. So then what does one do? I think you know to fill in the remaining fat-

Nicki: Calories.

Robb: … content and calories and whatnot. I think a lot of nuts and seeds, which that ends up being problematic from the super hardcore carnivore folks. Like Paul Saladino himself is going to have a heart attack over that because it’s like, “Oh my God, the omega-3, the omega-6s.” And I’m just pretty unimpressed with the potential downsides there.

Robb: For me, I would supplement with a little bit of fish and, or fish oil. Eat some fatty fish a couple of times a week, maybe add a little bit of fish oil to the mix. And then I would soak and sprout and maybe roast a variety of nuts and seeds and rotate those. Maybe it’s one week of almonds and one week of pecans and just kind of rotate through that stuff. And I think that, that’s a very reasonable way to tackle all this.

Robb: Some nuts and seeds like macadamias are super low in omega-6. They effectively have little to none. Things like almonds actually have quite a lot of omega-6 relative to the total fat content. Olive oil can vary in the amount of omega-6. Some varieties of olive oil can have remarkably high levels of omega-6. This is where a couple of maybe two years ago I had to do a rolled up newspaper to the back end of some folks that were freaking out about the whole 30 salad dressings that were using a high oleic safflower oil, which is lower in omega-6s than olive oil, and on and on and on.

Nicki: Is the main like obviously the tyramine nuts, but the dairy seems to be-

Robb: Dairy is kind of the-

Nicki: … the biggest offender versus he’s wondering if he should cut out his grass-fed beef and wild game. Those two seem less-

Robb: … I wouldn’t cut those out. I would really do a long, hard look at the grass-fed dairy, because that dairy tends to be higher in saturated fat and the dairy fats just for some people seem to disproportionately elevate lipoproteins. That seems like an easy place to go as a first whistle stop to get this stuff changed. And then he does provide some context and it does look like his lipoproteins and whatnot are fairly elevated. And so this would be something to give a shot, let it run for three months, do a retest with precision health reports and see where things go.

Nicki: … Great. Okay. We have one more question this week, and it’s from Jared on CGM sensors in BJJ. “Hey, Robb, I’m making 2022 the year of the data, and plan on spending time monitoring, sleep, stress levels, et cetera, with a wearable. And testing key tones with finger pricks and tracking my blood glucose with a CGM for at least a month. Any advice on where to place the sensor and how to secure it while rolling. I’m on the mats four to six times per week and I plan on using the FreeStyle Libre 2, unless you have a better suggestion. Ideally, the sensor would stay stuck to me for 14 days. Thanks in advance for the insight and also for being a strong voice of nuanced reason during this COVID shitshow.”

Robb: Honored. I don’t know if this is best, but what I’ve done is back at the tricep, trying to get very medial right in the middle of the tricep, both with regards to orientation between the shoulder and the elbow, and also like lateral and medial. And then when I roll, I do … It’s a little bit of an ACE bandage and, or some rock tape. And then I wear a rash guard and I wear a GE. And that worked great for me. I think that some people wear these things on their bellies. That seems horrible. Just-

Nicki: Knee on belly with a CGM.

Robb: … knee on belly and side control and all the rest of that stuff. Yeah. And if you’re right-handed, I would put it on your left tricep because so much of … In general, when people are playing their jujitsu game, if you’re on cross side bottom, you’re generally going to be edging towards the right and stuff like that.

Robb: I just feel like it’s going to be in the kind of least populated area. If you’re doing a bunch of take downs, tell the person don’t do an arm drag on this arm please, or whatever. And maybe that would be okay, but that should work fine.

Nicki: Okay. Jared, excited for your year of the data. Good luck with that. And that is all our questions for this week. Thank you all for sticking with us through the years and especially this last year of COVID craziness. Two years, I guess. Let’s all hope and pray that 2022 has more freedom in store for everyone around the world.

Robb: Yeah, let’s just reiterate on that. This is what we’re advocating for, more freedom for everybody. And if that puckers your backside, then maybe you are the problem, not the rest of the world.

Nicki: But be safe out there folks. Happy new year. Remember to check out our show sponsor LMNT. You can go to drinklmnt.com/giveasalt. It’s drinklmnt.com/giveasalt. And don’t forget to nominate your everyday heroes. It makes a big difference in people’s lives. It makes them feel appreciated and noticed. So something special that you can do for the special people in your life. Any other new year’s wishes, hubs that you’d like to share?

Robb: I hope Montana gets a little more snow. I’ll be selfish.

Nicki: Yes.

Robb: Yeah.

Nicki: Well, I hope that too. We’re getting very, very cold weather, but no precipitation. I know California-

Robb: We have a little snow, but not a ton.

Nicki: … Yeah. I know California, Donner Pass has a record amount of snow since 1970. That is super like 16 feet in December. Their previous year-

Robb: They beat it by a couple inches.

Nicki: … A couple of inches from, yeah, December of 1970. So that’s exciting. Anyway, wishing you all a very healthy, happy and prosperous 2022. And we’ll see you next week.

Robb: Bye everybody.

Where you can find us:

Submit questions for the podcast: https://robbwolf.com/contact/submit-a-question-for-the-podcast/

Keto Masterclass

The keto diet is one of the most effective ways to shed fat and improve your health. Keto Masterclass helps you start keto right, step-by-step, so that you can be successful long-term.

Don’t forget, Wired to Eat is now available!

Starbucks, Soy Milk, and Sustainability with Diana Rodgers (Chat 2) | Salty Talk 038 | THRR

Fri, 24 Dec 2021 11:00:57 +0200

Salty Talk is a special edition of Healthy Rebellion Radio. Each week on Salty Talk Robb will do a deep dive into current health and performance news, mixed with an occasional Salty conversation with movers and shakers in the world of research, performance, health, and longevity.
For the full the video presentation of this episode and to be a part of the conversation, join us in The Healthy Rebellion online community.

WARNING: These episodes may get “salty” with the occasional expletive.

Please Subscribe and Review: Apple Podcasts | RSS

Submit your questions for the podcast here

Show Notes:

This is the second installment of our “fireside chat” with Diana Rodgers. Diana and I talk frequently, usually comparing notes on some of the insanity (and bright spots) we see we see in the food and regenerative ag space. Each time we talk we usually say “we should have recorded that!” So now we are.

Sponsor:

Transcript:

Coming soon…

Where you can find us:

Submit questions for the podcast: https://robbwolf.com/contact/submit-a-question-for-the-podcast/

Keto Masterclass

The keto diet is one of the most effective ways to shed fat and improve your health. Keto Masterclass helps you start keto right, step-by-step, so that you can be successful long-term.

Don’t forget, Wired to Eat is now available!

Infant Leaky Gut, Firefighter Fueling, Excessive Nicotine | THRR095

Fri, 17 Dec 2021 11:00:25 +0200

Make your health an act of rebellion. Join The Healthy Rebellion

Please Subscribe and Review: Apple Podcasts | RSS

Submit your questions for the podcast here

News topic du jour:

Therapeutic targeting of inflammation in hypertension: from novel mechanisms to translational perspective

1. Young Rebel Eating [11:09]

Kevin says:

Hi Nicki and Robb,

A few podcast ago, Robb mentioned off hand answering a totally different question that leaky gut is actually a good thing in infants and that is why introducing allergens early was a bad idea. Either that or I totally misunderstood what he said. Either way, I am curious around your thoughts on Baby led weaning, exposing new eaters to allergens, and other food considerations when starting your little human out on food.

Thanks for all you do to educate 6 people,

Kevin

2. Dry Lips [15:22]

Jen says:

Hi Robb and Nicky! Thank you so much for all you do! I’ve been listening to The Healthy Rebellion Podcast and love learning from you. I follow a paleoish diet, female of 45 yrs old, 5 feet tall, 130 pounds, and in pretty good health. However since the beginning of 2021 I’ve been struggling with extremely dry lips. I have tried half a dozen products, all help but only a little. I have to use them upwards of 6 times a day to get close to normal. I drink around 40 oz of water with some LMNT daily and some decaffeinated (mostly herbal) tea once or twice a day. I am totally addicted to LMNT! With the colder weather approaching, it seems to be getting worse. Really unsure on how to move forward with this pesky annoyance. Would really appreciate your input. Thanks so much!!

3. Fueling for Wildland Firefighters [18:45]

James:

Hi Robb and Nicki!

I am a wildland fire crew leader based in Ontario Canada. I am looking for information on how to best fuel myself and my crew for the sometimes gruelling efforts the job demands.

I have listened to some of the other episodes regarding to fuelling for hiking and hunting etc., and while I’ve gleaned some valuable insight, I am aware that the intensity of the job might require a modified approach. Namely more carbs.

We are deployable up to 19 days and usually have relative autonomy in fresh food choices, outside of the first 72 hours in which we have preselected, non parishable options. I personally choose the first 24 hours worth of food. While I do my best to fill our bag with canned fish, nuts, jerky and other sources of protein and fat, a sizeable portion contains candy, chocolate and other sources of quick sugar. In other words junk.

For the sake of brevity, here is my question: What do you reccommend for innocuous sources of non-perishable carbs that can be consumed on the go?

Thank you guys for all that you do,

Wishing you the best,

James

4. Offering a cautionary tale for excessive nicotine lozenge/gum consumption [25:46]

Jack says:

I recently quit using lozenges/gum. I began using it in college about 6 years ago for the stimulant/nootropic effect, not as NRT, as I’ve never smoked or vaped. I was bought into the idea that sure, it was addictive, but other than that it was basically harmless. So I didn’t worry that much as my use became more and more excessive, especially since I wasn’t using tobacco or inhaling questionable chemicals from vape liquid. I was consuming probably 30-40mg a day. As far as I can tell that isn’t that far off from the initial starting dose for NRT.

A day or two after quitting I began to notice drastic improvements in my circulation. My hands and feet were alternately tingly and itchy for a few days. My color vision improved, I suddenly noticed shades of blue/green had much more differentiation. Even just taking a hot shower felt incredible because my skin sensation was so improved. After a few days the dead skin on my feet started to peel, as if I was molting like a snake. And I hope my hair will grow in thicker as well, that is one of the main reasons I’m quitting (besides excessive spending on lozenges). And related to my hair, I do weekly microneedling of my hairline along with a daily compounded topical dutasteride/minoxidil/tretinoin formulation (microneedling and tretinoin both enhance the effect minoxidil). My skin heals a lot easier from the microneedling, and I have much less irritation from the tretinoin.

I’m currently not the healthiest otherwise which didn’t help matters, since I’ve gained quite a bit during the pandemic. I’m 27, and my fasting glucose a few months ago was 99, so not “clinically pre-diabetic”, however in my opinion is definitely worrying for my age. But I never noticed the ill effects it was causing until I stopped.

Interestingly, quitting cold turkey wasn’t as difficult as I imagined. I didn’t really have cravings, likely because it wasn’t really tied to a physical ritual like vaping or smoking. But I could only do it because I had the week off from work. I couldn’t focus or really do much besides watch videos and stare at the wall. I was grumpy but it wasn’t unmanageable, but after a few days it felt like I had a really bad flu, apparently that can be an acute symptom of withdrawal. I could only sleep for a few hours at a time, so I had to do many short sleeps through the day and night.

I hope this helps, I think there may be other people out there like me who are consuming extreme doses of nicotine. I recall there was a guy who wrote in a few months ago who used about the same daily dose of snus.

5. Discussions on Freedom [29:48]

Ellen says:

Hello!

I really enjoyed your recent podcast discussion on freedom and the real dangers we are facing if we continue down this path. Thank you! It seems to me that the government wants us to feel alone, afraid, and to accept that we are the minority in our fight for freedom. By sharing your thoughts, I am reminded that we can make an impact if we stick together.

We read a book with our nine year old recently that I thought I might share. It is called The Mysterious Benedict Society. Have you read it? There’s also a TV show, modeled after the book, on Disney+. It is incredibly interesting and was filled with content to fuel discussions around freedom, control, courage, bravery, etc. and was a very sobering reminder of the challenges we face today.

In the book, the antagonist uses radio signals and cell phone towers to send subliminal messages in order to control the minds of the citizenry.

I was curious to know if you’ve read it or had any thoughts. Thank you for all that you do!

-Ellen

Sponsor:

Transcript:

Coming soon…

Where you can find us:

Submit questions for the podcast: https://robbwolf.com/contact/submit-a-question-for-the-podcast/

Keto Masterclass

The keto diet is one of the most effective ways to shed fat and improve your health. Keto Masterclass helps you start keto right, step-by-step, so that you can be successful long-term.

Don’t forget, Wired to Eat is now available!

On Health And Freedom | Salty Talk 037 | THRR

Fri, 10 Dec 2021 11:00:01 +0200

WARNING: These episodes may get “salty” with the occasional expletive.

Please Subscribe and Review: Apple Podcasts | RSS

Submit your questions for the podcast here

Show Notes:

Vinay Prasad MD How Democracy Ends

Florida Dept of Health https://mobile.twitter.com/healthyfla/status/1466174868764958728

Sponsor:

Transcript:

Nicki: Welcome to the Healthy Rebellion Radio. This is an episode of Salty Talk, a deep dive into popular and relevant health and performance news pieces mixed with the occasional salty conversation with movers and shakers in the world of research, performance, health and longevity.

Nicki: Healthy Rebellion Radio, Salty Talk episodes are brought to you by Drink LMNT, the only electrolyte drink mix that’s salty enough to make a difference in how you look, feel and perform. We cofounded this company to fill a void in the hydration space. We needed an electrolyte drink that actually met the sodium needs of active people, low carb, keto and carnivore adherence without any of the sugar colors and fillers found in popular commercial products. Health rebels, this is Salty Talk.

Nicki: And now, the thing our attorney advises. The contents of this show are for entertainment and educational purposes only. Nothing in this podcast should be considered medical advice. Please consult your licensed and credentialed functional medicine practitioner before embarking on any health, dietary or fitness change. And given that this is Salty Talk, you should expect the occasional expletive.

Robb: Howdy folks.

Nicki: Hello, hello.

Robb: We are back. Hopefully, you’re making your health an act of rebellion, wife?

Nicki: Yes.

Robb: Are you doing that? Are your rebellious, wife?

Nicki: I am, I am. And we were just commenting when we were testing our audio before this that we needed to watch some movies for just some fun, good humor and…

Robb: Escapism.

Nicki: What happened? Something happened and I said, “You want to fuck on me.” And I couldn’t remember the name of the movie and he’s like, The Hangover, and we should watch that again because there’s so many good tidbits in that movie.

Robb: There are.

Nicki: Very enjoyable, like tigers. Love cinnamon. Right? It’s pepper they don’t like.

Robb: It’s pepper they don’t like. Yeah.

Nicki: Yeah. Anyway.

Robb: There are some goodies.

Nicki: Yes, folks, we have a kind of a random Salty Talk for you today. We’re going to just be chatting about some topics related to health and freedom. But before we get into that, I have a couple of announcements with regards to things going on inside the Healthy Rebellion. Our fresh Start Cold Shower challenge kicks off on January 3rd. We did this last year. One of our rebels, Ash Higgs led it last year. It was fabulous, very well received. People loved it. And we’re doing it again this year. And that again starts on January 3rd.

Nicki: Our next Healthy Rebellion 30-Day Rebel Reset kicks off on January 14th. Robb and I will do that kickoff call. And then that following week is the optional seven-day carb test for folks who are interested in tracking and measuring to see how their blood glucose levels respond to a variety of carbohydrates. And then, the actual 30-Day Reset itself starts on January 24th, which happens to be…

Robb: The day that gold was discovered in California, and also-

Nicki: And also.

Robb: … that I was hatched in 1972.

Nicki: You hatched?

Robb: Yeah.

Nicki: Okay. Does that mean you’re like part dinosaur?

Robb: I’m feeling that old, for sure.

Nicki: It is actually going to be a big birthday for you.

Robb: Reasonably big, 50.

Nicki: It’s a milestone. Yeah.

Robb: Maybe it’s a half milestone.

Nicki: Yeah, yeah. Hopefully, it’s a half stone. Hopefully, we got another 50 in yeah?

Robb: I’d love it when people are like, “Oh, you’re only middle aged.” And I’m like, “I’m going to have to do really well if I’m legitimately middle aged.” Like the buzzkill for many years about 35, 38 is actually middle aged, if we’re being completely honest about it. Al, Dave Asprey living to 150 years and Peter Attia taking resveratrol aside, we’ll see how long this range is.

Nicki: Maybe the missing thing is just the oxygen canister up the hoo-ha.

Robb: That was what Dave recommended early on for ridding oneself of COVID.

Nicki: Yeah.

Robb: Yeah.

Nicki: Yeah.

Robb: I would have loved to have applied that oxygen canister up Dave’s backside. And I would have gone light on lube also, but…

Nicki: Okay.

Robb: Anyway.

Nicki: Anyway.

Robb: So, that maybe is reflective of at least my mental state. I always feel bad dragging you into that. I don’t want to say our mental state because, well, I don’t know you’re probably even more unhinged than I am at some of the stuff. I’ve just been kind of casting around like we planned on doing our standard Q&A and I’ve got to be honest with a lot of what’s going on. I kind of look around what we are doing and I look around at what most folks are doing and a lot of people are doing some amazing work. Like there are people fighting the good fight and doing a good job.

Nicki: Amazing people doing-

Robb: From my perspective.

Nicki: … much needed work, yes.

Robb: And not the least of which is just people working, like going to their jobs and being there to do things all the way out to having an opinion about the state of affairs online and whatnot. But I see a lot of stuff on say, social media that I’m like, this is just so trite. It’s so fucking trite. And maybe that’s true all the time.

Robb: Maybe that’s a truth of the privilege that we have living in a modern western liberal democracy that we’ve all, for the most part, got it pretty goddamn easy, especially compared to many other people. And so, maybe I’m late to the game. Or maybe it’s just the reality that I’m seeing that slip away. And so, maybe it’s becoming more front and center important to me.

Robb: But today, we’re going to talk about some health considerations and some freedom thoughts. Probably will be a disaster saying we probably shouldn’t do this. But it’s kind of the only thing that I feel like is important right now and just feel like sharing kind of a flow of consciousness, I guess, that has been going on between my ears and to some degree with what we’re we talked about at home.

Nicki: And before we go there, just because your comment about what the bulk of what happens on social media, I just have two things that popped into my head. They’re not in our notes, but I just wanted to drop them. I read this week, there’s a, I think it’s a cosmetics brand.

Nicki: I don’t follow a lot of cosmetics brands, but one called Lush and the CEO canceled all, they deleted all of their social media accounts, even though it’s supposed to cost them something like 13 million pounds, I think it’s a British company in revenue, because of the damage that social media is doing to young people. And it’s not worth like feeding into that fodder, which I thought was such an amazing stand.

Robb: Remarkable ethics.

Nicki: Remarkable ethics and I’m just wondering if this might be something that catches on. And then the second thing that ties into this is I haven’t watched it yet, but Kresser pinged us and he had recently listened to the Tristan Harris on Joe Rogan about social media and we’ve heard Tristan Harris. He’s one of the people featured in The Social Dilemma, that movie that we’ve talked about before. And I’m sure many of you have already seen it. If you haven’t, it’s great. Definitely make some time to watch that.

Nicki: And he’s been interviewed by a host of people, I think even was … I don’t know if he’s been on Joe Rogan, before he was on the Dark Horse, I believe. Or maybe Brett interviewed him. But anyway, phenomenal. And so, anyway, Kresser was like, “You guys have to watch this or listen to this interview.” Basically, we’re fucked was the takeaway. And it all comes back to social media. So, definitely some stuff for that we’ll be digging into more. But anyway, that just popped in my head when you-

Robb: Do you want to share 1/3 kind of social media story, Zoe. You want to mention that?

Nicki: Oh, yeah. Okay. So, I was wondering how it kicked off, just came to me. So, last week’s episode, we spoke about that mass formation topic. There was a question in our fifth question of the episode. We’ve got lots of good feedback from y’all listening regarding Professor Mattias Desmet. He’s been in numerous interviews. I think Chris Martenson just interviewed him as well this week for Peak Prosperity.

Nicki: But there’s a video that the academy of ideas put out and it’s animated kind of hand drawn one of those like, what do you call them? We did one for Wired to Eat for the release, but one of those like hand drawn animated videos, explainer video kind of things. And it’s a 21-minute video called the Killing of the Mind, believe is the title. And we watched it with the kids. Sagan wasn’t really interested. She was doing something else in her room. Zoe, who’s nine, sat there and watched it with us.

Nicki: And the imagery that the person uses and we can include a link to this video in the show notes. I think it’s one of the most accessible kind of well-done videos explaining the concept of mass formation and how it’s happened and namely like our addiction to our phones and the ability to scroll and get all of this fear-based messaging directly from our phones. And the imagery the artist used was really compelling in that regard.

Robb: And I’ll throw something in there, the day before watching this, Zoe had asked, “What does iconic mean?” And so, Nicki and I kind of flailed around giving a very non-Webster’s definition of iconic, but we had also just wrap up-

Nicki: A couple weeks ago-

Robb: Wrapped up watching-

Nicki: … we watched the Lord of the Rings series.

Robb: … the Lord of the Rings series. And so, the Eye of Sauron and that was one of the key images that, Zoe saw that and then we paused it and I’m like, “What do you think that means?” And basically she said, this is people monitoring you and-

Nicki: Control.

Robb: Controlling you.

Nicki: The ability to control.

Robb: Yeah.

Nicki: And then, that Eye of Sauron was there. And then, you have all these people kind of glued to their heads down, glued to their phone-

Robb: And I made the observation-

Nicki: Like puppet strings and-

Robb: … that in addition to that, right next to the Eye of Sauron was cell phone towers. And then in almost every slide after that, there was a cell phone tower, which to me that is the Hobbit in analog to the eye. But the day after watching this, we watched it and then, I don’t know, we stretched, we went to bed. I don’t know what else we did that evening.

Nicki: And she said, she’s like, “Mom, I don’t want to do any devices. I’m going to do a challenge for myself and I don’t want to do any screentime for a month.” It was completely unprompted. I was tucking her into bed and I was like, “Okay.” And I mean, we’ll watch some television, some movies. They get a little bit of phone time.

Robb: Non-networked phone time, where they play-

Nicki: Minecraft or something.

Robb: … like Minecraft and stuff, yeah.

Nicki: And she hasn’t asked.

Robb: Yeah.

Nicki: It’s been about a week. And she’s like, I don’t want it. And we talked about. It’s like she recognizes that the phone … She made that connection as a nine-year-old. So, I don’t know.

Robb: And I just kind of offhand them, how are you doing? Saturday morning, we’ll let them watch some cartoons and stuff like that. And I was like, how are you doing with that? She’s like, “I actually feel like I’m happier.” So, that’s cool. Little bit of a parenting win. So, maybe we’ll go into what’s probably going to be a parenting fail here.

Nicki: Well, you’ve talked about this piece before. You wanted to revisit this as a opening.

Robb: We have mentioned Vinay Prasad, MD’s work. And I do believe we mentioned this particular one. And I’ve had a tab open in both computers that I use for three months since he published this, and it said, how democracy and just Vinay is so interesting to me because he’s this very young, very accomplished physician. Believe he works in the Bay Area. I think he’s part of one of the like San Francisco. healthcare networks, which pretty progressive. I think we’re not ruffling too many feathers to say that that’s an area that is very much into the mandates and the masks and all the stuff.

Robb: And Vinay has been just interesting in that, he’s been unafraid to speak what he sees as being the truth. And I think he does a pretty remarkable job of sussing through the information at hand. Like he had a piece where he talked about the claims around mask wearing and COVID disease transmission and cloth masks are effectively worthless. If you wear an N95 mask exactly the way you’re supposed to all day, don’t touch your face, don’t do what everybody does with masks, that it had maybe a 30% risk reduction and that was being a bit on the generous side.

Robb: And I’ve just been amazed by both the things that he produces, the fact it doesn’t get censored, the fact it’s been on MedPage today, although MedPage has plenty of just absolute bollocks in it. But this piece struck me. And so, it’s really good. I would recommend folks read it in its entirety. I’m going to dig into this and then we’re going to talk about some other things and the other things that we talked about, I would just encourage you to look at those through the lens of what Vinay puts forward here.

Robb: So, it starts off the pandemic events of 2020, 2021 outline a potential pathway for a future democratically elected president of the United States to systematically end democracy. The course of events leading to this outcome need not be a repeat of the direct assault on the Capitol, but a distortion of risk of illness as a justification for military force and the suspension of democratic norms. I would say we’ve already been here.

Nicki: We have a distortion of risk of this particular illness.

Robb: And we have trod this path thoroughly. And I think just horrible precedents have been set. I’ve talked about this before, but just as a context piece, my whole life, I’ve kind of seen myself as this kind of center left libertarian.

Robb: And mainly, I would characterize myself more left because I’ve been progressive in a lot of social issues. If somebody were to ask me in one sentence or two sentences, how would you define your politics and it’s like, I hope my married gay neighbors can protect their pot plants with semi-automatic weapons, and they can drive their hydrogen-fueled car because we have a nuclear power plant that provides the energy to split water and produce hydrogen for their vehicle. That energy, social stuff, right to bear arms. That’s kind of the whole deal.

Robb: And I remember, post 9/11, I was super concerned about the United States going into Iraq. I was apoplectic over what came out of the Patriot Act. I just felt like it was virtually the destruction of the Fourth Amendment and all kinds of bad stuff was coming out of that and kind of the scene that we were in then, like the early CrossFit scene was beginning to make money hand over fist from getting folks in the military certified within CrossFit. And so, CrossFit wasn’t super excited about hearing any rhetoric like that. Many, many people were just like, “You’re un-American. You’re terrible. Your left wing pink or whatever.”

Robb: And then you fast forward to today. And we’re at this spot where apparently now this same basket of relative politics. My politics haven’t really changed but apparently now, I’m a right wing, conservative, whatever, whatever, whatever. So, the long and short of all that is just that I think, and I think it’s a credible position or maybe just a hypothesis to throw out there, I think we’ve gone down bad paths. I think that horrible precedent has been set and people have been willing to dismiss all this stuff out of hand. And I think that it’s dangerous. And I think that we’re really playing with fire on that stuff.

Robb: So then I guess we move to the Florida-

Nicki: Well, let me just touch on that a little bit. I believe someone in the Healthy Rebellion shared this little clip of Jordan Peterson from his recent appearance on Joe Rogan. And I think it kind of ties into what you were just sharing there. And the clip was like, I think Joe basically asked, “How did we get here? How is this happening?” And Jordan said, “Well, here’s how it happens. We push you. I’m going to push you a little bit just to the point … I’m going to keep pushing until you get to the point where you’re just about to start to protest. And then, I’m going to sit back and I’m going to wait awhile. And then I’m going to push again.

Nicki: And I’m going to encroach just again up until where your feathers are getting ruffled and you’re going to start to protest. And then I wait.” And this keeps happening, this process of like pushing just to the point, and then sitting back and it’s like this very patient exercise. It kind of takes place over time. But by the end of it, you’ve taken so many steps backward, steps where you said, “This is my line, I’m standing here,” but then you take half a step here, two steps another spot and before you know it, you’re a mile behind the line that you-

Robb: Thought you were going to stand.

Nicki: … thought you were going to hold on. And so, I will find that clip and put that in the show notes as well but kind of ties into to this. It’s sort of this gradual encroachment that it’s analogous to the frog boiling in water. The water is tepid. It’s warm. And then it gets a little warmer.

Robb: Maybe it’s self-serving, but we’re just throwing this out there. Again, this is just kind of what’s been on my mind and I’m doing this. For the people who may be push back or somebody new listening to this or like these guys are conspiracy theorists, wackos, whatever, our lives would be easier if we just kind of like tow the party line. There’s really not upside here. We haven’t turned this into like a monetization scheme.

Robb: We, speak for you and if I’m speaking inappropriately, you can tell me to bugger off, but we’re really concerned about where things are going and the kind of danger that we are in in this situation. And this is maybe a self-serving statement, but I’m going to make it in this process that Jordan describes here. There’s a group of people that really want control over other folks. And so, they push. And then when the people on the other side get ready to push back, then the instigators kind of back off.

Robb: But the people on the other side are mainly like you do you and let me do me. And so, there’s not the backlash, yet. There isn’t the backlash yet. There isn’t the move to retake real estate that has been lost, kind of acquiesce, kind of acquiesce. And what I’ve said for a long time is that you will push people, and in this case, it’s going to be more right leaning, more conservative folks.

Robb: You will push them until they decide to take back real estate. And that’s going to be a fucking disaster. And nobody on the progressive side of this thing seems to get it. They will say it’s a potentiality. Some people kind of allude to that, but they don’t get that they are going to be the instigators of this process.

Robb: In the piece that Vinay Prasad mentioned, he’s like it could be the totalitarian individual could be left leaning, it could be right leaning. And he describes two different paths where these people come into power and they’re able to use the precedents of the previous pandemics to justify whatever it is that they’re wanting to do.

Robb: And so, many people on the left like when The Handmaid’s Tale came out as a series, and it really was quite well done. A good number of people have followed that book. They’re like, “See, see, this is what I’ve always said. The religious right are going to be these people that take away all have our freedoms.”

Robb: I would say though, by and large, within this context, folks have been like, if you want to get a vaccine, get a vaccine. If you want to do this, do this. But they’ve been kind of hands off. But there’s this push and push and push. And then, there’s a response. And I guess that actually kind of dovetails a bit into…

Nicki: Your next.

Robb: … the next piece, which is, well, this sets it up.

Nicki: You want to go here?

Robb: Yeah, we’ll go here first.

Nicki: Okay. Really great piece that came out from the Florida Department of Health. This past week, there was a video that was shared via Twitter that features the Florida surgeon general, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, talking about keeping Floridians healthy. And it’s a short video. It’s showing people living an active lifestyle, talking about the importance of early treatment, which is never mentioned in mainstream-

Robb: And they mentioned getting vaccinated, too.

Nicki: Yeah.

Robb: It’s not absolute vaccine.

Nicki: Vaccine is mentioned there.

Robb: That’s part of the strategy.

Nicki: But it’s the first piece of kind of, I don’t know, the news, the first piece shared from a state or kind of government-

Robb: A governmental agency.

Nicki: … entity, agency that actually focused on the underlying theme was maintain a healthy immune system and stay active. And vaccination was on that list, exercise and activity nutrition. They mentioned vitamin D, vitamin C zinc, and the early treatment portion of the video. They talk about monoclonal antibodies and a couple of the other early treatments that people are seeing success with. And then the final thing was this Florida surgeon general saying let’s live.

Nicki: And it’s very well done. The message is hugely positive. It provides agency for people. There’s not a scrap of fear in there. It’s like here’s what we’re doing. Here’s how we as-

Robb: Here’s what you can do.

Nicki: Yes.

Robb: Here’s the power of you have.

Nicki: Yup, yup, as citizens of the state of Florida, this is how we can tackle this. And it was so positive, so encouraging. And it’s like why the effing F has this not been the message from the federal government from day one and to all the other states out there like Florida is I think doing a phenomenal job leading in this regard. All the states should be following their lead with regards to this.

Nicki: People need to get healthy. They need to boost their immune system. There’s no reason why we’re not talking about vitamin D on a more global level. People who know about vitamin D are following people like Kresser and Chris Masterjohn and it’s not been that widely addressed.

Robb: No, not at all.

Nicki: And it’s critical for COVID outcomes. So, I don’t know. Bravo to Florida. If you live in Florida, go Florida.

Robb: Well, it was interesting. So, this was on Twitter. And for the most part, the response was very favorable. Interestingly, non-Floridians were about the only people who got their bridges bunched over this. And there was some-

Nicki: Somebody was like, “Well, why don’t you emphasize the vaccine and boosters more, because then you wouldn’t even need to worry about your immune system,” which is like, this is why you don’t go on Twitter. The comments are-

Robb: Yeah, and it explains so much because we know whether you’re going to get the vaccine or you experience dealing with the virus via your own immune system, the healthier you are, the better your vitamin D status is being topped off on zinc and vitamin C, these essential cofactors in mitigating the cytokine storm and the inflammatory process that is a consequence of both vaccination and viral infection, things are better.

Robb: And this maybe goes into some of the kind of woke pathology around the healthy at any size stuff. A teenage boy who dies from malnutrition from anorexia was not healthy at any size. And neither is the individual that is five foot four and 400 pounds healthy at any size. It’s just not. And this seems to be in this same category where there are folks that are dead set now.

Robb: And it’s so fascinating, again, considering kind of like the political background there, they have wholly abdicated health to medicine, to a medical intervention. We’re going to get a vaccine. We’re going to get a booster. We’re going to mask. We’re going to hide inside. And those are our strategies.

Nicki: And people that previously, pre-2020 would have been skeptical or critical of big pharma in all of its largess and the commercials on ask your doctor before trying this side effects include blah, blah, blah. There was healthy criticism about the role of big pharma and advertising to people and all this stuff. And now, it’s sort of like, that piece is gone. There’s no critical thought there at all. It’s just this is the one true saving product.

Robb: Right. Do you want to do your…

Nicki: Yes, let’s go into our-

Robb: … Salty diversion really quickly.

Nicki: Yes, this Salty Talk episode of the Healthy Rebellion Radio is sponsored by LMNT, our Salty AF electrolyte company. And tis the season for warm beverages. We’ve had our first significant snow here this week, and the girls have been out rolling ginormous snowmen. And then when they come in, they’re cold and chocolate salt hits the spot. It’s a great hot cocoa alternative. Lots of element flavors can be enjoyed hot.

Nicki: As I’ve mentioned before, lemon habanero is my favorite. But chocolate salt, mint chocolate salt are great again as cocoa alternatives. Mint chocolate, remember is here just for a limited time. And Robb has a particular fondness for his raspberry added to hot tea.

Robb: I have to say maybe the orange I like even better than the raspberry, but they’re both really good. I’m maybe 80-20 on that at this point.

Nicki: Okay.

Robb: Yeah.

Nicki: All righty. So, you can grab your LMNT. Again, it’s important to hydrate even though it’s winter, it’s cold outside, at least in the northern hemisphere. Electrolytes are just as important. You can grab yours at drinklmnt.com/robb. That’s drink L-M-N-T dot com slash R-O-B-B and remember to grab some for yourself and anyone on your holiday gift list.

Robb: Cool.

Nicki: Okay.

Robb: Okay.

Nicki: This is where you’re getting into the…

Robb: This is where it gets sketchy.

Nicki: … danger zone.

Robb: Yeah, this is where it gets full on sketchy. But again, the context here, just I know the bulk of our listeners are super smart, really grounded, but I’ve been kind of horrified. I’ve been horrified for a while, but I’ll post something on Instagram. I’ll be like, okay, this is worth actually downloading the app and putting it on my phone and doing this thing.

Nicki: FYI, anytime Robb posts something to Instagram, like our podcast clips and whatnot, Jessica handles that. But anytime it’s a news type piece and that Robb is posting it, he literally downloads the app, does the thing and then deletes the app.

Robb: Julie do the thing.

Nicki: Yeah. Do the thing, Julie.

Robb: So, we have the hypothesis or the premise that Vinay Prasad shared with us that we’re heading in a direction that could be the end of democracy and it’s overreach of everything. But basically, this governmental overreach, this inappropriate tying of medicine into pandemic response and that we’ve in a similar way to the way that freedom was damaged due to 9/11. Arguably freedoms have been damaged here. Maybe people don’t agree with that. I definitely think that that’s true. I think it’s a real problem.

Robb: So, then we had Florida pushing back against the just doom narrative, that you can’t do anything, that the only things that we have are these highly medicalized interventions. And Florida is like, no, you can eat healthy. You can get healthy. You can have community. You can go outside. Check your vitamin D, zinc, vitamin C. These are all viable. And also, for some of the folks that are pushing back on this stuff, there is literally no downside to any of that. The risk-reward deal is phenomenal and-

Nicki: Improves health, it improves mental health, it improves-

Robb: And for people that push back on that, just take any of those topics and search for influenza and vitamin D, influenza and zinc status, influenza and vitamin C. It’s very well established. So, Florida’s pushing back on one level with just a health narrative. And Florida is also in a position where they’re looking at pushing back in another way because the federal government has so overreached itself, in my opinion and the opinion of many other people.

Robb: And so, from Governor DeSantis on the formation of a potential state of Michigan militia, I’m proposing more than $100 million for our National Guard active duty military and veterans to reestablish the Florida State Guard to assist our National Guard in state specific emergencies. I’m committed to supporting our military and keeping our state safe.

Robb: So, for some people, that’s a real taint puckering situation. Like, oh, gosh, and there’s a guy, Jackson barber, who was in this thread who said, it’s not about protecting Floridians, he is himself not a Floridian. It’s about controlling Floridians and protecting a certain governor. And there were a lot of comments like this. One of the people basically said, “So, this is Ron DeSantis’ SS group,” basically, which the Hitler and Nazi analogies just fly like snow flurries on a Montana mountain.

Robb: But it’s interesting. If you’re going to really make that analogy, I think you have to anchor that with who is trying to force some agenda on someone else who is unwilling, uninterested in that agenda. Is the supposition here that this group is going to go around and prevent people from getting vaccines? I mean, it is preposterous at this point. And this is where the, I think, the kind of moral compass and whatnot is just fascinating, but I am a big states rights person. And for the folks listening in Europe, they’re probably like, “What the fuck are these people talking about?”

Robb: But this is one of the still unique features of the United States. I know people in Australia and New Zealand probably just think that this is absolutely crazy. Or maybe they don’t, maybe some people don’t. But there’s been a longstanding struggle between folks who want to centralize power in the United States and those who want to keep more of the action on a government’s perspective happening at the local level. And the irony with that, and Dan Crenshaw, and some other people have done wonderful pieces on this.

Robb: When you look at Europe, the bulk of the governance actually happens at the local and technically the state level. And most of these countries have much smaller populations than the United States does. So, it actually ends up parsing out more on what we would consider to be the state level, like Switzerland does the bulk of its stuff at the municipal level as far as governance and whatnot.

Robb: But there’s a transparency with this more local governance. There’s a better understanding of what the needs are in this situation. When I look at this, what has happened thus far in the United States, if a governor pulls up the National Guard to do XYZ, that National Guard can then be redirected due to actions of the president and the federal government. And so, basically pulled off the task. There’s been some discussion around this within Texas and border issues and whatnot.

Robb: And so, part of the Constitution of the United States and Constitution is funny because we have this thing called the Constitution, which is this document. But there is the constitution of a nation, the constitution of a person. There is the constitution of a cup of coffee. It is warm with a ceramic. It is what this thing is built from. And part of what the United States is built from for right or wrong is that if individuals at the local level are sensing this notion that there was tyrannical overreach from centralized governance, then there are options for recourse. And one of those options is the formation of a state militia.

Robb: And so, think of this what you want. I think that this is probably a good thing. But this is also one more step down the path to a civil war. And I’m not really sure what more to say about that. The writing seems so on the wall, but yet, there seems to be no give. Every turn, you’ve got the Omicron variant.

Nicki: Well, you have to ask why is this even on the table. It hasn’t been on the table-

Robb: Ever.

Nicki: … ever, and so now-

Robb: Since World War II. And it’s interesting there were some slam pieces on this like The Daily Beast had a piece that talked about previous iterations of these state militias, the first being during the Civil War and because Florida is a southern state, then at that point, these militias were protecting then slave state. And so, okay, yes, super fucked up, a terrible, terrible part of history, but then it kind of sidestepped the whole process of these things being spun up during World War II when the National Guard was brought into the main army to fight abroad.

Robb: And we needed some degree of security here. And so, the state militias were formed. And god, I don’t even know what my point is above and beyond. At some point, individuals at a city, like what you heard about Oroville, California, basically proclaiming themselves a-

Nicki: A constitutional republic.

Robb: … a constitutional republic. And this is the beginning of this pushback. And part of me is at a point where I’m so frustrated with “the other side.” And if people have followed me long enough, I’m kind of a fuck it, burn it all down type of person. Now, I know that my life would suck during a civil war, pretty good chance I would die. Possibly my children will die either through violence or starvation or something else.

Robb: But I’m reaching a point where I’m kind of like, whatever difficulties I have are going to be minimal compared to most of the people that I think are just like huge assholes at this point. And some folks listening this are going to be like, “Okay, Robb’s totally crazy,” and maybe I am. But the deeper thing here-

Nicki: Well, people died for freedoms-

Robb: Before.

Nicki: … before. And medical freedom is one of those hills to die on.

Robb: And particularly, when medical freedom has been turned into something that now you maybe can’t travel, now, you can’t shop, now you can’t meet with friends and family and coworkers. So, it’s medical freedom that has been coopted into a variety of totalitarianism that like the Nazis could only dream of having something that’s effective in corralling a whole population.

Nicki: And the campaign of fear has been so successful that you see people where the sister won’t allow the 95-year-old double vaxxed mom, the triple vaxxed sister won’t visit the 95-year-old double vaxxed mother because-

Robb: She doesn’t have the third one.

Nicki: … she won’t get the third one, but the mom is over it at this point and is like, “Fuck it. I did the two. I’m not going to do any more. This is bullshit. I’m seeing this for what it is now.” And so, you’ve got these family rifts and these huge polarized … It’s literally tearing families apart, relationships apart, friendships apart. So, all of the mandate kind of stuff coming from on high is one piece of it, but that the fear campaign and just it’s been so, so successful that-

Robb: In dividing people against each other.

Nicki: … in dividing people against the people that they love, the people that they might not see again.

Robb: So, again, I don’t know if this was at all helpful as a podcast. Our charter was to make your health an act of rebellion. This seems kind of under that charter, but the bigger picture here for me is I’m pretty good at seeing long-term trends. And I remember telling Greg Glassman, “Hey, you’re going to have 10,000 affiliates at this point.” And really the only thing I missed on that was it took longer than I expected because the model that CrossFit rolled out business wise was so terrible that there was much higher attrition than what I really factored in.

Robb: But I told them 10 years in advance of where they would go. And I’m not Nostradamus. I’m not prescient. But I’m pretty good at catching some long term trends. And we are absolutely in the crosshairs of a legit civil war in this this nation. And there are lots of people internal to the United States that hate the United States and think it’s terrible and would love to see it burn down. There are lots of people external to the United States that agree with that.

Robb: And the ironic thing is that, for the most part, if the United States finds itself embroiled in anything above a very regional conflict, it’s going to be a disaster for the world. And I really don’t want to see that happen. But I’ve got to be honest, at this point, I’m kind of like, okay, the people that I’m growing to strongly disliked myself, I know what’s going to go worse for them. It’s going to go worse for the people in cities. It’s going to go worse for the people that are kind of in the woke mobs. And there’s a certain amount of schadenfreude that I’m kind of becoming okay with that eventuality.

Robb: And my only point to this, and some people may be like, “Well, Robb’s a lunatic and fuck him and I regret ever listening to any …” Okay, fine, if you want to take that. All I’m offering up here is I feel like I’m a fairly reasonable person. I really try to think things through, to let the true follow me, lead me where we’ll go. I’ve changed my mind on all kinds of different stuff with nutrition and different lifestyle things. I’m open to changing my mind on this. But I just see this trend, and this trend is going in a horrible spot.

Robb: And all that I’m making the case about is if I am a reasonably smart, reasonably balanced person who seeks the truth, what are the things being thought to the people less stable, and less secure, and don’t have the good relationship, and don’t have the internal fortitude to continually ask questions and whatnot. There’s a whole bunch of people to the side of me who are thinking similar thoughts, but they’ve been arrived at, at much less analyzed perspective.

Robb: And the world doesn’t want that to manifest. And I’m not really sure how to unfuck this at this point. To your opening, if we all got off social media, that would probably be a big deal. I’m really thinking about spinning up a substack and maybe I shut all my social media down, maybe I just turn the comments off, and I just post what I do with the substack there and we do the podcast, and we call it good. It is interesting that if enough people just today, tomorrow, just turn off their Twitter, turn off Instagram and just opted out, there seems to be done. They really would be done. But it’s…

Nicki: How do you get enough track.

Robb: Critical mass.

Nicki: Yeah, there’s a critical mass that needs to happen.

Robb: What do you think about what I’m thinking? I did a lot of jabbering. But you’re married to me. And of course, because I call you wife, then that means that I’m physically and emotionally abusive and all this other stuff. Clearly-

Nicki: I call you, hubbs, so what does that mean?

Robb: Clearly, if I treated you poorly, you wouldn’t shiv me in the liver and kill me and stick me in the front yard because you’re so incapable of defending yourself and everything. So, what do you think? Am I crazy? Is this madness?

Nicki: I don’t think you’re crazy. I do think it is absolute madness. I think medical freedom is for sure a hill that I would die on. The slope is slipperier than our driveway with a sheet of ice on it. COVID vaccine aside, medical, it’s not a far stretch to imagine some other thing that comes along and some other medication that everybody must have. And there was a woman that was just featured on the Dark Horse podcast, who is Australian. She has, six years ago, diagnosed polyethylene glycol allergy. She gets anaphylaxis from it, from a whole host of things.

Nicki: She’s highly allergic to practically everything under the sun, even like the skin prick test for polyethylene glycol gave her an anaphylactic reaction. And she could not get an exemption. It was just this run around dealio and in Australia, in Melbourne where she lives, that state made it a rule that you could not work without the vaccine, even though she works on her own and she’s in catering or something.

Nicki: And so, it was this huge process. She finally did a video online. And her story has become kind of went viral and has become well known. And she was finally able to get her exemption. But there are lots of people unable to get these exemptions who desperately need them. So, in the name of like … So, we can’t have even a single COVID death. But then we’re potentially vaccinating people with known allergies to the excipients in these products. We have a friend in Canada who’s an ER doctor who can’t get an exemption is likely going to be terminated from his job in January.

Robb: And he’s an ER doctor who serves rural areas, so rural that they have to stick him on an airplane or a helicopter to fly him around to different communities and they don’t fucking have anybody else to plug into that. And it is so goddamn important to get this one guy vaccinated that how many other people are going to die or suffer because they don’t have a fucking doctor.

Nicki: Yeah, I just feel like obviously, there has been so many people who have gone above and beyond in the medical community throughout this whole pandemic. But there are also a lot of people who, whether it’s ego or whatever, are really failing people. Yeah, there’s a story, but I don’t know that I’ll go into that right now.

Nicki: So yeah, I think this medical freedom piece is a hill that a lot of people would die on. It’s just what kind of life is it to be constantly put on house arrest or told you can’t go eat in a restaurant. You can’t take your kid to go to swimming lessons because she’s three and you can’t get vaccinated for whatever health reason or even for personal choice, you don’t want to get vaccinated. So, your three-year-old can’t go to swimming lessons. Your children can’t play hockey in Canada. Your family can’t go out to eat as a family. You can’t go to the movie theater.

Nicki: Well, and into that killing of the mind piece, which again, we’ll link to this, one of the ways around a totalitarian kind of state, like what it seems like the world is becoming is to create these parallel structures. So, you find ways within the physical totalitarian world to have some normal interactions and you kind of get together with other like-minded people and kind of have these sort of, they call them parallel structures that operate within kind of the grander, totalitarian regime. But it’s not living. If this just keeps coming up-

Robb: It’s not living free.

Nicki: … it’s not living free. And what kind of life is that, no innovation happens, there’s not as much joy. It’s like, fear, fear, fear. We had one of the guys that we do Jiu-Jitsu with, his best friend’s son killed himself before Thanksgiving. There’s the suicide situation is very high right now, even though the headlines say that suicides were lower last year than in 2019. I don’t know, it’d be interesting to see what they are for this year.

Robb: Well, they probably just counted as COVID deaths.

Nicki: I know. Well, there are lots of knock-on effects to this whole thing that are not being properly accounted for.

Robb: One final thing that I’ll throw in this, I know this was kind of a wandering grab bag of terribleness. But climate change has been woven into COVID, is woven into animal husbandry, is woven into all kinds of social justice issues. And I’ve been warning about this for at least six years, since Yael gave me the rundown on when I suggested that we should have a more nuanced look at…

Nicki: The eradication of mussels.

Robb: … the eradication of mussels in this overall climate change thing. And she was like, “Well, if anybody who says we need a nuanced look at climate change is also a Holocaust denier.” And I was like, there you go. All of this is going to get wrapped into that. And this was way before COVID. But all of these things have been mixed together in a way that even when you look at some of the lake state-sponsored material, you could just pull out social justice, climate change, COVID. And it doesn’t really matter which word you’re talking about, they’re all somehow the same.

Robb: And so, this is a hill I would die on because the next step is really limiting access to food, possibly limiting the ability to produce food that we would like. And the food that they’re going to produce is owned by Bill Gates and multinational corporations. It’s not an organic farm out your back door that is beans and pulses. It’s industrial real crop food systems. And so, I don’t know. It’d be interesting to know what people think about this episode, think about these topics at large.

Robb: I guess my whole point of this is there are some canaries and some coal mines that are sounding an alarm. I would put Vinay Prasad in that. I will put this attempt at this podcast in that. And I would also say that from this hypothesis generating perspective, people are saying, if ABC occurs, we can expect XYZ as results. And with the increased attempts at totalitarianism, you will see more and more pushback and more violent pushback. And we are seeing the seed stages of that.

Robb: And so, if and when these more gnarly things come to pass, you don’t get to act surprised. Maybe you get to be remorseful. But I’ve been hamstrung about what next to do. Because even just doing this, maybe we get canceled, maybe we don’t. I don’t know. But yeah, I should have probably finished on a different note. But that’s what I’ve got. Do you have any other final closing thoughts?

Nicki: I don’t.

Robb: Okay.

Nicki: I don’t.

Robb: Well, folks. We’re almost through this year.

Nicki: Yes, we are. And yeah, I think that’s all for this week. But we’d love some feedback.

Robb: Yeah.

Nicki: Love it, hate it, whatever you can-

Robb: Because at the end of the day, we really just want to provide value to people. And if this is just Nicki and I jabbering into the ether and people are mainly annoyed and you don’t get value with it, then we don’t-

Nicki: But it’s also our attempts at doing what we feel is needed. Because again, one of those ways of kind of combating a totalitarian system, at least as put forward in that video the Killing of a Mind is talking about this type of thing, so that people hear it. And there are a lot of people that are kind-

Robb: What was one of the biggest things that was critical to do?

Nicki: Ridicule and humor.

Robb: And humor.

Nicki: And humor, yeah.

Robb: And I just want to circle this back around to the early phases of the pandemic when a good number of people, people in the ancestral health community went whole hog after JP Sears and I knew that they were horrible people for doing that then and I doubly find them to be just absolutely reprehensible turd to this point.

Nicki: He has been just a phenomenal like … As far as ridiculing-

Robb: The establishment.

Nicki: … the establishment and making fun of it because that is one way to … There’s no sense of humor on the part of establishment.

Robb: In every totalitarian regime, whether they were right wing, fascist or left wing like communist or whatever, who were the first people to go?

Nicki: The comedian.

Robb: The comedians and the satirists. Anybody doing satire is gone. From the newspapers, standup comedians and whatnot. And this is another thing that still it just is such a … I’m so fucking disgusted by how all that played out and god bless JP for hanging in there. And if you don’t agree with what he says, then do satire of him. But this is an ironic piece to this. And I know this just diverting off into a somewhat tangential point.

Robb: But if you can make good satire on something, it usually means there’s something fucked up about it. And if you can’t make good satire on something, then it usually means that that thing is fairly buttoned up. And you could argue with that. Do some satire around whether or not that’s true. So, I guess that is something like we’re certainly not remotely as funny as JP Sears, but we do try to inject a little bit of humor into-

Nicki: Sadly, we are not.

Robb: But we’re not gingers, so-

Nicki: That’s true.

Robb: … we don’t have that superpower. What do I always say?

Nicki: It’s always the ginger.

Robb: It’s always the fucking gingers. Yeah. So, I guess that that is a thing to wrap up on. Part of what we’re trying to do is to the degree we understand this stuff, bring some commentary and some thoughts. And we do poke some fun, have some satire at various points. And again, if there was anything that folks took away from this, I guess two things that there are some people predicting some pretty gnarly things out there and maybe keep your eyes open about whether or not there are some goose-stepped marches towards this problem.

Robb: And then the other side of this is this notion around the sanctity of satire and humor. And that if you are of a mind that a satirist or comedian needs to be cancelled, shut down, deplatformed, you’re probably the fucking problem.

Nicki: It means you can’t take a joke.

Robb: You can’t take a joke, so fuck off. Okay.

Nicki: All right, folks. Thank you for listening to another episode of Salty Talk from the Healthy Rebellion Radio. Please check out our show sponsor, LMNT at drinklmnt.com slash R-O-B-B. Again, that’s drinklmnt.com slash R-O-B-B and we’ll see you next time.

Robb: Bye everybody.

Where you can find us:

Submit questions for the podcast: https://robbwolf.com/contact/submit-a-question-for-the-podcast/

Keto Masterclass

The keto diet is one of the most effective ways to shed fat and improve your health. Keto Masterclass helps you start keto right, step-by-step, so that you can be successful long-term.

Don’t forget, Wired to Eat is now available!

Aim for an overall healthful dietary pattern, the American Heart Association advises, rather than focusing on “good” or “bad” foods.

Omicron Variant, Plant Defenses, Extreme Sleep Schedule | THRR094

Fri, 03 Dec 2021 11:00:50 +0200

Make your health an act of rebellion. Join The Healthy Rebellion

Please Subscribe and Review: Apple Podcasts | RSS

Submit your questions for the podcast here

News topic du jour:

A Heart-Healthy Way to Eat

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/29/well/eat/heart-healthy-diet-foods.html

https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1161/CIR.0000000000001031

“The committee’s advice on protein foods, published during the climate talks in Glasgow, was well-timed. Choosing plant-based proteins over animal sources of protein not only has health value for consumers but can help to foster a healthier planet.”

https://www.performancemenu.com/article/1384/Robbs-Farewell/?mc_cid=46bc74eeea&mc_eid=f235501518

1. Sleeping and eating on a extremely variable schedule [12:35]

Jason says:

Hello,

Long time listener, first time caller. I have listened to your podcasts on adjusting sleeping and eating cycles when changing shifts, as many first responders do. However, I am trying to locate resources and best practices, for a more dramatically changing schedule. I work as a locomotive engineer for a class one railroad.

Truly, I am looking for actionable things I can spread to what I believe is an underserved industry. My co-workers and I are often under rested and unprepared, which can lead to poor dietary and lifestyle choices. Our schedule is extremely unpredictable, we may work a night shift, be off for ten hours and head back in for the afternoon shift. Equally as likely to be off long enough to work another night or even the next day. Unfortunately, there is no way to tell ahead of time, as we get either two hours or one and a half hour notice before our shift begins. These shifts often end up being twelve hours long. As such, there are multiple times a week, where I may be up for over twenty-four hours. In these situations, I am unsure how to even attempt to regulate my eating or trying to sleep when I need to but am not tired.

I am forty-six year old male 5’11” 210 lbs. I lift four to five times a week, often when I am tired, and try to get some steady state cardio in daily. A live Q&A would definitely be a great addition to all the work you guys already to, I would like to add that I greatly appreciate everything you do. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

2. Resistant Starch [18:19]

Cheeny says:

Worth the hype? Or is it Buck science? I love day old white rice so I’m hoping it’s got some merit to it. Thanks!

3. Plant Defenses [19:39]

wzrdpow says:

Are all plant defense mechanisms antithetical to human health or longevity? Thinking in relation to things like turmeric and sulforaphane.

4. Omicron [26:32]

Jenni says:

Hey,

I’m an MPH, and this completely stumping me. Reports on omicron from the field describe it as a lingering cold with no hospitalizations-Quartz article 11/28/21 (https://qz.com/2095354/what-are-the-symptoms-of-the-omicron-variant/amp/). If that’s the case, shouldn’t we be happy and not locking down. It was a shift to a less catastrophic influenza that ended the last flu pandemic. We didn’t vaccine flu out of existence.

I know that we don’t have all the data (but seriously that’s just a mantra now), but if the symptoms are “basic cold”, why is WHO and Fauci (last article I read had him making another reference to “the science” and I’m seriously going to vomit) flipping out?

Thank you,

Jenni

https://www.honestlypod.com/podcast/episode/5bfb867a/is-covid-over-and-other-burning-questions-this-thanksgiving

5. Is the Covid response mass formation or hypnosis? Dr. Mattias Desmet [34:00]

Joe says:

Hi Robb and Nicki, love your work, thanks for all the excellent content.

I came across a few interviews with Dr. Mattias Desmet who thinks that the response to covid can be explained by something called mass formation or mass hypnosis.

Here are a few links to some interviews with him where he discusses this:

https://jermwarfare.com/blog/mattias-desmet (relatively short and to the point)

https://www.thestoryofmepodcast.com/dr-mattias-desmet-psychological-crisis-and-mass-formation/ (more of a discussion on the topic)

(I’ve not listened to any other episodes from these podcasts)

A written interview:

https://dailysceptic.org/interview-with-mattias-desmet-professor-of-clinical-psychology/

Aubrey Marcus has done an interview with him, too, but I haven’t listened to it:

https://www.aubreymarcus.com/blogs/aubrey-marcus-podcast/why-people-willingly-give-up-their-freedoms-w-prof-mattias-desmet-aubrey-marcus-podcast

Does this sound plausible? Would love to hear your thoughts on this.

Thanks,

Joe

Amy Peikoff discussion with Mattias Desmet – Professor of Clinical Psychology at Ghent University, Belgium:

Sponsor:

Transcript:

Nicki: You’re listening to The Healthy Rebellion Radio. The contents of this show are for entertainment and educational purposes only. Nothing in this podcast should be considered medical advice. Please consult your licensed and credentialed functional medicine practitioner before embarking on any health, dietary, or fitness change.

Nicki: Warning, when Robb gets passionate, he’s been known to use the occasional expletive. If foul language is not your thing, if it gets your britches in a bunch, well, there’s always Disney+.

Robb: Welcome back friends, neighbors loved ones. Welcome back, wife.

Nicki: Hello. Hello. Welcome back to another episode of The Healthy Rebellion Radio. There’s some odd buzzing sound, but I don’t think any of you all can hear it.

Robb: Seems to have resolved. Yeah.

Nicki: Seems it came quickly and left just as quickly thankfully. I hope everybody had an enjoyable Thanksgiving for those in the United States that celebrate Thanksgiving. We played a lot of cribbage with some friends and I’ve been teaching the girls and Sagan has really taken to it. So we’ve had some throw down cribbage bouts. Well, there’s another buzzing sound.

Robb: (Mumbling in the distance)

Nicki: We’re having a, what do we call that? Ambient euphonious whales.

Robb: Wow. Wasn’t that the name of your dad’s band?

Nicki: My dad will get that one. Yeah. My dad was in a band called A Euphonious Whale. Anyway, that’s a little bit of a tangent, but I’m trying to think what else do we have that’s new and exciting and interesting to share? Your tap cancer out-

Robb: Should be happening next-

Nicki: … event is happening next Saturday, I believe.

Robb: … Saturday. Yeah.

Nicki: What would be that December 11th?

Robb: 11th. Yeah.

Nicki: Yeah. Okay. Robb will be doing that, an hour of continuous jujitsu.

Robb: Which will be basically me just laying there and letting people maul me.

Nicki: You might be dying for a while because you’ve been out for a couple weeks since your back has been bothering you, so-

Robb: That’ll be a good time.

Nicki: … it’s liable to be a fun one. Let’s see, upcoming in The Healthy Rebellion. We’ve got our virtual Healthy Rebellion holiday party coming up next Thursday, December 9th. That’ll be fun. Some good Zoom time with all of our rebels across all the time zones. We have a seven day cold shower challenge hosted again by our rebel, Ash Higgs. And that’s going to start on January 3rd and then our next 30 day Rebel Reset will be kicking off on Friday, January 14th. So lots of stuff coming up within the next couple of weeks.

Robb: Cool.

Nicki: Cool. Do you have a news topic for us today?

Robb: I do have a news topic, in fact. It’s New York Times piece, A Heart-Healthy Way to Eat. Aim for an overall healthy dietary pattern, the American Heart Association advises, rather than focusing on, quote, good or bad foods.

Robb: So I have a link to that now. So I have a link to the American Heart Association journal where this piece, the kind of sciencey piece comes from and this, I guess, a brief little snippet out of the New York Times piece. The committee’s advice on protein foods published during the climate talks in Glasgow, was well timed. Choosing plant-based proteins over animal sources of protein, not only has health value for consumers, but can help foster a healthier planet.

Robb: Get in there and let’s just fix everything. So this came to me from a group that I’m a part of. And probably after this podcast, I will no longer be a part of. It’s this low carb research group and a good number of people are in there. How much behind-the-curtain stuff do I want to do?

Nicki: I don’t know any of this. So I don’t know. I can’t give you any advice.

Robb: There have been a few dust-ups in there. I have raised some stinks around, hey, climate change topics are going to get inextricably wrapped into this food conversation and if you want to just write another keto book, that’s great, but there’s a window, an aperture that’s closing here where you won’t be able to just say, “Well, this addresses health and we don’t really know about the climate change stuff.”

Robb: Which has been the position of some of the folks in there, which is bullshit because two people wrote books that addressed a lot of the climate change issues around animal husbandry, myself and Diana Rogers. But some of the prominent members of this group have been basically refused to read the book and-

Nicki: Well, it’s politically unpopular to champion meat currently.

Robb: And that’s more to the point. So this… Fuck it. I’ll just say it. It’s Gary Taubes. We had some conversation in which he was, basically, “I don’t know if what you’ve put forward here is accurate.” And I said, “Well, have you read the book?” And he said, “No, not really.” And I really think that the brass tacks part of this is just that if you start championing things like, “Oh, animal husbandry may in fact…” And for God’s sake, yes. Let the best science, the best models take us where we need to go.

Robb: But when you look critically at the claims around climate change and the influence the animal husbandry has on that, it’s just massively overblown and regenerative and may actually play a remarkable role in mitigating a lot of climate change issues, not the least of which is desertification and food insecurity and whatnot because of a decentralized food system.

Robb: But when you champion that topic, you no longer are on the hoity-toity invite list to Berkeley and New York cocktail parties, because now you’ve stepped into something. Not only are you recommending that animal-centric diets, or animal-inclusive diets are good for health, which is very, very scientifically defensible, but also will get you on various naught lists.

Robb: But now when people push back and say, “Well, it’s terrible for the environment,” and as a credible scientist or someone who follows literature, if you push back on that, then now you are a climate change denier. And if you’re a climate change denier you’re also a racist and a white supremacist and all these other stuff. It’s all just gotten completely inextricably wrapped together.

Robb: So I appreciate why some people haven’t had the balls to just get in and really look deeply at this stuff. I think a good number of people are just hoping that they can sunset their careers in this space while avoiding this particular thorny topic. But as we’ve seen with the MIT professor who, he was giving a talk on engineering, but he had, given a commentary on critical race theory, completely separate to this. And it wasn’t even…

Robb: I forget exactly. He basically was uninvited from MIT. And this guy is a preeminent scientist, impeccable bonafides in the area that he’s in. The commentary that he had was whatever it was, but it was completely separate from it. And he was dis-invited from this process. This is where all this stuff is going, and if you want to conduct low carb research, if you want to conduct animal-inclusive dietary research, your opportunity to do that is closing.

Robb: If you are a big fan of autoimmune paleo, because it has been singularly beneficial in dealing with the challenges that you or the folks that you steward what they face, you’re going to find ever more difficult times championing this stuff, and you will be on the pointy end of the stick that you are a climate change denier and all kinds of other horrible stuff.

Robb: So I don’t really know what to do about that other than people need to be aware of it and folks need to be brave enough to stand up and talk about this stuff. And again where and when we have good science on this stuff, that’s what should direct the whole conversation. And I don’t know what else to say. I did throw a link in there to my little piece to the Performance Menus final edition for… I think some folks probably don’t know, or a lot of folks don’t know.

Nicki: Some people don’t know what the Performance Menu is, but, gosh, it was an online magazine that Robb and I started along with our business partner in CrossFit NorCal, Greg Everett, back in 2005, I want to say.

Robb: Yeah.

Nicki: Yeah. So lots of sorted history around that, starting that and whatnot. But Greg has championed that and taken that for, gosh, the last 10 years, at least.

Robb: Well, really, the thing was running for 16 years, I think, total. So, yeah.

Nicki: Right. And I think we were only intimately involved for two or three and then it’s been Greg’s baby, but he’s putting that to bed. And so the final addition, final issue came out today, which is December 1st.

Robb: And it’s just interesting. And a lot of people who’ve gone on to some fair prominence within the health space, either got their starts or had early contributions to the Performance Menu. So it’s the little journal they could.

Nicki: For sure. Okay. Let’s read our T-shirt review winner for this week. It goes to Dangerous Don. He says, “Sure, I know it’s a health and wellness podcast, but it is refreshing to listen to completely honest content. In this day and age, when people have to skirt around issues, the only agenda I see here is to provide listeners with accurate and useful information.

Nicki: I love the organic interactions between Robb and Nicki, and my only complaint with the whole podcast is that I feel like I should be able to buy Robb and Nicki a beer. Keep producing great content.” Dangerous Don, if you are ever in the Kalispell, Montana area-

Robb: You can buy us a margarita.

Nicki: You can buy us… Or a cider from the Ciderworks.

Robb: Or a cider.

Nicki: Yeah. Would love that. Thank you for your review, Dangerous Don. Send us an email to hello@robbwolf.com with your T-shirt size and your mailing address and we’ll send you a Healthy Rebellion Radio T-shirt. And The Healthy Rebellion Radio is sponsored by our salty AF electrolyte company, LMNT, and given that today is the 1st of December when we’re recording this, it’s already December. I can’t believe it. This year is-

Robb: Holy cat.

Nicki: It’s the fastest and the slowest year ever. I don’t know or maybe last year-

Robb: I don’t know, fully lockdown year was-

Nicki: Yeah. Last year might have won that award.

Robb: And we were contemplating our move and everything, but-

Nicki: Right.

Robb: Yeah.

Nicki: Right. Anyway, do you have any of the following people on your holiday gift giving list, a low carb or keto eater, athlete, spartan racer, BJJ player, runners, bikers, somebody with an active job. Somebody who works outside, does manual labor, any breastfeeding moms, anybody with pots, anyone who loves winter sports, skiing, snowboarding, cross country, et cetera, anyone you know who still drinks commercial sports drinks. Give them something salty this year. LMNT makes a great gift. We’ve got to convert all those commercial sports drinkers.

Robb: We do.

Nicki: Those sugar-laden colorful-

Robb: Late nights.

Nicki: Colorful red dye number, whatever-

Robb: 38.

Nicki: When you buy three boxes of LMNT, you can get the fourth box free with the value bundle and you can do that at drinklmnt.com/robb. That’s drinkL-M-N-T.com/R-O-B-B. Okay, Hubs, are you ready for questions?

Robb: Yes. Nicely done wife.

Nicki: Nicely. Okay. Question number one comes from Jason and it’s regarding sleeping and eating on an extremely variable schedule. He says, “Hello, long time listener, first time caller. I’ve listened to your podcast on adjusting sleeping and eating cycles when changing shifts as many first responders do. However, I’m trying to locate resources and best practices for a more dramatically changing schedule.

Nicki: I work as a locomotive engineer for a Class 1 railroad. Truly I’m looking for actionable things I can spread to what I believe is an underserved industry. My coworkers and I are often under-rested and unprepared, which can lead to poor dietary and lifestyle choices. Our schedule is extremely unpredictable. We may work a night shift, be off for 10 hours and head back in for the afternoon shift, equally as likely to be off long enough to work another night or even the next day.

Nicki: Unfortunately, there’s no way to tell ahead of time as we get either two hours or one and a half hour notice before our shift begins. These shifts often end up being 12 hours long. As such, there are multiple times a week where I’m may be up for over 24 hours. In these situations I’m unsure how to even attempt to regulate my eating or trying to sleep when I need to, but I’m not tired.

Nicki: I’m 46 years old, male, 5’11, 210 pounds. I lift four to five times a week often when I’m tired and I try to get some steady state cardio in daily.” He says, “A live Q&A would definitely be a great addition to all the work you guys already do. I would like to add that I greatly appreciate all that you do and any advice would be appreciated.”

Robb: We did spin up our sleep guide, right?

Nicki: Mm-hmm (affirmative). And we can put a link to that in the show notes. Yes.

Robb: Yeah. And so the sleep guide was something that I generated initially for the folks when we were working with the Chickasaw Nation and gave them a template of that. And then I’ve tweaked and fiddled it a little bit. And it’s, I think, the best accessible resource for how to manage this stuff.

Robb: Man, there’s so many variables here because at least with standard first responder work, there’s at least a bit of a known element to the schedule. Clearly things can go long, you can get called in for emergencies and whatnot. But this sounds like absolute chaos. And actually, when we consider the known elements of how compromised people are when they’re just tired, I’m shocked that there’s not more issues with running trains.

Robb: But I assume the risk adjusters have done some sort of noodling on this, but it’s… Low carb diets are a pretty good hedge against this because the individuals are almost universally insulin-resistant from the shift work. It doesn’t mean you have to be keto, but high carb, low fat is probably not going to work in this scenario.

Robb: Maybe it will for very few people. But the work that we did in Reno, that was one of the only levers left that the first responders could use was the dietary side, because the sleep, the hypervigilant state, all the rest of that, which is baked in the cake, that you could do mitigating strategies.

Robb: Knowing when you’re going to sleep and tapering on any type of stimulants, like using stimulants really early in your shift. Man, having a kit to take with you so you can black out rooms. I assume who these folks are on the road a lot and so weird hotels, so how to black out the room in two minutes or less, sleep mask, ear plugs, some Doc Parsley’s Sleep Remedy.

Robb: Those are definitely the things that I think are going to be helpful. We mentioned, I think, virtually all that stuff, but you’re just going to have to be that much more dynamic and nimble given the variation here. I think the main thing that changes is-

Nicki: Trying to avoid alcohol at all, I mean, because I guess it already disruptive for sleep if you’re sleeping on any kind of regular consistent schedule, but with this theoreticism, I think, would be just a big, big no-no. I’m trying to think of what else. And you’ve always said, the food is the one thing that you…

Nicki: It seems like Jason might have control over here and I’m not sure if it’s cafeteria-style eating or if you guys are eating at restaurants or what the situation is, but just by hook or by crook, choosing protein veggies, trying to avoid any of the sugar-laden stuff that I know is-

Robb: Super tempting in those scenarios. Yeah.

Nicki: Super tempting, especially when you’re super sleep deprived, but really, really making an effort to avoid those. Anything else?

Robb: I wish I had more, but-

Nicki: We will put a link to that sleep solution guide in the show notes.

Robb: And again, maybe to just consolidate that, the main thing that I see here is there’s just even more variability than what standard shift work has. And so everything that you’re thinking about with standard shift work, when and how to use stimulant when to start dialing those down so that you can actually sleep when you can sleep, the sleep hygiene piece, when you can sleep, get as good as sleep as you possibly can. Good circadian biology, all that type of stuff. So, yeah.

Nicki: Okay. Question number two is from Cheeny and she wants to know, or he wants to know whether resistance starch is worth the hype. Is it worth the hype or is it back science? I love day-old white rice. So I’m hoping it’s got some merit to it.

Robb: Well, here’s the deal, whether it’s good or bad that day-old white rice is still going to be as tasty either way. The little bit that we’ve done with monitoring people with CGMs, Continuous Glucose Monitors, some people seem to experience a dramatic decrease in total glycemic load with like bake potato, cool it overnight in the refrigerator, and then you can eat it the next thing.

Robb: You can even heat it up and it doesn’t undo the reticent starch. Same deal with rice. I want to say some things like grits and some things like that also are a little bit similar, but I forget if that’s accurate, but some people seem to do a great job with that.

Robb: They respond well or the effects are very pronounced. Other people, it doesn’t seem to do much of anything and I’m one of those other people. So if you like it and it tastes good and it’s convenient, then I would just say go for it. And hopefully you are one of the folks that get some benefit from it.

Nicki: Okay. Question three. I think this one must have been submitted via Instagram because it’s from… There’s no vowels in the first word. So I’m thinking it’s Wizard Pow, and it’s on plant defenses. “Are all plant defense mechanisms antithetical to human health or longevity? I’m thinking in relation to things like turmeric and sulforaphane.”

Robb: Yeah. It’s funny, I’m definitely in the carnivore-friendly camp. I’ve seen huge benefit for folks. What percentage of The Healthy Rebellion do you think is eating carnivore or pretty damn close to it?

Nicki: 20%

Robb: I mean like Jack Sibel. There’s a lot of people in there.

Nicki: I would-

Robb: 20, 25%.

Nicki: Maybe 20 to 25%. Yeah.

Robb: A non-trivial number of people are eating that way. Most of the folks have found some amount of plant material that they reintroduced, like Tara does a little bit of fermented vegetables and stuff like that. Very selective. It depends person to person, but I think that there’s, without a doubt, some folks that for whatever reason, like gut health issues, auto immunity, they’re virtually zero plant foods.

Robb: And then there’s a whole spectrum from there. One thing that I diverge from the real hardcore carnivore scene is I have no doubt that humans have preferred animal products throughout all of our evolution, and even more recent times when people are given an option to have more plant material, they tend to do that until they become woke and decide that feeding themselves the most nutrient-dense foods possible is a bad idea, but it’s, I think, a million things like shoes.

Robb: Most people in developing country would kill to have their kids wear a pair of shoes. And then you only get to a point where you wear skew shoes when you’re wealthy enough to be able to say that that’s terrible stuff for you. But I mean, humans are super adaptable. We survive across the broadest range of any organism on the planet. I have a friend of mine who’s a toxicologist for one of the big evil pharma companies-

Nicki: Big pharma companies.

Robb: … and I tasked him with this idea of, “Hey, has anybody looked at the evolutionary biology of our toxicology? What things can humans handle and they can’t handle?” It’s well understood that chimpanzees can eat things that are so bitter and so caustic that humans would have no hope of eating it.

Robb: There’s some Venn diagram overlap of some stuff that both humans and chimps will eat. And then there’s a bunch of stuff that chimps can eat that humans can’t and it’s largely because of toxicology issues. We can’t detox a bunch of the stuff that’s in there and then I think cows are far, far better than chimps in that regard. And then you think about dogs and their inability to deal with some of the constituents in chocolate and then what’s the sweetener-

Nicki: Macadamia nuts.

Robb: So Macadamia nuts-

Nicki: It’s-

Robb: A refutal?

Nicki: No, it’s… Oh my gosh. I can’t believe I’m blanking on this. It-

Robb: Anyway, there’s a safer non-nutritive sweetener that will make dogs sick and can kill them. And I think dogs are arguably a bit more carnivorous than humans are. Cats even more so. And so I think that there’s a spectrum within a population of what folks can and can’t handle that’s just at a genetic level.

Robb: I think there’s some epigenetic changes that can occur, antibiotic use, gut infections and whatnot that may change what’s happening there. Because a lot of these plant constituents too, it’s not just the constituents making it in the bloodstream and getting detoxified by the liver. Sometimes the organisms in our gut modify the constituents. Sometimes they make them more toxic. Oftentimes they detoxify them.

Robb: So I think there’s just a big spectrum on that. And, fuck, man, I just like having a salad sometimes, but a really raw green salad that’s huge doesn’t really work for me. It didn’t for a long time, but I just kept hammering that stuff down because you’re supposed to eat all this.

Robb: So I don’t know. I’m kind of wandering now, but I think… I’m not in the completely extreme carnival camp where’s it’s like avoid every plant material at all costs, unless you’re just noticing that you feel like garbage when you eat it. And then by all means adjust things appropriate to that.

Nicki: Okay. Excuse me. All right. It’s that time? Don’t laugh at me, Robb. It’s time for-

Robb: You had one thing to do, lady.

Nicki: It’s time for The Healthy Rebellion Radio trivia and our Healthy Rebellion Radio sponsor drink, LMNT, is giving a box of LMNT electrolytes to three lucky winners selected at random who answer the following question correctly.

Robb: I’m trying to distract Nicki so she can’t come up with this because she was supposed to do it before.

Nicki: Robb, what is the name of the Christmas movie that the girls like above all others, at least currently?

Robb: I’m not totally sure. Is it the Santa Claus?

Nicki: It is not. That would probably be in number two.

Robb: A Christmas movie. I don’t know. What is it?

Nicki: You don’t know?

Robb: Have we watched it recently?

Nicki: They have.

Robb: I usually go fetal when the girls watch movies. So I’m not totally sure on this.

Nicki: This one is actually quite good and entertaining and enjoyable to watch annually.

Robb: The Grinch.

Nicki: Nope.

Robb: I don’t know. Lay it on me.

Nicki: Home Alone.

Robb: Oh, Home Alone. Okay. I should have known that.

Nicki: Yes. All right. So, that will be our trivia question this week.

Robb: Fuck. That one hurt.

Nicki: To play, go to robbwolf.com/trivia and enter your answer and we’ll randomly select three people with the correct answer to win a box of LMNT Electrolytes. The cutoff to answer this week’s trivia and be eligible to win is Thursday, December 9th at midnight. Winners will be notified via email and also on Instagram. This is open to residents of the US only.

Robb: We’re super professional.

Nicki: We are. We’ve got it together folks. Got it together. All right. Question four this week is from Jenny on the Omicron variant. She says, “Hi, I’m a masters of public health and this is completely stumping me. Reports on Omicron from the field describe it as a lingering cold with no hospitalizations,” and then she links an article.

Nicki: “If that’s the case, shouldn’t we be happy and not locking down. It was a shift to a less catastrophic influenza that ended the last flu pandemic. We didn’t vaccine flu out of existence. I know that we don’t have all the data, but seriously that’s just a mantra now. But if the symptoms are basic cold, why is the World Health Organization and Fauci… The last article I read had him making another reference to, quote, the science and I’m seriously going to vomit. Flipping out. So why are the WHO and Fauci flipping out?” That’s her question.

Robb: Do you want to? I’m not totally sure where to weight into this. One thing, and Jenny points out very accurately is that the general natural history of an agent like this, whether it’s a bad influenza strain or other types of particularly airborne illnesses like this is that, generally if they do…

Robb: One, if it’s super contagious, it will just run through a population and it will run through a population fast enough that there’s not actually all that much opportunity for variants to spin off. There’s pretty good theory that the vaccination in amidst the pandemic and also interestingly the lockdowns, have provided these-

Nicki: Opportunities.

Robb: … opportunities for variants to emerge. But the hope and the usual trend is that things become less dangerous with time-

Nicki: Because it’s not in the virus’s best interest to kill the host before it can spread. So as it gets less-

Robb: It’s not even really in the virus’s best interest to make the host sick enough that they don’t get out and move around.

Nicki: Right. So this is what the virus wants is to have it be so common cold-like.

Robb: Benign.

Nicki: Benign, that it spreads rapidly. Most people don’t know they have it so they continue being out and about and circulating and spreading it, and that’s the ideal from the evolution of a virus perspective.

Robb: That is winning the lottery in that regards. And there’s a bunch of noise being made that we’re going to need… Even though the… What was the last one? The Delta variant? I was asking why are there no booster updates with this? And now with this one, which seems a couple of orders of magnitude more benign, there’s a bunch of noise that we’re going to need-

Nicki: Omicron boosters.

Robb: … Omicron boosters specific to this, which I find fascinating because variants can spin up fast enough that by the time you’ve re-weaponized the whole process of developing the Omicron booster, we may be three or four more steps down the road by the time this is spun up. I mean, on the basic safety deal, it just defies all logic.

Robb: And Bari Weiss had a great piece where she had a gentleman who’s a master’s in public health and he talked about a lot of this stuff. And the guy is very pro-vaccine in general, but very much against mandates. He feels that public health is going to be in absolute shambles by the time this is done.

Robb: And it may be a shambles in which we live in a totalitarian world where maybe today you can go shopping because your vaccine passport says that you’ve been a good enough person, your social credit score allows you to leave the house and go buy food for yourself and family, or maybe it doesn’t. Or maybe we manage, or at least some places manage to skirt that kind of authoritarian hell.

Robb: But then the next huge deal where we need to lean into public health for help, nobody’s going to trust anything. I can’t even think of an adequate analogy here, and this is much the… This guy got pretty fired up about this-

Nicki: And we can link to that in this if folks want to check that out.

Robb: … and we can definitely link to that.

Nicki: So if folks want to check that out, it’s a good…

Robb: And the flip side of this is that if this Omicron variant is doing what it’s doing, this is really good because it’s following the natural progression that we would expect, because there’s an alternate hypothesis out there people like Geert Vanden Bossche and other folks have put forward that all of the immunizing mid-pandemic, leaky vaccine, the unique feature of only encoding for the spike protein, for the immune response.

Robb: That this sets us up for an opportunity in which the COVID virus would be encouraged to adapt in non… What was the term? It doesn’t follow… You remember in the original Peter Daszak communications with Fauci, and he says, “Does not follow evolutionary-“

Nicki: Evolutionary-

Robb: “… expectations,” or something to that effect.

Nicki: Right. Something like that. Yep.

Robb: That doesn’t follow standard evolutionary expectations because you’ve created this odd pressure in the way that we are going about doing all this stuff. So we should all say a thank God if this thing is heading in the direction that it looks like Omicron is going. Because the alternative there, which we’ve seen a couple of different situations of seemingly higher case counts in the vaccinated, really suspiciously high hospitalization, whether it was COVID related or not within vaccinated populations. So we really do need some light at some end of a tunnel with all this.

Nicki: Well, and if back in January, February of 2020, the coronavirus that appeared on the scene was the Omicron variant, there would be nothing to-

Robb: There would be complete nothing source.

Nicki: Yeah. Nobody would care. There wouldn’t have been any lockdowns, there wouldn’t have been all the mask stuff, there wouldn’t have been… Nobody would’ve rushed to develop vaccines because it’s looking that benign. So the fact that some places are re-instituting lockdowns.

Nicki: Santa Cruz, California is mandating masks indoors in your own home. The fact that there’s travel bans, you can’t fly in and out of South Africa into a lot of countries, for this variant. Had this been the original variant, the last two years would’ve been completely normal.

Robb: Yeah.

Nicki: So, I don’t know.

Robb: I don’t know what else. Jenny, I guess your instincts on this, I think, are valid. Clearly other people can’t get enough lockdown, can’t get enough control of people’s lives, can’t do enough virtue signaling around all the stuff. And there’s just really two worlds that exist around all this, and-

Nicki: And our next question actually will dovetail into this. This is a question from Joe and his question is regarding mass formation and Dr. Mattias Desmet. He says, “Hi, Robb and Nicki, love your work. Thanks for all the excellent content. I came across a few interviews with Dr. Mattias Desmet, who thinks that the response on to COVID can be explained by something called mass formation or mass hypnosis.”

Nicki: And then he goes on to, Joe, list several interviews and podcasts that he has been on. “I was first introduced to Dr. Mattias Desmet from Amy Peikoff,” who is one of our Healthy Rebellion members and she has a podcast called Don’t Let it Go, and-

Robb: And she’s high up the food chain within the Parler ecosystem. She’s involved with the social platform, Parler. And I think that they were the first people to interview Desmet within this cycle.

Nicki: Yeah. One of them, for sure. So Desmet is a clinical psychology professor at Gent University in Belgium. And so Joe’s question, what do we think about this? And I’ll include the links that Joe shared, but also Amy’s episode, which is the one that I listened to, and it’s pretty fascinating.

Nicki: I had never heard of the concept of mass formation or mass hypnosis before watching this. And he makes the case that what we’re experiencing we were primed for it. So before mass hypnosis or mass formation can occur, there needs to be four characteristics, and these were all well established before coronavirus came to be in early 2020.

Nicki: So those four characteristics are people feel a lack of a social bond. They’re socially isolated. They don’t have high connection with others. That’s number one. Number two, they feel like their life doesn’t have meaning. And I guess before coronavirus, there was a study that’s showing over 50% of people felt like their jobs were meaningless. A lot of what he called free-floating anxiety.

Nicki: Normally when you feel anxious, you can attach it to something like, “Okay, I’m anxious because I have to give this big talk next week, or we have this big meeting, or there’s something going on and you know that that’s why you’re feeling anxious, but free-floating anxiety is where you can’t connect it to a reason. So you feel anxious, but you have no idea why you’re anxious. And so you’re searching…

Nicki: Apparently that’s one of like the most terrible things to feel, he’s explaining, and so people start searching for something that can explain their anxiety. And then the fourth condition that needs to be met for this mass formation to occur is people have lots of frustration and aggression, again, that can’t be attributed to a specific cause.

Nicki: And so when a crisis comes along, it allows people to connect their anxiety to something. It’s like, “Oh, this is why I’m anxious. There’s this COVID and I might die and everybody might die.” Those early models out of the Imperial College of London that had those…

Robb: Massive numbers.

Nicki: Just turned out to be so far off the mark, but that’s… Even a couple weeks into it, when other models were coming forward saying, “No, those were highly inflated. The odds of that happening are nil.” All of the press and media ran with these huge numbers. So people obviously were very afraid of that, but now they have something to connect their anxiety to.

Nicki: Now they can connect to other people. Their life has meaning, because it’s like, “Okay, we can fight this virus together. We’re all in this together and now they have this social connection that they felt was missing in their lives before and they have something to satisfy their frustration against.

Nicki: So he makes the case that people that these conditions were part of their life, they didn’t have social bonds, they didn’t have a lot of meaning, they had a lot of anxiety, when a crisis comes along, they now can connect their anxiety to something and they will follow the narrative regardless of how absurd it is. It’s become a ritual. Wearing a mask is a ritual. All of these things are now symbolic and it shows that they’re a part of the tribe and it’s really hard to-

Robb: Walk that back.

Nicki: … walk that back. Anyway, Amy did a phenomenal interview with him. I’ve seen his name pop up, gosh, dozens and dozens of times since. He’s definitely doing the podcast circuit and has been host… A lot of people have had him on. So I would definitely recommend listening to him. I think his point is very, very interesting. It’s also interesting, because he says around 30% of a population will succumb to the mass formation and he describes it like a hypnosis too.

Nicki: So in the beginning when it was, “All these people are going to die,” it’s like they have blinders on, horse blinders, and that’s all they can see. Even if you say, “Oh, but there’s going to be all of these other secondary effects that happen, like depression and this other social isolation and other people might die and job loss and poverty and kids aren’t going to be getting school lunches because schools are closed so there’s going to be more kids starving,” the hypnosis piece of it is that people, none of that matters to them. They really don’t take that data in at all.

Nicki: They’re just blinders on, like a COVID death is the worst thing in the world. So it’s interesting. It’s like this one-track mind and they can’t see outside of it, but apparently 30% of the population can succumb to a mass formation. 30% won’t. They’ll see right through it and they won’t. And the remaining 40% will realize something is wrong, they won’t be able to put their finger on it necessarily and they’ll just be silent and go along.

Nicki: So the trick is to get to the 40% and try to wake them up, because they already have that feeling in their gut that something’s not quite right or this doesn’t feel right, but this is what we got to do, and so they just go along. But the way out is to somehow tap into that 40%. Anyway, it’s fascinating stuff, again, that was the first exposure to that concept of a mass formation. But I’m definitely seeing more and more people talk about it and it ties back into Jenny’s question about the Omicron variant.

Nicki: Why are people freaking out about this? Well, because if this is the thing that gives you meaning to fight this virus, let’s fight it forever. Even if the next variant, nobody feels it at all and nobody knows they have it and nobody dies from it, we’re still fighting it because it gives us connection, it gives us meaning, we have purpose. So the people for whom they are experiencing this mass formation, they don’t want COVID to end, right?

Robb: It’s the best life they’ve had. The meaning connection and us-versus-them. Sebastian Junger talks about this in Tribe, where some folks that were in a number of different circumstances, but one that really stuck out to me was the bombing in London during World War II. People remarked after the war that that was the most enjoyable portion of their life. Because even though there was terror and there was a fear of death and all this stuff, but people pulled together and they had one thing to focus on and one thing to focus against and the rest of their life has been pale by comparison.

Nicki: I’m just… I don’t know what that says about humanity, but…

Robb: I don’t know and… What’s fascinating to me, because I’m just… My bucket of fuck given does not runneth over much anymore. There’s a good number of people in the ancestral health space that have just gone head long into this and a bunch of the other, I think initially, well intentioned, but really shortsighted social justicey type stuff.

Robb: One individual early on labeled themselves a COVID accepter. And I think that this was, one, for sure, virtue signaling because this person is a huge narcissist and just a terrible human being. But there was some fringy elements that were like, “Oh, COVID doesn’t even exist.” There are still people that say that HIV isn’t real. And they get into all this arcane virology stuff and Koch’s postulate and everything.

Robb: They’re fucking nuts and they also don’t understand science very well. But there have been a few people that really went head over heels for this stuff. And it’s interesting looking at who the people were that lost their fucking minds over this.

Robb: They tend to be narcissists, they tend to be super front facing on 50 different selfie photos of themselves and what they’re up to on social media and just on and on and on. And that really seems to… Although there are plenty of shirtless selfie front-facing people that are in the counter camp now that I think about it. But I may be clawing at straws there, but yeah-

Nicki: Yeah. You are channeling that. I would push back on that a little bit.

Robb: So I don’t know. I don’t know why. It’s fascinating to me though, that if it was this general anxiety and a lack of purpose, you would think that folks have this cool gig of selling health online and all the rest of this stuff. By those definitions, it would seem like-

Nicki: I’m going to push back there some too. I mean, you have this cool gig of selling health online and there’s lots of things that can contribute to not having perfect mental health.

Robb: Sure. Sure.

Nicki: So I’m going to push back there, but one of the-

Robb: What I’m trying to get to is why. Folks in the ancestral health scene ostensibly already went counter to the standard narrative, although a number of these people, interestingly now have abandoned this ancestral health template because it’s elitist or it’s racist or it’s this, or it’s that. So that’s interesting in and of itself.

Robb: So now they’re feeling guilty about promulgating something that… Somehow they say it’s elitist and whatnot. It’s available for anybody anywhere to do it because the information is largely free. So I don’t really get where any of this is. I’m just trying to figure out how some of the people in this space ended up where they did. What was the deal with that?

Nicki: Well, I guess my point is, is that just because somebody’s in… I guess your point, they’re in ancestral health, so they’re already eating well, maybe… I don’t know. I’m tying it back to his anxiety piece because that’s step one. You have this anxiety that you can’t attach to something in your real world. You don’t have a…

Nicki: If a Tiger’s chasing you, you’re anxious because you’ve got this thing, right? But if you feel anxious, but you don’t know why… And that can afflict anybody, right? It could be childhood stuff, it could be interpersonal relationship stuff. It doesn’t matter how well you eat. It doesn’t matter, maybe financially there’s challenges. Maybe you’ve got a sick child. I don’t know. I feel like there’s… Well, although those are specific things that you could attach your anxiety to.

Nicki: So maybe I’m… I don’t know. I don’t know. He just makes the point that in the years, preceding COVID, the five years running up to COVID, antidepressant use and prescriptions have just been lineally going up like crazy. It’s just a hockey stick of the number of people feeling dissatisfied with their lives and taking medication to deal with that. I guess I would say that that spans everybody regardless of profession. I think, that touches-

Robb: A lot of folks.

Nicki: … a lot of folks, but that underlying thing and not being able to know why you’re anxious and just feeling this general malaise, and then just because somebody has an online persona, they might be really fucking lonely in real life, right? Maybe even more so than the average person. They feel the need to do all the selfies because that’s where they get their-

Robb: Little dopamine hit.

Nicki: … little dopamine hit, but maybe they don’t have as many meaningful relationships in person, which we know how important is connection. We talk about community in our 30 day resets all the time. Community was one of your pillars of health and-

Robb: Wired to eat.

Nicki: … wired to eat. And as everything has moved more and more online and digital and social media, yes, it’s connection, but it’s not really connection.

Robb: It’s the junk food of connection.

Nicki: Yeah. So no wonder people feel like what they’re doing… I don’t know. He sets it up like we’ve had this perfect storm, all the kindling was stacked just perfectly and it just needed the tiniest spark to light this thing and create this mass formation, which is where we are now, and-

Robb: It’s interesting. I still wonder about some folks like Sam Harris. Pieces of this… And again, I think this model is super interesting, but it would be interesting to talk to this guy about some of these other outliers like Sam’s a brilliant guy. He’s a scientist, but he blue-pilled on this early. And I really think that a lot of that is an outgrowth of the sociopolitical environment that COVID began in.

Robb: Trump was in office and he said hydroxychloroquine, and he said these vaccines will be good. And there was just a reel that was going around the other day of all of these prominent folks from Biden to Harris, on and on, “I would never take this. This stuff needs to be heavily scrutinized,” and then-

Nicki: I would never take a rushed vaccine.

Robb: I would never take a rush vaccine.

Nicki: They would have to disclose all of the information on the approval process. I wouldn’t take it unless I had all of the data fully transparent. Yeah. And I’m sure people have seen it. It’s gone around and around.

Robb: It’s just fascinating though.

Nicki: But now that it’s-

Robb: The shoe’s on the other foot.

Nicki: … the shoe’s on the other foot, it’s the best thing since sliced gluten-free bread.

Robb: I don’t know. I don’t know if we’re contributing anything.

Nicki: I don’t know. Yeah.

Robb: It’s interesting though, I…

Nicki: I think Dr. Mattias Desmet has a really interesting angle on this. I think, Joe, I believe is who asked this question. Again, we’ll include the links that he shared, but also Amy Peikoff’s episode. I know he’s been interviewed and there’s written articles and things from Desmet as well. And I just think it’s worth reading.

Robb: Considerate.

Nicki: It’s an interesting perspective, an interesting angle to kind of view all this from.

Robb: Just to maybe wrap all that stuff up, if what… And you’ve followed part of this much closer than I have. Let’s just throw out there for a minute that the reason why folks are so invested in this is that they now have a sense of purpose, they now have something to focus all their angst and anxiety upon and it’s giving their lives meaning. Are these people going to want to walk this thing back? Are they going to want to let the air out of this particular hot air balloon and bring it to earth? And the answer is no.

Nicki: Mm-mm (negative).

Robb: So it’s going to be a fight of some form to-

Nicki: It’s almost like… I’m going to try to do one of your… You always do really good analogies and I’m going to try this.

Robb: Oh Lord. Oh Lord.

Nicki: Let’s see if this works. But it’s almost like if there’s a sleeping baby holding a stuffed animal that belongs to the older kid and you need to somehow take the stuffed animal out of her arms and slide in a different one. It’s like these people need a different thing that gives them purpose, a different thing that gives them connection before they’re going to let go of the other one.

Robb: And here’s me. I agree. And you know what gets slid in there? Climate change. And then when the climate change binky gets slid out, then it’s social justice wokeness, and then it’s COVID and then it’s climate change, and then it’s wokeness. And this is the revolving binky that these folks have right now to be able to focus. Everybody’s a racist.

Nicki: All the problems lie elsewhere, and not in any that you can do yourself.

Robb: Yeah.

Nicki: Well, that’s depressing.

Robb: This is why I haven’t been online a whole lot because I’m like, “Dude, we’re fucked.”

Nicki: Okay. Then it’s-

Robb: Well, it is, but-

Nicki: If it really is 30% and if there really are, and I don’t know how accurate these numbers are. He sites tons of research around mass formation from 100 years ago. This is not a new thing. This has happened before. There’s lots of people that have written on it. And I haven’t done any of that reading, but I’m just sharing little bits of what he talked about. But if these numbers are accurate or even approximately close to accurate, then there’s 40% of people that in their gut know that this isn’t right or that there’s something not going… That this isn’t the right path.

Robb: The narrative is not lining up with reality.

Nicki: And so I guess maybe the solution is to really somehow wake those ones up and get them over so then it’s a 70/30 thing, not a 30/30/40 thing.

Robb: That’s our fight. And now it’ll give all of us purpose too. The funny thing though, is I think all the rest of those people had some purpose and had some meaning. And that in some ways is, I think, why the folks on our side of the fence are like, “Hey man, we don’t need to do mandates. Let people make a decision.” This is the difference here.

Robb: Or like, “You must put a black tile on your social media thing.” And it’s like, “Well, maybe I agree with some or part, but I don’t know that I feel comfortable putting all of it on there.” Whereas the folks that actually believe in freedom and individuality and have meaning in their lives, this is the ironic thing, they’re not rabid to the point of being religious conversional about this. They’re not going to go out and find-

Nicki: Evangelical.

Robb: Yeah. They’re not going to do a crusade and put people to the sword to change their mind, because that’s antithetical to the basic worldview that these folks have. So I don’t know how you do that. I think we mentioned-

Nicki: -I think if that 30% pushes harder and harder for things like mandates and passports and… There are places in the-

Robb: School board meetings that if you push back as a parent about what’s going down at the school board thing that you get arrested for it. This is going to have catastrophic blow back and then we will be labeled racist and domestic terrorists and all the rest of it. But I mean, I don’t know another way out of it because you either comply and just go along with insanity or you fight and there will be some consequences to that.

Nicki: I thought you were listening to something that was supposed to be-

Robb: Optimistic.

Nicki: … optimistic and gives some hope the other day.

Robb: It is. It is, but the hope or the optimism that was offered there is that there may be a way to avert this totalitarianism becoming uniform across the planet. You look at like Australia, New Zealand, Canada, that ship has sailed and the only hope that those folks have, although a remarkable number of the people there are like, “No, this is great. Lock it down again. Thank you, sir. May I have another.”

Robb: But the main thing that I’ve seen or my understanding of this is if you can dismantle the vaccine mandate process, specifically the passport, which is basically a social credit score apparatus that can undermine every facet of your life and is being used in a super heavy handed way in China, that that is probably the singular…

Robb: If we were to focus on one spot to push back on, that’s it. That is the line that shall not be crossed and that all of us should probably be willing to take some non-trivial personal danger, risk and suffering to-

Nicki: Avoid.

Robb: … fight that.

Nicki: Yeah. Fight that.

Robb: Yeah. Because once that Rubicon is crossed, it is going to be very difficult to walk it back because it’s been institutionalized at that point and institutionalized to the point where you don’t even get to show up at the board meeting. You don’t even get to show up at the polling booth to vote unless your social credit score is all in order. And I guess we’ve completely gone to fucking Alex Jones’ land, but-

Nicki: But if you are, I think his name is Michael Gunner, one of the leaders in, I think, Northern Australia, if you are anti-vaccine mandate, that makes you anti-vax in general.

Robb: Do you know who this reminds me of?

Nicki: No, I don’t.

Robb: Greg Glassman. This was classic Greg Glassman bullshit. Somebody could love CrossFit. Love it. Love it to-

Nicki: -But you don’t like medicine-ball cleans, so if you pay CrossFit-

Robb: Yeah. But if you had some, “Hey, I don’t know if using a medicine ball to teach clean is really the entry point,” you hate CrossFit. And I guess this is… Fuck, I could go on and on with this, but it’s interesting seeing where narcissism that I’ve been in the crosshairs of and the vitriol that comes from that. And it’s identical to this.

Robb: It’s people who have gained shocking amounts of power in a really brief period of time and they do not want to let that go. And they wrap it all up in the guise of safety and public health. And it’s like… Yeah-

Nicki: We can stop there.

Robb: We can stop there. Yeah. Probably everybody else wishes we stopped before. But anyway, appreciate the questions. I do think that it’s reached a point where… I mean, if we’re crazy, well, people have easy options. They can quit listening and that’s all easy and fine, but for myself, I’ve been like, “What do I do? What do I do? I’m not really too sure what to do. I’m not sure where to move the needle on this stuff.”

Robb: But it’s become more clear to me. And other than just saying we can’t let these passports become the thing. If people want to get vaccinated by God, let’s facilitate that, let’s make all that happen, let’s help educate them on the risk reward story of different scenarios so that they are as well armed as they can be. Whether you get vaccinated or not, let’s try to you healthy and if you don’t want to get healthy, let’s at least get you some vitamin D and maybe a walk and just set you up for as much success as we can.

Nicki: Lower blood glucose levels, vitamin D levels. These are all things that we know-

Robb: We know will improve outcomes.

Nicki: … improves outcomes. And of course, beating a dead horse here and singing to the choir, but no mention of this from any global public health leader ever in the last two years.

Robb: But I guess if one is feeling exposed in talking about this, because it’s easy to just get mobbed online, but we have a very defensible position here. It’s like, “Hey, wherever you are on this story, let’s facilitate people understanding what their risk profile is and then do everything we can to improve their outcomes, regardless of what decision they make.” Because it’s crystal clear that people with good metabolic health respond better to any given vaccine that they’re given. So, yeah.

Nicki: All right, folks, we will wrap it up there. Thank you for listening to another episode of The Healthy Rebellion Radio. Be sure to check out our show’s sponsor LMNT for all your electrolyte needs all your holiday gift giving needs and there still is some mint chocolate salt left. So you can grab that at drinklmnt.com/robb that’s drinkL-M-N-T.com/R-O-B-B. And I hope you all have a fabulous weekend and we’ll see you next week.

Robb: Bye everybody. Take care.

Where you can find us:

Submit questions for the podcast: https://robbwolf.com/contact/submit-a-question-for-the-podcast/

Keto Masterclass

The keto diet is one of the most effective ways to shed fat and improve your health. Keto Masterclass helps you start keto right, step-by-step, so that you can be successful long-term.

Don’t forget, Wired to Eat is now available!

Listen here: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly90aGVyZWdlbmVyYXRpdmVqb3VybmV5LmxpYnN5bi5jb20vcnNz/episode/MWZjODZiMGYtOTNiOC00NDhiLWE0ZGUtOTZlMmMxOGEzN2Rk?ep=14

Podcasts Rebels Are Loving: December 2021

Wed, 01 Dec 2021 01:35:36 +0200

Get your earbuds ready!! Your podcast queue is about to be

Here are some of The Healthy Rebellion members’ recent podcast recommendations… they run the gamut of topics so you can find something no matter your taste or mood.

What’s your favorite podcast or genre?

Listen here: https://overcast.fm/+KwvNtZHng

“Ancestral Health and the brain. This covers how to use these to fix migraines in an engaging way.” – Greg F.

Listen here: https://peterattiamd.com/jamesclear/

“I know we’ve discussed “Atomic Habits” before and some have read/started/re-read the book, but for those who have not or who want a good refresher, this was an amazing episode with Attia and James Clear” – Kristin J.

Listen here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/triggernometry/id1375568988?i=1000539574619

“I enjoyed this Gad Saad. Let me guess, people think he’s a kook? That’s usually what I end up finding out about people I like.” – Whitney R.

Listen here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lex-fridman-podcast/id1434243584?i=1000540681301

“Lex Fridman is a fantastic interviewer and the subject of this podcast is the trucking industry.” – Whitney R.

“This is such a good listen. I’m only an hour in.” – Phil F

Listen here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1utiTB2HB5GGnYGX3gtgTP

“So much good stuff on this episode…covid theater, media ridiculousness, selling out to China, American manufacturing, etc. We should be applying regenerative agg type thinking to all our purchases, not just meat. Think about the person that makes your clothes, where the materials come from, who the profit goes to. I’m 100% in.” – Andrew S.

“Rebels I’m loving this podcast. Each ep is an interview discussing the Interviewee’s journey. It’s always interesting and informative but it’s also calm. Some of the podcasts I enjoy do leave me feeling a bit stressed afterwards lately! This ep is a long one but some excellent banter and old man grumbling” – Heather D.

Listen here: https://castbox.fm/vb/442359796

“Deep.” – Javaughn U

Listen here: https://pca.st/uwcdxdg7

“Growing up in CA, and spending a lot of time driving down the 5 (and it’s THE 5, not 5), almonds have ALWAYS frustrated me. This podcast hits on ALL THE POINTS as to why we should not consume almonds… The bees, this is probably the most frustrating for me. Especially with how much we export. Anyway – enjoy and don’t eat almonds!” – Kim G.

Listen here: https://overcast.fm/+mYMwB1Vng

“Malcolm Kendrick provides a compelling narrative for the epithelial damage hypothesis of heart disease over the LDL hypothesis. Sooo interesting that I’d love to hear a steel man critique of the hypothesis” – Greg F.

Listen here: https://pca.st/2bvexwqe

“Really interesting podcast on the Huberman Lab. Curious other, smarter than me, people’s thoughts. I really love that no only does he get into more alternative health topics, but also LOVES finding the science that supports things like breath work and acupuncture. I found the segment on acupuncture particularly interesting.” – Kim G.

“Love the way Andrew explains the science, I can replay and replay his podcast, loaded with great info. The immune one was ” – Tami S

“Loved this episode. Particularly loved his explanation of heating/cooling the body and also using breathing as a behavioral intervention to enhance immune response and decrease inflammation. I used to go to a pool-based crossfit class where we did some Wim Hoff type breathing outside the pool and then a whole bunch of adrenaline based activity inside the pool. It was a really challenging (mentally – comfort zone) class but I always used to come away from it feeling sensational. Huberman’s explanation of how that type of breathing effects the body in conjunction with releasing adrenaline was really enlightening.” – Kerry H

Want Health Rebel-approved podcasts daily?

Join The Healthy Rebellion for all the best content

JOIN US IN THE HEALTHY REBELLION

The Top 9 Ancestral Health Black Friday + Cyber Monday Sales To Shop

Fri, 26 Nov 2021 11:14:53 +0200

Complete honesty here… I’m not a fan of the commercialism of this weekend.

It’s completely loco.

HOWEVER, that being said, it’s hard to pass up on the opportunity to pick up some thoughtful, useful gifts, save beaucoup bucks stocking up on things that you use all the time, or try something you’ve had your eye on.

So I want to help you get in and out so you can get back to your loved ones.

Enough dilly dallying… scroll down to see my personal highlights of the Black Friday / Cyber Monday frenzy:

BluBlox

I talk about these guys all the time… if you, your family members, or your new beau don’t have a pair of Blue Blockers for night time (which is now about 5 pm if you’re lucky…) this is your time to invest.

BLUblox, who 1 in evidence backed blue light glasses, sleep masks, red light therapy and circadian friendly lighting are having a huge 25% off Black Friday Sale

Dates: November 19 – 30

Deal: 25% off sitewide

Click here to get 25% off BluBlox site

Beekeepers Naturals

Beekeeper’s Naturals makes effective products sourced from the hive and backed by science. I’ve been hooked on everything they offer, but I especially love their B.Immune Propolis Throat Spray.

The spray contains this super-ingredient called propolis that acts as the medicine of the beehive. It contains SO many vitamins and minerals, including vitamin C, zinc, iron, and B vitamins.

Dates: November 23 – 29

Deal: 30% off sitewide PLUS an additional gift with purchase on Black Friday and Cyber Monday

Click here to get your deals on Beekeepers Naturals

ChiliSleep

‘Tis the season of exhausting holiday chaos!

Although the holidays are wonderful, much of what makes them so enjoyable can also make them draining. This season, give yourself (or the one you love the most) the gift of deep sleep! ChiliSleep cooling bed systems, either the original Cube or the app-controlled OOLER, operate between 55°F-115°F and will become the gift that truly keeps on giving.

Dates: 11/17-12/31

Deal: 30% off all new Sleep Systems. Cannot be combined with other offers. Valid in new Cube and OOLER systems only

Code: WOLF30

Click here to get 30% off ChiliSleep

Dry Farm Wines

You are particular about what you consume… but the holidays have a special way of triggering overindulgence. Alcohol plays a big role.

The holidays shouldn’t be a time for guilt or sacrifice; they’re a time for love and celebration! Alcohol can be a vibrant part of this celebration, but you have to drink the right stuff…

Dry Farm Wines lets you enjoy wine that you know fits your lifestyle and tastes incredible. ALL the wines from Dry Farm Wines meet very strict purity criteria:

Sugar free. All wines contain 0 – 0.15g of total sugar per glass (yes, it’s possible!)
Organically farmed. No pesticides, herbicides, or other harmful chemicals
No industrial additives. No thickeners, dyes, or taste modifiers
Lower alcohol. All wines are less than 12.5% alcohol
Lower sulfites. All wines are less than 75 parts per million sulfur
Only wild yeasts. No lab made or GMO yeasts

For this holiday season, Dry Farm Wines is offering a few specially curated selections:

Black Friday Box (on 11/26) will include 4 pure, Natural Red Wines

Cyber Monday Box (on 12/2) – A rare chance to get a one time box at member pricing.

Holiday Gifting (live NOW through New Years Day) – Send a one-time gift or temporary subscription!

Ojai Energetics

Pain ruining your sleep? Looking for a calming sense of relief throughout the holiday season?

Ojai Energetics has cracked the code on making full-spectrum, water-soluble CBD oil without synthetic ingredients. Their first-of-its-kind Hemp Elixir is created using only certified organic, regeneratively grown plants. But that’s not all—their revolutionary water-soluble technology makes this CBD oil 20X more absorbable, which means you get the benefits pain-relieving benefits in 30 seconds instead of 30 minutes.

And the best part? I’ve secured a limited number of bottles at 10% off already-discounted prices this Black Friday. Be quick though, because these will sell out FAST.

Dates: 11/26 – 29

Deal: Additional 10% off

Code: discount10

Click here for Ojai Energetics CBD

Primally Pure

Primally Pure makes all-natural, sustainably sourced bath products that make you feel like you just stepped out of the spa. And during the holiday weekend they’re offering 20% off SITEWIDE! And, in addition to this discount, they’ve brought back their holiday line plus two new products:

Holiday Body Butter
Holiday Tinted Lip Balm
Holiday Body Wash
Holiday Candle (yes, it’s back!)
*NEW Bian Stone (Black Gua Sha) – will be released on Black Friday
*NEW Holiday Deodorant – will be released on Cyber Monday

Dates: Friday, November 26th to Monday, November 29th at midnight PST

Deal: 20% off sitewide

Code: THR20

Click here for 20% off Primally Pure and the limited edition holiday products

Paleovalley

We love Paleovalley’s mission: to help as many people as possible reclaim their vibrant health by using REAL whole foods.

Every Paleovalley product is ethically sourced, free of harmful additives or processing ingredients, and made with your wellness as the top priority. Our family always has their Grass-fed Beef Sticks, Essential C Complex, and Apple Cider Vinegar Complex on hand…

And during their biggest sale of the year, you can save year-round when you lock in 30% off FOR LIFE when you subscribe and save (or 20% off a one-time purchase!)

Dates: Friday, November 26th-Friday, December 3rd

Deal: 30% off for LIFE on any product (when they subscribe and save), or 20% off our entire store with a one-time purchase

Click here to stock up on Paleovalley goodies

Sleep Remedy

This is Sleep Remedy’s BIGGEST sale of the year. The gift of sleep is priceless and it doesn’t get better than $20 off!

Sleep sets a strong foundation for your mind and body to accomplish all your upcoming goals. Don’t wait until the New Year, start NOW.

BTW if you’ve tried Sleep Remedy in the past but aren’t a fan of the drink version, they now offer capsules that are definitely worth trying!

Dates: November 22-29th

Deal: $20 off Sleep Remedy & Sleep Remedy Kids

Code: SLEEPBETTER

Click here to get $20 off Sleep Remedy products

Wellnesse

Wellnesse was created by the mastermind behind hundreds of non-toxic, DIY recipes from her blog Wellness Mama —Katie Wells. Together with experts in product formulation, Katie has managed to make toothpaste, shampoo, conditioner, and moisturizing hand sanitizer that are always GMO-free, paraben-free, sulfate-free, and highly effective

When: Black Friday AND Cyber Monday

Deal: 20% off one-time orders of $35 and above. 20% off first month subscriptions on orders $35 and above. Free shipping on orders over $40.

Codes: BlackFriday on Black Friday and use code CyberMonday on Cyber Monday.

Click here to get your Wellnesse products

Happy Holidays to you and yours!

Want The Healthy Rebellion Gift Guide, Holiday Recipes, and Survival Tactics?

Join The Healthy Rebellion before 12/24/21 and we’ll send you all three for free!

JOIN US IN THE HEALTHY REBELLION

Substack Goodness | Salty Talk 036 | THRR

Fri, 19 Nov 2021 11:00:51 +0200

WARNING: These episodes may get “salty” with the occasional expletive.

Please Subscribe and Review: Apple Podcasts | RSS

Submit your questions for the podcast here

Show Notes:

We had a THR member mention she was unfamiliar with substack and was wondering how to find people to follow. Several members chimed in with substacks they subscribe to, and we thought this might be a fun thing to talk about in today’s episode.

Common Sense with Bari Weiss – https://bariweiss.substack.com/

bad cattitude – boriqua gato https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/a-cats-tale-how-getting-canceled

Vinay prasad https://vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/which-causes-more-myocarditis-covid19

Astral Codex Ten https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/ivermectin-much-more-than-you-wanted

Eugyppius – a plague chronicle https://eugyppius.substack.com/
https://eugyppius.substack.com/p/stupid-and-evil-in-equal-measures

Natural selections – Heather Heying https://naturalselections.substack.com/

Slowdown Farmstead – Tara Couture https://www.slowdownfarmstead.com/
an ode to the salty https://www.slowdownfarmstead.com/p/an-ode-to-the-salty

Raelle Kaia Open Heart, Open Mind https://raellekaia.substack.com/p/whats-to-be-done-about-the-vaccine

Other authors to check out that were mentioned by THR members:

Glen Greenwald https://greenwald.substack.com/

Matt Taibi https://taibbi.substack.com/

Popular Rationalism https://popularrationalism.substack.com/

John Mcwhorter https://substack.com/profile/6527799-john-mcwhorter

Alex Berenson https://alexberenson.substack.com/

Toby Rodgers https://tobyrogers.substack.com/

Steve Kirsch https://stevekirsch.substack.com/

Dr Rollergator https://drrollergator.substack.com/

Sponsor:

Transcript:

Nicki: Welcome to the Healthy Rebellion Radio. This is an episode of Salty Talk, a deep dive into popular and relevant health and performance news pieces, mixed with the occasional salty conversation with movers and shakers in the world of research, performance, health, and longevity. Healthy Rebellion Radio’s Salty Talk episodes are brought to you by Drink LMNT, the only electrolyte drink mix that’s salty enough to make a difference in how you look, feel, and perform. We co-founded this company to fill a void in the hydration space. We needed an electrolyte drink that actually met the sodium needs of active people, low carb, keto, and carnivore adherence without any of the sugar, colors, and fillers found in popular commercial products. Health rebels, this is Salty Talk. And now, the thing our attorney advises. The contents of this show are for entertainment and educational purposes only. Nothing in this podcast should be considered medical advice. Please consult your licensed and credentialed functional medicine practitioner before embarking on any health, dietary, or fitness change. And given that this is Salty Talk, you should expect the occasional expletive.

Robb: Welcome back, wife. Welcome back, everybody else, everybody not wife.

Nicki: Hello, hello. This is another episode of the Healthy Rebellion Radio, and it’s another Salty Talk.

Robb: You’re kind of running this one. This was your idea.

Nicki: Am I running this one?

Robb: Yeah.

Nicki: This was my idea.

Robb: Do you want the power of the mouse or are you just going to tell me to… I will be your mouse bitch as it were.

Nicki: I kind of like that.

Robb: Okay.

Nicki: You can be my bitch mouse today.

Robb: Perfect.

Nicki: Yeah. So, the idea for this episode came about because we had a member inside the Healthy Rebellion who posted, she’s like, “I know I’m late to the game, but I’m just hearing about Substack. How do you find people to follow? Who are you all following?” And we had mentioned, frequently people will share articles from different Substacks in the healthy rebellion, and we had mentioned specifically somebody that we’re going to talk about here, Vinay Prasad, who we’ve mentioned on the podcast before as well. And so, she was wanting to dig in and kind of learn more about Substack and who might be interesting to follow.

Nicki: So, it was a nice little thread with several people chiming in with different people that they enjoy, and so I thought that there might be more people who kind of are new, or maybe haven’t heard of Substack, or just aren’t sure exactly what it is, and I thought we could do a little show about that and also share some of the people that we enjoy following and we’ll also share some of the other people that were mentioned by members of the Healthy Rebellion at the very end. So, that is what this episode is about. I think we should start with just explaining what Substack is.

Robb: Launch right into that.

Nicki: Well, so it’s essentially, the essence of it is it’s a newsletter, right? So, it’s a newsletter in sort of blog format where you make a post and your subscribers get an email about your post, and the nice thing about Substack is it allows people to monetize their content. So, several folks who maybe have left kind of mainstream professions are able to make a living writing on Substack if their audience finds their content valuable. So, they can monetize their content. People can choose to subscribe as a free subscriber. People can choose to pay monthly, and it’s usually something nominal like $5 or $7 a month, or there’s annual options as well which make it a little bit cheaper. So, it’s a way for people to reward and contribute to the authors that they find value from.

Nicki: So, that’s what it is in a nutshell, and the nicest part about it, and as you’ll see, some of the people that we mention in today’s show were kicked off of other platforms like Twitter. And so, Substack so far seems to really be a platform for everyone. So, it doesn’t matter if your views or your conclusions that you come to when doing science or different research-

Robb: Or an opinion. Just a basic opinion piece. Yeah.

Nicki: Or opinions. Doesn’t matter if that doesn’t fit the narrative or what is accepted on platforms like Twitter. Substack, you can have your own audience there.

Robb: And I have some thoughts around that. I mean, the Healthy Rebellion was born when we were not deplatformed, but we were effectively demonetized when Google, via the Owl update that occurred in 2017, made our website very, very difficult to find. And so, we saw like a 97% drop in site traffic, and we had challenges on Facebook selling things like the keto masterclass. It’s kind of funny because it hearkens back to the very beginning of our journey in all this stuff. Do you want to tell the Greg Everett and Greg Glassman story early?

Nicki: I don’t know. That can be lengthy and can take us, lengthy and can take us…

Robb: No, it won’t be. But the fact that you’re hesitant to do it tells me that we should do it.

Nicki: All right. Go for it.

Robb: Early, early, early CrossFit, and I mean, there were maybe 10, 15 affiliates at this point, fewer than 50. People entering the scene were super unsophisticated. People didn’t know what they were doing. It was still at a time when there weren’t WordPress or Foursquare whatever these…

Nicki: Wix, yes.

Robb: Yeah, these easy-to-throw-up websites. Getting a website installed was a non-trivial thing. So, Greg Everett was great at building websites. He had been doing that in a variety of locations prior to that. And so, as these new CrossFit affiliates kind of started coming online, man, they needed a website, and here was this guy who was in the community. He had beautiful design, aesthetics, and everything. And so, he would build these websites and all was good until Brian Mulvaney who was one of Glassman’s henchman, and he’s a former tech guy, and just generally an enormous piece of shit now looking back in full retrospect, but he was doing some poking around and found that Greg Everett had built a website called Newtopia and he was contracted to do this. Greg wasn’t-

Nicki: He wasn’t involved in it. Yeah, he built the site.

Robb: He built the site. The horrible premise of the site was that let’s get people from both sides of the political spectrum, get a topic, and then have these folks write about it. And so, Greg built a super functional site. Ostensibly, he showed the people how to set it up and run, and the site had been running for quite some time. But one of the articles that was on there was from a Catholic priest who had written a piece suggesting that 9/11 was an inside job. And so, you could find this thing by clicking on Greg Everett’s-

Nicki: A CrossFit website that Greg had built, you could click on his name and it would show his portfolio.

Robb: Down at the bottom portfolio, it would say, “Site built by Greg Everett.”

Nicki: Yeah, and it would link it, and you click on that, and you could see a portfolio of all the other websites he had built, and this Utopia site-

Robb: Newtopia.

Nicki: … Newtopia site was on there.

Robb: The concern, and this is an opinion piece on my part, but the concern that Mulvaney and Glassman had at this point was that their burgeoning group of folks in the military, and potentially even the military who were paying for folks to go get certified through CrossFit, they were worried that somebody might click on a site built by Greg Everett, and then they somehow find way to Newtopia and then they find that article, and then…

Nicki: And find that article, and then it would reflect poorly on CrossFit, Inc.

Robb: Which is ironic because this was right at the time that we were having discussions with Glassman, largely being ignored, that hey, maybe we need something other than one main site because every photo posted on the main page was dudes breaching doors and helicopters and everything which I love our police, military and fire, but when you’re trying to spin up a gym and you have school teachers and stuff like that coming in, and the place that you send them is this-

Nicki: CrossFit.com.

Robb: … one size fits all thing, it was a problem, and eventually, everybody had their own website and this stuff became moot, and our concerns were actually validated as they always were. But what happened is that it was suggested that if Greg’s work wasn’t… Basically, if people didn’t cease using Greg as a web builder, that there was going to be problems for them.

Robb: So, this kind of opened our eyes to the reality that we don’t actually own what we have here. We had a website, CrossFit NorCal, and it’s like, “Oh, we don’t actually own the name CrossFit. We’re building this brand and all this stuff.” So, anyway, that was our first brush with this kind of censorship, or kind of some entity bigger than us curating our ability to do what it was that we wanted to do, and that was when we dual-branded. We became NorCal Strength and Conditioning and CrossFit NorCal, and that was a huge bur under Glassman’s saddle because he’d lost control over us, immediately, and this was a longstanding thing, but this stuff around power and control is where this stuff all comes from.

Robb: And so, I think it was 2014, 2015, Kresser and I were having a discussion fact that Google was effectively starting to curate medical and health-related material, and I didn’t really piece things together at that point, but it’s because Google has all these fingers into pharma. This is the reason why they want… I didn’t piece that together until pretty recently, but they began curating content around certain topics. And during that Owl update, again, our website lost 97% of the site traffic, lots of other sites that are in this kind of low-carb space, also lost significant traffic, and it caused us to need to go look for something else, and we ended up settling on Mighty Networks. Maybe Substack was going at that point, but we wanted to do-

Nicki: Well, we wanted a community.

Robb: We wanted a community.

Nicki: We wanted something a little bit different than what Substack offers, and I’ll still maintain that that was a bit of a tangent.

Robb: It was a bit of a tangent, but I’m also, the people who get systems which is everybody except my wife will see their-

Nicki: Are we going to have that kind of Salty Show today?

Robb: We certainly can. We certainly can. My back’s been hurt and I haven’t been going to jujitsu.

Nicki: Yes, I know. I know.

Robb: The common theme here though is just kind of some freedom of access on both sides of this, both you individually as a creator having the freedom to put out what you want to put out and then consumers to be able to find you and consume what they want to consume, and we’re finding that there are ever more intermediaries in that process. And it’s funny because there are some people who will kind of play the libertarian card back on this or these are private companies and they can do what they want to do, and it’s kind of, okay, I kind of get that, but they also start looking a whole lot like a public utility. And also just because an entity can do something, is it really good that they do something? Is this type of censorship really, really in the public’s best interest? Is it in the world’s best interest?

Robb: The internet grew due to the democratization of information and access to that information, and that was very good, and now there are basically monopolies within this scene that the thing that made it good now should go away. And so, that’s always trouble me. I think that people are idiots and shortsighted when they pull that thing. But the other side was something that actually Bret Weinstein mentioned a couple of shows ago which is the flip side of this, which is that these information curators think that you, we are so feeble-minded, so addle-brained that we need to be protected from everything, and that’s the other side of this. If you want to play the kind of pseudo-libertarian market card, and these things are even though I would argue they’re multinational entities and supersede governments and that’s probably a problem in and of itself, but the flip side of this is just that me as a consumer, I maybe want to have access to more or less what I want to have access to within certain bounds of decency and all the rest of that stuff.

Robb: So, Substack has been maybe one of the singular bright lights in the story because even outfits like Patreon has censored some people. They’ve deplatformed some people. Certainly, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, et cetera, has deplatformed folks.

Nicki: And it really seems like Substack is committed to really defending the freedom of expression and the freedom of speech. So, I saw an interview with the CEO with, I don’t remember his name, but some mainstream kind of news anchor type who was asking the CEO, and I don’t remember his name offhand, how can you stand behind hosting people like Alex Berenson on Substack. He’s putting out so much misinformation, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The CEO stood his ground. He was like, “We need the ability for all voices to have a place. Even if it’s poor information or people don’t agree with it, we have to be able to have that conversation. We have to be able to have that discussion. Just censoring and blocking people and making those voices disappear is not the answer.” And so, I’m pretty heartened by his position because I feel like, without Substack, I think it would be pretty challenging to find a lot of the people that we’re going to be talking about here today who are bringing a lot of value to the world.

Robb: Cool.

Nicki: Cool. Okay, mouse bitch, scroll down.

Robb: I like this. Kind of warming up to this.

Nicki: Okay. So, one quick thing about Substack. So, it’s basically a platform where anybody can have their list of articles, their feed where they publish their writing. If you follow a lot of people, it can be a little overwhelming because those people, whenever they publish something, it goes directly into your inbox. So, you can put things in a folder or have them go directly in a folder. They do have something called Substack Reader that’s in beta, basically compiles it. So, if you have five different authors that you’re following, it compiles it in a list as if it’s published like a newspaper feed and you can just read them like that, or you read them one at a time as they come into your inbox, or if you have a separate folder that you have those emails dropping into, then you can read them when you have the time to read them, but it can be a lot. Some authors publish multiple times a day, some once a month.

Nicki: So, one of the questions in the Healthy Rebellion was how do you stay on top of all this because one of the gals, Rachel, posted probably 10 different Substacks that she recommended and follows fairly regularly, and somebody asked, “How do you stay up on all this stuff?” And her answer was, “I don’t always. Sometimes I skim or depending on what the topic is, I’ll dig in more deeply.” Twitter, you have all voices kind of dropping into your Twitter feed. I’m not on Twitter anymore so it’s been a while, but this is dropping directly into your inbox. And so, you have to know who to follow in order to… As far as I know, maybe you know the answer to this, there’s not one Substack feed where you can kind of find other people the way that Twitter-

Robb: That I don’t know. I don’t think so.

Nicki: Yeah, to my knowledge, I don’t think there is. So, the way that you find people is either by recommendations or they send you an article and you read it and you’re like, “Oh, this guy’s pretty interesting.”

Robb: Honestly, I think that that’s one of a big, a social media move would be to start trying to push you into those ecosystems, whereas they’re just letting you find this stuff organically which I think is good, ultimately.

Nicki: So, the subscribers that people are gaining, they’re earning them the hard way. They’re earning them because their work has been shared. People like it, they decide to subscribe. So, subscribing again can be you just…

Robb: Let me just touch on that really quickly. It’s just kind of occurring to me. Facebook will push you things. Twitter will, Instagram, your Instagram feed. That’s a great way of growing followers, but then what you are incentivized to then do is ridiculous shit-

Nicki: To get more, yeah.

Robb: To get more, whether it’s more and more shirtless selfies or just hyperbolic over the top stuff. It is interesting that it hearkens back to kind of the early days of blogging where if you did good work, people would eventually find it, and you could carve your way in the world.

Nicki: Would find you, would share it, and you would grow your audience.

Robb: They would share it. You do something crazy, like provide value. So, it’ll be interesting to see how Substack grows and evolves, but I would predict that if they got into the business of trying to curate and send people here and there, then it’s going to poison their business model. Right now, I assume they make a cut off of what goes into the donations to run it.

Nicki: Yeah, I’m not sure how they monetize it. I think people maybe have to pay to have the platform.

Robb: A platform, okay.

Nicki: And I’m not sure if they take a percentage.

Robb: I’ve been waffling on, spinning up Substack and Nicki’s only answers were no or hell no.

Nicki: It’s all a matter of time allocation.

Robb: Which we have very little of.

Nicki: Very little of. Okay.

Robb: Anything else around that?

Nicki: I don’t think so. I think we’ll just dig in. I think we have seven, I believe, that we kind of want to talk about a little bit in more depth, and some of them, we’re going to read a little bit of a passage from a piece of their writing, and then at the end, we’ll share probably, I don’t know, it was like eight or nine more that were mentioned in the Healthy Rebellion by different people that folks might want to check out as well. We’ll include links to all of these Substacks so you can find them in the show notes. You can also just search the name of the person along with Substack, and you’ll usually get that return right up on top. So, the first, okay, mouse bitch, up.

Robb: Oh, I thought we were there. Okay, okay.

Nicki: Maybe I do need to drive.

Robb: This one, there was no link there. Okay. Okay.

Nicki: Okay. I didn’t put the link there, but there will be a link in the show.

Robb: Okay. Okay.

Nicki: My first exposure to Substack was Common Sense by Bari Weiss. If you’re not familiar with her, she was a journalist at The New York Times. She resigned, I believe like a year and a half ago and wrote-

Robb: Probably more than that now.

Nicki: Yeah, probably more than that now, wrote a very eloquent resignation piece that she published on her website, and then shortly thereafter created a Substack. So, that was my first exposure to her. She is, I think, one of the best people today providing really solid journalism on a lot of very touchy topics. She’s a Jewish lesbian woman. She’s I would say a little bit left of center and she’ll talk about everything from relations with China, transgender issues. She tackled the true story of the New York Karen incident, how we all came to know that phrase, Karen, and call people a Karen, the true story behind that.

Nicki: She has a very, very popular Substack and now has several writers doing writing for her. And so, she’s grown this into a little bit of the business. So it’s true-

Robb: It’s not a little bit.

Nicki: Kind of a sizable business. Yeah, but true journalism is happening. People are digging into complicated topics, sensitive topics. They did a whole piece on how professors in medical schools are apologizing for saying the words pregnant women because students in those classes are finding that term offensive because you can’t say pregnant women anymore. You have to say pregnant people. So, all of these types of…

Robb: These professors not just getting kind of a slap on the wrist which I think is interesting in and of itself, but facing career censor and legal issues and whatnot. I’m sure we will probably get some backlash even mention this, but there’s something really interesting and very scary about that, and there are historical precedents from where things like this come from, and Bari talks about this stuff. And again, it’s interesting. This is a person who was a fairly far left of center, writing for The New York Times, living in the big city, Jewish, lesbian, and then has-

Nicki: And finding herself discriminated against on Slack within her own company, finding articles that she wanted to write being butchered or not getting published because they didn’t fit the narrative. And so, she decided that that was no longer true to herself and it wasn’t what she wanted to be. She did not want to step in line and follow that. She needed to speak and report on stuff that she felt needed reporting on, and so she went her own way. And again, now she has a very-

Robb: I think she reported, I don’t know if it’s 800 grand a month or a year that the Substack generates, but she makes-

Nicki: And she’s able to employ writers. So, now she has several great, great writers that she’s able to pay far better than these folks ever made at regular newspaper houses. I don’t know. It’s a cool thing.

Robb: It’s a cool thing. It’s a good indicator that if you do good work, it can and will be rewarded. I personally don’t agree with everything that Bari writes herself or her podcast or that is curated by her folks, but it is always thoughtful. There is always diligence and work that goes into the material, and there’s an honest attempt at finding the truth.

Nicki: And we can just say this about everybody we’re going to mention. We don’t agree with everything everybody says, and I think that goes without saying-

Robb: The Gato, I don’t know, I don’t know I’ve seen anything I disagree with, yeah.

Nicki: He’s up next. I feel like that’s another thing that’s missing in today’s world. You want to read people that you don’t agree with everything that they say, right? That’s the whole point of growing and learning. It would be super boring if everybody was somebody that you agreed with everything that they said. It makes you kind of think and stretch and like, “Oh, I hadn’t thought about it like that. Maybe I still don’t agree with it, but that’s a really interesting way to frame that, or that’s a perspective I wouldn’t have considered.” So, yeah, all of these people that we mentioned, maybe with the exception of the Gato, we don’t agree with everything that they say, but they’re fabulous. I think you’ll find their writing top-notch. I want to also mention that Bari has a podcast called Honestly and it’s also quite good.

Robb: It’s quite good. Very, very good.

Nicki: Very good.

Robb: Okay. This next Substack fellow goes by the handle Boriquagato and his Substack is called bad cattitude. This is an anonymous Substack so we don’t know the true identity of this fellow. We believe that he is male, and we know that he spends most of his time on the island of Puerto Rico.

Robb: And maybe from Puerto Rico, likely yes, yes.

Nicki: I think he’s Puerto Rican, and we know that he went to Brown University. There’s just some…

Robb: And also there was some discussion about trying to get him on Joe Rogan, and I texted Joe and said that this person might be the smartest person he’s ever had on his show. So, Joe was intrigued.

Nicki: We’ll see. Yep. Fingers crossed on that because I think everybody, at least everybody in the Healthy Rebellion who follows him, we’re all very, very curious about his true identity.

Robb: We’re Gato curious.

Nicki: Gato curious, yes. So, he is a person who got canceled on Twitter, and I’m going to read a paragraph from his sort of… So, on Substack, people can kind of pin or have a main post that’s always featured, and then all of the other stuff kind of falls below that. And so, this is the opening paragraph to his featured post, a cat’s tail, about how getting canceled on Twitter, I think the rest of it is Makes Me Hopeful for the Future, but here’s the opening paragraph.

Nicki: Once upon a time on an internet not so very far away, there was a cat who met a bluebird. The cat had opinions and ideas. The bluebird had a forum and a promised “stand for freedom, empower dialogue, and speak the true truth to power.” The cat believed the bluebird and set about joining this community. He made many friends and had many adventures. By and by the cat grew to some small prominence and was friend to pundits and politicians, researchers and soul searchers, Nobel laureates, and nattering noobs. But Twitter was not an honest bird, and one day, without excuse or apologia-

Robb: Apologia.

Nicki: … the abusive avian banished the cat from all the realm. Many others who failed to suit the narrative of the bullying bluebird were treated likewise. And so began the madness of King Jack. So, what do you want to say about the cat?

Robb: He’s brilliant. He’s funny. He’s inspiring, clearly has a strong background in medicine and-

Nicki: Statistics.

Robb: … statistical analysis, very, very strong, has honestly been a beacon of hope for me because he has made some observations, connected some dots, looked around some corners that I’ve seen nobody else do and frames this in a this is the struggle of our time, but that we cannot fold, we must hold the line, focusing a lot on the vaccine mandates and the blowback and the challenges around all the social-political stuff that is falling out around that.

Nicki: And the terrible data that is available in the United States, like in a lot of countries. I think the UK has the most reliable data currently that he’s pulled from.

Robb: But he will constantly make the point so I need to do all the following adjustments because the data is garbage and something that I have meant to ping him, and I might even try to do it myself is to just compare and contrast the way that data is available for influenza. We don’t have these holes and gaps in virtually anything else. He points this out and he makes these cases for why the challenges around the data exist. It shouldn’t. We have all this material, looks very scientific, there’s charts and graphs, and it’s a suffocating amount of information that one would need a full-time job dedicated to staying on top of, and that’s kind of the point. It’s kind of sciencey-looking, but then when one really digs into it, it’s hard to find stuff that we can make solid conclusions out of, but of the people out there doing some data analysis, he’s one of the best. We’ll mention a guy, Astral Codex Ten, who is also phenomenal at this. There are some great people. I mean, there are great people out there, but it’s accessible. It’s funny. It’s inspiring. And he’s Gato.

Nicki: And don’t get your panties twisted in the fact that he writes with no capitalizations. He doesn’t capitalize anything. That kind of bothers some people apparently.

Robb: It’s been funny where some people have gotten completely britches twisted over that, and the fact that they can’t see the genius of what the guy’s writing-

Nicki: And they’re getting hung up on.

Robb: And they’re getting hung up on the fact that he refuses to capitalize the first letter of every sentence is hilarious.

Nicki: Every sentence, yeah. Okay. So, we’ll link to him in the show notes as well. Vinay Prasad. I think you mentioned one of his articles.

Robb: Early, early.

Nicki: No, just like probably a month or two ago because he just started Substack.

Robb: A month or two ago. He got on my radar early being on MedPage.

Nicki: Right.

Robb: And he was a person that in all this contentious time, well, where do you go for some information, and generally, MedPage has a very kind of missionary style, orthodox kind of approach.

Nicki: Scripted, yeah.

Robb: Scripted deal, and then you had some pieces that were very sound, very reasonable, and you don’t-

Nicki: But clearly asking a lot of questions that nobody else in the mainstream kind of publications were asking.

Robb: Yeah. And so, he, I don’t think is a full professor of medicine in San Francisco, but he’s kind of a young upstart whippersnapper that hasn’t learned that the usual career path is be very careful about what you say, follow the orthodoxy, don’t ask prickly questions, and he hasn’t done that. And some of the writing that he’s had, it’s again always very thoughtful and he’s willing to dig into some topics that are very controversial, very challenging.

Nicki: One of the most recent things that he wrote is a piece called Which Causes More Myocarditis, COVID-19, or the COVID-19 vaccination? And this has come up a lot in conversation because people are like, “Oh, well, COVID causes it as well.” And so, he asks this question and he gets to the bottom and it’s basically we don’t know for sure because we don’t have good data. And so, people that are just saying, “Oh, it’s the same or the vaccine doesn’t cause anymore significant rates of myocarditis,” and they’re just kind of brushing it under the rug, he is saying, and he goes through and kind of talks about the different rates of things, and we just don’t have the data. So, until we get that data, everybody can have an opinion, but until we get the data, the answer is we don’t know.

Robb: And this is, not to belabor this, but it’s quite akin to the discussion around the COVID vaccine and kids. So, some folks will have the following line of reasoning. We have less than two years of data in these vaccines in children so we don’t know what the long-term story is. The VAERS data, the vaccine adverse reaction database suggests that there’s a signal there that’s really troubling. The counterpoint would be VAERS is broken. It’s corrupt. It’s terrible, and so you can’t trust it which then circles us back around again to-

Nicki: Why don’t we have something better?

Robb: Why don’t we have something better?

Nicki: We’ve had two years to get something better.

Robb: We’ve had two years to fucking get something better.

Nicki: And we never thought it was broken before COVID.

Robb: It’s been, in one form or another, around for like 70 years, or at least, we have 70 years of data.

Nicki: If all of a sudden it’s broken, we’ve had two years to come up with a different process.

Robb: And why on God’s green earth would that not be one of our top priorities? Well, if you really want to hide whether or not there is a signal, then what’s that saying, the police should be able to come into your house if you have nothing to hide. This is kind of that thing flipped around. It’s like, well, we should have the best data that we possibly can because if these vaccines are really safe and they’re really safe over the long haul and they’re completely a win relative to experiencing the viral infection, then we should have some data to make some decisions around that. And just the long and short is that we don’t have that information, and this long into it, that’s challenging. And so, then some things like precautionary principle and whatnot should probably win the day until we have better data.

Nicki: Okay. You wanted to talk about Astral Codex Ten.

Robb: So, this guy is I believe a psychiatrist by training and does a lot of writing on psychotropic drugs, basically psychiatric drugs, but he writes on a host of different topics. And interestingly, he got on my radar, I forget who sent it to us, it might have been Chris Kresser, but it was a piece, The Only Thing I Can’t Tolerate is Intolerance. And it got on my radar middle summer 2020 when cities are burning and were in pretty good social upheaval, and it seemed as if he had in this piece specific to that day, but it was actually penned I believe in 2012 or 2014. So, it far predated the kind of next layer of our social unstitching that we experienced. But this guy reminds me of the Gato in the just exceptionally high-level thinking that goes into this. He’s not as funny, and doesn’t bring that same kind of-

Nicki: He capitalizes his words.

Robb: He capitalizes his words. Not the same degree of lighthearted humor, although he does have some zingers in there, but just a brilliant person. He did a recent piece, Ivermectin: Much More than You Ever Wanted to Know. It’s really worth a read. It is very long. One, it shows how complex these topics really are. And he goes through and looks at virtually every Ivermectin study done to date and talks about what is good about this piece, what is bad about this piece. There ends up being actually a remarkable amount of outright fraud on this topic. So, a number of the early pieces that provided maybe some hope or some interest around the ivermectin topic have been shown to be outright fraudulent, and he kind of details that story.

Robb: The finishing spot that he gets to, at least just with ivermectin specifically, is that it might have a mild, positive treatment effect in general. It likely has a powerful treatment effect if you live somewhere in which parasites which are commonly treated by ivermectin are a thing because you can dig in, and the immune compromise that occurs from having different types of parasites will further predispose one to poor COVID outcomes. So, what he arrives at is that for the people who were that ivermectin was like the next coming of Jesus, that was wrong. It’s likely not this 100% cure-all, although the little bit of me that’s holding out some, dragging my feet on this, I still don’t think that it’s been super well assessed as a prophylaxis. Pierre Kory, everybody you talk to in those circles, that really is the thing that they’ve been selling. This thing needs to be used as prophylaxis, and maybe he ended up addressing that, and I didn’t get it out of there because this thing was a remarkably long piece.

Robb: Aside from that, it’s not a cure-all, but then the flip side is that everybody that’s been saying there is absolutely nothing to see here, that’s bullshit too because it appears to have a remarkably significant effect when you live in places that experience a significant parasitic load.

Nicki: Like Uttar Pradesh, like places in Africa.

Robb: Like these developing countries. So, this is this thing that was kind of hidden in there, and I’ve been tinkering on trying to… I have this idea around some of the issues of original antigenic sin, and what is it, the antibody dependent enhancement. I think some of that may be an artifact of our evolutionary biology intending to be more parasite-infected in the past versus dealing with lots of bacteria and particularly lots of viruses. I think the landscape that we experience now is very different than what our immune systems have experienced in the past. I think that that kind of explains the antibody dependent enhancement and also the original antigen sin, and I’m kind of noodling on a piece around that.

Robb: But the long and short of this from just the ivermectin thing is nobody was right. Nobody really had the full analysis, and maybe this guy does or doesn’t but it’s a fascinating piece. He does a very thorough job of going through and unpacking all this material, and then he has some social implications and some political implications which I think are really powerful, and he makes the case on both sides of this story that just blindly believing something out of hope is not helping. And the flip side of that, and something he didn’t mention in here, is that ivermectin is just incredibly safe. It is one of the most studied drugs in the world. The difference between therapeutic doses and toxic doses are massive.

Robb: So, it was one of these things that at a minimum, from a public health standpoint, it could have been said, “This stuff is generally safe. It hasn’t been assessed.”

Nicki: We don’t really think it does anything.

Robb: “We don’t really think it does anything, but if you want to do it, do it because it’s not going to hurt anything,” which would’ve been a completely honest fucking statement.

Nicki: But the whole anti ivermectin campaign, I think did nothing but harm, and it harmed trust in these institutions which I think might be irreparably harmed, honestly when it comes down to it after this whole mess.

Robb: And he has a lot of commentary around that. If you’re a data geek, you will get everything in the world that you would want from looking at his data analysis. If you’re not super well steeped in that, even if you just kind of skim the data analysis and mainly focus on his intro, and then also the social implications and political implications, it’s really powerful. You just get an insight into a brilliant thinker.

Nicki: Cool. All right, we’re going to do our sponsor read next. This Salty Talk episode of the Healthy Rebellion Radio is sponsored by LMNT, our Salty AF electrolyte company. And as you all know by now, mint chocolate salt is officially in the wild, and I’m actually drinking some right now. It’s the perfect electrolyte to keep you hydrated for all your winter activities, be they skiing, snowshoeing-

Robb: Podcasting.

Nicki: … hiking, podcasting, or just sitting by a cozy fire in the presence of wonderful company. Remember, like grapefruit, it is a seasonal flavor or limited edition flavor so when it runs out, it’s out. So, you can get your mint chocolate salt, as well as all of the other LMNT flavors at drinklmnt.com/robb. Remember to keep LMNT in mind when you’re thinking about people on your holiday gift-giving list. That URL wants more is drink L-M-N-T.com/R-O-B-B.

Nicki: Okay. The next Substack we want to talk about is Eugyppius: A Plague Chronicle. So, this guy is I believe in Germany and he is another one of these amazing data, numbers, stats, cruncher guys, and a lot of wonderful pieces. Most of them are free. He did just recently open a paid corner, but he’s committed to keeping most of his work free. And one of his most interesting pieces recently that we had a lot of back and forth with Chris Kresser on just in a text read is a piece called Stupid and Evil in Equal Measures.

Robb: Do you want to open that one to look at it?

Nicki: Sure. There’s been a lot of conjecture, like did Bill Gates launch this whole thing so that he could… The pharmaceutical companies that he invested in September of 2019 could make billions of dollars for him, is this the result of some world economic forum, Klaus Schwab, great reset thing, was this intentional blah, blah blah. And this piece, Stupid and Evil in Equal Measure, is a really interesting, possible explanation. People will think, “Oh, this is a conspiracy theory,” but you can have what’s called… Well, his supposition is that there’s an inner conspiracy and an outer conspiracy. So, there can be lots of inner conspiracies. There could be these global elites that want the world to do X, Y, or Z, but they can’t. It’s really hard to make those happen, but then you have people, bureaucrats and people that are kind of enacting-

Robb: Well, for example, animal husbandry is the sole driver of climate change. So, this is this meme that is very prevalent, and I think most people listening to this podcast kind of grok that there’s some serious problems there. This is the whole thing that we… A big part of what we unpack in Sacred Cow, the book and the film, and that we talk about ad nauseam, but it is part of this movement where there’s a slice of people, whether it’s all the folks that have invested in Impossible Foods and this idea that lab-grown meat and these meat alternatives are somehow more sustainable and that they’re better for the planet. There’s this whole meme, and meme in the original meaning of this topic that it’s basically a cognitive virus, not a cat photo with witty aphorisms attached to it.

Robb: And so, this would be one of these outer conspiracies where you’ve got a group of people who are, let’s say the vegans, and they are committed to ending animal husbandry, and they’re really concerned, rightfully so, about climate change, but their main concern is that we’re going to shut down all animal husbandry because it’s the main driver of climate change. And that just so possibly plays into someone like Bill Gates, who owns the largest private holding of farmland, and also has deep investments in these industrialized food products, and also, he has gone on record as saying that the greatest return on investment that he’s ever had has been in vaccine programs. So, this is where the vegans aren’t necessarily sitting down smoking cigars at boardroom meetings with these people, but you can enlist these, yeah.

Nicki: They get sold the message, and then they are the best soldiers, the best purveyors of the message, and they go out, and it becomes a life of its own, and it just goes forth and prospers.

Robb: Indeed. Yeah.

Nicki: Anyway, this is a two-part piece. We’ll link to this in the show notes, but it’s a very interesting way to look at or way to consider how might this all have come. It’s not so much the thing, what can we ascribe to incompetence.

Robb: Never ascribed to malice what could be explained with incompetence.

Nicki: Malice what you can ascribe with incompetence, yeah. It’s not necessarily that, but it’s an interesting framework to kind of think through how this all came to be.

Robb: And even if a bunch of his conjecture is inaccurate, again, it’s cool to see some people that are just thinking at a very high level.

Nicki: Putting forward different models, yeah.

Robb: Yeah, and it’s very consistent generally. There’s a continuity to it that then also lends itself well to if it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny over time, then the thing’s going to collapse, and if it does, it tends to be self-reinforcing.

Nicki: And again, he’s in Europe so he always has interesting pieces-

Robb: Insights from there.

Nicki: … insights from what’s going on in Europe. Okay. This next one is Natural Selections with Heather Heying. Y’all have heard us talk about Heather Heying. She is Bret Weinstein’s wife. They’d run the Dark Horse podcast. Many of you probably already know about her Substack because you already listened to their podcast and she’s mentioned multiple times that she started this new podcast. So, it’s called Natural Selections. It’s wonderful. I really like her writing style. I like how both of them teach, and it really comes through in Heather’s writing if you’re interested at all in biology and evolution and revolutionary biology, as well as she is now on the board of directors, I believe, of this new university that’s kicking off in Austin. So, she’s writing some about that and what’s happening there with education and kind of innovating in education. And so, another great one to follow.

Robb: Yeah.

Nicki: Next, I want to mention a friend of mine, Tara Couture from Slowdown Farmstead, and I know I’ve mentioned her on the podcast before. I’ve read pieces from her Instagram account. This was probably a year or before the pandemic, so probably a couple years ago now, she was experiencing frequent censorship. So, they run their own farm in Ontario, Canada, and raise all of their own food. So, from cows and ducks.

Robb: And she has a pretty complex autoimmune situation that she manages with mainly carnivore.

Nicki: She’s mainly carnivore, and yeah. So, nose to tail, beautiful, beautiful writer, beautiful person. And Instagram would frequently censor the images that she would share about when they would harvest their animals because it was offensive to some apparently. And so, she left Instagram for quite some time because it’s kind of a toxic place.

Robb: Kind of.

Nicki: Kind of, as we all know, and kind of took some time off, and now she’s back writing on Substack. I believe she’s posting a little bit to Instagram, but mainly driving people to her Substack where she can write freely and also share whatever images she might want to share without having the Instagram overlords make decrees that it’s not allowed.

Nicki: Anyway, I wanted to read a piece from her called An Ode to the Salty, and I’ll link to that piece here in the show notes. I’m just going to read a little bit of a paragraph, but basically this piece, it was beautiful. It basically details several people, several friends of hers, and just their different idiosyncrasies and the uniqueness of their characters. One man is a welder. He eats bread and drinks and drinks diet Cokes, completely nothing on the same page with regards to the way that Tara and her family eat, but they have this commonality. They can learn to play card games together, and she goes through and details some amazing people and how most of them would be canceled in today’s world. It all came about because she wrote something on Instagram, and a commenter said, “This post me feel sad because I think you’re transphobic now,” because she said something about being a woman or admiring women, and so it prompted this piece about all of these wonderful people in her life. These characters, these salty individuals who are unique and authentic and real. They’re not these whitewashed, pasteurized, molds of people that it seems like society wants to create nowadays.

Nicki: Anyway, beautiful piece, and I’m going to read just this little snippet from here. And she says, “The irony is that the feminists would say I am a devotee of the patriarchy for my love and adoration of real and good men. They don’t want me either. In fact, I can’t think of a single flag-waving group that would accept me in my totality. You figure that out pretty quick in life. You figure it out and then you realize you have a few choices, conformity, silence, or go your own way. Conformity in any situation, to any issue that you don’t hold to be a genuine truth, is a betrayal of one’s own heart which is, ultimately, a betrayal of why you are here at all. Silence does the same. Our hearts are always listening. Sometimes silence is warranted. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about a pattern of living where our words and our actions are kept sealed behind our mask so we can go along to get along. That leaves the only other option, go your own way. That one takes practice to build the confidence to stand with conviction. Each virtue takes time to build and shape. You will be battered and bruised, a scuffed-up human. But you will also be tastier, saltier, juicer, a wonder. True.”

Nicki: So, anyway, I just love her writing. And I know this one came up on that thread that we had in the Healthy Rebellion over and over and over again. People are like, “I second Slowdown Farmstead. I third Slowdown Farmstead.” She’s like the calm in my chaos. Her writing just speaks to me, and if you read the comments on her post, she has such an amazing gift. She is in Ontario, Canada. So, she is sharing some of what’s going on up there in this world of COVID, but a lot of it centers around her farm, her animals, the way that they approach farming. If you are interested in having your own homestead or raising animals, you will definitely find a billion gems in Tara’s work. And so, I can’t recommend Slowdown Farmstead enough. Again, all of these will be linked in the show notes.

Nicki: I think this is the last one here that we’re going to mention.

Robb: And then we’re just going to kind of go through…

Nicki: And then we’re just going to kind of just list a few, and then we’ll wrap this up. This writer, Raelle Kaia, she runs a Substack called Open Heart Open Mind, and this one is brand new to me. Actually, it was Chris Kresser’s wife who sent this article to me and I find her writing beautiful, and this particular piece is entered on spell words which was a new concept, but it I think beautifully kind of relays where we are today with how we communicate as a society. And spell words are words that as soon as they’re uttered, the people have an instant grokking of what that means, and all critical think thinking just stops.

Robb: Has a potential to stop.

Nicki: Has a potential to stop. For most people, it just stops, and you instantly make all these judgments about the person that go along with the spell word. And so, in this piece, which I think is really well done, she talks about several different spell words, vaccine, vaccine hesitant, conspiracy theory, and-

Robb: The science.

Nicki: The science. And so, I’m going to read a piece here about the segment is she wrote on the science. And so, she goes, “Where does the authority to apply these definitions originate? Through another spell word, “the science.” Insertion of the simple article the achieves this infusion of authoritative spell power. The word the lets us know there is only one. In this case, there is only one scientific truth, and it is authoritatively and finally known. That’s why we hear about how the need to trust the science and follow the science. We don’t hear about how we need to trust science or follow science. There is a good reason for this. Science is a discipline grounded in the scientific method. When following science and the scientific method, knowledge is attained by proposing and challenging disprovable hypotheses. Each hypothesis welcomes as much scrutiny and challenge as possible. The more challenges a hypothesis sustains without being disproven, the stronger it becomes.”

Nicki: And then a little further down she says, “The science is a spell word of authoritative compliance, wielded by those who operate the mechanisms of finance, governance, and mass media. Like a priesthood, the science has the power to invest words like vaccine and drug with spells of command, belief, and compliance. Such spells are alien to science and the scientific method.” So, anyway, it’s a beautiful piece. Again, we’ll link to it. She’s one that I think writes a little less frequently, but this piece just totally stuck out to me and shared that in the Healthy Rebellion and lots of people, it resonated with them as well.

Robb: All I would throw in there is I think anybody that’s a student of 1984, Brave New World, we’ve seen this before. This game has been played before. This game is played in authoritarian power structures. It’s frankly fascinating, terrifying, but also fascinating to see about half of the US population under a spell, really buying into this notion, and it’s all under the guise of safety. It’s always under the guise of safety. This one is specifically public health, but there’s always a threat. There’s always the creation of an other versus us, and then it’s off to the races from there. The irony though is I think that the folks on the other side of this story are probably having similar discussions and we are, in some way, the authoritative-

Nicki: The ones under the spell.

Robb: Yeah. Yeah.

Nicki: It’d be interesting to see how this all…

Robb: I kind of wish I could be frozen and then just woke up at six-month intervals, and you kind of pop your head out and you’re like, “Oh fuck. Not yet. Put me back.”

Nicki: Not yet. Okay. I think that those were the main ones that we wanted to kind of give overviews on, but I wanted to just mention by name some other Substack authors that people in the Healthy Rebellion mentioned. Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, Popular Rationalism, that’s another good one that we look at fairly regularly. John McWhorter, Alex Berenson, Toby Rogers, Steve Kirsch, another one like Alex who’s sort of-

Robb: Controversial.

Nicki: … controversial, but interesting nonetheless, to kind of see what’s going on.

Robb: And just a quick comment on Steve, he’s abrasive. I think he’s probably on the spectrum and self-admitted, he’s a tough person to like.

Nicki: He’s hard to like when you listen to him speak. He’s kind of brusque.

Robb: He’s really abrasive. Even when he did a podcast with Bret and Robert-

Nicki: Malone.

Robb: … Malone, it was like Steve was arguing with Bret and Robert, and it was like, “Dude, these guys are…”

Nicki: His enthusiasm comes across in this really abrasive way, yeah.

Robb: Super abrasive. But Steve’s a brilliant guy and he has multiple… Being in Brazilian jujitsu and watching the development of the UFC, I literally was at ground zero when that stuff kind of got going and came from traditional martial arts and saw the Gracie challenge of like, “Hey, we’ll pay you a $100,000 if you can beat us in unarmed combat.” And that was interesting. And Steve Kirsch has been laying a bunch of million-dollar bets with-

Nicki: Different people.

Robb: … different people, and nobody’s taken him up on this stuff which doesn’t mean he’s right, but goddamn, it’s interesting, yeah, yeah.

Nicki: Which is interesting. It’s interesting. And he’s one who’s interesting too. So, he’s very, I think, independently wealthy and he has put a ton of his own personal funds into different drugs for COVID. And just throughout this whole last two years, he just recently started charging for his Substack and people were giving him a ration of shit, like, “Why do you need to charge for blah, blah, blah. You already have enough money,” kind of thing. And his response, which I think is awesome, he’s putting millions of dollars of his own money into these efforts, and he would like it to put tens of millions of dollars into it. So, people who donate, it’s not going to him, it’s going to these efforts towards finding therapeutics that work and also fighting mandates and whatnot. He’s definitely one of these no vaccine mandate-

Robb: And he is vaccinated.

Nicki: And he is vaccinated.

Robb: He and his family are vaccinated, and he has mixed feelings about that at this point, yeah.

Nicki: Yeah, and then the last one that was mentioned by rebels is Dr Rollergator. So, again, we will have a list.

Robb: And he’s another one that got booted off of Twitter. He was popular with Bret and Heather, with the Gato, with a good number of people, and he’s another one that got booted out of Twitter.

Nicki: Yeah. So, we will provide links to all of these inside the show notes. Hopefully, that was helpful. Hopefully, you found somebody new. If you didn’t know what Substack was, I think you’re in for a treat. There’s lots of people doing amazing work on the platform, and hopefully, y’all get something out of that. One last thing, be sure to check out our show sponsor, LMNT. Remember, mint chocolate salt is out just for a limited time. You can grab your LMNT at drink L-M-N-T.com/robb. You can buy three boxes, get one for free. It’s great stocking stuffer, great for gifts. Again, drink L-M-N-T/R-O-B-B. And any final parting words?

Robb: Just on that LMNT front, a little bit of, in the evening, some decaf coffee, chocolate mint, top it off with peppermints schnapps or some Kahlua, and it’s pretty good.

Nicki: Schnapps.

Robb: That’s all I got.

Nicki: All right, folks. Have a wonderful weekend and we’ll see you next week.

Robb: Bye, folks.

Nicki: Bye.

Where you can find us:

Submit questions for the podcast: https://robbwolf.com/contact/submit-a-question-for-the-podcast/

Keto Masterclass

The keto diet is one of the most effective ways to shed fat and improve your health. Keto Masterclass helps you start keto right, step-by-step, so that you can be successful long-term.

Don’t forget, Wired to Eat is now available!

https://www.instagram.com/p/CWIj9RDrY6T/

Regenerative Ag and Food Policy with Diana Rodgers (Chat 1) | Salty Talk 035 | THRR

Fri, 12 Nov 2021 11:00:16 +0200

WARNING: These episodes may get “salty” with the occasional expletive.

Please Subscribe and Review: Apple Podcasts | RSS

Submit your questions for the podcast here

Show Notes:

This is the first installment of something that I hope y’all will like, a “fireside chat” with Diana Rodgers. Diana and I talk frequently, usually comparing notes on some of the insanity (and bright spots) we see we see in the food and regenerative ag space. Each time we talk we usually say “we should have recorded that!” Well, today, we did. We laid out some basic ground that we share and also dug into some news topics, including the first patient given a diagnoses of “climate change.”

https://indianexpress.com/article/world/climate-change/climate-change-patient-canada-british-columbia-7614348/

Sponsor:

Transcript:

Coming very soon…

Where you can find us:

Submit questions for the podcast: https://robbwolf.com/contact/submit-a-question-for-the-podcast/

Keto Masterclass

The keto diet is one of the most effective ways to shed fat and improve your health. Keto Masterclass helps you start keto right, step-by-step, so that you can be successful long-term.

Don’t forget, Wired to Eat is now available!

The COVID Guide: The Food and Supplement Guide for the Coronavirus

Covid, Research, and Epistemology: A Conversation with Chris Masterjohn PhD | Salty Talk 034 | THRR

Fri, 05 Nov 2021 10:00:02 +0200

WARNING: These episodes may get “salty” with the occasional expletive.

Please Subscribe and Review: Apple Podcasts | RSS

Submit your questions for the podcast here

Show Notes:

Sponsor:

Transcript:

Download a transcript of this episode here (PDF)

Nicki: Welcome to The Healthy Rebellion Radio. This is an episode of Salty Talk, a deep dive into popular and relevant healthy performance news pieces mixed with the occasional salty conversation with movers and shakers in the world of research, performance, health and longevity. Healthy Rebellion Radio Salty Talk episodes are brought to you by Drink LMNT. The only electrolyte drink mix, that’s salty enough to make a difference in how you look, feel and perform. We co-founded this company to fill a void in the hydration space. We needed an electrolyte drink that actually met the sodium needs of active people, low carb, keto and carnivore adherents without any of the sugar colors and fillers found in popular commercial products.

Nicki: Health rebels, this is Salty Talk. And now the thing our attorney advises the contents of this show are for entertainment and educational purposes only. Nothing in this podcast should be considered medical advice. Please consult your licensed and credentialed functional medicine practitioner before embarking on any health, dietary or fitness change. And given that this is Salty Talk, you should expect the occasional expletive.

Robb: Welcome back, folks to another edition of the-

Nicki: Healthy Rebellion Radio. And we’ve got the-

Robb: Salty Talk.

Nicki: Salty Talk.

Robb: I came out of retirement to interview someone. That someone being Chris Masterjohn.

Nicki: Highly requested within the Healthy Rebellion community. Chris has been-

Robb: Fighting the good fucking fight.

Nicki: … Fighting the good fight for the last, what is it now? It’s not even 18 months, we say 18 months all the time. But it’s more like I don’t know coming up on two years or wherever.

Robb: Forever.

Nicki: The long time. Yeah. Let’s see, before we jump into that interview, anything new and exciting around these here parts.

Robb: We got a wee bit of snow.

Nicki: We did get a wee bit of snow. And it was like… It wasn’t predicted on the weather app. Because those things are not always accurate, as we all know. But yeah, nice little dusting, the girls were ecstatic. Of course, that meant they had to go put on their snow attire and try to eat as many snowflakes as they could find. It didn’t stick. I mean it barely-

Robb: It barely stuck.

Nicki: Yeah, just briefly, but a little fun. More of that to come here this winter.

Robb: Hopefully.

Nicki: Hopefully, yes. We need some snow. So this conversation you had with Chris Masterjohn, I know a lot of people have been very appreciative of the work that he’s been doing throughout COVID. Do you want to give a little overview of some of the things that you guys touched on?

Robb: I opened up with just kind of like, how does Chris Masterjohn do what Chris Masterjohn does. And he’s a big systems thinker. And he’s very much in that camp that yeah, you need to find some area of expertise. But then outside of that we have expertise and then proficiency, and then competency. And we should be able to dabble and communicate and collaborate all the way out to maybe the level of competency and made the case that science is far too siloed. And this is one of the big problems that we have. That the 20th century was a big win, that reductionism was necessary up to a certain point and will continue to be necessary up to a certain point, but it’s actually synthesis. It’s the people synthesizing things that move the world forward.

Robb: I’ve commented on this just related to nutrition, it seems like the people who do the best work in nutrition are folks with an engineering or physics background, family member gets sick, that person does a deep dive on it. Arrives at nutrition completely or relatively unencumbered with the bullshit that usually goes along with medicine and nutrition. And they end up arriving at some sort of a low-ish carb, paleo type thing for more things than not. And with some nuance and whatnot, but we talked about that.

Robb: Chris did a phenomenal breakdown of the recent CDC piece that suggested that vaccination was far superior to natural immunity with regards to cases and hospitalization and whatnot. And Chris did go out of his way to make the point, the famous quote, never ascribe to malice, what can be explained with incompetence, and he said, this is not incompetence. You can’t do this type of shoddy work at that level via simple incompetence. And so we talked about that stuff.

Robb: We talked about his material that he’s put together that would ostensibly help people mitigate their risk of contracting COVID from mitigating the severity of COVID and all this stuff applies to the vaccines too. If one chooses to be vaccinated, being metabolically healthy having low inflammatory status, adequate vitamin D like all of that, what we’re finding more and more is that COVID or vaccine, there’s a certain risk profile that is very, very similar. And the things that go sideways are very, very similar.

Robb: Issues around systemic inflammatory response, particularly neuroinflammation. And then also challenges with energy production. Like that mitochondrial just biogenesis, so limited mitochondria in number, but also limited in their ability to produce energy which leaves people fatigued and knackered and part of this long haul thing. So we didn’t dig into that as much but I would… Personally I feel that the two are very, very similar and so strategy to mitigate one it’s likely strategy to mitigate the other.

Robb: We talked a little bit about kind of his social justicing crusades. And I mean it really came down to he just couldn’t in good faith look around at the people around him, especially like these first responders. He was in and around New York during 9/11 and so like they’re heroes and then bad things happen and now-

Nicki: And all of last year they were heroes.

Robb: They were alternately heroes in absolute villains depending on which day we were on. But he in some ways financially he mentioned the same thing that we have. COVID’s been good for him like he’s been able to establish himself as a subject matter expert and lots of people flock around that and that’s been great but he couldn’t just in good faith sit back and let this stuff roll out. And he mentioned the Cuomo test which was basically if it will save one life then it’s worth shutting down society and he’s like, why the fuck are the subways going. Like somebody dies on those… Taxi cabs. It is an absolutely, appallingly, ridiculously, dishonest position.

Nicki: Nobody should drive the car anymore.

Robb: Nobody should drive a car and then the irony there, okay, so no more transportation, well than everybody fucking starves to death. Like there is just trade offs. And it’s funny, I was listening to a Dan Crenshaw podcast yesterday and he had Kayleigh McEnany. She was Trump’s former press secretary, which even mentioning that is going to cause some number of people listening now to like, check out or whatever. But she made the case that we really need to use persuasion and not argumentation. We need to persuade people.

Robb: And I think there’s a very different tenor and cadence around trying to persuade people to just have conversations and whatnot. And so we dug into some of what he’s been trying to do around that. Just, here’s the data that we have. And here’s how I dug into… This is Chris talking, I dug into PubMed, I dug into all these pre-print servers and whatnot, I relegated things only to randomized control trials as the first pass, retrospective cohort studies and whatnot, I allocated secondarily. And on and on and on. So it lays it all out very transparently.

Robb: And here’s where the flag lies with my interpretation of the data. And it’s been interesting, he has a very warm following, but some of the vitriol that the guy has sustained around this is remarkable, but he’s got some cool stuff going on. He’s working with an immunologist, to look into what is real vaccine efficacy. So Masterjohn is going to start applying his non-trivial analytical skills to some of these other very thorny topics. So excited to see where that goes.

Nicki: Awesome. Awesome. I know our listeners are eager to jump in. I’m going to actually read our sponsor ad here now instead of have it be in the middle. So I’m going to jump in on that.

Robb: Cool.

Nicki: So this Salty Talk episode of the Healthy Rebellion radio is sponsored by LMNT. Our salty AF electrolyte company that provides you with all the salty goodness and none of the sugar found in typical electrolyte or hydration beverages. So I wanted to share this. This is super cool. One of our LMNT co-founders Tyler Cartwright of Ketogains, he shared a screenshot earlier this week. One of his Ketogains boot campers had turned on one of her friends to LMNT last year.

Nicki: And this particular friend she turned on LMNT is getting married and she’s including LMNT in her wedding. And I thought this was so cute. She has these little baggies with a sticker that has like a Red Cross, kind of like the Red Cross logo. And it says just in case. And then around in a circle, it says, “For better or for worse, in sickness and in health.” And inside are some Tic Tacs and some LMNT.

Nicki: And she says, “I’m making little hangover kits to put in the welcome bags for wedding guests, and I’m putting LMNT in them. I thought you’d appreciate that.” So she was sending that to her friend that turned them on. And so her friend shared that with Tyler and the rest of the Ketogains crew. And I just thought that was so clever, so cute. And she even put grapefruit packets in her little wedding kits. So anyway, great idea. If any of y’all are getting married, you might want to steal that idea.

Robb: Indeed.

Nicki: And you can grab your LMNT at drinkLMNT.com/rob. That’s drink L-M-N-T.com/rob. And let’s jump into your conversation with Chris Masterjohn.

Robb: Chris Masterjohn, how are you?

Chris: Rob Wolf, I’m doing great. How you doing?

Robb: I’m good. It’s funny. We did an AMA in the Healthy Rebellion, I don’t know, maybe two weeks ago, three weeks ago, and somebody asked… I always love these kind of thorny questions, but they were like, “Who do you feel like is the biggest turd over the last two years in the ancestral health space.” And a few names came to mind. But then I was like, “Well, I’m not quite ready to commit career suicide entirely.” So I said why don’t I focus instead on the biggest hero that I’ve seen in the ancestral health space? And everybody was like, okay that works

Chris: – Haha, I was waiting to see where-

Robb: And I said that is easily Chris Masterjohn, you have been this beacon of light and hope and-

Chris: Thanks, man.

Robb: … Logic. And I mean, I’ve tried doing what I can in this space as well, but have honestly felt, I don’t know if hamstrung is the quite the right word. But definitely a strong sense of pissing into an onrushing blast of wind and just like, not really sure if this is working, not really sure if I’m accomplishing much of anything. But you’ve just been amazing. And I mean, I’ve always been… We don’t chat all that often. But you’re one of my favorite people in the world.

Chris: It’s always good when we do.

Robb: Yeah, I always love it, really appreciate it. I had a couple of different thoughts about how to kind of jump into this thing. But early in COVID, Nikki, and I remember, it was maybe week one, week two, when like the Imperial College projections about where deaths were going to go. And we were living in Texas at the time, we fortunately had a little bit of space. So we were out walking around with the kids, kids were on bikes, and we were chatting, and I was basically like, “Okay, if you die, here’s what our game plan is, if I die, here’s what your game plan is.”

Robb: And I mean, we took this thing seriously, like we really did. But I got to say it wasn’t long after that just like hound dog style, like my ears just started kind of perking up and feeling like there was something not really adding up. Like if this was an existential threat, it didn’t feel like things were being approached in the way that one would approach an existential threat.

Robb: I remember reading about the Manhattan Project where they had like the most brilliant minds on the planet trying to outrace the literally Nazis to develop an atomic bomb, which could alter the course of human history. And they divided people into different teams. And although there was collaboration within those teams, they were kind of competing against each other. And there were a couple of different ideas about where to go, uranium versus plutonium. Nobody knew if that was possible, some people thought that when we detonated one of these things, it was going to turn the Earth into a sun for a period of time because it was going to fuse the atmosphere.

Robb: But there was this really multi pronged approach. Whereas super early in this experience, it was like, “We’re going to have y’all a vaccine, and it’s going to roll out real fast.” And that’s where I started amongst other things… What was your experience in this whole thing? Where did you start with this say late March of 2020, I guess and then kind of going forward?

Chris: Yeah, well, I guess where I started with it, which I didn’t realize until a while later was I’m a COVID OG. So I got first set of symptoms… First day of symptoms was February 1, 2020. Although at that point, I totally dismissed it. And I had a whole different theory on how I had become the sickest I’ve ever been in my life. After the demographic started coming in, and especially after a lot of science around the taste loss. Actually during that period of time, you got LMNT in the background, I had some samples of that. And it actually helped get me through it.

Chris: Because I had become so dehydrated that I was developing an extremely sore throat and I was realizing that my body wasn’t retaining any water. And so just throwing a bunch of salty electrolytes in water actually got me through it, but that’s besides the point. So anyway, I mean, after that terrible experience that I lived through fine, but it was quite bad. I was just listening to podcasts. And I heard Sam Harris talk about it. And Tim Ferriss talk about it. And I just heard some anecdotes of someone new, a 30 year old who was healthy and died or whatever.

Chris: And so it’s like, “Oh, this looks pretty bad. I don’t know what’s going to happen.” And I was worried about getting it because I wasn’t at that point yet convinced that I had already gotten it. But I think my moment where I first knew something didn’t add up was way earlier than the vaccine. It was when Cuomo introduced the Cuomo test, which was publicly announced, with no one calling him out on how utterly irrational this was.

Chris: He came on live conference and introduced the test that if it can save one life, we shut the whole city down. And there is nothing that could more blatantly signify the complete loss of irrationality than that test. Nor could anything more signify that the entire press had lost any sense of a duty to push back against government, for no one to have said that that was the most blatantly irrational thing anyone had ever said about this pandemic.

Chris: The way that you approach any policy is you consider a cost benefit analysis. And they should have completely banned traffic many decades ago, if that was the test.

Robb: If this was our test, yeah.

Chris: I lived in Brooklyn for two and a half years. And while I was there, there were three children who died by traffic accidents in my own neighborhood, just in my neighborhood. Why wasn’t the first one enough to shut the whole roads down until no one ever died of traffic accidents, it’s totally irrational.

Chris: I mean, so that was my first turning point. But it took a while to… I guess, to shorten the rest of the story. I spent most of 2020, at least through September, being completely immersed in COVID research, because I learned from my audience that no one wanted anything else from me. It was just clear the way that my life… COVID turned my life financially upside down, and then spending all my time researching COVID turned it back around. And so nothing could have been a more clear signal that it was the one thing that my community valued from me.

Chris: And so that was all pre-vaccine, I was accumulating all this knowledge about what are the many things that can be done to protect yourself from COVID. And I feel like a lot of people who were just doing what they always do, became outspoken when they started getting more and more bullying. That’s what happened to me. I mean, I never intended to be outspoken, I was just making the same points the whole time. But all the sudden, this religion was adopted in December, that there is the one thing you must do.

Chris: I mean, it’s really like a baptism. It’s like, the one thing that you must do unto the remission of sins. And if you don’t do this, you’re going to burn in hell fire. And if you say anything to question the faith, even if it’s just posting some data on breakthrough cases, or something like that, you’re responsible for the mass graves in Mexico.

Chris: And it was at that point that I accidentally became outspoken because I was just reporting on research the way that I had always done. Although I didn’t feel… Even when I got kicked out of every gym in New York City, I that didn’t quite make me deliberately outspoken. But now that I’m watching 10s of thousands of people lose their jobs around me I’m protected from it, but I actually do feel a responsibility to speak out as all the teachers get fired, as all the health care workers get fired, as all the firefighters get fired, as all the police get get fired.

Chris: And the Cuomo test was if one person dies, shut it down. Well, the first, apparently, I mean, I can’t prove this. But according to the news reports, the first seven year old child died this weekend because the firefighters showed up for work and they told them, you’re not allowed to work, you got to go home and they were short staffed that day. And so it by the Cuomo test, the mandate should now be shut down. But we don’t apply the Cuomo test to that side of things.

Robb: I just kind of noticed that you seem to have a strong worldview… Backup a little bit. I have this sneaky suspicion that economics thermodynamics and evolution are these really foundational pieces to our understanding the universe and energy flows, resource allocation and cost benefit analysis. And then the way that dynamic complex systems adapt to change. I really think that those are a thing and kind of sticky and all that. But I found it really challenging.

Robb: I’ll find folks that maybe have a steeping in the evolutionary biology, but like the econ part, or the thermodynamics part is like missing. Or you’ll find a physicist that clearly is well steeped in thermodynamics and everything physics, but doesn’t really put much stock in economic theory. And evolution is this trite thing that applies in biology, and who really cares about that?

Robb: But I’ve always felt like you’ve had this very balanced way that you parse things. And it seems like you’re passing things through a filter that encompasses all of these elements. And I’m kind of the opinion that if one doesn’t at least pass shit through this initial filter, that the world is magic. And I don’t mean magic, like in a good way whimsical way. It’s like demons and witches and burnings, and stuff like that.

Robb: I mean, how do you inform your worldview the way that you do? Because I always feel like you’re kind of Johnny on the spot with whether it was super early in the ancestral health scene and acknowledging some great elements to it, but also saying, “Hey, we don’t really have the full accounting here.” I’ve just seen you consistently out ahead of everybody in the way that data analysis is provided, hypothesis generation, what is your kind of process to get to that spot?

Chris: Well, I’m definitely a systems thinker. And so what you just said resonates a lot with me. I think, in large part because of my personality type. So in the Myers Briggs system, I am an INTP, that means I lead with Introverted Thinking, which is like theory building and optimizing systems. And I look at the world with extroverted intuition, which is like connecting the outward dots. So the person that looks at the night sky and is able to realize that actually, all those dots make a constellation that looks like this.

Chris: And so, I think for that reason, I’m very resistant to the whole stay in your lane philosophy, which I think is the enemy of the way forward. And it’s funny too, because I think that everyone in science, who thought meta about science. Who thought about the scientific process, and who thought about scientific education, realized that towards the end of the 20th century that the 20th century had made enormous feats by fragmenting and breaking things down and getting granular.

Chris: But we wound up in this ridiculous situation where, like a vitamin A expert couldn’t comment on different types of carrots, because their specific field is the effect of retinoic acid on PPAR gamma expression or something like that. And it was just like so-

Robb: Siloed.

Chris: … Pigeonholed and siloed, so siloed into… But it’s the tiniest molecular silo, like this is my space. And I’m not allowed to talk about anything else. And I think that was the direction that scientists as individuals went in. Because that’s where they succeeded. I mean, I know that my own success personally has largely been at the expense of my personal balance, because I’ve realized, I get money when I do this. And so I just put all my eggs in that basket.

Chris: And scientists have the same incentive structure, I get grants when I get more specific about the last thing I researched. And so it naturally pushes them into that siloing position. But when I was in my first semester of grad school, we had a two credit class, it was a real brilliant class called concepts in nutrition. And the first thing we did was read a paper about how this was the major problem in 20th century science. And the path forward was into interdisciplinary collaboration.

Chris: And so everyone should have a core expertise, but around that they should have a much larger sphere of… What was the word they used? I’m missing the word, things that you’re good at. But it’s not your core expertise and a proficiency, that’s the word I’m looking for. And then around that you have an even much bigger sphere of competence.

Chris: And so that you can not stay in your lane. Maybe at certain hours of the day, you stay real deep in your lane, but then you also get out of your lane and talk to the people in the other lanes so that we can collaborate and put Humpty Dumpty back together again. And that always… When I find something that just clicks, I’m like, “Yes, this is the model.”

Chris: And so whenever someone tells me stay in your lane, I’m like, you’re an enemy of the 21st century. No. And so I mean, that’s basically where I’m coming from. So I don’t necessarily carved my identity around thermodynamics, or economics, or evolution, I think I carved my identity more around being a systems thinker who connects the dots and then constructs theories and optimizes systems. But when I hear you talking about thermodynamics, and economics and evolution, I’m like, “Oh, yeah, these are these systematic frameworks that we need to unify.” And I do identify with that process of unifying those different ways of thinking about systems.

Robb: Well, and maybe that’s why we didn’t cut it in academia. It seemed slow and boring compared to whatever it is that we do currently. So it’s fascinating, I just… We’re in this really interesting spot where, arguably, some degree of specialization is really how one makes their way in the world. But then this hyper specialization and the inability to then have some interdisciplinary conversation or even just that ability to have a conversation within say, like an online forum.

Robb: And folks are like, “Wait, you’re a nutritionist, you can’t comment on like economic topics, or vaccine related topics.” And it’s kind of ridiculous. And it’s really hamstringing things. And clearly, you and I are pretty bought in on that. But I’m ever wondering like how we kind of move that conversation forward. I think it’s just going to be trench warfare. We have job security and that nobody else is going to come solve this problem. Like, it’s not just going to magically be solved out from under us. And we’ll be left wondering, okay, well, what do I do next?

Robb: So I have a ton of questions I want to ask you. I opened up to the Healthy Rebellion for folks to post some questions to you. The main onslaught that came out of the rebellion was tell Chris, thank you for his work. I mean that was first and foremost. And I mean and I only posted this thing about an hour and 20 minutes ago, an hour and 30 minutes. And there was just a mountain of comments. So the bulk of the commentary was, basically thank you.

Robb: So I really got to convey that a lot of folks I think, had just looked at your analysis of the CDC materials that had just popped up suggesting that durability of immunity, natural infection versus vaccination. Okay, stop the press, vaccinated immunity appears to be orders of magnitude better than natural immunity, which would really be kind of a cool, I think it would be kind of a first in biology moment. And it appears to be kind of a first in the current research moment. I mean, this stuff evolves and changes. So we do have to be open to things modifying but everything that I’ve looked at thus far has really painted natural immunity, although there are costs and benefits there like you said.

Chris: You could (audio indiscernible) on your way to trying to get it.

Robb: Yeah. Yeah. Do you go lick doorknobs or what are your pre-existing conditions, do you do that versus the vaccine. All this stuff. But would you mind breaking that down? I know that you’ve done a really extensive piece on your blog talking about this.

Chris: So yeah, well, so I’m just, I’m going to be honest. There’s a saying that you should never ascribe to malice, what you can ascribe to incompetence. And you cannot ascribe this to incompetence, and you can only ascribe it to malice. And the reason that I say that is, and that’s not a comment on the study design, that’s a comment on the framing that they used in the significance of their study and the entire discussion that followed it.

Chris: So I don’t understand how it’s possible for the mis-framing not to be deliberate. So they stated at the beginning that the significance of this… You know how in the beginning of the paper, what was known, what’s new, what does this mean, what does this add? And so they say what’s known is that the vaccine and natural infection both offer immunity. Full stop.

Chris: And, that’s not what was known. What was known was that there are over 90 studies looking at immune responses, but there are specifically nine studies that looked directly comparing future infection risk from people who were either vaccinated but never infected, or people who were previously infected, but never vaccinated. And all those show across them, that even an older, natural infection is equal to or better than a more recent vaccination.

Chris: And in some contexts, so for example, in the general population of Israel, in a sample of, depending on which data set they were analyzing, between 28,000 and 80,000 people. If you control for the week in which someone was vaccinated, or the week in which they were infected, so that you’re comparing equal lengths of time since the immunity event, then the vaccination… Excuse me, the natural immunity is 13 times as protective against testing positive, 27 times as protective against becoming a symptomatic case and seven times as protective against being hospitalized.

Chris: And so for them to make the significant statement that what was previously known is that they both offer protection. But now, and then they go on to say, “What did we add?” Well, we’ve we compared them now quantitatively, as if no one had compared them quantitatively is grossly misleading. But then in their discussion, they say that there is one study that conflicts with theirs. And they named this specific study I just covered, which showed wild superiority of natural immunity.

Chris: But what they say about it is this one study that conflicts with ours did not show that vaccination was superior. What? I mean, how is that not a mischaracterization of it statistically significantly showing an order of magnitude or more better protection from natural immunity. So the framing of the findings is ridiculous. But the big problem with the actual study design, though, is that all the other studies, the ones that are relevant, what you want to do is you want to say, okay, if we start with a representative sample of people who’ve been vaccinated, but never infected, or a representative sample of people who have been infected, but never vaccinated, and then we follow them forward, or we look back in time and trace that forward progression, who winds up sick, who winds up testing positive, who winds up with symptoms, and who winds up in the hospital, and who winds up dying?

Chris: But that’s not what they did, they started in the hospital. And so in the hospital, there were six times as many people hospitalized for COVID-like illness. And these people are not there, because… This isn’t a sample of people who filled out a questionnaire and they lost their sense of taste. This is people who are hospitalized for respiratory failure, for pneumonia, for dyspnea, which is trouble breathing, for vomiting, or diarrhea or fever. Every single person in the hospital was hospitalized for that. And there were six times as many people who were vaccinated. So then in the comparison 94.4% of everyone tested negative for COVID.

Chris: So the first noticeable thing here is among hospitalized people with respiratory failure, and these other symptoms, either this test is worthless, or the test works well and is showing that COVID is irrelevant to almost all cases of respiratory failure, trouble breathing, and hospitalization for those other symptoms. I mean, which is it? I mean, so that’s the first thing.

Chris: And then the second thing is, like I said, they didn’t draw from the representative sample of people who’ve been vaccinated and people who had been infected. And so we can’t say like, this is the rate at which people wind up in the hospital from those populations. But it’s concerning that there were six times more people hospitalized for those symptoms who were vaccinated, then who are naturally infected. So put a flag in that.

Chris: What they then show is that among the dramatic minority who tested positive for COVID, it was about 5% of… Yeah, it was about 5% in the vaccinated group, I’m rounding up or down a percentage point and about 8% in the naturally infected group. And so the relative risks of testing positive was 70% higher for the naturally immune people than for the vaccinated people. But once they adjusted for confounding factors like age and geographical region, local virus circulation, calendar time, and other stuff like that then we get the headline that was plastered in the New York Times and everywhere else, which is the natural immune people are 5.5 times more likely to test positive.

Chris: Okay, so neither of these findings, that there are six times more people hospitalized who are vaccinated for those symptoms, or 70% greater relative risk of testing positive among the minority who do and statistically adjusted 5.5 fold, none of those are drawn from their respective samples in the population. So we can’t say that’s the rate for either of them.

Chris: But if they’re going to come out and use the adjusted odds ratio of testing positive among the small minority of people who tested positive, and use that relative difference, to just assume that the denominators would be proportional, and say, “Oh, it’s 5.5 fold higher risk.” Then why can’t I do the exact same thing and say that you’re six times more likely to wind up in the hospital with those symptoms if you got vaccinated?

Chris: The study’s not designed to make those statements. But if you make the statement for one, you should make it for the other. If you treat those data the same, you are six times more likely to wind up in the hospital with respiratory failure, trouble breathing, fever, pneumonia, vomiting, and diarrhea if you’ve been vaccinated, than if you are naturally immune. Once you get there, your chances of testing positive are 5%. And so you’re almost certainly not going to test positive. But if you were naturally immune instead of vaccinated, your chances are 8% instead of 5%. I mean, that’s what you would conclude from that. And that’s sort of the big part of that story is what the hell is causing six times more people to wind up in the hospital who had been vaccinated with those symptoms? That’s the big story from it.

Robb: Yeah, yeah. And it’s interesting there’s a… I still don’t know who this person is, he goes buy the Gato Malo @boriquagato, some guy of Puerto Rican descent who clearly has an inside look both at this pharma story. Has a very strong data analysis background. And he made a very interesting case around why are there so many people that are just ending up hospitalized sick currently. And they’re not flagging, specifically with SARS-COV2 virus. And it’s interesting. There’s some really interesting stuff there.

Robb: And something I’ve been tinkering with is kind of a retrospective look at how is a standard influenza season kind of tracked and monitored? And what are the processes that go in into making sense of that? Total number of cases, cases for ethnicity, and all these different things. But basically what is the mechanistic process for really making sense of a standard influenza season, and I’ve been trying to kind of break that out, and then do a bit of a compare and contrast to the current COVID season. We’ll just start.

Robb: And there’s all these pieces that are missing, there are… And I’m not remotely close to being done with it. But there are some fascinating spots where within an influenza story, if you’re like, “Well, Chris, what is the relative risk for this age group and this demographic.” And with influenza you can auger in and get it and it’s pretty, pretty damn clear. It’s not difficult to find. And then within this COVID story, it’s really difficult to find quality information.

Robb: It is really… And this was another thing that early on, I started saying, “Well, why are we not tracking this? Why are we not doing that?” Like the cycle threshold topics and whatnot with testing. It’s like, there’s no standardization on this. And Kary Mullis said that you shouldn’t really use PCR for diagnostic purposes any way other than then in some really specific circumstances. So I’m not sure what my point is. It’s kind of crazyville. It is really interesting to see a compare and contrast between, say, like a standard influenza season, and the way that the data is handled in that situation, when additional studies are warranted to try to get more granular.

Robb: And I swear, the more studies that are done on this COVID topic, we don’t seem to get more granular, it just seems to get more confusing. It seems purposely obfuscated to generate a huge amount of data. There’s a bunch of information floating around out there, but it’s stuff that you can’t really draw any conclusions with. It’s great for spinning up a headline. It’s great for devoting what little time we have left on this planet to try and stay on top of nearly infinite amounts of data to try to make sense of it, to provide some value to people.

Robb: But yeah, it’s tough and it’s been interesting also, again that the best data that we’ve seen, has largely been coming from outside of the United States. To the degree that we have some data that we can sink our teeth into it’s places like South Africa, Israel, the UK that either by accident or because they’re still doing good work, it’s actually like, “Okay, we can actually draw some conclusions on this stuff.” So Well, thank you for that. That was again, one of the more popular questions that folks had, you might find just throw a few specific questions at you from some folks.

Chris: Yeah, go ahead.

Robb: Thoughts on… Oh yeah.

Chris: Just a real quick comment on that.

Robb: Yeah, yeah.

Chris: It’s really interesting how… So I’m reading Edward Snowden, his book, permanent record. And last night, I was just reading a part where he was talking about how in the British Empire, the census was really a tool for taxation and military conscription. And the American Constitution basically flipped it on its head and made it more of a tool for democracy. And so as you’re saying that, I’m just thinking about how it’s interesting, because I think in a lot of cases, we have better data in some places, because they are a little bit more advanced with the surveillance state and the centralization of data. But yet, I don’t see any of this data obfuscation being used to preserve anyone’s freedom in America. So that’s my only comment on that.

Robb: That’s funny. That’s a fascinating point. And yeah, fuck, I wasn’t even sure if I was going to get into like the vaccine passports.

Chris: We don’t have to. I just thought it was very interesting how you would in a not upside down world, you would be a little bit more afraid of collecting the high quality data because you’re afraid of the surveillance state having that thing. Whereas we know that the American surveillance state is all permeating, and perfect. And yet, we have all this refusal to synthesize the data in a way that is actually high quality and good for conclusions. And yet, all that’s doing is obscuring the path to protecting anyone’s freedom. I mean, so it’s upside down, world.

Robb: No that’s a fascinating insight for sure. I’ll noodle on that. And I won’t drag us into the mandates and green passes and all that stuff.

Chris: No we can go straight to your question list.

Robb: Yeah, yeah. Fuck, I’m thinking like 50 things. Okay, let’s see here. This is from Serena, “Thoughts on vaccination for a teen male with asthma, not following a healthy lifestyle, and flares with significant coughing normally, with typical colds. Not necessarily asking if he should or shouldn’t get vaccinated. Just wondering about your insights on the options in addition to lifestyle changes. Thank you.” So I think a little bit of… Not that healthy of a kid. Risks of vaccination, versus naturally acquired immunity, but it sounds like he already has some challenges just with standard cold and flu season.

Chris: Yeah. So, keeping in mind, I’m not a medical doctor, and this isn’t medical advice, my thoughts that come to mind are, first of all, I view asthma as a deficiency of nitroso glutathione. And nitroso glutathione, is the endogenous bronchodilator in the lungs. If you’re inhaling albuterol, it’s because you don’t have enough nitroso glutathione in your lungs. If you wind up in the ER with an asthma attack, that’s bad enough to wind up in the ER studies suggest that your nitroso glutathione levels have dropped to zero.

Chris: And so I think that asthma generally should be done in mind with trying to improve nitric oxide delivery to the lungs and glutathione delivery to the lungs, which are the two components that make up nitroso glutathione and keep the airways dilated. And I would note that the study on L-arginine use people who have established, it’s not early treatment, people have established COVID-19 pneumonia verified on CT scan, with two indices of severe respiratory distress and established lymphopenia which is a major marker of the risk of death.

Chris: 1.6 grams of L-arginine twice a day was shown to seven fold increase the likelihood of improving their respiratory function by day 10. By day 10 after taking the arginine. And so far no one in the arginine group has died and three people in the placebo group have died although we’re going to have… For statistics, we’re going to have to wait till the final data come out. But I think that underscores two things. That COVID is… And I mean, we know asthma is a risk factor for severe COVID cases.

Chris: But clearly what’s interacting there is has a lot of parallels to asthma. And so from a COVID risk perspective, I think you do have to keep in mind that the asthma increases the risk of COVID, of having a severe outcome if he gets COVID. But at the same time, the things that have been shown to work for COVID respiratory distress, are probably the same things that would work for asthma for nutritional support.

Chris: And I would not be surprised if that study got even better results if they combine the L-arginine with something that focused on glutathione. Because I think that opening the airways with nitroso glutathione is probably one of the main protective benefits there. And so, I can’t make the decision… I will not and cannot make the decision for anyone whether to get vaccinated.

Chris: But I mean, you do have to consider the risk of a severe COVID case, and that is one. However I don’t know if the data is there. And I don’t know how good the data is on what the risk of the vaccination is with asthma. And I do have some concerns that the overlap between the vaccination and the COVID cases in terms of symptoms and consequences is very suggestive that the spike protein winding up circulating is what’s causing them.

Chris: And you do have to consider that a child is compared to an adult or to someone who’s older, is likely to have extremely good mucosal immunity, which will lock the virus in the respiratory mucosa. And make sure that the spike protein never gets in the blood, whereas you do guarantee that the child gets the spike protein in the blood through vaccination. And so those are the thoughts that come to mind. But I think in terms of… The things that I have confidence are, is that if you try to boost nitric oxide and glutathione functioning in the lungs, you’re probably likely to protect against all three options. Having asthma now, and getting side effects in either case.

Robb: Okay, and that I think, just filled in a gap that I’ve had. There’s been this observation or suggestion, that part of the reason why younger folks, kids in particular, are navigating this so well, is it the virus in particular is handled via innate immune response versus adaptive immune response.

Robb: But then what you’re suggesting there is that when we default to… It’s been fairly clear, at least in my mind that… And again, there’s risk profiles, people need to make their individual assessment and whatnot, but it seems like we’re offloading some of the risks that usually attributable to or relegated for older folks, when they’re facing the virus. We kind of seem to shift some of that into younger folks when they take the vaccine. And that is likely due to the fact that they are dealing with that via an adaptive immune response. And so they’re being exposed to that spike protein and all the downstream consequences.

Chris: Yeah, one of the FDA voting members on the panel to five to 11 year olds, expressed that he was very uncomfortable with the fact that we seem to be vaccinating the children to protect the adults, when we should be vaccinating the adults to protect the children. And I don’t remember his name, but I did capture a video of him in something I put on YouTube.

Chris: But yeah, I do. I’ve been thinking about this. And I’m not an immunologist. And so this is something where I’m… It’s in my sphere of competence, but not my sphere of proficiency or core expertise. But I’m starting to synthesize that the risk reward relationship being so different between old people and young people, is largely a result of the younger people having stronger immunity in general. And maybe the stronger innate immunity specifically plays a role in that. But I also think just stronger mucosal immunity. And general and mucosal immunity is not just innate. There are also adaptive responses that are locally induced, that are not systemic, that are locally reduced induced in isolated mucosal immune compartments that make Secretory IgA antibodies that are much better than any other type of antibody at mopping up anything without initiating an inflammatory response.

Chris: Whereas an intramuscular vaccine, is focused very specifically on a systemic IgG response, which does induce an inflammatory response unlike IgA. And you do get transferred For those IgA antibodies into the mucosa, but at a much lower rate than you would get if you locally stimulated the IgA. And the IgA are just seven to 15 times better than other antibodies at binding things up in the first place, but they also don’t elicit an inflammatory response, unlike the IgG do.

Chris: And so, my picture of this is that if a child got exposure to COVID, and stimulated and even better mucosal response, the spike protein probably never gets in their blood. But then every time they get additional exposure, they boost that response, and they lessen and lessen and lessen the chances that the spike per team will ever get in their blood. They might have such, and I’m just speculating, but by the time they’re 30 years old, they might have such strong mucosal immunity, that they’re like bulletproof to COVID ever getting systemic. Whereas because they have a higher immunity response in general. And because that’s not so much a problem if the mucosal IgA is mopping things up and preventing them from leaking systemically to light on fire, they’re really good systemic immunity, then the mucosal exposure isn’t so bad.

Chris: But when you’re injecting them intramuscularly, you’re guaranteeing that dose gets in. And probably if they’re just adjusting… I’m not sure exactly what the dosing adjustments were for the teenagers. But if it’s the same dose, or if it’s just adjusted for body weight, it’s probably not adjusted for the strength of the immune response. And so that kid is… They’re bypassing their very good mucosal antibodies that would have prevented the spike protein from getting in the blood, they’re guaranteeing the spike protein gets in their blood. And then they’re overdosing and generating this on fire systemic response that is just too inflammatory.

Chris: And so the risk reward is very skewed towards the negative side compared to older people. So with older people, their mucosal immunity is not that great, if they get COVID, it’s probably going to make its way… Not probably, but maybe, if they wind up with a severe case, there’s some 30% or 40% chance that it got into their blood, and it’s circulating systemically. And because their immune response at that point is still not that great compared to a kid’s, then it’s better if they’re primed beforehand with something that taught them to be a little bit stronger.

Chris: So old person has a weak response, a high probability of getting systemic, so they might as well just guarantee it gets systemic. I’m not saying they might as well guarantee but I’m saying relative to the kids the risk reward. It makes more sense for them to want to get it systemically to prime them so that it’s a little bit stronger when they do get the virus so they can actually mount an effective response. Whereas the child’s problem is mainly that if it does get systemic, their response is too great. And so they’re much better off just getting the mucosal exposure.

Chris: And then it’s not just that it’s stronger, but these kids, especially pre-locked down life, were always sticking their hands in everything and sticking in their noses. And so there was one study that showed that if you got a cold in the week, before you got COVID that your nose just completely destroyed COVID within 24 hours, and you basically we’re invincible to getting sick.

Chris: And so these kids who are just sticking their fingers in everything, including their mouth, and nose, and eyes and ears although that’s not a great habit, they’re still getting constantly primed by everything in a way that was once the COVID is on the finger. Well, they already got like seven other viruses in the week before. And so the immune system is just constantly on fight and it’s just not going to escape through. So anyway, that was long winded, but I think that’s where my view is converging on kids versus adults and why the risk reward is so different.

Robb: No, that’s amazing. I mean, I think at a macro level we’ve had a pretty clear sense of that, from the very beginning. And I think that this is another one of the really truly frustrating pieces to this whole story is that we’re going to use a ham handed one size fits all approach to one of the most complex information processing stories that exists in the universe, which is the human immune system. One size fits everybody and doesn’t matter the age doesn’t matter demographic. No discussion of these trade offs about just the general circulating cold is a variety of Coronavirus.

Robb: And it was postulated very early on that likely conferred some degree of non-trivial immunity. And so, let’s have a discussion around the risk reward of pulling kids out of schools and at a minimum, like even in the 1918 flu pandemic, which is different, but lots of parallels they operated classrooms outside wherever and whenever possible. And there seems to be a lot of wisdom there. I had some questions around original antigenic sin and a couple other things, but I’ll ping those to you offline because I too am not an immunologist.

Robb: And so every once in a while, I think I have a smart idea. I spent about four hours the other day, like I thought that I was really on to something with like, original antigenic sin and some of the antibody dependent enhancements, and parasitic infections and maybe a little bit of an evolutionary thing. And eventually, I realized I just didn’t know what the fuck I was talking about. Spun myself into a whole variety of circles.

Robb: So let’s see here. Somebody asked a great question. Who does Chris Masterjohn follow? Who do you look at for some guidance, particularly, I would say in this COVID era? Or are you mainly going to the research and doing the first pass on your own? Or is there anybody that you’re really impressed with, like their handling of the data. Their handling of kind of the hypothesis generation and all that stuff?

Chris: This is something that I struggled with I was saying to you earlier that I feel like one of the negative, positive… Negative in effect positive feedback loops for me has been, the more siloed I got, the more I feel like that’s where my success is. And so I’ve tended not just to feel so completely set on reading primary research that I really don’t wind up following anyone.

Chris: But I am trying to improve that a little bit. But I would say, on the nutrition front, I don’t really follow anyone. I mean, I’ve looked at the I-MASK protocol and like some of the other things as they come my way. I’ve looked at some other protocols, the Niatonen protocol and stuff when people have asked me to. Because that is my core expertise I’m just 100% into the primary research on that.

Chris: I have a COVID guide. And the last thing I did was just read every single randomized controlled trial, there was 41 by the time, I wrote the seventh edition of the guide in September. And so that was just… I’m just completely siloed in the primary research. Right now, I’ve actually dropped all my nutrition work to work on the vaccine stuff, because… And I made that decision when I started seeing everyone get fired around me. And I’m realizing that the science does come up in the court hearings. I’ve listened in, I’ve done some audio calls on court hearings, I’ve jumped on Zoom calls with lawyers and healthcare workers and teachers getting fired.

Chris: And I’m in touch with some lawyers. And so I feel like my analytical skills are best served by producing high quality rigorous analysis that can make its way into the peer reviewed literature. And I’m actually cooperating with an immunologist on that. And actually, I don’t know if you want to do any more interviews, but if you do want to talk about your original sin thing, you should probably talk about it with her, she might be into it. But we can talk about that later.

Chris: But anyway, on the vaccine stuff. I mean, the thing is where I follow people is on Twitter, and I don’t read my Twitter feed. Because I do read my Twitter feed sometimes, but it’s not very frequent. And so what I actually did was I started pulling all these people onto a private list where once a week when I feel like I have time I can go in and read that list. But on Twitter, I follow Robert Malone, I follow Sean Crotty, I follow Eric Topol, I follow Martin Kulldorff. There’s a couple other people. I mean, generally all those people in like the Kulldorff, Malone circle, I think.

Chris: Oh, Marty Makary and… But that includes some of the… And there’s this guy Francis or Francisco someone who calls himself a COVID centrist. So I got Topol and Crotty on the sort of pro-vaccine side, I got Malone and Makary on the rationality side, and I got that… It’s a French name. I don’t know how to pronounce it, but he’s the centrist. So I got those people but that’s still not what I’m primarily looking at.

Chris: Right now I’m writing a review… Or I just produced a review on the natural immunity studies. And what I did was I did a complete search of everything conceivable search term I could on PubMed, BioRxiv, MedRxiv and SSRN. Those last three are the preprint sites, and I went through hundreds of titles that may have been relevant, but only nine of them turned out to be. And I reviewed the nine studies.

Chris: And so I did that before I read anyone else. So just have a surface level, I follow those people just to kind of see what’s going on and whether I might be missing anything. But I’m generally immersed in the primary research. And right now, I’m working on the primary research on whether the vaccines reduce transmission, and we’re hoping to… The immunologist and I are hoping to submit something for a peer review, know that it might take forever or never get published, but release it as a preprint. And then blog about the simplified version.

Robb: Gotcha. Gotcha. And, Chris, I know that we have a hard stop here. So I wanted to dig into a little bit of the material that you have generated for folks that within the Healthy Rebellion people have used that extensively.

Chris: We can… I got 15 more minutes, so I can…

Robb: Okay, okay.

Chris: Yeah, we can do 15.

Robb: Let’s tackle that first, just so that we make sure that we get that. For a long time, you’ve had these comprehensive guides on just general nutritional status, sound supplementation for different protocols, and then you’ve really kind of gone crazy on the COVID front consolidating… I just couldn’t even believe the extensive nature, the breadth and the depth, and also the easy utility of the material that you’ve put around this.

Robb: Because let’s face it this ongoing battle around mandates and lockdowns. We’re going to be battling that thing. But then more to the point like, we’ve been having some internal discussion within the Healthy Rebellion about how do we move forward, what’s kind of the process. And folks are like, “Well people are still getting sick, people are still dying, and we’re still going to deal with long COVID.” Like full stop like that’s a guaranteed thing. So what do we do around dealing with improving general health status, and then also, this other piece of either preventing or trying to mitigate some of these long term effects. I had COVID in November, December of last year, navigated it pretty well, but coffee now tastes like crap to me, and chocolate isn’t much better. So good or bad, I don’t know.

Chris: When I had COVID the first time one of the two taste things that happened to me was that coffee and Gasteiner mineral water, which I usually crave tasted utterly disgusting to me.

Robb: Yeah.

Chris: And the only thing that I could tolerate was sugar sweetened smoothies. Because my sweet taste was so dimmed. It was basically anything that I loved, that had any sense of bitter was disgusting. Because I had just totally squashed the sweet taste buds. And so it had to be mega sweet to taste normal to me. But in both times I’ve had COVID, the taste function has been very isolated to the illness period, and it hasn’t lasted.

Chris: So yeah, I mean, I guess just so I have the COVID guides in version seven, at a high level view, basically, what’s going on here is… And so in the guide, I broke things down into three categories based on the strength and trustworthiness of the evidence. And so I have the essentials, the best add ons, and the things might help just based on how confident I am. And for prevention, I’ve always been a fan of keeping 25(OH)D in the 30s or so. And I’ve never really been into the… As an umbrella suggestion, never really been into pushing up into the 50s.

Chris: But the data is really clear that you want to be circa 55 nanograms per milliliter, give or take five nanograms per milliliter. So 50 to 60 range. A lot of people are going to need 5000 IU to get there, but it varies. So you got to do the testing. And that will cut your risk of infection in half, although it doesn’t get rid of your risk of infection. It’s just that’s where you can maximize that effect. And nutritionally speaking, that’s the only thing that has real good data from a preventative perspective.

Chris: Then, if and when you get… And then for exposures I think I’ve really, really… As I’ve gotten a little bit more skeptical of the COVID situation, and as I’ve gotten COVID twice, my conscientiousness about exposure has gone up and down and now I’ve settled on a happy medium where when I am in the midst of packed crowds I’ll do an exposure protocol before and especially after. I’ll do a life extension enhanced zinc acetate lozenge, which is in the best add on category. And I’ll do a povidone iodine rinse with 0.5% or 1%. I use 0.5%. Although most of the studies that have come out since I started using 0.5% have used 1%. And I just rent it through my nose, although if you wanted to be real strict about it, or real comprehensive about it, you also do mouth rinse, gargle and put a couple drops in the eyes, which I’ve never tried.

Chris: What I keep in my backpack now is betadine, naspal spray cold defense, which is Iota-carrageenan, which has a good study behind it. And that’s just a squirt the nose, it’s much easier to carry around in your pocket or in your backpack and just do a squirt in the nose instead of a povidone iodine rinse. But what you consider exposure, I think you have to take in your own risk tolerance. So if you think you’re going to die, if you get COVID no matter what, then you should probably be erring on the side of talking to any person or being anywhere near anybody else as an exposure.

Chris: But if you think that your risk is minimal, and the caseload around you is minimal, and you’re probably not going to get COVID. And if you do, you’re almost certainly going to be fine with it, then you should probably have a very narrow view of what is a potential exposure. And so for me, it’s like just being in the midst of packed crowds, is the only thing I treat like that. But for someone else that might be going to the grocery store.

Chris: And then if and when you get sick the things that are… The things that have what I consider good data are behind it are you want to do a loading dose of vitamin D of 100,000 IU once or twice. So on day one, and maybe day two, if you’ve kept your levels high, you can probably just do it on day one. If you haven’t, you should definitely do it on day one and day two, and that’s on developing potential symptoms. You don’t want to wait till it’s… You confirm COVID on day seven, then you wound up in the hospital on day eight or something like that, or the reverse of that.

Chris: And I’ve always been a big fan of balancing D with… Oh I should say then drop down to a maintenance dose of 10,000 IU until the symptoms are gone. Although when I had COVID the second time I was using 20,000 IU because I thought it worked better, but I didn’t do a loading dose. I do recommend balancing that with a ratio of 0.5% or 1% so the same or half as much vitamin A, and 200 micrograms of K2 and 20 IU of vitamin E, although that’s driven mostly from my other research.

Chris: And then doing the povidone iodine rinsing that we just talked about four times a day. There was a Bengali study in an obscure journal but nevertheless had 1,200 people treated by telling telemedicine that found that just doing that decreased the death rate by 88%. So that’s incredible. I think black seed oil at 500 milligrams twice a day has some good support and melatonin 9 or 10 milligrams before bed has some good support.

Chris: And then there’s a few… Lots of other things that people talk about. So quercetin, specifically quercetin, phytosome or mixed one to one with lecithin if you don’t use the phytosome patented version. It doesn’t have good prevention data behind it, but it has some decent treatment data, but it’s all from one place. And I’m not totally convinced on it yet, but I know a lot of people have been super bullish on quercetin the whole time, but that made it into my best add ons. B propolis and a specific probiotic made it into the best add ons. Enough omega-3 fatty acids to give a gram of EPA and DHA a day and using the zinc lozenges I was just talking about also made it in there. And then there’s some these might help stuff that’s just drawn from they’ll probably help. But that’s the gist of it.

Robb: And the zinc is the same one that you recommend when you’re battling the cold.

Chris: It’s for the colds, yeah it’s for the colds, yeah.

Robb: Awesome. Awesome. I have a million other questions but I knew that was going to be kind of the way that this thing was going to play out. Chris let people know where they can track down the guide and your other work. Nikki and I are going to do an intro for this thing separately so we’ll get all of that stuff double stamped within all this. But let folks know where they can track all this material down.

Chris: Yeah, so I’m at ChrisMasterjohnphd.com. If you want to get the COVID guide or anything else you can. I’m sure you’ll put links in the description for that but I also have it on my website or ChrisMasterjohnphd.com/COVIDguide and then you know I’m at Chris Masterjohn on all social media. For now my risk of deep platforming on Instagram is imminent, but I have plans for that. And so joining my occasional newsletter Chris MasterjohnPhD.com/newsletter is a smart choice to make sure that the cabal doesn’t get between you and me.

Robb: Cool.

Chris: And so I’m but mainly I’m on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Telegram right now.

Robb: Awesome. Awesome. We’ll get all that stuff in there. Any plans on coming out to visit me in Montana? Are you still doing jujitsu.

Chris: I’d love to.

Robb: Okay.

Chris: Well, I actually I got a reply to my former trainer that if he’s cool with me not taking the juice, maybe he can come do home lessons or something. Because I could set up some mats. But I’m actually banned from all gyms in New York City.

Robb: Well, we’re wide open here. So if you want to come hang out with us, do some skiing, snowboarding and get in some jujitsu, I will host you, so wide open door.

Chris: Cool, cool.

Robb: Awesome. Chris, anything else to wrap things up? Again, like I don’t want to overly polish the brass here in front of everybody. But it just so impressed and so grateful for the work that you’re doing.

Chris: I really appreciate all the thank yous it means a lot to me.

Robb: Well, sometimes I think when you’re facing that front end of the blast, because I see some of the shit that gets thrown your way when you’re making, “Hey, here’s how I see this.” And, of course, folks don’t say, “Well, Chris, I think you’re misinterpreting this data.” It’s just you want to kill old people and… Because that’s what you’ve devoted your life to is killing old people.

Chris: Right, that’s what I’ve always been about.

Robb: Yeah, totally, totally. And I just think that there’s this really hardwired evolutionary tendency. It’s much more dangerous evolutionarily to be unaware of somebody who is unhappy with us than to ignore the many people who may be okay with this. That’s a potentially life ending deal. So it takes a very low signal of have people hating on you to really get one’s attention. So I just can’t say enough thank yous, and attaboys and high fives and all the rest of that. The people in the Rebellion, absolutely love you and are ecstatic with the work that you’re doing, are rabid followers. So yeah.

Chris: Thank you. Appreciate it. Appreciate you having me on everything you’re doing too.

Robb: Cool. Yeah, I came out of retirement. I said, I wasn’t doing interviews anymore. But you were like, “What to do an interview?” I’m like, “For you I will do it.” So yeah, yeah. Awesome, Chris. Well we will do.. Oh yeah.

Chris: I think these things bridge right together, because I think it was, what did… I think it was Justin Trudeau came out and said, “Well, we learned from COVID. Now we’re going to apply that to climate change.” So think I ESG which is, I guess a little bit more in what you’ve been focused on is COVID 2.0.

Robb: Yeah, yeah, the sacred cow poster over there is kind of my current snowball into hell trying to address any of that. But that’s one of the fascinating things. And maybe we will circle back and we’ll just do kind of like a big picture wrap session. Because when you start trying to draw parallels between COVID, food supplies, food security international food policy and whatnot, it starts sounding very conspiracy theory very quickly, it’s very easy to kind of draw that parallel.

Robb: It’s like, well, you’re a biochemist, what do you have to say about regenerative agriculture and whatnot. But these things are really tightly woven together and they’ve been wedded together as a cudgel or a tool to some end. I have some speculation around what that end is, but the fact that a host of social justice issues, health issues, and then kind of global policy as it relates to climate change, they are absolutely wedded together, and they’re used interchangeably. kind of like a combination lock that is always changing when you start trying to engage it. It’s like, “Oh, no social justice topic. No, COVID topic. Oh, no, no, no, now we’re a climate change topic.” So it’s interesting trying to get out ahead of that, but there are good folks fighting the good fight. So yeah, thank you. Awesome, Chris, we will talk to you soon.

Chris: Awesome, Rob. Appreciate it.

Nicki: All right. That was a great little chat that y’all had.

Robb: Could have been three hours pretty easily. But Chris had a tight timeline today because he had a protest to go organize.

Nicki: All right, well maybe we can have him on again in the future.

Robb: I threw that out because I would like to just talk some big picture stuff like near the end, he actually alluded to some of the work I’ve been doing like sacred cow and the sustainability front. And just it’s not a woe is me, like the end of the last episode that we did prior to this, it was kind of like, I don’t know if anything we’re doing matters.

Robb: And thank you to the folks who said it doesn’t matter. We got emails, we got a lot of comments within the rebellion and just folks reaching out and said, “Hey, it really does matter.” When you work from home that feedback loop is kind of oblique. But it’s interesting that literally nothing we do. Not nothing but so little that we do is like mainstream. We’re homeschooling, which has become way more fucking mainstream than it was.

Nicki: Twice as many, it’s doubled in size.

Robb: So we’re homeschooling, we eat in a somewhat non-traditional way, we have these views of animals that we should treat them better, they should be respected, our food system should be improved. But not of the opinion that they are going to cause an Armageddon feed forward mechanism in the climate change story, and that there are probably other places we should be looking to mitigate those things.

Robb: And then on this whole COVID topic writ large, we’re in this kind of crazy spot where it’s like there is risk, but there is risk with any decision, there is risk with indecision. And that is part of the story and that this is the stuff that we need to hash out. And God damn, it would be an easier world, if I could just pick one side of the world or the other and just camp out there. And it’s all either gloom or doom or just listen to follow the science, whatever that means. Our lives to be easier in many regards, but I think much less rewarding and whoever you are that’s listening to us, you probably wouldn’t be listening to us. So I guess thank you on that. And it’s interesting. Like it’s just interesting trying to look back at oneself while doing all of this and have some perspective about the whole thing.

Nicki: All right, y’all, thank you for listening in. Remember to check out our show’s sponsor LMNT for all of your electrolyte needs. You can grab your LMNT at drinkLMNT.com/robb. Again, that’s drink LMNT.com/R-O-B-B. And we will see you next week. Have a great time now.

Robb: Take care everybody.

Where you can find us:

Submit questions for the podcast: https://robbwolf.com/contact/submit-a-question-for-the-podcast/

Keto Masterclass

The keto diet is one of the most effective ways to shed fat and improve your health. Keto Masterclass helps you start keto right, step-by-step, so that you can be successful long-term.

Don’t forget, Wired to Eat is now available!

https://vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/how-democracy-ends

Sleep Trouble After Training, Aging and Belly Fat, Is "Prepping” The Only Solution? | THRR093

Fri, 29 Oct 2021 10:00:27 +0200

Make your health an act of rebellion. Join The Healthy Rebellion

Please Subscribe and Review: Apple Podcasts | RSS

Submit your questions for the podcast here

News topic du jour:

“The pandemic events of 2020-2021 outline a potential pathway for a future democratically elected President of the United States to systematically end democracy. The course of events leading to this outcome need not be a repeat of the direct assault on the Capitol, but a distortion of risk of illness as a justification for military force and suspension of democratic norms.”

1. Cannot Sleep After Hard Training – JiuJitsu and Weightlifting [21:18]

Nick says:

After a hard JiuJitsu training class (or weightlifting) I always have trouble falling asleep. I also have trouble eating, too. I think it’s my adrenaline from hard rolling. I am competitive and this definitely affects my ability to rest. Practice starts at 6 and usually goes to 730-830. Both days I get insomnia if I train really hard. What can I do to relax my mind and body so I can fall asleep within two hours of training?

I know carbohydrates play a role. I try not to eat too much during the day because I get drowsy at my desk job. I usually track macros and I began to up my carb intake to see if it helps the issue – it doesn’t. For example. Today I ate 131g carbs from organic purple sweet potatoes. (143g protein from organic grass fed beef). All cooked with EVOO & seasoned liberally with Mediterranean Sea Salt, garlic and pepper. I trained at 6pm. Got home at 830. I know I need food but I cannot eat so I recently I tried forcing myself a shake made up of 35g grass fed whey, 4 eggs, plenty of fruit and 1/2 cup of oats. I am just ranting because I am suffering from this insomnia right now. I just discovered your product LMNT and instantly bought it after reading your story on the Amazon store website. I thought that an electrolyte in balance could be the issue so I’ll find out. I consume a lot of salt but maybe I actually don’t.

Then I found your Instagram and realized I can ask a question so here I am. Thanks for reading this word salad! I am excited to LMNT and resolve this insomnia!

2. Workout intensity, frequency, duration [28:11]

Dan says:

Robb, I read the Paleo Solution and have found it to be only the tip of the ice berg compared to the value of your podcasts. Thank you, great stuff.

I am looking for more guidance on workout intensity, duration and frequency for improving body comp. I’ve been doing a crossfit-type of workout at my club for six months. They call it “Dynamic” but essentially its the same stuff focusing on stability, power and strength in weekly rotations. I usually get in 3-4 of these workouts a week and sometimes a one hour bike ride (18mph) on off days. The workouts are a full one hour with a “melt down” in the last 10 minutes. I generally burn 700-850 calories during that time, ave HR 70-75% with max HR above 90% (according to Polar HRM). I’m not sure the instructors understand the concept of stress-induced cortisol release and I want to understand it myself. I am wondering if the length and intensity of these workouts are unnecessary beat downs; and/or if I am doing too many in a week.

I started in March, weighed 236 and about 29% body fat (6′ 0″). I lost 18 pounds over first 3 months with calorie reduction, higher-carb low fat. I then plateaued for 3 months with no changes in eating or workouts. I’ve been 100% Paleo for two weeks and the weight appears to be coming off again (down to 212 lbs now). Ideal goal is to get to 185-190 at 10% body fat.

I hear you guys talk about “Cross fit beat downs” and working out too frequently; I’m not sure if I am falling into that. I am looking for a better reference of what is an optimal body-comp program in terms of intensity, duration and frequency. Any guidance is appreciated.

Thank you for what you do.

Dan

3. Collagen and Folic Acid [34:47]

Kay says:

My SIL, who is involved with a MLM supplement company, said that I should not take collagen supplement daily because it will influence folic acid in my body in a negative way. She said her supplement is only taken for 10 days out of 30. I have never heard of this. Any truth?

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/4417592/

4. Aging and Abdominal Adipose [38:14]

Annette says:

Would love to hear your comments on abdominal fat. I am in good health for 65 yrs old. Always had a “belly” but I am 116 lbs, 5 ft. Not fat, but my middle holds 6-8 lbs of fat I know is there. I have a good dietary intake, exercise 3-4 days weekly, 2 of those days are weight training. I have good abdominal muscles under the fat I can feel. Can I ever lose this weight? I am an ICU nurse with a Masters in Critical Care, and I have my adult NP so I am not without a good background education. I enjoyed one of your books on Paleo; I feel you are a great educational resource. Please advise.

5. Is “Prepping” The Only Solution? [43:37]

Richard says:

What steps can a person or family take (other than to be as healthy as possible) to mitigate this situation as best we can? I look at what is happening in Venezuela, for instance, and wonder what I would do in that situation: an almost complete breakdown of society, with hyper-inflation wiping out saving and making income equally worthless. Is “prepping” the only solution: lots of weapons, years of stored food/water/gas, a bunker mentality? I’m not sure that is a viable option of the majority of citizens. So, what are your thoughts on what the average Joe-citizen can do?

https://www.foxfire.org/shop/category/books/

Sponsor:

Transcript:

Coming soon…

Where you can find us:

Submit questions for the podcast: https://robbwolf.com/contact/submit-a-question-for-the-podcast/

Keto Masterclass

The keto diet is one of the most effective ways to shed fat and improve your health. Keto Masterclass helps you start keto right, step-by-step, so that you can be successful long-term.

Don’t forget, Wired to Eat is now available!

Durability of immune responses to the BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine

Long-Term Blood Donation, Low Body Temperature, EMF Filters and Earthing | THRR092

Fri, 22 Oct 2021 10:00:12 +0200

Make your health an act of rebellion. Join The Healthy Rebellion

Please Subscribe and Review: Apple Podcasts | RSS

Submit your questions for the podcast here

News topic du jour:

“reports of waning vaccine efficacy, coupled with the emergence of variants of concern that are resistant to antibody neutralization, have raised concerns about the potential lack of durability of immunity to vaccination. We recently reported findings from a comprehensive analysis of innate and adaptive immune responses in 56 healthy volunteers who received two doses of the BNT162b2 vaccination. Here, we analyzed antibody responses to the homologous Wu strain as well as several variants of concern, including the emerging Mu (B.1.621) variant, and T cell responses in a subset of these volunteers at six months (day 210 post-primary vaccination) after the second dose. Our data demonstrate a substantial waning of antibody responses and T cell immunity to SARS-CoV-2 and its variants, at 6 months following the second immunization with the BNT162b2 vaccine. Notably, a significant proportion of vaccinees have neutralizing titers below the detection limit, and suggest a 3rd booster immunization might be warranted to enhance the antibody titers and T cell responses.”

1. Low Body Temperature [18:16]
John says:
Hi,
Im trying to figure out if a declining body temp is something I should be focused on. I’m 42 now and a couple years ago I started noticing my daytime temperature was not a consistent 98.6. No big deal I thought until more recently I started having a hell of a time waking up in the morning. After doing some reading on thyroid related issues (which run in my family) I started recording my daily temp.

Most days my waking temp is 96.9 – 97.1. During the day it hovers around 97.6. I’ve done a full suite of thyroid tests multiple times and my Free T3/T4, TSH, Reverse T4, and thyroid antibodies are right where they should be so no obvious issues there. I generally follow a paleo diet but switched to strict keto for a few months this spring and now follow a low carb diet, no gluten. For activity I do have a 40 hr work week at a computer but my spare time involves part time farm work and 2x weekly capoeira classes. When I’m not at the work desk I’m fairly mobile. I’m male, 5’5” and fluctuate between 135-140 lbs. Daily calorie intake is usually around 1500 calories unless I’m burning hard with activity on a given day.

Is this just par for the course as we age for some folks? Is my metabolism just slowing down? My energy and muscle mass is still excellent, but I am fascinated with this and wondering if it’s anything I should keep paying attention to.

Thanks!

2. Long-Term Blood Donation [23:23]
Sherry Says:
I’m a 61 year old female and a long time listener. I’ve been donating blood every couple months for several years. My mother had hemochromatosis. I was checked but fortunately do not have it. I know that blood donation helps keep iron levels in check and I like that my body refreshes itself by making new blood. I am wondering though if there’s a downside to long-term, ongoing blood donation. I don’t want to deplete some limited resource in my bone marrow, or something else like that!

Thank you.

3. Wading through Scientific studies [26:32]
Paul says:
Hi to you both ,question for Rob
My question is about the way scientific papers are written and the most effective method you have of screening out junk.
I am not a medical professional or scientist. I work in IT and management during which I have developed a skillset around identifying ballshit.
Whilst looking through papers in pubmed I find the summaries/ abstracts often very unhelpful or misleading. Then the main body of the paper is often rambling and I frequently find myself skimming details in an attempt to find basic facts about the study which I feel should have been stated clearly at the beginning.
Information such as;
The purpose of the study;
the conclusions (if any);
the scientific soundness of those conclusions (eg what kind of test with how many participants, the test cell characteristics and the control cell).
Some papers are much better than others. But coming from a business background I am used to information following the following format

Title
1 pager (recommendations)
Appendix(method ,results,data and caveats)
In my experience in business overly obtuse pros often points to deliberate deception or sloppiness.
What is your view on this? How do you best navigate scientific papers in your research ?
Are there recommendations you have for me so I can be more effective at working through these papers.?
Are there services that grade papers with metrics. For example a simple way of filtering those studies without sizeable test cells and control groups.
Or do you have any sources you consider to be consistently bad eg specific universities or business etc that you would avoid ?
A final question on this topic is In your view what percentage of scientific studies are actually junk?
Kind regards
Paul

Ps
Love the show i feel with you both on the mic its very warm an nice, like sitting in front of a fire chatting about health.

4. Sea salt vs Electrolyte [45:30]
Matt says:
Hey Robb and Nicki. I’ve been listening to your podcast for a few years now and have definitely enjoyed the new format. Recently I read Sacred Cow, it was by far my favourite book of 2020. I have the paleo solution and wired to eat on my list of books to read at some point this year.

To my question.

For about a year now in the mornings my wife and I will each put a slice of lemon and 3 big pinches of Celtic sea salt into a big glass of water. Where we really noticed a difference was in the summer heat, when we would sweat. My question is, how is this different then consuming “electrolytes”? Are there any differences that we would notice by taking electrolytes instead of just a good sea salt?

I would love to try LMNT one day, but being from Canada doesn’t make it as simple.

Thank so much for your content.

Matt.

5. What’s the deal with EMF Filters and Earthing [48:00]
Derek says:
Hey guys,

Love the show. Now straight to my questions. I don’t think you have covered this yet, at least not in great detail:

1. What are your thoughts on Earthing? Is this legit? It seems kind of ridiculous and tree-huggerish, but at the same time it has a ring of legitimacy. I’ve seen different methods recommended – from using grounding mats that you sleep or sit on to just walking around outside barefoot or sleeping on the ground.

2. What about EMF Filters? Again they have some ring of legitimacy, but at the same time seem kooky. Obviously there are waves galore travelling through the air, but is blocking out these waves (if the filters even work) really going to make that much difference? What about just removing electronics from the room. Does that really make that much of a difference?

I plan on trying out some of these methods, from the standard remove all electronics from the room, to actually shutting off the breaker for our bedroom, but given that there are so many other factors that could affect how I perceive my sleep quality I thought I would see what you guys think. Without solid research or, at a minimum, convincing anecdotes I am definitely not going to be dropping a few hundred dollars on something like this, but I would really like to know if it actually works.

Thanks for all the awesomeness. Keep it up!

https://robbwolf.com/2020/04/08/5g-and-coronavirus-salty-talk-004-thrr/

Sponsor:

Transcript:

Coming soon…

Where you can find us:

Submit questions for the podcast: https://robbwolf.com/contact/submit-a-question-for-the-podcast/

Keto Masterclass

The keto diet is one of the most effective ways to shed fat and improve your health. Keto Masterclass helps you start keto right, step-by-step, so that you can be successful long-term.

Don’t forget, Wired to Eat is now available!

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/12/health/aspirin-heart-attack-stroke.html

Is Ground Meat Processed Food, Nicotine Adverse Effects, Lifting With Slipped Disk | THRR091

Fri, 15 Oct 2021 10:00:05 +0200

Make your health an act of rebellion. Join The Healthy Rebellion

Please Subscribe and Review: Apple Podcasts | RSS

Submit your questions for the podcast here

News topic du jour:

1. Peptide uptake orally [12:50]

Andreas says:

Dear both.

First of all thank you both for all that you do. I am very grateful for you weekly courage, «sticking your neck out there», sharing your take on life while crushing main stream «dogma”. Love it, great job – please keep it up.

Now, could you please help me understand how all the so called beneficial peptides in animal foods ends up in the human body to deliver any biological function?

The human digestion system is very good at breaking down peptide sequences long before they reach their destination to give any biological function (both spontaneously, non-enzymatically, like stomach acid, and enzymatically by peptidase etc.).

Now days, I am experimenting using my chicken eggs as a “delivery vessel” by which I deliver non palatable but highly nutrient dense organ foods to my family indirectly by actively changing the egg nutrient profile(or so I think). The chickens free range and get plenty of sunshine in the summer, eat bugs, greens, wild herbs and berries, while I occasionally feed them organ meats(primarily beef liver and heart), beef tallow etc. They get no plant oils, soy and so on. They love the organ meat and look/act very healthy. I know the fatty acid profile of the eggs will change to a higher percent of for example steric acid (based on research literature), but not sure about the other vitamins, minerals and peptides from their diet actually ends up in the eggs – and so is passed on to my wife and kids. I have no problems eating meats like liver and heart, but they will not touch it, let alone eat it. But they absolutely LOVE my dishes that I preparer from those eggs (like carnivore waffles etc.).

But if humans (or chickens) do not absorb many of these nutrients, peptides in a biological active form and increase the nutritional profile of the eggs, well, then the story ends there. A little bit like some expensive skin care products that my wife uses, that proclaim the price I justified with added water soluble vitamins that should be so healthy, but will not ba absorbed unless you eat the damn thing..

Best,

Andreas

2. Non-carb processed food, issues? [18:10]

Mike says:

Hi, can’t explain how important you guys have been in my life over the past 12ish years. I’ve listened to EVERYTHING and implemented SOME (realistically a lot, although I don’t really have any health / nutrition / digestive issues so it’s more of a favorite-subject/interest of mine than a dire need to make sweeping changes sort of thing).

Question:

I know ‘processed’ foods are worse for us for a number of reasons and that there are different levels of processing (highly processed factory food, steak vs ground meat, blending mainly unprocessed foods to make a smoothie, etc) but my question is, are these processed foods ever better for us than the unprocessed? …or maybe equivalent, mainly when it comes to processed fat/protein. I’ve wondered for a while, if a quality liverwurst, from USwellness for example, might be an ideal food, despite the baggage it carries along with it ‘processed meat’. THE DEVIL! But let’s be realistic here. My understanding of this product is that it’s a nose to tail tube of goodness, from a healthy animal, all slapped together, with some spices. All good right? Is there any benefit or detriment to this sort of thing? Does the protein/fat being digested more quickly than if I chewed the component parts individually, really matter?? I know processed sugar becomes a blood sugar issue, but does processed fat/protein have a similar corollary??

Thanks!

Side note, I know you always say chew your food and I think this mostly refers to people who have weight control issues and need the chewing/eating/fullness slowdown to moderate their intake. Clearly this is probably one way to answer the above question but is there anything else??

PS: I’ve often thought of getting a tattoo of the fraction 1/6 somewhere, to signify I was one of six listeners, with the added benefit that nobody else would know why the hell I had it!! Thanks… hopefully this shoots to the healthy rebellion e-mail… couldn’t figure out how to ask a question to the new poddy. I joined the rebellion for a month last year and it’s great and all but I just realllllllly don’t like social media. (It’s not you it’s me )

3. Lifting With a Slipped Disk [29:06]

Trystan says:

Robb and Nicki,

Love the podcast!

I’ll make this short – my wife has had an operation on her back due to a slipped disk, but she’s curious to start lifting.

What do you guys think? I’m no expert, however it does seem a bit risky. That being said she knows her body and what her back can take more than anyone…

Would love to hear your advice on whether lifting with slipped disks could be beneficial or downright dangerous.

All the best, and keep up the good work.

4. Cluster Dextrin [40:43]

Jackson says:

I would love to hear your opinion on this! Thanks

5. Nicotine Adverse Effects? [42:45]

Garrett says:

Hi Robb & Nikki,

‘Been around since the Paleo Solution podcast days, so while I’m not an OG-6 listener, OG-20 is not out of the question.

I heard a Q&A episode a while back where a listener asked about the caffeine-nicotine protocol you suggested for special forces, or anyone working odd hours / graveyard shifts to stay moderately alert while still being able to unwind at the end of the day. In a similar vein, on a recent Huberman Lab episode he mentioned the potential benefits of Nicotine in treating Alzheimer’s disease. I believe it is universally agreed upon Nicotine is a nootropic / cognitive enhancer.

Now to my question – I’m Swedish, and we have quite the ‘snus-culture’ over there, our spin of dry snuff (tobacco pouches, but without the spitting you see with American dip). I’ve gravitated towards this as an alternative to drinking, and I should note I’ve moved to the tobacco free versions containing only nicotine (Zyn is a brand that is making it’s ways in the U.S.). However, one can’t really drink on the job, whereas the only bad time for some snus is while eating and sleeping, leaving about 16 hours of consumption throughout the day.

Is there to your knowledge a ‘healthy’ range to stay within? In the U.S. they are sold in 3 and 6mg pouches, however the ‘good stuff’ I can get in Sweden goes all the way up to 20mg. According to a quick Google search, only 10-20% of the content is actually absorbed, meaning the dose “per hit” is up to 4mg. I could be on the high end consuming shy of 50mg per day some days. I’ve gladly taken in your and Andrew’s notes as a compelling argument that I’m functioning better cognitively while staving off Alzheimer’s disease, but I have a good feeling there’s another side of this story I should heavily consider as for all I know I’m doing damage equivalent to smoking a pack a day, just wrapped in different packaging with different side effects.

Appreciate all you do to keep us informed and entertained.

-Garrett

Sponsor:

Transcript:

Coming soon…

Where you can find us:

Submit questions for the podcast: https://robbwolf.com/contact/submit-a-question-for-the-podcast/

Keto Masterclass

The keto diet is one of the most effective ways to shed fat and improve your health. Keto Masterclass helps you start keto right, step-by-step, so that you can be successful long-term.

Don’t forget, Wired to Eat is now available!