You’ve Been Lied To About Diabetes! with Dr. Cyrus Khambatta PHD | The Fit Vegan Podcast Ep #379

If I walked up to a hundred people on the street and I said, "What causes type 2 diabetes?" The majority of people are going to say, "Sugar or carbs?"

"I ate a banana and it caused high blood glucose." Right? It's not the banana's fault. I guess bananas are bad for me. I guess mangoes are not good for me. I shouldn't eat oatmeal because when I do, my blood glucose spikes. It's the stuff that you did before you ate the banana that caused the benefits associated with adding muscle tissue. Improve bone muscle density, improve resistance to osteopenia and osteoporosis.

The number 30 is where the magic happens.

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Good morning everyone and welcome to another episode of the Fid Vegan podcast. Today we have a very special guest. I had a beautiful conversation with Cyrus Kimatada, as a PhD and co-founder of Mastering Diabetes and now founder of Evolution Health. He is a leading expert on plant-based nutrition for blood sugar control. So Cyrus and I were on the vegan cruise, the Holistic Holiday at Sea cruise a few weeks ago and, um, I invited him to be on the podcast. I didn't have the good microphones that I typically have because it would have been too bulky to bring with me. So the audio might sound a little bit different than typically what we have when we're recording in person with guests. But we've managed to edit it to make it, um, you know, pleasant to the ear. So if you're listening purely on audio or watching on video, you would see us in our cruise at the cabin, basically, uh, on in our cabin at the cruise recording together.

So, for those of you that don't know, Cyrus has helped thousands of people reverse insulin resistance and manage diabetes through a low-fat whole food plant-based diet. He's also the co-author of the best-selling book, Mastering Diabetes and a passionate advocate for evidence-based nutrition. So Cyrus and I had a beautiful conversation about insulin resistance and insulin sensitivity, the most common misconceptions, why people think that eating sugar or carbohydrate would cause diabetes and how actually consuming more fat would cause it. We really nerded out on ensuring that we, you know, explain and cover every single basis so that you can understand exactly how it works and how to improve your diabetes. This is basically a master class where we went deep. I asked, you know, quote unquote, all the dumb questions so that you don't have to. So, enjoy this upcoming episode and we will see you after.

Awesome. Well, Cyrus, man, welcome to the show. Thank you, brother. I appreciate being here. I This is, uh, it's been awesome to be able to get to know you, uh, like so well and, uh, you know, what you're doing is is truly changing a lot of lives. I love it. Thank you, man. I'm happy we got to meet. You're a recurring guest on the show. Um, and this was our first time meeting when we got on the boat. Yeah. In person. Yeah. Yeah. Cuz we're supposed to be in Florida at one point. I think it didn't end up happening. I think I had to fly back. Yeah, it's all good. I'm holding this. Well, we're here. It worked out great. So, yeah, I'm excited to record with you and, uh, you know, we went, Ivy and I went to two of your talks. Yeah. One was myth debunking and the other one was about mitochondrial energy and health, right? Correct. Yeah. So, I want to talk about these two things. And also, just for the people listening, um, Cyrus has a free gift for you guys. I just want to mention it now because statistically, you know, not everyone makes it all the way to the end. So, uh, I'll put the link down below in the description. Would you mind sharing what that gift is? For sure. So, it's basically, it's I call it the 14-day insulin sensitivity jump start. And it's basically a guide that gives people a a clear-cut plan of understanding how to get out of the insulin resistance world and do it in a way that is documented by science, that works, and it works very quickly. So, if you if you want that information, I'm here for you. No problem. Beautiful. And it has all the actionable steps on how to make that happen. It literally tells you day by day. Do this on day one. Do this on day two. Do this on day three, and so on and so forth for 14 days. I guarantee if you follow that plan, you'll go from being in an insulin resistant state to a highly insulin sensitive state, and your whole life can change in front of you in a very short period of time. That's beautiful. Yeah. So, for the people that are potentially don't necessarily need it, if you know someone that needs it, then just download. Again, it's free. You can just send them the link. Yeah. Um, all right, man. So, let's talk, let's talk diabetes a little bit. For sure. For sure. I think your field of expertise. Um, so the first talk that you gave was about myth debunking, correct? Um, and when Ivy and I were listening, Ivy wasn't too familiar with that world and she's like, "Oh, I didn't know that high fat had such an impact." She thought just like the majority of people, it was about it was about sugar. Correct. So, do you mind kind of debunking that for people? Because you've jumped on calls with people that are like, I need help with this, but like I can't eat fruit. I can't eat any form of like carbohydrate or else it's going to it's going to spike it. I'm not going to be in a good position. So, do you mind kind of debunking that a little bit? Yeah. Break it down.

Okay. So the simple way to think about it is that, uh, if I walked up to a hundred people on the street and I said, "What causes type 2 diabetes?" Uh, the majority of people are going to say sugar. Yeah. Or carbs. Yeah. Sugar, carbs, sugar, sugar, sugar, sugar, carbs. I've done this before and across the board, people are always saying that, right? And, uh, it makes sense because the messaging that we receive from the outside world is that sugar, carbohydrate causes sugar, or sorry, increases your sugar, uh, the blood sugar and as a result of that, it's going to increase the amount of insulin resistance inside of your body. It's going to, it's going to spike your insulin. It's going to cause your blood glucose to go high and then as a result of that, you're going to become insulin resistant. Okay? So that's what the majority of the population believes. But it turns out that if you do a lot of the research and actually read the primary scientific literature, you find out that yes, it is possible that if you're consuming foods that are refined carbohydrates. Yeah. Okay. These are the cookies, the crackers, the chips, the pastas, the sodas, you know, the waffles, the stuff that tastes really good that comes in a package from the center of a grocery store. That stuff can absolutely create the insulin resistance pathology. Yeah. Okay. And it does so primarily in your liver tissue. Okay? However, there's a more effective way to do it. And the more effective way to do it is actually to eat a diet that contains a significant amount of saturated fat. Because saturated fat is a nutrient inside of the human diet, which actually causes a lot of issues for cholesterol metabolism, but also sets into motion the insulin resistance pathology. Yeah. And the way that that occurs is that saturated fat ends up getting stored inside of your liver and muscle tissue when it is present inside of your diet in high quantities. So if you eat a significant amount of it, then it ends up actually getting inside of your liver and muscle tissue where it's not supposed to be in large quantities. Yeah. But when it gets inside of your liver and when it gets inside of your muscle, then all of a sudden the next thing that you do to try and eat a carbohydrate-rich anything, it could be a banana, it could be a cracker, it could be a white potato, it could be a purple potato, it could be a bowl of oatmeal, anything that contains carbohydrate, yeah, cannot be effectively metabolized because the saturated fat that's inside of your liver and inside of your muscle has caused a metabolic traffic jam. So effectively the the overaccumulation of that saturated fat sets into motion this thing called insulin resistance, which is a self-protective mechanism that these cells employ to say, "Hold on a second, I don't want any more stuff. I don't want any more stuff." And as a result of that, even the carbohydrate energy that you eat after the fact basically ends up getting broken down into glucose, and that glucose gets trapped in your blood because insulin tries to get the glucose inside of your liver and it tries to get inside of your muscle, but it can't effectively do it because the saturated fat has already beat it to the to the to the right location. And then as a result of that, glucose ends up, um, pooling in your blood causing excess glucose and the high blood glucose value. Okay. So effectively, if we sort of like go backwards here, saturated fat gets lodged in your liver and muscle. That then blocks insulin from doing its job. Yeah. Which then pools insulin, I'm sorry, pools glucose inside of your blood causing high blood glucose. So when people think, "Oh, well, I ate a banana and it caused high blood glucose, right?" It's not the banana's fault. It's the stuff that you did before you ate the banana that caused the traffic jam that made it so that the banana was not metabolizable.

So it's creating like. So, and also just some people are not as like familiar with the whole world. So in terms of resistance and sensitivity, so the resistance is obviously it's kind of setting up a barrier where it's not able to go in and do its job and it just has to go sit around in a corner somewhere and then it's accumulating and that's what's causing a spike. Yes. Exactly right. So you can think of it as like, imagine I, I put like a liver cell in front of you or a muscle cell in front of you. Okay. The reason why we're talking about liver and muscle because those are the two primary locations. Those, those are two tissues that are very glucose responsive. Yeah. They're very hungry for glucose at all times. Okay. Your brain is also extremely hungry for glucose as well, but your brain can take it up without necessarily utilizing very much insulin, which is good. Okay? So, your liver and muscle cells function similarly to one another. So, if I put a cell in front of you right here, inside of the cell, uh, you can basically put glucose, you can transport glucose into the cell. You can also transport fatty acids into the cell. Those are sort of two primary fuels. And the cell is constantly deciding, do I want to use glucose? Do I want to use fatty acids, right? How much do of each one of those do I want to take up? And it depends on how much is present in the outside world. Okay? So when you consume a high-fat diet, the concentration of fat inside of your blood goes up just a little bit. And that means that your the the triglycerides inside of the LDL particles increase. The triglycerides inside of, uh, the VLDL particles increase. And so as a result of that, there's simply more fat in your blood. And as a result of that, that means that more fat will enter the liver and muscle. Yeah. Period. End of story. So when those two tissues end up accumulating fat inside of them, there's this thing called a lipid droplet, which is a small region. And the lipid droplet is meant to be small. So if I drew the cell right here, the lipid droplet is supposed to be very small. It's, it's there and it's used as a reservoir of energy. Yeah. But if there's a lot of fatty acids that are coming in from the blood, then the lipid droplet grows and it grows and it grows and it grows and it takes up a significant volume inside of that cell. Yeah. When that lipid droplet grows, then it makes it, it has a whole bunch of secondary effects. And one of the secondary effects is to go to the cell surface and tell the insulin receptor to stop doing its job. Okay? And so when it tells the insulin receptor to stop doing its job, effectively the reason it does that is because the cell is saying, "I have too much stuff inside of me." Okay? There's too much energy. Please, please put, don't put any more energy inside of me. Yeah. And since insulin is such a powerful hormone to to allow for glucose transport and allow for energy uptake, if you just go and make the insulin receptor not very functional, then you can effectively block a lot of energy from coming inside the cell. So it's a self-protective mechanism and the lipid droplet is the one that sort of signals to the insulin receptor to like, yo, turn it off, turn it off. Right? So then what ends up happening is 12 hours later, if you try and eat a banana, the banana gets broken down into glucose. The glucose tries to get inside of the cell, but the glucose can't get inside the cell by itself. It requires insulin. So, an insulin goes and knocks on the goes, knock. There's glucose in the blood. Would you like to take it up? And the insulin receptor is like, "Well, sorry. Like, I'm, I'm, I'm not supposed to be working right now." Bouncer saying no. Yeah. I'm the bouncer. I'm, I'm saying no. Right. You got to stay outside. Right. And as a result of that, there's a big old party going on in here with a whole bunch of fatty acids. You're not welcome. Right. So as a result of that, the insulin tries to get the glucose inside of the cell. Insulin fails at getting glucose inside the cell. So glucose gets trapped. So it's sitting inside of your blood and then it gets, it gets more concentrated, more concentrated, more concentrated. And then if you're wearing a continuous glucose monitor, if you check your blood glucose two hours after a meal, see a spike. You see this large blood glucose spike and you're like, "Huh, I guess bananas are bad for me. I guess mangoes are not good for me. I shouldn't eat oatmeal because when I do, my blood glucose spikes." I read the oatmeal often. You what? Like a lot of people are like, "Oh, oatmeal spikes it. Like, oatmeal can't be good for me." Correct. Correct. But again, it's like you're blaming the messenger. You're not blaming the culprit that actually blocked the messenger from working. Yeah. So, you got to go backwards in time and say, "What is it that actually made it so that the the glucose was forced to get trapped?" Yeah. Yeah. And then once you figure that out, you go, "Oh, it's the saturated fat that got there first. Let me try and reduce my saturated fat content." And as soon as you do, then all of a sudden glucose and insulin can work on the cell and get inside much easier.

And so I'm going to ask all the dumb questions because I'm sure people have them and then I get to ask them. So could there be what happens if it's the opposite scenario? I'm just trying to think of it logically. What if you ate a bunch of, you know, fruits and vegetables and oatmeal and all of those grains and high carb foods? So you would saturate the cell and then what if you ate a high-fat meal after? Oh, like the exact opposite. Yeah, like the exact. Would the cell be like, "Hey, we're Cuz the glucose would be processed pretty quickly, right?" So, would it be like, "Oh, I'm full. Go hang out somewhere else." What is that? Or would just fat predominantly take ownership? Basically, it would be like, "Oh, you're full, but we're taking over." Good question. Great question. Okay. So in order to answer that question, we got to think about how does glucose get inside of a cell and how do fatty acids get inside of a cell? Okay. There's a there's a fundamental difference in the way that the two of them get inside of cells. Okay. Glucose, for the most part, cannot get inside of a cell by itself. Okay. So if you were a molecule of glucose and you were trying to get inside of this cell, like suppose this was like the the cell membrane. Yeah. Right. You can't get inside. You're sort of like, you're like, "Huh, how do I get in this thing? Doesn't make any sense." Right? The way that you would get inside of here is you would have to be accompanied by an escort. And the escort is is insulin. Yeah. Okay. So insulin is the one that knocks on the door and goes, "Hey, uh, there's some glucose right here. Would you like to take it up?" And then the cell surface receptors, the insulin receptors can basically respond by saying, "Yes, I want to take it up or no, I don't want to take it up." Okay. So it's the presence of that escort, aka insulin, that is imperative. It's required in order to get the glucose inside. Yeah. If the cell surface receptors say, "Yes, let me in." Then they open a door and then glucose can go inside. Okay. Again, it's like the bouncer opens the door and then you can go inside the club and now you can go party and have a good time. Okay. Fatty acids, on the other hand, they don't require an escort. They just plow through. They just get right through because there's these things on the cell surface called fatty acid transport proteins called FATPs. And the fatty acid transport proteins basically function differently. When fatty acids appear on the outside, they basically can recognize the fatty acid. The fatty acid can go right to the transport protein and then go right inside the cell. So to answer your question, if you were eating a carbohydrate-rich diet that was low in fat, because that is a very effective way to keep insulin effective, you're doing that, that means that glucose can get inside the cell. Insulin can signal properly and there really is no metabolic traffic jam at all. Okay. So you're operating in the glucose economy and everything's fine. Yeah. Then you decide that you're going to go have an Impossible Burger or you're going to have some like large, you know, beef tallow burger and you're like, "Oh, this is really tasty." So now all of a sudden your fat content for that meal got high. So what ends up happening is that there's a significant amount of fat in inside of your bloodstream. The saturated fat molecules are basically going to go right to the cell surface and they're going to go and they're going to get right inside and they're going to go accumulate inside of that lipid droplet and that lipid droplet is going to grow temporarily just because there's more fatty acids available. Yeah. Okay. So that process right there immediately makes it so that the the insulin receptors on the cell surface become less effective. It happens within hours. Okay. Right. So, the fat, the fatty acids will get inside. Yeah. But when they get inside, the next thing they'll do is they'll make it so that, uh, the the insulin receptors don't work as well. Okay. So, that means that again, if you followed that meal in time with another carbohydrate-rich meal, like let's say you ate that fat-rich meal, the fat got inside of the liver and muscle, then 12 hours later you decided you wanted to eat what's the next meal? Mangoes and quinoa. Yeah. Right. Then the mangoes and quinoa will get broken down into glucose. The glucose will try and get inside, and now you're back to square one because the insulin receptors aren't doing their job properly. Okay. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah.

Would there be a dysfunction of a cell where even with the insulin present the glucose would not be able to enter? Say that one more time. So would would there be like a a situation where potentially someone has a condition where the cell would not be able to accept the glucose even if the insulin is present? Oh yeah. So you're saying yes that it's like the guy that knocks on the door is there but he doesn't have the key. He doesn't have the power to like get in. Yeah. So effectively what you're describing then is that insulin resistance is a spectrum. It's not like it's either on or off. Okay. Right. There's varying degrees of insulin resistance. Okay. So, let's just say someone like you, like you're fit, okay? You're normal weight, you're active, you have a lot of really good things going for you as far from a metabolic perspective. Yeah. Okay. So, you also eat a carbohydrate-rich diet. Yeah. And you, uh, try and minimize your total fat intake and you're probably eating a diet because you're eating a plant-based diet. Your the total quantity of saturated fat in your diet is quite low. Yeah. So, from everything that I know about you, you're probably quite insulin sensitive and that's a good thing. Yeah. Okay. But then if you were to contrast you versus somebody else who eats let's say a little bit of fish and a little bit of meat like twice a week, they might have just a slightly higher degree of insulin resistance than you. Maybe that person's not that active. Okay. So they're a little bit higher. And then the next person beyond that is like, "No, I haven't exercised in years." Yeah. Right. And then finally, the fourth person is like, "Oh, okay. I haven't exercised in years and I'm also 140 lbs overweight." Yeah. Right. So the degree of insulin resistance continues to go up and up and up and up and up. So as a result of that, you know, the amount of insulin required in order to get glucose in the blood goes up and up and up and up and up. Yeah. Right. And so you might utilize, I don't know, let's call it 20 units of insulin per day in order to get glucose inside of your muscle and liver. Yeah. The next person might require 35 units. The next person might require 60 units. The final person might require 120 units per day. Yeah. You see what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah. Damn. Okay. Yeah. So it's a spectrum. Yeah. And you mentioned exercise as a part of that conversation. So, correct. Uh, exercise will increase insulin sensitivity. Yeah. And what, how does that work? Okay, that's a great question. So, insul, I'm sorry. Um, exercise does a lot of incredible things for, you know, muscle tissue, mental health, cardiovascular health, you name it. Okay? Specifically in the muscle and liver tissue. So the simplest way to think about it is that exercise does a tremendous number of has a tremendous number of positive benefits to it. Okay. During exercise, what you're doing is you're forcing your muscle tissue to, uh, mechanically, uh, contract and elongate. Mhm. So you're you're running on a treadmill or you're doing bicep curls or you're swimming in a pool or you're doing a CrossFit class, right? What you're doing is you're basically every time you squat, as an example, right? There's a significant amount of muscle contraction that's happening in your quadricep muscles, your your, your hamstrings, your calves, you name it, right? And so there's a contraction and then there's an elongation. This happens over and over and over and over and over again. By doing that, what you end up doing is stimulating those muscles are performing mechanical work and as a result of that, they're burning ATP. And as a result of that, they basically get hungry and they're like, "Well, I need some more fuel in order for me to continue to make more ATP." Yeah. Okay. Cuz ultimately what they're trying to do is produce energy so that they can actually continue to operate. Okay. So the fuel that they need in order to make that happen is glucose and fatty acids. Those are the two primary fuels. Okay. So, um, when you're performing exercise, one of the adaptations that occurs is that if your muscle tissue can get glucose in without needing insulin, then it's, it's quicker. It enables your, your muscle tissue to basically get what it needs without having to go to the escort and say, "Hey, could you please help me out here?" So what you get during exercise is a thing called insulin-independent glucose uptake. So is that the only way to get glucose without the insulin would be through exercise? It is not necessarily the only way. It's, it's the most powerful way to do it. It's the most effective way to do it. Okay. So that when you're in the middle of exercise and you're sweating and your heart is beating, you know, uh, your heart rate is elevated. Yeah. And you're, uh, you know, forcing the contraction elongation cycles to increase. What ends up happening is that the the muscle tissue is like, "I need glucose and I need it now." It's got its own onboard storage called glycogen, and it's burning through those glycogen stores in order to create ATP, which is good. But at a certain point, it needs more from the outside world. So, it's like, "Give it to me, give it to me, give it to me." So, the liver basically dumps glucose into the blood. The glucose circulates throughout the blood and then it gets inside of your quadricep tissue and it's like, "Oh, you need glucose. Boom." And it just gets sucked right up into your into your muscle tissue without the need of insulin because it's more efficient that way. Right. So that happens during exercise and then after exercise, you have a window of opportunity that usually lasts about one to two hours where insulin-independent glucose uptake is still pretty high. Yeah. And it kind of diminishes over the course of, you know, one to two hours. So that's why it's important to sort of capitalize on that that one to two hour window whereby you're finished with exercise, then you're like, "Okay, cool. Sweet. Now I have an opportunity to put some a significant amount of glucose into my mouth." Yeah. Yeah. Because that that glucose will get inside of my muscle tissue and my liver tissue effectively for free. Yeah. Right. And then over the course of that hour, it'll kind of like, you'll go back into like needing a significant amount of insulin. Right. So you want to capitalize on this insulin-independent glucose uptake during exercise and a little bit after exercise. And as a result of doing that, that makes it so that you don't need as much insulin in order to get glucose out of your blood and into your muscle.

So why is why is it important to not need insulin post-exercise? Like what's the cost of having to use insulin? Good question. So there's there's nothing wrong with insulin. Insulin is a is a good guy and we like insulin and insulin is required in order to get glucose inside of muscle and liver. We know this, right? But a simple way to think about it is though, um, you have what are called beta cells inside of your pancreas. Okay. You got beta cells. I got beta cells. And the beta cells are the only cell type that actually knows how to manufacture insulin. Okay. Okay. So imagine you're living in an insulin-sensitive state, meaning you're eating a low saturated fat content and you're moving your body regularly. Yeah. Okay. The amount of insulin that your beta cells are are required to secrete in order to eat carbohydrate is let's call it 20 units per day. Yeah. Okay. Now, take me as an example. Imagine that I'm not that active and I decide like, "I don't really like activity." Maybe I'll exercise once every three weeks or something like that. And I'm also going to eat a diet that contains a significant amount of saturated fat. Well, in that situation, that means that my daily insulin requirement is going to be higher. Yeah. So, let's say that you need 20 units of insulin per day. I need 32 units of insulin per day. Yeah. Okay, great. So, now I'm I'm secreting 12 more units of insulin per day than you are. Yeah. Okay. If you repeat that every single day for years, for years, for days, weeks, months, years, well, guess what? I'm going to be manufacturing hundreds of thousands more units than you are in the same period of time. So, you're more efficient at utilizing insulin than I am. And as a result of that, my beta cells are working harder. Yeah. So, guess who's at a higher risk for beta cell burnout, aka pre-diabetes and type 2? Yeah. You. So that inefficiency is the the cost, basically. Exactly. Right. Yeah. So it's like a little bit of insulin production today is not going to change your life, right? Or like an increased need for insulin today is not going to change your life. But if you repeat that over and over and over again over the course of many years, then the compounded effect ends up causing a significant increase in the risk for the development of pre-diabetes and type two diabetes because effectively you're forcing your beta cells to have to just work too hard. Yeah. So basically that post-workout kind of window to fuel is a way to not only replenish the glycogen and help with the recovery, but it's also a way to prevent the inefficiency and the burnout of those cells. You got it right. You you think about it as though you're trying to preserve beta cell function as long as possible because beta cells have a finite lifespan. Yeah. Right. And ultimately I want my I want your beta cells to be alive as long as you're alive. Yeah. Yeah. Right. But if you force your beta cells to work too hard, then they can end up dying before you do. And once they die, they're not coming back. And then you have to you have to take some basically. Exactly. Right. So, we're trying to basically allow the beta cells to stay alive as long as possible. And one of the most effective ways you can do that is to make it so that they don't have to work very hard. Yeah. Right. They're going to secrete insulin all day long every day. But there's a difference between secreting 20 units of insulin and 32 or 20 units of insulin and 60. The higher you go, the more work they perform, the the shorter their lifespan. Yeah. Even 10 more per day for a decade. That's a significant amount more. Oh, that's massive. That's massive. Yeah. Um, you mentioned earlier about high fat, right? So, you sound like when you're eating more saturated fats, that's what's going to fill up the cell and then you're going to have a hard time putting the glucose into it cuz it's going to be full. So, it's going to float around and spike. So, correct. What, what is you talked about on your talk, but what is considered high fat that would cause a saturation of the cell that would therefore make it that if you eat like something good like a banana that you're it would spike up? Okay, that's a great question. So, I was trying to answer that question for many years myself and I and I didn't, I looked into the medical research to try and figure out like, what is that number? Is it like a, is it a certain number of, uh, grams per day of fat or is it a certain percentage, percentage of total calorie intake, right? And I could not find the answer. So then through personal experimentation and then having applied this methodology to thousands of people over the course of the last five years, yeah, what I came to realize is that the number 30 is where the magic happens. Okay. Again, there's no documented scientific research that says 30 grams per day is is this threshold. Grams, not percentage. Correct. So what I'm what I'm what I've come to learn over the course of time is that there's a magical doorway that happens at about 30 grams of total fat per day. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, 30 grams of total fat per day, which you can measure by using a food logging app. Yeah. Okay. So, you put all your food into a food logging app and you take a look and you see how many total grams you ate within a 24-hour period. Okay. If you are 30 grams or below, yeah, per day, then that means that you are likely living in a highly insulin-sensitive state. Okay. If you are 30 grams to somewhere about 30 to 45, 30 to 40, somewhere in that time range, you're living in a medium insulin sensitivity state. Yeah. And then if you go from like 40 to 45 north, then you're living in a relatively insulin resistant state. That's one meal a day for some people. That's the thing. That's the thing. That's why so one of the pieces of feedback that we get from people is they're like, "Man, you guys are like the fat police." Yeah. Like this, you just made my life so hard because the foods that I really like to eat are the ones that you're forcing me to restrict. And then simultaneously I can easily eat 30 to 40 grams of fat at a single meal. And now you're telling me that that's my quota for the entire day. I get it. Trust me, I totally understand. Yeah. Fat tastes good and it's very satiating and great. Like I would love to be able to eat more myself as well. But the I can't argue with biology. Yeah. And if and also like once you're dealing with diabetes or any of those kind of health situation like it does require you to take more drastic measures to be able to handle it versus if you don't have any diagnosis, you know, it's a little bit of a different conversation but agreed. Yeah. So to your point, if you're if you're non-diabetic, you're not, you don't have pre-diabetes, you don't have type two diabetes, you don't have type 1 diabetes like myself, there's going to be a little bit more wiggle room, right? So like for you to be able to operate within the 30 to 45 range on a daily basis, you're probably going to be able to get away with that a little bit more than your average person with, you know, pre-diabetes or type two would. Um, so you're right, there's a little bit of wiggle room, but like in general, I have still found that there's a lot of people who choose to eat a plant-based diet. Yeah. Or like a vegan diet, and they're like they do this for years and years and years, and they're like, "Guys, I'm doing everything you tell me to do, and yet I still got this thing on me, and it's never going away, and like I just got my A1C tested, and my A1C is a 6.4. Now I'm I'm going towards type two. So like, your system doesn't work." And I'm like, "Hold on a second. How many grams of fat are you eating per day?" And they're like, "I don't know. I don't know." And I'm like, "Well, let's measure it." And then as soon as we measure it, we realize that they're eating 55 grams of fat per day. They're eating 72 grams of fat per day. And then I say, "Okay, well, here's the solution. All we're going to do is lower that. I'm going to get you closer to 30." They go closer to 30. Two months later, they call me back and they're like, "Holy crap, my A1C just fell by an entire percent." And I just lost 14 lbs. Crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Right. People don't think of the specific. They just hear whole food plant-based or just plant-based like I'm already doing that and it's not working. I was like, "Yeah, proportions, quantities, like it makes a difference." It makes a huge difference. I mean, you could put like 50 whole food plant-based eaters in one room together and be like, "What do you eat? What do you eat? What do you eat?" And you get 50 different responses. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. It's, it's about, it's the game of fine-tuning. Basically, when you have a specific goal, like being able to do A1C, like improving your body composition, it's just a different, different approach to like just eat a variety of whole food plant-based. 100%. I mean, classic example is like you and me, right? We're, we're both like similar people, right? We're both like ectomorphs. We're both, uh, uh, fit individuals. We love to exercise and we eat a whole food plant-based diet. Awesome. But if you delve into the details, you realize you're 6'4. I'm 5'11. So just that 5 inches of height difference makes a big difference. Yeah. Okay. That means that our calorie intake is likely to be different. That means that our basal metabolic rate is going to be different. That means that the total amount of carbohydrate that we consume is likely to be different. Fat, protein, likely to be different. We might have different goals for fitness, right? I have type 1 diabetes. You don't. So, all of that stuff matters, right? You really got to like dial it into a kind of science experiment and that's when you can make it work. Um, so let's talk about the protein component because when you were when you were doing your talk, you mentioned that protein does help as well. But then when you think of a whole food plant-based lifestyle and consuming like the higher amount of protein for someone that's an athlete or looking to improve their body composition that is strength training, that number typically tends to be higher than the average person that's just not exercising. Um, but you think of like tofu, a significant amount of fat. I think you get more if you eat a whole block of tofu. I can't remember how much fat that is, but it has to be close to 30, right? I'm trying to remember. It's like I don't have it turned on my phone cuz it's a cruise. It's like probably like 20, 30 grams or at least like 50% of your daily intake through a whole block of tofu. Yeah, an entire block of tofu is going to get you somewhere between 30 and 40 grams of fat if I'm not mistaken. Yes, it's pretty high. So, um, how does the protein affect, uh, insulin resistance and sensitivity and how do you make that work as someone that is exercising and trying to be fit and build muscle? It's a great question. Okay. So there's some research actually done in people with type 1 diabetes to answer that specific question. Okay. And effectively what they do is they take individuals and they split them up into one of two groups and they say, "Okay, great. We're going to feed you, uh, a meal that has the same carbohydrate content, but this group gets the low protein diet that contains about 10 grams of protein per meal. And this group gets a high protein, which is 30 grams of protein per meal." How many meals per day? Okay. So, sorry. They just test the one meal at dinner time. Okay. So, they're basically just testing one meal of the day and then they put a continuous glucose monitor on them and they see what happens for the next, you know, 12 hours of time. What happens in the first three hours? What happens in the next three hours and so on and so forth. And what they find is that the people who eat somewhere around 28 to 30 grams of protein per for that meal in that one specific meal end up with effectively the same, the first three hours is the same. The glucose and insulin response is literally the exact same. Glucose goes up, insulin goes up, and then it comes right back down. Okay. At the three-hour marker, there's a, there's a divergence. Okay. The people who eat the low protein meal end up with lower blood glucose and insulin requirements for the next nine hours. Yeah. The people who eat the high protein meal end up with a higher blood glucose and higher insulin response over the course of the next nine hours. Okay. Okay. Does that mean it's bad for you? No, it doesn't necessarily mean that. What it means is that protein requires insulin. That's what it means. Okay. So, the higher the protein content in your diet, the higher your insulin requirements are going to be. Is that bad? Not necessarily. Again, we talked about the fact that our goal is to try and keep your beta cells not having to work as hard. But if you are increasing your exercise, you're, you're increasing the amount of strength training that you're performing, you're going into a hypertrophic state more frequently. And as a result of that, you're actually synthesizing new muscle tissue. Yeah. That is going to have a metabolic cost associated with it. So if you're building muscle tissue, you have to go into what's called net muscle protein synthesis, which is the protein synthetic machinery has to turn on. And that is a ridiculously expensive pathway. Yeah. It takes a lot of energy and a lot of time to manufacture new muscle tissue. But there's so many benefits that come along with it. So in the short term, you might end up requiring more insulin to make new muscle tissue, to synthesize more protein, to make your biceps stronger and your quadriceps stronger and your glutes stronger. But the benefits that come along with really strong, uh, uh, dense muscle tissue is massive because that tissue is then very insulin responsive. Yeah. Right. So it's almost like you secrete a little bit more insulin in the short term in order to make the tissue, but then once the tissue exists, your insulin requirements go back down again. Yeah. Right. So that's the beauty of the entire system. Yeah. And on top of all the other benefits that come from just building more muscle from like bone density, bone density because you're doing strength training and all that. So, well, I was going to ask, uh, I was going to dive deeper into the, the muscle part. So, building muscle is basically like you're building a building requires a ton of work. You're sweating, you're lifting heavy things, you're building a whole house, but then you have a house or you have a building after, right? You then you get to reap the benefits of that hard work, but also would there be there is some type of offset obviously with having more muscle tissue, but you also mentioned there's that two-hour window after where you can take in glucose without having insulin. So that two-hour window of like break of insulin production after every workout will kind of add up. Would it compensate a little bit for all the extra strenuous work from building more muscle? Yes. It's a great question. So the answer is yeah, that that post-exercise window of opportunity. Yeah. Where you still need insulin, you just need less than you normally would, um, when you're at rest. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So the the non-insulin dependent glucose uptake is actually also, uh, it also works for amino acids. In other words, glucose can get inside of muscle tissue for less insulin and amino acids from protein can also get inside of muscle tissue for less insulin. And both of those are a good thing. Okay. So your question is, does that window of time compensate, kind of give you a little bit of a boost even though overall your insulin requirements might be going up because you're synthesizing more muscle tissue? I think that's, I, I never thought about it that way, but I think that's actually very true. Yeah. It's kind of giving it a break for a little bit so it doesn't overexert itself. You over the years if you're doing three, four workouts a week, I feel like that would add up a little bit. For sure. For sure. For sure. But like, it, you and I both know the benefits associated with adding muscle tissue are immense. There's no, there's no downside. There's no downside. There's absolutely no downside, right? Improved bone muscle density, improved, uh, you know, resistance to osteopenia and osteoporosis. Reduced risk for sarcopenia later in life. Yeah. Hormone balancing, mood enhanced. Exactly. Right. Yeah. Stronger, stronger legs, stronger brain, as the sharer's eyes like to talk about. Yeah. Less risk for injury. Way less risk for injury, improved mental health, you name it. Right. Improved cardiovascular metabolism to go along with it. Yeah. Right. So there's there's a, there's a tremendous number of benefits. So the cost, like you were saying, you know, there's a, there's a mechanical cost of the at the when you're synthesizing that tissue, but once it's there, you reap incredible benefits for it. So there's no question that it's, it's worth it. Yeah. Go ahead. Also, I was going to say I was talking to a lady yesterday and I said, um, fitness solves pretty much everything. Like, you're building more muscle. Like, you want to be happier, have a better relationship, make more money, go further in life, like just improve your mental health, anxiety, depression, just you exercise, you get in shape, you get it all. Yeah. You get it all. Literally, it's like the cheat code to life.

It is. Yeah. And all it requires is a little bit of hard work, but then once you're there, like you understand why we continue to work out 100%. So let me ask you this question then. Um, you and I share the same mentality, which is like we look forward to exercise. Yes. It is literally like one of the best parts of the day. Yeah. Right. We think about it. We love it. When you're in there, you're sweating, you feel the burn, and you're just like, "Oh, this is the best. I feel alive right now." Yeah. You enjoy the pain of the muscle just like, Yeah. You enjoy the pain. You look forward to the pain after the workout when you're like face down and you're sweating in a pool. You know, there's a bunch of sweat on the ground and you're just like breathing super hard. You're like, "Holy crap, this is awesome. Like, I want more of this." Right?

But the general population doesn't feel that way. The general population is like, "I hate sweating. I don't want to have to work that hard. This hurts. I get super sore afterwards. Can is there a pill that I can use that would actually just make this whole process easier?" Right? So like, how do you, I don't know, encourage people to like get out of that mindset and start to like get inside of their body. Yeah.

So, a few things. Like, I think people never do it long enough to experience the flip side of how we feel. Okay. Right. So I always try to use another analogy that they have in their life is like, what is it that you really enjoy in your life? And they're like, "Oh, I enjoy playing, you know, piano or doing or playing pickleball or whatever." I was like, "Well, did you suck at the beginning? Was it like not fun?" Cuz you like to run? Was like, "Yeah." And then like, at one point it kind of shifted and you, you hit a shot and you're like, "Oh, I just use pickleball 'cause it's popular. I know you play pickleball." And I was like, "Oh, you hit a shot and you made a point like, 'Oh, this feels good. I want that feeling more often.'" That feeling is what happens when you start to get fitter and you lift weight. So just showing like every other example in life of anything that you are now good at, you sucked at at first. And you, at one point, someone got that moment of like getting that shot or doing that thing or seeing that definition in their shoulder and they're like, "Oh, I'm starting to look good." Yeah, that's a good point. And you start to get excited about it.

I think most people when they start, they, um, how can I say that? They don't necessarily have a game plan in place, right? I just call them wanderers. Like they go to the gym, they're like, "Ah, this machine's free." And then they do that, and they do that, and then so they put a lot of effort into it without any structure. And then they get upset because they're like, "I'm not seeing results." Yeah, but you're just kind of, you know, you're just kind of wandering and not really having a game plan in place. That's one thing. Strategy, right? Like when you, when you get a game plan, you literally, you know, we both coach, but like go and try GPT, get a workout program, right? Like, I'm, I'm all for it. If you want accountability, it's different. Get a coach. But like, start with anything that has some type of structure with progressive overload. You'll start to, to see some progress. And I think people go too hard from the start where they get burnt out and they get so, either they get injured or they're so sore, they're like, "I'll take the next day off," and then it turns into two days, and three days, and four days, and never get back at it. Valid. It's January. It's basically the January symptom of like, "I'm going to work out every day for an hour starting January 1st." You've never exercised. After three days, you're dead. You're so sore, you can't do anything. Then you don't start to see the benefits. You don't start to see the results. So, correct. Like, to start small. Start small. Start to see some wins. And then people start to see some wins. It's like that good shot at pickleball, and then they're like, "Oh, like I want to see myself get better at this thing." Yeah, that's a good point.

So, it's like the two X factors are like, number one, you can't go too hard too quickly. Yeah. And then number two, you have to give it enough time so that you can get the, the effect of like, the compounded effort over the course of not two weeks, but maybe like two years or, you know, six months. You got to give it enough time. And you got to like do it systematically to get to a point where you're like, "Oh crap, I can definitely feel this now." Yeah. It's like anything else. Like, you know, you're, you're a parent. We've been hanging out with your, your whole family on, on this weekend. Like, I'm going to assume that you're a better parent now than you were when Indigo came into your life. That's debatable, but yeah. Right. Like, when you start your career or a new business or a new job, at first you suck. You were figuring out how everything worked, and then down the line, you're like, "Oh, this is how you do this, and it's super easy." Correct. There's no other process in life where you're like, "I'm going to pick up this new thing and I'm going to be incredible at it from the start, right? I'm going to be badass right off the bat." Yeah. Even Tom Brady sucked at football when he started, right? Like, Valid. Valid. Yeah.

Um, so, let's talk about the protein number per day for people that are active. So, like, how, how would you be able to kind of respect the insulin process with diabetes but still be able to improve your body composition, since a lot of those protein sources, yeah, are high in carbohydrate, but that's a ton of beans to eat and would eat up a lot of your calories. True. Right. So, like, how do, how do you manage that as someone that is active that is fit? Okay. So, um, the simplest way to think about it is that there's the numbers that I always program into my head are 0.6 on the low side and 0.8 on the high side. Those are the numbers that I have in my head. Okay. Grams per kg or pound per pound? Per pound. Okay. Yeah. So, the way that I think about it, and like, feel free to like, I want to know what you think about this too. You figure out your, your ideal body weight in pounds. Okay. So, my ideal body weight in pounds is 165. Yeah. Right. Right now I'm at 163. So I got two more to go. Five. Okay. So I take 165 and on the low side, if I multiply that number by 0.6, you want to do on your, on your calculator. I think it's like low 100s. Okay. That's my like base level protein requirement. 99. 99. Okay. So 165 * 0.6 is 99. Okay. And then 165 * 0.8 is 132. So, so my range of protein could be as low as 99 and as high as 132 per day. Yeah. Okay. If I'm eating 99, then okay, fine. I can, I can get away with that. That's fine. But that's not going to be, uh, enough protein for me to be able to go into net muscle protein synthesis on a regular basis and get into a hypertrophic state where I'm actually manufacturing new muscle tissue and using that to change my body composition. If I'm trying to accomplish that, I'm going to want to err closer to the 0.8 calculation, which is 132 grams per day. Yeah. Okay. So, that's the range that I always say in my head. Okay.

Now, to your point, if I'm trying to eat 132 grams of protein per day, yeah, on a plant-based diet, it's not easy. Yeah. That's not easy. You got to eat for sport. Yeah. Right. It literally becomes a sport where you're like, "All right, I'm going to You have to become like a carbohydrate hunter and a protein hunter." Yeah. Right. And it sometimes it can be a little uncomfortable 'cause you're just like, "Oh god, I don't really want to eat, but like I have to in order to get enough calories in me and enough protein in me and enough carbohydrates simultaneously." Okay. So, a simple way for me to be able to achieve what I'm, you know, my 135 grams per day quota, which for full clarity, I don't always achieve that number. Sometimes it's hard for me to get there, but one can of beans, whether it's black beans or chickpeas or red beans, it doesn't really matter, has approximately 25 grams of protein. Yeah. Okay. So, it's got a 3:1 carbohydrate to protein ratio. So, it's approximately 75 grams of carbohydrate and approximately 25 grams of protein. So if I make sure that I eat those beans or the equivalent, not that hard to eat that, right? So I might have like one for lunch. 70 grams of fiber. Yeah. It's a lot of fiber. Exactly. Right. So you got to work yourself up to that for sure. Right. So from those, I'm getting about basically 225 grams of carbohydrate. Yeah. 75 grams of protein and call it 70 grams of fiber. Three grams of fat. Like, it's pretty minimal. It's tiny. It's tiny. Yeah. Exactly. So single digits fats. Yeah. Right. And so as a result of that, that's 75 grams of protein. Then in addition to that, I also make sure that I'm having two servings of a protein powder per day. Yeah. So in the morning, I'm going to take two scoops of protein powder and throw it into a meal. And that gives me another 25 grams of protein at that meal. And then I'm going to have another serving of protein powder later in the day. And then that's going to give me another 25. So I have 25, 25, 25 from the three beans, and then 25, 25 from the protein powder. 125. That's 125 grams. But that doesn't even include the food that I'm eating. Yeah. Yeah. So now I'm going to be adding in the quinoa and the potatoes and the veggies and everything. The fruits and the vegetables. You name it. And then that's going to add another, call it, 30 grams of protein, maybe. Something like that. Yeah. Easy. Right. And so as a result of that, now I'm like, "Okay, great. I'm there." Yeah. Right. So that's my sort of general strategy for doing that. But again, the, the, the main calculation that I think is worthwhile and understanding is that there's somewhere between a 0.6 and a 0.8 protein requirement. You tell me, how do you, how do you manage it? How do you? It's about, it's about 0.8. Yeah. Cuz we do like the 1.6 grams per kg of body weight. So it's about, you know, 1.6 divided by 2.2. We're pretty much like, we're right in between that roughly. It would be like 0.78, I think on that point. So like, that's, we're kind of within the same range as well for the protein. Correct. And it's not as high. Cuz the bodybuilding-esque world is like that one pound per gram of body weight or one gram per pound of body weight and then up to like 1.5. Um, yeah, 0.8. We've seen like, again, thousands of people, incredible transformation, my own transformation, like that 0.8 range is great. Totally. And you know, for you, like, do, do you consume soy? Like, okay, like for me, like I'll do like, I do three meals, smooth in the morning with two scoops in there. So that's 50 grams right there. I'll do a whole block of tofu for lunch. And then for dinner, I'll do like a can of beans or like edamame or lentils or whatever. So right there, that hits all my protein for the day. And like that's not the adjacent food that comes with it. Like if you're making a stir fry, like you mentioned veggies and some quinoa, some mushrooms and broccoli, you can add an easy like 20, 30 grams of protein. So I do the same thing, but I always have one block of tofu per day, um, with the protein, and then beans and legumes basically. You're talking like one of those big blocks of tofu, like extra firm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. I would love to be able to eat that much tofu in one day. That that adds too much fat for me, but again, it's 'cause I have type one. That's why I was saying it's like 40 grams. That's just that block. Yeah. But I have like tofu jealousy now. I want to do that. I just cubes, air fryer, done. That's it. Yeah, that's huge. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, so, okay, perfect. So, we're about the same range and same philosophy for for the protein. So, correct. You're basically not consuming as much or soy to be able to keep the fat content under, and that's why you're doing the beans. More beans, basically. That's exactly right. So my beans is your tofu, or my beans is your soy. Okay. Right. And soy is a bean. It just has a higher, higher fat content than you get from red beans or black beans or, what's the macros on edamame? Is it high fat? I don't know off the top of my head. Yeah, it's a higher fat bean for sure. Okay. Uh, 'cause tempeh is, is, 'cause you know, tofu is high protein, high fat, but tempeh is high protein, high carb. Correct. Yeah. Correct. So do you do tempeh? From tempeh? I love tempeh. Okay. Yeah. Tempeh is a safer way for me to eat soy without getting, uh, a significant fat content. Yeah, for sure. I absolutely love tempeh as well. I just like literally forget to make it on a regular basis, but every time I eat it, I'm like, "Dude, I should be eating more of this stuff." It's very tasty. Yeah. Every time we say tempeh, it makes me think of my dog. I'm so naive because my name, my dog's name is Tempe. That's awesome. I didn't. He's like white and beige, and that's what we named that. So I forget about the food. Every time we say tempeh, I just think of my dog running over.

Um, so, let's talk about mitochondrial health. Oh yeah, my favorite. Because your last talk was on that, and then you brought up the topic of like, the same principle of like eating high fat, it's saturating the cell. So what's the correlation between eating high carbohydrate and higher fat with mitochondrial health and having more energy? Okay. So, um, the simplest way to think about it is that mitochondria are these, uh, tiny little microscopic powerhouses inside of cells that do, that create 90% of the ATP that a cell requires to stay alive. Yeah. Okay. So, um, mitochondria are like such incredibly powerful organelles inside of all tissues. Yeah. And I think people generally recognize that they refer to them as like the powerhouse of the cell, but in reality, they are the powerhouses of the cell because there's hundreds or thousands of copies of them per cell. Okay? It's not like you just have one mitochondria inside of, you know, a cell inside of your liver. You have like 400 to 2,000 depending on a number of different factors, right? So long story short, they're all over the place. Number two, the only type of tissue that doesn't contain mitochondria is your red blood cells. Every other tissue, your brain, your liver tissue, your muscle, your kidneys, your vasculature, they all, they're, they're packed with mitochondria. Okay? So, maintaining ideal mitochondrial health is essential for being able to generate ATP. But what we want to do is generate the ATP, but also generate it with as few byproducts as possible. Okay. Okay. And the byproducts that we don't want to create in the ATP, I'm sorry, in the, in the mitochondrial world are these things called free radicals. Yeah. Free radicals are very dangerous molecules because they basically are missing an electron and they will do anything to try and find that electron back. So if you generate free radicals or you eat food that contains a significant amount of reactive oxygen species, what would those foods be? So foods that are basically deep fat fried. Okay. Right. Processed foods, foods that are fried in oil that's been like heated and cooled and heated and cooled and heated and cooled. That gives rise to reactive oxygen species in the food itself. Yeah. And then when you consume that food, you're actually eating the reactive oxygen species that then go on to create oxidative stress inside of all tissues. Okay. So what we want to do is find a way to generate ATP without as many, without without generating these free radicals 'cause these free radicals can damage, um, protein. They can damage phospholipids and they can damage DNA, and you don't want any of that stuff. Yeah. All right. So your question was, how does carbohydrate and protein factor into the mitochondrial equation and and fat and fat? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So again, we talked about the fact that when you're eating a carbohydrate-rich diet that's low in saturated fat, that actually is a recipe for insulin sensitivity. Yeah. Okay. That's a true statement. Um, now if you did the flip opposite and you're eating a high-fat diet, a high saturated fat diet with a low carbohydrate content, okay, you might end up with like good blood glucose numbers, flatline glucose, all that stuff. Exactly. Right. You're in the ketogenic world, you see a flatline, you see a low A1C, and you're like, "Oh, cool. See, diabetes is gone." In reality, no, your numbers are looking good, but the inside of the cell from like a, a, like microscopic perspective, Yeah. What you're doing is you're actually telling cells inside your liver and muscle, you are going to operate in the fat economy, not in the carbohydrate economy. So by operating in the fat economy, effectively what that means is you're playing the carbohydrate avoidance game. Yeah. Okay. Fine. Yeah. And that keeps your blood glucose low and that keeps your A1C low. Fine. But the byproduct of consuming a significant amount of fat in the mitochondria themselves is guess what? Increased free radical production. Okay. Right. But you and I can't see that. Yeah. You and I have no idea that there's actually more free radicals that are generated inside the mitochondrial compartment inside of liver and muscle tissue when there's more fat in your diet. Yeah. Right. So, if you're choosing to eat a high-fat diet, you might end up with like good blood glucose regulation, but in the long term, what you're doing is number one, damaging mitochondrial health. Number two, you're eating yourself into an insulin resistant state. Yeah. That is going to compound over the course of many months to years, and you're going to end up at a higher risk for pre-diabetes and type two diabetes down the road. Okay. And that is going to cause significant problems, um, for total body health and it's going to increase your overall chronic disease risk. So we're trying to minimize that. Okay.

So the mitochondria, what the research says is that mitochondria can be preserved and you can actually generate new mitochondria relatively easily by doing, you know, a number of different things. Number one, you can exercise. Yeah. Exercise is like the best mitochondrial food you can possibly ever come up with. Yeah. And exercise works because exercise deprives mitochondria of oxygen. Yeah. Mitochondria need oxygen in order to fully perform their work and generate ATP. Is that from your different, like, you know, ATP, CP when you're training in aerobic state, anaerobic state? Would that play a role? Basically depend on the intensity of the training? It does. Yes. The intensity of the training absolutely matters because the higher the intensity of the training, the more oxygen debt you go into. Effectively, the less oxygen you're able to to intake per unit time. And as a result of that, you end up accumulating carbon dioxide inside your blood. Intensity interval training or by going above, you know, going towards your anaerobic threshold or above your anaerobic threshold and then coming right back down. That oxygen debt is a ridiculously powerful signal to the mitochondria inside of your muscle tissue to make more mitochondria. Yeah. And by making more mitochondria now, it makes it so that when you go back into that same oxygen debt the next time, it's much easier. That's the whole point. Okay. So, mitochondrial biogenesis happens by as a result of oxygen debt. Number one. But then number two, there's actually foods that you can eat that can actually stimulate mitochondria. Yeah. Crazy. The foods that you can eat that will do it are the foods that contain the highest polyphenol content. Okay. Of of of all foods, right? So effectively what you're doing is you're looking for for foods that have high polyphenol content and polyphenols are antioxidants. So if you look for foods that have very high antioxidant content, then boom, right there is a massive signal for mitochondria to be able to clean up the free radical damage that is being caused at any moment in time and then also to replicate themselves so that there's more of them around. Yeah. Okay. So those foods include, I was going to say, most people are thinking of wine and chocolate right now. Yeah. No, totally. Of course. Well, here's the best part. Chocolate, aka, I shouldn't say chocolate, I should say cacao beans. Yeah. Yeah. Those have a very high antioxidant content. Yeah. Those are mitochondrial manufacturing foods. Like cacao nibs, cacao beans, like the, those 100% dark chocolate bars as well. Like those guys. Exactly. Right. And the cacao powder as well. So like, perfect example is like if you're making a smoothie. Yeah. Right. You can make a smoothie that's got like berries and, you know, um, bananas and mangoes and maybe some kale. Yeah. Right. And it's like, it's green and it's tasty. If you open your cupboard and you basically take like two heaping spoons of cocoa powder and you drop it in there and now it's like a chocolatey version of that, you're actually eating for more mitochondria by doing that, which is crazy. So, cacao is a, is a big one. Turmeric is a big one 'cause the, the, the antioxidant content of turmeric is massive. Yeah. And then my favorite of all is called the Indian gooseberry, which is the amla berry. Yeah. And that bad boy has the highest ORAC, or the highest antioxidant content of any food ever discovered by humans. So that one is my absolute favorite. We have some at the house. You do? You guys sent me some. You sent me some. Yeah. Yeah. The tea. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It's good. Good. Yeah. I'm glad. I'm glad you use that 'cause the having a little bit of Indian gooseberries in your diet on a daily basis is a very powerful way to increase the phenolic content of your food. Yeah. Which then in turn can help stimulate mitochondrial health. So when you did the presentation, you had like a slide of the ones that contain the most amount in it. Correct. Um, where does, uh, sea buckthorn berry fall onto that list? Cuz I've heard it's pretty high as well and like in vitamin C and antioxidants. Yeah. So I don't, let's look that up right now if you want 'cause like we have a lot of powder of that. So there's a, like a, a company that we had at one point and it, we just had pounds of it. Uh, it tastes like very sour. People put in skincare now. Yeah. Yeah. So, I was just curious 'cause you brought up amla. I was like, "Yeah, we, we have the, we have the tea at the house and we love it." Um, but as like sea buck, like I know bell peppers as well is another high one for vitamin C. For vitamin C, that's a true statement. Correct. More than orange juice, which most people don't know. Correct. Yeah. Vitam. I'm sick. Let me just drink orange juice. And it's the one that has sugar added to it. Most of the time when people buy bell peppers, it'll be so much better. It's so true. There's actually some, uh, Indigo, my three-year-old daughter, she like walks around our garden and she like finds little things that look like weeds. Yeah. And sometimes she'll just like put them in her mouth 'cause she's a kid and she just does that. So, we had like a botanist who was like helping us redesign our garden. He was like, "Oh, by the way, those are all edible greens right there. Like you can, you can eat all that stuff." So, now she goes in and she eats what's called driveway salad, and she just goes out outside and she just picks the greens and she sticks them in her mouth and she eats them. And what I recognized is that some of these greens have like a pretty, like bitter or sour flavor to them. Yeah. And we looked them up online and their vitamin C content is through the freaking roof. Oh wow. Right. And so a lot of the times these like sour flavors, um, even in like leafy green vegetables or like vegetables that are kind of obscure. Yeah. You know, have a tremendously high vitamin C content. It's just that we as humans are like, "Oh, vitamin C comes from oranges," and that's it. Yeah. Right. But it's not even true. There's been so many great marketing schemes throughout the year. Oranges, vitamin C. Calcium, dairy. Um, you know, iron, mainly protein, steak. Um, yeah, it's crazy. It's crazy. It's a lot of folklore. So, I can't see the sea buckthorn ORAC value right now, which is the antioxidant score. So, I'll, I'll look that up in a little bit. Yeah, people can can look at it at their house. I'm sure that we don't have internet on the cruise besides for a few devices. I'm already like 400 bucks deep on Wi-Fi, so I'm not buying. I'm not paying for another device.

Um, perfect. Well, I'd love to talk a little bit about, uh, if you're, if you're comfortable with it, like, you know, this new project that you're working on now with Evolution Health. You mind talking about that, people? Yeah. So, I used to, I started a company called Mastering Diabetes. Yeah. And I no longer work, I, I resigned from Mastering Diabetes. It's basically a business we built over the course of the last seven years. Yeah. Um, and so I resigned like six months ago. And now my wife, Kylie Buckner, who's a registered nurse, her and I started later. That's right. That's right. We started a new company called, uh, Evolution Health. And Evolution Health basically takes people through a six-month health evolution that takes them from their current state of health to a significantly improved state of health approximately six months later. Yeah. Okay. And what we specialize in is helping people master their glucose metabolism, master their cardiovascular health, and then lose weight and keep that weight off permanently. Right. Which is your game as well. Yeah. Right. So there's a very strong connection between insulin sensitivity that will, you know, lower your blood glucose and A1C, and insulin sensitivity also significantly improves your cardiovascular metabolism. So we have a lot of people who come to us who are have high cholesterol and high blood pressure, and we teach them how to eat for insulin sensitivity, and then before you know it, their cholesterol value is coming down, their blood pressure is coming down, and they feel like a million bucks. Yeah. And then in addition to that, people also end up losing weight without even trying, and we teach them how to create sustainable habits that keep their weight loss off in the long term. Yeah. Right. So it's a, it's a fun process and, you know, lots of people are are looking for this information and are trying to understand exactly what they can do. Yeah. And our goal is to try and teach you the nitty-gritty details and the habits that are going to that are specific to you, that are personalized, that are different for you than it is for the person next to you. Yeah. And you get to work with your wife, which is awesome. I know. She's, she's great. She's a wonderful human. Yeah. It's my favorite part. Yeah. Exactly. You guys get to work together, too, right? It's my favorite part. And you know, also just, you know, for the people listening as well, like there's a lot of coaches out there, and I don't have them on because I don't agree with their philosophy, but Cyrus is an amazing man, and like that's why I wanted to have him on the podcast 'cause I knew he had started this, this new venture, and I know he has his heart in the right place. Again, incredible coach, and and you and your wife are doing amazing work. And so, you know, for the people listening, you guys can go check out. I'll put the website down below as well. So, go check it out. And again, there's their free gift down below that you guys can can download, too. But hey, just know that whoever I have on the show, I fully back up what they do. And so, Cyrus is incredible. You're a stud, right? If you guys want his help, go and hire him, right? Like, there's more than enough people in the world. Um, yeah. So, just again, love the work that you do, man. I, I appreciate that so much. And you know, I, I'll throw that right back at you because, uh, there's like, I've only known you for probably like, two years at this point, right? But like, this is literally the first time I'm meeting you in person 'cause we've known each other for virtually for a long time. And it's very obvious from a very, from a very early stage, I was like, "That dude is incredibly smart. He's got a lot of experience, and he's a genuine human being," and like, that's an absolute requirement in order for me to be friends with you. So, like, I've seen the transformations that you can promote in other people, and it is, like, it is unbelievable to see what you can do, and like, I absolutely love the work that you do, and you and Ivy are just killing it. So, I, I appreciate you guys very much. Thank you, man. Yeah. Thank you for the kind words. I'll slip you a 20 after. Make it 100. Yeah. 100. Okay, cool. Awesome. Well, man, any last words of wisdom you'd like to share with the audience before we go today? Uh, I would say effectively that like most people equate insulin resistance and insulin sensitivity to being diabetic. Yeah. Right. This is not a story about diabetes. It started with a story about diabetes. It's not anymore. The majority of the population is living in an insulin resistance state, and they just don't know it. Yeah. Insulin resistance literally affects like 95% if not more of all human beings. Yeah. Around the world. Right. And so what I want people to understand is that if you can master your glucose metabolism and and allow your pancreas the opportunity to work very efficiently, so many things about your overall health will change for the better. Your risk for chronic disease goes down significantly. Your ability to control your body weight goes down, uh, you know, increases significantly. And your cardiovascular metabolism goes through the roof. Yeah. And so if we can just kind of like focus on that one thing and trying to get out of the insulin resistance jail and turning it into an insulin sensitivity paradise, as soon as we get there, all of a sudden, like, it just feels unbelievable, and the changes make a massive difference in overall health. Yeah. And I think just for people not to wait until to get to that state of sickness to be able to recover from it, 'cause it's such an uphill battle and so much more effort than if they start now and trying to do prevention. 100%. Yeah. Prevention is the name of the game. You're right. But you got to, like, you got to want it. You got to recognize that every moment that you work right now in order to prevent disease is going to be 10x easier than if you waited until you developed a chronic disease. Trust me when I say I have three autoimmune conditions. Type one, Hashimoto's hypothyroidism, and alopecia, which is why I have no hair. Right? The amount of work that I have to put into my health on a daily, weekly, monthly basis, you know, is significantly higher than it was if I had like prevented these three from coming in the first place back when I was 15 years old. Right. I just didn't know it. Yeah. Right. And it's, there's an element of, you know, I'm preventing with how I'm living, but I'm not, like, I'm having fun. I'm just, you know, like I said, once you start to get fit and see results, it just becomes a part of your art and you're having fun exercising. Totally. Which, uh, you know, a side benefit of it is you're preventing all these things. But, you know, I'm not focusing on prevention every day. I'm just eating whole food plant-based. I'm exercising. I'm having a good time. And you just happen to get these benefits out of it. 100%. Just people have to start to, you know, start small, build those small wins like you mentioned, have habits that are specific for them. Um, 'cause it's not, it's overwhelming, right? Like, just this podcast, there was a ton of information in it. So, you know, just for the people listening here, people listen to a lot of podcasts, read a lot of books, do a lot of, they read a lot and they listen a lot, but they do nothing with the information. Right. Right. Exactly. It's like a lot of people are really smart, but they're super out of shape and unhealthy. So, biggest part is take something from this conversation today and take action on it. Again, download the guide down below, go book a call with Cyrus, like, take some type of action because if not, it's just cool. You know, you can tell your friends and your life is not going to change, and then we'll just, you know, you'll keep listening to the podcast for the next five years and look the same or worse in five years from now. True. Right. This stuff works. It's really powerful. Uh, you got to take action. No question. Yeah. And, uh, and this thing, proof is undeniable. Like, that's, that's what I like about it is like you've transformed thousands of people. True. So to me, if I go like skydiving or bungee jumping, which I've done both. Um, bungee jumping way more fun than skydiving in my opinion. Agreed. Agreed. And my dad was like, "Well, aren't you scared?" I'm like, "They've been in business for like 20 years and they have no deaths." So to me, I'm pretty safe if I'm going to go. They've only killed 100 people died. Exactly. Only 50% of people died. Then maybe I won't go hire these guys. Trust me, it's safe. But if everyone's safe and they've been around for a long time, obviously they're doing something right, right? Like that's how you make a decision for an activity that like your life is literally on the line. Correct. So like, you know, your life is on the line if you don't change those habits. So go to a trusted source. So, agree. Awesome, man. Thank you, brother. Thank you for jumping on. Everyone, check the links down below, and we will see you guys in the next episode. Bye. [Music]