Metabolic Health Quotes

Organic Oreos are not a health food. When Coca-Cola begins selling organic Coke, as it surely will, the company will have struck a blow for the environment perhaps, but not for our health. Most consumers automatically assume that the word "organic" is synomymous with health, but it makes no difference to your insulin metabolism if the high-fructose corn syrup in your soda is organic.

A disruption of the circadian cycle—the metabolic and glandular rhythms that are central to our workaday life—seems to be involved in many, if not most, cases of depression; this is why brutal insomnia so often occurs and is most likely why each day’s pattern of distress exhibits fairly predictable alternating periods of intensity and relief.

All of this suggests that one of the best things each of us can do—not only for ourselves, but also for our children and grandchildren—is to metabolize our pain and heal our trauma. When we heal and make more room for growth in our nervous systems, we have a better chance of spreading our emotional health to our descendants, via healthy DNA expression. In contrast, when we don’t address our trauma, we may pass it on to future generations, along with some of our fear, constriction, and dirty pain.

Eighty percent of American Farm Bill subsidies go to corn, grains, and soy oil. Amazingly, tobacco receives four times more government subsidies (2 percent) than all fruits and vegetables combined (0.45 percent).

The Hedonistic Imperative outlines how genetic engineering and nanotechnology will abolish suffering in all sentient life. This project is ambitious but technically feasible. It is also instrumentally rational and ethically mandatory. The metabolic pathways of pain and malaise evolved only because they once served the fitness of our genes. They will be replaced by a different sort of neural architecture. States of sublime well-being are destined to become the genetically pre-programmed norm of mental health. The world's last aversive experience will be a precisely dateable event.

Yes: we have arrived at our common thread, the underpinning factor that lets us answer our tangled questions about causes and treatments, symptoms and overlaps. Mental disorders—all of them—are metabolic disorders of the brain.

Nothing breaks my heart more than seeing that person who’s struggling to lose weight who thinks that they need to run 20 miles a week. They have no desire to do it, their knees hurt, they hate it, and they’re not losing weight. And I’d like to say, ‘Well, I’ve got great news for you. You don’t ever need to run another step a day in your life, because there’s no value in that.’ “There is value in exercise, though, and I think that the most important type of exercise, especially in terms of bang for your buck, is going to be really high-intensity, heavy strength training. Strength training aids everything from glucose disposal and metabolic health to mitochondrial density and orthopedic stability. That last one might not mean much when you’re a 30-something young buck, but when you’re in your 70s, that’s the difference between a broken hip and a walk in the park.

If we added up all of the special ‘avoidance’ diets, no one could eat anything.  Many people are ruining their health by avoiding too many foods.” -Ray Peat

Americans now eat more than one million chickens per hour.

High quality sleep fortifies your immune system, balances your hormones, boosts your metabolism, increases physical energy, and improves the function of your brain.

Muscle Contraction Is Medicine The reason that moving regularly is important is because a body in which muscles are contracting frequently (even at low intensities for short periods) is experiencing totally different physiology than a body where the muscles are worked in only a one- to two-hour exercise block per day (no matter how intense that block). Muscle contraction is miraculous medicine.

Do human cells have “drivers” making the cells stop and go? It turns out that they do. The drivers of human cells, and human metabolism, are called mitochondria. And they are the common pathway to mental and metabolic disorders

I deeply respect doctors, but I want to be very clear on something: at every hospital in the United States, many doctors are doing the wrong things, pushing pills and interventions when an ultra-aggressive stance on diet and behavior would do far more for the patient in front of them. Suicide and burnout rates are astronomical in health care, with approximately four hundred doctors per year killing themselves. (That’s equivalent to about four medical school graduating classes just dropping dead every year by their own hand.) Doctors have twice the rate of suicide as the general population. Based on my own experience with depression as a young surgeon, I think a contributor to this phenomenon is an insidious spiritual crisis about the efficacy of our work and a sense of being trapped in a system

Coconut’s distinctive medium-chain composition has been shown to offer protection from heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and many other degenerative illnesses, to improve immune function and fat metabolism, and to protect against liver damage from alcohol and other toxins, and deliver anti-inflammatory and immune-supporting properties.

How many fluids should you take in daily?  That is an unanswerable question with all of the variables that affect our fluid needs at any given time.  If you meet anyone who can answer that question for you, run away quickly.

Factoid: Within the class of nutrients called ‘carbohydrates’, there is no molecule that is essential for human health or well-being. This does not mean that blood sugar is completely unimportant, but rather that blood sugar can be well-maintained via metabolic processes such as gluconeogenesis without dietary carbohydrates in the keto-adapted human.

Fermented foods contain natural probiotics, or healthy bacteria, that can take your health to the next level. Nearly every culture has a version of a fermented food: yogurt, kefir, miso, and fermented vegetables, including sauerkraut, pickles, and kimchi.

WHAT’S GOOD FOR THE HEART IS GOOD FOR THE BRAIN. That is, vascular health (meaning low apoB, low inflammation, and low oxidative stress) is crucial to brain health. WHAT’S GOOD FOR THE LIVER (AND PANCREAS) IS GOOD FOR THE BRAIN. Metabolic health is crucial to brain health. TIME IS KEY. We need to think about prevention early, and the more the deck is stacked against you genetically, the harder you need to work and the sooner you need to start. As with cardiovascular disease, we need to play a very long game. OUR MOST POWERFUL TOOL FOR PREVENTING COGNITIVE DECLINE IS EXERCISE. We’ve talked a lot about diet and metabolism, but exercise appears to act in multiple ways (vascular, metabolic) to preserve brain health; we’ll get into more detail in Part III, but exercise—lots of it—is a foundation of our Alzheimer’s-prevention program.

Make sure your diet and lifestyle is something that you love and want to continue for life.  If you feel that way about it, you’ve found the healthiest diet for you.  Make the diet fit your life.  Don’t change your life around to fit your diet.  Don’t let the diet take over your life.  Let it play a supporting role in your life, helping you to feel better and have more energy for the things you would love to do and experience.

Barrett said that when we’re dehydrated, we don’t necessarily feel thirsty—we feel exhausted. When we have something odd happening in our stomach, our body doesn’t quite know if we have a menstrual cramp or a stomachache or if we need to poop. We might not even be aware for a long period of time that our stomach hurts. And this isn’t unique to people with PTSD. It’s normal, everyday bodily dissociation that we all suffer from. If we find ourselves in a shitty mood, we might not necessarily be mad about a certain trigger. We could just be running at a metabolic deficit. Our body might be screaming “I NEED FUNYUNS” while we project our hangriness onto, say, this poor sweaty schmuck who’s breathing too loud in the elevator. But Barrett said that PTSD does make these inclinations worse. It affects a variety of systems in the body, throwing them all out of whack. Our hearts might beat faster. Our lungs might pump harder. Our body budget can get tipped off-balance more easily. And when it does, our reactions to these deficits can feel outsized. “Make sure that you get enough sleep, make sure you exercise, make sure that you eat in a healthful way,” she told me when I asked her what I could do to be a better person. When I countered that that didn’t seem like enough, she kindly offered, “You know, all you can do is take as much responsibility as you can. And sometimes it’s the attempt that matters, you know, more than the success.” Then she chuckled at herself. “That’s a very Jewish mother response!” So, first step of hacking my brain: sustaining it with enough oxygen and nutrients

Fasting carries significant health benefits. Metabolism increases, energy increases and blood sugars decrease. The only remaining question is this: Can you do it? I hear this one all the time. Absolutely, 100 percent yes. In fact, fasting has been a part of human culture since the dawn of our species.

The microbiome affects our mood, libido, metabolism, immunity, and even our perception of the world and the clarity of our thoughts. It helps determine whether we are fat or thin, energic or lethargic. Put simply, everything about our health-how we feel both emotionally and physically-hinges on the state of our microbiome.

Weight loss is not a goal, it’s either something that happens or doesn’t happen as a result of living, eating, and moving in smarter and healthier ways.

What I have found over and over is that, once we have made short-term changes, they tend to change our long-term habits.

Health, not illness, is our natural state. It’s usually just a matter of finding it tucked beneath the layers of imbalance that have accumulated over time.

Between 1909 and 2007, meat intake rose from 124 pounds to more than 200 pounds per person per year. That’s more than seventy-five pounds of extra meat for every person every year.

Generally speaking, what you do habitually is everything. What you do on occasion is inconsequential.

deep sleep for learning and memory, not to mention all branches of bodily health, from cardiovascular and respiratory, to metabolic, energy balance, and immune function.

Consider this: when a kid drinks one bottle of Coke, they ingest as much added sugar as they might have had in an entire year if they were living 150 years ago.

The word “metabolism” refers to the complicated collection of chemical reactions our cells use to turn food into

Since the brain is an energy hog, if its metabolic machinery can’t generate enough power to meet its needs, it can and will malfunction.

Every institution that impacts your health makes more money when you are sick and less when you are healthy—from hospitals to pharma to medical schools, and even insurance companies.

Yogasanas have often been thought of as a form of exercise. They are not exercises, but techniques which place the physical body in positions that cultivate awareness, relaxation, concentration and meditation. Part of this process is the development of good physical health by stretching, massaging and stimulating the pranic channels and internal organs. When yogasanas are performed, respiration and metabolic rates slow down, the consumption of oxygen and the body temperature drop. During exercise, however, the breath and metabolism speed up, oxygen consumption rises, and the body gets hot. In addition, asanas are designed to have specific effects on the glands and internal organs, and to alter electrochemical activity in the nervous system.

The real model for health, however, is more complicated. The real model goes like this: eating low-quality foods leads to overeating and metabolic brokenness, which makes you overweight and sick.

Fructose, which is often paired with glucose, is naturally present in fruit and honey, as well as table sugar (sucrose, which is 50 percent fructose). Assuming your baker used plenty of sugar, your cake probably has a fair amount of fructose. Unlike glucose, which can be metabolized (essentially burned) by cells throughout the body, fructose is almost entirely metabolized by the liver. The liver, however, can burn only so much fructose at once, so it converts any excess fructose into fat, which again is either stored in the liver or dumped into the bloodstream. As we will see, both of these fates cause problems.

The most blatant and deadly example of the intervention-based incentives of our medical system is that medical leaders are absolutely silent on the things that are actually making us sick: food and lifestyle.

Refined added sugar causes astronomically more deaths and disability per year than COVID-19 and fentanyl overdoses combined. We need to see refined added sugar for what it is: an addictive, dangerous drug that has been included in 74 percent of foods in the U.S. food system and for which the body needs zero grams in a lifetime. Of all the levers most damaging our cells and preventing Good Energy, I believe the worst offender may be added sugar. This substance has become a mainstay of food that we and our children eat regularly. As Dr. Robert Lustig has noted, sugar shows up on labels in fifty-six different names and sneaks in everywhere.

key reason why we are chronically consuming far too much food energy is because of the wide accessibility of ultra-processed, industrially manufactured foods, which impair our body’s self-regulatory satiety mechanisms and directly trigger hunger and cravings. These ultra-processed industrial foods are chemically engineered to be addictive and make up nearly 70 percent of calories that people in the United States consume today.

If you sit all day but get 10,000 steps over the course of one hour by going for a run, that’s less health promoting than if you space out those steps over every hour of the day (more on this in Chapter 8). Wearables

which their previous doctors have chalked up to “normal.” These symptoms often include neck pain, seasonal sinus infections or recurrent colds, eczema, itchy ear canals, lower-back pain, acne, headaches, bloating, reflux, chronic cough, a little anxiety, trouble falling asleep, low energy, and PMS symptoms like cramps and moodiness. None of this is normal. You can and should feel incredible—mentally and physically—most of the time.

First, when you try to restrict calories and exercise more, your body is hardwired to perceive a starvation situation. That makes you tired (so you move less and conserve energy) and hungry (so you eat more), and it slows down your metabolism (so you don’t die!). This “eat less, exercise more” formula is not too successful for most people. It can work for a short time, certainly, but less than 10 percent of people lose weight and keep it off for a year;4 you will almost always rebound and gain back the weight. Second, when you eat carbs and sugar, insulin spikes and your blood sugar drops. The insulin drives most of the available fuel in your bloodstream into fat cells, especially the fat cells around your middle, otherwise known as belly fat. So your body is starved of fuel, and this stimulates your brain5 to make you eat more.6 You could have a year’s worth of stored energy in your fat tissue and yet feel like you are starving. The only thing that can stop this vicious cycle is eating a lot of fat and cutting out the refined carbs and sugar. A high-fat, low-carb diet leads to a faster metabolism and sustained weight loss.

The day may come when the obese people of the world must give up diets, since metabolizing their fat deposits will lead to DDT poisoning. But, on the bright side, it is clear that fewer and fewer people in the future will be obese!

Bone broth is considered a powerful detoxification agent since it helps the digestive system expel waste and promotes the liver’s ability to remove toxins, helps maintain tissue integrity and improves the body’s use of antioxidants.

Cutting carbs, fats, or calories (dieting) is like trying to hold your breath.  The longer you do it, the more your body resists it until you finally gasp for air – taking in more than ever to overcome the short-term deficit you induced.

Recent studies have shown that the composition of the nursing mother’s diet has a major influence on the baby’s risk for metabolic disease and obesity later on in life, and much of this is mediated by the early programming of the baby’s gut microbiota.

The best advice I can give anyone in transforming their health is to find a way—any way—to stick with totally unprocessed, organic food for just a month or two. By the end of this time, I can guarantee that your preferences and cravings will have changed.

Obesity doctors and pediatricians are not calling to lower the recommended added sugar for children to zero; they are saying obesity is a “brain disease” and that the government should subsidize bariatric surgeries and pharmaceutical injections to manage it.

Your waist size is such an important predictor of health because the type of fat that is stored around your waistline—called “visceral fat” or “belly fat”—is related to the release of proteins and hormones that cause inflammation, which can in turn damage your arteries and affect how you metabolize sugars and fats. For this reason, visceral fat is strongly linked to type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer’s, and other chronic diseases. Seeing your waist size come down is a great indicator of improving health.

Your diet shouldn’t have a name or be something you can tweet about using the # sign.  If you, in your chronic dieting ways must name it, it should be your first name, followed by an apostrophe s, and the word “Diet.”  So for example, what I eat is referred to as “Matt’s Diet.”  If your name is Jean Claude Van Damme, then what you eat is called “Jean Claude’s Diet,” and probably consists mostly of metal chards and King Cobra filets.  If your name is Shooter McGavin, then you probably eat pieces of shit like Happy Gilmore for breakfast.

Metabolically speaking, if sugar has an evil twin, then "drinking alcohol" can become the demon spawn. This is because sugar converted to booze converts to ethanol plus carbon dioxide, and if you imbibe--do not pass Go. Do not collect two hundred dollars. Go straight to the liver.

that adds 104 calories to the meal. If this happens daily, that’s eleven pounds gained per year! Not only that, but if you eat healthful, saturated fats, such as those found in nuts, within one day of being stressed, your body metabolizes these foods as if they were filled with bad fats. I’m

Patients are being crushed by the devil’s bargain. Between the 6 trillion dollar food industry which wants to make food cheap and addictive and the 4 trillion dollar health care industry which profits off interventions on sick patients and stays silent about the reasons they are getting sick.

And when small cellular disturbances happen in every cell, at every moment, the effect is outsized—rippling up into the tissues, organs, and systems of your body and negatively influencing how you feel, think, function, look, age, and even how well you combat pathogens and avoid chronic disease.

The leading source of calories that Americans consume is a category called “grain-based desserts,” like pies, cakes, and cookies, according to the US Department of Agriculture. That is our number one “food group.” If we consume a bunch of grain-based desserts in a Cheesecake Factory binge, our blood glucose levels will surge. And if we do it over and over and over again, as we saw in previous chapters, we will eventually overwhelm our ability to handle all those calories in a safe way. The SAD essentially wages war on our metabolic health, and, given enough time, most of us will lose the war.

Bad Energy Foods If you remember one food principle in this book, remember that cutting the unholy trinity of these three ingredients from your diet will completely change your health and ensure you’re making room for more Good Energy foods: Refined added sugar Refined industrial vegetable and seed oils Refined grains

Focusing on individual nutrients, their identities, their contents in food, their tissue concentrations, and their biological mechanisms, is like using math and physics to catch balls. It’s not the way nature evolved, and it makes proper nutrition far more difficult than it needs to be. Our bodies use countless mechanisms, strategically placed throughout our digestion, absorption, and transport and metabolic pathways, to effortlessly ensure tissue concentrations consistent with good health—no database consultation required. But as long as we let reductionism guide our research and our understanding of nutrition, good health will remain unattainable.

Dietary fat was singled out as the most villainous culprit responsible for weight gain and declining health. The food industry adjusted by replacing saturated animal fats with “heart healthy,” super-processed vegetable seed oils, and high fructose corn syrup. Soon, our average body weight started to rise, and it did so quickly.

Social reality is not just about words—it gets under your skin. If you perceive the same baked good as a decadent “cupcake” or a healthful “muffin,” research suggests that your body metabolizes it differently. Likewise, the words and concepts of your culture help to shape your brain wiring and your physical changes during emotion.24

Scientists generally agree that the more HDL you have, the lower your risk for heart disease. As you might have imagined, people with Metabolic Syndrome and type 2 diabetes also typically have low levels of beneficial HDL. Exercise is one of the cheapest, easiest, and most effective ways to raise HDL. Consuming saturated fat is another!

Simple markers can show us “check engine” alerts. A most basic and accessible way to see if you have a reasonable level of metabolic health is by checking five markers that are almost always tested and tracked at your annual checkup: blood sugar, triglycerides, high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, blood pressure, and waist circumference. When these markers fall into an optimal range, in the absence of medication—see Chapter 4 for exact specifications—you can deduce that your cellular energy production is doing OK. Typically, you will feel vibrant, healthy, and pain-free. These feelings, too, should tell you that your body has Good Energy, the foundation of general good health.

These visceral (belly) fat cells behave differently than fat elsewhere in the body in two important ways.25 First, they are several times more sensitive to hormones and thus tend to be more metabolically active, which means they are capable of storing and releasing fat more rapidly than fat cells in other parts of the body. Second, when visceral cells release fatty acids (something fat cells do all the time), they dump the molecules almost straight into the liver, where the fat accumulates and eventually impairs the liver’s ability to regulate the release of glucose into the blood. An excess of belly fat (a paunch) is therefore a much greater risk factor for metabolic disease than a high BMI.

I reflect that the mitochondria that process energy from food to animate our tissues are inherited entirely from our mothers, passed down through millennia in an endless progression of nesting dolls along a matrilineal line. The mitochondria from the sperm essentially melt upon fertilization with an egg, while our mother’s mitochondria persist and create all the energy we need to do everything.

Foods are more than the sum of their nutrient parts, and those nutrients work together in ways that are still only dimly understood. It may be that the degree to which a food is processed gives us a more important key to its healthfulness: Not only can processing remove nutrients and add toxic chemicals, but it makes food more readily absorbable, which can be a problem for our insulin and fat metabolism.

Sitting here in my lab, I can imagine you scratching your head again: Dr. Panda, what’s the big deal? Aren’t we talking about just a few ounces of fat gain after a late-night snack? Won’t my metabolic rhythm come back the next day? Actually, it’s worse than you think. It is hard enough for the body to monitor hormones, genes, and clocks for someone with a strict eating routine. But when eating occurs at random times throughout the day and night, the fat-making process stays on all the time. At the same time, glucose created from digested carbohydrates floods our blood and the liver becomes inefficient in its ability to absorb glucose. If this continues for a few days, blood glucose continues to rise and reaches the danger zone of prediabetes or diabetes. So, if you’ve wondered why diets haven’t worked for you before, timing might be the reason. Even if you were diligently exercising; counting calories; avoiding fats, carbs, and sweets; and piling on the protein, it’s quite likely that you weren’t respecting your circadian clocks. If you eat late at night or start breakfast at a wildly different time each morning, you are constantly throwing your body out of sync. Don’t worry, the fix is equally simple: Just set an eating routine and stick to it. Timing is everything.

Anyone can prove whatever they want. It's easy. I could "prove," via those mechanisms that carbs are the devil, fat is the devil, protein is the devil, grains destroy your digestive tract, grains are the ultimate food for digestive health, fruit is the devil, fruit is the salvation of mankind, dairy is the perfect food, dairy is atherogenic, dairy causes autoimmune disease, dairy cures autoimmune disease, fat makes you fat, fat makes you thin...

Prioritize whole, unprocessed, nutrient-rich, nourishing foods. Eat vegetables, grass-fed and pastured meats and eggs, wild-caught seafood, and some fruit, nuts, and seeds. Avoid foods that are likely to be more harmful than healthful. Especially when regularly consumed, certain foods can trigger inflammation, cause digestive problems, or derail our natural metabolic processes, such as grains, legumes, sugar, and processed seed and vegetable oils.

and I am convinced that healthy emotional boundaries—such as being clear and vocal about what you will and will not let into your life—are what make relationships functional. Your gut lining is a boundary between you and everything else in the universe that is poised to inundate and overwhelm your biology and generate unrelenting inflammation. Healing and strengthening your gut lining with food—therefore creating and strengthening this critical boundary and reducing intestinal permeability or “leaky gut”—allows you to be selective about what you want to take in from the universe on a material level. You can choose what serves you. I reflect on the fact that many of the problems in society—including violence, mental illness, developmental issues, and pain—start in humans, and humans are made by cells that become dysfunctional largely because of oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction, and chronic inflammation. How miraculous that food can directly combat those things. We can’t have a healthy society without well-functioning humans. We can’t have well-functioning humans without well-functioning cells. And we can’t have well-functioning cells with mitochondrial dysfunction, oxidative stress, chronic inflammation, and cellular and hormone disruption from toxic chemicals in our food. We combat those things through nutrient-dense, unprocessed foods grown in living, thriving soil.

Gerontologists studying the aging process find increasing evidence that most of us will age with a fair degree of success. There’s far less institutionalization and disability than one might have guessed. While the size of social networks shrink with age, the quality of the relationships improves. There are types of cognitive skills that improve in old age (these are related to social intelligence and to making good strategic use of facts, rather than merely remembering them easily). The average elderly individual thinks his or her health is above average, and takes pleasure from that. And most important, the average level of happiness increases in old age; fewer negative emotions occur and, when they do, they don’t persist as long. Connected to this, brain-imaging studies show that negative images have less of an impact, and positive images have more of an impact on brain metabolism in older people, as compared to young.

nonalcoholic fatty liver disease has become the most common chronic liver disease in the world, increasing from 25 percent of the global population in 1990 to close to 40 percent by 2019. NAFLD is full-blown metabolic dysfunction in kids and adults, representing liver cells filling with fat, which worsens insulin resistance. Key contributors are processed foods, refined sugars, refined grains, sweet beverages, high-fructose corn syrup, fast food, low fiber and phytochemical intake, habitual eating close to bedtime, sedentary behavior, and oxidative stress. Liver transplants have gone up close to 50 percent in the past fifteen years, and while alcohol and hepatitis C used to be the leading causes, now NAFLD is taking the lead in women as the cause of liver failure and is a top cause for men. Fatty liver disease is now the most common cause of liver transplant in young adults in the United States. We are failing our children.

Dieting activates “thrifty genes” that induce weight gain, both by increasing your hunger drive and decreasing your metabolism, and triggers other weight-gain mechanisms, many of which are beyond your conscious control. Also, some food choices that have become increasingly common bypass your internal weight-regulation system: Since their calories don’t register, eating them can result in an insatiable appetite, even when sufficient (or more than sufficient) calories are consumed.

TRUST THE SYSTEM ON ACUTE ISSUES, IGNORE IT ON CHRONIC Most health care books give recommendations and end with a disclaimer to “consult your doctor.” I have a different conclusion: when it comes to preventing and managing chronic disease, you should not trust the medical system. This might sound pessimistic or even frightening, but understanding the incentives of our medical system and why it does not deserve our benefit of the doubt is the first step to becoming an empowered patient.

The pounds of molecular information we put into our bodies daily impact our health. Every thought you have and feeling you feel comes from food. Inside your mother’s body, you were 3D printed out of food, and every item you ingest continues to print the next iteration of yourself. Bodies, neurotransmitters, hormones, nerves, and mitochondria are all made, exclusively and necessarily, from what you (or your mom) put in your (or their) mouth; we don’t arise from thin air, we arise from food.

Six out of ten adults are living with a chronic illness. About 50 percent of Americans will deal with mental illness sometime in life. Seventy-four percent of adults are overweight or have obesity. Rates of cancer, heart disease, kidney disease, upper respiratory infections, and autoimmune conditions are all going up at the exact time we are spending more and more to treat them. In the face of these trends, American life expectancy has been declining for the most sustained period since 1860.

Eating a Paleolithic diet is not about historical re-enactment; it is about mimicking the effect of such a diet on the metabolism with foods available at the supermarket. There was no one diet eaten throughout the entire Paleolithic, nor is there a single diet eaten by contemporary hunter-gatherers. Hunter-gatherer diets can vary substantially depending on the geography, season, and culture. Even so, the commonalities among hunter-gatherer diets provide useful parameters for a healthy modern diet.

There’s a saying that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. And that’s precisely what has happened to national nutritional policy in the United States in recent years. The government ignores studies that don’t fit within a preconceived template of a low-fat, low-salt, calorie-restricted, high-carb, plant-based diet. But this one-size-fits-all approach to eating does not work for the large segment of the population that is dealing with obesity and other metabolic chronic health issues.

When our cells sense sustained danger, they divert resources to defense and alarm pathways instead of normal functions that generate sustainable health. Given this, no matter how pristine your dietary intake is, how much you’re moving, how much sunlight you’re getting, or how many hours of quality sleep you’re getting, if the cells are bathed in a stew of stress created by the way psychology translates to biochemistry (via hormones, neurotransmitters, inflammatory cytokines, and neurologic signals), all the other healthy choices will fall

With food we covered three simple rules that get you quite far: don't eat added sugar, don't eat industrially processed vegetable and seed oils, and don't eat highly processed grains. With fitness I also suggest three simple rules: 1. walk at least 7,000 steps throughout the day and space them out throughout the day; work up to 1,000 per day; 2. get your heart rate above 60% of your maximum for at least 150 minutes per week (30 minutes for 5 days per week). 3. lift heavy things multiple times per week in a way that hits every major muscle group.

Below are recommended optimal ranges for key metabolic blood tests. Falling outside of these ranges is an indicator that you could have brewing dysfunction. The remainder of Part 2 and the plan in Part 3 will give specific steps to increase Good Energy and improve these biomarkers: Triglycerides: Less than 80 mg/dL HDL: 50 to 90 mg/dL Fasting Glucose: 70 to 85 mg/dL Blood Pressure: Less than 120 systolic and less than 80 diastolic mmHg Waist Circumference: <80 cm (31.5 inches) for women and <90 cm (35 inches) for men (South Asian, Chinese, Japanese, and South and Central Americans) <80 cm (31.5 inches) for women and <94 cm (37 inches) for men (European, Sub-Saharan African, Middle Eastern, and Eastern Mediterranean) Triglyceride-to-HDL Ratio: Below 1.5. Above 3 is a clear sign of metabolic dysfunction. Fasting Insulin: From 2 to 5 mIU/L. Above 10 mIU/L is concerning and above 15 mIU/L is significantly elevated. HOMA-IR: Less than 2.0 High-Sensitivity CRP (hsCRP): Less than 0.3 mg/dL Hemoglobin A1c: From 5.0 to 5.4 percent Uric Acid: Less than 5 mg/dL for men, and from 2 to 4 mg/dL for women

About 74 percent of U.S. adults are overweight or obese, and 93.2 percent have metabolic dysfunction. These numbers sound high until you realize how many levers of modern society are stacked against our mitochondria and metabolism: too much sugar, too much stress, too much sitting, too much pollution, too many pills, too many pesticides, too many screens, too little sleep, and too little micronutrients. These trends—with trillions of dollars behind them—are causing epidemic levels of mitochondrial dysfunction and underpowered, sick, inflamed bodies.

Many factors other than your size, fat, and muscle tissue figure in resting metabolism. Some are genetic and immutable. You may have been born with the ability to burn a lot of energy quickly and effortlessly, while others have what’s called a “sluggish metabolism”and don’t use energy at a very fast rate. It’s interesting to consider the cultural value judgment in using the term “sluggish”; from a scientific perspective, the person with a slower metabolism is much more efficient, a trait that would have been highly prized in earlier times when food was harder to come by.

Zinc Zinc has significant effects on male sexuality, including sperm motility and production, erections, and even testosterone levels. Because the transformation of androstenedione to testosterone depends on a zinc-dependant enzyme, zinc intake significantly affects testosterone levels in the body. One study found that sixty milligrams of zinc daily for fifty days increased serum testosterone levels. Because DHT is metabolized from testosterone, a subsequent rise in DHT levels was also seen. Testosterone and DHT levels only increased in those men whose testosterone levels were low. Normal men experienced no increase.

Despite these trends, our culture pushes a Bad Energy world onto kids who cannot protect themselves. Our culture has normalized giving one-year-olds packaged, ultra-processed foods like cake, Goldfish, rice puffs, juice, and french fries. We slather toxic, artificially scented lotions and shampoos all over their tiny bodies as soon as their first hospital bath. We damage their livers and antioxidant capacity with too much acetaminophen (Tylenol) at the first sign of fussiness or a cold. We blast their microbiomes with heavy-duty antibiotics at the first sign of a possible ear infection. And we interrupt their sleep for unconscionably early school times, then force them to sit at desks in school for six or more hours a day. We create terror and chronic stress in their bodies from social media and overall media exposure. The world kids live in is inflammatory and metabolically disastrous unless parents staunchly go against the tide of “normal” American culture. The irony is that so many parents wish that parenting were easier—fewer infections, less colic, easier behavioral patterns—without thinking through the lens of energy production in their children’s bodies. We can do so much to make our lives and our kids’ lives easier by controlling the controllable.

Downstairs in the body, sleep restocks the armory of our immune system, helping fight malignancy, preventing infection, and warding off all manner of sickness. Sleep reforms the body’s metabolic state by fine-tuning the balance of insulin and circulating glucose. Sleep further regulates our appetite, helping control body weight through healthy food selection rather than rash impulsivity. Plentiful sleep maintains a flourishing microbiome within your gut from which we know so much of our nutritional health begins. Adequate sleep is intimately tied to the fitness of our cardiovascular system, lowering blood pressure while keeping our hearts in fine condition.

that drinking diet soda was associated with a 43 percent increase in risk of vascular events (strokes and heart attacks). The 2008 Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study (ARIC)10 found a 34 percent increased incidence of metabolic syndrome in diet soda users, which is consistent with data from the 2007 Framingham Heart Study,11 which showed a 50 percent higher incidence of metabolic syndrome. In 2014, Dr. Ankur Vyas from the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics 12 presented a study following 59,614 women over 8.7 years in the Women’s Health Initiative Observational Study. The study found a 30 percent increase risk of cardiovascular events (heart attacks and

Thermoneutrality”: A hallmark of modern industrial life is spending most of our time indoors at relatively consistent ambient temperatures, a concept we’ll refer to as thermoneutrality. Interestingly, experiencing swings in temperature is great for mitochondrial function, as cold stimulates the body to generate more warmth by increasing mitochondrial activity and stimulates more ATP generation and use. Heat exposure has been shown to activate heat shock proteins (HSPs) within cells, which can protect mitochondria from damage and help to maintain their function. HSPs can also stimulate the production of new mitochondria and improve their efficiency in producing ATP.

Like everything else in life, we should eat consciously. We should learn to listen to our body about what to eat and how much – not too much, not too little, the foods which will not strain or poison our system. If the channel of communication is clear between our body and mind, it will tell us what we need for our body type, age, and level of activity while taking into account any health issues or changed circumstances which affect our metabolism. We can still treat ourselves with things we love, but we should do so in honest moderation and with awareness. Eating what is right for our individual system keeps our body healthy and active, and our mind awake and alert. 

Our modern diets and lifestyles are synergistically ravaging our mitochondria. Our mitochondria and the greater cells that house them co-evolved over eons in relationship with our environment. Their mechanisms work in connection with a combination of inputs and information that come from the outside world into our bodies and ultimately into them. Certain kinds of nutrients, sunlight, and information from bacteria in the gut, among other things, all help trigger or supply the cells and their powerhouses with what they require to work. But many of those inputs and information streams have changed radically, resulting in blocks to proper mitochondrial function and downright damage to

Going without food for even a day increases your brain’s natural growth factors, which support the survival and growth of neurons. Evolution designed our bodies and brains to perform at their peak as hybrid vehicles. Metabolic switching between glucose and ketones is when cognition is best and degenerative diseases are kept at bay. As a recent paper in Nature Reviews Neuroscience put it: “Metabolic switching impacts multiple signaling pathways that promote neuroplasticity and resistance of the brain to injury and disease.” So how do you do it? Not by overloading on glucose or ketones, but by altering the cadence of eating and letting the body do what it was designed to do during times of food scarcity.

When a modern woman is blessed with a body that can move, run, dance, play, and bring her to orgasm; with breasts free of cancer, a healthy uterus, a life twice as long as that of the average Victorian woman, long enough to let her express her character on her face; with enough to eat and a metabolism that protects her by laying down flesh where and when she needs it; now that hers is the gift of health and well-being beyond that which any generation of women could have hoped for before—the Age of Surgery undoes her immense good fortune. It breaks down into defective components the gift of her sentient, vital body and the individuality of her face, teaching her to experience her lifelong blessing as a lifelong curse.

I reflect on the fact that many of the problems in society—including violence, mental illness, developmental issues, and pain—start in humans, and humans are made by cells that become dysfunctional largely because of oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction, and chronic inflammation. How miraculous that food can directly combat those things. We can’t have a healthy society without well-functioning humans. We can’t have well-functioning humans without well-functioning cells. And we can’t have well-functioning cells with mitochondrial dysfunction, oxidative stress, chronic inflammation, and cellular and hormone disruption from toxic chemicals in our food. We combat those things through nutrient-dense, unprocessed foods grown

Refined Added Sugar Refined added sugar causes astronomically more deaths and disability per year than COVID-19 and fentanyl overdoses combined. We need to see refined added sugar for what it is: an addictive, dangerous drug that has been included in 74 percent of foods in the U.S. food system and for which the body needs zero grams in a lifetime. Of all the levers most damaging our cells and preventing Good Energy, I believe the worst offender may be added sugar. This substance has become a mainstay of food that we and our children eat regularly. As Dr. Robert Lustig has noted, sugar shows up on labels in fifty-six different names and sneaks in everywhere. While dozens of types of refined sugar are added to foods, chief among the offenders is high-fructose corn syrup,

Triglyceride-to-HDL Ratio After assessing each of these five biomarkers, there is one more step: calculate your triglyceride-to-HDL ratio to better understand insulin sensitivity. Simply divide your triglycerides by your HDL. Interestingly, studies have shown that this value correlates well with underlying insulin resistance. So even if you are unable to access a fasting insulin test, the triglyceride-to-HDL ratio can give you a general sense of where you’re at. According to Dr. Mark Hyman, “the triglyceride-to-HDL ratio is the best way to check for insulin resistance other than the insulin response test. According to a paper published in Circulation, the most powerful test to predict your risk of a heart attack is the ratio of your triglycerides to HDL. If the ratio is high, your risk for a heart attack increases sixteen-fold—or 1,600 percent! This is because triglycerides go up and HDL (or ‘good cholesterol’) goes down with diabesity.” Dr. Robert Lustig agrees: “The triglyceride-to-HDL ratio is the best biomarker of cardiovascular disease and the best surrogate marker of insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome.” In children, higher triglyceride-to-HDL is significantly correlated with mean insulin, waist circumferences, and insulin resistance. In adults, the ratio has shown a positive association with insulin resistance across normal weight and overweight people and significantly tracks with insulin levels, insulin sensitivity, and prediabetes. Perplexingly, the triglyceride-to-HDL ratio is not a metric used in standard clinical practice. If you remember one thing from this chapter, remember this: you need to know your insulin sensitivity. It can give you lifesaving clues about early dysfunction and Bad Energy brewing in your body, and is best assessed by a fasting insulin test, discussed below. Right now, this is not a standard test offered to you at your annual physical. I implore you to find a way to get a fasting insulin test or to calculate your triglyceride-to-HDL ratio every year. Do this for your children, as well. And take the steps outlined in the following chapters to ensure it does not start creeping up. RANGES: Range considered “normal” by standard criteria: none specified in standard criteria Optimal range: Anything above a ratio of 3 is strongly suggestive of insulin resistance. You want to shoot for less than 1.5, although lower is better. I recommend aiming for less than 1.

Life expectancy has increased primarily because of sanitation practices and infectious disease mitigation measures; because of emergency surgery techniques for acute and life-threatening conditions, like an inflamed appendix or trauma; and because of antibiotics to reverse life-threatening infections. In short, almost every “health miracle” we can point to is a cure for an acute issue (i.e., a problem that would kill you imminently if left unresolved). Economically, acute conditions aren’t great in our modern system, because the patient is quickly cured and no longer a customer. Starting in the 1960s, the medical system has taken the trust engendered by these acute innovations and used it to ask patients not to question its authority on chronic diseases (which can last a lifetime and thus are more profitable).

question that our system can produce positive results when focused on the right problem. U.S. hospitals today are filled with some of the world’s most dedicated, intelligent, and hardworking professionals. But they are operating in a system that has lost its way, one that now makes money when patients are sick and loses money when they are healthy. The modern medical system has systematically, overwhelmingly, and unequivocally let us down in preventing and reversing chronic disease. In fact, if you pull out deaths from the top eight infectious diseases (which were decreased by antibiotics) from historical data, life expectancy rates haven’t improved much in the past 120 years—despite, of course, the fact that health care is the largest and fastest-growing industry in the United States—with the vast majority of health care dollars going to chronic disease care.

We have witnessed hundreds of clients and patients damage their metabolic and hormonal health through low-carb diets. It is becoming increasingly apparent that there is an epidemic of metabolic and hormonal dysfunction emerging in the hordes of people who have been following low-carb diets. This is particularly impactful for women—and especially physically active women—who commonly suffer side effects from their low-carb diets, including: A stopped or irregular menstrual cycle (amenorrhea)418 419 420 421 422 Decreased fertility423 424 425 Hypoglycemic episodes and blood sugar swings426 Depression, anxiety, and irritability427 428 429 Poor libido430 431 432 Disrupted sleep/insomnia433 434 Dysfunctional relationship with food and fear about eating either fat or carbohydrate435 436 Cycles of restriction and binges437 438 Chronic fatigue 439 440 441 442 Poor thyroid function (and a slow metabolism)443 444 445 446 447 448

The second is that our food is being transported over large distances, causing degradation and damage to nutrients. The average distance that produce travels from farm to plate in the United States is approximately fifteen hundred miles. During this journey, some fruits and vegetables can lose up to 77 percent of their vitamin C content, a critical micronutrient for ATP production in the mitochondria and antioxidant activity in the cell. You may have thought that “eating local” or shopping from farmers’ markets is frivolous, but it is actually a critical step to ensure you are getting maximal helpful molecular information in the bites you take to build and instruct your body. The third is that most of our U.S. calorie consumption is ultra-processed foods, stripped of their nutrition. About 60 percent or more of the calories adults in the nation consume is ultra-processed garbage. You’re looking at just a fraction of that seventy tons meeting the cells’ functional needs. No

For years, exercise scientists have been convinced that the only way to increase mitochondrial density is with aerobic endurance training, but recent studies have proved otherwise. Not only is an increase in the size and number of mitochondria a proven adaptation to HIIT, but the mitochondrial benefit of HIIT goes way beyond size and number. For example, all your mitochondria contain oxidative enzymes, such as citrate synthase, malate dehydrogenase, and succinate dehydrogenase. These oxidative enzymes lead to improved metabolic function of your skeletal muscles—particularly by causing more effective fat and carbohydrate breakdown for fuel and also by accelerating energy formation from ATP. So more oxidative enzymes means that you have a higher capacity for going longer and harder. And it turns out that, according to an initial study on the effect of HIIT on oxidative enzymes, there were enormous increases in skeletal muscle oxidative enzymes in seven weeks in subjects who did four to ten thirty-second maximal cycling sprints followed by four minutes of recovery just three days a week. But what about HIIT as opposed to aerobic cardio? Another six-week training study compared the increase in oxidative enzymes that resulted from either: 1. Four to six thirty-second maximal-effort cycling sprints, each followed by four-and-a-half minutes of recovery, performed three days a week (classic HIIT training) or 2. Forty to sixty minutes of steady cycling at 65 percent VO2 max (an easy aerobic intensity) five days a week The levels of oxidative enzymes in the mitochondria in subjects who performed the HIIT program were significantly higher—even though they were training at a fraction of the volume of the aerobic group. How could this favorable endurance adaptation happen with such short periods of exercise? It turns out that the increased mitochondrial density and oxidative-enzyme activity from HIIT are caused by completely different message-signaling pathways than those created by traditional endurance training.

Weight stigma can contribute to health problems in a number of ways. Perhaps the most obvious one is that it’s stressful to be stigmatized for your size, and stress takes a physical toll on your body. The scientific term for this toll is allostatic load, meaning the cumulative effect of chronic stressors on multiple systems in the body: the cardiovascular system, the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, and metabolism. Because it looks at the entire body rather than isolated parts, allostatic load has been shown to be a more robust predictor of chronic-disease risk than other markers. And the research is clear that weight stigma has seriously detrimental whole-body effects. One study that followed close to 1,000 participants for ten years found that those who reported experiencing significant weight stigma over that period were twice as likely to have a high allostatic load as those who didn’t—regardless of actual BMI.5 In other words, weight stigma is an independent risk factor for physiological stress.

A metabolic, deep nutrition, and nontoxic approach is the answer to cancer prevention and management. This book is our call to arms—we must focus on the 90–95 percent of cancers that are caused by the standard American diet and exposure to environmental toxins. We simply cannot keep shrugging our shoulders when we, or our loved ones, are diagnosed. If a new virus began to kill one of every four people in the United States, you can bet your pink ribbon a cure would be found, and fast. While Western medicine continues to drive along the dusty, dead-end road seeking the genetic and targeted answer to cancer, it is time for us to start taking control of our own health and health care choices. We’ll say it again: Cancer is a metabolic, environmental, and emotional disease. It’s not just a tumor; it signifies correctable imbalances that occur inside and outside our body. Now is the time for lifelong remission. It is time for some real hope and to disarm the most deadly disease of modern times. How? With the metabolic approach to cancer.

My general philosophy regarding endurance contains four key points: 1. Build a great aerobic base. This essential physical and metabolic foundation helps accomplish several important tasks: it prevents injury and maintains a balanced physical body; it increases fat burning for improved stamina, weight loss, and sustained energy; and it improves overall health in the immune and hormonal systems, the intestines and liver, and throughout the body. 2. Eat well. Specific foods influence the developing aerobic system, especially the foods consumed in the course of a typical day. Overall, diet can significantly influence your body’s physical, chemical, and mental state of fitness and health. 3. Reduce stress. Training and competition, combined with other lifestyle factors, can be stressful and adversely affect performance, cause injuries, and even lead to poor nutrition because they can disrupt the normal digestion and absorption of nutrients. 4. Improve brain function. The brain and entire nervous system control virtually all athletic activity, and a healthier brain produces a better athlete. Improved brain function occurs from eating well, controlling stress, and through sensory stimulation, which includes proper training and optimal breathing.

Yet there are problems with speeding up whole-grain bread, and they begin with the flour. Many if not most of the new whole-grain white breads on the market are made with a new variety of hard white wheat developed by ConAgra. This is why the bread doesn’t look like whole wheat: the specks of bran are white, or whitish. They are also microscopic: The wheat is milled by ConAgra using a patented process called Ultrafine that attains a degree of fineness never before achieved in a whole-grain flour. This resulting flour, called Ultragrain, makes for a softer, whiter whole-grain bread, but at a price. It is metabolized almost as fast as white flour, obviating one of the most important health advantages of whole grains: that our bodies absorb and metabolize them slowly, and so avoid the insulin spikes that typically accompany refined carbohydrates. A common measure of the speed by which a food raises glucose levels in the blood (and therefore insulin, an important risk factor for many chronic diseases) is the glycemic index. The glycemic index of a whole-grain Wonder Bread (around 71) is essentially the same as that of Classic Wonderbread (73). (By comparison, the glycemic index of whole-grain bread made with stone-ground flour is only 52.) So perhaps we really have gotten too smart for our own good. Using

RESISTANCE TRAINING SHOULD HAVE BEEN INVENTED FOR WOMEN. The fitness industry has been plagued with more myths than ancient Greece. One of the most glaring is that women who weight train will look like Mr. Universe. There are still many women who are sidetracked by this common misperception, thereby avoiding weights altogether and bypassing the opportunity to achieve a beautiful, shapely body. One of the biggest differences between men and women is their hormone levels and how these hormones behave—most specifically, testosterone. Testosterone bulks up muscle mass in most men. Men have significantly higher testosterone levels than women, and therefore increasing muscle mass for men is much easier. The vast majority of women cannot build huge, bulging muscles because they have a tiny fraction of the testosterone found in men. There are so many benefits to resistance training for both men and women, but the some of the benefits are very specific to women’s health. For women, the truth is that resistance training increases your metabolism so that you burn fat more easily (and women tend to carry more body fat than men), you build bone mass and prevent osteoporosis (which affects more women than men), and you balance your hormones (which tend to fluctuate wildly in women as they age). Also, women who do resistance training feel a boost in self-esteem and gain renewed physical and mental strength because of their new sexy shape. Resistance training is a woman’s best friend. I rest my case.

DRY SAUNA Numerous cultures use sweat lodges, steam baths, or saunas for cleansing and purification. Many health clubs and big apartment buildings have saunas and steam baths, and more and more people are building saunas in their own homes. Low-to-moderate-temperature saunas are one of the most important ways to detoxify from pesticide exposure. Head-to-toe perspiration through the skin, the largest organ of elimination, releases stored toxins and opens the pores. Fat that is close to the skin is heated, mobilized, and broken down, releasing toxins and breaking up cellulite. The heat increases metabolism, burns off calories, and gives the heart and circulation a workout. This is a boon if you don’t have the energy to exercise. It is well known in medicine that a fever is the body’s way of burning off an infection and stimulating the immune system. Fever therapy and sauna therapy are employed at alternative medicine healing centers to do just that. The controlled temperature in a sauna is excellent for relaxing muscular aches and pains and relieving sinus congestion. The only way I made it through my medical internship was by having regular saunas to reduce the daily stress. FAR-INFRARED (FIR) SAUNAS FIR saunas are inexpensive, convenient, and highly effective. Detox expert Dr. Sherry Rogers says that FIR is a proven and efficacious way of eliminating stored environmental toxins, and she thinks everyone should use one. There are one-person Sauna Domes that you lie under or more elaborate sauna boxes that seat several people. The far infrared provides a heat that increases the body temperature but the surrounding air is not overly heated. One advantage of the dome is that your head remains outside, which most people find more comfortable and less confining. Sweating begins within minutes of entering the dome and can be continued for thirty to sixty minutes. Besides the hundreds of toxins that can be removed through simple sweating, the heat of saunas creates a mild shock to the body, which researchers feel acts as a stimulus for the body’s cells to become more efficient. The outward signs are the production of sweat to help decrease the body temperature, but there is much more going on. Further research on sauna therapy is destined to make it an important medical therapy.

Vitamin D3 boasts a strong safety profile, along with broad and deep evidence that links it to brain, metabolic, cardiovascular, muscle, bone, lung, and immune health. New and emerging research suggests that vitamin D supplements may also slow down our epigenetic/biological aging.29, 30 2. Omega-3 fish oil: Over the last thirty years or so, the typical Western diet has added more and more pro-inflammatory omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids versus anti-inflammatory omega-3 PUFAs. Over the same period, we’ve seen an associated rise in chronic inflammatory diseases, including obesity, cardiovascular disease, rheumatoid arthritis, and Alzheimer’s disease. 31 Rich in omega-3s, fish oil is another incredibly versatile nutraceutical tool with multi-pronged benefits from head to toe. By restoring a healthier PUFA ratio, it especially helps your brain and heart. Regular consumption of fatty fish like salmon has been linked to a lower risk of congestive heart failure, coronary heart disease, sudden cardiac death, and stroke.32 In an observational study, omega-3 fish oil supplementation was also associated with a slower biological clock.33 3. Magnesium deficiency affects more than 45 percent of the U.S. population. Supplements can help us maintain brain and cardiovascular health, normal blood pressure, and healthy blood sugar metabolism. They may also reduce inflammation and help activate our vitamin D. 4. Vitamin K1/K2 supports blood clotting, heart/ blood vessel health, and bone health.34 5. Choline supplements with brain bioavailability, such as CDP-Choline, citicoline, or alpha-GPC, can boost your body’s storehouse of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine and possibly support liver and brain function, while protecting it from age-related insults.35 6. Creatine: This one may surprise you, since it’s often associated with serious athletes and fitness buffs. But according to Dr. Lopez, it’s “a bona fide arrow in my longevity nutraceutical quiver for most individuals, and especially older adults.” As a coauthor of a 2017 paper by the International Society for Sports Nutrition, Dr. Lopez, along with contributors, stated that creatine not only enhances recovery, muscle mass, and strength in connection with exercise, but also protects against age-related muscle loss and various forms of brain injury.36 There’s even some evidence that creatine may boost our immune function and fat and carbohydrate metabolism. Generally well tolerated, creatine has a strong safety profile at a daily dose of three to five grams.37 7.

If mutual mate choice is indeed influencing mental characteristics, this may help to explain variability in intelligence, even though intelligence is highly heritable (e.g., Miller, 1997). Recall, that in order to be reliable fitness indicators, traits must demonstrate high individual differences; traits may be highly heritable if they “tap into genetic variation in fitness,” because fitness itself seems to be a heritable characteristic (Miller, 2000b). Although brain size correlates with intelligence (Rushton & Ankney, 1996), creating a large brain is costly for the organism in terms of metabolic energy necessary to support the brain, time necessary to produce it, as well as the physical difficulty and health complications of squeezing through a small pelvic opening during delivery. Intelligence is also correlated with other fitness indicators, in particular, body symmetry (Furlow, Armijo-Prewitt, Gangestad, & Thornhill, 1997). Prokosch, Yeo, and Miller (2005) have found evidence that general intelligence (g) reflects developmental stability. Furthermore, the finding that humans assortively mate with others of similar intelligence, which should increase variability in intelligence in the general population, lends weight to the idea that indicators of g are used as indicators of fitness (Rushton 1989; Rushton & Bonns, 2005).

Walking is one type of happy traveling without spending money but it definitely working as a healer in depression. It covers a lot of metabolic activities in the body. So just join me to know the healthy benefits of walking in detail.

There is value in exercise, though, and I think that the most important type of exercise, especially in terms of bang for your buck, is going to be really high-intensity, heavy strength training. Strength training aids everything from glucose disposal and metabolic health to mitochondrial density and orthopedic stability. That last one might not mean much when you’re a 30-something young buck, but when you’re in your 70s, that’s the difference between a broken hip and a walk in the park.

Mitahar can be defined as taking only the amount of food necessary to keep your body alert and functioning efficiently. If you overeat, you make your body work harder to metabolize the excess food. Eating in moderation has proven metabolic benefits. It can reduce oxidative stress and improve digestion, leading to better overall health.

THREATENING If habitual sugar or the consumption of sugar mimics continues, the metabolic nightmare can turn into a living hell. Similar to those who consume excess alcohol and develop resistance to it, the excess insulin numbs the cells of our muscles. Once this occurs, they no longer vacuum glucose or other essential nutrients from the bloodstream. Unable to gain entry into muscle cells, glucose accumulates in the blood, and cells become old prematurely. Blood gets bad, as seen by sugar levels above 115 (normal

The holy grail of Modern Medicine is you can’t fix healthcare until you fix health; and you can’t fix health until you fix the food. Everyone is talking about healthcare, few people are talking about health, and nobody is talking about the food. Medical Incompetence To be clear, better screening, diagnostics, and treatment is what Modern Medicine does; but preventing or reversing NCDs is what Modern Medicine doesn’t do.

Protein Powder Milk Tea: A Nourishing Blend of Flavor and Wellness In the world of culinary innovation, the fusion of familiar favorites with health-conscious choices has led to the emergence of protein powder milk tea. This innovative concoction takes the beloved flavors of milk tea and infuses them with the nourishing benefits of protein, offering a delicious way to elevate both taste and well-being. Milk tea, renowned for its creamy texture and diverse flavor profiles, has captured the hearts of beverage enthusiasts worldwide. Now, with the introduction of protein powder, milk tea becomes more than just a delightful indulgence; it transforms into a nourishing treat that supports muscle recovery and overall health. Protein powder milk tea takes the beverage experience a step further by addressing the needs of those who seek to integrate protein into their daily routines. Protein is an essential building block for our bodies, aiding in muscle repair, immune function, and maintaining a healthy metabolism. With protein powder milk tea, individuals can enjoy the flavors they love while also benefiting from the nutritional value of protein. This innovation offers versatility that caters to different lifestyles and preferences. Whether you're a fitness enthusiast looking for a post-workout replenishment or someone who appreciates a nutritious and delicious snack, protein powder milk tea fits the bill. Its adaptability makes it a convenient choice for anyone striving to strike a balance between their taste buds and their health goals. The availability of protein powder milk tea has also expanded the options for at-home customization. Enthusiasts can experiment with flavors, sweetness levels, and protein concentrations, creating a personalized beverage that aligns with their dietary preferences. In conclusion, protein powder milk tea underscores the exciting possibilities that arise when traditional flavors meet modern nutritional needs. It showcases the potential of culinary creativity to cater to diverse tastes while supporting holistic well-being. With every sip of protein powder milk tea, individuals are embracing a delicious journey towards a healthier and more balanced lifestyle.

The holy grail of Modern Medicine is you can’t fix healthcare until you fix health; and you can’t fix health until you fix the food. Everyone is talking about healthcare, few people are talking about health, and nobody is talking about the food.

Glucose and fructose are two kinds of sugars that contain equal amounts of calories (400 calories per 100 grams). Both are unhealthy in large amounts, but fructose even more so than glucose. Glucose can be processed by all organs in the body, whereas fructose is processed mainly in the liver. Consequently, fructose causes an even greater risk of fat accumulation in the liver, resulting in a potbelly, more fats in the blood, and insulin resistance. In addition, fructose creates cross-links with proteins much faster than glucose does. Fructose also sends fewer saturation hormones to the brain than does glucose, making you eat more of it and gain more weight. In short, although all these substances contain equal amounts of calories, they have completely different effects on your metabolism and your health, certainly in the long term.

Notice that LDL is not an indicator of metabolic health. But doctors are often quick to throw a patient on a statin and assume that will prevent them from getting heart disease and extend their life.

Discover the transformative power of Puravive in your weight loss journey. Crafted by Dr. Michael Kim and Tom Harris, this supplement targets brown adipose tissue, unlocking natural fat-burning potential. Users applaud visible results, increased energy, and holistic well-being. The unique blend of natural ingredients, including Luteolin and White Korean Ginseng, supports metabolism and overall health. Choose from cost-effective options on the official website: Single Bottle $59, Three Bottles $147 (with 2 eBooks), or Six-Bottle Bundle $234 (with 2 eBooks and free shipping). Embrace Puravive for a holistic shift towards a healthier, revitalized you.

As I see it, vitamin D3 at optimal doses is the ideal “weight loss drug” because it addresses three different factors: minimizing fat absorption in the small intestine, increasing the metabolism by twenty to thirty percent, and decreasing the appetite.

If you buy your organic, all-natural, GMO-free tortilla chips at Whole Foods, you're still stuffing your liver and starving your gut--you're just paying more for the privilege.

Key Points As you age, your body naturally becomes less efficient. Changes you will go through include losing muscle mass, slowing of your metabolism, and producing less testosterone You have the power, through exercise, to slow down the aging process Exercise will improve your self - image and your self-confidence Regular exercise will make you physically and mentally stronger, improve your bone strength, body composition, coordination and balance Exercise will boost the efficiency of your heart and lungs and make you far less likely to succumb to age-related disease

Blood vessels lose their elasticity, making the heart work harder to pump blood around the body Muscles, joints and tendons lose strength and flexibility Testosterone production plummets The metabolism slows down

The natural loss of muscle tissue that occurs with aging is accompanied by most people with an increase in levels of body fat. A person’s metabolism will naturally slow down as they age. This means that, even if they maintain the same caloric intake in their 50s as they did in their 30s, they burn fewer of them for energy and store more of them as body fat. In tandem with this is a general slowing down of activity as we age, meaning that we are burning off fewer calories.

The more muscle you carry on your body, the less likely you will be to carry excess body fat. That’s because muscle is very energy dependent. It takes about five times more energy to preserve an ounce of muscle than it does an ounce of fat. So, putting on muscle will speed up your metabolism, countering yet another of the natural effects of aging.

A Japanese study published in the Annals of Nutrition and Metabolism in 2015 reported that high cholesterol does not lead to heart disease and protects against many illnesses, including cancer. This study found an inverse relationship between all-cause mortality and cholesterol levels.

Your kettlebell exercises strengthen your bones and fight osteoporosis. • Kettlebell swings are great for the back and can help overcome back pain and immobility. • Kettlebell swings are the fastest exercise. You can go from sitting to full exertion in seconds and be all done in little over a minute. • With your daily workouts, you will be fierce. And why not? You are slimmer, harder, taller, smarter, fitter, and your booty be bad! The twelve minutes are not done at once. As a matter of fact, eight sessions, each 90 seconds long may be optimal for exertion and spacing for maximizing metabolic risk protection.  Eight sessions has you exercising frequently throughout the day, in quick, easy sessions. Well, quick at least. Your twelve minutes is roughly the cardiovascular equivalent of running an eight minute mile pace for a mile and a half in 12 minutes. A moderate daily aerobic workout is a key component of nearly any health regimen.  It is very good for your heart health to raise your heart rate and respiration with cardiovascular exercise on a daily basis. In many ways, the first minute and a half of running a long distance is the most difficult part of a run, as the body shifts from rest to intense exercise. In this same way, the 90 second kettlebell swings are quite intense, as your body adjusts from no-load to heavy exertion immediately. Kettlebell swings represent a type of interval training, a short burst of intense exercise. Twelve minutes a day of kettlebell swings build muscle.  Muscles, generally, are a good thing, helping us be athletic, protecting us from injury, burning lots of calories and basically looking good. Twelve minutes per day is a very short time to build muscle, compared say, to a construction worker doing demanding physical labor all day. The construction worker will be well muscled, but not necessarily better than yourself, because you are harnessing the weight training effect with your kettlebell swings. You can build significant muscle size and strength with just these few minutes each day, while not having to spend the entire day in hard labor.

The good news is that you can quickly reclaim your genetic fat-burning abilities. Metabolic flexibility allows you to feel great all day long, with stable mood, energy, cognitive functioning, and appetite, whether or not you eat regular meals. I believe that reigniting your metabolic flexibility is the holy grail of all health pursuits. With it, you can naturally derive energy from a range of sources: the fat on your plate of food or the fat on your butt, belly, or thighs; the carbohydrates in your meal, the glucose in your bloodstream, or the glycogen in your muscles; and even from ketones, the superfuel that your liver makes when you’re fasting or restricting dietary carbs. The best part is that your body doesn’t care where those calories came from, because your source of calories to burn will move seamlessly from one substrate (fuel source) to another depending on your immediate energy needs.

However, contrary to popular belief, while aging may cause weight gain, menopause itself does not. It can, however, increase your belly fat. How so? Fluctuating levels of estrogen can trigger fat storage in the body, and the belly is the storage shed. However inconvenient this may seem, there is a method to this madness. As ovarian production of estradiol slows down, our body relies on belly fat tissue to produce estrone, estrogen’s backup. We actually need that belly fat to ensure that some estrogen production continues as we age. However, while having enough body fat can help maintain our hormonal health, too much can cause other problems, as we know. This shift can result in an apple body shape, usually accompanied by a buildup of visceral fat—a stealth fat that collects around internal organs, increasing the risk of heart disease and metabolic disorders.

It might not sound like it, but the theme of this chapter is optimism. We are amid a modern health crisis. The good news is that our system can be fixed, and the crisis can end. Just 120 years ago, starvation, malnutrition, and early death were the norm. Tuberculosis and pneumonia were leading causes of death. Life expectancy in the United States was around age forty-seven. Back then, 30 percent of all U.S. deaths occurred in children under five years of age, compared to just 1.4 percent in 1999. If you transported someone living in those times to the present day, they’d be in utter shock as they tried to process society’s advancements. There is no

Lyon’s

I declare in faith that God's healing power is at work in my body, restoring my hormones to balance, my metabolism to function properly, and my body to its ideal weight. I believe that God is my Healer and that His power is greater than any sickness or condition. I receive His healing and restoration, and I trust that He will renew my strength and vitality. I confess that I am made whole and complete in Jesus' name, and that His grace and mercy are sufficient for me. I will walk in divine health and wholeness, and I will praise God for His goodness and love towards me." Remember to hold on to this confession with faith and patience, trusting that God's power and love are at work in your life. Keep seeking Him and His guidance, and believe that He is working for your good.

It may be that the degree to which a food is processed gives us a more important key to its healthfulness: Not only can processing remove nutrients and add toxic chemicals, but it makes food more readily absorbable, which can be a problem for our insulin and fat metabolism. Also, the plastics in which processed foods are typically packaged can present a further risk to our health.

existing metabolic disease, the resumption of an active lifestyle can significantly improve preexisting cellular damage and promote gains in muscle mass. Regular endurance exercise, by itself—independent of changes in diet—can normalize age-related mitochondrial dysfunction by stimulating mitochondrial biogenesis. (20

Figure 2.2 Factors reducing glucose needs in a ketogenic state. In addition to lowering glucose requirements, ketone bodies themselves send an anticatabolic signal. Taken together, these various aspects of ketogenic metabolism reduce the amount of glucose used during this phase. Muscle catabolism is thus reduced, but it is not completely avoided in Phase II starvation because base protein requirements continue.

BREATH 1​While seated or lying down, take 30 to 40 full conscious breaths: Breathe fully in to the belly and the chest, then letting go, without force. 2​On your final exhale, let the air out and hold it out for as long as you can without discomfort. Listen to your body and don’t force it! 3​When you feel the urge to breathe again, take a deep breath in, hold for 10 to 15 seconds. Then release and relax. 4​Repeat the steps above two or three more times, paying attention to how you feel and adjusting your breath as needed. 5​Rest in this elevated state until you are ready to move on with your day. Alternatively, use the energy you just generated for your morning workout or yoga practice. Experiment with what feels right for you. Congratulations! You just influenced key drivers of your health, increased your vitality and focus, busted your stress, reduced inflammation factors, and optimized your immune system. FOR COMPLETE WHM BREATHING INSTRUCTIONS AND SAFETY GUIDELINES, SEE CHAPTER 4. MIND Your post-breathing practice state is the perfect time to program your mindset. Try this: 1​Before you get up from your breathing practice, bring up a thought in your mind like “Today I’m going to stay in the cold shower for 15 more seconds than yesterday,” or “I feel happy, healthy, and strong.” 2​Reflect on this thought and notice how your body feels. 3​If you identify any inner resistance to your intention, just keep breathing steadily until you feel an alignment between your body and mind. With practice, your sense of your inner experience, or interoception, will sharpen, allowing you to more consciously observe and control your body and mind. SEE CHAPTER 12 FOR DETAILS. COLD 1​At the end of your warm shower, turn the water to cold. 2​If you like you can start by first putting your feet and legs, than your arms, then your full torso under the water. 3​Do NOT do the WHM Basic Breathing Exercise while standing in the shower. 4​Gradually extend your exposure every day until you can handle two minutes in the cold. 5​If you are shivering when you get out, try the horse stance exercise. (See “How Long Can You Hold a Horse Stance?” for details.) Success! You just improved your metabolic efficiency, regulated your hormones, further reduced inflammation, and are enjoying the endorphins and endocannabinoids released in response to the cold.

To state the obvious, a cow’s muscles were designed by nature to move the cow’s legs. A chicken’s muscles allow the bird to walk and fly (although current breeding and rearing practices are such that these obese birds do not get around very well). A fish’s muscles move the fish’s tail. A muscle is not designed to be a nutritional supplement. It is a biological ratchet system designed for pulling. For that purpose, it is beautifully designed. Strings of protein serve as the ratchet mechanism, with fat in between them. If meat were designed to provide good nutrition, it would have fiber to tame your appetite, complex carbohydrate for energy, and vitamin C to protect your body, among other vital nutrients. But meat has none of these things. It is mainly a mixture of fat and protein (along with the occasional parasite, perhaps). Meat’s fat packs in calories, and it adds to the fat that is collecting inside your cells—the intramyocellular lipid that slows down your metabolism, as we saw in chapter 3.

Plant proteins are not only free of animal fat and cholesterol; they are also free of two problems caused by animal proteins. First, animal protein is linked to osteoporosis, apparently because it causes the kidneys to lose calcium in the urine. If you were to check urine samples from people following meaty diets—especially high-protein Atkins-style diets—you would find that they lose calcium rapidly.3 Sodium does the same thing, as we’ll see below. Second, animal protein is also linked to gradual loss of kidney function. Harvard researchers studied a group of women who had already lost some kidney function, as many people do, due to high blood pressure, diabetes, urinary infections, or other factors. As the years went by, the researchers found that those women who tended to get their protein from animal products were much more likely to experience continued loss of kidney function.4 Protein from plants did not have this effect. So if you get your protein from beans, grains, vegetables, and other foods from plant sources, your kidneys will breathe a sigh of relief.

There is more cholesterol in a single egg than in an entire eight-ounce steak.

What about protein? Egg white is essentially solid animal protein. That is not an advantage; that is part of the problem. As I mentioned above, animal protein—including that from eggs—is hard on the kidneys and encourages calcium loss. Instead of building you up, it is gradually tearing you down. You are much better off getting protein from plant sources.

Good Energy is also known as metabolic health. Metabolism refers to the set of cellular mechanisms that transform food into energy that can power every single cell in the body.

first order of business is to reduce the burden of apoB particles, primarily LDLs but also VLDLs, which can be dangerous in their own right. And do so dramatically, not marginally or incrementally. We want it as low as possible, sooner rather than later. We must also pay attention to other markers of risk, notably those associated with metabolic health, such as insulin, visceral fat, and homocysteine, an amino acid that in high concentrations[*7] is strongly associated with increased risk of heart attack, stroke, and dementia.

for good health, avoid the scary and intense blood-sugar roller coaster (peaks followed by crashes) and stick to the cute and gentle blood-sugar caterpillar ride (slow and steady ups and downs). Having a high glucose response to your meals is a risk factor for obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and other metabolic disorders, and it’s also a predictor of higher overall mortality.

Despite constant insistence that we lose weight for our health and track the simple arithmetic of calories in, calories out, there is no data illustrating that dieting achieves long-term weight loss. To the contrary, constant dieting may make weight loss more difficult, as our metabolisms fight back, searching for the stasis of a familiar, fatter body.57 A major study following contestants from the television show The Biggest Loser showed that despite their dramatic weight loss on camera, most contestants were unable to maintain their smaller size, despite hours of working out each day. The study’s results were staggering: after their extreme televised dieting, every contestant’s body burned fewer calories at rest than it did at the beginning of the competition—and one contestant was shown to burn eight hundred fewer calories each day than expected for a peer of the same gender and size.58 Those results aren’t limited to reality TV contestants. As one Slate writer put it, addressing dieters, “You’ll likely lose weight in the short term, but your chances of keeping it off for five years or more is about the same as your chance of surviving metastatic lung cancer: 5 percent. And when you do gain back the weight, everyone will blame you. Including you.

Evolve180 Weight Loss Ketogenic Protocols and our Red Light Therapy Sessions are designed with your health and wellness in mind. Our medically-designed meal plans burn fat fast, speed up metabolism and alter the way your body processes and stores food – forever! Nearly 60% of people are born with a metabolism that is predisposed to store fat. But not understanding their metabolism is different, they eat and diet the wrong way their whole lives. Evolve180's weight loss programs help reverse this imbalance and improve the body's ability to burn food efficiently, without hunger, cravings or struggle.

Metabolism slows down 90 percent after 30 minutes of sitting. The enzymes that move the bad fat from your arteries to your muscles, where it can get burned off, slow down. And after two hours, good cholesterol drops 20 percent. Just getting up for five minutes is going to get things going again. These things are so simple they’re almost stupid,” says Gavin Bradley1 in a 2015 interview with Brigid Schulte for the Washington Post.2 Bradley is one of the preeminent experts on the subject, and the director of an international organization dedicated to building awareness of how detrimental sitting all the time can be to our health.

most people collect ungainly fat around the middle. This “central” or “visceral” fat is unique: Unlike fat in other body areas, it provokes inflammatory phenomena, distorts insulin responses, and issues abnormal metabolic signals to the rest of the body. Visceral fat is responsible for effects as varied as cancer, knee arthritis, and infertility. In the unwitting wheat-bellied male, visceral fat also produces estrogen and other hormonal distortions that create “man breasts.” In susceptible females, the same inflammatory fat causes abnormally high testosterone levels, male-like facial hair, and infertility.

If I were to boldly define the entirety of human health, there would be five essential elements: immunity, metabolism, hormonal balance, cognition, and gene expression. That would cover our bases for everything we need to thrive as humans, and what’s amazing is that the microbiota is intertwined with all five axes of human health.

On the other hand, intact fiber—found in Real Food—has many benefits, and not just short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs). In the processed food industry, the germ of the grain (the nucleic acids, flavonoids, polyphenols) is removed along with the fiber because they can go rancid (see Chapter 19). Protecting the liver means maintaining the fiber and keeping the germ intact as well. Two simple precepts—protect the liver, feed the gut. Real Food (low-sugar, high-fiber) does both. Processed food (high-sugar, low-fiber) does neither. Processed food is the primary suspect in our current health and healthcare debacle, because it doesn’t improve our eight subcellular pathologies, our three nutrient-sensing enzymes, and our two physiologic precepts.

It’s incredibly hard to make people care. It’s also difficult to convince them they’ve been living inside a medical system that secretly keeps them sick to farm them for money. Instead, set an example. Get metabolically healthy, look great, and live a more active life.

With too much stress, any of our systems become traumatized. Some aspect of ourselves has been distorted and will not return to normal by itself. This could be mental, muscular, or metabolic.

1-2 minutes shining it on the neck and thyroid gland area and thymus area in the center of the chest, from roughly 6-12” away. There are studies already showing this can impact thyroid function (the studies were done in people with Hashimoto’s hypothyroidism), which is critical to metabolic health in the entire body. The light on the thymus can potentially enhance immune function. 1-2 minutes on your sex organs (from 6-12” away) if possible, as this will increase the health of those tissues and promote optimal hormonal function.

Then in March 1993, everything changed. My one-year-old son, Charlie, had his first seizure. There’s absolutely nothing funny about being the parent of a child with uncontrolled epilepsy. Nothing. After a year of daily seizures, drugs, and a brain surgery, I learned that the cure for Charlie’s epilepsy, the ketogenic diet—a high fat, no sugar, limited protein diet—had been hiding in plain sight for, by then, over seventy years. And despite the diet’s being well documented in medical texts, none of the half-dozen pediatric neurologists we had taken Charlie to see had mentioned a word about it. I found out on my own at a medical library. It was life altering—not just for Charlie and my family, but for tens of thousands like us. Turns out there are powerful forces at work within our health care system that don’t necessarily prioritize good health. For decades, physicians have barely been taught diet therapy or even nutrition in medical school. The pharmaceutical, medical device, and sugar industries make hundreds of billions every year on anti-epileptic drugs and processed foods—but not a nickel if we change what we eat. The cardiology community and American Heart Association demonize fat based on flawed science. Hospitals profit from tests and procedures, but again no money from diet therapy. There is a world epilepsy population of over sixty million people. Most of those people begin having their seizures as children, and only a minuscule percentage ever find out about ketogenic diet therapies. When I realized that 99 percent of what had happened to Charlie and my family was unnecessary, and that there were millions of families worldwide in the same situation, I needed to try to do something. Nancy and I began the Charlie Foundation (charliefoundation.org) in 1994 in order to facilitate research and get the word directly to those who would benefit. Among the high points were countless articles, a couple appearances of Charlie’s story on Dateline NBC, and a movie I produced and directed about another family whose child’s epilepsy had been cured by the ketogenic diet starring Meryl Streep titled First Do No Harm (1997). Today, of course, the diet permeates social media. When we started, there was one hospital in the world offering ketogenic diet therapy. Today, there are 250. Equally important, word about the efficacy of the ketogenic diet for epilepsy spread within the scientific community. In 1995, we hosted the first of many scientific global symposia focused on the diet. As research into its mechanisms and applications has spiked, incredibly the professional communities have found the same metabolic pathway that is triggered by the ketogenic diet to reduce seizures has also been found to benefit Alzheimer’s disease, ALS, severe psychiatric disorders, traumatic brain injury, and even some cancers. I

Meditation can be as simple as sitting quietly and just mentally noting whenever a thought pops into your head. As each thought emerges, notice it, note thought in your head, let it go, and reset. In doing that, you flex the muscle of returning to the “present moment.” In a ten-minute session, you might have one hundred thoughts pop into your head. Having so many thoughts pop up might seem like a failure, but noticing them is actually the work. The alternative is that you don’t notice

By simply noting the thought, you get off the “train of thought” and back to the present moment. In doing this, you solidify the understanding that your identity is separate from the rush of stressful thoughts running through your brain. Most of us spend the entirety of our life jumping from thought to thought, never getting off the “train,” thinking that this is “reality” or “you.

It’s not: you can simply step off and reset into the present moment, and this is like waking up from a dream and stepping into a blissful spiritual space. The voices

Another way to practice mindfulness at any moment is to close your eyes and scan every sensation in your body: your heartbeat, your butt on the chair, any areas of warmth or cold, your toes on the ground, the air moving into your nose and lungs. Because this body scan forces you into the present moment, it takes you away from mental states of anxiety or stress.

My favorite meditation apps are Calm and Waking Up, and there are many guided meditations on YouTube. Even a ten-minute meditation can transform a day.

Authors and poets who address the human condition, mortality, eternity, and continuity with nature that I recommend are Mary Oliver, Pema Chödrön, Paramahansa Yogananda, Michael Pollan, Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Rumi, Lao-tzu, Khalil Gibran, Hafiz, Walt Whitman, W. S. Merwin, Thích Nhất Hạnh, Diane Ackerman, Alan Watts, Lewis Thomas, Ram Das, Rainer Maria Rilke, Deepak Chopra, and Wang Wei.

Lavender oil is well studied and especially potent in minimizing stress and helping with sleep, as outlined in the peer-reviewed paper “Lavender and the Nervous System.” Rub a few drops of lavender essential oil between your hands, cup your face, and inhale deeply a few times.

The truth: we should consider listening to the medical system if we have an acute issue like a life-threatening infection or broken bone. But when it comes to the chronic conditions that plague our lives, we should question almost every institution regarding nutrition or chronic disease advice. All you need to do is follow the money and incentives.

Fortunately, we’re entering a new era of medicine. Doctors no longer need to serve as the middlemen for interpreting lab results. This new era will benefit patients profoundly. Levels CEO Sam Corcos calls this concept “bio-observability”—the ability to observe your own biology through technologies like wearables, continuous monitors, and direct-to-consumer (DTC) lab testing. Let me be clear: bio-observability is one of the most disruptive trends our health care industry faces. You should not blindly trust your doctor and you should not blindly trust me. You should trust your own body. Your body can “speak” to you through accessible testing and real-time data from wearable sensors that help you understand how individual symptoms are connected to overall metabolic health.

According to Dr. Mark Hyman, “the triglyceride-to-HDL ratio is the best way to check for insulin resistance other than the insulin response test. According to a paper published in Circulation, the most powerful test to predict your risk of a heart attack is the ratio of your triglycerides to HDL. If the ratio is high, your risk for a heart attack increases sixteen-fold—or 1,600 percent! This is because triglycerides go up and HDL (or ‘good cholesterol’) goes down with diabesity.

Metabolic syndrome is clinically defined as having three or more of the following traits: Fasting glucose of 100 mg/dL or higher A waistline of more than 35 inches for women and 40 inches for men HDL cholesterol less than 40 mg/dL for men and 50 mg/dL for women Triglycerides of 150 mg/dL or higher Blood pressure of 130/85 mmHg or higher

Almonds Allspice, dried Amla berries, dried Apples Artichokes Asparagus Bay leaves, dried Basil, dried Black beans Black chokeberries Black elderberries Black pepper, dried Blackberries Black tea Blueberries Broccoli Capers Caraway seeds, dried Cayenne pepper, dried Celery leaves, dried Cherries Chives, dried Chili, dried Cinnamon bark, dried Clove, dried Cocoa powder Coffee beans Cumin, dried Curry powder Dandelion leaves, dried Dark chocolate Dill, fresh or dried Fennel leaves, dried Fennel seeds, dried Ginger, fresh or dried Green mint, dried Green olives, with stone Green tea Hazelnut Kalamata olives, with stone Lavender, dried Mustard seed, dried Nutmeg, dried Oregano, fresh or dried Paprika, dried Peaches Pecans Peppermint, dried Pistachios Plums Pomegranate, whole Red lettuce Red onion Rose flower, dried Rosemary, fresh or dried Saffron, dried Shallots Spinach Strawberries Tempeh Thyme, dried Turmeric, dried Vanilla seeds Walnuts White beans Wild marjoram leaves, dried

next revolution in health will come from understanding how the root of almost every disease relates to energy, and how less specialization, rather than more, is the answer.

Other Childhood Metabolic Conditions Epidemic levels of obesity, liver dysfunction, and brain dysfunction demonstrate a cellular energy epidemic. And our children’s small, not fully developed bodies are being set up to fail at an early age because our culture and daily lives have been co-opted by processed foods and the other factors that damage mitochondria and cellular energy production.

On my mom’s final day of consciousness, she woke up weak and started to lose control of her speech. Later in the day, in a burst of energy, she urged us to take her to the place where she would soon be buried—a rustic forest grove overlooking fields and ocean, just three minutes from her house. We quickly drove her there and took her in a wheelchair to the natural burial site. My mom expressed amazement at the beauty of the ocean view and the trees she would soon be buried under, and we hugged as a family. She asked my dad to kneel beside her in the wheelchair and cupped his face in her hands. She looked at him and talked about how magical their life was together. On this small patch of earth with the Pacific Ocean behind them, they exchanged silent looks that expressed emotion and gratitude for each other that are impossible to fully convey in words. The awe and connection they shared as they exchanged their final embrace will forever be my definition of the meaning of life. “It’s just . . . so perfect and beautiful,” my mom burst out as she looked at her family embracing her at her final resting site. Minutes later, she lost consciousness. Two days later, surrounded by her family holding hands around her, she died. The final thirteen days I shared with my mom were the most meaningful of my life. If we had taken the advice of the medical system, they wouldn’t have happened.

Nearly every doctor I worked with dreamed as a child about curing disease and worked like crazy to become a doctor. They studied tirelessly to learn science, entered medical school with idealistic visions, and became the pride of their family. They entered residency with hundreds of thousands of dollars of student loan debt and initially saw the chronic sleep deprivation and verbal abuse by their superiors as integral parts of the experience—because “great achievement is born of great sacrifice.” But almost universally among doctors I have met, this idealism eventually turns to cynicism. My colleagues in residency talked often about questioning their sanity, of wondering whether this was all worth it. I spoke with successful surgeons who’d drafted their resignation letters dozens of times. Another had a recurring daydream of leaving everything behind and becoming a baker. Many of my supervising physicians were desperate to spend more time with their children. I witnessed more than one tearful breakdown in the operating room when surgical cases were delayed and led to yet another missed bedtime for their kids. Several had dealt with suicidal depression. I understood why doctors had the highest burnout and suicide rate of any profession. Inevitably, these conversations led to an insight that I believe is whispered by doctors in every hospital in America: they feel trapped inside a broken system.

But the medicalization of chronic disease in the past fifty years has been an abject failure. Today, we’ve siloed diseases and have a treatment for everything: High cholesterol? See a cardiologist for a statin. High fasting glucose? See an endocrinologist for metformin. ADHD? See a neurologist for Adderall. Depressed? See a psychiatrist for a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI). Can’t sleep? See a sleep specialist for Ambien. Pain? See a pain specialist for an opioid. PCOS? See an OB-GYN for clomiphene. Erectile dysfunction? See a urologist for Viagra. Overweight? See an obesity specialist for Wegovy. Sinus infections? See an ENT for an antibiotic or surgery. But what nobody talks about—what I think many doctors don’t even realize—is that the rates of all these conditions are going up at the exact time we are spending trillions of dollars to “treat them.

At the start of my residency, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was passed and all doctors had to get up to speed on the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS), a new program under the Quality Payment Program (QPP), where a physician would now receive substantial adjustments to payments from Medicare if they met specific quality-of-care criteria. One would think that “quality” and “merit” in medicine would mean that the patient was actually getting better. But when I dug deep through the MIPS website to find the specific quality metrics for each specialty, I was shocked to see that these quality criteria were primarily based on whether doctors prescribed drugs regularly or did more interventions. Yes, a government incentive program focused less on actual patient outcomes (i.e., Did the patient get healthier?) and more on whether doctors prescribed long-term pharmaceuticals.

If a medication could slash Alzheimer’s risk by 50 percent, it would be front-page news and prescribed to every patient. But this “drug” does exist—it’s walking! Yet less than 16 percent of doctors prescribe movement to their patients, and 85 percent of practitioners report zero training in prescribing exercise.

Keep It Simple With food, we covered three simple rules that get you quite far: don’t eat added sugar, don’t eat industrially processed vegetable and seed oils, and don’t eat highly processed grains. With fitness, I also suggest three simple rules. Walk at least 7,000 steps per day and space these steps out throughout the day. Work up to 10,000 per day. Get your heart rate above 60 percent of your maximum for at least 150 minutes a week. (That’s 30 minutes, five days a week.) Lift heavy things multiple times per week in a way that hits every major muscle group.

I implore anyone working to optimize their metabolic health or weight to incorporate resistance training (otherwise known as strength training or weight training). Resistance training simply means intentionally making your muscles work against a weighted force, which could be functional movements such as lifting or pushing heavy things in your home or at work, lifting or pushing weights, or using your body weight as a force to work against (think pull-ups or push-ups).

GOOD ENERGY BIOMARKERS AND MOVEMENT When you’re striving to be part of the 6.8 percent of metabolically healthy Americans, regular movement will help you get there. Research shows that exercise improves all five of the following basic biomarkers of metabolism: Glucose Levels Above 100 mg/dL: Twelve-week exercise programs of either high-intensity running (40 minutes per week) or low-intensity running (150 minutes per week) both brought participants’ blood sugar from the prediabetic range (100 mg/dL or greater) to the nondiabetic range (<100 mg/dL). HDL Cholesterol Less Than 40 mg/dL: A 2019 review of the literature showed that exercise increased HDL cholesterol, “with exercise volume, rather than intensity, having a greater influence.” Meanwhile, “raising HDL levels pharmacologically has not shown convincing clinical benefits.” Triglycerides Above 150 mg/dL: Numerous studies have demonstrated that physical activity effectively lowers triglyceride levels. In a 2019 study, an eight-week moderate aerobic exercise program significantly reduced triglyceride levels in participants. Furthermore, even a single session of intense aerobic exercise has been found to decrease triglyceride levels the following day. This positive effect could be due to the increased activity of hepatic lipase in the liver, an enzyme that facilitates the absorption of triglyceride from the bloodstream. Blood Pressure of 130/85 mmHg or Higher: Research has shown the effects of exercise among populations with high blood pressure were similar to the effects of commonly used medications. A Waistline of More Than 35 Inches for Women and 40 Inches for Men: Not surprisingly, regular exercise can help decrease obesity by increasing energy expenditure and promoting weight loss. Research shows a clear inverse relationship between the amount of movement people do each week and the size of their waistline: more movement, smaller waist circumference. What’s more, lower activity (fewer than 5,100 steps per day) yields a 2.5 times higher risk of central obesity than higher activity (more than 8,985 steps per day).

in the modern West, where—unlike many indigenous and Eastern cultures—we tend to be culturally avoidant of talking about death or having curiosity about it, leading it to be an existential fear for many. So many of the texts that have stood the test of time—spanning Rumi, Khalil Gibran, Hafiz, Marcus Aurelius, Yogananda, Seneca, Lao-tzu, Thích Nhất Hạnh, and more—implore us to examine death and trust that it is both natural and not to be feared.

Doctors have twice the rate of suicide as the general population. Based on my own experience with depression as a young surgeon, I think a contributor to this phenomenon is an insidious spiritual crisis about the efficacy of our work and a sense of being trapped in a system that is not working but seems too big to change or escape.

HDL is often referred to as “good” because it helps remove cholesterol from the blood vessels and carries it back to the liver for processing and elimination from the body. This process of reverse cholesterol transport can help prevent the buildup of plaque in the arteries and reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke. Therefore, high levels of HDL in the bloodstream are considered beneficial for cardiovascular health. Meanwhile, LDL (low-density lipoprotein) is often referred to as “bad” cholesterol because it can deposit cholesterol in the walls of the arteries, leading to the formation of plaque. This process, known as atherosclerosis, can narrow the arteries and increase the risk of heart disease and stroke.

Continuous Glucose Monitoring I believe CGM is the most powerful technology for generating the data and awareness to rectify our Bad Energy crisis in the Western world. A CGM is a biosensor that can alert us to early dysfunction, coach us on how to eat and live in a way that promotes Good Energy in our unique bodies, and promote accountability. My belief in the potential of this technology to reduce global metabolic suffering is why I cofounded Levels, which enables access to CGMs and software to understand and interpret the data. A CGM is a small plastic disc worn on the arm that automatically tests your blood sugar roughly every ten minutes, twenty-four hours a day. And it sends that information to your smartphone.

Impact of Stress on Glucose: One of my highest glucose spikes ever was after an argument with my brother (my coauthor!). We hear examples of this all the time from Levels members: stress alone can raise glucose levels, regardless of your diet. The reason is that a key stress hormone, cortisol, signals our liver to break down stored glucose and release it into the bloodstream to fuel the muscles, anticipating a threat that we’ll need energy to physically move away from. In the modern world, however, the “threats”—like arguments, emails, honking, and the alerts on our phones—that cue our stress pathways rarely require our muscles to be active. As such, that mobilized glucose sits in our bloodstream, causing more harm than good. CGM can be a powerful tool in teaching us how stress impacts our metabolic health and motivates us to address acute stress in healthy ways, like deep breathing.

low-grade activity that occurs more frequently and regularly throughout the day is extremely important for cellular health and glucose control, even more so than chunking all your physical activity in one discrete block and sitting for the rest of the day (a pattern most Americans adopt).

Research strongly suggests that a minimum of 150 minutes of moderate aerobic activity per week is crucial for cardiometabolic health (and is as effective as antidepressant medication for mood), which translates into about 30 minutes, five days a week.

The two main ingredients of Beyond Burger are pea protein and canola oil. Canola oil is high in omega-6 fats, making Beyond Burger more inflammatory than grass-fed beef. Additional ingredients include natural flavors (a misnomer, as natural flavors can be highly processed and contain chemical additives) and methylcellulose, a main ingredient in laxatives manufactured by heating wood in acidic solutions to extract and purify cellulose.

Eating spices like turmeric (which directly minimize chronic inflammation) or cruciferous vegetables (which directly minimize oxidative stress) are two examples of ways that food can functionally signal for Good Energy.

PRINCIPLE 5: IGNORE DIET PHILOSOPHIES AND FOCUS ON UNPROCESSED FOOD Diet controversy is a charade.

key way that you regulate your hormones, metabolism, weight, and risk for disease is by showing your cells what time it is by exposing your eyeballs to direct sunlight throughout the light part of the day and by hiding your eyeballs from as much light as possible when the sun is down.

I monitor several biomarkers related to metabolism, keeping a watchful eye for things like elevated uric acid, elevated homocysteine, chronic inflammation, and even mildly elevated ALT liver enzymes. Lipoproteins, which we will discuss in detail in the next chapter, are also important, especially triglycerides; I watch the ratio of triglycerides to HDL cholesterol (it should be less than 2:1 or better yet, less than 1:1), as well as levels of VLDL, a lipoprotein that carries triglycerides—all of which may show up many years before a patient would meet the textbook definition of metabolic syndrome. These biomarkers help give us a clearer picture of a patient’s overall metabolic health than HbA1c, which is not

Everyone is talking about healthcare, few people are talking about health, and nobody is talking about the food.

were producing and using energy. Even my enormous size at birth—which medically fit the criteria for fetal macrosomia (literally “big-bodied baby”)

Fasting glucose of 100 mg/dL or higher A waistline of more than 35 inches for women and 40 inches for men HDL cholesterol less than 40 mg/dL for men and 50 mg/dL for women Triglycerides of 150 mg/dL or higher Blood pressure of 130/85 mmHg or higher

Ultra-processed foods make up 60 percent of calories consumed by adults and 67 percent of calories consumed by children, and they drive Bad Energy diseases like obesity, high blood pressure, dementia, type 2 diabetes, and insulin resistance.

research has shown that people on diets who keep food journals lose twice as much weight as those who don’t.

A study conducted by the Arthritis Foundation found that for every pound of weight gained, the load on the knee joint increases by four pounds.

We’ve created a culture where really large numbers of people can’t bear to be present in their daily lives and need to medicate themselves throughout the day.

In a rational health care environment, a key public health priority would be to support maternal and early childhood metabolic health as a high-leverage approach to support a thriving population.

syndrome. Metabolic syndrome means cells are struggling to get their jobs done because of problems in their energy production system. Metabolic syndrome is clinically defined as having three or more of the following traits: Fasting glucose of 100 mg/dL or higher A waistline of more than 35 inches for women and 40 inches for men HDL cholesterol less than 40 mg/dL for men and 50 mg/dL for women Triglycerides of 150 mg/dL or higher Blood pressure of 130/85 mmHg or higher The reason you want to know whether your markers have tipped into suboptimal states is that it gives you a surefire clue that the Bad Energy processes are happening inside the cells.

higher insulin levels than those without acne. High insulin levels are linked to increased production of male hormones that stimulate the production of skin oil, called sebum. When the skin’s oil glands produce too much, sebum can mix with dead skin cells and clog hair follicles, creating an environment where bacteria can thrive. Multiple studies have found that a low-glycemic load (i.e., low sugar) or a low-carbohydrate diet can lead to significant reductions

Disease isn’t some random occurrence that might happen in the future. It is a result of the choices you make and how you feel today.

Laboratory tests are the next set of important numbers to know. Here are the key lab test numbers you need to know:   1. Complete blood count   2. General metabolic panel with fasting blood sugar and lipid panel   3. HgA1C   4. Vitamin D   5. Thyroid panel   6. C-reactive protein

Healthy levels of estrogen help you feel good. Too much estrogen can make you feel as anxious and irritable as a wet cat. Estrogen withdrawal makes you feel depressed and confused. It’s the rise and drop in estrogen that drastically affects your mood, and the more erratic your particular fluctuation is, the more upset it can make you. These problems become worse during perimenopause and menopause, when estrogen levels wane. There are three different kinds of estrogen: estrone (oestrone), estradiol (oestradiol), and estriol (oestriol). According to my friend and colleague Dr. James LaValle, author of the Metabolic Code, estrone is the estrogen to worry about. Estrone can make you more prone to cancer. Your liver, gut, and adrenal health determine what types of hormones are made. Depending

The main areas for estrogen breakdown are the liver and gastrointestinal tract. Diets high in refined sugar and low in fiber feed the unfriendly bacteria in the intestines, causing them to disrupt estrogen metabolism. One of the by-products of the unfriendly “bugs” in the intestines is that the estrogen metabolites can’t be excreted and they build up in your tissues over time, causing trouble.

Dietary Changes to Improve the 2:16 Ratio There are great foods that can help improve the conversion of estrogen into good metabolites and away from the bad ones. These foods include insoluble dietary fibers, such as lignin found in green beans, peas, carrots, seeds, and Brazil nuts. The reason that dietary fiber, especially lignin, is so beneficial is that it can bind harmful estrogens in the digestive tract, so they can be excreted in the feces instead of being reabsorbed. Dietary fiber also improves the composition of intestinal bacteria so that harmful estrogen metabolites can be excreted from the body. It also decreases the conversion of testosterone into estrogens, maintaining a healthy testosterone level. Sugar and simple carbohydrates cause unfriendly flora to grow in the gastrointestinal tract and disrupt estrogen metabolism. These foods also raise blood sugar and insulin levels, resulting in adverse influences in sex hormone balance. Too many simple carbohydrates have been associated with postmenopausal breast cancer risk among overweight women and women with a large waist

Diindolylmethane (DIM)—This is a phytochemical found in cruciferous vegetables like broccoli and cauliflower. It shifts estrogen metabolism to favor the friendly or harmless estrogen metabolites. DIM can significantly increase the urinary excretion of the “bad” estrogens in as little as four weeks. The typical dose of DIM is 75–300 mg per day. Omega-3 Fatty Acids (fish oils)—These contain eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), which has been reported in laboratory studies to help control estrogen metabolism and decrease the risk of breast cancer. Eating grass-fed organic beef also supplies these fats. I typically recommend 2,000 mg a day. Calcium d-glucarate—This natural compound is found in fruits and vegetables like apples, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, and cabbage. Calcium d-glucarate inhibits the enzyme that contributes to breast, prostate, and colon cancers. It also reduces reabsorbed estrogen from the digestive tract.

The Right Intake Protein, protein, protein. Is there any other food group that causes so much angst? Have too little and you may be in trouble, have too much and you may be in greater trouble. Proteins are the main building blocks of the body making muscles, organs, skin and also enzymes. Thus, a lack of protein in your diet affects not only your health (think muscle deficiency and immune deficiency) but also your looks (poor skin and hair). On the other hand, excess protein can be harmful. “High protein intake can lead to dehydration and also increase the risk of gout, kidney afflictions, osteoporosis as well as some forms of cancer,” says Taranjeet Kaur, metabolic balance coach and senior nutritionist at AktivOrtho. However, there are others who disagree with her. "In normal people a high-protein natural diet is not harmful. In people who are taking artificial protien supplements , the level of harm depends upon the kind of protein and other elements in the supplement (for example, caffiene, etc.) For people with a pre- existing, intestinal, kidney or liver disease, a high-protein diet can be harmful," says leading nutritionist Shikha Sharma, managing director of Nutri-Health.  However, since too much of anything can never be good, the trick is to have just the right amount of protein in your diet.  But how much is the right amount? As a ballpark figure, the US Institute of Medicine recommends 0.8 gm of protein per kilogram of body weight. This amounts to 56 gm per day for a 70 kg man and 48 gm per day for a 60 kg woman.  However, the ‘right’ amount of protein for you will depend upon many factors including your activity levels, age, muscle mass, physical goals and the current state of health. A teenager, for example, needs more protein than a middle-aged sedentary man. Similarly, if you work out five times a day for an hour or so, your protein requirement will go up to 1.2-1.5 gm per kg of body weight. So if you are a 70kg man who works out actively, you will need nearly 105 gm of protein daily.   Proteins are crucial, even when you are trying to lose weight. As you know, in order to lose weight you need to consume fewer calories than what you burn. Proteins do that in two ways. First, they curb your hunger and make you feel full. In fact, proteins have a greater and prolonged satiating effect as compared to carbohydrates and fats. “If you have proteins in each of your meals, you have lesser cravings for snacks and other such food items,” says Kaur. By dulling your hunger, proteins can help prevent obesity, diabetes and heart disease.   Second, eating proteins boosts your metabolism by up to 80-100 calories per day, helping you lose weight. In a study conducted in the US, women who increased protein intake to 30 per cent of calories, ended up eating 441 fewer calories per day, leading to weight loss. Kaur recommends having one type of protein per meal and three different types of proteins each day to comply with the varied amino acid requirements of the body. She suggests that proteins should be well distributed at each meal instead of concentrating on a high protein diet only at dinner or lunch. “Moreover, having one protein at a time helps the body absorb it better and it helps us decide which protein suits our system and how much of it is required by us individually. For example, milk may not be good for everyone; it may help one person but can produce digestive problems in the other,” explains Kaur. So what all should you eat to get your daily dose of protein? Generally speaking, animal protein provides all the essential amino acids in the right ratio for us to make full use of them. For instance, 100 gm of chicken has 30 gm of protein while 75gm of cottage cheese (paneer) has only 8 gm of proteins (see chart). But that doesn’t mean you need to convert to a non-vegetarian in order to eat more proteins, clarifies Sharma. There are plenty of vegetarian options such as soya, tofu, sprouts, pulses, cu