Paul Saladino Added Rice & Potatoes to His Diet (and this happened!?)

All right, Paul Salino. I, I had to bring you back on, man, because you're, you're irritating people with like, flip-flopping on things and stuff like that. And now, like, I saw recently, you, you added rice into your diet. Like, people, people are like, "Paul, what's next, man?" People that don't actually look into the content, they just see the, the headlines here, like, "What's next, Paul? You going to, you going to start doing Snickers too?" Like, what's, what was this whole rice thing about? Like, what happened there?

You know, I, I used to be named Carnivore MD on social media, and I changed it to Paul Saladino MD. I don't like to be dogmatic. I like to experiment with things, and I was curious. And I've been incorporating more carbohydrates in my diet recently. We talked about that the last time I was on the podcast, right? And I think that I'm surfing two to three hours a day in Costa Rica. I have probably two to 350 grams of carbohydrates a day in my diet, and that's all coming from fruit, fruit juice, and honey, maple syrup. Although it's hard to get good maple syrup in Costa Rica. So I thought, let's just experiment. How do I feel with rice? And I actually did white potatoes too, Thomas. So you get a bonus here. I did rice and white potatoes. Let's just see. You know, I've talked about grains in the past, and I, I did some research on rice, which we can talk about. But let me see how I feel with rice.

There's a lot of talk about fructose. There's a lot of fructose hating in the world. I've done podcasts kind of debunking a lot of that. I think if you look at the research, fructose and sugar in whole food form from fruit, honey, maple syrup, is not, not harmful for humans at all. There's great research on fruit juice. There's research on orange juice, watermelon juice, grape juice, pomegranate juice, cherry juice. They're all beneficial for humans, whether it's endothelial function, whether it's actually watermelon juice given to someone when they do an oral glucose tolerance test improves glucose sensitivity. So you can give someone processed sugar, you give watermelon juice, and it improves glucose sensitivity. So fruit and fruit juice, I don't fear it. I think people fearing that just don't understand the literature. But I thought, let's experiment with rice. Maybe rice will make me feel better. I want to feel good, right? That's the whole reason I did carnivore in the first place. I was eating a paleo diet that was organic five and a half years ago. I had eczema, and it wasn't getting better. I want to feel better. I'm not trying to be dogmatic about this. When I did carnivore, I thought it was really interesting that my eczema got better. And we see so many people now who improve autoimmune conditions when they cut out vegetables. I don't think everybody needs to do this, and I've often said, if you're thriving, don't change a thing. But how interesting that some people are uniquely sensitive, myself included, to foods that we think about as healthy foods. We'll probably talk about that a lot today. Foods that we think of as healthy foods that may be problematic for some people, or maybe aren't as great as we think they are.

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So I cut out vegetables, I felt better. In carnivore, felt even better when I reincorporated carbs. I want to stay, you know, I want to stay cutting edge. Like, what if I incorporate rice and I feel amazing? But I didn't just incorporate rice. I knew off the bat that brown rice had more arsenic, a heavy metal, than white rice. And when I went down the rabbit hole, I found a lot more about arsenic in brown and white rice and heavy metals in a lot of other foods. So I started with white rice. I started with organic white rice. And I got the white rice, and I would rinse it seven times, you know, in the sink. I'm just rinsing the heck out of it. And then I would soak it overnight in warm water. Cuz I live in Costa Rica, so it's always in the 70s outside. And I put apple cider vinegar in there. And then I would cook it in the pressure cooker. And I still had like brain fog. I still didn't feel great on rice.

And then I thought, okay, uh, there's actually a significant amount of arsenic even in white rice. What we look at the literature when we see is about 1.5 times as much arsenic in brown rice as there is in white rice. And there is some evidence that you can mitigate it somehow. It's called parboiling, where you take the rice and it's dry, you've hopefully washed it, you got to rinse off the dust off the rice, you rinse off kind of like the, the rice dust when you get the rice. And then you can parboil it. You can put it in a bunch of water and then you bring it to a boil, then you dump that water out, hopefully with some of the heavy metals. And then you cook the rice. That can decrease the arsenic. But even when I did that, decrease the arsenic maybe 30%. Still a good amount of arsenic in the rice. And we can talk about how much. Even when I did that, I still didn't feel good on rice. So that's my experiment. You know, and, and people have said to me, would you eat vegetables again? And the answer is, yeah, I would eat vegetables again. I just don't feel good when I eat them. I'm not trying to be dogmatic, and I'm trying to always evolve the message and learn from these things. But what I find is that when I reincorporate these things in my diet, I don't feel as good. But I, I'm always looking for the next level, right? What if, what if mango and watermelon juice and orange juice plus rice is even better for surfing or skating, which are my main forms of exercise in Costa Rica, than my current diet, which is basically fruit juice, honey, raw milk for the carbohydrates, and then the, the meat and the organs? So that was where it. And I had to take the rice out. I just didn't feel good with it.

And then I tried white potatoes again, not wanting to be dogmatic. I know there's some oxalates in white potatoes, and some people are sensitive. I peel the white potatoes and I pressure cook them, trying to decrease any of the lectins, any of these carbohydrate-binding proteins, and white potatoes that could trigger any autoimmune conditions because I have a history of this atopic conditions, these eczema, allergies. And again, with white potatoes, I didn't feel great. It made me feel almost too full because I know that for me, in Costa Rica, I need to get calories in. I'm not trying to lose weight, I'm trying to gain weight. I'm trying to keep my weight. Two and a half hours of of exercise in the water is just, I'm trying to gain weight or keep my weight where it is in Costa Rica. So when I eat white potatoes and they just make me feel full, and I don't really want to eat dinner, it's, it's like this doesn't feel right to me. So they didn't, they didn't, they didn't make me feel as good. So I'm just trying to experiment with these things and figure out what works for me. I think this is what everyone should do, but understand that what they're experimenting with always has benefits, potential benefits, and potential cost.

Yeah, for sure, man. How long were you trying out the rice? How long did you do that for?

Oh, man. I, I did it like three or four occasions for three or four days each time. And after three or four days of eating it every day and feeling like, this just isn't feeling good, I'm like, well, stop. And then I try it again.

Yeah, because it, I mean, I look at rice. It's good. You know, I, I learned recently that rice has some of these morphine-like compounds in it. Um, you know, milk has some, wheat has some. But when I eat rice, it's, it's like, get a little bit. Oh, that's kind of, that's good. But it just doesn't make me feel good.

Do you think that, I mean, has rice always been problematic? Or do you think this is something where it's, uh, the actual genetics of rice have changed? Are there things, I mean, do you think because obviously there's civilizations that have been eating it for, you know, thousands of years, and some civilizations that live extremely long lives eating it, do you think there's like, what's the situation there? Is rice just not the same as it was 100 years ago?

Who knows, man. I mean, I'm getting organic rice. But are there contaminants? Is, so this is the thing about plant foods that I've learned recently, and animal foods. Just like if you feed a cow grains versus feeding a cow grass, the quality of that cow's meat is going to be different. If you feed a cow grass from the time it's, you know, weaned from nursing to the time that it's becoming meat, it's going to have, uh, different nutrients, you know, more glutathione, different things in its meat. And it's going to have less pesticides and less mold toxins that accumulate in the grains that grain-fed cattle are fed. Plants grown in different soils have different nutrients and can have different amounts of heavy metals. There are some plants that hyperaccumulate different heavy metals. Rice accumulates 10 times more arsenic than other plants on average. So, rant, rice, rant. So rice is a hyperaccumulator of arsenic. I want to talk about some other plants too, because lettuce hyperaccumulates lead, spinach hyperaccumulates cadmium and lead, and arsenic, all the heavy metals. So a lot of the foods we think of as healthy hyperaccumulate heavy metals when they're grown in soil that has heavy metals in it. So it's tricky for people. And again, it's not that I think no one should eat these foods ever. It's just if you have heavy metal toxicity, and we can talk about what that might look like or issues people might have, it's important to know that these might be foods in your diet that you think are healthy that are causing problems.

So rice is a hyperaccumulator of arsenic. And either this rice that I'm getting that's organic has more arsenic, or I'm just more sensitive to it. It could also be a lectin in the rice that I'm sensitive to. I could be more sensitive to mold toxins. Rice, really, all of the grains, whether it's oatmeal or oats, right, or wheat, or rice, or buckwheat, they all have more mold toxins than foods that are not dried and stored in warehouses. So you look at rice, it has ochratoxin, it has aflatoxin. Maybe I'm uniquely sensitive to mold toxins. And the other thing is that I'm changing one thing about my diet, which I think is a powerful intervention. I'm eating everything else the same. I still do my raw milk with honey when I get up in the morning. I still eat grass-fed burger patty, a little bit of heart, fruit, and fruit juice when I get back from surf. It's this, everything else in my diet is exactly the same. I'm so regimented in Costa Rica with my life that I've got it dialed. And so I do one intervention, and that gives me more confidence that I'm seeing something in my life, in the quality of my life, that's actually related to the rice. And so, who knows? Maybe people are not as sensitive as I am to things. And I think there's a lot of people that can eat rice and be fine. Check your arsenic levels, right? Um, but yeah, it's, it's just my experiment. I hope is valuable for other people.

So if people want to follow me and just have a prescription for how to live, that's not me, right? If people are interested in my content or what I'm doing with my dietary experimentations, hopefully they know my history and where I've come from. And I, and I want to be, I want to be open and honest about it. I'm going to show my blood work. I've showed it many times. I got blood work on this trip to LA. And I just want people to know, like, hey, this is my personal experience. There's some people in the health space who say the only valid thing is a randomized control trial. And I just disagree with that strongly. I think that clinical experience, personal experience, the summation of multiple people's anecdotes is valuable. I'm not saying everyone needs to stop eating rice. I'm just saying it didn't work for me. So if you get brain fog sometimes and you want to try cutting out rice, maybe that's helpful. That's the whole idea with a carnivore diet or an animal-based diet. I don't think everybody needs to stop eating vegetables. But man, I've met and talked to and emailed with and seen in the comments now thousands, if not tens of thousands of people, who can improve their life in some way, whether it's autoimmune condition, libido, sleep, um, fatigue, joint pain, when they cut out some vegetables. That's cool. Do we need an RCT to prove that? No, because there's tens of thousands of people who are having valuable, unique human experiences. And we don't say the USDA guidelines should say vegetables are bad. No, we say this works for some people. Everyone has different sensitivities.

And I've noticed your, your reach has improved significantly since you've softened your stance on some.

Yeah, we learn, right? Yeah. Because I mean, think you've, I think you've seen, or at least, and I've seen at least, you know, from the peanut gallery here, that as you've been less dogmatic and sort of softened your stance, even soften your stance even on vegetables, not in your particular take on vegetables, but you're saying, hey, like, if they work for you, if you're thriving, great. You know, I think that's allowed people to open their minds and open their ears a little bit more to understanding that, hey, this anecdotal experience of this one person, and oh, by the way, the anecdotal experience of these 30 people I'm seeing in the comments underneath here, hey, maybe it's worth a shot, or maybe it's worth experimenting myself. You know, maybe rice doesn't bother you, but maybe something else does.

I'm curious, uh, with the old thing, how are you with with histamines? Because that's the first thing that I think about is like, do you have issues with? Because, you know, rice isn't high in histamine specifically, but it is historically known to have a high amount of mold with that that tends to affect the same mast cells that like a histamine issue would bring up. So like, cats, mold, avocados, tomatoes, like, how are you with the foods that are high in histamines?

I don't seem to have problems. I mean, I've eaten fermented foods, um, without problems.

That's true. Yeah. I do a lot of fermented foods. I don't seem to be that sensitive to histamines. Histamine sensitivity is an interesting thing. My suspicion, which is just my clinical suspicion, is that histamine sensitivity for a lot of people begins and ends in the gut, and it's kind of an indicator that there's dysbiosis, the wrong type of bacteria. It's an underlying gut issue.

Yeah, and like so many things, limitation of histamine-containing foods can help while you address the gut issue.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. I mean, what is it, what is it, DAO is the, uh, diamine oxidase in the gut, right? So yes. Yeah. And copper-dependent enzyme. Yeah. Some people find benefits from supplementing with DAO. Kidney has a lot of DAO. Thymus, actually, I believe, has a significant amount of DAO. So some certain organs can help with histamine sensitivity while people are addressing underlying gut issues.

So would you have said, if you were comparing, uh, that the white rice to the white potatoes, was one a worse impact than the other? It was just like apples and oranges, right?

I didn't feel, I didn't feel good on either of them. Yeah. And pretty immediate. Like, yeah, pretty immediate. Pretty immediate. And I just, I couldn't believe it with rice. I just thought, no, maybe I'm just having an off day. But it was consistent. And then I get rid of it, and I just feel more clear. So that's a valuable, that's just a valuable data point. And, you know, some people will say, data is better than feelings. But like, look, an anecdote, that's data. You know, that's a case study. That's an N of one that I'm going to share. That's data.

Yeah. What, what is our, what is our concept of data? I think that there's, I think this myopic perspective that if there's not a double-blind randomized control, you know, with a placebo, you can't talk about it. That's, that's silly.

Yeah, well, it's, it goes too far the other direction, right? Then myopic, you're myopic this way if you're not willing to look at the literature. And you're myopic this way if you'll only willing to look at the literature. Evidence limited, right? Right. So it's, and a lot of things that can be scary when you're looking at evidence is like, there's those are often times a lagging KPI. Like, it's just, they're real things, and we should definitely take it to heart. But a lot of times that's five years too late, right? So you have to be able to be your own advocate and test for yourself.

But speaking of like, okay, so rice making you feel crummy, whatever. I, I had a question last time that I meant to ask, and that was, I mean, have you ever encountered any particular fruits that you don't feel good when you eat?

I'm trying to think. Um, I was telling you before we came into the podcast that this is just completely my anecdotal experience. Maybe eating dates in the past worsened like low back stiffness for me. I generally have, have lots of flexibility in my back. People have seen me move. Sometimes we put content on the stories or something in my movement. I love deep squatting, I like mobility stuff. So when my low back gets tight, and I feel it when I'm surfing, I like being able to put my butt as close to the ground in a deep squat that I possibly can. So maybe dates one time triggered some stiffness in my back, but I haven't repeated it. So I don't eat a lot of dates. But I think people are great with them. Most of the fruits I eat don't bother me. I'm pretty good with most all the fruit. Although I will say that mentioned heavy metals a little earlier, not really your question, but raisins can have significant levels of heavy metals, and some of the dried fruits can have significant levels of mold toxins. I don't do dried fruits. I get everything fresh in Costa Rica and I make juice out of it or eat it.

Have you heard of FGF21 before?

No.

Okay, so FGF21. It's a, it's a, I think it's a receptor protein. But it's, it's interesting. There's, I just did a video on it. And they're looking at sucrose, right? Like sucrose actually drives up this FGF21, which in a healthy person, when FGF21 is elevated, it elevates, essentially elevates in the brain, and it essentially signals additional blood flow to, I can't remember which region of the brain. But basically, it creates the self-governing thing where a healthy person will not overeat sugar. And there's actually this kind of increase in metabolic effect. And in rodents, of course, where brown fat is much more prevalent, like you can see the impact on brown fat in rodents much more than you can in humans, obviously. But in in rodents, when FGF21 is elevated, it's like the amount of active brown fat is significantly higher. My point in saying this, in obese people or overweight people, didn't happen. There was like a feedback loop where if they were to eat sugar, sure, it didn't, it did increase FGF21, but it didn't have the same impact. It actually did not increase blood flow to the specific region of the brain that would allow them to sort of control themselves. So in essence, like a healthy, it seems as though a healthy metabolically functioning person can eat quite a bit of sugar and self-regulate. Like their body will say, no, we're done, or it's time to move. Like this sugar, you know, you've ingested the sugar. Whereas someone that's maybe metabolically unhealthy is not going to be in the same situation. They might just continue to overeat. Curious your take on that, because like, with you adding three, 400, sometimes even more grams of carbohydrates per day, do you think that someone needs to get themselves on track before they could ever do that? Like, you spent years doing a carnivore diet, years before that doing paleo, keto, to sort of correct some of these issues you had, maybe any metabolic dysfunction that may have been a result of autoimmune conditions and whatnot. Do you think if you had have introduced three or 400 grams of carbohydrates at that time, ate the way that you're eating now, things would have been okay? Or do you think going keto, carnivore for a period of time, sort of reset you, unbroke your metabolism, so you can handle what you handle now?

Interesting. It's a good question. For me, I don't think I've ever been terribly metabolically unhealthy. I love checking fasting insulin, but I've only been checking it for probably three or four years. I don't have fasting insulin levels since, you know, from 10, 15 years ago. But I've never been terribly overweight. My suspicion is that I've always had a six-pack. My suspicion is that metabolically, my cellular energy production at the level of the mitochondria and the electron transport chain has always been pretty good. Which I think is where metabolic dysfunction really, that's where it happens. It's in the mitochondrial electron transport chain, and then it's manifested elsewhere. So this is an interesting question because I think often when we're talking health, we, in some ways, it's instructive to divide it into two groups of people. Are we talking to healthy people and saying, you're healthy, don't fear fruit, honey, right, carbohydrates from rice, if you tolerate, don't fear those things? Or are we talking to people who are diabetic, as a model, or overweight, which is probably on the spectrum of pre-diabetes, and saying, how do we get you better? So I think it, we start with the first group, metabolically healthy. I would definitely think you can eat carbohydrates and in proportion, probably to the amount of activity you do. I'm not surfing three hours a day, two hours a day when I'm here in Los Angeles right now. So I'm not eating 400 grams of carbohydrates. I'm still eating a significant amount, like at least 200, maybe 300. But I'm not eating 350 or what I probably do in Costa Rica most of the time. And it's based on my activity. If I have a hard workout at the gym, or I'm, you know, walking a bunch or doing something else, I went bouldering the other day at a climbing gym for an hour and a half. Maybe I will want to eat more carbohydrates. So it's based on activity level. Sometimes people hear me say that, right? And from our last conversation, you know, you made the thumbnail of me like, I'm eating so much sugar, thumbnail of me like, veins are popping out. I love you, man. You make me look bad. And, you know, uh, but it's good. People pay attention. Hopefully, because it's interesting. Off the bat, but not everyone needs to eat 400 grams of carbohydrates a day. You know, if you're not, come to Costa Rica and surf with me for three hours, and you'll understand that like, hey, give me another banana, man. Like, I feel good with this. And so, like, that's where we are. With people that are metabolically healthy, diabetes, overweight, let's just clarify this position. If you look at the medical literature, I don't see any evidence that carbohydrates makes people metabolically unwell. And I will respectfully debate anyone in the ketogenic community about that. So to say that carbohydrates cause insulin resistance, no, I don't see that in the literature at all. It doesn't happen. Fruit, apples, bananas, oranges, milk, honey, they don't make people obese and diabetic. However, once you are broken, and I believe honestly, that inappropriate consumption of seed oils and probably processed foods in general, with a number of ingredients that kind of break metabolism and cause increased levels of lipopolysaccharide from the gut to transit into the human body, this is at the, that's at the epicenter of what's causing with metabolic dysfunction. So it's breaking the mitochondria at the level of the membrane because you're eating excess linoleic acid, which accumulates in the mitochondrial membrane, breaks the electron transport chain. And or often co-occurring, you're eating foods that are irritating the gut, causing dysbiosis, leading to overgrowth, the wrong type of bacteria, and leading to endotoxemia or elevated levels of lipopolysaccharide in the human body. We know that lipopolysaccharide is horrible for glycolytic oxidative phosphorylation metabolism. Fruit, honey, no, I don't see it. It doesn't happen. That's not what caused it. The problem is that if you look at people who are metabolically unwell, you're raising your eyebrows. We'll see if you disagree with me. The problem is that if you look at people who are metabolically unwell, they don't handle the fruit and honey as well, meaning they get more blood sugar spikes. And so yeah, they should probably limit those things. Completely eliminating those things, I think, is a bad idea. And I'm not saying a diabetic person needs to eat honey, but there is at least one or two randomized control trials with up to 150 grams of honey per day in diabetics showing improved insulin, H, and all that. That's pretty interesting, too. Yeah, improved insulin sensitivity. Improved insulin sensitivity. Now, blood sugar goes up a little bit, but not much. But I don't think a diabetic is going to, you know, have a, have a horrible time if they have one tablespoon of honey per day. My concern is that it's, it's good for people to limit carbohydrates to some extent when they are metabolically unwell. But I think if you limit them too much, and you're not paying attention to things like a full thyroid panel, cortisol, glucagon, epinephrine, you'll see the stress hormone start to go up on the other side, right? And this is my learning from my experiences, my evolution, my missteps that I share with people. Like for me, going strict carnivore after a year and a half, that was probably the worst I've been metabolically because I was really not doing that good. My electrolytes were kind of messed up. I'm not having an insulin bump when I eat, which helps you hold on to electrolytes, sodium, potassium, chloride, calcium, magnesium, whatever. And so when I added back carbohydrates, I felt much better. My fasting blood sugar is lower eating 300 grams of carbohydrates, right? My fasting blood sugar is lower than it was on carnivore. My fasting insulin is the same or lower. Yeah. So this is something to consider. You're overweight and obese, which is a lot of people. Fruit didn't get you there. Yeah, limiting it somewhat is not the worst idea. But fruit didn't get you there. Fruit didn't cause it. If you just tell people that carbohydrates are what caused diabetes because you misinterpret the literature and the physiology is misunderstood, then people won't potentially address the other problems. Fix the gut, make sure you're not eating foods that are irritating your gut, causing lipopolysaccharide to move into the body. And that's probably the hardest thing to address because it's not something you can really measure easily. And make sure you get rid of the seed oils. So that's, did I answer your question there? I think that there is room for moderation in disease states. But understand that those foods didn't get you there. And that's something that's really, really important because people need to know how to get back. And I, as I said, if you limit the carbohydrates too much, you end up with a stress response. And that works in the other direction. You end up, people who sometimes do good for a little while on keto, but plateau, and then they, they end up in this kind of hole they can't get out because they have so much carbohydrate fearing. And I've worked with people like this. I've seen it. They have such bad electrolyte issues, they have sleep issues, palpitations, sex hormones are declining, they're clearly stressed from this lack of carbohydrates. And they don't know what to do because they realize they got somewhat healthier by limiting carbohydrates, probably cutting junk food out of their diet. And they don't want to go back there. And then they're, they're stuck. And I think that there is a way forward, which is a little more, um, informed by consideration of human physiology and where we've come from as humans.

Yeah, it's, it's much easier to tell someone that their insulin resistance or that their reason for being metabolically dysfunctional is simply because of carbohydrates. It's much easier to tell them that because it's a, it's a line item, like thing that they can say, oh, my blood sugar's high, I eat so much sugar. Oh, my gosh. And a lot of us kind of fall victim to that way of thinking. And that's just as myopic as some of the other things we've talked about, right?

Right. When a broken metabolism is a very complicated thing, right? I mean, in the state of what we eat, typically speaking, in the United States, it doesn't take long to have an abundance of energy in the body. Right? So take your pick of what ingredient or what macronutrient or what issue is actually at hand. Right? So is it saturated fat? Because you're in a state of overnutrition? Very well could be. Because you're in a state of overnutrition along with hyper-palatable, leather garbage. I mean, so I do feel personally that saturated fat, not in like someone that is eating sort of an animal-based or even a carnivore diet, is problematic. But I do think for a standard American, I think it is very much so. Saturated fat alongside perhaps sugar, but definitely not sugar in its own. And I don't mean sugar, I just mean excess refined carbohydrates in general, in tandem with saturated fat and energy abundance along with that. And I'm not someone that is a deep calories in, calories out thinker. Like I obviously know that there's more going on than just that. But I think we've got a lot of different pieces going on that are skewing exceptionally stronger the more of a state of overnutrition and I don't know, inactivity we're in.

I disagree with you about the saturated fat. Um, and I, I think that I would, it differently. I think having energy is different than having fuel that's not converted to energy. So this is a really interesting, this is a really important distinction in the way that we talk about these things. I don't think humans get sick because we have excess energy. If you are able to ingest macronutrients, protein, fat, and carbohydrates, most of the protein goes to molecular building blocks, some of it gets, uh, oxidized. The fat and the carbohydrates mostly become energy. Some of it may get stored. But if you can move those macronutrients through the electron transport chain, so that's fuel, right, being made into energy, energy in the form of ATP at the end of the electron transport chain. So humans don't get obese because they have excess energy. They get obese because they're not making energy out of fuel.

That's a good point. So that's really important to know that if you can move fuel through the electron transport chain, that's great. In fact, what we see is that that means that's a signal of abundance to the human body. And a lot of times in that case, if you can do that, and that is in someone who has, is metabolically healthy, and we talked a little about why someone becomes broken in the first place, but we can rehash that. If you're metabolically healthy and you can move fuel into energy, a lot of times more fuel equals more energy equals more thyroid hormone equals more sex hormones. And there is, you have to go extremely high to get to overnutrition and overeating. This is why I don't like these ideas or I sort of bristle at these ideas of energy balance because energy balance is different for every person depending on your metabolic health. And if you can, and I'll reiterate that point, if you can move fuel into energy through the mitochondrial electron chain, more fuel equals more energy equals more life. That's really cool. So the problem is not excess fuel. The problem is you can't make it into energy. Which is right at the level of energy production. That doesn't get talked about enough.

But what comes first, the chicken or the egg on that? Like, right? Because if someone is, in order to be efficient at creating energy, you kind of have to get moving first, right? So like, what actually came first? Is it poor nutrition? Is it inactivity? Like, cuz something in that basic balance has to be broken first, right? If something is inactive and not moving, then you can't just force more, even good quality food on it and hope that it's going to cram in through this little funnel and spit out energy, right? You got to get the wheels in motion first.

I would say it's poor nutrition. Okay. And this is what I'll say is that when you get things working, you want to move. So I think a lot of times people, they're dragging themselves to the gym. You and I understand this. We have to work out. I have to move. And if I can't, I, I, like, I'm not dragging. I have to go to a gym if I'm in Los Angeles because I want to. I know that I feel better if you are someone that just doesn't want to go to the gym, then you're not making energy properly, and it's coming from poor nutrition. And I think yes, it's good for our discipline as humans to say, if you don't want to go to a gym, still go to the gym and move. And maybe you can apply that discipline to the food choices you make. But I think if we give people a chicken or the egg scenario, and so that they understand what to focus on, yes, moving is great. Dietary choices are king for me. And that's what I would say to people. Before you do anything, change the quality of your food. And I believe that if you change the quality of your food, you will want to move. And that is the magic. Because I hear people talking about this and they say, exercise is the best thing for longevity. And I think, no, food quality is, is the foundation of this house we're building. And if you don't improve food quality, it's going to affect your mental health, your sleep, your hormones, your micronutrient status, your production, and you're not going to want to move. So I think the ideal situation here is if you don't fix energy production, then it's harder. And if you do fix energy production, it will be enjoyable to move. You'll want to go for a walk, you'll want to move, and you'll, you'll get up and you'll do it. So that's what's key. Because I think that if we give people all these targets, they get confused. What do I do? Right? So my perspective is focus on food quality. And I'll read, I'll just say this again, so people understand. I believe that the two or three key things that break energy production, right? You have macro, macronutrients, moving them through the electron transport chain in the mitochondria, it all happens there. Our excess linoleic acid from seed oils and lipopolysaccharide from a disordered gut. And I'll just talk about each of those briefly so people really understand what they do. Seed oils are corn, canola, safflower, sunflower, soybean, grapeseed, etc. Evolutionarily inconsistent amounts of linoleic acid are being consumed by humans today. Things we never would have had. That linoleic acid and other polyunsaturated fats get stuck in our membranes because we don't metabolize them as humans easily. Some we do. Those specifically, we don't metabolize. We don't get rid of them. And that there's evidence. I mean, there's again, you can't do randomized control trials on this. You have to look at cell culture. You have to look at in vitro studies. But the more polyunsaturated fats there are in the mitochondrial membrane, the more proton leak there is across the inner mitochondrial space and the matrix. And that is what, that gradient is our battery. That is our cellular battery. And if you break that battery, if you break that difference in in charge, you don't make energy as well. And we know that the changing structure of the mitochondrial membrane, the cristae, the folds in the mitochondrial membrane get broken when we have excess amounts of these fatty acids. And so putting foods in our body that we have not had access to for hundreds of thousands of years as humans, this is a very compelling hypothesis that I think is supported by the randomized control trials looking at polyunsaturated fats that breaks energy metabolism. Lipopolysaccharide. What foods do we eat that damage the gut? Those are the foods that cause overgrowth, predominantly of gram-negative bacteria, but there are other types of lipopolysaccharides, um, even from gram-positive bacteria. But overgrowth of the wrong type of bacteria leads to LPS in the human body. And those studies are so clear, it's just so, just crystal clear that when you have a messed up gut, your energy metabolism is going to be broken. And then another one is glyphosate, which also appears to disorder mitochondrial respiration in vitro because we can't, these are hard to do RCTs. So some people will poo-poo mechanistic studies, but that's where we get the hypothesis from. We have to do these mechanistic studies to understand these things. And I'll just make one comment about LPS and saturated fat. If you look at LPS and saturated fat, I think this has been massively misunderstood. People will say, oh, well, if you eat more saturated fat, the LPS moves across your gut more. But it moves across your gut more because it's being taken in saturated fat lipid rafts to the liver to be detoxified. So saturated fat is protective against LPS. And mono and polyunsaturated fats are harmful with regard to lipopolysaccharide. But if you really look at literature carefully, LPS, you are protected against that by saturated fat. So I would say the, the beginning part, fix your diet. And then you will want to move because you have to make the fuel into energy.

Interesting. I pretty much agree with that. I mean, there's nothing that I do think that if, if you were to take a, a baby from inception, from the time that it's born, right? From the day that it's born, okay? You could control for maybe never giving that baby a seed oil, right? Yeah. But Mom can't eat seed oils either. Yeah. Go the breast milk. Got that. What would this baby or hypothetical kid eat to not ultimately end up in serious dysbiosis with LPS leaking in? You know, it's like, how could we possibly control that? I'm just kind of curious because like, I'm trying to think like, okay, like if we were to put a human in this kind of situation and see if this human could become obese. Okay, let's say you got all the cards stacked against this human. Let's say any potential polymorphism, any like potential genetic, I say potential because even that is still uncharted territory. If we knew it was a genetic issue, we'd probably have it solved right now, right? So it's, let's just say that all the cards are stacked against this person, bad genetics, Mom and Dad metabolic syndrome, X, Y, Z, whatever. Kids born. Do you think that you could course-correct that kid's lifestyle through life by never letting them have a seed oil or in limited amounts? But I don't know what you would do to control for LPS. But you think if you could, that that kid would have an entirely different look at life?

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Genetics are are predisposition, but they don't manifest.

Yeah, well, it's hard to quantify anything with that anyway. It is difficult. It is difficult. So lipopolysaccharide is interesting. I think that, um, basically eating higher quality foods, either plant or animal origin, is how you limit LPS. And I think that the research here is just beginning to sort of elucidate some of these things. But this is why I worry about things like carrageenan and this sulfated polysaccharide from algae that looks really inflammatory in most animal models in the gut. And there's all sorts of additives. And, and look, if people avoid ultra-processed foods, and we all know what these things are, it's all the fast food out there with ingredients you can't pronounce. It's any ingredient you can't pronounce on a label. And it's, it's these ultra-processed foods. These are the main issues with lipopolysaccharide in humans. And that is also causing issues in humans. And so in, in the whole body systemically. So I think that you could do that fairly easily. Now, you bring up a fair point. Most humans are never going to be the boy or girl in the bubble. And we don't want them to be. We need to live our lives. But I think it's also, every human has unique genetic susceptibilities. Some of us are more susceptible to certain things than others. And we just have to make individual decisions. I'm more susceptible to this. I have more leeway with this. Some people can eat these foods and be okay. But I want people to know that if they're suffering from metabolic dysfunction, diabetes, and the continuum here is long, and there are many manifestations of this, there is a way out. I mean, I was just looking at the AHA, so the American Heart Association statistics in 2024, the AHA is now admitting that over 150 million Americans are either diabetic, unknown diabetic, pre-diabetic, like hundreds, like more than, like half of our population. The AHA is saying now it's metabolically dysfunctional. That's crazy. That the AHA admits that, because some of the studies I've seen suggest 88% or 93% of the population has some indication of suddenly being on this slide toward metabolic dysfunction. And that to me is like, yeah, most people in our society eat foods that are pushing them in that way at the level of the mitochondria and at the level of the gut, contributing to that mitochondrial dysfunction. So it's pretty tricky. But it's crazy to me that the AHA is showing over 150 million Americans are there. And then we wonder why studies get skewed, right? Where's the, where's the control group of healthy people?

For sure. Yeah. And I, you know, I just recorded something today because I was talking about, uh, the, you know, contained sort of, uh, energy expenditure model. Have you, have you seen that? Like where constrained, constrained P model? Yeah. It's, uh, so when I was looking at that, I mean, it was just really mind-boggling for me. And it kind of echoes the stuff that you were saying, right? It's like, along with some of the other literature we've seen, it starts raising questions, right? Okay, if I'm obviously an exercise fanatic, but so does that potentially mean that when I'm exercising a lot, my body's sort of downregulating how much energy I am expending when I'm just at rest or hanging out the rest of the day, even if it's completely unconscious to me, like I'm just, I'm doing less of this, you know, and I don't realize it. And that's where certain wheels do get turning in my head, starting to doubt some beliefs that are out there that are that are really loud beliefs, you know, where I still believe calories have a place. I'm not a calorie denier. I'm making that clear. But I, I also look at this and I say, well, it seems as though we have a little bit of a set kind of margin that our body wants us to be in. And it seems to make sense. Like, if we exercise a lot in an, I'm going to call it an unnatural way, because if I go out and I squat 315 for reps or something, that that's unnatural. I'm going to call that unnatural. My body is going to say, well, we're going to try to conserve the rest of the day because that was a little bit unusual, Thomas, and we don't want to make, we want to make sure you don't die, right? Um, which for then.

The way that I look at that, I perceive that as well. Shoot, I guess nutrient quality matters then. Because if it's going to constrain me to a certain amount of calories that may or may not have a, you know, 2 or 3,000 calorie margin, you know, who knows? That's that's really not that many calories in the grand scheme of things, right? Like it is, but it's not. Like even if that is the delta, then makes me believe that, wow, okay, the quality of my protein and what I can actually assimilate, the effectiveness of my gut and ability to absorb, and the ability to hydrate, insulin, all these things become really important. So, and there's not even literature to talk about that right now. It's just we have to kind of blue sky territory, put things together. And the constrained energy theory or model, that's not something that people call quackery, that's something that is fairly legit. It's legit, yeah.

And I think that the benefits of exercise are beyond calorie exertion, right? Exercise for weight loss doesn't work real well. Exercise for mental health, for brain-derived neurotropic factor, this is we need to exercise, there's no question. Humans are better when we move. Exercise is not how we lose weight, it's how we become mentally healthy, you know, humans that are vital and that sleep well and have mental clarity. That's why we exercise. Because, yeah, but we don't exercise to lose weight. So you see a lot of people in the gym trying to lose weight, and it's like, great, the the discipline that you're exercising here when you're exercising, right? The discipline that you are manifesting when you're exercising will translate into all other areas of your life, and you're going to feel better, and your brain. Exercise is more for your brain than it is for your belly, yeah. Right? Than it is for your butt. And, you know, how you look there. And yes, you can build muscles, which will then have a metabolic rate at rest for you. But the constrained energy model is compelling. And it's interesting to say that if you do intensive exercise, you are going to be more chill the rest of the day. And it says, okay, there is more to it than calories in, calories out. There are laws of thermodynamics. But what gets left out of the equation, and I'm glad you bring this up, is food quality. And I've always said, okay, look, the asterisk in the calories in, calories out equation is, what are the quality of the food? What's the quality of the food you're putting in? Because that affects how many calories go out. It just, it does. And not all, like, and the calories inside you have, it's so it's so basic, it's so elementary. You have protein, fat, carbohydrates. And we're saying all fats are 9 calories per gram. And calories is a poor metric anyway. Calories is a heat measure. And we're not making heat, we're running enzymes, you know, we're maintaining cell membranes, we're we're having, we're having cellular processes in the human body. If you ate more calories and you became hotter, we would all just incinerate, right? If you, I mean, look at how obese people are, we would just burn ourselves up, right? So this is, this is also like, if you look at a package, well, hopefully people aren't looking at packages, but say you look at a block of raw cheese and it says there are 700 calories in this block of raw cheese. That's assuming your body can take that fuel and make it into energy. And and someone that's has broken metabolism, you can't even get the quote calories out of there. So there's the potential to have energy from a food. An apple, 90 calories, right? You potential, you can get this amount of ATP from the apple. But a lot of us can't even do that. And so then it's just, it's totally different. So how do you say calories in, calories out when you don't even know what's in the middle there? That arrow that goes from calories in, calories out, that's your mitochondrial electron transport chain in some ways. And for some people, it's big, and you can move a lot of calories out. For a lot of people, you can't even move a lot of calories out. And then you then you gain weight. A lot of people that are obese don't eat a lot of calories, you know, they're not eating 4,000 calories a day. A lot of people I know that are obese eat 1,500 calories a day. And you're telling me calories in, calories out, come on. Yeah, the the arrow going from calories into calories out, that's the problem. And that's the energy production. Does that make sense?

No, it makes sense for sure. Yeah. And it's, and I think once you have this, I'm seeing a lot more people that over the last, I'd say 10 years, have gone from being, it's simply calories in, calories out. And I say that again, bold, underscore, people that would say it's simply calories in, calories out, because neither of us are denying thermodynamics here. But it's, I've seen many of those people soften in how you can talk to them about this. And I mentioned this in a video today because it was just, um, a matter of reference, like, uh, I posted something on Instagram, uh, it was like, just a tweet that said, perhaps moving more and eating less isn't the answer. And that was just one of like five things. And like four of the other things, like people totally agreed with. And a lot of people were like, I agree with all but number one. And like, well, I'm talking about like energy flux, first of all. I'm talking about like, if you eat more and move more, you're going to burn more in general. Like people have talked about this a million times, you know, ad nauseam. But basically, like eating 2,000 calories and burning 2,000 calories is not the same as eating 5,000 and burning 5,000. Like just the pure fluxing capacity of that in the first place. But flux is a difficult thing for people to to really grasp. But the reason that I think that's so important, so Greg Duet had commented on it. And Greg, Greg and I are friendly, so it's not like he was like, well, if it's not move more, eat less, then what is it? And I didn't even want to get engaged publicly. So I just sent a voice DM afterwards and was explaining. I was like, no, the idea here is that like, if people eat more wholesome food, they'll have energy and they'll move more. And then they'll move more and they'll eat more. And thus begins a beautiful cycle of people having abundant energy and like wanting to eat. And like, hey, what do you know, food as fuel, who would have ever thought? You know, not just a storage system. So it's like, and he was even, he like, he is probably the king of calories in, calories out. And he was like, ah, I get what you're saying. Yeah, because then their NEAT will increase and this and that. Like, even the people that are serious calories in, calories out people, if you position it, but you still tell them that your calorie model is still, we're not saying it's not true, but we're saying that calories as energy versus just, uh, a heat measurement, right? And then of course, it makes sense. And almost everyone tends to agree when you explain it to them logically. Um, I mean, I get excited about that because I look at like my kids now. I know it's a little bit of a different situation with like sugar, but like, if I give my kids, who are pretty darn healthy kids, if I give them like sugar in the way of fruit, isn't it interesting that they want to go run around the block? Yeah, they want to move. They want to, they just want to burn it. And it's kind of funny, like they're almost that way with any food. It's not just carbohydrates. Like I give them fuel and like they become vibrant and they're just like, and when they're like not hungry or when they haven't eaten, they're just kind of like, yeah. And they eat and they're like, Dad, let's go run around the block, go tag, play tag. Like, this is interesting. Like, how come most, you know, people aren't like this? You feed them food and they're like, because they can make energy out of it. Because their energy, because the arrow between calories and calories out is broken. Because their mitochondria don't work. Because they eat poor quality food. So Greg Duet said, if it's not eat less, move more, what is it? It's eat better food. You know, it's the food quality matters. It's that, yeah. Like, and the problem I have with this, if it's, you know, eat less, move more, is there's no attention to food quality. You, you can eat 1,200 calories of Weight Watchers, full of seed oils, full of things that are going to increase lipopolysaccharide trans, you know, transit into your body. You're, you're basically breaking your energy metabolism with these calories. And there's no attention to that. And yeah, you could lose weight in the short term. But long-term studies, what is it? 85% of people gain the weight back when they do calorie restriction. And a lot of them gain back more because we have adaptive thermogenesis. And if you give your body less fuel, your thyroid hormone goes down, and your sex hormones go down, and your body goes, bam, Y, and your RPMs go down. And that's not what you want. And there is this magical place that humans can get to where they eat more food and actually become healthier and burn more energy. And your RPMs go up. And that's what you really want. I tweeted about this. I said, you are not fat because you eat too much food. You are fat because you eat the wrong foods. And I really think that the corollary of that is that if you are eating good quality food, and everyone is going to, like, this is not really something that's rocket science, unprocessed foods, unprocessed plant foods. If you eat that, you can eat a lot of food. And your satiety mechanisms in your brain, when you're full, are going to work. And they're going to tell you when to stop. And then you're done. Totally. And then you're done. It's so easy. But nobody wants to admit that a cookie isn't the best way to lose weight. But you don't, I mean, I guess. And I don't have a dog in this fight one way or the other. And I'm curious your take on it to challenge that a little bit. If we are burning hot, you know, are we essentially dying young? Right? So it's like, if we're, so is there, what's, what's the answer to that?

Yeah, we're not machines. This is really important. I'm actually writing a book about this, um, because I think that the mainstream idea around longevity is is wrong. There's this conflation of humans as machines. If your car burns hot, it burns, you know, you burn it out. But we are self-regenerating organisms. We're not machines. And if you look within species, if you look within a species, those organisms that have the highest metabolic rates live the longest. So it's the opposite in humans. If you burn hotter, you live longer. And you live better. It's completely different. But we, we always think, I'm a car, right? I've used that metaphor a lot. Yeah. Well, was the RPM analogy that put, put that in my head, right? Yeah, yeah. You're a machine. If you burn, the candle that burns, you know, twice as bright, burns half as long. Except when you're an organism that's self-regenerating. How does the body repair itself? That takes energy. Yeah. So this is the point that gets left out. If you want to fix your DNA, if you want to repair cellular processes, if you want to do autophagy, that requires energy. You better be making that fuel into energy. If your mitochondria don't work, you don't have the substrate, which is ATP, to do the cellular repair processes. This is, in my mind, where a lot of longevity thinkers go wrong. They're saying eat less, do less, fast, calorie restrict. And we can talk about why there's confusion there. But imagine this, you need energy. Your body needs usable energy, which is ATP, which must be made through the electron transport chain in the majority of cases. Um, and that means you have to have healthy mitochondria. You have to be able to convert that fuel to energy. And then you use that energy to do cellular repair. We are not machines, we are self-regenerating organisms. So burn twice as bright, live twice as long. I mean, obviously, you get the analogy there.

No, I think that's well said, man. Yeah. Paul, where can everyone find you, man? Paul Saladino MD on all the socials. That makes it easy. That's it, right on. Thanks, brother. Thanks, brother.