Will Eating Carbs & Fats At The Same Time Make You Fat? (The Randle Cycle Explained)

Will eating carbs and fats at the same time make you fat? The Randle cycle. The Randall cycle. That damn Randall cycle. The Randall cycle.

There's a theory floating around on the internet that mixed diets are more fattening than low carb or low fat because of the glucose fatty acid competition. Every time I eat a meal, I avoid the combination of carbs and fats together.

Does eating carbs and fats in the same meal make you insulin resistant? Like the Randall cycle, right? The ability to use fats and carbs or the inability to use fats and carbs together. Are you doomed to having to choose between only eating carbs or only eating fats across the day?

And most people don't really understand this very well, and it's called the Randall cycle, a an enzyme called um, the human metabolic system cannot do is do well on a fuel mix which is fats, carbohydrates, and protein. So that's basically what the Randall cycle is.

In this video, I'm going to break down the infamous Randall cycle, aka the glucose fatty acid cycle, for you and show you exactly how it works. And then I'm going to show you how you can structure your meals with the Randall cycle in mind using carbs and fats to improve your metabolic health and get control over your weight.

Now, quite a few dietary camps have presented the Randall cycle as a support for their dietary choices. We have the high-fat, low-carb camp, which includes people in the keto, carnivore, low-carb, and paleo groups. We have the high-carb, low-fat camp, which tends to include the sugar dieters, the pitarians, and also to some extent vegans and plant-based individuals. And then we also have the camp that is the carb-only meals with the fat-only meals, which includes people in the honey diet camp as well as some of the fruit till noon camps. But the question is, does the Randall cycle really support all of these different dietary interpretations?

Now, before we jump in, if you'd like to cut straight to the point and know how much carbs and fats to incorporate into your diet while allowing you to optimize your blood glucose levels, your body composition, and your metabolic health, I created a free macronutrient calculator, food guide, and course that you can use to construct a personalized energy-based diet specific to your goals. The link is in the description.

All right, let's jump in and talk about the three key pieces of the Randall cycle to understand.

So in point number one, our bodies are made of billions of individual cells that are working in unison together to create our organism. Each one of these cells uses fats or carbs as an energy substrate at one given point in time. What the Randall cycle tells us and explains to us is that only fats or only carbs can be used at a given time in an individual cell. The reason why is because fat oxidation or the burning of fat for energy directly inhibits carb oxidation or the burning of carbs for energy and vice versa. So carb oxidation also inhibits fat oxidation. Thus, both carb and fat oxidation will always occur simultaneously at all times, just not in one individual cell. You'll have some cells be undergoing carb oxidation and other cells will be using fat oxidation at the same time. But one individual cell will not be oxidizing both carbs and both fats. And then at the same time, you can have a cell that will be oxidizing fats at one point in time and be oxidizing carbs at another point in time, even right after. It can switch based on what's going on with the body. So when we are adjusting the carb and the fat amounts in our diet and we are mainly shifting how much carb versus how much fat is being oxidized across the whole body in general, we are not necessarily trying to force an individual cell to oxidize both carbs and fats at the same time. And this is where I think some of the misunderstanding comes in because if you are taking in a meal that has both fats and both carbs, you'll have some tissues will use the carbohydrates and then other tissues will be using the fats and then on top of this, some tissues may be using fats for purposes that aren't for energy burning and carbs for purposes that aren't energy production. So you have, you can have both carbs and fats at the same time in a meal across the day, but you cannot have them burning or being oxidized at the same time within a given cell, within an individual cell.

Now to the second point, with this in mind, on average, carb oxidation tends to be better from a health standpoint than fat oxidation. With carb oxidation, you have an increase in the NAD+ to NADH ratio, which is a marker of mitochondrial metabolic health. I'm going to make a separate Randle cycle video showing you exactly how that works. Then, with carb oxidation, you have less ROS production in the mitochondria under normal circumstances. Carb oxidation provides a better ratio of ATP produced per unit of oxygen consumed, further aiding in protection against oxidative stress. Carb oxidation also increases the amount of glutathione you have, which is the master antioxidant in the cell, by producing NADPH, which is needed for glutathione production. That's via the pentose phosphate pathway. Again, this further minimizes that oxidative stress. The carbs also increase the production of CO2 compared to fats, which can help to increase oxygen uptake at the cells and also enhance mitochondrial function. Carbohydrates can help us to decrease our reliance on stress hormones that are heavily involved in most disease states. These stress hormones include cortisol, adrenaline, glucagon, and growth hormone, which are all involved in upregulating the production of carbohydrates at the liver and the burning of fatty acids and release of fatty acids when we don't have adequate carbohydrate coming in exogenously from our diet. And then lastly, carbs are essential for allowing for the conversion of inactive thyroid hormone T4 into active thyroid hormone T3 at the liver, which further helps to improve mitochondrial energy production and enhances the production at the mitochondria of the protective youth associated steroid hormones like testosterone, like DHEA, like progesterone, and like prenal. So across the board, carbs will decrease oxidative stress if they are oxidized appropriately, and they will also lower stress on top of increasing mitochondrial function and also increasing steroid hormone production. So this is why we want to optimize carbs over fats in general. Um, and this is important when we're talking about the Randle cycle because some people say, well, why don't you just use fats anyway then? It's like, because carb oxidation is actually better and there's reasons to support that. So the, the goal from the bioenergetic perspective, from a pole metabolic perspective, is to be able to oxidize carb carbohydrates effectively because the fats, as we'll talk about, are actually going to be oxidized regardless. Um, they are the backup fuel source in general.

When we are discussing the Randle cycle in the context of metabolic health and disease, it's absolutely important to understand insulin. Why? Well, insulin directly coordinates the utilization of carbs versus fats in the body. When you have carbohydrates, when you take in carbohydrates, insulin shuts down the release of fatty acids from the fat tissue and also the utilization of those fatty acids, and then decreases the production of endogenous glucose production or decreases gluconeogenesis at the liver, and then basically it increases the uptake of the glucose from the bloodstream by the muscle tissue and by the fat tissue and then further increases that utilization of that glucose in those cells as well. So insulin is the hormone that helps us switch off the catabolic pathways, the stress pathways, the releasing of free fatty acids, and then the breakdown of our glycogen stores and of our protein tissue to produce glucose in the process of gluconeogenesis and allows us to then have an anabolic process where our body starts to take up those carbohydrates and use them effectively.

Now, something that's really important to understand with insulin though, is that only certain tissues in the body specifically require insulin for this effect. It does it by stimulating the, the translocation of a transporter called GLUT4 to the cell membrane so that those tissues can actually increase their uptake of glucose. Now, these insulin-dependent tissues include the muscles, the fat tissue, and the liver. Now, in response to insulin, the muscles typically convert the glucose to energy, as well as store it as glycogen, and potentially can store some as fat. The fat tissue, in response to insulin, converts that glucose to fat stores, and it also stops releasing free fatty acids into the bloodstream, which can impair the utilization ultimately of glucose via the Randall effect because insulin inhibits the enzyme hormone-sensitive lipase, which releases free fatty acids from the fat cells. At the liver, insulin decreases the production of the, of, of glucose via a process called gluconeogenesis, while increasing the storage of glucose in the form of glycogen. So, it stops the liver from pushing out glucose into the bloodstream, and it allows the liver to store some of that glucose in the form of glycogen.

Now, other body tissues don't necessarily need insulin to uptake glucose, as they express other GLUT receptors that aren't GLUT4, that are insulin-independent. So, they will take up glucose regardless of whether or not insulin is present. One thing to keep in mind though, is that when insulin is not present, the free fatty acids start to dominate in the bloodstream. They become the major fuel source, and in those tissues, when they start to oxidize the free fatty acids, they will not be oxidizing glucose. That glucose is actually spared for the central nervous system when you don't have adequate carbohydrate intake coming in from the diet because the central nervous system has an absolute requirement for glucose, whereas a lot of other tissues, there's few exceptions, can run on either glucose or fatty acids. So those tissues basically get the fatty acids, and then the central nervous system gets the, the glucose, and the amount of free fatty acids in the bloodstream will adjust the insulin sensitivity, as well as the utilization of glucose or fatty acids because if, again, with the Randall effect, if you are using fatty acids, you are not going to be using glucose.

Now, this is extremely important to understand because the metabolic problems in states like type 2 diabetes, insulin resistance, fatty liver disease, obesity are largely centered around these insulin-sensitive tissues or these insulin-dependent tissues. Insulin resistance is essentially found in all of these states. So here's a, here's a kind of overview of what happens in this process. So diabetes, insulin resistance, obesity, fatty liver, cardiovascular disease, etc., are all characterized by high levels of fatty acids in the blood, as well as deposits of fatty acids in the tissues like the liver, muscles, and the fat stores. These fatty stores accrue over time due to poor diet, micronutrient deficiencies, hormonal imbalances, microbiome disruption with subsequent production of endotoxin, toxic exposure, inactivity, etc. And a quick side note here, this is also why diet, lifestyle, physical activity, supplementation, hormonal balancing, and also microbiome balancing are the best ways to correct these metabolic disorders and have the best long-term effects.

Now, back to metabolic dysfunction. These fatty acids create issues metabolically because they don't allow for the mitochondria to use glucose due to the Randall effect or the Randle cycle. Even worse is, as these fatty acids build up in the muscle cells, the fat cells, and the liver, it leads to impairment in insulin signaling directly. This leads to the inability of the muscles to clear the glucose from the bloodstream, even when insulin is present, leaving more glucose in the bloodstream. It leads to the inability of the fat cells to take up glucose, as well as the inability of the fat cells to stop releasing free fatty acids into the bloodstream, even when insulin is present. And you basically have more glucose and more fatty acids left in the bloodstream. And it also leads to the inability of the liver to stop producing glucose via gluconeogenesis, even when insulin is present, further leaving more glucose in the bloodstream.

Now, ultimately, this leads to an increased circulation or an increased amount of both glucose and fatty acids in high amounts in the bloodstream at the same time. This obviously creates issues because, as we're talking about with this video, both fats and glucose cannot be effectively metabolized at the same time because of the Randall effect, because of the Randle cycle. And doing so can actually drive oxidative stress inside the mitochondria and also create damaging effects inside the cells. So long-term, running both the high glucose and high free fatty acids because of the insulin resistance and from the initial buildup of fats within the cells can put pressure on the cells and the mitochondria as they're overloaded with both substrate, and that ultimately continues to drive that oxidative stress. With that oxidative stress inside the mitochondria and inside the cells, directly damaging the mitochondria and directly damaging the cellular components. This ultimately leads to mitochondrial failure and overt mitochondrial dysfunction, as well as cellular derangement that then further impairs insulin signaling and further decreases the uptake and utilization of both carbs and fats at the cellular level and at the mitochondrial level.

Now, long-term, since those substrates can't be taken up into the cells and into the mitochondria, the fats and the carbs actually backlog into the bloodstream. And this puts a lot of pressure on the pancreas because the pancreas is trying to lower the blood glucose levels. It's getting the signal saying, "Hey, we have a lot of glucose in the bloodstream and we need to clear it out." So, it's producing insulin, producing insulin, producing insulin. And over time, that constant production of insulin in the face of the high blood glucose levels starts to damage the pancreas. The pancreas starts to become fatigued. Now, this long-term damage in the pancreas ultimately is the inability of the pancreas to produce insulin altogether. And that's late-stage type 2 diabetes. There's a spectrum of progression, um, from early impaired glucose tolerance all the way up to late-stage type 2 diabetes where the pancreas eventually fails due to the high levels of insulin resistance and in the same time, the high levels of oxidative stress that are being generated by the cells, as well as the high amounts of fats and the high amounts of glucose floating around in the bloodstream. And this directly damages the vasculature.

Now, the long-term vascular damage impacts the supply of blood and carbohydrate in the form of glucose and free fatty acids to the organs that are dependent on the circulatory system, like the nervous system, the eyes, and the kidneys, as well as other tissues like the, the skin. And this is why you see in people who have type 2 diabetes, especially advanced type 2 diabetes, develop blindness, develop damage to the kidneys, and ultimately develop cardiovascular disease, as well as develop ulceration on the skin because you basically have long-term vascular damage, as well as direct mitochondrial and cellular impairment due to this overload of both substrates simultaneously driving oxidative stress, and the other organ systems start to become damaged from this issue with the processing of fuel.

So the Randall cycle, the Randall effect, mainly becomes a problem, not necessarily from an individual meal, but more so in states of established metabolic dysfunction where the body has high amounts of both fats and carbs due to that mitochondrial dysfunction, due to that metabolic dysfunction, this overload of both substrates simultaneously.

So with all this in mind, the question then begs, can you actually eat carbs and fats at the same time? And the answer is yes, you can eat both carbs and fats at the same time. The Randall cycle, as we mentioned initially, refers to the use of carbs versus fats in an individual cell. And as I mentioned, uh, originally, you can basically have two different cells, one oxidizing carbs, one oxidizing fats. For example, you can have the muscle tissue oxidizing fats while the brain oxidizes glucose. And on top of that, the body will use carbs and fats for other things outside of just being fuel sources. So in an individual meal, you can have both carbs and fats. And I actually think it can be quite helpful for a variety of reasons that we'll touch on in just a minute. So you can have both in a meal. It's not going to drive the metabolic dysfunction. It's when the cells are overloaded with both substrate simultaneously and they're forced to kind of use both substrate or they're stuck being provided with both substrate and they can't oxidize the substrates effectively that really drives, uh, some of these major problems. And that is due to the metabolic dysfunction, not because you are having some macadamia nuts while you also have some melon or or some potatoes in a meal.

Now, the next thing is, will eating carbs and fats at the same time make you fat? And basically, no, this isn't, this isn't what happens. So the studies are pretty clear that total calorie and macronutrient intake are the most important determinants for weight loss or weight gain or fat loss or fat gain. And there's studies looking at both high-carb, low-fat, and high-fat, low-carb, as well as, you know, these are all mixed macronutrient diets to some extent, all leading to fat loss and weight loss. And with that fat loss and weight loss, significant improvements in multiple metabolic markers because again, when you start to take the clutter, the fat out of the cells and you stop having the fat tissue overloaded with fats that are dropping free fatty acids into the bloodstream, you wind up running into a circumstance where the system can start to decompress. Because now, when you have the meal, it uses a substrate from the meal. When you don't have the meal, you'll run on the fatty acids in your glycogen stores, and the system's not being flooded simultaneously with both fuel sources because the cells aren't overloaded with the fatty acids and the bloodstream isn't being flooded with the free fatty acids from the high amount of fat inside your fat tissue. So overall, in terms of weight loss, in terms of fat loss, energy input versus energy output is the most important determinant of fat loss across the board.

However, and this is where people, and this is where, you know, even Jay and I have talked about this, this is where some of the concerns come in with calories in, calories out. Matching energy input and matching energy output is a little bit nuanced in theory because there's multiple factors that affect and impact the ability to take your carbs and fats and effectively convert them into ATP or convert them into energy at the cellular level. So, as an example, if you don't have enough micronutrients like B vitamins and minerals like magnesium and calcium that are co-factors for the enzymes inside the Krebs cycle, then you, you can't take either carbs nor fats and effectively convert them into energy because the fats and the carbs both require vitamin B3, vitamin B2, and a variety of other components to actually create the ATP inside the electron transport chain. Now, if your hormonal state is poor, if you have high amounts of something like cortisol, this can directly take your substrate and shift it towards fat storage instead of allowing you to actually take the substrate and convert it into energy directly. So, hormonal imbalance, high levels of stress that can force fatty acid oxidation, keep releasing free fatty acids into the bloodstream and lead to a circumstance where the fuel that you're taking in from your diet gets converted directly into fat stores instead of used for energy. And this is why when you see people who use, uh, glucocorticoid-based drugs, they actually gain visceral body fat and they start developing all of the symptoms of insulin resistance. It's driving that process. On top of that, when you have somebody who has low thyroid function, which controls energy metabolism at the cell, controls mitochondrial function, you can also see that fuel getting shunted towards fat because you're not taking that fuel and using it for energy production because the signaling for energy production at the cell is low due to the decreased thyroid. And so the fuel, it has nowhere to go. So the body shoves that into fat. So hormonal aberrations can directly impact the cycle. And then on top of this, oxidative stress can directly impact it. So if you start developing high levels of oxidative stress, the cell, this can directly impair the mitochondrial enzymes in the Krebs cycle, for example, like aconitase, that allows you to actually take the electrons off your carbs and your fats, store them in NADH and FADH2, and convert them into energy in the mitochondria. Or if over time, you load up your mitochondrial membranes with polyunsaturated fats, and then you have an event that triggers oxidative stress, the oxidative stress in conjunction with the polyunsaturated fats in your cellular structure can damage those polyunsaturated fats. And when the structure of the mitochondria is damaged, say, for example, you think of the mitochondria like the engine in your car, the belt in your car breaks on your engine, your car is not driving. So the same thing in the mitochondria, when you destroy that membrane inside the mitochondria, you're not going to get energy production, or energy production is going to be significantly impaired. And this is what happens when you start loading up the cell membranes of the mitochondria with polyunsaturated fats, or if you start blocking enzymes in the mitochondria from oxidative stress. And then on top of that, you have direct poisons that can impact energy production that basically impair mitochondrial function directly. So these are things like endotoxin. These are things like heavy metals. These are things like chemicals. These are things like EMF and radiation exposure. This is industrial additives in our food supply. And also lipid peroxidation products present in our food from the polyunsaturated fats. These are just some, there's quite a few components that can directly go in and start impairing metabolic processes and impairing mitochondrial function, which inhibits your ability to take your fuel, your carbs and your fats, and convert them directly into energy. And when that occurs, you start to store the carbs as fat or glycogen, and you start to store the fat as fat. And as this builds up over time, again, we get stuck in that cycle where the body is, is has a lot of fat stores, and the fat stores are impairing the carbohydrate utilization, and it builds this backlog all the way back up that I talked about before.

The next question that typically gets asked around the Randle cycle is, will eating carbs and fats at the same time make you insulin resistant? Now, in general, higher carb, lower fat can improve insulin sensitivity overall. However, even if you go on a low-carb diet that's high in fat and you lose a ton of body fat, or even if you're on a low-fat, high-carb diet and you lose a ton of body fat, or you do intermittent fasting or something like this, all of these interventions with a loss of total body fat and basically getting the body into an optimal circumstance in terms of the amount of fuel it has on board and its ability to use that fuel will improve metabolic function across the board. So this is why in general, if you have a healthy person, you feed them a higher fat diet, their insulin sensitivity tends to be a bit impaired compared to if they had a higher carb diet. But this is the, this is where the paradox comes in where people go on carnivore diets or they go on a keto diet and all of their markers improve. Part of that is because they, a lot of people tend to lose a bunch of weight on those diets. And taking off the weight, lowering the amount of free fatty acids that are coming out of the fat tissue over time will help to improve insulin sensitivity and will stop the mitochondria from being forced to run both carbs and fats simultaneously because you have the free fatty acids leaking in. And then when you eat a meal, you're throwing glucose on top of that, and then the cells are not responding to glucose, and you have that backlog effect. So this is why in these diets, you can actually see improvements in these markers, but fundamentally, you still see in these lower carbohydrate diets over time, people tend to actually become more insulin resistant and they have a, they have the circumstance where they're fasting blood glucose starts to raise, and then when they do a glucose tolerance test, their glucose tolerance test results are pretty poor because running on the fatty acids, even in physiologic states where it's not, you don't have the pathology, and even when you fix some of the insulin sensitivity markers, still leads to to an insulin resistance and a lack of ability to use carbohydrates because you are prioritizing fatty acids.

Then on top of this, something to mention is a lot of markers change in low carb purely because you are not taking carbs in. You are not stimulating insulin, and your blood glucose is relatively flat across the day. This will lower A1C and insulin values, but this doesn't tell you that you're using carbohydrate very well at the cellular level. So that's something else important to keep in mind. But under normal circumstances, the body is able to process both carbs and fats at the same time without issue. It's when you start to develop metabolic aberration that you are forced to kind of use both substrate, or the cells are being presented with both substrate because the body is leaking free fatty acids into the blood supply all the time from the fat tissue. And then when you're taking in carbohydrates, you have that, it's not getting shut off because of the insulin resistance. The liver is not shutting down its glucose production. The fat stores are not stopping the release of free fatty acids, and they're not taking up the glucose, and then the muscle tissue is not taking up the glucose as well. And depending on which stage you are at inside type 2 diabetes versus impaired glucose tolerance, you can start to also have direct mitochondrial dysfunction where the mitochondria are damaged by the reactive oxygen species, the oxidative stress of of this metabolic situation where you have the carbs and fats present. So depending on where you are, this can shift things. And it's also why when people shift to one diet or the other and they just use just carbs or just fats, it also can help to force the system in one direction to take some of the pressure off. And people do see some benefits in those circumstances. But again, fundamentally, and this is why I started this video with this, you want to be able to use carbohydrates as a primary source for all of the benefits that we talked about. And again, I think the major point to hammer home here for insulin resistance, for body fat, and then also for having carbs and fats within the same meal, the primary issue with the Randall cycle and the Randall effect is the metabolic dysfunction itself. Now, your diet can drive this, but if the metabolic, if metabolism is functioning well and you're eating a solid diet, you should be able to tolerate both carbs and fats within the same meal. Um, so this is something to, to, to focus on is the metabolic piece. Not necessarily, oh, I can't have carbs and fats in the same meal because of the Randle effect, because that's not necessarily how it works. It's more when you have the metabolic dysfunction. This is where the Randle effect becomes centerpiece becomes extremely important to understand.

Now with this, the question I'm sure people are wondering at this point is, I know my total calories and macros per day, but what do I do in one meal? Or what I like to do is I take my total macronutrients and then I divide them across the meals. So say we have the 150 grams of protein per day, the 60 grams of fat per day, and the 215 grams of carbs per day. What I would do, say I'm going to have three meals per day, is I would just divide those values by three. So for protein intake, we're going to take the 150 protein and we're going to divide it across the three meals. So you're going to get 50 grams of protein per meal. When we look at the fat intake, we're going to take that 60 grams of fat per day, we're going to divide it by three, and we'll get 20 grams of fat per meal. And then with the carb intake, what we're going to do is we'll take that 215 grams of carbs and we'll divide that by three. So we get roughly 70 grams of carbs per meal.

Now, you don't have to be perfect with it. It doesn't have to be exactly split like that. I make adjustments with clients all the time. So say somebody's having trouble with sleep, I will increase the amount of carbs and fats at their last meal, their dinner meal, so that they can have blood glucose stability and they can also minimize the stress hormones and sleep throughout the night. That can help quite a bit so people aren't waking up. Now, if you have to last a long time between meals, right? You have a couple hours, four or five hours, increasing your fat in that particular meal can be helpful because the fat will delay the gastric emptying and allow that food to last quite a bit longer. This is why people who are on keto and low carb are full for really long periods of time because they basically have high fat and high protein in a meal that satiates them, and then it slowly drips out because of the high fat intake, and then they don't have to eat for hours and hours on end. You can throttle your fat versus your fat in a meal. Lower will make you hungry faster. Higher will allow you to last longer between the meals. On top of that, you can adjust your carb and your protein intake so that you get most of it after your workouts where so you can optimize the anabolic response of the workouts. You don't have to do this, but these are some things that you can do to moderate the amounts of different foods. And a lot of times I'll have people who aren't that hungry in the morning. So maybe I'll make breakfast a little bit lighter, and then I'll put the rest of the macros into lunch and also into dinner.

Now with this in mind, the last piece that I want to talk about is we have this idea in these different dietary spheres that you have to just choose one macronutrient and you can't have the other. So you have to either go high-fat, low-carb, or high-carb, low-fat, or just go low-carb, low-fat and go really high protein because that's the protein is not going to get make you have any fat gain or anything like this. I would switch the perspective here and see that each macronutrient serves a purpose and has value, and you need to figure out which macronutrient works for you as an individual, the amounts. And so that's why I'm giving some guidelines here with the energy-based diet calculator, or what I'm talking about in this video. But there's going to be some finagling, some tweaking that has to go on to make sure that the system and diet that you set up works best for your context.

So as an example for fat, what happens if fat goes too low? What do I typically see with clients? Satiety starts to go out the window. Getting hungry all the time. I think people on the sugar diet are probably experiencing this. They want to have carbohydrates and sugar all the time, every hour. I experienced this when I did a low-fat diet. As I mentioned, the fats delay that gastric emptying. So, it actually allows you to slow drip that food into your intestine, have a delayed release of that food. Now, also that slow release of the food into the small intestine from the stomach by the fat, that delayed gastric emptying helps with blood glucose regulation. It helps you to not have this huge spike and drop. You have a more even curve on your blood glucose. On top of that, the fats help to optimize digestion and minimize exposure to endotoxin while shifting the microbiome in the small intestine, clearing out the small intestine of bacteria because they induce the release of bile acids. Those bile acids are also important for detoxifying the liver. And then on top of that, the fats are important because they are precursors to the steroid hormones. They help to increase steroid hormones. And there's studies showing lowered fat intakes actually lower testosterone in men, as well as DHT.

Now, what happens if your carbs go too low? Well, if your carbs go too low, and we see this in people on low-carb carnivore diets, they start to increase adrenaline, glucagon, cortisol, and growth hormone while they lower their T3 levels and can increase the reverse T3 levels. So, thyroid hormone takes a hit, and the stress hormones start to upregulate. And what you see with this is that they tend to see over time elevated fasting blood glucose levels from the bumped up gluconeogenesis. And on top of that, they start to see hemoglobin A1C values rise. And this is why you see people like Dr. Sean Baker, who was carnivore for a while, having not so great fasting blood glucose levels, as well as not so great hemoglobin A1C levels. On top of this, when you don't have adequate carbohydrates, you can't activate the pentose phosphate pathway, which produces NADPH, which is important for glutathione recycling. So glutathione is our master antioxidant. The carbohydrates help to allow us to produce this glutathione so that we can actually protect ourselves from oxidative stress. On top of that, at the electron transport chain, when you oxidize carbs, it allows complex one to work better and decreases ROS production compared to when you oxidize fats. Um, I'm going to go through this in depth in the, the super in-depth Randle cycle video that I'm going to release. And then on top of this, you have a better NAD+ NADH ratio when you're oxidizing carbohydrate because of how the carbohydrates are processed by the cells. And the NAD+ NADH ratio is one of the major metabolic markers or markers of metabolic health that people are starting to look at in longevity spheres. Carb oxidation optimizes this at the cellular level. On top of this, you have increased CO2 production when you have adequate amounts of carbs, which is important for circulation and also important for mitochondrial function. And then over time, a higher carbohydrate, lower fat diet, the amounts obviously is going to be individual, can help to improve insulin sensitivity and help people who have gotten high fasting blood glucose or poor glucose tolerance from low-carb diets. When they start to shift and add carbs, that can actually over time improve their insulin sensitivity as they start to use carbohydrates again, instead of relying so much on fatty acids.