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News topic du jour:

Mediterranean diet and inflammaging within the hormesis paradigm

Nutritional Ketosis and Mitohormesis: Potential Implications for Mitochondrial Function and Human Health

Podcast Questions:

1. Post surgery recovery [18:41]

Marianna D. says:

Hey Robb and Nikki,

I am headed into week two of a total of four weeks of post surgery restrictions. I had a bladder sling procedure for incontinence. The doctor ordered walking only for exercise. I specifically asked about upper body workouts and was told no go, which makes sense because upper body almost always involves core muscles. I’m a 71 yo female who normally spends over an hour every other day lifting heavy things in the gym. Tips please on how to avoid muscle loss, particularly advice on protein consumption. Advice on collagen intake desired as well. Thanks.

2. Thyroid & Iodine [22:41]

Marilee says:

Hi Robb & Nicki, I recently listened to a podcast with Dr. Alan Christianson and read his book The Thyroid Reset Diet. His premise as I understand it is that most auto-immune and hypo-thyroid conditions are due to an excess of iodine in the body and can resolve once that iodine is depleted/used up by going on a low iodine diet. This includes primarily removing salt (unless clearly non-iodized or kosher), egg yolks and dairy although there are many other sources listed including certain skin care products. My labs have indicated the need for treatment for hypo for many years as well as having autoimmune thyroid disease. However any prescription thyroid medicine as well as thyroid support supplements leave me feeling much worse so I have been untreated for several years. While I don’t feel nearly as bad as my labs would indicate I also don’t feel great. I would like to know what you think of this idea and whether you think his eating plan would help. Thanks for all you do.

Guermo Ruiz https://www.3030strong.com/

Isabella Wentz https://thyroidpharmacist.com/

3. Do ketones make you wired? [27:30]

Alex says:

I am sensitive to stimulants in the afternoon. Especially caffeine, even carnitine. I am looking for something to take in the afternoon for a pick me up at work and eventually for an evening workout (after work).

I am tempted to try ketones to boost my brain and energy. I am also on the Shoemaker protocol to recover from mold illness. I am not opposed to making my own stack. I have an anti-fatigue stack that helps me through the morning crash. But I need a 3pm stack, because I start to crash hard around then. I have yet to rule out taking electrolytes, cordyceps and Lions Mane.

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Transcript:

Download a copy of this transcript here (PDF)

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 Plus.

Robb: Welcome back folks.

Nicki: Hello. Hello.

Robb: It is chilly in Montana.

Nicki: It is. It is quite chilly in Montana. I’m still partially bundled from our early morning session.

Robb: Not that type of section, unfortunately.

Nicki: Wouldn’t be that bundled for that.

Robb: Those days are long gone.

Nicki: Wow. We’re starting this one off in quite the direction. This is episode 133 folks of the Healthier Rebellion Radio. Thank you for joining us. Again, what I was referring to-

Robb: Or apologies for joining, it could go either way.

Nicki: Yeah, apologies. What I was referring to is that I have started participating with Robb in his early morning, freezing cold garage zone two cardio sessions. And I got enticed, I’ll say, into doing this because he started re-watching Stranger Things. And we only made it through season one, I think when it first came out.

Robb: All of season one, and then two or three episodes of season two. And then I think we started moving-

Nicki: Back when it first came out and then we just stopped watching it for whatever reason. And so they’re now on season four. So he started re-watching it from the beginning. And we don’t really have a lot of time to watch TV, especially shows that are not kid appropriate. And so we don’t have a TV in our bedroom and we don’t want a TV in our bedroom. And we’re in bed fairly early reading or just-

Robb: Drooling on ourselves to completely knackered.

Nicki: Yeah, we’re not late night owls. So anyway, so this was a good opportunity and I just forgot how good of a show it really is. So we’re really enjoying that. I’m like, I don’t remember this. I don’t remember this morning. This morning Robb’s like, “Babe, we’re getting old”. And it’s-

Robb: No, what I said, this is the upside of age related memory loss. Everything is new. And back in the day when I had my paleo solution seminar, one of my one liners when I talked about-

Nicki: Getting old and having dementia-

Robb: In that-

Nicki: Wow, she’s hot. Wow, she’s hot.

Robb: Well, what I said was, what would be really cool, because when you first meet, I’m still very much in love with you, but when somebody’s brand new, they’re brand new. And I had my patent line, which was if I could selectively tailor my neurodegenerative process such that each time I turned away and then I saw Nicki again as like, Ooh, she’s hot. Ooh, she’s hot. But more than likely my neurodegenerative decline will look more like depends. And institutionalization. So yeah.

Nicki: Those who attended Robb’s CrossFit Nutrition seminars back in the day will remember that line ’cause that was an oft repeated. It made its way into almost all of those, I think. But anyway, it’s a fabulous show. If you haven’t seen it, if you grew up in the eighties, it’s just a great acting, great show. I don’t know. I’m pretty tickled. So anyway, it’s four days in now. I’ve doing zone two cardio with Robb in the morning and it’s freezing cold. I refuse to do the bike. If I get on the bike, it’s like one minute at a shot. I don’t like how it feels on my hips. And how-

Robb: And funny enough, when I do the Concept2 rower, it irritates my back. So we have our mean-

Nicki: Then I jump rope a little bit and then I do step ups for my third and just rotate around.

Robb: And you’re using a Garmin watch currently and I’m using the Morpheus heart rate monitor.

Nicki: Yep. Yep. So anyway, it goes by a blink of an eye because it’s such a good show. But that’s all about that. What else today hubs?

Robb: I have nothing.

Nicki: You have nothing.

Robb: Literally nothing. I mean there’s chaos and pandemonium in the Twitter verse and everything. It’s interesting. I don’t want to… I always say this, I don’t want to divert too far, but it is fascinating what’s going on there with Elon Musk seemingly. And it’s so interesting, seemingly trying to create a platform where free speech is a thing. That there’s a legitimate town square where everybody has a voice and really no topic is off limits, so long as it’s not inciting violence. And some of these long held strictures around decorum and whatnot. And there’s a fascinating cross section of people that are absolutely epileptic over this process and are convinced that this will be the… There was actually a CNN piece, the Bagato had this where free speech will be the undoing of free speech. And this was said on CNN and then their fact checkers checked it and they weren’t really too sure what to do with it.

It was this whole hilarious thing. But it’s really interesting. The folks that were, and I’m going to do some broad brush generalizations, but that felt that people should be fired if they weren’t vaccinated, felt like they should not receive medical care if they weren’t vaccinated. That you should be publicly shamed if you’re not wearing a mask during the pandemic. And maybe some other demographic characteristics, seem to be the people that are really clutching their pearls over the notion that people can come and say what they want to say and have an opinion on things. And do you want me to throw that ACLU thing out that I mentioned to you the other day?

Nicki: I’m not remembering which one it is.

Robb: I’ll just throw this out there. I’ll just throw this out there. There was this case, and this is 15 years ago, where there was a group of legitimate white supremacists that we’re trying to organize a rally in a march, and they got shut down and the ACLU, the American Civil Liberties Union defended them in their right to organize. Now, are these people probably to a person, absolute pieces of shit? Almost certainly. Maybe some of them could be redeemed and convinced that they’re thinking is flawed. And the only way that you do that is maybe having some interaction with these people, which there’s a story about this Black gentleman that made it his life’s mission to go and engage with these white supremacists. And he ended up as deradicalize 200 of these guys or whatever, because he would sit down and buy them lunch and start having a conversation. And then they changed their minds.

But there was a time when the ACLU actually defended legitimate Nazis, let’s say, it’s interesting. These people are deplorable and horrible and it’s easy and reasonable and probably justified to not anything that these folks are about, but still woven into the American experience and the American constitution is this right to assemble. And there was a time that entities like the ACLU would stand up for these folks as horrible and deplorable and everything else as they are. And that’s gone. That’s just gone. And what’s interesting to me is that when things like that are gone, and Brett Weinstein has made this case that one is a magic number, zero is a magic number. When you can make it such that there is no representation of an academic setting that isn’t broken due to wokeness, that there is no town square where everybody has a legitimate, unfettered voice, then totalitarianism is there and it’s on your chest and it’s just going to settle in deeper and deeper and deeper.

And it may never be cast off again. And it’s just interesting what’s going on and who finds themselves on what side of this story. And I am absolutely in, and this is a hill I would die on, is a free speech absolutist. The nuttier the idea, the worst the idea, like fuck I battle this all the time. People insist that grazing animals are the undoing of the planet. And so when people are bemoaning this stuff, it’s like, I deal with this all the time. I’ve been dealing with this for literally two decades now.

My first public debate about this topic was at Chico State University in 2006. So I’ve been hammering tongs on this thing. And there are people out there that make these erroneous claims that pull up bad data. And it just falls on some of us, hopefully all of us and ideally more of us than who are currently doing this, to actually fight back. To get in and devote some of our bandwidth and some of our precious one, in of one, the only life we’re going to have, to setting the record straight. And if that’s too hard for people then you’ve already given up and whatever comes your way, you deserve at this point. So that’s what the other thing-

Nicki: That was a nice little rant. It’s funny, I saw Elon Musk tweeted something about freedom of speech, without it even America will fall to authoritarianism. Or I can’t remember the exact quote, but it was something to the effect that this is the paramount fight, the paramount battle, defending freedom of speech. And the first comment was some asshole who had OMG shut up, or STFU, and it’s like, okay, maybe it was a bot or a troll, but it’s like, I don’t know, I have a heart. I don’t love everything that Elon is or does, but I like a lot of what I’m seeing and what he’s doing.

And it just strikes me as so granite, like social media is accessible and people will say all sorts of things that they would never say to a person’s face, but it’s just like how does somebody just… So clearly this person, assuming it’s not a bot or a troll, thinks that he’s just some windbag spewing him on about freedom of speech and that it really, he was wasting his time and there’s nothing to fight for in this case. It’s just appalling. But that is social media and well I won’t go there because we’re already derailing. This is another-

Robb: No. Go there.

Nicki: Go there? Well, the girls discovered this new show called Brain Child.

Robb: Yep. Brain Child.

Nicki: And they watched, and I’ve only peripherally seen a couple of the episodes, but they talk about how the mind works and how fast your synapses can work and how fast you can have a thought and act on a thought and whole host of things. And an episode that we didn’t watch, but Zoe was telling us was about social media and how they did this experiment where they had some person made a song, some gal made a song and it was a terrible song.

Robb: It was purposely a terrible song.

Nicki: Purposely terrible. And then they had two groups of kids. One group was told they needed to just write a review or a critique of this song and it was going to be anonymous. And that was that.

Robb: No, one of them, they were going to read the critique to the person-

Nicki: To the person.

Robb: In real life. And one, the critique was going to be delivered via a social media platform.

Nicki: But they wouldn’t have to… It was anonymous. It wasn’t like them. Yeah. And the result, as we all can guess is that folks that knew that they were going to be reading the critique to the person, their critique was much kinder than the ones that knew that they were just going to have this anonymous post to the person. So it was just this experiment on how people interact with each other online. And I don’t know, it was pretty interesting.

Robb: And it was kind of cool that the kids dug that up and then we got to have a little bit of Q and A with the kids about that. Well, what do you think that given that reality, what do you think it does to the world if most of the interactions that people have end up being online versus real? And they’re like, “Well, people are mean and horrible”. And so ended up being a valuable teaching lesson. But anyway.

Nicki: Anyway. Okay, news topics, what do you got for us, hubs?

Robb: So two related pieces of Mediterranean diet and inflammaging, which is within the hormesis paradigm, which is a new term that I’ve dug up. Inflammaging is the process of aging driven by inflammation. And it makes the case that the Mediterranean diet may be beneficial largely due to the mitohormetic stress, the low grade toxic exposure from the plants in the diet, which is interesting. This nest under some of the carnivore diet discussion. And some people are like, “Well, you don’t need that”. Maybe you do need that. I find it very interesting that this mitohormetic stress topic is not really so theoretical anymore although this is a review paper. It’s not like it’s a randomized control trial, but they build a theoretical case around it. So I appreciated that. But it’s worth mentioning that there are other papers, which I linked to the other one, nutritional ketosis and mitohormesis, potential implications for mitochondrial function and human health.

It makes the case, it simply being in a state of ketosis is a mitohormetic stress. So there’s a certain mild stress associated with the state of ketosis, which then upregulates endogenous antioxidant systems, cellular repair. And so what’s interesting, perplexing about this, there are a lot more people eating a lot fewer plants than I think maybe has happened in a long time. And so within the context of this Mediterranean diet, there’s potentially the benefit of eating these mitohormetic stress inducing plants. But then there does appear to be this option of simply being in a ketogenic state, which may confer some benefit. What’s interesting about that is when we’re talking generally about the ketogenic diet, I don’t know if it’s been controlled such that we are talking about ketosis absent any plant material inputs. So within a ketogenic diet versus a Mediterranean diet, still people are usually eating some plants.

So it’s like broccoli with bacon and stuff like that. And so don’t know how perfectly clean that distinction or delineation is, but there’s clearly something to this story, to the degree that fasting and caloric restriction seems to confer a benefit. The benefit mainly, and if folks remember from the talk that I gave longevity, we trying too hard. The first benefit that we get is just simply not overeating. That’s like the big, big win, which is a non-trivial thing to do in this modern hyper palatable food environment. But then above and beyond that, if we can rig up some sort of a mitohormetic stressor, which exercise, ketosis, some amount of fasting, seem to provide those benefits and also would appear some amount of fruit and vegetable consumption as well.

Nicki: Nice. Okay. We will leak to both of those in the show notes. And the Healthy Rebellion Radio is sponsored by our salty AF electrolyte company, LMNT. And I’m excited to announce that the Chocolate Medley is now available for everyone. We had a two week period where it was only available to our value bundle subscribers. But now you can grab a box of Chocolate Medley as a standalone purchase, although I will add that the value bundle is still your best bang for your buck. You can mix and match any flavor, any box that you want. You buy three, get the fourth one free. But the Chocolate Medley has 10 chocolate caramel salt, 10 chocolate mint salt, and 10 chocolate salt.

And right now I’m drinking a concoction that the girls are also loving. It’s a raspberry hot chocolate combo. You just mix a third of a package of your raspberry salt with two-thirds chocolate salt in hot water. It’s so good. Really, really good. Remember, the Chocolate Medley is only available for a limited time when it’s gone, it’s gone. An LMNT also has no questions asked refunds. So you can give Chocolate Medley a try risk free. You can grab yours drinklmnt.com/robb. That’s drinklmnt.com/robb. And the holidays are coming. So if you have folks that you think might need a little extra hydration, this makes a great stocking stuffer or gift. So grab that value bundle, buy three boxes, get the fourth one free, drinklmnt.com/robb.

Robb: Nicely done.

Nicki: Okay, hubs, we’ve got three questions today. The first one is from Marianna on post-surgery recovery. Hey Robb and Nicki, I am headed into week two of a total of four weeks of post-surgery restrictions. I had a bladder sling procedure for incontinence. The doctor ordered walking only for exercise. I specifically asked about upper body workouts and was told no go. Which makes sense because upper body almost always involves core muscles. I’m a 71 year old female who normally spends over an hour every other day lifting heavy things in the gym. Tips please on how to avoid muscle loss, particularly advice on protein consumption and collagen intake as well. Thanks.

Robb: So man, a couple of angles you could take on this for sure. Adequate protein intake, a gram protein per pound of lean body mass up to a gram of protein per pound of body weight or ideal body weight. There’s just no two ways around a higher protein intake, even while relatively sedentary is just a dramatic hedge against muscle wasting. Being in a state of ketosis seems to both enhance this anti catabolic effect maintaining, and when we say the ketosis, we’re not talking about a three to one, four to one epileptic type ketogenic diet, but more of a modified Atkins, which is higher protein, keto gains type approach, all that type of stuff. But there does seem to be some benefit with regards to wound healing recovery while in a ketogenic state. All other things being equal and making sure that you’re on point with your electrolytes and all that type of stuff.

And then above and beyond that, if you’re cleared to walk, man, I would walk till the soles fell off your shoes. Be as active as you can. And again, this is something you would need to pass by your doc. But even doing planks against a table or something like that so that you’re engaging core musculature, but it’s an ecstatic fashion and stuff like that, I’d be hard pressed to imagine that that would not be okay. But again, within your tolerance, within whatever parameters that the doctor is okay with, I would suspect that going up and down some stairs would probably be quite good.

Nicki: Or hill climb if he can find some sort of an incline and walk uphill.

Robb: But four weeks of not being able to lift is a little wild. But if you eat well, sleep well, and then just weight bear as often as you can, I think you’re going to be just fine. You’ll find that you’re going to have some strength deficits compared to where you were before and it’ll take you a little while to ramp back up. But once you start getting back into the gym, so long as you’ve been feeding yourself well and being as active as you can within your constraints, I think you’ll be just fine.

Nicki: And what about your thoughts on collagen intake?

Robb: Collagen is great from the context of balancing that methionine glycine ratio, which Chris Masterjohn is really the expert on that, but there’s a case to be made that there’s a lower inflammatory potential. If we’re balancing that glycine methionine ratio, we tend to get methionine from more muscle meat and chicken and eggs and all that type of stuff. And we get more glycine from gelatin, collagen type sources, skin organs, all that type of stuff.

Nicki: But she wouldn’t count her collagen intake towards her protein grams for her day.

Robb: No, that’s the interesting thing.

Nicki: Okay, just clarifying that.

Robb: If you’re counting calories, it counts as calories, but it’s not going to count in your protein allotment because we don’t want it to dig in unduly into the anabolic signaling that we get from standard protein. Great catch.

Nicki: Cool. Okay, our next question is from Mary-Lee on thyroid and iodine. Hi Robb and Nicki. I recently listened to a podcast with Dr. Allen Christensen and read his book The Thyroid Reset Diet. His premise, as I understand it, is that most autoimmune and hypothyroid conditions are due to an excess of iodine in the body and can resolve, once that iodine is depleted or used up, by going on a low iodine diet. This includes primarily removing salt unless it’s clearly non iodized or kosher, egg yolks and dairy, although there are many other sources listed, including certain skincare products. My labs have indicated the need for treatment for hypo for many years as well as having autoimmune thyroid disease. However, any prescription thyroid medicine as well as thyroid support supplements leave me feeling much worse. So I’ve been untreated for several years. While I don’t feel nearly as bad as my labs would indicate, I also don’t feel great. I would like to know what you think of this idea and whether you think his eating plan would help. Thanks for all you do.

Robb: When we receive this, I have not read the book, didn’t have a chance to read it before this, looked at some reviews and it’s interesting, but I have to say, my understanding of this topic is that generally the problem that we see with excess iodine consumption is a hyperthyroid state. I just haven’t, and I’m not a thyroid expert. There are some people like Guillermo Ruiz, Elle Russ, and some other people that are pretty notable in the thyroid space. They’re much better versed on both the mechanistic elements and also the clinical. We’re going to try this and we’ll see what the results are. So the thing that I have about this is in digging around, I haven’t seen a lot that suggests that excess iodine really contributes to hypothyroid. So I’m not sure on that. This is, I’m-

Nicki: So it’s mainly for hyper-

Robb: Hyperthyroid.

Nicki: Okay. Gotcha.

Robb: There’s definitely a case to be made for that. If there is a hypo story mixed into this, then it’s outside of my knowledge set, I’m over the tip of my skis and I’m not sure and just haven’t been able to dig deep on this. The one thing that I would throw out there though, most of these dietary interventions like this seems really safe. If we are reducing iodized salt in iodine dietary factors for some period of time and we’re paying attention to clinical manifestations, that would be consistent with hypo or hyperthyroid, dry hair, lethargy, coldness, both sides of the spectrum, I think so long as you’re paying attention to what’s going on, then this seems like a reasonable protocol.

Nicki: So your own little N equals one. How do I feel when I modify my diet?

Robb: Yeah, it doesn’t seem super scary to give that a shot at least. So again, in the show notes will link to Guillermo and maybe a couple other folks, if I remember, who are the knowledgeable folks in the thyroid space. There’s somebody else that I’m just blanking on. Guillermo, Elle-

Nicki: I know that we’ve sent a couple of friends to Guillermo and-

Robb: The folks that-

Nicki: Oh, the pharmacist?

Robb: Yes.

Nicki: What’s her name? Isabella Wentz.

Robb: Yes, Isabella Wentz, that’s who I was thinking of. Isabella is also super well steeped in this stuff. So those are some other folks that I would maybe poke around their information, just to get… Funny enough, there was a time when folks recommended a second opinion on things and that the science wasn’t settled and also that your individual situation may not fit perfectly within the parameters of any one person’s recommendations. So Isabella Wentz, Elle Russ, Guillermo-

Nicki: And we’ll put links in the show notes to these folks too. So you can go to robbwolf.com and click on the latest podcast episode and find those.

Robb: So I wish I could give you a better opinion on that. But the most concrete thing that I have is that I’m not directly aware of a mechanism of causation where excess thyroid tends to lead to hypothyroid.

Nicki: Excess iodine.

Robb: Sorry, excess iodine. Yep. Yep.

Nicki: Okay. Our final question this week is from Alex. He wants to know, do ketones make you wired? He says, I am sensitive to stimulants in the afternoon, especially caffeine, even carnitine. I’m looking for something to take in the afternoon for pick me up at work and eventually for an evening workout after work. I’m tempted to try ketones to boost my brain and energy. I’m also on the Shoemaker Protocol to recover from mold illness. I’m not opposed to making my own stack. I have an anti fatigue stack that helps me through the morning crash, but I need a 3:00 PM stack because I start to crash hard around then. I’ve yet to rule out taking electrolytes, Cordyceps and lion’s mane.

Robb: Again, maybe self-serving because we pedal electrolytes, but that electrolyte piece is critical. We’ve seen so many times where the afternoon slump that usually would’ve been a half cat espresso or something like that is better served by properly jumping on some electrolytes. So I would really look at that. And if you don’t want to buy something like LMNT, there’s other things out there. LMNT also has a how to make it home brew. I don’t see that Cordyceps or lion’s mane would really help with this energy slump. Cordyceps can help with endurance or perceived exertion while training. I think it’s legit for that, but I don’t see it really addressing this. Also, I would be really, Alex, I would be super clear about are you overdoing carbs? Are you overdoing the timing of the carbs and have a good protein-

Nicki: I was going to say that because I’m like a morning crash and then a 3:00 PM crash to me, and again, maybe this also ties into the mold illness that he is trying to recover from. So it might-

Robb: Certainly could.

Nicki: But it makes me wonder about the food. And clearly he’s listening to this podcast and he’s curious about ketones. So I’m assuming that his food is mostly dialed in. But it’s worth looking at what are you eating? Are eating something that could be contributing to these crashes because I don’t know, two crashes a day. I know that’s standard for the standard American diet population and people are going through the drive up coffees and having to get their five hour energies and all that stuff. But people who typically eat more on the ancestral side of things, yes, you can have an energy slump in the afternoon, but I don’t think the double crash a day every day is a thing.

Robb: Right. So I agree. So I’d be curious about nutritional composition. To your point, Nikki, this may be an artifact of dealing with the mold exposure and whatnot.

Nicki: Yeah. That’s probably.

Robb: And Alex, circling back around to the ketone story. I personally have had very mixed results with different ketone products like the ketone salts give me a gut ache and I can’t say that I feel like cognitively charged and revived with them. I’ve tried the ketone esters. Kind of a similar deal. One thing that I’ve been tinkering with, and I really like the product is Kinetic and it’s drinkkinetic.com. And again, we have links in there. I don’t have any affiliate link or any financial tie to the company, but it’s a different way of delivering ketones. This is a deform of the Beta-hydroxybutyrate and is a product of fermentation of plant material, basically. And they end up with this aqueous form of the D-isomer of the ketone body. And because we’ve moved so many times, I have not tracked down where my blood keto monitor is.

It’s somewhere in this god damn house, but I don’t know where. So I haven’t checked my blood levels, but I’ve tried the product and I’ve actually had a little hypoglycemic event afterwards. So it’s telling me that it probably bumps my ketones up quite a bit because when ketones levels rise fairly significantly, you will get an insulin release and blood sugar can drop. What I’ve found is with the drink kinetic is that I can only tolerate about a half serving of it. So I’m really curious. I may need to just buy another ketone monitor and check this thing, but I suspect it’s doing something pretty profound because I tend to eat more or less in that ketogenic ratio and have good energy and good cognitive function and all that type of stuff. So I’m assuming based off of past experiences that I’m in that modest level of ketosis. But this thing definitely seems to bump stuff up. But before this, I would look at composition of food, timing of food, making sure you’re eating enough food, possibly a glycemic crash-

Nicki: Enough food is a big point. If you’re under eating, you can have energy slumps also, especially if you’re doing any training.

Robb: Yep. And then I would think about electrolytes and then I would think about the ketone product. And again, this drink kinetic is an interesting one that you might look into tinkering with. And just be aware that I talked to the CEO of the company, just picking his brain on some stuff. He has heard a few other reports of people getting a little bit of a hypoglycemic event from the product and so they end up recommending a half dose for those folks.

Nicki: And then lion’s mane, Cordyceps, mushrooms for energy.

Robb: I mentioned that a little bit before. I don’t really see that being a big driver for energy. Yeah,

Nicki: For energy, yeah. I don’t think so either. Okay. I think that was our three questions for this week. I can’t believe we’re on the cusp of December. It is almost the final month.

Robb: The end is nine.

Nicki: The end of 2022. Let’s hope that 2023 has a lot of wonderful things in store for us all.

Robb: We have a lot of wonderful things.

Nicki: All right. I have no other closing thoughts. Robb, anything from you?

Robb: Nope, I’ve got nothing.

Nicki: Okay. Folks, I hope you have a wonderful weekend. Enjoy your families, get outside. Thanks for tuning in. We will see you all next week.

Robb: Bye everybody.

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News topic du jour:

Mortality in vegetarians and comparable nonvegetarians in the United Kingdom

“United Kingdom-based vegetarians and comparable nonvegetarians have similar all-cause mortality. Differences found for specific causes of death merit further investigation.”

Podcast Questions:

1. Reducing and preventing tendon pain? [12:03]
Joe says:
Hi Robb and Nicki,
Loving the podcast and all your great content!
I have tennis elbow, which the physio said was tendinopathy (after asking me some questions and getting me to do some movements.)
I got it from weight training, and after taking a break for a month or so and then training with my other arm only, it’s still there. As the rest didn’t help, I’ve gone back to weightlifting. I avoid exercises that hurt it, but just moving weights around the gym, from the rack to the station, and general life tasks, seem to aggravate it.
It seems to have spread into my wrist area and upper arm now. And I’m feeling a similar pain deep in my collar bone area (but not the bone itself but the soft tissue (muscle?) part (high upper chest/front trap?).
Even if I was to stop lifting, I think I would still aggravate it, from just general things, like lifting a cup of tea, getting things out of my bag, etc. So I’m not sure I can just avoid triggering it and wait for it to go.
I have some exercises from the physio that I’m doing.
But is there anything else I can try, like supplements, or maybe red light or cryotherapy? Anything really that might help fix it and prevent it from coming back.
I’m male, early 40s, and train with weights 3 or 4 times a week and have done for years.
Thanks,
Joe

2. Body Comp and Longevity [18:55]
Lindsey says:
Hey guys! Love ya lots. I have been following Robb since before my 15 year old twins were born.
One of the many things I love about you both is that you are not afraid to change your views on health and nutrition.
I love learning about both though I find it SO hard to decipher what is “true”. I feel like so much information is contrary.
I am a 41 year old mother of 5. (Ranging from 18-2 years old) I am super committed to my nutrition, sleep, activity, etc.
Having kids in my 20’s was very different than my last one at almost 40.
I have found it much harder to “bounce back” to my pre-pregnancy body. I understand that as I age I won’t have the same muscle tone, skin elasticity, etc though I want to give it my all.
This is my question:
I have heard 2 conflicting ideas:
1) fuel the metabolism
2) caloric restriction

Which is the way to obtain and maintain optimal body composition and best for longevity. Maybe the answer is that one is best to obtain and the other to maintain?
Does this question make sense?
Thank you guys!!

What Mid-Victorians Can Teach Us about Nutrition and Health

3. Nutrient Density of Chicken Sucks!@#$ [28:25]
Derek says:
So what now? I’m 140 pounds and want to get 1g of protein per pound. Is there still a point to getting protein from chicken if it is low in nutrient density; how does all that work?
Love my LMNT and the holiday stuff rocks!
Derek

Sponsor:

The Healthy Rebellion Radio is sponsored by our electrolyte company, LMNT.
Proper hydration is more than just drinking water. You need electrolytes too! Check out The Healthy Rebellion Radio sponsor LMNT for grab-and-go electrolyte packets to keep you at your peak! They give you all the electrolytes want, none of the stuff you don’t. Click here to get your LMNT electrolytes

Transcript:

Coming soon…

Where you can find us:

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

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

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Please Subscribe and Review: Apple Podcasts | RSS

Submit your questions for the podcast here

News topic du jour:

Sophistry and the Savior:
https://www.moneyandstate.com/blog/sophistry-and-the-savior

Bankless: The Collapse of FTX
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-collapse-of-ftx-24-hours-later/id1499409058?i=1000585711733

Freedom to Transact thread by Punk6529:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1494444624630403083.html

Highly processed foods can be considered addictive substances based on established scientific criteria

Podcast Questions:

1. Cold weather and the urge to pee [20:04]
Michael B. says:
Every year when the temperature drops I feel the need to urinate more often. It especially hits me the hardest when first going outside into the cold even if I just went. It also happens when I get cold water on my hands. I have been upping my salt content in an attempt to keep the fluids in my body longer. The urge does slowly lesson as winter progresses. My diet is Paleo around 100grams of carbs a day. I do have a meal or two a week that isn’t, my job keeps me on my feet and active exercise consists of mt biking once a week and chasing my five year old daily. I’m 43 6’2” and 220lbs. Definitely a so called dad bod. So what is up with all the peeing? What’s my body doing and is there something I can do rather then just waiting for my body to adjust to the weather? Thanks, been listening and reading your stuff since the very beginning.

https://www.accuweather.com/en/health-wellness/why-does-cold-weather-make-me-need-to-pee/647306#:~:text=Cold%20weather%20will%20result%20in,having%20to%20pee%20more%20often.

2. Zone 2 Exercise / LMNT through Amazon [23:57]
BJ David says:
Hi Robb & Nicki.  Long time listener.  You have answered a couple of my questions over the last few years through your podcast.  Thanks.  Feels like we’re besties.  Can’t wait to get your Christmas card this year!  Ha.

Ok, so we live very close to a major Amazon hub in Greater Cincinnati, on the KY side of the river.  To my horror yesterday morning I opened the pantry to get an LMNT pack and there were none.  Zero.  Zilch.  My lovely bride had used the last one apparently.  Moving swiftly into action, I jumped on the Amazon app and ordered a box.  Honest to goodness, it was at my front door in a couple hours.  Didn’t even have to wait a whole day.  That’s some magic right there.  Woohoo!  Side note, I went ahead and clicked the box to get it auto-shipped monthly.  It really is that good.

So, my question is about Zone 2 exercise.  My integrative Dr told me to use Zone 2 if I was still interested in losing/maintaining weight…that it is the best fat burning zone.  Over recent episodes I’ve heard you repeatedly mention getting in your Zone 2 workouts and that you’ve been paying more attention to them lately.  I’m pretty sure you’ve even mentioned that you really don’t want to get any leaner.  Soooo, why are you recently so committed to Zone 2 exercise?  What are the benefits you’re after?

Thanks to you both.  Keep up the great work.

BJ David

3. BJJ training and bruising [30:04]
Jason says:
I’ve been training 12 years and over time I’ve realized my body has built up a great tolerance to bruising, to the point you’d have to beat me with a stick to abuse a bruise. However @ the last 5 years I get bruising on my face almost every training session. Not like a black and blue bruise, more like a strawberry color like a brush burn, and it goes away in 24-48hrs.

Healthy 51 years old, no meds, mostly ancestral diet, moderate alcohol consumption. 1/2-3/4 bottle of wine per day.

Bonus question for fun!

About twice per year my wife will make a awesome homemade apple pie and we have this argument every time. Her philosophy is eat just a little piece every day until it’s gone. Mine is have a grueling workout then sit down with 1/2 gallon of ice cream and do my best to kill it all at one sitting so I’m not tempted to eat it again for months. Who’s side are you on? Ps i don’t care the answer because I’m still eating the whole damn thing lol!

Sponsor:

The Healthy Rebellion Radio is sponsored by our electrolyte company, LMNT.
Proper hydration is more than just drinking water. You need electrolytes too! Check out The Healthy Rebellion Radio sponsor LMNT for grab-and-go electrolyte packets to keep you at your peak! They give you all the electrolytes want, none of the stuff you don’t. Click here to get your LMNT electrolytes

Transcript:

Download a copy of the transcript here (PDF)

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 Plus.

Robb: Howdy, neighbors.

Nicki: We’re rolling. Hello, hello. Welcome back to another episode of The Healthy Rebellion Radio. This is episode 131.

Robb: Fantastic.

Nicki: Good day, hubs.

Robb: Good day.

Nicki: Good day. What do we got? I know last episode we shared a little bit about what our weekend was going to be all about, and I thought we could give a post-bison-

Robb: A postmortem?

Nicki: … Mortem report from our adventure up at Roam Free Ranch.

Robb: Well, you get right on that, wife.

Nicki: Well, first of all, it was freaking amazing. It was just a fantastic experience. Like we mentioned before, it was a dry run. They want to do this type of thing more frequently at their ranch, kind of experiences that you can only have out in the middle of nowhere in Montana.

Robb: With very little oversight or regulation.

Nicki: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it was pretty cool. Some folks that were part of the hunt hunted the bison and then got it cleaned and processed and then strapped onto this metal frame. First of all, they butterflied it and then strapped it onto this metal frame, and then Robb, along with 10 other guys, lifted it and carried it over to the rotisserie thing and had to lift it up and mount it on the… How much did that thing weigh all in all? The metal, the steel?

Robb: It was estimated about 800 pounds total. So each person was… Not a huge amount, but it was awkward and icy and-

Nicki: And cold, and cold fingers.

Robb: And cold. And when we put it up, there was a fire going that you had to-

Nicki: You didn’t want to get your shoes burned.

Robb: … Try to not standing in the middle of the fire while you’re putting up. So it wasn’t Navy SEAL stuff, but it was non-trivial to get it put up there.

Nicki: It was pretty cool. And then folks pushed the wheel of pain through the night and roasted it and cooked it. And then the next day more people came, the folks that were coming just for the feasting portion of it. And we ate the bison.

Robb: We did.

Nicki: Yeah. It was good. It was a good time. Lots of fun.

Robb: John and Britney are amazing people. The Go Roam Free Bison Ranch if you want to follow them on Instagram, it’s at GoRoamFree-

Nicki: If you want to see pictures of this contraption, definitely go to their Instagram account.

Robb: And just as a reminder, again, this was inspired by the wheel of pain from Conan the Barbarian, which was you walk in the circle pushing these big logs. And that then was attached to this eight to one gear ratio where every eight turns of the wheel turned once the bison.

Nicki: Fully rotated the bison over the fire.

Robb: And quite an engineering feat. And just, John and Britney are amazing people, and they’re significantly younger than us and full of a lot more piss and vinegar.

Nicki: It’s cool. He had this idea in his head and he decided to make it happen. So super, super cool. So anyway, that ended up being a ton of fun. Looking forward to the next one, which is-

Robb: Potentially in May.

Nicki: … Potentially in May. And I know that they’ll probably be taking outside signups for that one. So when there’s registration information, if people are interested in coming in and checking that out, we’ll let you know when signups are available.

Robb: Awesome.

Nicki: It was actually cool because we met a couple who were podcast listeners and who recently moved here to the Flathead Valley and heard about Roam Free Ranch from us talking about them on the podcast. And so they are customers of John and Brittany, and so they were invited to this thing and it was kind of fun to meet some people that way too.

Robb: It was. They were a wonderful couple.

Nicki: Yeah. Any other upfront news you want to share, huborama?

Robb: I don’t think so. There’s all kinds of chaos in the world.

Nicki: Oh goodness. Craziness. Yes. Insane. Narcissistic, sociopathic-

Robb: There’s a lot of acronyms.

Nicki: … Founders of trading firms that trade in cryptocurrency but aren’t decentralized, and so they’re like banks and can steal people’s money like FTX and Sam Bankman Freed. So that’s been a fun kind of unfolding drama.

Robb: Did we talk about that last?

Nicki: I don’t think so. It was just kind of popping up.

Robb: It was just breaking. Yeah. But-

Nicki: Super fascinating.

Robb: If you want to get caught up on that. The Bankless podcast, we’ve recommended those guys a few times. It’s a lot of the Bankless podcast just, it is frankly a few rungs higher up than where my aptitude and interest lies. But they were really right at the bleeding edge of this thing breaking because they had Sam Bankman-Fried.

Nicki: They had SBF on a debate with this other guy named Eric Voorhees, who’s a longtime libertarian bitcoin crypto advocate, very much in the decentralized side of things. And Sam has been lobbying in DC and made huge political donations to the Democratic Party, to the tune of 30 plus million dollars working to get this crypto regulation put in place that looks like it would have been very protectionist for what he was doing and-

Robb: Would’ve crushed decentralized finanace.

Nicki: … Really crushed DeFi, which is what most people in this space are attracted to. Let’s not trust people, humans who can be bought out and who make mistakes and who fuck things up. Let’s trust code. Let’s trust protocols to do things. So anyway, they had this debate, which was fascinating. Eric is super articulate, really, I don’t know. It was just fascinating. And I’ve never, I didn’t know who SPF was prior to listening to that episode. And then subsequent to that, there was just all this stuff online on Twitter about people really upset with what Sam was lobbying for because it really wasn’t in the interest of the crypto industry at large. And then just went downhill. Basically, he’s gambled away over $16 billion, all of his customer funds. He was basically running a fractional reserve situation.

Robb: And there was a bank run.

Nicki: And there was a bank run. And then the New York Times just did this super fluffy piece about how his empire collapsed, but making it sound like it was, he didn’t intentionally use customer funds. People are suffering. People’s life savings were on this platform, which is another reason why you should never keep your stuff on any platform if you’re in crypto at all. Anyway, long story short, we’re getting derailed here, but lots of fascinating stuff going on in the world.

Robb: But that Bankless podcast, if you thumb back through some of their live streams and a few podcasts back, if you want to get caught up on that, and I would really encourage people to have some awareness around this topic. This isn’t our news topic today, but we’ll dig into it.

Nicki: Let’s make it a two part news topic, because I’ll link to Erik Voorhees’s blog. He has a blog post. His blog is moneyandstate.com, I believe. I could be wrong, but I think that’s it. He wrote a really great blog post talking about all of this, and it’s a good read.

Robb: Here’s why I think it’s important. This notion of decentralization is something that I’ve talked about for ages, and whether it’s decentralized governance, more governance happening on the local level versus a more centralized level, our food systems, our financial systems, whenever things get centralized, it’s easier to corrupt them. And it’s not impossible to corrupt something at the local level. But this decentralized finance is going to be fought tooth and nail because it really is an elegant solution to a ton of problems that we have. It really is. And I was talking a little bit about this in the Twitter verse, and I had some folks that I know, and they were largely of the opinion, they’re like, “Well, this just shows why crypto is a ruinous, terrible idea.” And I’m like, no man, no. And so I-

Nicki: Nothing that happened was the fault of crypto. It was all the fault of human beings-

Robb: Taking advantage of a-

Nicki: … Taking advantage of a system. Also, this whole thing, his whole business was offshore. People in the US have been asking for more clear lane lines with regards to regulation with crypto, but because there weren’t any, lots of people went offshore, including this FTX enterprise. And so then there’s no oversight. It just allows bad actors to come in. This guy was the darling. Apparently people were calling him the next JP Morgan, and he’s this nerdy guy with super fluffy, curly hair and-

Robb: Public hair on his head.

Nicki: … Public hair on his head and overweight. And he’s vegan. He fits the whole… They call him an effective altruist because he just wants to give all of his money away. He drives a Toyota Corolla, even though he is worth billions of dollars. When all of it appears to be this big ruse. I don’t know.

Robb: Again, sorry, we diverted in that. But if you are concerned about sovereignty in general, food sovereignty, medical sovereignty-

Nicki: Freedom to transact. The fact that somebody couldn’t tell you that because you want to protest your president or prime minister’s dick tats in a public square that, oh, we’re going to cut off all your bank account access like Trudeau did in Canada to the trucker protests. And regardless of where you stand on that issue, you can imagine an issue that you’re passionate about. And if the wrong person in government were there and they could say, “Well, because we don’t believe in the cause that you’re trying to protest. We’re just going to cease your access to your funds.” This is fundamentally, and Punk… I know we’ve mentioned this before in a previous episode, but Punk 6-5, 2-9, who is just an amazing resource on all things crypto and metaverse stuff has said and made a very eloquent post, “There are no constitutional rights without the freedom to transact.”

And so if you take away people’s freedoms to transact, if you take away their access to their funds, you’re basically stripping them of every other human fundamental because without your access to money, you can’t organize, you can’t have freedom of speech, you can’t print pamphlets to promote whatever to-

Robb: You can’t pay for your website.

Nicki: You can’t pay for your website, you can’t get on a bus and go to a rally. You can’t do all the things. So anyway, that one, for me, the freedom to transact is what really that whole Canadian situation back in February of this year is what really kind of opened my eyes to a lot of this stuff. And anyway, I know we’re getting derailed, but.

Robb: It’s important stuff.

Nicki: It’s important. What if all the powers that want us to be eating more bugs and crickets, and meat is bad for the environment? So Robb, I see that you’re been… Your bank statements show that you’ve been purchasing a lot of meat lately and that’s really bad for the environment. So we’re going to just cut you off from that.

Robb: And what’s funny. Folks think that this is a joke, and there’s kind of two, a couple of facets to this. One is that there’s a cross section of people that feel like this is okay because they’re so righteously in belief of say, climate change or masks or mandates or whatever, that they’re really willing to forego any type of freedom so long as they get the compliance that they think is appropriate. And they never ever realize that this thing can and will get weaponized against them. And these are the classic brown shirts out of history, that the useful idiots are the first ones to go because… Well, history, and not to go too deep into that, but it’s, you really said it well. I should have shut up because the freedom to transact peace is really at the root of all this/

Nicki: It doesn’t matter what you care… What is your single issue thing that you would care about, regardless of what it is. It’s not hard to imagine that there’s some person that could come into power for some reason, it’s an inconvenient or it doesn’t align with… The meat thing, for example, with the goals for global climate emissions or whatever. And so you lose access to using, spending your funds the way that you want to spend them, or you lose access altogether if you are being kind of an… What do you call it? A dissident or a protestor. You’re standing up and speaking your truth and-

Robb: Conspiracy theorist? Because man, those people really need to be hammered down.

Nicki: So anyway, long story short, obviously this is a topic I’m pretty passionate about, but we will put some links. We’ll separate it out as two news topics. So we’ll do one with that Money and State blog post from Erik Voorhees. And we’ll also include a link to one of the Bankless podcasts that kind of sums everything up pretty well.

Robb: Cool. I will be really quick on the original news topic today.

Nicki: Before we derailed.

Robb: Yeah, interesting paper. “Highly processed foods can be considered addictive substances based on established scientific criteria.” There’s been a lot of back and forth over the years. Are foods addictive? Are they not addictive? I will say that the standard dietetic scene has skewed the notion that foods could be addictive as if it were a plague. And it’s because there’s a cross section of folks that are of the mind that if you put any foods in the naughty box, that this is going to foster disordered eating and impure thoughts and whatever. And some of this has been really kind of screwed up because there have been pieces and quasi credible people who will say things like, “Some of these foods are as addictive as cocaine.”

And it’s based off of PET scan imaging where when somebody uses cocaine, they get certain areas of the brain that light up and then similar areas of the brain light up when they eat a Twinkie. And then they’re like, it’s just as addictive. That clearly is ridiculous. But the flip side of that is that dismissing the addictiveness of food, that there’s some threshold, there’s some combination of stuff for any given person that they’re not going to win that battle. They will overeat. And that is a reality. And we’ve just run into the abyss of this, healthy at any size.

I would never, and I would never condone shaming someone because of their choices. But at the same time, it is so unethical and injurious to tell people a lie that, “Well, you just need to moderate your consumption of X, Y, Z.” Some people can, people can’t. That’s some of Gretchen Rubin’s work. And this is just some further research that I think really makes a strong case for the reality that we do need to look at modern hyper palatable foods, particularly the daisy chaining of one type of food after another, as being something that is dangerous and we need to then act accordingly. And that’s up to each individual, funny enough, at least for right now, to make that decision.

The funny thing is that if the World Economic Forum and other folks get their way, I think that the hyper palatable food will not be the things that we are restricted from. It’s going to be meat and dairy products and stuff like that.

Nicki: I wonder how hyper palatable you could make crickets.

Robb: I don’t think very. You’d have to do a lot to dress them up. But anyway, I recommend checking out this paper as well. I’ve got probably another couple of papers over the next couple of weeks looking at the disproportionately powerful effects of a low carb or ketogenic diet on different types of disordered eating. So I should have a series of these that will be dropping in each week.

Nicki: Very cool. All right folks. Get it while it’s hot. As you know, the Healthy Rebellion Radio sponsored by our salty AF electrolyte company, Element. And as I mentioned last week, the Element chocolate medley is now available for all value bundle subscribers and can also be included in new value bundles if you’re not yet a value bundle subscriber. The chocolate medley is a box of 30, which includes 10 of our new flavored chocolate caramel, 10 mint chocolate, and 10 chocolate salt. This is available for a limited time only while supplies last. So be sure to grab yours now, if it’s something that sounds good to you. It’s free… Really, I was going to say frio, and then I was like, but I shouldn’t be speaking Spanish.

Robb: Culturally-

Nicki: It’s frio outside. It’s frio outside here, so-

Robb: Baby, it’s frio outside.

Nicki: So yes, Element in a hot mug is perfect this time of year. As always, Element has no questions asked refunds, so check it out if you are interested. Stay cozy and hydrated this winter with Element in your mug. You can grab your value bundle at Drink Element dot com slash Robb. That’s Drink L-M-N-T dot com slash ROBB. And let me tell you, we did have a big vat of chocolate salt up at the Bison Ranch this past weekend. And all the kids that were there with their families sledding while the adults were doing the bison thing were happily sipping their chocolate salt.

Robb: It was pretty popular.

Nicki: Yeah, it was pretty popular. So, perfect on a cold day. Okay, questions this week. We’ve got three and a half. Somebody-

Robb: Three and three quarters?

Nicki: Somebody snuck in a halvsie. Okay, the first one is from Michael on cold weather and the urge to pee. He says, “Every year when the temperature drops, I feel the need to urinate more often. It especially hits me the hardest when first going outside into the cold, even if I just went. It also happens when I get cold water on my hands. I have been upping my salt content in an attempt to keep the fluids in my body longer. The urge does slowly lessen as winter progresses. My diet is paleo, around a hundred grams of carbs per day. I do have a meal or two a week that isn’t. My job keeps me on my feet and active exercise consists of mountain biking once a week and chasing my five year old daily. I’m 43 years old, six foot two and 220 pounds, definitely a so called dad bod. So what is up with all the peeing? What’s my body doing and is there something I can do rather than just waiting for my body to adjust to the weather? Thanks. I’ve been listening and reading your stuff since the very beginning.”

Robb: So this is a condition called cold induced or thermal induced polyuria. And we get exposed to cold air or a cold environment and the heart begins beating faster and we get increased movement of fluids through our system and it literally is just kind of pushing more fluid through our kidneys. And you tend to get an offshoring of urine. This is one of the bastards of backpacking when it’s cold because you go to button up for the night and you lay down and you’re kind of trying to warm up and then you’re like, I have to pee again. And then you get up and pee and hopefully don’t get eaten by a bear or something while you’re outside of the tent. And then you lay down and you’re like, oh, I need to pee again. And this is above and beyond just kind of a male prostate issues, which that can worsen all this stuff.

And it’s funny, one of the best resources I found is a horrible website, Accuweather dot com. And it’s horrible because it is riddled with, it’s so riddled with banner ads that when you turn it on your… Or you click on it, your computer starts smoking because it’s trying to download 800 different click bait ads. But they actually have a really phenomenal description of what this phenomena is. As to improving it, I will say that it looks like the more metabolically healthy an individual is to some degree you have less of this effect. And so he was mentioning a little bit of dad bod and stuff like that. So if we could tighten up a little bit of fluffiness that may help things a bit.

Nicki: Hundred grams of carbs is not bad. I’m wondering if A, how long have you been eating that way? Paleo with hundred grams of carbs. And then if it’s recent, then maybe he’s transitioning too. He could be.

Robb: Could be. But there, not a ton of activity here. Young kid, maybe not great sleep. There’s just some probably diet and lifestyle stuff that needs to get tuned up a little bit. And whenever I see the, “I eat paleo except for a few times a week,” I’m-

Nicki: I’m always like, what is that? Yeah.

Robb: Oh, I don’t know. And not picking on them, but just those are some things, like tightening up one’s physicality a little bit will improve all this. And not everybody gets this effect. Most people do, but there definitely is… Another thing that you could do is get all Wim Hof on this and get very cold adapted.

Nicki: So that’s probably why as the season goes on, he doesn’t notice it as much because he gets a little bit of an adaptation. Okay.

Robb: Yeah.

Nicki: Cool. Michael, I hope that helps. Report back. Let us know.

Robb: Yes.

Nicki: Okay. Our next question is on zone two exercise from BJ David. “Hi Robb and Nicki, longtime listener. You’ve answered a couple of my questions over the last few years through your podcast. Thanks. Feels like we’re besties. Can’t wait to get your Christmas card this year.”

Robb: Ping us an address. We’ll do it sometime-

Nicki: If only I sent Christmas cards.

Robb: … in February.

Nicki: I am so bad at Christmas cards.

Robb: She’s actually blushing right now.

Nicki: I am. Because it’s like I’ve been… Even though. Because I just feel guilty because I’m so bad at Christmas cards.

Robb: Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer red right now. She’s blushing.

This is hilarious. I love this.

Nicki: Am I that red?

Robb: You are glowing.

Nicki: Okay. Well it’s the guilt that over the past few years. So I’m bad at getting it done before Christmas-

Robb: Like the 20 years we’ve been together?

Nicki: So then I was sending out New Year’s cards and then last year I didn’t send out anything because-

Robb: We suck.

Nicki: … I don’t know it. We suck. Anyway, so David, BJ David, you won’t be getting one. Let’s just be real.

Robb: You have as much chance as anybody else of getting one.

Nicki: All right. He has a little Element blurb here. I’ll read that too. Okay. “So we live very close to a major Amazon hub in greater Cincinnati on the Kentucky side of the river. To my horror, yesterday morning I opened the pantry to get an Element pack and there were none, zero, zilch. My lovely bride had used the last one, apparently. Moving swiftly into action, I jumped on the Amazon app and ordered a box. Honest to goodness, it was at my front door in a couple of hours. I didn’t even have to wait a whole day. That’s some magic right there. Woo-hoo. Side note, I went ahead and clicked the box to get it auto shipped monthly. It really is that good.”

Robb: Yeah. I just want to comment that if you live in Montana, it doesn’t work that way.

Nicki: No.

Robb: When we-

Nicki: You order something in Montana and it says you can expect it in one week and then it’s often 10 or 12 days. Yes. Okay. So his question is about zone two exercise. He says, “My integrative doctor told me to use zone two if I was still interested in losing and maintaining weight, that that is the best fat burning zone. Over recent episodes, I’ve heard you repeatedly mention getting in your zone two workouts and that you’ve been paying more attention to them lately. I’m pretty sure you’ve even mentioned that you really don’t want to get any leaner. So why are you recently so committed to zone two exercise and what are the benefits you’re after?”

Robb: Man, the benefits are fundamentally not dying. It improves cardiac output, vascular endothelial function. I definitely feel better, particularly going into the winter. I have some tendencies towards depression, seasonal affective disorder type stuff that the exercise will help. And it is true that zone two, the goal is fat burning, but that’s not necessarily the thing that’s going to lean you out more. We do still need that calorie deficit and all that type of stuff. Mitochondrial density. What are the things that I’m missing on this? So there’s cardiac benefits, there’s systemic benefits of improving insulin sensitivity and mitochondrial density. There’s cognitive benefits. I have-

Nicki: Mental health benefits.

Robb: Mental health benefits. I have been-

Nicki: Jujitsu benefits.

Robb: Yeah. You recover from other activity much easier when you’ve got a really solid aerobic base. I’ve been using the Morpheus platform and really like that. It gives me an HRV reading each morning. I pop on a little watch and do my HRV and it then gives me some upper and lower bounds to work in. And it seems pretty spot on. When I’m really well rested, my working heart rate for that day can be 8, 10, 15 beats per minute higher than days where I didn’t sleep as well. So I really think there’s something to that. What else am I missing on this thing?

Nicki: So you’re recently committed to this because of all of these benefits that you just described?

Robb: Yeah. I mean, just general health benefits. As we age, we tend to lose both strength and cardiovascular capacity, lung capacity. And the bigger headroom that you’ve got, the more that you’ve got in the bank, so to speak, when you start, the longer run that you’ve got with that, and when you’re trying to maintain that cardiovascular reserve over time, then you lose it less quickly. So those are all the reasons why I do that. Similar to strength training, the same story occurs on the strength training side. Trying to think of anything else. But those are. On the, I’m not trying to get leaner. One of the buggers about this is that if you do an hour of this, 40, 45 minutes, an hour three or four times a week, lo and behold you end up with about an additional 800 to a thousand calorie deficit on your day from doing that. And when I’m already stretched thin with the foods I can eat, it has been challenging.

Nicki: It’s been definitely been challenging for you.

Robb: It’s been hard in that regard because my digestion just isn’t spectacular. It’s pretty good and I’m, goddamn it, I’m just not willing to go a hundred percent carnivore and just cook beef tallow and eat it. And so I still dabble on the periphery with some fruit and some things like-

Nicki: Avocado and-

Robb: Avocados and-

Nicki: … Nuts.

Robb: A little bit of nuts, yeah. And the nuts don’t work great for me. So I mean, the challenge that I’ve had is just I’ve increased my activity level over the last couple of years while having somewhat compromised digestion. And that just makes things tough.

Nicki: Okay. Final question, or this is question… The one and a half final questions. From Jason. “BJJ training and bruising.” He says, “I’ve been training for 12 years and over time I’ve realized my body has built up a great tolerance to bruising, to the point you’d have to beat me with a stick to cause a bruise. However, for about the last five years, I get bruising on my face almost every training session. Not like a black and blue bruise, more like a strawberry color, like a brush burn. And it goes away in 24 to 48 hours. I’m healthy, 51 years old, no meds. Mostly ancestral diet, moderate alcohol consumption of one half to three quarters of a bottle of wine per day.” So let’s answer this and then we’ll answer the bonus question.

Robb: What this sounds like to me is just more of a surface abrasion, and I’m not a dermatologist and we don’t have a picture. So that’s-

Nicki: I’m just wondering how you’re getting that on your face. Unless people are cross collar… How are you?

Robb: Some folks, depending on the gym and their kind of individual predilection, they will do herculean efforts to get out of side control as an example. And it can peel your ears off of your head. If you’re doing a lot of take downs, particularly in the gi.

Nicki: And you’re putting your face on their chest and-

Robb: You can get a lot of ear and face abrasion and activity there. So Jason, I’m guessing this is more of a surface abrasion type story. It doesn’t sound like bruising specifically the way you’re describing it, but again, I’m guessing here. And again, this is where the call in show would be handy.

Nicki: We’d need a video in show to check out these bruises.

Robb: Well, he could at least verbally describe it. Hey, does it seem more like an abrasion? So that’s my thought. And the fact it goes away pretty quickly makes me think that it was probably some sort of a surface type abrasion, not a bruise per se.

Nicki: Have you ever gotten a bruise on your face from jujitsu?

Robb: I mean, I’ve taken an elbow here and there, or had shiners.

Nicki: I just have never, ever. I guess I’m wondering, can you pinpoint when it’s happening in the training? Are people going north, south on you and smashing your face? Do you feel like your face is getting abraded while you’re training? I just don’t.

Robb: Right.

Nicki: I’m having a hard time figuring out how it’s happening.

Robb: Well, let’s move on to the next part of this question.

Nicki: I also don’t know that a half to three quarter bottle of wine is… Every night is really moderate-

Robb: It’s pretty aggressive, but, yeah.

Nicki: That kind of was.

Robb: If you listen to the Huberman Lab podcast on booze, that’ll….pucker you up.

Nicki: Maybe one glass? One glass, Jason, one glass a night. Unless it’s like you’re kicking your heels up for special occasion. All right. Bonus question. About twice per year, my wife will make an awesome homemade apple pie and we have this argument every time. Her philosophy is eat just a little piece every day until it’s gone. Mine is, have a grueling workout, then sit down with a half a gallon of ice cream and do my best to kill it all at once in one sitting so I’m not tempted to eat it again for months. Whose side are you on? PS, I don’t care the answer because I’m still eating the whole damn thing.

Robb: I am definitely of the mind of just get that shit dealt with.

Nicki: Out of the house.

Robb: So I’m more, hard workout, plow it, be done. Because, it’ll… And also-

Nicki: I can too, because I can’t just do a little piece every day till it’s gone. I’m an eat it all if it’s in front of me.

Robb: Well, you’ll do a little piece like eight times a day.

Nicki: Right, right. Which is what I’m saying.

Robb: Literally every time you cruise through the kitchen, you’ll carve off a slice.

Nicki: So I’d rather it be gone too. So I’d rather either, if you’re going to just do a little piece, then give the rest away, or if you’ve got somebody in the house who’s willing to take that bullet and eat the whole damn thing, then get it out of the kitchen.

Robb: So there you are. Eat it all at once, family.

Nicki: Or at least just not have it there anymore.

Robb: Yeah.

Nicki: Okay. I think that was our last question. We are… Yeah. Any other parting thoughts, hubs?

Robb: No, I think we rambled on inanely sufficiently-

Nicki: Enough at the beginning?

Robb: … Towards the end.

Nicki: Yeah.

Robb: Okay. We’ll save everybody. I hope you all have a fabulous weekend. Remember to check out our show sponsor Element. Grab some hot Element for your mug this winter. It’s chilly outside, folks. You need to stay hydrated. You can grab yours at Drink Element dot com slash Robb. That’s Drink L-M-N-T dot com slash R-O-B-B. And that’s a wrap.

Bye, everybody.

Nicki: Talk to y’all next week. Bye.

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News topic du jour:

America Trapped between hyperinflation and great depression:

Podcast Questions:

1. Protein combining/quality [13:30]

Mike says:

Hi guys,

This isn’t your average black beans + corn + rice (or however the vegans tell it) question, or maybe it is??? I was hoping you could clear something up for me. Every week I mix up a huge batch of: 10% milkfat cabot yogurt, 1 can coconut milk, 1-1.5 cup oats, a couple stevia packets, + some combo of various amounts of: raisins, protein powder, collagen protein, chia seeds, coconut flakes, chopped nuts, coco powder, instant coffee, etc; and then batch it out for daily breakfasts. Honestly, its awesome, on the level of some sort of non-frozen ice cream treat, and I would tend to this its at least prettttty healthy.

Question: each bowl ends up being a dense 500-600 calories, and 30-40 total grams of protein …I would usually tend to think that everything outside yogurt-protein and whey power are sort of crap-protein that shouldn’t hardly be counted, but does this crap-protein gain value when eaten in the complete amino matrix found in the animal foods? Essentially, is incomplete added to complete valuable? I feel like I always hear the combining-question in the context of incomplete incomplete.

Side question to squeeze it in; any value to all those things sitting in my yogurt for 5-6-7 days? Fermentationwise.. anti-nutrients go poof!??

2. Brain Fog After Training [19:08]

Steve says:

I am approaching 40 but still giving hell and setting PRs (late bloomer). I like to lift heavy, ruck, do circuit training, wrestle, play flag football. Already taking 1000mg DHA fish oil, 10g creatine, 6g salt/electrolytes, 2g magnesium malate daily. I’m 6’4″ 295lb.

Is there a way to avoid or curb the CNS/brain fatigue that follows heavy training. I work from home and have a home gym. I would love to train at about 3pm when I still feel energized. However it can feel impossible to do work after training for about 2-3 hours after. Caffeine is a no go since it will make me stay up all night. Any thoughts?

3. Conflicting Information – Where to Start? [26:23]

Shaun says:

I am 47 and lived a life of low fat high carb and lots of artificial sweeteners. The thing is I am getting sicker, more unhealthy and my weight is going up. There is so much conflicting information so I don’t know where to start. Every time I try to cut carbs down and dump my artificial sweeteners use my energy tanks and I end up on the cycle again. Now please don’t judge but at its worse I was using 20 plus packets of equal a day and drinking 2 litres of diet a coke today to keep energy up. Please help. Shaun from New Zealand

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Transcript:

Download a copy of the transcript here (PDF)

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 Plus.

Robb: Never fear folks, we’re back and better than ever.

Nicki: I don’t know if they were fearing. I think they were maybe hoping.

Robb: You were fearing. Yeah.

Nicki: Yes, we are back for another episode of The Healthy Rebellion Radio. This is episode 130. Hello, hubs.

Robb: When you want the podcast, but don’t need it…

Nicki: Don’t need it, we’ll be here, but when you do need it, but don’t want it…

Robb: Something like that.

Nicki: We shall have to go.

Robb: We’re getting all Nanny McPhee on it I think.

Nicki: Nanny McPhee. If you guys haven’t watched, I don’t know, is it on Amazon or Netflix or something, but it’s Nanny…

Robb: Those of you afflicted with kids.

Nicki: With children.

Robb: Yeah.

Nicki: Nanny McPhee is a good family flick. I think my dad is the one who found it and recommended it to us and it’s quite enjoyable.

Robb: Which for your dad is doing pretty well because he usually picks horrible movies.

Nicki: Not everybody can have great taste.

Robb: So true.

Nicki: I don’t have good taste either.

Robb: That is true.

Nicki: In a lot of things.

Robb: Clearly in spouses you are failing.

Nicki: Where are we going with this?

Robb: Yeah.

Nicki: Where are we going with this? Let’s see. Sleds are out. The kids have been sledding. We’ve gotten a lot of snow in the last week. It’s quite cold now. We’re down in the single digit temperatures here.

Robb: In Fahrenheit, which is pretty chilly.

Nicki: In Fahrenheit, yeah.

Robb: This coming weekend we’re doing a gig with Roam Free bison ranch and want to go into details of what’s happening with that or?

Nicki: I think we’ll just share after we…

Robb: Post script?

Nicki: Post script.

Robb: Okay.

Nicki: And see how it all goes, but it should be fun. This is the first time this has ever occurred. It’s kind of like a lunar eclipse. No, nevermind, those have occurred a lot of times, but this is the first time this thing has occurred.

Robb: Yes.

Nicki: That we’re going to…

Robb: Yeah.

Nicki: Yeah.

Robb: It’s the first of what is hoped to be quite a few things in the coming years.

Nicki: Yes.

Robb: Coming months and years.

Nicki: Okay. That’s vague. Guys, we are on a roll today.

Robb: It’s so funny, the internal dynamic. I’m a real sharer. I’m like, “Fuck it, let’s just tell people what’s up.” And Nicki’s like, “No, don’t tell them this. Don’t tell them that.”

Nicki: We can share. Do you want to share? Let’s share.

Robb: No. Well, I was going to have you fill in the deets.

Nicki: Okay. Our friends at Roam Free Ranch have built this kick ass wheel of pain.

Robb: If you’re familiar with Conan the Barbarian where a bunch of kids are shackled to this wheel that they just push in a circle and then eventually Conan is the only kid left there. Our friend John had this idea of making this wheel of pain, which would be hooked up to a…

Nicki: He spent lots of time and even had super high end…

Robb: Some engineers.

Nicki: Help with the gears on this, but this wheel of pain will be pushed by human power, and by pushing this wheel, it spins… What do you call it? A rotisserie…

Robb: Apparatus.

Nicki: Apparatus that will have an entire bison on it rotating it and roasting it over a fire.

Robb: An open flame, yeah.

Nicki: Yeah. We’re going to be participating and this is sort of a dry run. They want to do another one next year, but kind of working out the kinks, making sure that the entire thing gets cooked adequately before we serve it to other people and all that good stuff, but it should be a fun time.

Robb: It’s going to be cold as hell.

Nicki: And cold. Super cold.

Robb: We’ll have stories of frostbite I’m sure when we come back.

Nicki: I’m sure. Yes, yes.

Okay, now that we’ve shared, because you wanted to share, what do you have for a news topic?

Robb: The guy that I found, I think his name is Brian, Clear Value Tax.

Nicki: Sounds like a cheesy handle, but this guy is solid. Solid.

Robb: There aren’t that many people that understand the implications of the Federal Reserve and money printing and inflation and potential hyperinflation or deflation. And this guy really nails it. What’s interesting is most of the people that talk about this stuff are pretty doom porn. And I think this guy’s name is Brian with Clear Value Tax. He’s super honest and he understands his stuff at a really high level.

Nicki: He’s super funny.

Robb: He has the driest humor. It is drier than a saltine cracker left in the desert for a century. It’s just hilarious. He’s been doing this thing for a number of years. He’s got 1.5 million followers. Very, very good, very accomplished, but he covers a bunch of different topics. And about a month ago, as of the recording today, what?

Nicki: We’re on November 8th.

Robb: November 8th. He did a piece called America Trapped Between Hyperinflation and Great Depression. And he goes through the mechanisms of the last say 10 years of super low interest rates, of quantitative easing, of pumping all this money into the system. And then some of the stuff that happened during COVID with the breakdown in supply chains, which finally caused, like a lot of people had been predicting, an inflationary process that could really leap out and cause some problems. But for a host of reasons, we hadn’t seen the type of inflation that we’re seeing right now. And now, man, it’s really off to the races. And so now the Federal Reserve is trying to correct that.

And the way he describes it, very reminiscent, because it’s icy right now. On our way coming and going from the gym yesterday, we saw six cars that had spun out off the road. And what happens is you start losing control one direction and so you try to correct another direction.

Nicki: You over correct.

Robb: You over correct and then you’re ass over tea kettle before you know it. And the two things that we are kind of facing right now are potentially a really hyperinflationary event and also this deflationary depression event. And as shitty as both of those would be, it’s arguable that in general the deflationary depression would potentially be the preferable the two. But it’s really asking do you want a hot poker to the left eye or the right eye. It’s going to be kind of gnarly.

And the thing that I think is interesting and a little bit scary about all this stuff is just that all of the tools that have historically been used to try to correct these things, whether upward vector or downward vector, we’re losing the utility of those tools. If the Fed over corrects and we end up overly tamping down the economy, their solution to it is going to be quantitative easing, printing money and releasing money, which immediately gets us back into this inflationary cycle. And then the danger of the inflationary cycle is that we now have so much debt on the balance sheets and the fact that interest rates are higher, The United States is really in this kind of gnarly position of defaulting on loan payments and stuff.

And I don’t really know what to do about any of this other than just being aware that it could happen and doing some resiliency planning, making sure you’ve got some extra money stashed away and some food and have good social connections. But again, I think more than anything, just knowing that these potentialities are out there is really valuable because a ton of people are going to be caught completely unaware with this. “How did this happen?” And so I think the guy is great.

Nicki: I think just understanding too, how these things come about, what does it really mean? He’s very clear. He’s got a very direct, easy to understand. He is talking about very complicated topics or topics that most people haven’t spent a lot of time steeping themselves in. And so he does a really great job making it accessible for everybody. I will say, I did see that somebody did a poll and 63% of Americans are in favor of more stimulus checks to combat inflation. That just shows you kind of our general savviness as a country when it comes to how printing money and stimulus checks are related to inflation.

Robb: And the only thing that has maybe depressed me more than the lack of knowledge around nutrition and health is the understanding of basic economics. That one could make me lose faith in humanity pretty quick. But clearly all of y’all listening, all six of you remaining, are not in that camp. But again, I think this stuff is invaluable.

Nicki: We binge watched maybe six or seven of this guy’s videos over the weekend because Robb was kind of in a…

Robb: Well, a bunch of good topics came up.

Nicki: Yeah.

Robb: Around inflation, deflation.

Nicki: He went through the meeting at the Fed, and Jerome Powell’s, exactly what he said, and kind of translated that for the lay person. And again, very, very accessible and solid material.

Robb: And what does it have to do with The Healthy Rebellion? Well, your mental health matters. And again, I think just understanding that these potentialities are out there, and the thing about all this type of stuff, nobody knows if one of these things is going to happen in 30 seconds or 30 years. It’s amazing that our system has been able to motor along as long as it has, but there are some folks who dismiss all this stuff like, “Oh, it’ll be fine. We’ll be okay.” And we will all ultimately be okay, but I think that we’re going to go through some pretty good rough patches and there’s going to be some significant changes to the way the world works.

And if nothing else, if people better understood what we’re facing here because of the current system, maybe they would understand some of the potential benefits of crypto and decentralized finance and having the government decoupled from the money system, which is a crazy thing to say, but there are people out there that have been advocating for this for quite some time. And when you really look at the way that it’s been mismanaged and the hell that it will unleash on many people, to be able to entertain some other alternative to this, you have to be aware of why this stuff happened the way it did.

Nicki: Nicely put.

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Robb, what’s your verdict on the chocolate caramel salt?

Robb: I really like it.

Nicki: You love it. You love it.

Robb: I know you are a fan of other chocolate iterations.

Nicki: I’m more of the mint chocolate gal, but Robb loves the chocolate caramel. We’ve gotten really good feedback on it so far for the ambassadors and partners that have already received theirs so excited to see what you all think.

Robb: There you have it, Gatto.

Nicki: You ready for questions, hubs?

Robb: Let’s do this.

Nicki: Okay.

Robb: Yeah.

Nicki: Our first one is from Mike on combining proteins and quality of protein. “Hey guys, this isn’t your average black beans plus corn plus rice, or however the vegans tell it, question, or maybe it is. I was hoping you could clear something up for me. Every week I mix up a huge batch of 10% milk fat Cabot yogurt.” I had to look that up, it’s a brand. “One can of coconut milk, one to one and a half cup of oats, a couple of Stevia packets, plus some combo of various amounts of raisins, protein powder, collagen protein, chia seeds, coconut flakes, chopped nuts, cocoa powder, instant coffee, et cetera, then I batch it out for daily breakfasts. Honestly, it’s awesome on the level of some sort of non-frozen ice cream treat, and I would tend to this, I would tend to think,” I may have missed a word here, “Tend to think this is at least pretty healthy.

“Question. Each bowl ends up being a dense 500 to 600 calories and 30 to 40 total grams of protein. I would usually tend to think that everything outside the yogurt protein and whey powder are sort of crap protein that shouldn’t hardly be counted, but does this crap protein gain value when eaten in the complete amino matrix found in the animal foods? Essentially, is incomplete added to complete valuable? I feel like I always hear the food combining question in the context of incomplete mixed with incomplete.

“Side question to squeeze it in, any value to all those things sitting in my yogurt for five, six or seven days, fermentation wise?”

Robb: I’ll answer that last one first. I don’t think that there’s probably much in the way of benefit. There might be a little bit of digestion that occurs in there, maybe some of the sugars from the…

Nicki: Raisins.

Robb: Raisins and stuff like that get converted into lactate possibly, but you would need to have it in a completely airtight container and all that type of jive.

Nicki: And if he’s opening it every day to serve himself a serving?

Robb: Probably not, yeah.

Nicki: Okay.

Robb: It’s probably just making a good soup or something, the longer the flavors mix, the better it tastes. I noodle on this a fair amount, and this would actually be a great one to run by Gabrielle Lyon because she’s done so much solid protein work, but one of the things to keep in mind with this is if we want decent anabolic signaling, and also if we just want that satiety signaling from protein, we need a decent amount, usually about 25 grams seems to be the theoretical minimum threshold to get that anabolic signaling. I assume that the bulk of the protein, when you mention this other stuff, the regular protein powder is probably good to go, the yogurt is probably good to go, the collagen protein, although nice to balance out the cysteine-methionine ratio, is not really adding to that anabolic mix and whatnot. This 30 to 40 gram total protein, depending on the makeup, is just barely hanging on that edge of being an efficacious dose of protein.

Another thing to consider within all this stuff is that similar to fiber blunting the effects of carbohydrate, which can be good, it can slow down the effects of carbohydrate and kind of blunt that insulin response, significant amounts of fiber can similarly blunt some of the glucagon effects of protein, which are important for appetite control and the benefits that we get from protein consumption. Given the ubiquity of the fiber and everything in this setup, that could be a problem. That’s all well and good from a theoretical perspective, but how do we know practically what’s going on? How do you look, how do you feel, how do you perform? Are you getting good energy, good cognition, not rebound hypoglycemia after this? Can you go several hours after eating this without getting significantly hungry again? And that will give you a pretty good indication of how this is working for you.

Nicki: Cool.

Robb: And I don’t know that I 100% answered the question of incomplete proteins mixed with the more complete proteins. It’s going to be a little bit helpful, but it’s the thing, again, would I be more concerned about are you hitting a protein minimum and is there enough fiber and other stuff in this that it’s blunting the effects of the protein? You could potentially end up a scenario within that protein leverage hypothesis where you’re just hungry soon afterwards and we’re not really getting the efficacy out of the protein that we would like.

Nicki: But if you tolerate it, if you’re not having blood sugar swings afterwards, you’re able to go several hours without feeling ravenous, if your body composition is where you want it to be, then it’s probably an okay thing.

Robb: It’s probably good to go. Yeah.

Nicki: It just reminded me from all of the days of your CrossFit nutrition seminars, of telling people protein powders weren’t a valid option because it needed to have a face and a soul and you needed to kill it and bring its essence into your body.

Robb: Indeed.

Nicki: Or something like that.

Robb: It’s a good thing we did all that when we did.

Nicki: You might’ve gotten canceled for that today.

Robb: I would’ve surely been canceled had we done that in this day and age.

Nicki: Yes. Okay.

All right, our next question is from Steve on brain fog after training. Steve says, “I am approaching 40 but still giving hell and setting PRs. I’m a late bloomer. I like to lift heavy ruck, do circuit training, wrestle, play flag football. I’m already taking 1,000 milligrams of DHA fish oil, 10 grams of creatine, six grams of salt and electrolytes, two grams of magnesium malate daily. I’m 6’4″ and 295 pounds. Is there a way to avoid or curb the CNS/brain fatigue that follows heavy training? I work from home and I have a home gym. I would love to train at about 3:00 PM when I still feel energized. However, it can feel impossible to do work after training for about two to three hours afterwards. Caffeine is a no-go since it will make me stay up all night. Any thoughts?”

Robb: Couple of things. Steve doesn’t mention what his chow is, so it’s hard to know what’s going on there, but Steve’s a big dude, 6’4″, basically 300 pounds, and that six grams of sodium is right at the bottom edge of what we recommend in general for normal humans, and Steve’s an ice giant. Let’s assume he’s eating a fairly higher carb diet, but he’s insulin sensitive and everything, he still might be under consuming sodium and electrolytes by like 50%. That is one of these just low hanging fruit things. I would try something like LMNT or I would do a home brew or pickle juice before, during, and after the workout. And maybe try bumping that up first to about nine grams of sodium per day. I would chase that for a bit to see what’s going on there.

If that doesn’t address things, I thought about a bunch of different things. We could do some blood glucose monitoring and see if you’re getting into a hypoglycemic event after training. And then we have to figure out, well, why is that happening? Do you need more carbs? Do you need fewer carbs? Are you not actually as carbs sensitive as what you might want to be? The other thought also is, yesterday we were down at the MAC training and there’s this cool young guy who we found out is a type one diabetic, and super chatty, really engaging.

Nicki: High school kid.

Robb: High school kid. And when he came in he was pretty doughy and I don’t think had really done much activity before and is a type one diabetic, which can be difficult to manage. And he’s really been getting after it.

Nicki: He’s hitting the weights consistently and he’s looking jacked.

Robb: Looking really good.

Nicki: He looks great.

Robb: But there’s a couple of crusty old power lifters down there that have kind of taken him under their wing.

Nicki: They razz each other all the time.

Robb: They razz each other all the time. And the one guy is probably early 60s, but he’s a big fucking dude, big guy, has a really accomplished background in strength athletics and everything. And he was like, “Listen,” he said this to the young guy, he’s like, “Listen, if you really want to get big and you really want to get strong, you need to do half of what you’re doing.” He’s like, “You’re doing step aerobics down here, not lifting weights.” This kid, they’ll do set after set after set of stuff.

And I remember when I was training, I was following, at the time, the body building magazine workouts were huge volume workouts and everything. And I made some progress, but I really stalled out pretty quickly. And then it was when I started training with these power lifting coaches, they put together a power cycle where you knew what your max was and they would project forward. You knew on the Thursday three weeks from now what you were going to hit on your squat, your deadlift, your bench, your accessories. It was all based off of percentages. And I know within Westside Barbell world and everything, people look askant at that stuff, but I got pretty fucking strong doing that. I was just a hair off of elite level as a teenager doing that. And I really only competed in power lifting for two years. And this is very much out of the playbook of what Ed Coan did.

And within that context, not every day can be a barn burner. Some days you just get in and when you’re starting the beginning of the power cycle, your squat, deadlift, and bench, it may be three sets of five at 65% and it feels like absolutely nothing. And it has to feel like nothing because you can’t go back to the well every day, all the time.

And this is one of the problems with CrossFit and a lot of the high intensity training, which some of the high intensity training has kind of bled over into strength training. Again, I said it, you can’t go to the well every single day. You need some sort of a plan. Even within the Westside Barbell context where they do different iterations of max effort training each week or every two weeks, there’s a lot of nuance in there. They do a speed day, a hypertrophy day sometimes, and then also kind of a max effort day. And those max effort lifts are rotating all the time. And they’re not doing the ampules of ammonia.

Nicki: Smelling salts.

Robb: Snorting them and headbutting the bar. You can only do that once a year, maybe twice a year. You just can’t do all that type of stuff every day that you train. Steve, you sound like a big strong dude, and I don’t want to get over the tips of my skis with this, but when you’re mentioning this just super blown out CNS fatigue at the end of the training, the electrolytes could be a thing, the fueling could be a thing, but it could also be the volume and intensity, could absolutely be a deal with this.

And I would look into some of Ed Coan’s stuff, some a Pavel Tsatsouline’s material. You might need to do some adjusting on the volume and intensity of your training because you shouldn’t be knackered after each session. With jujitsu, I used to be more that way, but I really had to learn to dial my volume and intensity down. And this is where some days people just kind of maul me, but I play a more defensive game and I don’t try to match speed for speed, strength for strength. And I started doing some basic cardio training on the backside of that. And I’m not nearly as blown out. And you’ve been doing more cardio training also and feeling better at jujitsu and not so knackered. Could be also another piece of this, is you might in the background need a little bit of zone two cardio to improve the recovery.

And again, going back to the Westside Barbell folks, those guys will drag sleds, walk on a treadmill, they’re not doing aerobic aerobics, but they’re getting into that zone two cardio space because that increased mitochondrial density improvement in your cardiovascular system can, will, does improve your recovery with the strength athletics also.

Nicki: Cool, cool, cool.

Okay, our last question this week is from Shawn on conflicting information, wondering where to start. Shawn says, “I am 47 and have lived a life of low fat, high carb and lots of artificial sweeteners. The thing is, is I am getting sicker, more unhealthy and my weight is going up. There is so much conflicting information that I don’t know where to start. Every time I try to cut carbs down and dump my artificial sweetener use, my energy tanks and I end up on the cycle again. Now, please don’t judge, but at its worst, I was using 20 plus packets of Equal a day and drinking two liters of a diet of Diet Coke to keep my energy up. Please help, Shawn from New Zealand.”

Robb: Shawn of the dead.

Nicki: Yeah.

Robb: What are your…

Nicki: Tricky. Tricky, tricky, tricky.

Well, he’s emailing us, so yes, there’s a lot of conflicting information, but I’d like to think that you might have found a good resource. And we’ve talked about nutrition and training for years now, so there’s lots of information in the archives and whatnot. Making any type of habit change is just challenging, but the number one thing that seems to help folks is really getting that protein on track first. You’ve got the carbs, you’ve got the artificial sweeteners, you’ve got all these things that you’ve habituated to and you’ve got years of behavior, reaching for them.

Robb: Tied to it.

Nicki: Tied to it, but we’ve got to break that somehow. And the number one place to start, at least in my mind, and what we’ve seen so many people have so much success with, is getting your protein on point first.

Robb: Because we’ve had folks that have, we’ve mentioned this in other podcasts, they’ve followed our work. They’re like, “Oh, we bought The Paleo Solution in 2010, had some great improvements, but still been carrying around the extra five or 10 pounds or what have you.” Then we would do these resets in The Healthy Rebellion, and when we broke out the food scales for a couple of days, the folks were like, “Oh shit, I’m under eating protein by 50%.”

Nicki: Even people who are consciously eating protein and think that they’re getting enough protein.

Robb: Yeah, they just weren’t. They just weren’t. And we’ve never, we’ve never, ever, ever had somebody that was struggling with body composition issues that was eating adequate protein. I’m sure there is a person out there that’s eating adequate protein and then just overeating in general, it absolutely can happen, but it is so disproportionately flipped I think the other direction that hitting that adequate protein, dense protein sources, and then thinking about your minimally processed food beyond that.

And Shawn, this is the place to start. A gram of protein per pound of body weight or a gram protein per pound of ideal body weight, three meals a day, three meals and a snack, something like that. And I would just start with that. And then if you want to do a little bit of carb capping, maybe you cap carbs at 100 grams a day. You don’t have to go Joe Keto on day one.

And then also the artificial sweeteners, I’m just not so freaked out by them like so many other people are in the health space. And particularly from a how many things are you going to change at once scenario. Adding the extra protein is probably going to be a big lift for you. I would be surprised if it’s not a significant change. And then if we just shift you to maybe some carb capping of around 100 grams a day and trying to make it on the low glycemic load side.

Nicki: Minimally processed as possible. Yeah.

Robb: Yeah, all that stuff. That’s probably going to be a big change in and of itself. And so then within that context, let’s not worry too much about the artificial sweetener use. Some people would say, “Well, he could shift to Stevia or something.” It’s like, “Sure, fine, whatever.” From a toxicological perspective and everything else, it’s possible that these sweeteners are causing some appetite dysregulation such that Shawn is tending to peel out and then maybe make poor choices, but this is where clean out the house, get the pantry squared away, make sure you’re on point with protein, and then maybe a month down the road we start trying to titrate down the artificial sweeteners or something like that.

But even then, if you’re rocking it and you’re feeling good and you’re losing weight and you’re getting the body composition you want, maybe you change that, maybe you don’t. And again, to the point about the conflicting information, there are folks that just freak out about artificial sweeteners. Early in my career, I was more of a stickler about this because we had a couple of clients that the artificial sweeteners were definitely a trigger for these folks and we had to sneak up on and we had to go really protein centric model, but just getting this person to drink water was a big lift eventually.

Nicki: Yeah.

Robb: This was Jorge in my first book, but it worked over time. It worked and the guy went from 400 pounds and now he’s about a buck 90 and has maintained this over the long haul. It can work. I think that those are the strategies, to pull in adequate protein, maybe some carb capping, around 100 grams a day, minimally processed foods ideally. And let’s just do that as a beginning and then we can maybe dip our toes into thinking about the artificial sweeteners.

But again, what you’re describing here is that you’re doing this wholesale change, a ton of different things, and then the wheels fall off the wagon and then we just end up with total recidivism on it. Let’s find a middle ground on that that we know generally works. Good protein, minimally processed food, little bit of carb capping to help with the appetite control. Maybe someday you go keto, maybe someday you don’t. Maybe someday you totally peel out the artificial sweeteners. And again, maybe you don’t, but let’s find somewhere where we get a month of adherence and then we can start asking questions about changing. And Shawn, if you do this, as always, please report back.

Nicki: Let us know. Yeah.

Robb: And then maybe we can provide the next step about where we go with this.

Nicki: And the only other thing I would maybe add is that if you do end up, because it’s challenging, right? You’re making a lot of changes. And even if you just do the protein change, there’s going to be circumstances and events where there’s cake or there’s this or there’s that. If you do end up having a bigger whack of carbs, go for a walk afterwards. That post meal walk can just help with blood sugar regulation. It can help with energy. It can help with just moving your body and feeling good in your body, getting outside. There’s tons of reasons why going for a walk, especially after a meal, is really beneficial. That’s a little tool to have in your back pocket.

We always like to say, “Don’t throw in the towel. You’re one meal away from getting back on track.” If life throws a curve ball or you’re in a situation where you end up eating something that wasn’t on plan and wasn’t part of the changes that you’re trying to make, don’t just scrap it all. Just know, “Okay, I’m one meal away and I’m going to go on a walk.” And that can kind of help keep people going forward.

Robb: Yep.

Nicki: Cool. Yes, Shawn, please report back and let us know how you are doing. And I think that’s a wrap for this week’s show. Please check out our show sponsor LMNT. Remember, if you want to try the chocolate caramel, which is this winter’s limited time flavor, you can grab that in the Chocolate Medley box. You get 10 of the chocolate caramel, 10 of the mint chocolate salt, and 10 of the regular chocolate salt. There’s also tons of great recipes for peppermint mochas and caramel macchiatos and all kinds of fun recipes using those winter flavors. All of them are meant to be enjoyed hot. Winter is coming, it’s the perfect time. What else?

Robb: The night is long and full of chairs.

Nicki: The night is long and full of chairs. Yes. You can grab all those at drinklmnt.com/robb. That’s drinklmnt.com/robb. Folks, have a fabulous weekend and we’ll catch you next week.

Robb: Bye everybody.

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News topic du jour:

https://drturner.substack.com/p/losing-my-vaccine-religion-a-doctors

Podcast Questions:

1. Joint Pain [14:15]

Justin says:

Hi Robb, Nicki,

I must start with the obligatory — first time caller, long time fanatic!

I have a varied medical history, but the main highlights being: 6ft, 360lbs (2016) down to 185lbs (2018). Keto and fasting made this possible — meandered back to 215 with the help of higher calories and some light weight training. I also don’t have a thyroid (papillary carcinoma). My maintenance calories are really low for some reason (1700 cal) but I eat my protein first (160-180g) and tend to feel better if I fill the remaining calories with fat rather than carbs.

I know I’m healthier without the weight (cholesterol, trigs, a1c all on the lower end of normal now), but I don’t feel better. Mild lethargy and joint pain are what plague me. The lethargy is a struggle but isn’t debilitating… the joint pain is just frustrating. Knees, ankles, hips, shoulders, and elbows nag enough to make even bodyweight workouts a challenge. The pain in my wrists and hands can be excruciating (I’m a couple years post-carpal tunnel release as well). No redness or swelling. I’ve been cleared for gout as well as RA (RNP 1.6, SSB/LA IGG 1.4, were positive, but nothing warranting more than a pat on the back from a rheumatologist).

I’m turning to you Robb because I’ve heard you mention hand pain in the podcast, but I’m not familiar with your backstory there. The hardest part about all of this is I unintentionally removed red meat from my diet (temporary bro diet — lots of chicken) and my hand/wrist pain *almost* vanished. Spoiled myself with a homemade double cheeseburger the other night and woke up with throbbing hands/wrists. As a devout keto-er and meat-asaurus, I was all in on Sacred Cow and even considered carnivore as my starting point for an elimination diet to test various sensitivities. My brain just doesn’t know how to process this recent information. Can you help me make sense of all this?

Thank you both for all you do!

Justin

2. Achilles Tendon Rehab options & diet [24:46]

Cory says:

Hi Rob and Nicki,

Love the show and the well balanced opinions the two of you provide. I recently tore my Achilles’ tendon shooting some hoops. The ultrasound revealed a grade two tear. I am fairly active playing hockey two to three times a week and weightlifting a couple times a week as well. I’m a 45 year old high school Physical Education teacher, so on my feet most of the day, as well as demonstrating sport specific skills in class

My questions for you are:

1. Which rehab option do you think is best for my case (surgical or non-surgical)?
2. What sort of dietary interventions could I be making to optimize my recovery?
3. What can people do to prevent Achilles tendon injuries from occurring/reoccurring?

I live in Ontario, Canada so although the healthcare is “free” it does move at a slower pace for access to orthopaedic surgeons and sports medicine doctors.

Hope you can shed some light on this for me,

Kind regards,

Cory

3. PCOS in 14 year-old girl [33:40]

Krista says

Hi Guys-

LOVE all that you do! 15 years ago my functional medicine doctor put The Paleo Solution book in my hands to help with my gut issues and I’ve never turned back!

My 14 year-old niece just got diagnosed with PCOS. To back up, she was a very sick newborn, minutes away from an ECMO machine and miraculously made a full recovery. I believe having all those drugs in the beginning of her life, while saving her life, has really jacked up her microbiome and created an insatiable appetite!!!!! starting around 2 years-old. She sneaks food, eats until stuffed (she’s thrown up in the past from too much food) and hence she has steadily put on weight and now she is at 195lbs. She’s the most incredible kid and my heart is breaking for her!!

Her parents have kept her active through sports and helped her keep a pretty clean diet, but nothing super steady and as she gets older they lose more of how and what she eats. Her most recent doctor’s appointment reviled the PCOS and there was talk of birth control pills and metformin. The next stop is an endocrinologist and a natural path.

Rob & Nikki, what would you do if this were your kid???

THANK YOU SO MUCH:):)

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Transcript:

Download a copy of the transcript here (PDF)

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. 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 DisneyPlus.

Robb: Welcome back, everybody. Welcome back.

Nicki: We’re live, another episode of the Healthy Rebellion Radio. This is episode 129. Good morning, hubs.

Robb: Good morning. It’s a frosty day in the neighborhood.

Nicki: It is. It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood because it is like a winter wonderland.

Robb: Won’t you be? Won’t you be my, neighbor?

Nicki: I shall. Are we dating ourself? Everybody knows that, right?

Robb: I don’t know.

Nicki: Okay. Well, the youngsters might not, but everybody in our generation knows Mr. Roger’s neighborhood, I believe. Anyway, I don’t know where we’re going with this. It’s beautiful outside. We’ve gotten a lot of snow in the last, what, 36 hours?

Robb: Yeah, at least.

Nicki: A lot of snow. Yeah. Yeah. So the kids are ecstatic. Zoe is desperately wanting a harness so that she can hook Grizz up to a sled and have him pull, probably Sagan, but she wants to ramp it up so that he can maybe pull her, but we’ll see.

Robb: And yeah, it is just hilarious. Zoe is fascinating in that since she was probably 18 months old, she’s tried to harness up chickens and stuffed animals, and there’s just been this-

Nicki: There’s this animal affinity.

Robb: Yeah, yeah.

Nicki: Animal training thing that’s been lurking. So we’re trying to foster that.

Robb: Yeah. That’d be getting too weird.

Nicki: Well, no, lots of people… It’s a thing, harnessing dogs and people will have their dog pull them on cross-country skis and sleds and all kinds of things. Even in the summer, people will harness their dogs and have them pull them on bikes and skates and stuff. So it’s a thing. We just don’t have the proper harness for that. So she’s trying to do it with the collar, but I’m like, “No, this is going to hurt him.” So anyway, the harness is coming. Trying to think of any other news. It is finally November. I don’t know why I said finally, but it is November and 2022 is rapidly coming to a close.

Robb: Soon it’ll be the new year.

Nicki: Lots of ominous stuff being reported in the markets. But hey, we are in the me that is on this adventure. Is that the quote?

Robb: That is the quote.

Nicki: Robb’s favorite movie, I think back when we were doing trivia for the Healthy Rebellion Radio podcast, we used to do these trivia episodes, and I think we asked that question. What is your all time favorite movie?

Robb: Grosse Pointe Blank.

Nicki: Yeah, so I’m on the me that’s on this adventure. All right, hubs, news topic.

Robb: News topic is a good friend sent me this one. And the title is Losing My (Vaccine) Religion, A Doctor’s Journey from Hope to Despair. It’s from a guy, Dr. Turner. I was not familiar with him. And for some context, this guy started off a hundred percent kind of team vax, COVID’s going to kill you. And clearly COVID does and did kill a lot of people. He starts the story off with one of his friends who was 70 some odd years old, being taken early from COVID. But then it tracks his kind of psychological transformation over time as different bits of the story, different bits of the narrative didn’t really add up. I think there are good faith actors like this Dr. Turner who are showing some transparency around the transformation that they had. And he became a fairly vocal critic of forced vaccinations, particularly in the reality that these vaccines are leaky and they don’t prevent transmission and making your own cost-benefit analysis and whatnot. But now we have these bubbling up little bits of stories of, “Gee, whiz, guys, maybe we should have some sort of a COVID amnesty.”

Nicki: Pandemic amnesty.

Robb: Pandemic amnesty. “It was kind like a drunken night and gee, whiz, we didn’t really mean it all.”

Nicki: “Let’s just kiss and make up.”

Robb: Yeah. And this is what fucking narcissists do, is they completely ignore the damage and the hell and the chaos that they unleash on the people around them and just want it all to go away, particularly if you finally hem them in, finally show that they were a piece of shit and they didn’t know what they were talking about and they were being abusive. Then it’s like, “Oh, well, we can just kiss and make up. And I mean, you should forgive me. I mean, forgiveness is noble and all that type of stuff.” And this is different. This Dr. Turner piece is different, But I think that it’s important to acknowledge folks like this gentleman who went through a pretty remarkable transformation just based off of the facts and the reality that he saw in front of him as a clinician. And then we have other people that are now, as all the chickens are coming into roost…

God, there’s this article that I’m still carving my way through, that’s talking about there’s some sort of publicly traded funeral home. It’s like an international thing, and it’s a conglomerate of funeral homes. And historically, it’s never been a real growth industry, but it’s been very consistent because people die in a remarkably consistent pattern. And this is part of that article, which maybe I’ll bring that one up next week and dig into it a little bit more but at best, there’s a one, one and a half percent variation from one year to the next. A little bit up, a little bit down, but very consistent. People are born, people die. Investing in this thing, it’s just going to be a good little work horse deal. Well, this organization is up 15 to 18% off of what its normal baseline is.

And you can only hide this stuff so many goddamn ways, but you literally can’t hide all the bodies. And one of the key points that they point out in this stuff is this 15% uptick is not attributable to the COVID deaths. This is aside from the COVID deaths is the way that this article plays out. And again, I have not fully vetted this out, fully looked at it, but yeah, just give this Dr. Turner piece a look, and maybe we will discuss these amnesty topics and things like that a little bit more as we move forward.

Nicki: The amnesty topic, I haven’t seen many people from the side of the aisle who were just wanting to ask questions and have a conversation, I haven’t seen many of those people embracing the amnesty.

Robb: Yeah, me neither. And maybe it’s because after you’ve spent two years being called a racist, a grandma killer, and everything else, for just wanting to ask questions-

Nicki: And not being able to go to funerals and not being able to hug your loved ones as they lay dying or be with elderly relatives who-

Robb: Births.

Nicki: Births, losing jobs, closing businesses. Family businesses that have been generationally operational, closed. Forgive and forget is a-

Robb: It’s a laudable thing but when you’ve been held literally at gunpoint and abused for the better part of three years, and I don’t want-

Nicki: Being told that you’re-

Robb: That you’re a horrible person.

Nicki: I mean, Chris Cuomo had a quote that was like, “The biggest threat to America are your fellow Americans,” meaning-

Robb: In what regard?

Nicki: Meaning the ones who chose not to get vaccinated. So you had all of this divisive messaging coming from all sorts of media angles and politicians and anybody with a blue check-

Robb: I didn’t.

Nicki: Not you, a lot of them.

Robb: And I guess we’re short-ish on time, so I don’t want to belabor this thing too much, but I think it is worth discussing. Nicki and I talk about this stuff a fair amount, just kind of where we’re going and Trudeau in Canada just rolled out this bill that’s truth-

Nicki: There’s some that’s proposed, Bill number 11, which is basically any opinions that are counter to the government stated position are, I don’t know if they’re punishable or whatever it is, but his little speech was just, “Gosh, we’ve got to deal with these extremists like the ones that were protesting this winter.” And anything that’s inconvenient for the government is automatically in this misinformation, disinformation, bad, extreme, right wing, violent. Like slap any adjective you want on there, and that’s what you get.

Robb: And again, just for context, this ranges from the vaccine, the virus, to all kinds of social justice topics like having an opinion on maybe the nuclear family is a good thing, net-net. But if the state decides, “No, that’s not good,” which when the state goes down this kind of Marxist revolutionary thing, the nuclear family is always the enemy, always the enemy. And we’re in a position now where if the state says, “No, no, no,” and people think this is hyperbolic bullshit, but it’s not. And then even just as mundane as, “I want to feed myself and my family the way that I feel is best for our health,” and, “Well, the stuff you’re eating is causing climate change and climate change is racist,” and on and on and on.

Nicki: Greta Thunberg doesn’t think you should eat meat, babe.

Robb: Well, there you have it. And so we’re in a position right now where we’re kind of teetering on this precipice that I’m not honestly super optimistic that we’re going to turn the corner on. It’s possible we might. We might stuff this genie back in the bottle. We live in an area here in northern Montana that wildfire is a hell of a problem. And what you need is defensible space around the property you don’t want to burn. And if we manage to turn this shit around, if we’re able to get back to a spot where discussing science, which is what science really is, it’s inquiry and discussion and debate, and it’s not rarely all that much that is settled. And if you think it is settled, you just let it go a couple years and you discover there’s some wrinkle or nuance to it that you didn’t consider.

But if we’re able to stem the bleeding that’s been happening around all this stuff, we’re going to need a defensible space. And part of that defensible space is holding people accountable for being absolute shitheads over the last three years. And fortunately, the internet does have a long memory, and I’m not sure exactly what that looks like at this point, but there definitely needs to be some accountability around that stuff in addition to just fostering these opportunities for discussion and seeing that people can transform. And this is where I really think that this Dr. Turner piece is super valuable. Okay.

Nicki: Okay. Healthy Rebellion Radio is sponsored by our salty AF electrolyte company, LMNT. Winter is coming. In fact, it’s already here if you live in northwest Montana. But that doesn’t mean that your electrolyte needs decrease. And the good news is that LMNT doesn’t have to be consumed cold. So if you’re chilly or just want something warm to drink, try drinking LMNT in hot water. Chocolate Salt in hot water is amazing. Lemon Habanero in hot water is my go-to. Absolutely amazing. Even Orange Salt or Raspberry Salt in hot water, they work. It’s the perfect way to hydrate, get in your electrolytes, and stay cozy when it’s chilly outside. So you can grab yours at drinkLMNT.com/robb. That’s drink, L-M-N-T.com/R-O-B-B. And I know I put out a teaser a couple weeks ago, and I’ll put another one coming soon. There will be another cozy flavor for you to try.

Robb: There you go.

Nicki: There you go. All right. We’ve got three questions today. The first one is from Justin on joint pain. “Hi Robb and Nicki, I must start with the obligatory first time caller, long time fanatic. I have a varied medical history, but the main highlights being I’m six foot tall, I was 360 pounds in 2016, down to 185 pounds in 2018. Keto and fasting made this possible. I meandered back to 215 with the help of higher calories and some light weight training. I also don’t have a thyroid due to papillary carcinoma. My maintenance calories are really low for some reason, 1700 calories. But I eat my protein first, between 160 and 180 grams, and tend to feel better if I fill the remaining calories with fat rather than carbs. I know I’m healthier without the weight. My cholesterol, triglycerides, A1C are all on the lower end of normal now, but I don’t feel better.””Mild lethargy and joint pain are what plague me. The lethargy is a struggle but isn’t debilitating. The joint pain is just frustrating. Knees, ankles, hips, shoulders and elbows nag enough to make even body weight workouts a challenge. The pain in my wrists and hands can be excruciating. I’m a couple years post carpal tunnel release as well. No redness or swelling. I’ve been cleared for gout as well as rheumatoid arthritis. And then he has some test things that were positive, but nothing warranting more than a pat on the back from the rheumatologist. Turning to you, Robb, because I’ve heard you mention hand pain in the podcast, but I’m not familiar with your backstory there.””The hardest part about all of this is that I unintentionally removed red meat from my diet, temporary bro diet with lots of chicken and my hand and wrist pain almost vanished. Spoiled myself with a homemade double cheeseburger the other night and woke up with throbbing hands and wrists. As a devout Ketoer and meatasaurus, I was all in on sacred cow and even considered carnivore as my starting point for an elimination diet to test various sensitivities. Now my brain just doesn’t know how to process this recent information. Can you help me make sense of all of this? Justin.”

Robb: Man, that’s a lot to unpack. First, I think no matter how attached we are to paleo or Keto or carnivore or whatever, the clinical outcome is the most important thing. And so if you have a food that you add into the mix that gives you problems, I would absolutely pay attention to that. On the rheumatoid arthritis screening, the fact that you’ve got some activity there… The bugger with some of the screening, so like… Oh gosh, what is it? The Mast Cell Activation Syndrome, for ages and ages, people would get blood work and they would be sick. It’d be kind of like fibromyalgia, which for ages, the medical community said was a non thing and now it’s acknowledged as being a thing, which is again, science fucking evolves. If the science was settled 30 years ago, then we wouldn’t have a concept of fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, some of that being Lyme disease related and whatnot, and other issues there, metabolic and whatnot.

But diagnoses have to fit into these certain buckets. And if we’re talking about an orthopedic issue like a broken bone, it’s kind of cut or dry. If we’re talking about pregnancy, it’s binary. It’s a yes or no. And then in so many of these immune function scenarios, there’s kind of a spectrum. And in going back to the Mast Cell Activation Syndrome, for ages, people knew they felt like shit, they knew that they had all these problems going on, and they’d different types of elimination diets and, “Oh, maybe this would help,” and that would hurt and they would get blood work. And the allergy side of the immune response screening was kind of elevated, but not enough to really tick the box of, “This is an allergic reaction.” Some of their autoimmune stuff was elevated but not enough to tick the box there. And so what was missed is that there was just this general broad uptick in immune response across the board, not enough to kind of like, “Oh, you have rheumatoid arthritis,” “Oh, you have multiple sclerosis,” or on and on.

But there was this general enhanced immune response which downstream was likely leading into systemic inflammation and significant problems, at least from a clinical perspective of just living. And now we have some other categories that we can stick on people like Mast Cell Activation Syndrome, and we can think about histamines and different stuff like that. Okay. So the main thing that you have to look at is what is it that’s causing this stuff? And for me, what was a bugger is dairy ended up being a pretty big factor for me and dairy protein specifically.

And the difficulty there, the shitty thing about that is that if I eat a tub of yogurt, which I in the not too distant past used to routinely do, it felt wonderful on my gut. I digested it well, my blood sugar was good, I enjoyed it. But for the better part of three years, I had this non-trivial amount of hand pain and joint pain that I mainly attributed to jujitsu. I thought, “Ah,” I’d get a little tweak here, get a little tweak there. I don’t do a real grip intensive jujitsu game, but still it’s a grappling sport. And maybe my hands are getting kind of dinged up. For my birthday, I guess a year ago. Yeah, this last-

Nicki: January.

Robb: January.

Nicki: January of ’22, Robb’s favorite cake is a cheesecake. And it’s easy to do those Keto. So I made a Keto cheesecake and you felt terrible afterwards. Your wrist pain noticeably ticked up.

Robb: Well, my left pinky, which has been a problem for a long time, and you can noticeably see that joint is bigger, was very painful. But then my right hand, which had never really hurt up until that point, the pinky, the metacarpals up into my wrist and then all the way across up to my middle finger into the metacarpals, it was on fire and screened it for a gout. And it wasn’t gout. My blood work got fucked up trying to see if it was rheumatoid arthritis. The lab just didn’t do it. And I had gotten the blood work done, went on some prednisone, and an elimination diet. Thankfully, was able to knock that stuff down to a point because I mean, I couldn’t sleep at night. I actually wasn’t so hot.

Nicki: Really, really uncomfortable.

Robb: It was pretty terrible. I managed to knock all that stuff down. I’ve had kind of a mild flare of late and I actually added some fish oil into the mix and that seems to be helping a little bit. But dairy is a big deal.

Nicki: Dairy kind of stuck out with me and I’m not sure… So he’s saying that he’s had this pain eating Keto, and so I don’t know how much dairy is included in his Keto diet. And then I’m wondering, when you did your temporary bro diet with all the chicken, was there any dairy? He’s attributing it to the double cheeseburger, he’s attributing it to the meat that he ate rather than the chicken, but it could have been the cheese on the meat.

Robb: Right. I got it. So interestingly, I don’t seem to respond particularly negatively to whole cream or butter. I don’t do a ton of it because it does tend to raise my lipoproteins. So I’m in this thing of, “Is my gut going to kill me? Is my autoimmune disease going to kill me? Or am I going to have a heart attack from just being able to eat enough calories and figure out a way to do it?” And when you’re doing Keto, I got to say, dairy products like cream and fatty cheese-

Nicki: Cheese is a big one.

Robb: And everything are really handy. But I guess my big thing here is I wouldn’t immediately throw red meat under the bus. Maybe it is. And even in that scenario, I’ve encountered people that like a steak doesn’t cause problems. Ground beef does. The ground beef, sometimes what they need to do is get a steak, grind it if they want a hamburger, and then fix it and eat it because to some degree, the histamine production, the bacterial activity that occurs in the ground beef, people who are really, really reactive to different scenarios like this Mass Cell Activation scenario and histamine and whatnot, they can’t do ground beef or they have to do ground beef under a really specific circumstance. But out of this whole story, I would definitely look at dairy as the most likely problem here.

Nicki: Cut it and just eliminate that.

Robb: Absolutely eliminate that.

Nicki: In every form to start.

Robb: Yeah. And I can do a little bit of goat dairy and it doesn’t give me seemingly any problems, but I don’t pressure test that a whole lot. But that’s kind of the place that I would look first and then I would look at the types of beef that you’re doing and maybe see if steaks versus hamburger… The deal with the steak is just that it doesn’t get the same marginal amount of bacterial activity, which can feed into histamine production which can be a problem in this thing. I wouldn’t be afraid of maybe dropping in a tablespoon of good quality fish oil in that whole story. Again, because my hands started kind of flaring up again, I did some reading, “Does this help? Does that help?” There were some great studies that suggested that for RA specifically that fish oil was beneficial. And I’ve been back on using it consistently and my wrist is definitely a lot better.

Nicki: Justin, let us know.

Robb: Yeah.

Nicki: Drop the dairy and let us know if you notice a difference. Okay, our next question is from Corey on Achilles tendon rehab options and diet. “Hi, Robb and Nicki, love the show and the well-balanced opinions the two of you provide. I recently tore my Achilles tendon shooting some hoops. The ultrasound revealed a Grade 2 tear. I’m fairly active, playing hockey two to three times a week and weightlifting a couple times a week as well. I’m a 45 year old high school physical education teacher, so on my feet most of the day, as well as demonstrating sports specific skills in class. My questions for you are, one, which rehab option do you think is best for my case, surgical or non-surgical? Two, what sort of dietary interventions could I be making to optimize my recovery? And three, what can people do to prevent Achilles tendon injuries from occurring or reoccurring? I live in Ontario, Canada, so although the healthcare is free, it does move at a slower pace for access to orthopedic surgeons and sports medicine doctors. Hope you can shed some light on this for me. Kind regards, Corey.”

Robb: So Corey, on your first question about surgical versus non-surgical, totally above my pay grade. I don’t know what the right answer is there. What I would recommend, if I were in your shoes, I would try to get the best sense of, “Okay, it’s a Grade 2 tear.” I’m assuming that there was an MRI, and you’ve got a sense of where in the tendon belly that this tear occurred. I would do a deep dive into what surgical repair success looks like versus rehab success with as close a matching as you can get to the type of injury that you have. And then go from that. And this is the funny thing, again, not to just make the whole show all politics and angst towards COVID, but goddammit, there was a day not that long ago, when you went to a doctor and-

Nicki: Then you got a second opinion.

Robb: And then what did your first doctor tell you? Go get a second opinion. The science isn’t fucking settled. And Malcolm Gladwell has talked about this in his books like Blink and some other pieces that he’s written. There were 10 oncologists that were provided, I think, a hundred cancer cases and there was no consistency. Each person had a different take on the same material, and they were all experts. Pointing into the sphere of clinical medicine where we actually decide to do things, we try to rely as much as we can on science, and then there becomes a certain amount of art and also faith in what you are up to. My sense from people, like we knew Lonnie ages ago who had Achilles tendon rupture, we’ve known quite a few people who’ve had Achilles tendon ruptures who did a surgical fix, and it’s a nontrivial period of time in a boot and rehab and their leg is tight and all that type of stuff, but my sense is that people respond pretty well to that. So I wouldn’t automatically-

Nicki: Dismiss it.

Robb: Dismiss it. There are cases for when that might be appropriate. There’s always a risk when we have surgery. I mean secondary infections and there’s just risk associated with that. But when we are trying to heal something… Did he mention his age? He’s 45 years old-

Nicki: 45.

Robb: Not super old, also not a spring chicken. So healing is not the same as what it always has been in the past. Some folks, and I don’t know, could be difficult to get access to this in Canada, but peptides, the BP-158 and some things like that do seem to offer some promise in rehab. So he asked for dietary interventions.

Nicki: Yeah.

Robb: I mean just a good anti-inflammatory diet, whatever that is for you. You don’t want big blood sugar excursions. When the body is healing, if we have these blood sugar highs in particular, you are glycating the proteins, they’re sticking together and they just don’t heal as well. Something like a Ketogenic diet I think offers some non-trivial benefit in wound healing because of the mitigation in inflammation. Although, we don’t want zero inflammation. There was a podcast on STEM-Talk, and if I remember, we’ll stick this in the show notes where they talked about a little bit of fish oil and then a quarter of a baby aspirin. So a baby aspirin is 80 milligrams of salicylic acid and they cut that into quarters and they’re doing a tiny little piece of that for this selective pro-resolution modulation process because it is part of our recovery.

We have an initial inflammatory process that we must have, but then the resolution which happens on the backside sometimes gets buggered up. And so tweaking that resolution process could be beneficial. And this is another angle that could be brought to bear on that. So like Ketogenic diet, reading up on these selective pro-resolution modulators, and then what to do to prevent and recover from this. The tendons are largely avascular. They don’t have a ton of blood flow. What is super beneficial for them are really high rep activities and mobility, so good stretching. And this is where some FRC, can stretch type stuff that actually puts some emphasis on all the little fiddly bits joints and whatnot. And then talking to Coach Summer and gymnasts. Gymnasts almost never experienced Achilles tendon ruptures and these are people that are… A tumbling run is-

Nicki: Super explosive?

Robb: So explosive even though it’s a-

Nicki: Spring floor.

Robb: Spring floor and everything like my God. But when you look at the injuries that occur in gymnasts, Achilles tendon ruptures are not one of these things that are really high up the list. And they do a mountain of high rep toe raises and full range of movement, lots and lots of stretching, toes in, toes out. And so I can’t see that being anything but a good thing. But clearly, again, you’ll have to start that at appropriate loading. I have heard of people who have mild tendon ruptures. Initially what they will do is toe raises while standing in a pool. They’ll get chest deep in a pool and so they’re able to go to the-

Nicki: And when you say toe raise, you mean like a calf raise?

Robb: A calf raise, yeah.

Nicki: Okay.

Robb: Yeah.

Nicki: I was thinking you meant lifting the toes up.

Robb: No, no.

Nicki: Yeah, okay. Calf raise.

Robb: Calf raise, but they’ll stand like nipple deep in water so they know exactly where they are. So they’re getting a certain amount of displacement and they accumulate a hundred reps, 200 reps, 300 reps or whatever. And then they can go back there over the coming weeks and then they go from nipple deep to couple inches lower and slowly what you’re doing is increasing the loading that you’re going to experience with that. And just high, high reps to lots of blood flow through your legs.

Nicki: And have big ass calves when you’re done.

Robb: Hopefully. Hopefully. It’s never worked for me, but yeah.

Nicki: I’ll also mention there seems to be an increased occurrence of Achilles tendon tear for people who’ve been previously on antibiotics.

Robb: Oh yeah, that’s a great point.

Nicki: And I don’t know if you were recently on antibiotics before this thing, but if you do do a course of antibiotics, I think that’s a time to be very careful in the activities that you choose. When we had people at the gym who were on antibiotics, we wouldn’t let them do box jumps or double under. There were certain things that they would not do for a while.

Robb: Yeah. And we would make them do lots and lots of sled drags, really pushing off of the toe, doing it barefoot oftentimes just so that they get the maximum articulation of the foot and all that. It’s not all antibiotics. I forget which class of antibiotics, and it’s a good four months post-antibiotic treatment that the tendon rupture potential is there. But if you had been on antibiotics, I would look into what the… Cipro, I think the whole family that Cipro is part of is in that tendon rupture potential. So that’s a great catch.

Nicki: Okay. Alrighty. Our last question is from Krista about PCOS in a 14 year old girl. “Hi, guys. Love all that you do. 15 years ago, my functional medicine doctor put the Paleo Solution book in my hands to help with my gut issues and I’ve never turned back.” That’s really cool.”My 14 year old niece just got diagnosed with PCOS. To back up, she was a very sick newborn, minutes away from an ECMO machine and miraculously made a full recovery. I believe having all those drugs in the beginning of her life while saving her life has really jacked up her microbiome and created an insatiable appetite starting around two years old. She sneaks food, eats until stuffed. She’s thrown up in the past from too much food and hence she has steadily put on weight and now is at 195 pounds. She is the most incredible kid and my heart is breaking for her. Her parents have kept her active through sports and helped her keep a pretty clean diet, but nothing super steady. And as she gets older, they lose more of how and what she eats. Her most recent doctor’s appointment revealed the PCOS and there was talk of birth control pills and metformin. The next step is an endocrinologist and a natural path. Robb and Nicki, what would you do if this were your kid?”

Robb: Do you want to jump in on this one?

Nicki: Gosh, this is a tough one. And obviously this aunt, her heart is breaking, my heart is breaking for her too. My thought is she’s 14, so she’s old enough and mature enough to have a real conversation about what having polycystic ovarian syndrome means, what that means for her health now, what it means for her health in the future, fertility issues, potentially just generally. So I think I would start there. And obviously this is a sensitive subject. She’s 14. This is right in the time when you’re-

Robb: Finding yourself.

Nicki: You’re finding yourself, you’re going through puberty. The comments and opinions of your family and peers really, really matter. It’s a tricky, tricky time, but we have a 14 year old or a 15 year old in our life, male. But we can have wonderful conversations with this kid and I feel like this is a time to not try to coerce or figure out some sneaky plan to get her to do the thing.

Robb: You want to talk a little bit about that? Because when we first met him, he had some really significant acne. And this kid is pretty remarkable too. He’s just pretty buttoned up. But I just threw out there, I’m like, “Hey, man, no judgment, but from my understanding, dairy is a big factor in acne. So if you ever wanted to fiddle that, you’ve got a lever you can pull. If you ever wanted to be show ready and not have the degree of acne got, I would dial the dairy back.” And refined sugar can be a problem too. But I would put it probably like 90% of the problem is dairy, can be certainly exacerbated by sugar. And then we didn’t see them for, I don’t know, couple of weeks. And when he came back, his skin was stunningly better and it’ll kind of vary. We’ll see him sometimes and it’s a little bit worse. We’ll see him sometimes and he’s a little better.

Nicki: He knows what leads to that. He has control over that. Even Zoe. Zoe’s 10 and she’ll occasionally get a little pimple here or there. And I’ve pointed out, because dairy definitely gets me, and if I knew this when I was a kid, when I was a teenager in high school-

Robb: Your acne was so bad.

Nicki: My whole side of my dad’s family has pockmarked faces from acne. And I don’t thankfully have a lot of scarring, but I can get the really big cystic kind of zits if I really go after dairy. And so just talking to Zoe, “The cheese can really impact this.” And so she gets a little pimple, she’s like, “Mom, I don’t want any cheese. I’m not going to have cheese on my taco tonight.” And so I feel like at 14, you can be having just a real conversation with this girl.

Robb: And I think to the degree that we’ve had success so far with this is we couch this as, “This is a decision you can make. We’re not judging you. This is just a lever that you now have control on if you want to pull that lever.” And then that way there’s not the judgment, there’s not the trying to control them. I think you start trying to hide food and stuff like that.

Nicki: You don’t want to do that.

Robb: The kids will wear you down. They will win that battle. They will absolutely win that battle.

Nicki: And I think talking… Let’s see, this is Krista. Krista’s saying her niece has this insatiable appetite. Maybe she does and maybe she’s eating in a way that leads to an increased appetite like Robb has talked about in Wired To Eat and hyper palatable foods. So maybe talking about protein first and how it’s the most satiating macronutrient. If we fill up on protein, then we tend to not want as much other stuff. Or even if you want some, you’ll tend to eat less of it because you’ve gotten a big chunk of protein. And I don’t know if her parents are the right people to have this conversation with, what that relationship is, maybe it’s you as the aunt, maybe it’s somebody else, but she’s 14, she’s old enough to understand. And again, like Robb mentioned, “I just want to share this information with you because maybe you’ll choose to implement it now, maybe you won’t, but just so it’s in the back of your head and it’s something you can noodle on.”

Robb: And again, not to turn this into political fest, but there will be people out there who would be like, “You’re horrible people. Accept her for who she is, healthy at any size,” blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You don’t have to make this about the weight. But if she at 14 is being diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome, this bodes terribly for the rest of her health life. The likelihood for being able to be fertile and have children is dramatically altered. And I know that breeders are horrible people because we are destroying the planet, but fuck you to the people who believe that. It’s kind of like if somebody… I have been struggling for even an analogy to this, but it’s literally like you’re walking around and you have a smoldering ember.

Let’s say, you have long, beautiful hair and you have a smoldering ember on your shirt that is migrating towards your hair and your hair is going to burst into… You’re just arming the person with some knowledge that, “Hey, there could be some really significant problems here.” One of the most difficult things to impress upon young people, and I remember this because people tried to help me, looking to the future seems impossible because one day seems like an eternity when you’re young. And so that long term thing is difficult. But one thing that kids and young people and really everybody does seem to respond, at least to some degree, is being empowered, like, “You are in control and you can make the decision.”

Nicki: And even sharing some of this, I mean, I don’t know how much she knows about… I mean I’m sure she knew, she was in NICU and all this stuff, but just telling her, “It could be that all of the stuff that went on in the early days of your life has led to this being a big challenge for you. And we can’t change that. But here are some things that we could try that could help change. Your life doesn’t have to stay-“

Robb: “Be defined by that.”

Nicki: “Here or be defined by that. Here are some things that you could try that could lead to an outcome that you might want.” Another thing I’ll mention, just because I know y’all have heard us talk about Coach Cinnamon Prime before she’s done some things in the rebellion for us. She’s a mindset coach and she’s worked with people of all ages, including teenagers. And she might be somebody to talk to too, just from that mindset perspective. One of the things that’s been the hugest takeaway or a big help for everybody going through our resets in the Healthy Rebellion is the concept of, “Just for today.” So our brains, like Robb just mentioned, are not wired to, “I’m going to eat protein first and I’m not going to have dairy for the rest of my life.” You say that in your head and you make this huge goal and-

Robb: Very few people do that and make that more.

Nicki: It’s so daunting that we sabotage and two hours later, you’re having dairy and carbohydrates. But if you say, “Okay, just for today, I’m not going to put cheese on stuff. Just for today, I’m going to make sure that I eat my protein first. I’m not going to necessarily not have the potatoes or the rice or whatever, but I’m going to eat the protein first.” And then tomorrow, “Just for today, I’m going to do the thing.” And so it just allows your brain to really wrap itself around this shorter timeframe and the success that people see when they do that is indescribable. It’s really, really huge.

Robb: One, Cinnamon is amazing. And we personally know of folks that they would’ve probably killed themselves or they were in a position to do so and she’s been able to work some magic with these folks by just providing them with some tools and some context to be able to-

Nicki: Understanding how your brain is working.

Robb: And so one, a vote for her or someone like her to do that. And in this really micro goal planning, when I did that I-CAVEMAN! show, it was so miserable. I mean, I was so hungry, so cold, so tired. And the only way that I was able to keep doing it was in my head, I would just say, “Okay, it’s morning. Morning sucks. I don’t want to do this anymore, but I’ll stay here till noon.”

Nicki: Because you could have quit at any time.

Robb: Because I could have quit at any time, but it’s like, “Fuck it, I’ll just stay here till noon.” And then noon would hit and it’s like, “Well, I’ll just stay here until “dinner time,”” even though there was no food to be had. But I would do that and I was like,” Well, I made it this far. I mean, I don’t sleep that well, but I can sleep through the night again.” And that’s the way I did 10 days of that. It was literally about two and three hour chunks. And each time, it was always with the out. It’s like, “Eh, I’ll just quit later.” And then I would hit the later, I’m like, “Well, I already did that. I’ll just keep doing this.” And I can’t emphasize how powerful that is because trying to think about a lifetime of change is almost impossible, really, really daunting, and so you just have to do it just for today, just for this moment, sometimes just for this hour to be able to get through.

And this is all good tools that would help this young woman regardless of her health. It would help her on so many other levels potentially. I know I would’ve loved to have better understood this stuff when I was 14. I could have grown up to be somebody then, but yeah. And props to you for caring about this. It’s an important thing. And our kids and this next generation are really important and their health is not generally great, and we can’t just fucking roll over and accept it. We can’t. We also can’t go barnstorming in and be the same-

Nicki: Finger wagging it.

Robb: And finger wag and act like we’ve got all the answers. We can be facilitators, but at the end of the day, we have to have functional adults who can think and rationalize and understand the limitations of our own physiology and psychology and evolutionary biology and everything and then figure out strategies for how to get out of it what we want.

Nicki: Krista, I hope that was somewhat helpful and-

Robb: Would love to hear back from you.

Nicki: Would love to hear back from you.

Robb: Yeah.

Nicki: For sure. All right. That is our third question this week. I’m trying to think if there’s any other things to share. I don’t think so. You got anything?

Robb: Nope.

Nicki: Nope. Okay. Please check out our show sponsor LMNT for all your electrolyte needs. You can grab those at drinklmnt.com/R-O-B-B. Remember, the value bundle is the very best, what did say, bang for your buck. Buy three boxes, get the fourth box free. And you can do that at drinklmnt.com/robb and hope you all have a fabulous weekend. Get outside. Even if it’s not sunny, get outside and hug your loved ones and we will see you all next week.

Robb: Bye, everybody.

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News topic du jour:

Podcast Questions:

1. Diet for Cystic Fibrosis [16:45]
Leah says:

Hi Rob and Nikkie,

I am a listener of three years now. I am a current college student who just got married to my high school sweetheart of 6 years. I love listening to your podcast and I have learned so much, that it has enabled me to make my health an act of rebellion. Once I am not a broke college student, I will become a member of the Healthy Rebellion.

Now on to the question. My husband, who is 23 years old, has cystic fibrosis and is interested in changing his diet. However, I think what is a healthy diet for me may not be a healthy diet for him. His entire life he has been encouraged to drink sodas and eat absolute junk food just to meet his daily caloric intake. CF patients on average have been told they need almost double the amount of calories a normal person needs a day (between 2,900-4,500). Because of this many CF patients develop diabetes in their later lives, which we are trying to avoid. (It runs in both our families) Two years ago he stopped drinking soda/coffee or anything with lots of sugar or caffeine, he also does not drink alcohol. He drinks about a gallon of water a day, and since getting married in July he has tried to significantly cut down on his processed carb intake. We have been eating mostly proteins and vegetables with rice, seasonal squash and potatoes. We live in North Carolina and we have some really great farmer’s markets that I try to source most of our food from. He lifts weights 3-5 days a week, and we are both service industry workers, so we are on our feet for 6-10 hours a day. Since cutting most of the processed carbs out of his diet, he has lost about 10 pounds that he did not really need to lose. He is 5ft 6inch and weighs about 135lbs. He has since found it difficult to put on muscle, wake up in the morning, and maintain energy through out the day. I am wondering if all of this is because he is not taking in as many calories as he needs? Or maybe it’s a lack of protein? With our current diet, he eats about 2,000 calories a day and averaging about 40-60grams of protein a day. He has two high fat snacks of either yogurt or cheese a day in order to take specific medicine he needs. This is in addition to his three meals per day and has often found he will get too full and feels sick if he eats more. How could he increase his caloric or protein intake with out feeling full too fast or eating absolute junk food?

Any thoughts are appreciated, since most diet advice we have been given for people with cystic fibrosis, is to just eat high fat, high carb, and processed foods, and that is a very s.a.d. diet.

Thank you for all that you do to encourage a healthy diet and lifestyle.

You do reach a younger audience!

2. Gaining Lean Mass And Inflammation [26:48]
Alan says:

Hello Robb,

I have been resistance training consistently since I was 13 years old and I am 29 now. I do not struggle gaining weight when I dedicate myself to it, but I have noticed that when I bulk up, I also increase my symptoms of inflammation, mainly, eczema, skin redness, bloating, fatigue, and difficulty sleeping. I am 6’2″, currently weigh 185 lbs, and weight train 3-5 days per week. I haven’t measured my body fat in awhile, but I am assuming it is very low judging by what I see in the mirror. The last 2 and a half years I have been following the auto-immune protocol and have tinkered with carnivore as well. I feel the best I have felt in my life, but I have also lost weight, including both fat and lean mass. For the majority of my adult life I hovered around 200 lbs. which is 15 pounds heavier than now. I have tried to increase my calories to gain lean mass while still sticking to the auto-immune protocol, which works in increasing my lean mass, but even though the foods are the same, just the fact of eating more calories in general will almost always increase my symptoms. I tried bulking up while on a carnivore-ish diet, with similar inflammatory results although maybe not quite as bad as when I ate more plants while on AIP. I seem to have a limit of how much food I can eat before symptoms come up, which is at the maintenance level for my 185 lb body. I have also tried different styles of hypertrophy training with high volume and lower intensity, or lower volume and high intensity, both of which don’t seem to make a difference in gaining muscle mass as much as dietary or caloric changes. My question is – is there any way for me to increase my calories or gain lean mass without having to suffer the consequences of increased inflammation in the process?

Thank you so much for all your help. I love your podcast.

Alan

3. Slow Metabolism [33:23]
Beth says:

Hi Robb and Nicki,

Everywhere I look, there’s talk about how to increase your metabolism, how to burn more fat etc. but no one that I can find is asking if this actually makes sense. We wouldn’t want a car that’s an inefficent gas guzzler, why would we want to put more fuel in our bodies than we have to? Even from an evolutionary perspective, I would think having a slow metabolism, a lower basal metabolic rate, would be advantageous.

I get that the majority of the population is overweight and looking to lose it, but even in health and fitness communities I can’t find any information on this. I personally would absolutely love to be able to cook and eat less without losing weight! So my questions are, might it be healthy to have a slower metabolism, and if so, are there any strategies to facilitate that?

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Transcript:

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News topic du jour:

https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/omicron-gain-of-function-research

https://www.eugyppius.com/p/boston-university-falsely-denies?

Podcast Questions:

1. Protein amounts per meal [21:06]
Kevin says:
Hi Nicki and Robb,

A few episodes ago, Robb discussed how getting 30g of protein in a meal was important because it makes a process in our body’s start. Maybe you could explain that a little further and my bigger question is at what point is it too much protein at one sitting? Is there an approximate number of grams where you won’t get the benefit of the protein or is it more important to hit the overall protein goal for the day? Also, would splitting a 70g meal into two 35g meals be more beneficial and if so, what is the necessary wait time between those meals?

Thanks for all you do!

Currently having the best reset yet!

2. Blood Sugar Regulation [28:33]
Aquila says
Hi Robb,

I’m a fan of yours and have listened to a number of podcasts with you as a guest. Great work and thanks for fighting the good fight!

I am very fortunate to have good health and eat an animal based diet accompanied by fruits and vegatables from our garden and local farmers. I was raised by hippie parents who fed me high quality unprocessed foods and my digestions tends to work well. My partner however has some big problems with her glucose levels and doesn’t know what to do.

She was raised on a sadly “standard” american diet consisting of lots of grains, processed snack foods, sugar and generic grocery store produce and meats. Her mother has type 1 diabetes and is quite frankly in bad shape.

My partner, Lindsay, was “diagnosed” with Type 2 Diabetes when she was 18 and prescribed metformin which gave her bad stomache pain and other side effects. The doctor never mentioned anything about changing her diet (it was bad at the time) which made Lindsay think something wasn’t right. She is now 34 and in the last decade has come a long ways with her health. She is now physically active on a regular basis, quite fit, and eats what most would consider a very healthy diet. She avoids grains almost entirely and eats primarily meat, fruit and vegatables. Our son is two and she is still breastfeeding. Basically anytime Lindsay eats even a small amount of carbs like potato, fresh corn, strawberries, her blood sugar spikes and she feels the physical effects. It seems as though her glucose levels were staying at healthier levels a few years ago but now are zig-zaging pretty hard. She doesn’t know what to do to increase her insulin sensitivity or have more regulated blood sugar levels. It feels really unsustainable for her and is concerned about the long term effects.

I know you’re not a doctor and very busy but if you had any insight that could point us in the right direction it would be very appreciated.

Thanks again,
Aquila

3. Vasectomy Follow Up [35:20]
Ryan says:
Hi Robb and Nicki,

This is a follow up question from way back in Episode 63. I tried to find the JAMA study (or studies) that you referenced about vasectomy causing a decrease in testosterone and couldn’t find much.

There was one meta analysis from 2017 about prostate cancer, but it stated “Although 1 study found that serum testosterone levels are elevated in men who underwent a vasectomy more than 20 years ago relative to men who did not undergo a vasectomy, most studies have shown no changes in testosterone levels following vasectomy.” (Authors: Bimal Bhindi, MDCM, MSc, FRCSC1; Christopher J. D. Wallis, MD, PhD2; Madhur Nayan, MDCM, PhD3; et al)

Any other information or updates on this topic? My wife and I are done with kids and a vasectomy is tempting in some ways, but I’d hate to mess up my endogenous testosterone production.

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Transcript:

Download Here (PDF)

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 Plus.

Robb: Howdy folks.

Nicki: Hello everyone.

Robb: Nicki started hacking just as we-

Nicki: I was like, I have a tickle my throat. Right when he pushed the record button, and of course he didn’t stop it to start over. He just pushed the record button.

Robb: We operate without a net, wife.

Nicki: This is true. This is true when it comes to this podcast. This is absolutely true.

Welcome back everybody. This is episode 127 of the Healthy Rebellion Radio. How you doing, hubs?

Robb: Better than you.

Nicki: Better than me? Yeah, I woke up a little flat this morning.

Robb: A little flat today.

Nicki: A little flat today. Yes. But we might get snow this weekend. There’s a 50% chance of snow. We’ve been running the stove because it’s been chilly. So the seasons are a changing.

Robb: They are.

Nicki: You carved the pumpkin with the girls.

Robb: And it looked like a passable cat when it was done, which is what they wanted.

Nicki: Yeah. Sagan wanted it to look like a cat and did a pretty darn good job.

Robb: It’s not bad.

Nicki: She drew it on with a Sharpie and-

Robb: They largely cut it, so.

Nicki: Yeah. Zoe’s mostly interested in the pumpkin seeds, so she wasn’t-

Robb: Which I don’t blame her on that.

Nicki: She wasn’t too concerned about doing much of the carving. I’m trying to think of what else is going on. I think we could just jump right into this one.

Robb: Cool. My news topic, I have two pieces here, and I’ve honestly had to go to ground over this over the past couple of days because I was just going to freak out and say something that would probably get me canceled. Even though cancellations seemed to be less frequent, I think more people are just like bugger off at this point. So this is… I’m linking to the badgato and the title of this is Omicrom Gain of Function Research: Truly There is no Practice So Stupid That Humans Will Not Keep Doing It, is the subtitle. And it basically looks at this piece, role of spike protein in the pathogenic and antigenic behavior of SARS CoV one or CoV two, BA point one Omicron.

Here’s what they did. This is from the paper. We generated chimeric recombinant SARS CoV two encoding the S gene, which is for that spike protein on the backbone of an ancestral SARS CoV two isolate. And so basically what they did is they took elements of the current Omicron version of, or fairly current Omicron version of SARS or COVID, whatever we’re calling it at this point, which is by all accounts pretty benign. It’s incredibly infectious.

It spreads the like dickens. The last I heard the are nought was equal to or greater than measles, which I think at that point was the most transmissible thing known at that point. But they took the transmissibility elements of the current version and grafted it back onto the nasty, going to kill you elements of previous versions. And the mouse line that this was exposed to, the current iteration is non fatal. This new hybrid version had an 80% fatality rate. And this is basically more gain of function research, which you just can’t… Like I’m losing my mind. We’ve talked about this on this show and the show is not that big in the grand scheme of things. So I don’t know how much impact this has. Other people talked about this, like Dark Horse and different folks like that. I just, I’m at a loss for words for how dangerous this is even. And this is all… It’s so weird because-

Nicki: The hubris, right? It’s like, oh, well maybe… First of all, why? What are you trying… Is the ideal outcome of this? And everybody was like, oh-

Robb: Can I be a dick?

Nicki: Sure.

Robb: The mask wearing COVID apologist crowd, ironically, will say this is so that we can gain an insight into this stuff so that we know how to treat it later, which is patently false.

Absolutely false.

Nicki: So we can get ahead of it if something like this occurs, but how would something like this version of COVID? Like you’ve said, it’s already less deadly, more transmissible, less deadly. That’s how viruses tend to go.

Robb: That’s where we want to go.

Nicki: Great. So what would it take for this one that they created in a lab to actually come about now on its own? What are the odds of that? Why would they need to get ahead of that?

Robb: Something like the… So, the 1918 flu pandemic is maybe an example of this where there were three kind of primary phases. The phase one was not super gnarly. The phase three was bad, but not as gnarly as the phase two. So it did get worse. And what… I’m by no means an expert on it, but just it appeared that there was a combination of both worse transmissibility and pathogenicity, which usually doesn’t happen. Usually it gets less pathogenic as time goes on because the goal of the thing isn’t to kill people, it’s to spread. That’s the game theoretical model there. So I mean it’s possible this stuff can turn a corner. Some of the concerns early with… Well again, and we’ve talked about the SARS CoV one and the MERS, sister or related viruses, which received gain of function research, apparently, like the Peter Dasik’s Eco Health Alliance, we’ve talked about this stuff.

The SARS CoV one and MERS have about a 30% case fatality rate. And this is, again, I sound like a broken record. I say this stuff in my own head, we’ve said it on the podcast, so I feel like I’m literally am a broken record. But this isn’t a like, oh, you got bit by a shark and you happen to have COVID at the same time. Death. This is like no joke, 30%. Like a hundred people get it, 30 die, the 70 that live are sick, really sick. And that’s pretty well established. The only thing going for us with SARS one and MERS and some of these other things, is that they’re really difficult to catch. You have to the aerosolized infectious nature is not really there. You have to really be in close proximity. You have to really try to catch this stuff.

Nicki: But making this one that has an 80% mortality rate-

Robb: In mice.

Nicki: In mice, okay.

Robb: In mice. But-

Nicki: Humanized-

Robb: These are humanized mice.

Nicki: Lung tissues or whatever of the mice.

Robb: But, shit.

Nicki: If that happened, it would end civilization as we know it.

Robb: So it probably, a 30% legitimate case fatality rate could be a civilization ender. Because… And Nikki and I were talking about this, so it’s a little bit Groundhog’s Day for us, but this stuff is really important, I believe to talk about. A 30% case… Maybe a 10%. We saw… The last-

Nicki: Even the shutdown was like-

Robb: One percent, approximately, case fatality rate. And there there’s some, maybe it was. Maybe it wasn’t, but about a 1%. And dude, it fucked stuff up. It shut things down. And a lot of the shutdown shouldn’t have happened because that was never part of pandemic response planning. But there were enough people that got sick, there were enough situations-

Nicki: Staffing shortages and whatnot.

Robb: Staffing shortages, overwhelmed hospitals. Hospitals got overwhelmed. There were people dying in the droves in the beginning. In the beginning there was no joke about that. If it had been 10 times worse and 10 times more doctors died. 10 times more police died. 10 times more parents died on and on and on-

Nicki: Electricians, plumbers.

Robb: You might have had like massive civil-

Nicki: Grocers, farmers.

Robb: … Civil unrest.

You start getting into civil unrest and maybe some power stations get taken down, maybe fuel doesn’t get transported around the planet the way it should. And then you start having people freeze to death, starve to death. And so anything I think above a 10% case fatality rate is going to be a really bad day for civilization. And 80%. So just imagine that potentially 80% of the planet is expunged from the virus, which I think that there are a lot of people these days that think that would be a wonderful thing and they’re assholes. But that’s a whole other side deal.

But it, there’s no infrastructure left. The brain drain is so huge. There’s nobody left who knows how to do enough things to make the world work the way that it needs to work to get the done that we do. If there are people left, we’re literally back to maybe a little bit above stone age technology. And we reset the clock on trying to dig ourselves out of this. And in the process of all that happening, water systems fail. So cholera outbreaks explode. This is where the whole thing just snowballs. So if you didn’t get killed from the main thing, then it’s-

Nicki: Your chance of getting killed from any number of other things skyrockets.

Robb: Yeah. It’s just massive. So the only things that… And I can’t remember the podcast we were listening to. We mentioned this on this podcast, but there was a scientist who said, the main reason why gain of function research is popular or allowable is it’s actually quite easy to do. You’re just serially passaging the vector through these organisms. That is actually quite easy to do. You do the genetic sequencing, you write this whole thing up and you get grant after grant to do this stuff. So there’s this kind of perverse incentive to do it because it’s easy and it gets funded even though huge segments of this gain of function research stuff was supposed to be shut down. And the very people who likely created the current pandemic that we’ve been dealing with for three years and were put in charge of managing the response are still issuing grants for this.

Nicki: This study took place at Boston-

Robb: This was at Boston University.

Nicki: And it was funded by-

Robb: NIH-

Nicki: NIH and Big Pharma.

Robb: And so another sharp person, Ujipius-

Nicki: This is a sub stack. I don’t know if it’s “you-jyp-ius” or “you-gyp-ius

Robb: Eugyppie, yeah.

Nicki: But it’s a plague chronicle. And he’s out of Germany, I believe.

Robb: Yeah. He’s had super interesting insights both on COVID and also the energy situation within Germany. “Boston University falsely denies gain of function accusation, lamely claims creation of chimeric SARS two virus will lead to, quote, targeted therapeutic interventions to help fight against future pandemics.” This is absolute busllshit. And I’ve been struggling to… The main case that I would say around this, the reason why it’s bullshit is that this stuff evolves so quickly that there isn’t some novel insight that you’re going to figure out because you don’t know what thing you’re going to be fighting at that time.

Nicki: And the thing that you think you’re going to be fighting could mutate super quickly such that the thing that… Whatever therapeutic you created no longer works-

Robb: Is applicable to it. Which we saw with this, we started seeing that the things that were targeted towards alpha variant were no longer really all that efficacious with a delta variant and were completely worthless, more or less, for omicron, other than maybe some very targeted situations. The only other viable reason to do gain of function research is to find a pathogen that you want to weaponize and then you develop a vaccine that hopefully isn’t leaky and that you can get into your population and the population of your allies in such a way that everybody is immunized ahead of the release of this thing. Because we’ve seen what happens when you try to immunize mid pandemic, it doesn’t work that well. There’s an original antigenic sin, there’s antibody dependent enhancement which ends up tuning the immune response to that archaic, now evolutionarily defunct flavor of this stuff. If you do have a leaky vaccine, you would at least need to get this at a population wide level out ahead of it first so that the first wave of the released virus ends up hitting the same type of immune response.

But because it’s leaky, you’re still going to have transmission. There’s still the possibility for evolution to occur there and for the virus to work around this. But the two reasons to do gain of function research are either that you’re an unethical scientist and the system is broken and it’s easy to do, cheap to do, but well funded to do, or you want to weaponize this stuff. And god, if it’s not dangerous to weaponize biologicals because they’re alive and they will evolve and you can’t control them, you can’t predict where they’re going to go. You might get a chimera strain of this plus that naturally out in the wild and then you are fucked.

I am going to someday do a sub stack on this hopefully in the next couple of weeks, but I’ve really had to just sit on my hands because the stuff… If you’re concerned about social justice stuff, if you’re concerned about environmental stuff, if you’re concerned about this, you’re concerned about that and you’re not concerned about the fact that these assholes are still getting funding for gain of function research, I’m sorry, but you’re an idiot. Your risk analysis… And maybe you just aren’t aware and that’s fine. And I know I’m like totally going crazy here. This is existential thread stuff. This is, pick whatever terrorist group you don’t like, in saying, “Hey, let’s put you on a lottery for maybe getting a couple of suitcase nukes. Sound good?” And it’s worse than that because, and Nicki and I were talking about this, a suitcase nuke going off… And those don’t really exist, but let’s just say for argument’s sake that it does-

Nicki: It goes off in a city. It targets that particular city.

Robb: It targets that city-

Nicki: And that’s awful-

Robb: … And that’s awful-

Nicki: But it doesn’t have the potential to spread globally the way that, like what we saw.

Robb: Biologicals do. Geez Louise. So man, I don’t know how to rally against this, but this is something that the people doing this stuff need to be held accountable and never, ever again, never again. There is no upside to be gained from this stuff. We will have plenty to contend with the yearly flu, influenza strains that come in and we’re going to get some gnarly one just due to shitty luck at some point. We will be well tested to just handle the stuff that nature throws at us, especially considering that fewer than 7% of our population are metabolically healthy. And so everybody is already one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel.

And we’ve got all the barrels pointed at us, they’re all loaded. We don’t need to then further exacerbate the problem with this. And in a lot of ways, what I feel like is happening here is the continuation of this gain of function research is basically trying to justify what’s been done previously. Instead of trying to hide… They can’t hide it. They tried to hide it for ages, but now it’s kind of like, well, this is all totally fine. This is totally normal. Oh, it’s very unfortunate that this got out and killed a million people in the US and shut the economy down and has created all this other havoc and chaos and it basically forced a novel medical therapeutic upon a global population in a way that violates all kinds of human rights conventions.

Nicki: And locked people in their country. Such that they can’t go visit family members and loved ones that are dying and giving birth in other countries.

Robb: And on and on and on. But what I think part of this is, they’re normalizing the application of gain of function research, even though they’re saying that it’s not gain of function research, so that they can retro tune the Alfred Hitchcock like tunnel through time in this thing in such a way that it’s like, no, it’s fine. We’ve always done this, and we’ll always do this because it’s valuable, even though it’s not.

Nicki: Change the definition will change the meaning of the word.

Robb: So folks, I really encourage you to read up on this stuff and please stay on top of it and post it and talk about it and ask questions. Maybe I’ve got this all wrong. I hope I do. I really don’t think I do. But this is something that is a no joke deal where I think some people should hang from yard arms off of this and many of the people are now household names and whatnot. At a minimum, there needs to be-

Nicki: Many of the people have-

Robb: … Comments on this.

Nicki: … Now have thousands of pets named after them.

Oh, goodness.

Robb: So anyway-

Nicki: That’s probably good on this.

Robb: That’s probably good on this. But please dig into those two links. Please look into this and let’s make some noise about this. We need to push back against this. And I don’t know exactly what that looks like, but I’m hopeful that we’re able to get something together such that we can get a legit moratorium on this stuff. The US should not be funding gain of function research anywhere and anybody else doing it, this should be looked at as weapons of mass disruption and should be dealt with appropriately.

Nicki: Amen. All right. The Healthy Rebellion Radio is sponsored by our salty AF electrolyte company, Element. Our listeners might be the exception, but most people don’t realize how important electrolytes, sodium in particular, are for health. From everything from muscle contractions to nerve impulses, sodium is key. Element makes it easy to get your electrolytes without the sugar and other crap that’s found in normal or typical hydration beverages. So if you’re an athlete or you train regularly, if you have a physical job, if you’re eating keto or low carb, if you live in a hot or humid climate, if you suffer from muscle cramps, Element is for you. We have a host of flavors to please every taste bud. You can grab yours at Drink Element dot com slash Robb. That’s drink, L-M-N-T dot com slash R-O-B-B. And we have a little… I’m going to just tease out a little winter something coming towards the end of this month, early November. And we’ll see if it’s… We’ll see how it goes. That’s all we’ll say.

Robb: Cryptic.

Nicki: Cryptic, but keep your eyes open for that. Okay, we’ve got three questions for you all this week. The first one is from Kevin regarding protein amounts per meal. “Hi, Nikki and Robb. A few episodes ago, Robb discussed how getting 30 grams of protein in a meal was important because it makes a process in our bodies start. Maybe you could explain that a little further. And my bigger question is, at what point is it too much protein at one sitting? Is there an approximate number of grams where you won’t get the benefit of the protein or is it more important to hit the overall protein goal for the day? Also, would splitting a 70 gram meal into two 35 gram meals be more beneficial? And if so, what is the necessary wait time between those meals? Thanks for all you do, Kevin.”

Robb: It’s actually like 35 questions in here. So Kevin, I steal most of this stuff from Dr. Gabrielle Lyon and folks like her who are much my better on the protein story. But in general, there seems to be a bit of a consensus. Always dodgy too lean in consensus too much. But the science does seem to support this notion that if you want anabolic signaling from branch chain amino acids, specifically leucine, you need about 25 grams of effective protein to get that happening. If you’re taking away protein isolate, you want 25 grams of effective protein. Below that, you are unlikely to get much in the way of anabolic signaling. And so there’s kind of this minimum threshold there. And then poking around trying to figure out what the upper limit is on a per meal basis. There’s not really a specific upper limit. I mean clearly at some point gastrointestinal distress sets in and you just can’t eat that much and all that type of stuff.

Nicki: It would be dependent on the person’s size?

Robb: Size is going to be a factor. And this is even, at this minimum, this protein minimum, I wonder about that too. Again, five foot two female, six foot four male. I think that there’s probably differences there. So these are rough guidelines. Peter Atia made a comment offhand, which I have not dug into, but he suggested that protein consumption over about 40 grams of protein per dose, that the body gets a anabolic signaling, but you begin just oxidizing those amino acids and they get broken down and used as fuel instead of body maintenance and stuff like that. So is that good or bad? Well, it kind of depends. That can be a really slow release method of maintaining blood glucose response. And this is largely the way that the Bernstein Diabetes solution recommends managing both type one and type two diabetes, which is a low carb, moderate fat, high protein diet, so that the liver is getting enough protein to meet growth needs and anabolic needs.

But also it ends up converting a non-trivial amount of the amino acids into glucose, but that glucose is then titrated out of the liver in a pretty precise fashion. So whether that’s good or bad is dependent on what you have going on. Also, higher protein intake is pretty highly satiating. So if one is trying to lose body fat, then the higher protein intake is arguably better because of the satiety effect. Because of the thermic effect. We don’t get as much calories out of a given amount of protein because of the way that it’s metabolized. So Kevin also asks some great questions around the timing with this. How long from one meal to another would you need to wait to really… So that you don’t have an overlap on say, the previous meal to the next meal? And it’s about two hours. Plus or minus maybe an hour and a half for some people, but about two hours.

And if you look at just body building lore, they recommended eating a protein rich meal about every two hours. And for maximum anabolic activity, maximum satiety so that you gain muscle, minimize body fat gain. That’s probably a great recommendation. One of the problems with this super high frequency of feeding is that it is pro-inflammatory and there’s no two ways around it. Every time we eat, we get an inflammatory response. I don’t know that that really makes a strong case for a one meal a day protocol. And we’ve talked about this in other shows where if you’re only eating highly infrequent meals, you need way more protein than you do to maintain muscle mass or having an adequate anabolic response. You would need to eat far more protein in that meal than what you would eat if you were doing two meals and a snack or four small meals broken throughout the day.

So there’s trade offs with all this stuff. Would splitting a 70 gram meal into two 35 gram meals be beneficial? Maybe from the perspective of consistent anabolic signaling throughout the day. I do know some people, for me, the digestive thing is a interesting trade off. I don’t want to be snacking all day because that kind of bombs my digestion out. But at the same time, a massive meal doesn’t really work well for me too. So like breakfast, lunch, dinner, maybe a snack, maybe two meals and a snack is kind of the place that I play out there. So again, there’s just a lot of variables ranging from, what’s your goal? Body composition change, body re-composition, gain muscle, lose body fat, only lose body fat, maximize muscle, hypertrophy signaling, mitigate gut issues? I know Bobby Maximus, who’s a pretty well known strength and conditioning coach and MMA fighter, he ended up having some really serious ulcerative colitis type gut issues and he found that he just needed to eat… One, he needed a compositional change to his diet.

So I think some things like gluten and dairy ended up being problematic for him. I’m going by memory, so I could be wrong on that, but I think what he found was smaller, more frequent meals was the ticket for him. Whereas some other people, they just have to spread out their meals and although they can’t be huge necessarily, they don’t do well with every two hours, every two and a half hour eating. So I think that that’s, again, if you have gut issues, then you may need to tackle this in a way that’s like… I would love to be 10 pounds heavier with muscle, but I just can’t eat that much food. It is just not going to happen. I struggle to just maintain what I’ve got. So I’ve got to cater more to my gut issue limitations, even though I have some goals that I would like to see that would be facilitated by maybe more food intake, more protein and taking more frequent eating.

Nicki: It’s almost like there’s no one size fits all when it comes to nutrition.

Robb: Really not. There’s a lot of moving parts and the whole thing is largely driven by your goals. But also I would throw out there some of the limitations that you have. And somebody like me, I have some compromised gut health that I do a pretty good job of managing, but I still have to pay attention to certain things to make it work and I have to cater more towards making sure my gut doesn’t fail than being concerned about the other stuff.

Nicki: Okay. Our next question is regarding blood sugar regulation from Aquila. “Hi Robb. I’m a fan of yours and have listened to a number of podcasts with you as a guest. Great work and thanks for fighting the good Fight. I am very fortunate to have good health and eat an animal-based diet accompanied by fruits and vegetables from our garden and local farmers. I was raised by hippie parents who fed me high quality unprocessed foods and my digestion tends to work well. My partner, however, has some big problems with her glucose levels and doesn’t know what to do. She was raised on a sadly standard American diet consisting of lots of grains, processed snack foods, sugar and generic grocery store produce and meats. Her mother has type one diabetes and is quite frankly in bad shape. My partner, Lindsey, was diagnosed with type two diabetes when she was 18 and prescribed metformin, which gave her bad stomach pain and other side effects.

The doctor never mentioned anything about changing her diet. It was bad at the time, which made Lindsay think something wasn’t right. She’s now 34 and in the last decade has come a long ways with her health. She’s now physically active on a regular basis, quite fit and eats what most would consider a very healthy diet. She avoids grains almost entirely and eats primarily meat, fruits and vegetables. Our son is two and she is still breastfeeding. Basically, anytime Lindsay eats even a small amount of carbs like potato, fresh corn, strawberries, et cetera, her blood sugar spikes and she feels the physical effects. It seems as though her glucose levels were staying at healthier levels a few years ago, but now are zigzagging pretty hard. She doesn’t know what to do to increase her insulin sensitivity or have more regulated blood sugar levels. It feels really unsustainable for her and she’s concerned about the long term effects. I know you’re not a doctor and very busy, but if you have any insight it would be very appreciated.”

Robb: Yeah, it’s funny, I am not a breastfeeding mother, but I am very similar to this. I was never formally diagnosed with type two diabetes, but too many carbs will get me on kind of a blood sugar roller coaster. We did our experiments with Wired to Eat where Nikki ate 50 grams of carbs. I ate 50 grams of carbs from white rice and Nicki’s blood sugar barely budged upwards and mine got to nearly diabetic levels. So there are some people for whom you just have to find what is a workable glycemic load for the individual. And for me, it’s usually I can get up to maybe 7,500 grams of carbs on days where I’m pretty physically active. If I’m really physically active, I might be able to sneak in a little bit more. But I really do pretty well from a blood sugar perspective being around that ketogenic level, 30 to 50 grams on most days.

And again, on days when I’m really physically active, I can eat more carbs and still have passable ketone levels, which seems to be the thing that keeps my brain happy, tends to normalize my blood sugar levels. And I’m lean. I’m probably eight, 9% body fat, physically active, carry a decent amount of muscle mass. I’ve tried doing blood donation in the past. If I had iron overload, I don’t really think that that was an issue. This wouldn’t necessarily be an issue for Aquila’s wife or partner. Omega-3 fats, two grams a day, Alpha lipoic acid, strength training, aerobics-

Nicki: Walking-

Robb: Walking, pre and post meals-

Nicki: … Pre and post meals. And then I think also, we talk about this in the carb test and she doesn’t necessarily need to do that, but just maybe keeping a little notebook of how she feels after these carbs. Because maybe potato, fresh corn and strawberries are really problematic for her, but maybe she would do better with rice instead of potato or blueberries instead of strawberries. I don’t know. But we have found that a lot of people, they get some pretty interesting insights when they really start charting and paying attention. Just some foods elevate blood sugars in certain people more than others.

Robb: And there’s two pieces of that. There’s just the carbohydrate content of the food. And then for some people, if they have an immunogenic response, if their immune system just doesn’t like the food, that can register as a stress. And so you can get a cortisol induced blood sugar response. So the main thing is that we have to play to this clinically. And Lily Nichols’ work around gestational diabetes and dealing with blood sugar regulation around pregnancy and breastfeeding, she might be a good resource just because the material is written by a woman, it deals with all kinds of mom related stuff. And that might, Lily and her work might be a good resource for getting in and looking at this stuff. But again, lifting weights, exercise, some zone two, a little bit of interval training. Walking.

Nicki: You know what? Squatchee just posted an interesting article in the rebellion and I didn’t read the whole thing, but the gist of it was something about doing calf raises, even if you’re sitting and you’re just elevating your heel off the ground onto the ball of your foot, like calf raises. And I can’t remember if it was pre or post meal, but it reduced blood sugar-

Robb: Significantly?

Nicki: Significantly.

Robb: Oh, wow.

Nicki: So that was an interesting, and again, I just glanced at it. I didn’t get a chance to read the whole thing, but definitely activity pre and post, can definitely help with blood sugar.

Robb: This is one of those things that folks talk about. The NEAT factor, the non-exercise activity. Fidgety people just tend to burn a few more calories and just that movement ends up… Any amount of movement that we do ends up stimulating to some degree this non-insulin mediated glucose disposal where we can lower blood glucose levels. I would say it’s probably better post meal to do that, but you could probably do some pre and do some post, but-

Nicki: We’ll dig out that article up and we’ll put it in the show notes for anybody.

Robb: But this is where even doing 10 body weight squats and some pushups against a counter or something like that. Movement breaks throughout the day. Post exercise, like doing a walk and then.

Nicki: And then really watching sleep. Sleep is huge for blood sugar regulation. So I know it’s hard when you have a youngster that may or may not sleep well through the night, but really being… If she can get super protective around her sleep, make sure she’s getting enough sleep. Make sure that it’s a dark room, all the stuff that we’ve talked about with regards to sleep hygiene. That just definitely helps set the stage for better blood sugar regulation overall.

Robb: Nice. Nice.

Nicki: Okay. All right. The last question this week is from Ryan on vasectomies. “Hey Robb and Nicki, this is a follow-up question from way back in episode 63, I tried to find the JAMA study or studies that you referenced about vasectomy causing a decrease in testosterone and couldn’t find much. There was one meta-analysis from 2017 about prostate cancer, but it stated, quote, ‘Although one study found that serum testosterone levels are elevated in men who underwent a vasectomy more than 20 years ago relative to men who did not undergo a vasectomy, most studies have shown no changes in testosterone levels following vasectomy.’ Unquote. Do you have any other information or updates on this topic? My wife and I are done with kids and a vasectomy is tempting in some ways, but I’d hate to mess up my endogenous testosterone production.”

Robb: The short answer is I have no additional update on this. I did a little bit of poking around, but what I’ve found is just contradictory. I’ve seen some examples, again, like the material we cited in episode 63 where it suggested, at least in some people you can see a non-trivial decrease in libido and testosterone levels, a shift towards a more estrogen dominant kind of profile. And then there’s lots and lots of material that seems to say the opposite to that effect. And I just don’t know what the real story is. And it may depend on the individual. This is one, again, one of the problems with aggregating data. If you have some people that there’s no… Maybe, like this one study that’s cited here, maybe some people see a testosterone boost for whatever reason, and some people see a decrease. And if you average the thousand, then there’s no change there. And the people on the bad side of that it are going to not clinically do all that well. So.

Nicki: It would be interesting… I guess if it were me. I mean, you had a vasectomy, knowing what your testosterone levels are now. I think if you’re going into it with really robust levels, then maybe if I were male, I’d be like, okay, maybe that’s… I’m starting with really robust levels and I know there’s some chance of it dropping some amount, but I’m okay with that because of where I’m starting. But if you’re a man who’s starting with mediocre levels and there’s that risk, that might be kind of a way to gauge it. Because I know talking to Kirk Parsley, there have been so many people in the military who go through these just hellacious training and getting deployed and sleep and stress and all of this, and they’re testosterone goes to shit. Super, super low. And so again, that’s probably, it just depends on where you are in the spectrum when you’re making this decision. I think if you were pretty low or even average or slightly below average, you’d have to decide if that was a risk you were worth willing to take.

Robb: Well, and at a minimum checking levels before, and then checking afterwards so that there are things like enclomaphine and whatnot, which can help boost endogenous production. So could look into some things like that. But I think just having a benchmark is smart. Both of the actual levels and just kind of clinically how you look, feel and perform and all that. So not a lot to offer there, apologies. But it seems like there’s a signal there. But I don’t know. I don’t know. I’ve also seen probably more information saying, nothing to be concerned about here, than the other. Yeah.

Nicki: Okay. I think that’s a wrap for this episode. I’m trying to think if there’s any other closing comments.

Robb: Just circling back, I really do encourage people to read up about that gain of function research and folks should be hopping mad about that. And this should be something that, the few people that pull this card that we’re going to learn something in this process that’s going to help us later. No. The risk reward profile is not there.

Nicki: Well, you were telling me something that Brett and Heather had shared with regards to the current pandemic. People were saying, claiming that there was gain of function research happening in the Wuhan Institute and that people were like-

Robb: That is a great point.

Nicki: … It wasn’t gain of function, but if it was-

Robb: It didn’t help us.

Nicki: It didn’t help us. If the idea was to be able to understand so we could get ahead of something, that didn’t come to pass.

Robb: Right. At best, there was a claim that we were able to sequence this thing overnight and then in a weekend start spinning up production of vaccines, which seems super dubious to me, but that’s a whole other topic. But it clearly didn’t avoid this thing. And look how much time it took, even. It was two, two and a half years before they started saying, “Hey, we’re going to tweak the boosters to match omicron.” Okay. It’s just the logical breakdown there. And also just systematically where this thing fails in so many ways, it’s just incredible. Again, this is where I really do need to collect my thoughts, but do it in a way that doesn’t get me outright canceled because it just makes me so angry. But I really do encourage people to dig into this and this is something that we need to, among the many other things that we’re concerned with in the world, but I do think that this is a big deal.

Nicki: Okay. Well folks, thank you for tuning in to another episode of the Healthy Rebellion Radio. Remember to check out our show sponsor element for all your electrolyte needs, and you can find those at drink L-M-N-T dot com slash Robb. And hope you all enjoy the weekend. We’re potentially getting some snow. Not sure how much it will stick. Also turning 45-

Robb: And that will stick.

Nicki: That will stick. Anyway, have a wonderful weekend everyone. We’ll catch you next week.

Robb: Bye, everybody.

Where you can find us:

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News topic du jour:

https://www.farmersweekly.co.za/agri-technology/farming-for-tomorrow/using-livestock-for-healthier-soil/?

Podcast Questions:

1. Addressing Weight Loss Stall [13:06]
Becky says:
Hi!
Longtime listener, third time emailer. I have been doing low carb/IF (clean 18:6 or 20:4) for about a year and lost 70 bs (hooorayyyy!!).
I still make Rob’s electrolytes Anyway, I have been stalling on my progress for a couple of months. My long-term goal is about 100 lbs (which would put me in the 100 lb loss range) with a healthy approach to maintenance.
I reserve the right to want to go beyond that as well depending on how my thighs look at that weight. Does the healthy rebellion address plateaus and how to bust through them? Does Robb have a product or guide for that? I’ve fallen off the rails a couple of times this year bc I wasn’t seeing the results to sustain me through the discomfort of fasting & low carb. Can you guys HALP? I didn’t do a ton of exercise, maybe long walks a couple of times a week but very inconsistently bc I thought you can’t gain muscle and lose weight at the same time. Was I wrong? IDK. Send help or a Costco bag of Reeses cups. Please and thank you

2. Zone 2 Advice [19:22]
Christin says:
Hi Robb and Nicki,
I heard you mention doing your zone 2 on the show last week or the week before maybe. I wondered what dose frequency you use for your zone 2 work?
Lately I’ve been strength training 4x/week and try to get in at least 2 days of zone 2 dedicated for at least 30 minutes and then will typically go for a hike with my dog and husband on a third day but am wondering if this is enough.  I also listen to Peter Attia’s show and he talks about doing like 4 days/week of zone 2 work! That just sounded overwhelming and depending on the strength training plan I’m using at the time, between a full time job and 40 minute commute I don’t always have time to fit that much in. I’ve started trying to add maybe 10-15 minutes of zone 2-3 conditioning type work at the end of one of my shorter lifting days (think Tabata sets of jump rope and KB swings or jump rope and farmers carries or something to that effect). Is this enough?
Basically my goals are optimal general health. I typically will do a couple 5ks and possibly a half marathon once a year and know how to adjust my training to get my endurance beefed up to handle this volume, but on the average daily am just wondering what is optimal dose.
Cheers,
Christin

3. Gadolinium Toxicity [25:46]
Lori says:
Hi from Three Forks MT
I grew up in Bozeman. And have lived here most of my life minus college.
Hope you are enjoying Fall.
My question is about Gadolinium Toxicity.  My daughter in law had a scan after having gall stones removed.
Ever since she has been having symptoms in line with Gadolinium Toxicity.
Do you have any suggestions for her to help with this condition?
Not sure if any diet or exercise program will help.
Thank you
Love your podcast and books.
Lori

Sponsor:

The Healthy Rebellion Radio is sponsored by our electrolyte company, LMNT.
Proper hydration is more than just drinking water. You need electrolytes too! Check out The Healthy Rebellion Radio sponsor LMNT for grab-and-go electrolyte packets to keep you at your peak! They give you all the electrolytes want, none of the stuff you don’t. Click here to get your LMNT electrolytes

Transcript:

Coming very soon…

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

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News topic du jour:

https://philmaffetone.com/180-formula/

https://philmaffetone.com/want-speed-slow-down/

Notes:

Electrolyte homebrew recipe: https://drinklmnt.com/blogs/health/the-best-homemade-electrolyte-drink-for-dehydration

Podcast Questions:

1. Pooping Rocks and Acid Reflux [12:46]
Brian says:
As of the last 8-10 weeks I have experienced constipation. Pooping daily but basically a bunch of rocks. I’ve also been getting acid reflux more often. BOTH of which seem random and cannot figure out what it is dietwise, as my diet is relatively consistent. Curious what may cause this and perhaps recommended remedies? Much appreciated

2. HCL Supplementation [17:04]
Alex says:
I’ve been treating some gut dysbiosis, which among other things includes HCL supplementation, and I feel like the dosage recommendation protocols on HCL are really missing a big piece of the picture. I eat nearly carnivore and prefer 2 large meals a day. I’ve increased my HCL dosage up to 10 capsules (650mg each) to beneficial effect and still don’t experience any discomfort. Based on almost every protocol out there I’m way past the upper end of the dosage. It seems rational to me that the combination of 60-80g+ protein meals and gut dysbiosis would necessarily call for such large dosages, thoughts?

3. Why hasn’t the paleo/ancestral health community embraced baobab fruit as a staple food? [19:44]
David says:
Hey Robb,

I recently found out about baobab fruit, and decided to try it. It’s apparently native to Africa, and a favorite staple food of the Hadza. anyway, it tastes good, and seems to have helped a lot in fixing most (maybe all?) of my gut issues.

I’ve known about the paleo diet for 10ish years now, but this is the first time I’ve ever heard about this fruit for whatever reason.

This seems like an easy win food-wise, given the amount of fiber/prebiotics it contains, it’s one of the most nutrient dense fruits one could eat, and I didn’t have too much trouble buying it on the Internet at a reasonable price. And, given how long Baobab plants/trees live, this is about as “paleo” as it gets today.

What gives? Why hasn’t the paleo/ancestral health community embraced baobab fruit? Is there some potential downside to eating this all the time that I have yet to discover? Will I die from some weird African parasite hiding in the pulp or something?

Sponsor:

The Healthy Rebellion Radio is sponsored by our electrolyte company, LMNT.
Proper hydration is more than just drinking water. You need electrolytes too! Check out The Healthy Rebellion Radio sponsor LMNT for grab-and-go electrolyte packets to keep you at your peak! They give you all the electrolytes want, none of the stuff you don’t. Click here to get your LMNT electrolytes

Transcript:

Download file here (PDF)

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. 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: Welcome back everybody.

Nicki: Hello. Hello. Welcome to another episode of the Healthy Rebellion Radio. We’re at episode 125 today.

Robb: We’re all grown up.

Nicki: We’re all grown up. Yep. What is that like, I guess there’s no term for them for… I was going to say one and a quarter, 100 and a quarter, there’s no…

Robb: It is a hundred and a quarter I guess. Yeah.

Nicki: Yeah. Okay. I was thinking there might be some more specialer term.

Robb: Well, we are kind of like the Blue Collar Dark Horse podcast, so Brett and Heather will talk about prime numbers and stuff like that, but it’s outside my scope currently.

Nicki: Yes.

Robb: We’re just dealing with area and perimeter currently with our kids.

Nicki: Perimeter and multiplication facts. Yeah. Okay. Let’s see, what do we have going on this week? We’re just wrapping up sleep week in the 30 day Rebel Reset inside the Healthy Rebellion community and kicking off movement week here with the movement call Friday, which is September 30th, the day this episode releases, and then all next week is Movement Week inside the rebellion. What else hubs? What else is going on?

Robb: Pipelines getting blown up and all kinds of interesting things. It’s just fascinating to look out at the world and know that we’re possibly closer to nuclear Armageddon than we’ve ever been.

Nicki: It’s been kind of a week.

Robb: Since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Yeah, it’s just kind of fascinating.

Nicki: But we’re not getting get into all of that right now.

Robb: We won’t get much into that, but it’s just kind of like, “Huh, that’s interesting.”

Nicki: A lot going on in the world, but we can only control what we can control, which is our daily habits and our actions and loving the people we love and doing the things.

Robb: So I guess I’ll love the one I’m with.

Nicki: I guess so.

Robb: Does that apply if I travel or not really?

Nicki: You’re not traveling.

Robb: Okay. Fair enough, fair enough.

Nicki: All right. Let’s see, moving on. I guess news topic. I don’t know that we have any other stuff up front to chit chat. The dogs all healed up. No more stinky butt.

Robb: Thank God.

Nicki: No other animal issues thankfully.

Robb: I’m still looking around to get my anal glands expressed, but have found no takers on that, so don’t know what to say.

Nicki: I don’t even think you have anal glands.

Robb: Have we looked?

Nicki: I mean, humans don’t go around sniffing other human stool to identify.

Robb: Do you know this as a quantifiable fact?

Nicki: I do, yes I do. Yes, this is a 100% fact. Okay, we’re getting derailed here. What do we have for a news topic?

Robb: So this may be super low brow for some of you, but it’s two links to Phil Maffetone who is a exercise physiologist and he popularized the math pace formula, which is a great way of finding a benchmark for your heart rate to be purely fat fueled. And man, there’s so many benefits to this building a legit aerobic base recovery, balancing out parasympathetic sympathetic nervous system kind of response. CrossFits awesome, but it is just all sympathetic overload all the time, and that can create problems. And so high intensity training is cool, it’s very effective, but it’s pretty potent medicine. And the funny thing is I keep feeling like I’m… Well you know it’s funny, our coach, Travis Davison, our jujitsu coach, he will say, “I feel like what I’m showing you guys is just super basic,” whatever it is he’s going over, and I always get something out of it. And what I’m discovering in life is that I don’t usually need more, I just need a better understanding of what I’ve oftentimes have on my plate.

Robb: And we were having a discussion the other day in one of the chats within the Rebellion, and there were a bunch of people that had never heard of the Maffetone paced stuff, the zone two cardio and all that type of thing. And so I shared these links in the Rebellion, and so I felt like it was important to share it more broadly. I would really like to get Joel Jameson on a Salty Talk sometime soon. I’ve been using the Morpheus platform, which he’s the developer of, to monitor HRV and also to monitor most of my training. I don’t wear it during jujitsu, you can, it works well enough doing that, but it’s been really valuable. But I have a few questions around that like some of the recommended heart rates that come out of the Morpheus platform are significantly higher than what most of the Maffetone paced stuff suggests, so looking forward to chatting with him and circling up on that and really encourage folks to dig into this Maffetone formula and get some of your zone two cardio going. It definitely is of benefit. I fought and kicked and screamed against this stuff for ages and it really is the bees knees.

Nicki: And I’m still fighting and kicking because-

Robb: Well, so maybe this is-

Nicki: …. I loathe all things cardio. I like doing sprints, but just the steady state cardio stuff, it’s like nails on a chalkboard, pulling teeth to get me to do it.

Robb: And a lot of that I don’t enjoy, the main thing that I enjoy about it is I feel better later. The other activities that I do are improved and it is literally the only time that I get to watch any TV. And so that’s my care currently. And I think the big problem we have with you is that we haven’t found the right modality. I use an Assault bike and jump rope combo and sometimes I’ll do a little bit of a circuit, but it’s mainly a Assault bike.

Nicki: I don’t like stationary bike riding. It’s just not my thing, like the spinning of the legs and sitting on the butt. It’s not my thing.

Robb: The thing that gets most worked out is you’re taint and not in a pleasant way, so yeah.

Nicki: Okay. Here we go onto our sponsor. Heller Belling Radio, as you all know by now, is sponsored by our salty af electrolyte company LMNT. And we had an question that came in this week regarding LMNT, regarding our chocolate salt flavor. And so I was just going to weave this question into the ad to have an extra question and tackle two birds with one stone.

Nicki: So we’ve got one from Ivy on the chocolate salt and caffeine sensitivity. She says, “Hi, you two. Let me start off by professing my undying love to you guys. I love your message and your unapologetic perseverance to the truth. I’m a huge LMNT fan as a former POTS sufferer and an aerialist, it’s been a total game changer for me. My question is about the chocolate salt flavor containing caffeine. The reason I’m asking is because when I take it pre-workout early morning, I get a huge kick from it. The other flavors do not do this to me. I avoid caffeine at all costs, even though I adore cacoa, because I have a history of POTS and HPA dysregulation and have hypothyroidism. I’m a petite 100 pound 39 year old female. When I take the chocolate salt pre-workout, my workout is amazing, but seems to be followed by an afternoon of lethargy and feeling like I am tired, but wired. That feeling you get when you are under recovered, it’s by far my absolute favorite flavor, but it seems to trigger this caffeine response in me. And I’ve started to mix it with half raw and half chocolate salt, and I’ve noticed improvement.”

Nicki: So her question is, “Do you know how much caffeine is in it? And better yet, why the f so sensitive? I’m also sensitive to vitamin D, both supplemental and from too much light exposure. Could I have a genetic mutation or am I just a small sensitive female canary in the coal mine? Any thoughts? Greatly appreciated.”

Robb: So working backwards, there could certainly be a genetic component to this. This is one of the things that I’ve mentioned when folks talk about diet and all kinds of other things, the average halflife of clearing caffeine out of one’s system across a whole population is about eight hours. But there are people like our friend Luis, who has the polymorphism and he likely clears it in about four hours. And halflife is basically, if you’ve got a hundred milligrams of caffeine, which is about how much caffeine you would get out of a good stout cup of coffee, how long before you only have 50 milligrams of caffeine, and then how long before that 50 becomes 25 and on and on and on. So average population is about eight hours. There are fast metabolizers that only take four hours, and then there are people that take as long as 36 hours.

Robb: And so when somebody says, “I drink a cup of coffee and I can’t sleep for two days,” it’s foolish to dismiss that because there’s this massive variation there. And this is one of the other parts of maybe the evidence based medicine, evidence based nutrition crowd that live and die by randomized controlled trials. When you aggregate data, like you would with, “How long does it take on average to clear caffeine?” That may be completely meaningless depending on who you are. If you are that fast metabolizer, you literally could have a double espresso with dinner and you’re probably going to be fine, you’re probably going to sleep just fine. And then other people, not so much. With me, like the essential tremor syndrome, caffeine dramatically worsens it, and interestingly, there’s something about coffee specifically that seems to worsen it above and beyond just the caffeine content because I get less severe tremor worsening from say, like caffeinated black tea than I do from decaf coffee, ironically, so. For whatever it is, but the long and short within our product, the amount of cocoa powder that’s in there, on average, you would expect it be about 10 to 15 milligrams of caffeine to be in there, which is a non-trivial amount. And then cocoa has other stimulants in it too. So this may be part of the reason why she’s getting such a profound response with this.

Nicki: She notices it so much, yeah.

Robb: Yeah, yeah.

Nicki: Okay. Ivy, maybe figuring out what your ratio of raw and half chocolate salt is so that you can enjoy the flavor you love, but it doesn’t affect your-

Robb: If anything, what this tells you, we use really good cocoa powder in the product. It’s not shite cocoa powder, it’s actually very high quality stuff. So just as an aside.

Nicki: All right, we also had a question on how to make the LMNT home brew, and so I’m going to be adding a link to that in the show notes. This person couldn’t find that and she wanted to make her own. And we have a lot of great recipes on how to do that in a PDF that we’ll link in the show notes. If you want to buy your LMNT, of course, you can go to drinklmnt.com/robb, drinklmnt.com/robb, and you can grab any of our LMNT flavors. If you do the value bundle, buy three and get the fourth box free. Again, that’s drinklmnt.com/robb.

Robb: That was probably technically the longest commercial-

Nicki: That we’ve ever done, because-

Robb: … in all of podcast history.

Nicki: … we put a nice question in there.

Robb: Sneaky.

Nicki: Okay, we have three other questions today. The first one is from Brian on pooping rocks and acid reflux. He says, “As of the last 8 to 10 weeks, I have experienced constipation. Pooping daily, but basically a bunch of rocks. I’ve also been getting acid reflux more often, both of which seem random, and I cannot figure out what it is diet-wise, as my diet is relatively consistent, curious what may cause this and perhaps recommended remedies. Much appreciated.”

Robb: Man. Brian, when you dig into what causes constipation versus, say like loose stools, usually there’s a ratio of some of the sulfuric acid producing bacteria versus… Man, I’m blanking on the other one. The funny thing about that is I tend to be on the loose side, but whenever I’ve had gut testing, I should in theory be constipated. So that stuff you have to take with a little bit of a grain of salt. The fact that this kind of came on all at once, it makes me wonder, was there a bacterial infection, a viral infection, some other kind of health situation that has changed? That kind of makes me think about the acid reflux also. I got to say whenever I hear acid reflux, like if you do a little bit of poking around on acid reflux and gluten acid reflux and insulin resistance, there’s a lot there. So I don’t know-

Nicki: He says his diet’s consistent, but he doesn’t say what it is that he’s actually eating. So we don’t know if he’s, is he paleo? Is he keto? Is he just kind of eating standard American diet but maybe trying to cut some of the sugar out? We just have no idea where his starting point is.

Robb: So this is where the call in show would’ve been helpful. And we’re probably not going to help Brian a ton here, but I guess look back 8 to 10 weeks previously and maybe look at your calendar even, as did you go to a party? Did you do something different?

Nicki: Even a really stressful event can cause constipation. I don’t know that it would go on for 8 to 10 weeks, but.

Robb: Well, it can change things and then it’s hard sometimes to get that back. And the more that I dig into the get, the more it just becomes this thing where you do the best you can to do some sort of differential diagnosis and then get a plan for what you’re going to do to try to address this stuff and then do it and see if it improves the outcomes. The interesting thing is, short of adding more fruit and fiber and things like that, that should speed things up. But going more keto or paleo usually kind of slows things down to some degree, depending on how people eat because they may eat a little bit less fiber, certainly going more like carnivore is going to worsen that side of things, even though it might improve the acid reflux.

Robb: If the acid reflux goes on for a while, I would definitely get it checked out. Like esophageal cancer from acid reflux is no joke and it is a real spectern, a real problem. And I would take that seriously if this continues for another 8 or 10 weeks. It sucks going to a standard GI doctor because, God bless them, but I feel like most of them just really, they’re operating at such a superficial level that it’s hard to… It’s just tough, but at least you could see, are you getting any type of damage to the esophagus? And although the constipation stinks, damage to your esophagus can kill you. So that’s a really important thing to address and look into. And this might be where you need to link up with someone like a Dr. Russo or Lily Nickels or someone like that, that is just good at going deep on this, but you might need to do kind of a conventional survey, figure out where you’re at, and then look at some of these more alternative interventions, alternative people.

Nicki: Sounds good. Our next question is from Alex on HCL supplementation. He says, “I have been treating some gut dysbiosis, which among other things includes HCL supplementation and I feel like the dosage recommendation protocols on HCL are really missing a big piece of the picture. I eat nearly carnivore and prefer two large meals a day. I’ve increased my HCL dosage up to 10 capsules, 650 milligrams each to beneficial effect and still don’t experience any discomfort. Based on almost every protocol out there, I’m way past the upper end of the dosage. It seems rational to me that the combination of 60 to 80 grams plus of protein meals and gut dysbiosis would necessarily call for such large dosages. Thoughts?”

Robb: Yeah, I would agree. And this is kind of interesting. This is maybe a case, Alex though, for maybe do two main meals and a snack, just breaking things up, it’s not bad from… We don’t want to eat all day long. That’s not great for the gut, just eating serially, it’s not great for the body. There have been some really interesting studies where they had animals that were caloric restricted and also they fed the animals like serially. They basically once an hour they were allowed to eat. And most of the benefits that you would usually see with caloric restriction, you guys know that I’ve got kind of a contrarian view of caloric restriction, but most of the benefits went away because there’s this low level systemic inflammation that happens each time we eat. It’s not the end of the world, but it also kind of makes the case that grazing, we are not grazers, humans are not grazers.

Robb: So there’s kind of that thing. But also the flip side of this is that unless you have a really robust digestive process, a huge meal can also negatively impact the digestive system. So there’s maybe a little bit of a break even in there. Two meals and a snack, making each one of the meals a little bit smaller, doesn’t really address the thing around the HCL supplementation other than, so long as you’re seeing beneficial clinical outcomes, I would say just full steam ahead and it may take 3, 4, 5 months and then all of a sudden you start noticing that heat in the epigastric region after eating a meal. And then you may end up dialing the HCL down, which is usually the protocol that people use to dial the betaine hydrochloride down when they’re using that to improve digestion.

Nicki: Okay. And next question is from David on Baobab as a staple food, “Hey Robb, I recently found out about Baobab fruit and decided to try it. It’s apparently native to Africa and a favorite staple food of the Hudsa. Anyway, it tastes good and seems to have helped a lot in fixing most, maybe all, of my gut issues. I’ve known about the paleo diet for 10 years or so now, but this is the first time I’ve ever heard about this fruit, for whatever reason. This seems like an easy win food-wise, given the amount of fiber and prebiotics it contains. It’s one of the most nutrient dense fruits one could eat, and I didn’t have too much trouble buying it on the internet at a reasonable price. And given how long baobab plants and trees live, this is about as paleo as it gets today. So what gives, why hasn’t the paleo and ancestral health community embraced baobab fruit? Is there some potential downside to eating this all the time that I have yet to discover? Will I die from some weird African parasite hiding in the pulp or something?”

Robb: I’ll put that last part at probably a very low likelihood. We had a friend of ours in someone I worked with Ursula, who’s from South Africa, and she actually sent me some baobab fruit. Gosh-

Nicki: This was a long time ago.

Robb: … I want to say it was like 2008, 2009. It was a long time ago. And I liked it, I enjoyed it. I think it’s one of those things that it could be, who knows, maybe this will be the next super food trend. It is pretty good stuff. It does have a lot of fermentable fiber in it, which for some people is great, for other people, not so wonderful. Thinking back about it, I actually did pretty well with it and I don’t always do well with, I don’t do well with onions and some of these FOD maps and whatnot. So it’s a good call out, David, it’s interesting stuff. When I was kind of noodling on my, what do I do when I grow up, the whole coconut farm thing and all that. I was looking at baobab fruit cultivation and where you can do it and all that type of stuff. Funny enough, they won’t grow particularly well in Montana. So that ship is kind of sailed for me. But it is cool. And if folks want to check it out, it is like mentioned pretty nutrient dense, has some interesting fermentable carbohydrates in it, so yeah.

Nicki: Awesome. And that is our three questions for this week. We kind of blew through this episode.

Robb: I was less chatty this time than last time.

Nicki: A little less chatty. Well, I do want to make a call out on the liver question from last week’s episode. Jack Rustin, who was one of our moderators inside the Healthy Rebellion, he commented after that episode was released, and this is something I didn’t know and I wanted to share it with everybody because… So the question was, why does liver taste so bad if it’s so good for us? If it’s so nutritionally dense and it’s so good for us, shouldn’t it taste better? And Jack’s comment was, “Regarding the liver question, liver can be unbelievably tasty, sweet, tender, and mild. If you take the liver out of a freshly slaughtered animal, it’s completely different to some old ox liver that’s sat on the meat counter for two days. Totally different. That’s why they eat it immediately.” So, makes perfect sense. In the past, people would’ve eaten it right away.

Robb: When we did the elk kill on I caveman, we ate the liver right there in the field. Now this can get you parasites under certain circumstances, so do keep that in mind. But yeah, that’s a great point.

Nicki: So most of the stuff that people are getting from the store is weeks old, and even if you’re getting a half of a cow or something and you’re getting the liver, I mean, then it’s frozen. I wonder if that also probably, I’m sure impacts it because it’s not fresh and right, that immediate… So anyway as I was-

Robb: As usual, Jack Rustin with the good answer. Yeah.

Nicki: Jack Rustin. Yeah. So I wanted to share that because I know that’s important.

Robb: Yeah, yeah.

Nicki: Okay folks, I think that’s a wrap for this week’s episode. Please check out our show sponsor if you need any electrolytes LMNT is the place to grab them. You can get them at drinklmnt.com/robb.

Robb: Take care everybody. Hopefully we’ll see you next week.

Nicki: We’ll see you all next week.

Robb: Bye.

Nicki: Great. Bye.

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News topic du jour:

Too Big, Too Fast: Inside The Rapid Rise and Shocking Fall of F45

Podcast Questions:

Liver Taste and Evolution [23:24]
Casi says
I’m a reader/listener since 2010, so thanks for the knowledge and laughs for many years, hope you keep going forever.
My question… liver seems to be one of the best foods for us. Nutritional density, vitamins, minerals, etc. A ‘superfood’? Anyhoo, I’ve been wondering why, if the above is true, liver tastes so fucking awful to so many people?? An amateur thinker like myself would think if it’s so great for us, we would have a propensity to desire the taste. But I’m looking to an expert thinker to show me what I’m missing.
Thanks again.

Long Covid [29:43]
Mike says:
Robb
Long time listener (aka since the Paleo Solution podcast days). I’m curious to hear your thoughts on Long Covid.
61 year old male, fairly healthy/fit/active low carb/Paleo 6’3, 210 lbs; 16% body fat, pre diabetic (fasting BCG in low 100’s/5.8 A1C)
Not aware of a previous Covid infection but it now appears that I may have Long Covid (aka Post Viral Syndrome)
Would appreciate a classic Robb Wolf stream of consciousness brain dump
General symptoms
Tiredness or fatigue that interferes with daily life

Symptoms that get worse after physical or mental effort (also known as “post-exertional malaise”)
Respiratory and heart symptoms
Cough
Chest pain
Fast-beating or pounding heart (also known as heart palpitations)
Neurological symptoms
Difficulty thinking or concentrating (sometimes referred to as “brain fog”)
Headache
Sleep problems
Dizziness when you stand up (lightheadedness)
Pins-and-needles feelings
Change in smell or taste
Depression or anxiety
Digestive symptoms
Diarrhea
Stomach pain
Other symptoms
Joint or muscle pain

Regards
Mike

Vertical farming… [38:30]
Susie says
Hi Robb and Nikki!
Last week you “debunked” lab meat.
This week… what are your thoughts on vertical farming?
I thought this video by Freethink to be excellent… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4SaSfnHK3I
Any reason you think this won’t work?
Looks legit to me as a layperson. But what do I know?
Any thoughts much appreciated!

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Transcript:

Download file here (PDF)

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 Plus. Hello everyone. Welcome to episode 124 of The Healthy Rebellion Radio. We are back on a wet and rainy Northwestern Montana day.

Robb: We are.

Nicki: We are. We’re getting a lot of rain actually. It’s quite good. All last night, constant rain, all day today and then I think we get a week or two at least of some nice sunshine.

Robb: But fall has fallen.

Nicki: Fall has fallen. Yeah.

Robb: And winter is coming.

Nicki: It is. We’re not quite sure what kind of a winter we’re going to get, but it’s coming nonetheless. We’ve had an interesting week. I had dogs as a kid. Our family dog passed away when I was 16, I think, and then I haven’t had a dog again since Dutch and Dutch is now six years old. And I learned something for the very first time in my entire life and that that dogs have anal glands that sometimes can be problematic. And how I know this is that we… so long story short, our dog has had a very stinky rear end for the last couple of days and the girls were like, “Mom,” they started calling him stinky butt, they gave him a bath still wasn’t resolving. And then we were noticing some excretion type stuff on the carpet and then that was like, “Okay, what is this? This is a problem.” Did some Googling. This was over a weekend, of course. So there’s no vet option at this point.

Robb: Everything always goes sideways on the weekend with the fucking animals.

Nicki: It always happens on a… Yes. Yes.

Robb: Yeah. Yeah.

Nicki: So learned that there is such a thing called an anal gland, that it basically is what puts scent on the dog’s poop so that dogs can know that it’s a particular dog’s-

Robb: “Oh, that’s Dutch.”

Nicki: … poop. Yep. But they can get irritated and rupture even. And so the symptoms are normally scooting around a lot, licking a lot. He was doing none of that. Yeah. Anyway, long story short had to take him to the vet on Monday where one had ruptured, the other one she expressed. So expressing anal glands is a thing. And we had people in the Rebellion, we did a live chat and one woman was sharing how during apparently groomers do this and maybe this is why I don’t know about it because we don’t get Dutch groomed. But yeah, apparently groomers do it and over COVID since groomers weren’t really doing… they weren’t open for business, like many other establishments, she had to learn how to do this on her own. Yeah. So anyway, we’re on the downhill slide of that. Antibiotics.

Robb: And what has been question around this whole thing?

Nicki: Yes, and I agree with you on this one. What is the upside of pet ownership?

Robb: No, no, no. That’s like the broad thing. Specific to this deal, what has been my question?

Nicki: I don’t remember.

Robb: How do I get my anal glands expresses?

Nicki: Oh, Jesus.

Robb: What’s a Wolff got to do get a little action like this. I mean, when they were like, “Oh yeah, our dog groomer does this all the time.” I’m like, “Well, what do I need to do to explore this?”

Nicki: Yeah. Anyway, if you have dogs and you didn’t know, my dad didn’t even know about it. After I was sharing what was going on with Dutch, he did… And he’s had dogs his whole life. So I don’t know. So apparently here’s what happened, because again, we’ve had Dutch for six years, nothing. So apparently it’s more common in small breeds and also in overweight dogs. And because we just got Griz, there’s been a lot more treats in the house and Dutch has gained and he doesn’t look it.

Robb: Cause he’s a big dog.

Nicki: I was shocked cause we took him to the vet and he stepped on the scale and it said 125 pounds. And I’m like, “There’s no way.” The most he’s ever weighed was 110 and then he’s been hovering around 105. Robb stepped on the scale. It looks like it was not calibrated properly.

Robb: It was reading five heavy.

Nicki: It was like five pounds over. So they ended up putting 120 in his chart, but that’s a 10 to 15 pound weight gain. And he’s a big dog so you don’t notice it. He doesn’t look fat, but it’s the extra treats that we’ve been using to train Griz and then of course Dutch is there and he can sit and spin and shake and all those things too. So he’s been getting lots of extra treats. And so now we’re on the…

Robb: The Dutch lean out program.

Nicki: The Dutch lean out program for sure. Yeah. Anyway, that’s a long, long tangent of what’s been going on with us this week. Otherwise, let’s see. The Rebel Reset is in full swing. We had our food call last Friday. This is the week of all things food. This coming Friday or the day this episode is released is the sleep call. So just full swing ahead with the Rebel Reset. Let’s see, anything else we want to talk about?

Robb: You have a prompt there, but I don’t know.

Nicki: I have a prompt here, but I didn’t know if you were game for it or not.

Robb: I can.

Nicki: You are? Okay.

Robb: I can.

Nicki: Robb, yesterday morning I called him Oscar.

Robb: The Grouch.

Nicki: The Grouch, because he was like just-

Robb: I was a complete dick yesterday.

Nicki: Being a shnark, like every little thing, just-

Robb: With kids, with everything. Yeah.

Nicki: It was not even like 9:30, we’d just barely getting the day going and just, I’m like, “Okay, Oscar.” And he’s like, “Ugh, you know what? That’s spot on.” And then he proceeded to share what was… where his mind was and why he was acting the way he was and I don’t know do you want to dig into that?

Robb: Do you want to share some of it or?

Nicki: Okay. Well, so you-

Robb: You’re staging it well.

Nicki: I’m staging it. Okay.

Robb: Yeah. Yeah.

Nicki: So he doesn’t spend a whole lot of time on social media, but he-

Robb: I’ve deleted the apps for a long time and I try to avoid going online at all costs on social media.

Nicki: Right. But he had posted something or LMNT had him look at something or there was something-

Robb: Well no, this time it was the COO of Beyond Meat bit a guy’s nose and I just couldn’t… He got into a fight after a football game and the guy just looks like a big cranky piece of shit anyway and so I couldn’t resist and it actually pulled me on, I downloaded the app for Instagram.

Nicki: Some people are saying he… Cause it’s like okay, you’re fighting, when do you go from punches to biting, deciding that it would be a better idea to go bite something on their face and people are like, “Oh, maybe he’s hungry for some real protein or something.” Anyway, so yeah, you went on for that and then you…

Robb: And normally I would post and delete immediately. And if anybody listening follows me on Instagram, you’ll notice that there’s just not a lot of activity because I find the whole thing pretty repulsive and I’m probably part of the repulsiveness at this point, but it’s just the shit that gets attention to me is so ridiculous that it’s literally nauseating and then I’m just kind of like, “I don’t really know…” And then half the time, if I feel like if I put something thoughtful down there, the responses are so again, ridiculous. Oftentimes there’s some very engaging, thoughtful stuff, but then you get enough knuckleheads and you’re just like, “Fuck, why did I even bother with this?” So normally I delete the app, but I didn’t. And I had to go do some heavy moving in the water closet and foolishly, foolishly looked into Instagram and one of the folks that I guess, ostensibly I’m friends with, we’ve been in this health space for quite some time, had a long post, lots of pictures, slides and lots of grievances against the world.

Robb: Some of it was… It’s fair to say that this person is very social justice oriented and I’m not opposed to that. What I oftentimes do get opposed to is the modality in which people think that they’re enacting social justice. I think a lot of what people do is infantile and it’s actually treatment or symptom chasing ironically, these people that are in this alternative medicine space and are knowledgeable about evolutionary biology. And I think a lot of these social ills, a lot of these challenges I personally, and not just personal opinion, I think I could build a credible case, that a lot of this stuff, the way that folks go about trying to address it is symptom chasing. But one of the things that this person mentioned was that, and again, there was probably five or 10 different pictures, you know little memes and there was a statement about the shortcomings of the world.

Robb: And one of them was that she had had a conversation with a prominent person in the paleo scene and that they had said that welfare recipients were just these grifters just sponging off of the system. And I’m pretty sure she was talking about me. And I’m certain that that is not what I said because I remember this conversation and what I did say, because I’ve been kind of noodling on a post about this because I was a welfare kid. I still have, and sometimes carry around, an actual food stamp. There was a time when you weren’t able to pull out a card that looked indistinguishable from a credit card or a debit card and buy things via welfare. You had things that were obviously part of the welfare system and there was a fair amount of shame and guilt associated with it. Maybe right, maybe wrong. I don’t know.

Robb: And again, I’m going to talk about this stuff in a post that I will eventually do, but I determined as a kid that I was never going to be a part of that system, by hook or by crook, I just wasn’t going to do it. And God bless my family, but a lot of my family has turned into a multi-generational trap with this stuff. And I’ve observed that welfare can be an amazing thing under the right circumstances, but it can turn into a multi-generational trap and there are people who abuse the system. And I think if you argue contrary to that, that’s ridiculous. But the deeper story there is that the path to hell is paved on good intentions and sometimes those good intentions can end up being more damaging than not. I saw welfare destroy the soul of my father, in particular, and again, that’s kind of a whole story that it really does need to be unpacked and told, and maybe it’s just my own cathartic thing.

Robb: But anyway, I posted to this person’s timeline. I’m like, “I hope you’re not talking about me, and if you are, my sentiment was that welfare can be both a safety net and a multi-generational trap.” And I left it at that. I haven’t gone back there, but goddamn if my mental space wasn’t completely consumed with this and it put me in a terrible mood, not present for my family, not present for myself, cranky irritable. And what I said to Nicki was just that I don’t know sometimes when… Some people would just say, “Well, it’s not worth it pushing back against that stuff.” And maybe it’s not. Certainly the cost was not worth whatever this outcome was, but there’s also been the reality that I’ve pushed back on a lot of different topics and maybe I’m right, maybe I’m wrong, but part of me learning to not be wrong is having other people push back and then there’s a dialogue and you can learn at least there was a time like that before cancel culture in which if you didn’t have a certain prescribed set of mores, beliefs, values, then you were basically shut down.

Robb: So I don’t know when it’s worth it to push back on that stuff. We’ve had people reach out to me and they’re like… I started thinking about things differently. I started reading about economics and it had the same kind of impact on my life as learning about evolutionary biology did and I had looked at the world in a really simplistic way. So in some regards I kind of feel like it’s a moral obligation to speak up and set some things right like that, but then at what personal cost? And so Nicki and I talked about that. And again, I don’t know if this is the least bit interesting to anybody listening, if anybody is still listening, but you know.

Nicki: Well, it’s certainly a struggle, right, because in order to push back or to share those thoughts, you have to participate in these types of platforms or you write it on sub stack, but then… I don’t know, then it’s the time that you need to find in order to write something that’s well reasoned and thought out and it takes time. So, it is sort of a quandary. How much good are you doing versus is it just sort peeing into the wind and what is that taking away from your in the moment? Does it mean that you don’t train or you don’t go to jujitsu or you don’t read?

Robb: Or I wasn’t present for my kids.

Nicki: You weren’t present for your kids because you’re noodling on something that’s sort of contentious. So I don’t know, we don’t have a good answer, it’s just sort of… It’s tricky. It’s complicated.

Robb: It’s complicated, very first world problem stuff, but it… I really… I guess part of the thing, the same person when we were having a discussion, and I think the discussion was around minimum wage, I was talking about some kind of big macroeconomic kind of things and she said, “Well, you just don’t care the way that I care.” And this person’s known me, they got their career start because of the work that I’ve done and I mean, they wouldn’t be doing what they’re doing and I’m grateful for what this person has done. She has taken the autoimmune concept and really dug in deep and pushed it forward and everything. But I was so taken aback by that. Just because I’m not ruled by emotion doesn’t mean that I don’t operate with some emotion.

Nicki: That you don’t have them.

Robb: And there’s also, what I would push back on that, is that the knee-jerk reaction, hyper-emotional response to everything, doesn’t leave a lot of room for understanding secondary, tertiary, quaternary ramifications to decisions and that things are complex and that there are oftentimes root cause issues that are different than what we’re actually looking around at. And it was amazing to me that this person would look at me and would look at the body of work that I’ve done and would assume that I don’t really care about helping people. That’s why I fucking do any of it. This is why I speak up about any of this stuff, because… And again, maybe I’m wrong about all of it, but my intent is to help people look at the world in a way so that we minimize suffering. Period. Like that’s it. And part of that is that I hope that by putting things out there when and where I’m wrong about things, I get some feedback and I can grow and iterate and all that stuff. But anyway, it’s interesting. Yeah.

Nicki: Yes. Happy to report though that after we had that little chat, Oscar went back in his trash can and I had my Robb again.

Robb: Not to be seen again. Yes.

Nicki: Yes. Okay. I think that’s all of our beginning stuff. What’s our news topic today?

Robb: So there was a piece that, funny enough, I did a short little blurb online about, it’s about the rise and fall of F45. This is one of these Johnny Come Lately, CrossFit attempts at CrossFit 2.0 it was a franchise model and whatnot and it’s a really well written article on a lot of different levels. One of them, again, is kind of the bigger macroeconomic picture, which is that people drunk with money and power who had no good sense, dumped ungodly amounts of money into this thing. They had an IPO and then the people running F45 did ridiculous stuff with the money. Eight figure, A-lister endorsement deals here and there and everywhere, all the while doing really nothing to help the people that are running their gyms.

Robb: And the piece that I did was basically talking about whether it’s F45 or even the current CrossFit leadership, I had some high hopes when Eric Roza bought the business from Greg Glassman that there would be some realization about that the only real asset and the only real important thing about CrossFit is the affiliates. And there’s not movement there, in my opinion. They have some folks that are starting to run some sort of a business seminar type thing. They’re very nice people, I have no gripes or grievances with them individually. They’ve never run a successful business. There are lots of people out there that have run successful gyms, multiple successful gyms and there’s different ways of doing it.

Robb: If there was a franchise model that the CrossFit Inc wanted to roll out there, I guess I’d be okay with that, but I would encourage him to pick five or eight different business modules and compete them all against one another and then have these entities show what the profitability is per square foot, show what the conversion rates are, phone call, email, walk in, there’s all these opportunities. People should be it heavily encouraged to own the building that they are in because that’s the only goddamn asset they’re going to have throughout this whole process. And there’s none of that going on. There’s been some noise here and there about it, but there’s none of that going on.

Nicki: And some affiliate owners are doing that independently, but that has never been the message coming from on high.

Robb: That message has been outright squashed under the great Glassman regime, black box summit and all the rest of that. And something that was interesting to me is a few folks, when I posted this, a few folks that run pretty good gyms are like, “Well, I’m doing great and I’m happy with what it is.” And it’s like, Well, that’s great for you, but there are people who have second mortgaged their house and they’ve done this and they’ve done that,” and maybe they were just idiots or maybe they were like all of us getting into this thing and they did all the same stupid mistakes and all of that… There’s going to be some amount of failure and attrition with any bank, anything, but there are some best practices. You don’t do a one week free, you don’t take anybody in off the street. You need a development program. You need personal training, you need this, you need that. There are just some non-negotiable features to it.

Robb: But anyway, if you care about CrossFit, if you care about group fitness, I would read this thing and it’s also a little bit of an insight into the unraveling of the current financial world, because the cheap, dumb money, and I wish I could use a different word, but I can’t, but this cheap, dumb money is gone and what we’re finding is that a ton of shit that was out there, a ton of businesses, and I think it’s going to range from Uber to all kinds of different tech darlings, we’re bullshit. They were predicated on complete bullshit to start off with because there was never a thought towards profitability because there’s been a decade or more of just money getting dumped into this stuff and it’s gone and there’s going to be some real heartache over this stuff.

Robb: So it’s kind of an insight into that and it’s definitely an insight into the failure of this amazing opportunity to be realized of developing this group fitness model into a legitimate professionalization that could be the interface between healthcare and wellness. And that is the huge failure here. The Reno risk assessment program where we saved the city 22 million dollars in a 33 to one return on investment, something like that could get plugged into this whole scene and you could partner these gyms with healthcare systems with, I would argue, medi shares over insurance, but you know, can dicker over that. There’s an enormous opportunity here. I’ve been trying to do it. I don’t even care if I’m involved with it at this point. I just want somebody to do it. But I think it’s interesting. I think it’s valuable. I think it’s important thing. I don’t think that ship has 100% sailed yet, but it’s pretty goddamn close.

Nicki: Does it say that I’ve been living under a rock that I have never heard of F45?

Robb: Never even heard of F45. Yeah. I mean, it was huge. They had a lot of affiliates and now they laid off something like 70% of their workforce and the franchises are closing fast.

Nicki: Wow. Wow. Okay. The Healthy Rebellion Radio is sponsored by our salty AF electrolyte company LMNT. And if you follow a low carb or ketogenic diet, electrolytes matter. If you’re active or have a physical job, electrolytes matter. And if you live in a hot or humid environment, electrolytes matter. And if you find yourself getting muscle cramps or feeling fatigue throughout the day, you guessed it, it might just be that you need more electrolytes, particularly sodium. And LMNT makes the tastiest, no sugar electrolytes on the market. All of the electrolytes you need with none of the crap you don’t. Can I say crap? I can say crap.

Robb: Dodgy stuff.

Nicki: Dodgy stuff.

Robb: Yep.

Nicki: You can get yours at drinkLMNT.com/robb. The value bundle, buy three boxes, get the fourth box free again. You can get that at drink L-M-N-T.com/R-O-B-B. And we have three questions for you today. The first one is from Cassie or Casey on liver taste and evolution, “I’m a reader slash listener since 2010. So thanks for the knowledge and laughs for many years, I hope you keep going forever. My question, liver seems to be one of the best foods for us, nutritional density, vitamins, minerals, et cetera, a super food? Any who, I’ve been wondering why if the above is true, liver tastes so fucking awful to so many people. An amateur thinker like myself would think if it’s so great for us, we would have a propensity to desire the taste. But I’m looking to an expert thinker to show me what I’m missing.”

Robb: I think this is a wonderful question and I have noodled on this as well. I’ve been… so I’m a fan of the carnivore diet. I don’t think it’s the first whistle stop folks should make in dietary change, but for a lot of people, it’s super helpful. I’ve been kind of chagrined watching the schism within the carnivore world where you’ve got some folks that are like, “Must have nose to tail,” and other people are basically like, “No, I’m just going to eat ribeyes.” And both groups seemingly doing pretty well. I’m sure that there are some folks that get ground to dust somewhere in there that carnivore isn’t the best option for them, but I’ve been really intrigued by just how well the folks that don’t incorporate any of this other stuff too.

Robb: And then I had Chris Kresser on the podcast two weeks ago, we talked about nutrient density and it was like liver was the tip top of the spear on that for so many different things, and then some shellfish and spleen and kidneys and all these fiddly bits. And I just don’t know. I know that in traditional cultures, everything from like menudo and pho, eating the stomach and some of the digestive stuff, some of the internal organs do have a super strong taste to them. Kidneys are way up there, I think they’re right behind liver. There is no way in God’s green earth that I’m eating that and not thinking that I’m basically doing a piss saute or something like that, so…

Nicki: Do we know if the taste is an issue for more modern people who have been raised with hyper-palatable foods versus hunter gatherers? Do hunter gathers find it to be not so abhorrent?

Robb: I’m not entirely sure on that. Again, most traditional, what is the… Spanish, anticuchos, you know words like heart, and this is more like chicken, but the heart and gizzard and all that stuff, which I think those are amazing. I think there might be something to that. I had liver and onions as a kid and so I do like liver. I like chicken liver better than beef liver. I like calf liver better than beef liver. So kind of smaller animals seem like just holy smokes that was a bunch of liver. It seems to be not as big of a deal. I don’t know, Cassie, it’s a really good question. I don’t have a great answer on this. It could be a acculturated thing and… because again, when you look around at other kind of non-westernized cultures or just more traditional cultures, usually organ meats do play a pretty important part, especially as the Weston A. Price Folks go crazy over this stuff.

Nicki: Well, and even Italian culture, they’ll make pâté and it’s a part of their tradition and culture and way of eating. So I think you could probably find some liver in almost all cultures would be my guess. I’m just wondering if we’ve just been so… our palates have been so distorted growing up with Lucky Charms and Slurpees and all the rest of it.

Robb: Yeah. I mean, because you have folks that eat such processed food that even eating a sweet potato and a steak, they’re kind like, “Ah, this is super bland.” So it could be that, that could be a thing maybe. But it is interesting. That raises a whole interesting thing too, though, from this evolutionary perspective, are we kind of able to epigenetically bypass sense of nutrition in favor of just sense of calories? So the bowl of Lucky Charms, “Oh my God, it tastes so good.”

Nicki: I think that’s… Isn’t that the whole… isn’t happening with everybody being, what do you call it? Overfed, but-

Robb: Undernourished.

Nicki: Undernourished. Yeah.

Robb: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I guess the thing there, maybe what Cassie is alluding to, okay, so you’re overfed undernourished, you would think that there would be some sort of biological imperative that when you smelled that liver cooking, you’re like, “Oh my God, that’s the thing I need.” And some people kind of report that. The vegan person, the vegetarian person that hasn’t added steak in 10 years and they smell the steak cooking they’re like, “I just had to have it,” and all that type of stuff. I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s interesting. I don’t have a good answer to it. And I like the thinking and there is… there’s a whole fascinating food science PhD thesis lurking in that trying to unpack where and when are organ meats really respected and enjoyed and what are the circumstances where that happens and then what happens culturally and food processing-wise that people started skewing that and going towards more bland flavors, even steak and whatnot? Yeah.

Nicki: Okay. We have a question from Mike on long COVID, “Robb, longtime listener since the paleo solution podcast days and I’m curious to hear your thoughts on long COVID. I’m a 61 year old male, fairly healthy, fit, active, low carb paleo six foot three, 210 pounds with 16% body fat, pre-diabetic, fasting in the low 100s with a 5.8 A1C. I’m not aware of a previous COVID infection, but it now appears that I may have long COVID, AKA post-viral syndrome. I would appreciate a classic Robb Wolf stream of consciousness brain dump.” So then he lists all of his general symptoms, which are fatigue that interferes with daily life, symptoms get worse after effort, chest pain, pounding heart, difficulty thinking, brain fog, sleep problems, dizziness, pins and needles, depression, it’s everything.

Robb: It’s on and on and on.

Nicki: Diarrhea, stomach pain, so it’s like the whole litany.

Robb: This is an interesting thing. So Beni Prasad who I really respect, I think he’s one of these folks that really understands the COVID situation well, both the vaccine, COVID itself, risk reward scenarios and whatnot. He’s skeptical that there’s even a thing that we would call long COVID, which I find interesting. And it’s been one of the things though that I’m kind of like, “Okay, what’s he seeing that I’m not seeing?” I’ve talked with and followed some of the stuff that Chris Masterjohn has talked about with this and then we’ve talked internally about this stuff. Early in COVID, I was kind of optimistic in a way because it seemed like there was an opportunity here that this post-infection syndrome thing, it seemed like people have been getting hammered by stuff like this for ages, like Epstein-Barr virus turning into chronic fatigue syndrome.

Robb: And my God, again, I’ve been dinking around with this stuff. I worked in a health food store in college for my undergrad back in ’95 through ’98 and chronic fatigue syndrome was the… Alternative medicine kind of acknowledged it and mainstream medicine was like, “It’s bullshit. People are making this up,” but you clearly had people were sick. My mom fit into this chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia thing, and then eventually over time, it’s like, “Well, okay, maybe it’s this and maybe it’s that and maybe there actually is something going on. Maybe the fact that you don’t have a will to live and can’t get out of bed and take care of yourself, maybe that’s real. It’s not just in your head,” whatever the fuck that means. I mean, what are you if not what is in your head?

Robb: So interestingly, I was kind of optimistic that maybe this COVID thing, people would start taking post-infection syndrome stuff serious, but then I’ve got to say it is interesting though some people that I respect, they’re kind of like, “I don’t know if this is even really a thing.” I think that there is something going on here. The two things that seem to be common, and it’s worth mentioning people who’ve had vaccines also report similar type of phenomena post vaccination in addition to things like cardiac issues and whatnot, which also some people with the viral infection experience, these cardiac issues, and that’s a whole other kettle of fish.

Robb: But the two things that seem to be going on here, either way seems to be systemic inflammatory response, insulin resistant and kind of a difficult time with mitochondrial function. And this is where I think something like a ketogenic diet and maybe some smart fasting, and if you guys have followed anything I talk about, I’m not a huge fan of fasting other than some very targeted situations, but this might be a case for doing a 72 hour fast and being ketogenic before going into a 72 hour fast and then eating a ketogenic diet after that, and maybe supplementing with all these mitochondrial cofactors, CoQ10, alpha lipoic acid, N-acetyl cysteine, silymarin milk thistle extract, like just shotgun all these things that help liver function, help mitochondrial function.

Robb: Because when you look at what’s going on systemic inflammation, difficulty managing blood glucose levels and maybe malfunctioning mitochondrial activity like fasting, some zone two cardio, those seem like great ways to maybe fix this. It’s worth… if this is primarily a mitochondria driven issue, it’s worth remembering that the mitochondria, the whole endosymbiotic theory of life is that we had some cells that a small outside cell got into it and that made a eukaryotic cell, which is all kind of modern complex life and that’s what it… mitochondria basically a type of bacteria that got inside of a cell and then somehow that got woven into life. One of these things that makes me 99% atheist and 1% agnostic, because it’s like, “Damn, that’s a lot of work to get done for just spontaneous activity,” but like bacteria, you can select mitochondria for better or worse functioning changing the environment that they’re in.

Robb: So providing a ketogenic diet, providing the stress of low level exercise, mainly oxidative in nature, low intensity, all of those things create a selection pressure that weeds out poorly performing mitochondria and tends to select for better performing mitochondria. So this seems like all the stuff that would go into fixing this situation and you would have to go very slow, very gradual. Mike is reporting even right now that he’s got some blood sugar issues as it is so that could have maybe exacerbated the problem. We have one good friend that has had a really significant challenges with COVID. Young guy and his sleep is shit. Everything else, he exercises, he eats really well, but the dude stays up till three in the morning, not infrequently and has a very disturbed circadian biology.

Robb: But I couldn’t figure out what was going on with this guy until I really dug in. I’m like, “Oh my God, his sleep is a train wreck.” And that ends up negatively impacting all these metabolic issues. So Mike, this is the stuff that I would think about with this and whether long haul syndrome is real or not, there’s clearly something going on with you, and there’s clearly something going on with a lot of people. And it’s kind of funny whether we’re sick or not, not everybody needs to be on a ketogenic diet, but all of the benefits that we get from even some intermittent ketosis, maybe some targeted fasting and certainly some consistent zone two cardio and goosing our good mitochondrial function, there is absolutely no downside to that.

Nicki: Cool. Absolutely. Seems like with that list of symptoms, you’d want to just try anything that you could and just see what outcome you get.

Robb: See what you get out of it. Yeah. And definitely that is not the time to go do CrossFit. That is not the time to dig a deep metabolic hole. The training you do, when you’re done, you should be invigorated and feel better. You shouldn’t be tired from it. If you are, you went too hard, you did too much. This is maybe the case for getting some sort of a heart rate monitoring system like Morpheus or a WHOOP or one of these things so that you can really get a sense of what a Maffetone heart rate pace is or something like that.

Nicki: Okay. Our final question this week is from Susie on vertical farming, “Hi Robb and Nicki, last week you debunked lab meat. This week, what are your thoughts on vertical farming? I thought this video by Freethink to be excellent,” and there’s a link here, “Any reason you think this won’t work? Looks legit to me as a layperson, but what do I know? Any thoughts? Much appreciated?”

Robb: So we have a link to this video in the show notes and I really encourage folks to check it out. It’s slick. This thing is really cool. They open it with basically making the case that this is the way that we’ll grow food on Mars. And I’ll buy that. On Mars, you have very limited options. There is no outdoor farming on Mars. On our planet though, we do still have options for outdoor farming and some of the upsides that they mentioned with this is that it’s super water efficient. It can, in theory, be potentially energy efficient. It uses, in theory, a fraction of the acreage that you would use for regular farming. They mention all the massive amount of land that is allocated to farm land.

Robb: And they, like so many people, make the case that we should just let all that stuff rewild and just grow all of our food in a factory farm kind of gig. Diana and I talked a lot about this. I don’t know if the film got much of it, but the book got quite a bit of it. Diana made the point that the food that has grown in these kind of vertically integrated hydroponic setups are almost exclusively what we would call crunchy water. It is greens. Occasionally you get some fruits like strawberries or something like that, but nobody is doing row crops.

Nicki: You’re not getting tubers like beets and…

Robb: You’re not getting tubers, you’re not getting corn, you’re not getting wheat. And so it’s kind of bullshit on that level. Nobody is producing calories with this. It’s just not happening. The startup costs for this operation of this thing is currently about a hundred million dollars to just get this one footprint going. And these folks are really verklempt over it, they’re like, “Oh, Moore’s law. The costs of all this stuff is going down.” And I have no doubt that some of this stuff is improving. One of the really interesting things is that one of the primary energy inputs that they need are the lights, the grow lights, and because of LEDs, there is this fascinating opportunity there where there’s the whole electromagnetic spectrum, a big swath of it hits us from the sun and from background radiation from the universe, but only narrow wedges of that spectrum are actually used by plants to grow.

Robb: And so something that folks have done is that they will make these LEDs so that they only produce the wavelength that the plants actually use. So the amount of energy that’s needed is dramatically less. And it’s definitely cool, it’s really neat. But the thing that I keep coming back to is we’re just not producing calories. It may be a really cool thing to do so that we’ve got some nutrient dense vegetables and salads and some places in far Northern climates do this sort of thing. And it’s worthwhile for them to just have some hot house tomatoes basically and stuff like that-

Nicki: And have some arugula in December.

Robb: Yeah. Yeah. And it’s not necessarily getting trucked around the planet and there might be some economies of scale around that. But it was so interesting where the guy that’s running this thing, he said something kind of offhand, he’s like “The species, the human race is going to die if we don’t fix everything, but we need to fix everything only if it’s economically viable.” And he’s like, “Why does it need to be economically viable? We just need to save the species.” And it’s kind of like, dude, nothing works unless the economics are there. I mean, it’s kind of classic… what’ll be interesting is like impossible foods, like beyond burger, how much has this guy and how much has this process benefited from the dumb money that has been dumped into equities and investment and speculating over the last 10 or 15 years. And where are these things going to be in three to five years? I think they’re going to be dead on arrival because you’re not actually producing calories.

Robb: And here’s two things that I do want to touch on really quickly. These folks always go kind of crazy about, “We could rewild all these areas and just turn things back to nature.” That sounds great on the one hand, but turning things back to nature. Okay, so are we going to have deer out there and elk and bear and this and that and that’s all good. That’s fine. Are we going to allow hunting to manage those populations? Are we going to reintroduce wolves like it’s been done in areas of Montana and elsewhere and deal with the kind of drama there, mountain land populations, people occasionally getting attacked and killed? There’s a lot of stuff that starts going into that and this. Diana’s much better educated on the rewilding topic and kind of the boondoggle of that, but what gets missed is that within the regenerative ag space and within the regenerative ag phenomena, there’s lots of room for wild animals and it’s managed, it’s not just left to do its own thing.

Robb: And this is where there’s a great book, 1491 and it talks about pre-Columbian contact and makes the case that the Amazon rainforest was effectively a food forest. There was nothing remotely natural about it. Humans had terraformed that area and turned it into a massive food forest and it improved the soil quality and the ubiquity and presence of food producing items. There was nothing natural about it. It went back into kind of a wild state post-initial contact when the population was cut by like 90% and the human population basically disappeared back into the woodwork. But there’s this kind of… this is again where people emotionalize things instead of actually understanding what the hell is going on. Rewilding is kind of an interesting concept at first blush, but then when you start asking thorning questions about it doesn’t look so good at next review. And then the other point that I would make is that if these indoor growing situations are so wonderful, why is it that many of the marijuana producers in the areas that have good climates to facilitate this, are opting to grow outdoors instead of indoors?

Robb: And it’s because the economics win. The sun is free. And once you, if you can button up water sources, which depending on your location, that could end up being a really compelling thing because these vertically integrated situations are really fascinating. They water the plants, the plants pull the water through their stem network, they respire it back into the air, the air is then scrubbed and condensed and that water is recollected and it’s like 99% efficient. It’s really cool. If you were on a spaceship or on Mars, that’s definitely what you would want to do, but it’s the difference between that and living on a still habitable biosphere is this huge Delta there. The economics and everything. I think there’s some really cool stuff there. I think there could be some great applications, but when this thing is put forward as a solution to global food issues, I think it is the boondoggliest of boondoggles.

Robb: And maybe I’ll be completely wrong about that, but we face the same problems where people talk about lab grown meat, “Well, where do you get all the substrate for it? How do you produce all the substrate to grow the meat, to get the amino acids, the minerals and all the rest of that to dump into the vat to be able to grow the meat?” And there’s just kind of a reality that an open biosphere that grows food naturally, even if it’s managed, is pretty goddamn efficient because we get all these other kind of benefits to it. So I think it’s cool stuff. It’s kind of a hat tip to the engineering and innovation of these folks. There may be some really targeted applications where I think it’s great and may have maybe a huge benefit.

Robb: If we ever do get off this planet and start setting up shop elsewhere, if we don’t have an intact biosphere to land on and we don’t have a manageable atmosphere, then we’re going to grow shit like this, for sure. But in lieu of that, there’s just a massive difference between taking advantage of the natural world, the sun, the non-equilibrium thermodynamics of trying to optimize the energy capture of a vibrant ecosystem on our planet that mitigates soil erosion and fosters ecosystem diversity outside versus trying to pull all this stuff indoors and then just act as if nature is just going to go and do its own thing.

Nicki: Good question, Susie.

Robb: Yeah.

Nicki: Okay. Any other thoughts before we wrap this episode?

Robb: Oh my God. I mean, I solved all the world’s problems in this thing, so yeah.

Nicki: All of them. All of them. Well, thank you guys for tuning in again to another episode of The Healthy Rebellion Radio. Be sure to check out our show’s sponsor and grab some electrolytes at drinkLMNT.com/robb, that’s drink L-M-N-T.com/-R-O-B-B and we hope you all have a fabulous weekend and we’ll see you next week.

Robb: Bye everybody.

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News topic du jour:

https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/eu-physics-denial-has-come-home-to

Podcast Questions:

1. LASIK [17:19]
Mark says:
Hi Robb and Nikki,
On last week’s episode Robb mentioned getting LASIK.
I don’t think I’ve heard this mentioned on the podcast before.
I’m short-sighted (-4.00), and have long been considering LASIK. But, something about it just makes me feel squeamish.
Robb, how much research into the procedure did you have to do before getting comfortable with it?
Are there any major thoughts/findings from your research worth sharing?
And, you being someone who’s active and does BJJ, did you consider LASEK (ek) over LASIK (ik), which I’ve read is often preferred by military personnel/police/boxers/the like (anything high impact).
From an article in The Times (UK):
“Unlike the most common form of laser eye surgery, Lasik, the operation used on military personnel, Lasek, does not involve slicing a flap in the cornea because there is a slim chance that a hard blow could dislodge the flap. Boxers, police officers and those with a very active lifestyle are also advised to opt for Lasek.”
How was your recovery – being able to get back into physical activity?
Any and all thoughts that might help me overcome my squeamishness would be much appreciated!
Mark

2. Returning to fitness after cancer [29:48]
Greg says:
Hey Robb and Nikki,
I have a friend who has just finished an extensive round of chemo treatments. He wants to know what would be the best way to pursue getting back in shape and getting his health in order post-chemo. Are there any specific things he should focus on in terms of diet and exercise? Thanks for everything you do.

3. Essential Tremors [32:25]
Sandy says:
I have heard you mention several times on Podcasts that you are finding some relief from your essential tremors with lions mane. I would love to do my own experiment to see if this would help me. What form of lions mane would you suggest? What dosage would you shoot for? How long did it take until you saw some relief? All of the drugs I have tried for my tremors gave me side effects that were worse than the tremors themselves. So I had given up. This is the first time in a long time I have felt hopeful. Thanks for what you do!

Sponsor:

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Proper hydration is more than just drinking water. You need electrolytes too! Check out The Healthy Rebellion Radio sponsor LMNT for grab-and-go electrolyte packets to keep you at your peak! They give you all the electrolytes want, none of the stuff you don’t. Click here to get your LMNT electrolytes

Transcript:

Download file here (PDF)

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+. Hello-

Robb: Welcome back, folks.

Nicki: … and good morning and good evening and good afternoon, wherever you may be, at whatever time you’re listening to this. It’s morning here. This is episode 123 of the Healthy Rebellion Radio, and yeah, good morning, Hubs.

Robb: We were having somewhat of a debate between the difference between a grunt and a belch. I guess there is a-

Nicki: There’s a very distinct difference.

Robb: Internally. Externally, maybe not as obvious.

Nicki: Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. Are you kidding? Like the guy at the gym the other day that was grunting like crazy, doing his bench, that’s a grunt. If he had been-

Robb: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was like-

Nicki: … belching there, it was-

Robb: … he was trying to father children on the bench, so yeah, it was a total scene.

Nicki: It really was, it was, it was. And I was close to him because I was doing some… What were we doing? Sarah had us doing some single-arm-

Robb: It was a straight arm lap, pull-down deal.

Nicki: It was a single-arm, pull-down thing. And he was on the bench right next to me, and I was feeling the air expelling from him as he’s grunting.

Robb: Dude, I was on the other side of the room, feeling the air.

Nicki: And I was like, “Okay, this is a bit much.” Yeah, good times. How many good gym moments are there every day? I mean, good, in the sarcastic way. Anyway, what else is new? Sagan got her… She got promoted to gray and black belt last week, so that was really awesome to watch.

Robb: And within SBG, it has become, I think, from very early on, a tradition to Ironman, basically, to roll with each one of the people in the class or whoever shows up. The adult ones can be pretty epic. He can get a hundred or more people to show up, and it can be a bit of a crucifixion. The kids-

Nicki: It’s a celebration, right? You’re worked really hard to reach the next level in your jujitsu journey, and so, the coaches-

Robb: And you can’t do it without your team.

Nicki: And you can’t do it without your team, so the coaches really… They like to focus on the celebration element. And so, she rolled with everyone in her class, and a really big class showed up that day, and Sagan and another classmate of hers also was promoted. And so, it was super fun to watch. She did-

Robb: And she really rallied. It was-

Nicki: … really, really well. It was one of those times when you watch your kid take a step up. She did things during that Ironman, that we’ve never seen her-

Robb: She had never done in-

Nicki: … do in-

Robb: … regular rolling. Yeah, yeah.

Nicki: Not just during regular classes, so it was like, who is this kid? Yeah, so it was pretty fun to see. I’m trying to think of anything else that’s going on, that we want to share with-

Robb: It’s smokey, but-

Nicki: … audience.

Robb: … cooling off here, if we want to talk about the weather briefly, because that’s what folks do when they lack for something better to talk about.

Nicki: We started the first part of our 30-day reset, so the seven-day carb test, which, as you know, if you’ve been listening for any length of time, is an optional week that we do leading up to the 30-day reset, where people can test their unique response to specific carbohydrates. And so, that’s going on this week in the rebellion. The actual 30 Day Rebel Reset begins this coming Monday, September 19th. So September 19th, at midnight, is the final day in time to sign up and participate in this reset that’s going round. So if you’re interested and you want to join us, just go to join.thehealthyrebellion.com.

Nicki: Jessica and Squatchy are gearing up for the food call, which happens Friday, so this Friday, the day that this episode releases, just to get everybody squared away on what’s going on next week. And if you join after Friday, you can certainly watch the video. All of the videos are recorded and posted, so I know it’s impossible to host any type of live thing via Zoom that works with everybody’s schedule, so we make that really easy for folks to watch when they can. I think that is everything up front. What do you have for us, for a news topic?

Robb: So a little something different, our good friend, the Bad Gato, he has a-

Nicki: Boriqua Gato.

Robb: Boriqua Gato. He has a piece, EU physics denial has come home to roost. And again, with this podcast, the goal isn’t to just constantly, incessantly, make everything a politicized topic, but we have some changes afoot in the world that, I’m of the opinion, are driven almost… The ability to drive them forward, to try to make them work in reality, is born of just wanton ignorance of the way the world works. Nobody loves confirmation bias quite like I do, and for ages, I have said that if you don’t have a basic steeping…

Robb: And again, this need not be, specifically, a math-based exposure to this material, although, even a cursory level of math exposure, like algebra, is really going to help you get your head around what this stuff means. But if you have a basic understanding of economics, basically, resource allocation, thermodynamics, the energy inputs and outputs of a system, and in evolution, the way that systems evolve over time, if you have a steeping in that, you at least have a chance to understand things at a pretty good level. Doesn’t mean you’ve got it all figured out.

Robb: And I would also posit that without a steeping in those topics, it is impossible to even ask a good question about this stuff. So when we look across the Atlantic at Europe, and usually, Europe is held up as this beacon of just nicer people and more educated people and-

Nicki: Sophisticated.

Robb: … smarter people… Very sophisticated.

Nicki: Culturally advanced.

Robb: Bougie. And these folks have been shitting the bed for at least the last decade in insistence upon renewable energy. And I am a big fan of employing renewables where they make sense, but one of the primary renewables being used in Europe at this point is wood harvested in North America. And we’ve talked a little bit about this on other shows, and it’s just bullshit that this ticks a box called renewable because wood can be regrown, like the-

Nicki: Well, the main issue also is that you said it’s harvested in North America, so then it’s being shipped via-

Robb: It gets harvested, then shipped across the world. And nobody does any accounting on the energy that goes into doing that, and folks seem to be doing their level… And then, people will say, “Well, what about solar?” Well, solar Is great under certain circumstances, and if folks haven’t been to Europe, a lot of Europe is very, very cloudy for remarkable periods of the year.

Nicki: Denmark, anyone?

Robb: Germany. I think that in Mediterranean climates, I think being used as a means of actually not heating a home as much, so like rooftop solar collectors and whatnot, but there’s still massive issues with batteries and the rare earth minerals that have to be extracted to get the materials to make solar panels, and the limited life cycles, and on and on and on.

Nicki: Is wood being used because of the claim of renewable, or-

Robb: That’s it.

Nicki: … is it-

Robb: Nope, that is it.

Nicki: Really?

Robb: That is it, that is it.

Nicki: Because, gosh, in the ’90s, the claim that wood was renewable was…

Robb: Again, this is-

Nicki: During the whole spotted owl craze and whatnot, that was the claim that people were dismissing, no, it doesn’t matter, it’s-

Robb: Well, and this is some of-

Nicki: … damaging to the environment.

Robb: … the irony, is that in the United States, the EPA regulations around wood-burning stoves… Basically, in Europe, they have made lax the wood-burning stove regulations to allow for more of this because it ticks the box of renewable.

Nicki: It’s mainly because they don’t want to be using… well, they have no access, or limited access to gas, and-

Robb: Their access-

Nicki: … they don’t want to use coal.

Robb: … to gas has been curtailed. They are wanting to shift away from coal. Coal is still a lesser carbon input than wood is in the short run because it just produces more energy per unit of carbon release. Now, you-

Nicki: And especially when you account for the fact that the wood is being shipped across the world versus harvested on their own continent.

Robb: And then, everybody seems to be doing their level best to just ignore nuclear energy, including small modular reactors and thorium, which thorium is just this side note. If you like solar and you don’t like thorium, you’re an idiot, and here’s the reason why. This is why. It behooves you to educate yourself. And I try not to be a dick with this stuff, but I mean, people are going to die over this. People are going to freeze to death over this stuff. But in the process of extracting the rare earth minerals that are necessary for solar panels, a massive amount of thorium is extracted. And even within the whole nuclear energy scene as we’ve experienced it over, say, the last 80 years, 50 years, plutonium is more rare, I believe, in the Earth’s crust than gold, and uranium. They’re remarkably rare. They’re right in the ballpark there.

Robb: Thorium is three orders of magnitude more common than uranium or plutonium. There’s something like 5,000 years of energy worth of thorium that is stored in the Nevada desert because of other mineral processing, that this stuff gets super funded, and stuck into a barrel, and then stuck underground. Fuck, this thing has gone way longer than what I really intended on this, but the thing is, is, as important as it is for all of us to be healthy, and to eat well, and to sleep well, and have community, and take care of our local communities and whatnot, we really need a grassroots effort of people who are educated about the realities of energy. And that energy then feeds into food systems, and the food systems start pushing back against globalization of the food systems and row-crop-centric processes that destroy top soil, that destroy sovereignty, that don’t allow for nutrient-dense foods, and it just-

Nicki: On and on and on.

Robb: … dovetails, and on and on and on. The real central crux to all of that is energy. And we have a chance within the next 30 years to lift all of humanity out of abject poverty, and that’s only going to happen if we have adequate energy. There are folks out there that are like, “No, we need to go backwards. People need to just learn how to live with less.” I do not agree with that. When people run different numbers one way or the other, I think that that is a complete misnomer. And also, when we look back at history, whenever… I’ll concede one thing, if that is true, then we’re super screwed, because whenever civilizations have hit an energy bottleneck in the past, the civilization collapses in an absolutely epic fashion. So one, I don’t think that that’s true, and to the degree it is true, it’s being driven towards truth because people are making really poor decisions around energy.

Robb: Certainly, just being energy efficient is a smart move, and there’s all kinds of cool things that you can do around that. But then, this topic of, should we be burning wood versus reinvesting in smart nuclear energy, and if you’re a fan of solar, you need to understand some basic concepts, like base load and storage and the limitations of batteries, from stem to stern. How the fuck are batteries made? What are the materials that go into it? How toxic and dirty are they to be-

Nicki: Are they-

Robb: … made, stored, decommissioned? What is their life cycle? If you are not a fan of nuclear energy, of all the varieties, can you explain the difference between, say, a three-mile island reactor, which is a gen-one reactor, thorium reactors, as they are proposed, small, modular gen-four, gen-five reactors, which can actually use the unused or the un-fizzed material from gen-one reactors as input for this stuff? If you can’t explain any of that stuff, you’ve got no goddamn business having an opinion on it, but we need everybody to have an opinion on it because this thing’s going in an absolutely clusterfuck-ish direction.

Robb: So I really encourage people to read this article. It’s phenomenal in the way that it breaks down this energy, story, and people. Again, if you don’t like math, if you don’t like science a ton, okay, I get it, but for the love of God, invest some time and energy into getting up to speed on what this stuff means. And don’t just take my word for it. I mean, I just have a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from a state school best known for being Playboy’s top-

Nicki: Party school in America.

Robb: … party school 1987, so what the fuck do I know? But unfortunately, I’m way better educated on this than the vast majority of people are, and we really need a groundswell of folks to know about this, care about this, and make it important, because it will affect every angle of your life, your children’s life, future generations’ lives. There’s this just full court press on poor energy policy, poor food policy, poor medical policies, and we really do need to be armed with credible information to be able to push back against it. And again, that was way longer than I expected. Apologies. But it’s important stuff.

Nicki: And it’s important stuff. All right, the Healthy Rebellion Radio, sponsored by our salty AF electrolyte company, LMNT. If you’re feeling low energy, don’t reach for another cup of coffee or other caffeinated beverage that’s probably loaded with a bunch of other stuff, including lots of sugar. You might just need some electrolytes. LMNT has a flavor for everyone, citrus salt, raspberry, orange, watermelon salt, and don’t forget, mango chili and lemon habanero if you like the little bit of extra kick. The cool weather is coming, which is when I move to my lemon habanero hot water. That’s my favorite, so I’m looking forward to that. It’s starting to be brisk here in the mornings. Fall, I think, is officially here. But anyway, you can grab your LMNT-

Robb: So smokey, we can’t see it.

Nicki: We feel it, we feel it. You can grab your LMNT at drinklmnt.com/robb. That’s drinklmnt.com/robb. And we have three questions for you today, the first one, on the topic of LASIK, from Mark. Hi, Robb and Nicki. On last week’s episode, Robb mentioned getting LASIK. I don’t think I’ve heard this mentioned on the podcast before. I’m shortsighted. How do you say that, minus four?

Robb: Yeah, the diopters, yeah, yeah.

Nicki: Okay, I’m not familiar with eye readings.

Robb: I remember, vaguely, what it means, yeah.

Nicki: Okay. I’m shortsighted and have long been considering LASIK, and he’s writing LASIK with L-A-S-I-K, but something about it just makes me feel squeamish. Robb, how much research into the procedure did you do before getting comfortable with it? Are there any major thoughts or findings from your research worth sharing? And you being someone who’s active and does Brazilian jujitsu, did you consider LASEK, L-A-S-E-K, over the I-K version, and I didn’t even know there were two versions of LASIK, which I’ve read is often preferred by military personnel, police, boxers, and the like, anything with high impact.

Nicki: And then, he cites an article from the UK Times, quote, unlike the most common form of laser eye surgery, LASIK, with IK, the operation used on military personnel, LASEK, E-K, does not involve slicing a flap in the cornea because there’s a slim chance that a hard blow could dislodge the flap. Boxers, police officers, and those with a very active lifestyle are also advised to opt for LASEK, which is the E-K ending. Then, Mark says, how is your recovery, being able to get back into physical activity? Any and all thoughts that might help me overcome my squeamishness would be much appreciated.

Robb: So Mark, in all honesty, when I decided to do this, and this was-

Nicki: This was 2008, I believe, because-

Robb: Yeah, close to 15 years ago.

Nicki: … we went to Nicaragua at the end of… Did we go to Nicaragua in 2007 or 2008? Was that before or after we-

Robb: Maybe ’07. Let’s just say ’07-

Nicki: … got married?

Robb: … for the-

Nicki: Okay, I can’t remember. We went to Nicaragua, and Robb had glasses, and so I remember snorkeling, things were blurry. This was the first time we’d gone snorkeling together, and he couldn’t see very much under the water, which was awful. He’s wanting to spear fish and stuff, and it’s like, everything under the water is blurry.

Robb: Yeah, and at the time, LASEK was not on my radar. I don’t know how new that procedure is, but we started poking around, and there was a guy… So we were living in Chico at the time, and there was a guy down in the Sacramento area who had three clinics. He had one in Sacramento, one in New Mexico, and one… maybe Los Angeles, or something like that.

Robb: And I’ll throw on my, or jump up on top of my libertarian soapbox. This is one of these examples, and I use LASIK as an example of how things get cheaper and better over time, nobody accepts insurance for this stuff. It’s a hundred percent cash and carry. It’s insanely competitive, the advertising that goes into it and the success rates and all that type of stuff. There’s a Moore’s Law deal to it. It’s half as expensive as what it was in the past when you inflation adjust, tends to get better and better and better. And so, we found this guy. He was topnotch. I really wasn’t looking for a bargain basement person, but it was still far less expensive than what-

Nicki: He had done-

Robb: … it had been previously.

Nicki: … LASIK for several people on the Sacramento Kings basketball team, and so that was also compelling.

Robb: Pretty compelling, yeah. So we gave him a shot, and then when I decided to do it, I ceased researching the topic. And Nicki, before going in and getting this thing done, she started asking me all these questions. I’m like, “I don’t want to talk about any of this. I’m just going to do it.” And-

Nicki: I think if you understand a lot, then it is easy-

Robb: It is far more-

Nicki: … to get really squeamish.

Robb: Yeah, so I just committed to it. I am chagrined. They give you some Valium before. They gave me five milligrams. There was this tiny little Asian woman who came up, and she was like, “How much Valium can I get?” And they’re like, “We can give you up to 15 milligrams,” and I’m like, “Oh, God, what about me?” But it was too late for then. They gave me a little-

Nicki: Teddy bear.

Robb: … stuffed animal, teddy bear, to hold onto while they did it, and they’re just like, “Just relax.” And it-

Nicki: It took five minutes, or-

Robb: Took five minutes.

Nicki: … 10, I don’t know. It was really, really quick.

Robb: I sat up and, immediately, could see better than what I had ever been able to see in my life, absent glasses, a lot of fogginess immediately afterwards. Definitely some non-trivial discomfort immediately afterwards, but I think it was just-

Nicki: We went back to our hotel-

Robb: … over-the-counter-

Nicki: … room, and-

Robb: … pain meds. Yeah.