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What Starvation Experiments Teach Us about Health and Longevity
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How to Actually Live Longer is your go-to podcast for cutting through the noise and discovering practical, science-backed strategies to not just add years to your life, but to add life to your years. Hosted by longevity author and functional health practitioner Christian Yordanov, this podcast dives deep into the truths (and myths) behind longevity, health optimization, and addressing chronic health problems.
Each episode offers actionable insights drawn from the host's own research, clinical practice, and personal journey, helping you make informed decisions to restore and enhance your health. Whether you're interested in reducing stress, boosting your energy and mental performance, improving your gut health, or simply looking to optimize your diet and lifestyle, this podcast delivers the tools you need to live a healthier, longer life.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:03
chrisyzen
Hey, it's k Christian Jourdanoff. Thanks for tuning back into the podcast.
Fear of Cholesterol in 2024
00:00:07
chrisyzen
Today, I'm going to cover a few topics, the ah of obviously health-related, longevity-related, but we're going to weave in a little bit about um Cholesterol, because believer believe it or not, in 2024, people are still afraid of cholesterol. Doctors are still obsessed with the their patients' cholesterol levels. Clients are coming to me, you know prospective clients are coming to me, and some of the first things that will come out of their mouth will be, my cholesterol
Cholesterol and Hypothyroidism
00:00:41
chrisyzen
is pretty good. and
00:00:42
chrisyzen
I'm like that doesn't matter one iota really in in the greater scheme of things that's like one of the most inconsequential things unless it was pretty high over let's say 260 then that's a very clear sign or that that's a very good indication that the person is hypothyroid and by virtue of that fact they're gonna have a a lot of health problems but the high cholesterol Is a downstream ah artifact of the much more serious health problem which is hypothyroidism so you know if if a person with high cholesterol will go to their doctor
00:01:20
chrisyzen
the doctor will try to lower it with a freaking poison ah instead of what they should be doing is helping the person with their hypothyroidism. And it's actually ah the thyroid medications, the T4, T3 combos, or even T4 on its own, those are actually on the much more benign or even beneficial end of the spectrum whereas most of the other things are on on the other way on the other side into the poison category, right? And the craziest part is that so many people are hypothyroid and as as an artifact of that will have a high cholesterol but their doctors do nothing to help them when they actually can and this would be the best thing they could do for there.
00:02:02
chrisyzen
client. So we're going to talk about cholesterol.
The Myth of Cholesterol and Heart Disease
00:02:04
chrisyzen
We're going to talk about the guy that spearheaded the quote unquote cholesterol causing heart disease hypothesis, which is a hypothesis that has been debunked even since the fifties when it was sort of pushed into the limelight. People were, researchers were already poking holes in it and and whatnot. But this guy,
00:02:33
chrisyzen
Anso Keys, he was he lived, interestingly, he lived 100 years. He lived from 1904 to 2004. He was a physiologist, public health researcher, and so surprisingly, a lot of people don't know this, but he is the guy that coined the term Mediterranean diet. So if you ever if you were ever told the mediterranean diet is good the the people that told you that they were influenced or the people they learned from were influenced by ansokey so the same guy who is somewhat responsible for the deaths and the suffering of tens of millions of of americans at least if not hundreds of millions of people around the world with all of this
Dietary Shifts in Bulgaria
00:03:29
chrisyzen
pushing of a lie that cholesterol causes heart disease that you know you need to have a low cholesterol level to be healthy and all of the vegetables and seed oils that then replaced the butter, the, the ah you know, the animal fats in the diets of people, at least in the West. I know even, yeah even though but Bulgaria, where I'm from is kind of Eastern Europe, it's technically the West, but like the, on the straight up periphery, but even us in the nineties, I remember that I write about it in my book, how to actually live longer volume one. I remember.
00:04:09
chrisyzen
One of my earliest memories is us switching to margarine, and me like scooping margarine out, and ah my grandma drizzling sunflower oil to make all of her pastries, and in in salads, and we would cook potatoes in it. So from a very early age, I was exposed to this polyunsaturated fat.
00:04:30
chrisyzen
that we all were. you know And if if that was the case for me in freaking Eastern Europe, it's double at least for for you know you in America or or Western Europe because you had access to these things even way before we did.
Ancel Keys' Influence
00:04:47
chrisyzen
so But what's interesting about this Anso Keys guy, so he lived 100 years and alleged is because he followed his Mediterranean diet. But the thing is,
00:04:56
chrisyzen
he was actually pretty powerful dude he was kind of well connected so if you go on pubmed dot.org he has his name appears for like 400 papers published papers and in many places he's like the first or the last listed which means it's either if it's his last in the list of researchers names it's his lab generally that's what it means it's he's he's kind of the the either the owner or the the boss at the lab conducting the experiments. And if his name is first, which it does appear many times, that means he's the lead lead researcher on on the the study or he's the lead author on the paper. So a lot of papers, a lot of research. And what's interesting is that he did a lot, I don't know what he obsessed with this, but he did kind of a bit earlier on in his career.
Minnesota Starvation Experiment
00:05:55
chrisyzen
he he was doing quite a lot of studies with um starvation some of it was in animals ah but then in from 1994 to 1945 this is a very famous experiment called the Minnesota starvation experiment. So he he ah basically led that. right So this Minnesota starvation experiment, ah this is where it it um this is where the topic becomes much broader than just cholesterol. right ah We're going to discuss the effects of basically starvation or caloric restriction or fasting in many cases.
00:06:35
chrisyzen
ah brings the same effects you know but we're gonna see what that how that affects a human being right because what we are told in fact a lot of these a lot of these guys out there that are kind of quote-unquote longevity experts I'm not gonna name any names but um umm I'm sure you've heard of some of them if you if you've read a few longevity books so some of them they actually ah recommend the Mediterranean diet so what they but here's what they say a wreck a Mediterranean diet is they say ah lots of whole grains vegetables fruits nuts and in some fish maybe once or twice a week sometimes I tell you and you know as little of the other stuff like lean proteins not too much eggs but the Mediterranean diet is just a
00:07:32
chrisyzen
It's just a fabrication, right? It's just ah some concept that... ah how can you Can you even compare like Italy or Spain? They have such different diets. For example, in Spain,
00:07:46
chrisyzen
who by the way have I think at the moment Spain has the height life highest life expectancy let me see life expectancy so I think Spain surprisingly is at the top if maybe so Japan let me see how sorry about this ah
00:08:10
chrisyzen
Okay, so I was wrong. So but Spain, Italy and Spain are 10th and 11th on the list. So it's Hong Kong is 85, Japan 84.7 South Korea, French Polynesia, Andorra, Switzerland, Australia, Singapore, Italy, Spain, and then France 83. Okay, so I made a mistake there. But what's interesting is that Spain has a pretty decent life expectancy, right? 83.67. And if you go to Spain,
00:08:42
chrisyzen
It is like chorizo everywhere, you know, they love the chorizo, they love their tapas and maybe what it has to do with a lot of places don't cook with seed oils. They'll cook with like olive oil. So if you go like we were in Spain ah in the summer and i I would explicitly tell everywhere we go to not cook my food or my family's food in seed oils and they would almost snootily say we don't use those oils we use olive oil as if cooking foods with olive oil is much it is much better but it's not optimal by any means you don't want to cook it in a saturated fat that doesn't peroxidize but it seems like maybe because they use so so much more olive oil that that's probably protective but the the interesting thing is that
00:09:33
chrisyzen
pork chorizo which we used to eat a lot of with my wife before we had our kid we oh my god this's this is organic chorizo that comes from Spain um but very few organic places have here and every we were traveling up and down Portugal a few years ago camping and stuff and we just look for organic stores and be like let's go get that chorizo was so good but the thing is it struck we had had stopped it for a while then last year we were in Spain again and I just looked at some chorizos in the store and I was like holy cow this this thing is like 50% fat almost and 50 plus percent of that is polyunsaturated fat I'm like oh my god because so a lot of obviously a lot of pigs most pigs are gonna be
00:10:23
chrisyzen
getting fed predominantly grains um in the US probably soybeans and corn and then in in Europe it will probably be corn and then maybe some other stuff but then there's a lot of
00:10:38
chrisyzen
There's a lot of um Iberian pork that in Spain that is acorn fed. So the kind of, you know, that' that that that's a marketing sort of, that's a marketing sort of thing that it's fed with acorns. And before it used to be impressive, like, oh, my God, these pigs are eating acorns. And what what else are they getting like?
00:10:58
chrisyzen
you know, caviar on the side, but acorns are just another seed. So super high in polyunsaturated fats, comparative to other things. So unfortunately, their consumption of polyunsaturated fats is still very high because if you're eating pork, you're eating a lot of polyunsaturated fats. But in spite of that, pretty high life expectancy of 83 years of age, right?
00:11:26
chrisyzen
Now, let's let's just, um I just want to go back down, go back
Low Life Expectancy in USA
00:11:31
chrisyzen
to this list. So, oh my God, hold on. So I forgot to even look at the USA. Oh my sweet mother of Jesus. So the USA, with all of its medical spending, all the best doctors, Harvard Medical School, all of those that, you know,
00:11:47
chrisyzen
The best researchers, the best doctors, the best technology, the best healthcare is 56th on the list. 79 years of age. Now tell you my grandma.
00:12:00
chrisyzen
My granddad, ah one of my granddads lived to 80. And he was basically like sedentary for the last 30 years of his life. and But he still managed to outlive the freaking USA life expectancy as it was twenty in 2023. My grandma lives almost five years longer. So she lived to the age of 84. So the USA,
00:12:25
chrisyzen
clearly there there's something not right there that the life expectancy is way lower than other much uh what's the word much poorer countries because but puerto rico is is higher 20 points almost higher cypress is higher guadalupe right uh bermuda can imagine they're very rich Martinique not sure about those guys so there's plenty of Relatively poorer countries on as Spain is a very poor country if you look at the average person what they have, you know so, okay, Hong Kong ah Hong Kong being first is fine but you even Greece is 36th in the list Greece Puerto Rico and Cyprus are are higher than Chile is higher than the USA for God's sake
00:13:24
chrisyzen
Costa Rica is higher so
00:13:30
chrisyzen
Albania is also even very marginally higher than the USA and Yeah, but at least the USA beats Saudi Arabia China Kosovo, you know, so it's pretty bad. It's pretty bad it actually infant infant mortality is actually relatively quite high in the USA, so that's what happens when your country gets taken over by scumbags that just want to extract profit from from the population via their sickness and then continue making them sick with these seed oils and all the toxins being released and into the environment, you know. They're destroying they're they're destroying the country and the people.
00:14:14
chrisyzen
And unless a person puts in effort to protect themselves, they're going to become one of these statistics, unfortunately.
Effects of Starvation Experiment
00:14:25
chrisyzen
So the Minnesota Starvation Experiment 1944 to 1945. So this is a very well-known study that was done on human starvation. Basically, let me just bring up my notes here. So.
00:14:43
chrisyzen
Keep in mind Ansokey is this guy, he comes up with the in the 50s, he's the one that kind of spearheads this whole lipid, ah saturated fat bad, cholesterol causes heart disease. So he's one of the the people instrumental in this, almost, so I dare ah dare call it, okay, want I won't use such strong strong terms such as genocide or whatever.
00:15:08
chrisyzen
But it is like a lot of people have have have suffered and died at the hands of of of these people that basically caused the replacement of natural animal foods that we've lived with for tens of thousands of years ah with what used to be oils that were used to lubricate machines.
00:15:32
chrisyzen
And we're using like paints and varnishes and just kind of really in more industrial purposes, right? They turn those into like a major or or at least a significant source of calories for the ah the American. I mean, at the moment, I think yesterday I was recording an episode, I think that one of the studies said the ah average American gets eight to 10% of their calories from linoleic acid alone that's the major predominant omega 6 fatty acid so that's not all polyunsaturated fats that's just I think it was just linoleic acid excuse me so this guy but before he did that he was like doing weird shit with starv starving people and I guess he was like
00:16:24
chrisyzen
getting aroused by that or something so let let let's go over the Minnesota starvation experiment just to give you an idea what it was about what happened how what findings ah were there so basically they were 36 healthy male volunteers primarily conscientious objectors so they didn't want to go to war and kill their basically brothers and sisters just from a different country right And that's that's why they're going to get experimented on because they don't want to go kill for a country that's a government that's trying to kill them. you know So aged between 20 and 33 years of age, so they were young, they were generally healthy.
00:17:09
chrisyzen
probably much much healthier than your average 20 to 33 year old these days way healthier for sure and the next point actually uh really is a testament to that so there was three phases in the experiment control phase where they consumed a normal diet of about 3200 calories per day for 12 weeks to get the to establish the baseline measurements. So 3200 calories per day now. How many men do you know today that can eat 3200 calories per day as a maintenance?
00:17:51
chrisyzen
You know, that's ah it's more than a thousand calories if you do three meals per day. I mean, i I remember last year I started working with one client, man, big dude. And he, some days he was eating 800 calories, a quarter of that. And he was coming off of like a sort of intermittent fasting and, uh,
00:18:16
chrisyzen
What you call it? Low carb kind of phase, which really lowers your metabolic rate, right? So that why why do I tell clients don't, if you're doing the intermittent fasting and the low carb, but let's get you to stop and let's start to re-establish a proper metabolic rate, if you know what I mean.
00:18:39
chrisyzen
but but without any or much weight gain ideally, right? Because that is the risk. Obviously, if you're going to start increasing your calories, you have to be very careful with the macronutrients.
00:18:51
chrisyzen
um So but these guys imagine how healthy they were if they were like maintaining their weight with 3200 calories per day. Then for 24 weeks or six months there was a semi-starvation phase where they they consumed the restricted diet of about 1500 1,560 calories a day. So 50% of their baseline caloric intake. And the food was designed to simulate the types of food available in war-torn Europe. So this was like a study um that would help them
00:19:33
chrisyzen
figure out how to rehabilitate people that were impoverished and ah in in kind of famine areas after the war, ostensibly. So the the diet was mainly potatoes, turnips, bread and small amounts of dairy and meat. So it sounds pretty pretty horrible to have to eat half of your normal caloric requirements per day. And then in the last 12 weeks in the end, ah they were divided into various groups to receive different levels of calories and nutrients to evaluate the most effective ways to recover from starvation. right So what were the key findings of the study? So the physical changes were severe.
00:20:21
chrisyzen
so weight loss was approximately 25% of their body weight obviously muscle wasting as you would expect lowered basal metabolic rate as you would expect in cardiovascular changes there were reductions in thyroid hormones testosterone and insulin and increases in cortisol as as you would expect if you've listened to me before or if you have read my book that's what happens when you when your metabolic rate is lowered that obviously that's ah function of thyroid hormones being down regulated and when your cortisol goes up generally your testosterone will decrease sooner or later.
00:21:04
chrisyzen
But what's interesting, so these physiological changes, these hormonal changes, we absolutely, you don't have to cause people to suffer for six months to to know that, because you know low-carb studies have shown this, inter intermittent fasting, fasting studies have done it for like ah eight days, 10 days. But um what's interesting is more the psychological changes. So some participants so but some participants became obsessed with food,
00:21:34
chrisyzen
exhibited depression anxiety social withdrawal and cognitive decline so this is why I tell clients if you want if longevity is what if one of your main goals is longevity right ah you don't want to do these things that lower the basal metabolic rate, the thyroid hormones, the testosterone, and increase your cortisol. Because cortisol, it doesn't just atrophy your your muscles, it also your bones, even parts of your brain, if if done enough, you know.
00:22:10
chrisyzen
um So cognitive decline, yeah, you don't want that. You don't want to do things like cutting calories. here Here's the thing I oh actually meant to say earlier,
Caloric Restriction and Longevity
00:22:20
chrisyzen
right? So some of these guys that ah shield the Mediterranean diet, that shield, you know, eating mostly plant-based, ah they ah are also big proponents of the caloric restriction increases longevity theory.
00:22:37
chrisyzen
um And this is, okay, so in this case, it was a pretty severe caloric restriction of 50%, but some of them are purporting or saying that, proposing that 20% caloric restriction, 30% caloric restriction will extend life. And it doesn't, in like some animal studies where they're eating poison, so they're eating less poison when they calorie restrict the animals, but imagine,
00:23:05
chrisyzen
Imagine you reduce your calories by 20% and this increasing cortisol and dropping testosterone and thyroid hormone. What is that going to do to you over the years? ah ah The cortisol contributing to anxiety, depression, the cognitive decline. Is this really
00:23:26
chrisyzen
when you when you look at it When you look at the psychological changes after six months of cutting calories by half, do you think calling cutting calories is ah viable longevity strategy other than in a freaking lab with some rats that are eating like fish meal and soybean oil and then they cut those calories and then the rats do do better they live longer sometimes just marginally by the way because they're eating less poison and toxic slop so this is another thing and a lot of these
00:24:02
chrisyzen
ah these longevity folks they already kind of in their 60s they look pretty damn emaciated and because they're not they're just eating like plants and like indigestible foods like tons of fiber and indigestible kind of bits of nuts and grains and whatever and the That doesn't look compatible with living a long life, at least a long healthy life, you know. um Then what they also saw in the study was long-term recovery challenges. The refeeding phase showed that simple caloric refeeding wasn't enough to fully restore physical health and psychological effects, including food obsession, lingered long after body weight was restored.
00:24:51
chrisyzen
So what that means, the feeding phase showed that simple caloric refeeding wasn't enough to fully restore physical health. What that means is that if you were misled by the current harmful fads of intermittent fasting or you did dieting in the past to try to lose weight or keto or low carb or carnivore diets that result in a the ah pretty major decrease in metabolic rate. You can't expect to just start eating normally, let's say if you were eating 1600 calories a day for months and months.
00:25:31
chrisyzen
You can't just you know increase your calories to 2,000, 2,500 calories a day and expect just magically your health to be restored because the the body down regulates function very quickly right because that's a survival mechanism if you let's say if you stop eating today in four days time you will be your met metabolism will will be very down regulated if you don't have any any other food in in those four days
00:26:03
chrisyzen
because the body has to act fast to reduce function ah function in terms of like how much energy various parts of you are burning, right? So the test is the ovaries, the gonads, the reproductive function that will probably shut down. ah some Some cognitive functions will shut down. um a lot of the majority of the calories will be just used for the maintenance functions, right? So if the boy doesn't do that very quickly
00:26:35
chrisyzen
Obviously it won't survive very long, right? And we didn't get to where we are because the body is is wasteful when in times of starvation, lack or stress or, or any other potential danger. That's why all kinds of stress, it might just be psychological stress, but if you're like working 80 hours a week,
00:26:57
chrisyzen
for a long time that very similar hormonal cascades are are occurring in the body cortisol being heightened adrenaline will be heightened eventually serotonin and potentially estrogen and other stress hormones will be elevated so if if it's even if it's just psychological stress that in and of itself because it's a stress can lower the metabolism so
Debunking Health Myths
00:27:20
chrisyzen
let's look at some other findings in the study right so okay okay okay kick okay so they were losing about 2.5 pounds per week so 25% of their body weight over six months
00:27:45
chrisyzen
The men were required to walk 22 miles per week and engage in other moderate physical activities such as treadmill walking to maintain fitness. So there they were still being active, right? ah What else? Okay, check this out. So physiological and psychological effects during starvation. So participants became increasingly physically weak reporting fatigue, muscle wasting, and a significant reduction in strength and stamina, as you would expect.
00:28:16
chrisyzen
reduced basal metabolic rate, so the BMR, the basal metabolic rate decreased by about 40% as the body adapted to conserve energy by reducing thyroid hormone levels and and metabolic activity.
00:28:30
chrisyzen
cardioves cardiovascular changes resting heart rate and blood pressure decreased with some men experiencing bradycardia slow heart rate dropping to around 35 to 40 beats per minute the men also lost heart muscle mass or atrophy of the heart leading to a reduction in heart size so listen to this now so they experienced bradycardia or slow heart rate now we are being told that the slower your heart rate the healthier you are so then why do these guys that are on ah on a semi starvation diet why is their heart rate dropping shouldn't it be the opposite shouldn't their heart rate be increasing if a low heart rate signifies being healthy but it's because it's another freaking lie they they're saying that if you're
00:29:23
chrisyzen
if your heart beats ah ah us less beats per minute it's pumping more blood per go or something like some nonsense like that you know that's what we're told and we just believe this nonsense right so actually a low heart rate indicates the person is not not super healthy and this is what a ah recent client of mine ah he was measuring his um morning heart rate and heart rate variability and all that stuff with The ordering that kind of biometric tracking device and he's like my my heart rate is pretty good. It's pretty low and He told me what it was. I was like damn dude, that's really low. Like that's not good exactly. Oh, that's not good ah which and He's a very sophisticated client in terms of knowledge of health and all of the stuff right hidden
00:30:12
chrisyzen
He probably knows more than most doctors, i like medical doctors, I kid you not, I kid you not about real health stuff. And even he was like, oh shit, I did i thought low heart rate was good. But in fact, you you don't want it to be too high, sure, because it probably means you're stressed out.
00:30:30
chrisyzen
But ah something like these guys dropping to 35 40 beats per minute. That is not good it means the body is slowing down functioning and even the heart is affected that's end stage starvation and These guys probably could could have survived another good while on that many calories but they just would have deteriorated even more and more and more and it would have been a horrific and torturous thing for them to experience probably not as bad as being out there on the front lines or whatever in more circumstances of course the body temperature so participants reported feeling cold most of the time even in warm environments as their core body temperature
00:31:12
chrisyzen
Dropped due to the reduced metabolic rate and how many women do you do you know? Have you that have told you? Well, I guess maybe everyone's different but how I can't tell you how many women I've spoken to that would tell me like hands and feet are cold or they're always cold and What does that mean? What does that mean? Well, they're probably hypothyroid. They're hypometabolic Right, but what does that really mean?
00:31:39
chrisyzen
it oftentimes means they're severely under-eating just by virtue of severely under-eating like a lot of girls do when in their teens and then obviously they're in their 20s or they might switch to a plant-based diet where you're eating a load of volume of food but you're not really eating a lot of nutrition, calories or vitamins or minerals, at least bioavailable ones so this is how this kind of stuff can can develop and what's interesting is holy god i was um over the summer i was at a gym here i was kind of like going around the gyms and and studios and yoga places and stuff to kind of maybe talk about doing talks about you know the topics in my book longevity health whatever
00:32:30
chrisyzen
and I i stopped in one gym nearby here and I kind of was talking to the guy there at the counter and we're talking talking gave him a copy of the book to give to his boss and whatever else and then so we're shaking hands to say goodbye and he gave me his hand and i was almost shuddered at how cold his hand was it was icy cold and i've never shook hands with anyone whose hand was that cold and this guy was very thin he looked ripped but quite thin and and small he he was young he was like 20 22 or something like that
00:33:18
chrisyzen
So i I didn't want to assume you can't even assume people's gender. Never mind Are they on a keto or intermittent fasting regime, but I'm assuming that he was probably like on some kind of intermittent fasting regime coupled with a lot of exercise probably fasted cardio like people do like loads of people are doing fasted cardio today and maybe even a low carb diet to get shredded because you know you work in a gym you have to you have to look the part but think about the long-term consequences of doing that you can you can do it in your early 20s without feeling bad you can power through it in your early 30s but 35 plus like this kind of stuff catches up catches up to you and
00:34:09
chrisyzen
the the The longer you do it the more hypometabolic you become, the harder it is. to get out of that. This is why I've had clients where ah it's I don't tell all my clients to not exercise because I have plenty of clients now, especially after publishing the book, that are in decent health. They just want to kind of get the last 10, 15%. Sometimes it's just the last few percent improvement. So it's not like I tell all my clients to not exercise, but like especially I remember last year I had a few women where
00:34:42
chrisyzen
ah theyre like As soon as they start feeling a bit better, they'd be like out on the road running and they'd tell me that during calls. I'm like, what? ah ah Yeah, I was in the gym there for two hours. ah I'm like, ah why? Why? you you you You feel better, have a bit more energy and you go and wasted running or or lifting weights when you have so much sort of
00:35:13
chrisyzen
ground to cover in terms of improving your health. It doesn't make sense. It really doesn't make sense. So I guess moral that that little story is that the more health issues a person has the weaker they are and or the older they are, the more they have to be careful about these things about letting their base of metabolic rate drop like skipping meals, ah eating super lit tiny amounts. I can remember my grandma the last several years of her life. It's partly because the butchers took out her gallbladder, right? ah Years before, so she couldn't eat much. But she was just eating like a ah piece of toast. And maybe she might have like two tiny meals per day. And it was like, that's like end stage hypometabolic sort of state and
00:36:08
chrisyzen
But there's a lot of there's a lot of women like that are eating tiny amounts, getting by on tiny amounts, and that is only going to cause them problems in the long term. And they feel like, it seems like they feel like they're forced to do it in order to kind of maintain a certain look or whatever, and it's it's sad, it's sad really.
00:36:28
chrisyzen
because it it makes the problem worse in the long term. and But a lot of guys are also like that, maybe not necessarily under eating protein, they might eat like plenty of protein, but they might be like under eating the carbohydrates and that they're also painting themselves slowly into quote-unquote a metabolic corner where you might like these guys here imagine so what okay so 3200 calories times 0.6 so they lost so they had a 40% drop in metabolic rate so roughly their metabolic rate dropped to where 1900 calories would then be like a maintenance level of calories right so
00:37:16
chrisyzen
that's That's what people are doing with these kind of intermittent fasting, low carb and other even just prolonged fasting regimes. so They're doing that where the the body learns to make do with less calories. And then what ah what happens where you just start as soon as you kind of go over calories for a while, let's say Christmas time, December.
00:37:41
chrisyzen
you you balloon up because ah people are used to eating let's say a certain volume of food they might go on a diet or keto low carb intermittent fasting whatever when they go back to eating the same amount so their the plate looks the same as before so I'm eating the same why am i doing why am I gaining weight now you know well that's why because the metabolic rate lowers in times of stress okay so cognitive and psychological
Intermittent Fasting and Metabolic Issues
00:38:09
chrisyzen
effects. So they were preoccupied with food. They became obsessed with food, frequently talking about recipes, hoarding food and engaging in an news and ah an unusual eating behaviors, like licking their plates. There was a guy caught sticking a carrot up his ass. Just kidding. That that the one i I made up. That didn't really happen. um Depression and irritability. Many developed symptoms of depression, anxiety, and irritability. That's the high cortisol and adrenaline.
00:38:37
chrisyzen
and some becoming socially withdrawn and apathetic, that would be the high serotonin, which does increase in times of stress. Decreased libido, sexual interest and activity virtually virtually disappeared due to hormonal changes, particularly the reduction in testosterone. This is a great thing if you don't want people to reproduce so much, right?
00:39:02
chrisyzen
if you get the guys to like to get into stressful things like lots of intermittent fasting low carb keto diets carnivore because it's supermanly it's how we used to we're like they're kind of tapping tapping into the warrior archetype you feel like a warrior going to the supermarket buying the meat coming me home and you know, cooking it on the pan. That's super warrior archetype. But we you know what I mean? it's It's kind of crazy, but these things do work. Like when I was, Jesus Christ, late 2018, when I was doing the carnivore diet, I remember we got from the the local organic store, we got this whole lamb.
00:39:48
chrisyzen
And it came and I was like making this lamb broth to soup thing on the stove. And I was also eating it raw. And I was like, ah, I'm super primal. And it so it does work. i'm I'm sure lots of guys were like, oh, this soup feels super primal. Then I had the liver, the chicken liver with the hearts. I was eating it raw and I was feeling awesome. I was feeling awesome. However,
00:40:18
chrisyzen
one day and i think this is how i got the parasites i think this is how i screwed myself royally um so we have the food and i was doing all this kind of carnivore low carb stuff and i was feeling great and whatever else probably running on a lot of stress hormones as well like you do feel like pumped when your adrenaline is high and stuff so one day one afternoon after lunch i would lie on this yoga mat on the cold tiles in the apartment. And then I would put a an acupressure mat and I would lie on that just to take some pressure off my back. It's nice. The problem is sometimes because of that sort of those needles in your back, they do something to the nervous system where it really helps you fall asleep. So this is actually how I fall asleep every night now with a lie on an acupressure mat. Really? Yeah, I think Dave Asprey, he he even branded his one
00:41:15
chrisyzen
on his website, they call it a sleep induction mat. So it's all, it's all marketing. Even these things cost 10 bucks on Amazon. But if they've asked, we call it a sleep induction mat, puts 50 bucks for whatever people buy it. I'm sure it's it's probably better quality than your average acupressure mat. But What happened then was my,
00:41:39
chrisyzen
I fell asleep that one time. It was already kind of, I think maybe October, November. It was a little bit cooler in in Portugal and that was a north facing apartment. So it was already kind of cool in the afternoons. So I i think that's when I fell asleep.
00:41:57
chrisyzen
maybe 45 minutes or more on that near kind of the cold floor and my body temperature dropped and I kind of woke up I for the next couple of days I was a little bit kind of achy feverish I think that's when my temperature dropped that's when potentially something could have gotten hold maybe it was something i was exposed to from the raw meat maybe the liver maybe the the lamb or maybe it was something already living in me because we always we all have these kind of gram
Personal Health Experiences
00:42:35
chrisyzen
negative bacteria in the gut that can over grow when in times of stress or other insult to the gut so i kind of
00:42:44
chrisyzen
shook it off after like maybe a couple of days it was a bit like feverish not but not much you know and here's this is where i'm starting to think why was i a little bit feverish not a lot feverish you know because if it's an issue the body will raise the temperature you will have the fever and kill whatever needs to be killed then there you go back to normal right but could it be that because i was doing all this low carb stuff and intermittent fasting nonsense Could it be that I was hypometabolic? And I definitely was because I was measuring my TSH. And at the time, I didn't notice it, but my testosterone was going up, indicating hypometabolic or hypothyroidism. My TSH, my thyroid stimulating hormone was going up. That was indicating, um obviously, a reduction in in
00:43:39
chrisyzen
metabolism so could it be that maybe I was just becoming hypothyroid more and more and I couldn't muster up this ah what you call it ah high temperature ah fever response which by the way very very sick people that or people that never get sick it could be that they just don't have the reserve the immune system is suppressed ah or the white blood cells are low or whatever where they cannot even muster up this energetic response required to have the fever and stuff like that. So I after that over the weeks and months it definitely started having problems.
00:44:19
chrisyzen
ah libido went down, strength went down all kinds of ah sleep was pretty terrible waking up at night, itchy butt and then later in 2019 I started running some lab tests and that's when I did a hormone test androgens were all super low ah then I did a stool test parasites Giardia blastocystis super high candida started doing hair testing super high metals ah ah especially aluminum aluminum mercury and it was
00:45:00
chrisyzen
only when I started eating carbohydrates again in 2019 and doing all the parasite stuff, the detox stuff and so stopping doing the dumps the dumb things like eating only meat and organs, no carbs and intermittent fasting and trying to fast even for more than a day and stuff like that, so that's That really helped me get my my health back in I was still young So in in weeks and months I clawed back my health actually very quickly I was feeling amazing at one point. I remember I was feeling so good that then in 2019 I was
Recovery and Immune System Health
00:45:48
chrisyzen
We went to Dublin to visit family for a few days and we came back to Portugal and after the flight, the next two days I was almost the entire time kind of on the couch with a super high fever. It was super high. I was like, Oh my God. But then two days it was completely gone. I felt like a million bucks. So that was the last time I got sick.
00:46:16
chrisyzen
until basically until we had our child in
00:46:24
chrisyzen
even after. So I think 2022 was the next time I was actually sick. And it was then then it was like a 10-day thing. It was horrific. it was you know if If COVID exists, that that was definitely COVID. because um ah But the the thing is, i it it lasted 10 days only because we were moving apartments at the time, and I i moved single-handedly all our crap. and I was I was in here taking in deliveries because we all we bought everything you had to buy everything couches and refrigerators I was here I was working I was here assembling Ikea furniture nonsense and I was constantly like sweating and then I'd be freezing because obviously as soon as you start moving a little bit you start sweating when you have a fever and then you're shivering so
00:47:17
chrisyzen
I didn't allow my body to just kind of like, lay I couldn't lie down for like three days and and kind of get through it. So it's my own fault that it lasted 10 days. I would imagine it would have lasted a lot less. But that was almost, I guess, I guess three three years later that I was sick for the first time. And that was because three, four months of waking up multiple times a night you know to change a a little baby that kind of stress of all of that definitely definitely takes a toll on the immune system because we know that cortisol suppresses the immune system also adrenaline will suppress the immune system so when you're stressed out your immune system is suppressed and you know that that's when you can kind of kind of get them
00:48:05
chrisyzen
sick so but since then I've only been like sick two more times after that so that's 2024 almost the end of 2024 so I basically since 2018 I think I've been sick like five times in six years and some of them are like only a couple of days minor little things so I think that's pretty a pretty good testament to not to to what I'm doing in terms of Not doing low carb not doing intermittent fasting not eating only meat And and kind of just super extreme things just eating Eating like eating I didn't eat super clean those times when I did get sick in the last three years It was when after a kid was born obviously the diet slipped for a while for a good while I'll have to admit
00:48:57
chrisyzen
um and it was actually during those times that I that i got sick and then when i I started cleaning up the diet really well again since then I have not actually been sick all of last winter I didn't even have a sniffle actually I did for I felt bad one morning and so I woke up I woke up but a bit too early and um I just had two aspirins It's 10 a.m. I had two aspirins, I had a coffee, and then my wife got up, I told her I'm gonna go take a nap, so I took like an hour and a half nap. ah Woke up maybe ah just before noon, and I felt normal again, I was completely fine, and that was it. So I ah barely even had a sniffle all of last winter.
00:49:48
chrisyzen
And what's interesting, just by the way, as ah as a as a quick um side note, last winter I took, I want to say literally, in the literal sense, millions of international units of vitamin D, topically and and internally, orally. I mean millions, millions of international units, just as an experiment,
00:50:20
chrisyzen
So I think, so the bottle I get, it's um it's ba it's in a MCT oil, ah the vitamin D, I get it with a tiny bit of vitamin K and each drop is a thousand IUs.
00:50:34
chrisyzen
So that's 1.7 million IUs in the bottle, right? So I'd give some to my wife, my my ah kid, my dog, and I would like take a crap load. I'd take like 20,000 IUs, some days you'd skip it, but then topically you'd ah take a bunch.
00:50:52
chrisyzen
and didn't have a sniffle. My wife, I think she did she got sick once or twice. My kid got sick once or twice, but it was very minor compared to how other people were getting sick in bed and flu and man flu and COVID and COVID flu and man with COVID flu and whatever else. None of that, none of that happened. So I think I think some of this stuff out there that vitamin D is rat poison and whatever it's bad for you. I think and all the stuff with vitamin toxicity that if you take too much you get become toxic with these vitamins. Even vitamin A I mean like we're reading at one point I was seeing so much liver that
00:51:39
chrisyzen
I don't know, zero problems, you know. I think it has to do with your overall nutritional balance, but I think a lot of these, a lot of these vitamins being toxic stuff is is really just pharmaceutical propaganda, so that there are things you're never like... really, there's never a concern that their drugs are causing horrific, horrific side effects and people are dying left, right and center from their horrible statins and other horrible drugs and the SSRIs and whatever, are destroying people's lives, like destroying families, you know? But then if you take a bit too much of a vitamin, you know, you might have an issue, you know, it's kind of ridiculous.
00:52:23
chrisyzen
Like vitamin K and E, ah vitamin E becomes water soluble. it's It can be easily excreted. Vitamin K, they have not been able to find a toxicity level for it, you know, ah just as an example. So the vitamin B, ah the B family, they're water soluble. I mean, the vitamin C can make you ah ah have loose stools for a while, but that's again, it's water soluble. so All of that stuff is propaganda and even with the minerals, like they're saying, yeah some of these minerals can be toxic and stuff. Copper, I've taken like, I don't know, thousands of milligrams of copper this year, no problems.
00:53:04
chrisyzen
ah You know, like the body is able to not, yes, long-term supplement, you can make mistakes with over supplementing certain things and causing deficiencies in others and stuff.
00:53:18
chrisyzen
but that takes a lot of stupidity like you have to be doing like crazy amounts of a certain mineral to then imbalance another one for a long time it doesn't happen like a couple of months or stuff like that so it's overblown what okay so hold on i i was just ranting on uh rambling on for like 20 minutes let's just look at just to finish off this episode so they did the three months um uh baseline kind of they just ate normally 3 200 uh calories per day then they had half of that for six months and then the rehabilitation phase was uh 12 weeks three months so
Challenges of Metabolic Recovery
00:54:06
chrisyzen
They were div divided into several groups ah receiving different types of nutritional refabilitation.
00:54:14
chrisyzen
And the groups varied in the number of calories providing from, so they started with two thousand between 2,000 and 3,200 calories, ah depending on the group, and different proportions of protein, fat, and carbohydrates. And so what what did they find? So the study revealed that simply increasing calories did not lead to full recovery. This is again why I'm telling you you, you don't want to be doing intermittent fasting, low carb diets, fasting, carnivore.
00:54:42
chrisyzen
all of this stuff because once you lower your metabolic rate it's very arduous to get it back up it will take months or even years in some cases it's not just a matter of I'm going to increase my calories I'm going to recover You don't want to get into that state to begin with. If you've ever seen a hypothyroid person talk to them, see seeing what their life is like, it's horrible. It's horrible. They're being cold, no libido, um just constipated, sleeping badly, all of that stuff, you know? Brain fog. So you don't want to get into those states. And that is the end game with these low-carb and fasting regimes.
00:55:28
chrisyzen
So that's kind of the moral of the story really here in this whole show. If you can remember that, you you were already well ahead of the game. Nutrient-dense foods, particularly those in rich in protein and vitamins, were necessary to restore health and muscle mass. and This is another thing in the zeitgeist right now, that animal protein is bad, it raises emptor and stuff like that and that. This is another way they're keeping the population weak, because people are genuinely getting brainwashed, all the plant-based people and whatnot. you know
00:56:05
chrisyzen
weight gain was rapid in some participants but it was primarily fat rather than muscle this was a sign that caloric refitting alone did not adequately support muscle repair so of I mean most people know that if you diet for a while and then you start gaining weight again because you increase your calories a lot of that was gonna be fat why because the body has been has been send the signal of lack, famine, starvation, depending on the intensity of the diet or caloric restriction, or fasting or low carb diet. Because remember, I've said this multiple times before, restricting carbohydrates sends the same signal as starvation to the body. So the body will respond in kind over time, right? So it's kind of, it it it follows that
00:57:02
chrisyzen
if you do send that signal of starvation when the body gets more calories it will store the fat so it has an energetic reserve because it it thinks this is the status quo now This is why you have to constantly give your body the signal of abundance. that what That's why two chapters in my book, How to Actually Live Longer, Volume 1, are called signal abundance to your body, part one and part two. right That's why we talk about low-carb diets separately and why we talk about fasting regimes separately, because both of those send the opposite of the signal of abundance. they send
00:57:42
chrisyzen
signal of lack of scarcity of famine of stress and the body responds to stress by turning down the metabolism because you want to spend less like if you if you let's say let's say you're making $4,000 a month And then they they cut your salary in half. You're going to be like, oh, crap. OK, I have to like which which of these bills can I not pay for a while? Maybe I won't be buying ah these foods now because there are maybe I won't I won't go for cocktails on a Friday night. You immediately start lowering the nice to haves in terms of your budget and the body is the same.
00:58:22
chrisyzen
Why do you think these guys lost their libido and interest in sex? Because that is ah an energetically expensive thing. And in times when times is tough, as they say, you you don't have the energetic reserve to want to have sex and you know to make sperm or whatever the case may be, or to have a baby, right? So this is another reason why low libido
00:58:51
chrisyzen
is is actually pretty common in in in people nowadays, right? Because if you're hypometabolic, or if you're just starving yourself or sending these stressful signals to your body, yeah, you your body's not gonna inherently not going to want to, you know,
00:59:08
chrisyzen
get frisky so okay unrestricted so they also had this unrestricted rehabilitation rehabilitation phase so they they had eight weeks or two months where the men were allowed to eat ad libitum without restriction me meaning they could consume as many calories as they wanted and some individuals consumed as many as 10,000 calories per day during this phase, like Michael Phelps level of calories.
00:59:42
chrisyzen
So that is, that's what happens. I mean, that's lots of, I know lots of people that have told me that they have this desire to binge or they actually do binge eat. And I also used to be like that when I was doing low carb or intermittent fasting, because yeah, you started yourself for two thirds of the day. It's natural. It's an instinct.
01:00:04
chrisyzen
to want to binge, right? So it's it's not like it's not that a person is weak psychologically, and that's why they're binge eating, it's because they're they're not structuring their meals throughout the day.
01:00:22
chrisyzen
where they don't get these ah kind of uncontrollable cravings. right This is what I teach my clients how to do. How to structure your eating not just so that you don't have cravings. Obviously that's an added bonus that you don't binge eat. But you want to structure it in a way where you're not having drops in blood sugar for too long at least.
01:00:46
chrisyzen
that result is stress hormone release and that because that that discombobulates you in general so then if you allow that let's say you go too long without a meal that drop in blood sugar will rise in cortisol you feel crappy that then predisposes you to want to binge and then let's say you you perhaps you binge or you eat too much of something that's not exactly balanced the way I recommend Then that might cause another spike in blood sugar that's too high That causes a big insulin spike that then causes a subsequent lowering of blood sugar that then causes this so this reactive hypoglycemia as it's called that then ah Results in a cortisol spike again, and this is this kind of rollercoaster
01:01:33
chrisyzen
it's pretty horrible to deal with and I don't know how people deal with it on a daily basis but it's actually very simple to to correct and sometimes people do it for like two days and like oh my god this this is awesome I slept like a baby I feel really good today my brain works really well and it's only been two days yeah that's what happens when you just do very simple fundamental things well and consistently you're gonna get amazing results okay ah measurements ah ah findings during okay so findings during unrestricted rehabilitation where they could eat as much as they want to so they experienced rapid weight gain much of which was fat
01:02:14
chrisyzen
The body's natural response to prolonged starvation was to store as many calories as possible in the form of fat, hyperphagia or overeating. They ate excessively even after their body weight had returned to normal. And um so physiological, so key findings of the study, metabolic adaptations.
Body's Adaptation to Stress
01:02:33
chrisyzen
The body adapted to starvation by reducing metabolic rate, body temperature, heart rate and activity of the thyroid hormones.
01:02:39
chrisyzen
this is
01:02:42
chrisyzen
This is how the body adapts not just to starvation, but to stress in general, which could be physical, psychological, or a combination of both, as is now nowadays is the case. So reduction in metabolic rate, reduction in body temperature, reduction in heart rate, and a reduction in the activity of the thyroid hormones. And that that that's why a lot of people become overweight over time not that's not the only reason a big reason is the is the the seed oils because when you consume a lot of them they're metabolic inhibitors so they interfere with the thyroid hormones they can also if they can also interfere with ah glucose metabolism so there's a lot of there's it's a multi-factorial issue but these current fads that people and and here's the thing
01:03:35
chrisyzen
This is what people were told to do to lose weight. I had one one client. um
01:03:44
chrisyzen
I was working with her granddaughter. And she she had a bit of ah of a weight. One of her main things was a weight issue. And the doctor here told her to do intermittent fasting. So now doctors are telling people and they doctors are telling people to do low carbon keto diets. So this is they're they're telling people to lose weight by by doing things that give them an initial perhaps loss of weight but that resultant metabolic rate drop actually in the grand scheme of things causes a lot more weight gain so they're making the problem worse which is actually very typical for doctors to make the problem worse but not not immediately you want to provide symptomatic relief for a while
01:04:39
chrisyzen
Because that way the it reduces the liability, right? Oh, I took I took this thing you told me that I feel horrible and I XYZ happened No, it's that's not good. You want the headache to go away and then the thing that caused the headache to fester and Then maybe get more complex more worse Cause ah another issue and then you go from headaches to like, you know, whatever intermittent fainting I don't know but that's kind of the that's kind of the
01:05:10
chrisyzen
the sort of paradigm that if you don't educate yourself, that's the paradigm you are going to with open arms, hoping to save you and help you. And in the meantime, it was designed not by the doctors, by the company sponsoring the medical schools and that kind of have control over this paradigm. It was designed in a way to extract as much value out of you without killing you too quickly, because because money, that's why. So unless you educate yourself,
01:05:49
chrisyzen
you are potentially can get into a lot of trouble. Unless unless you stay stress free, eat well, and and you know keep the toxins out of your body, if you can manage that, that that thats that would also be good. So you don't need them. yeah the The whole point of it is to not need them in the first place, unless it's an emergency, of course, then and they're the best thing for that.
01:06:16
chrisyzen
it's not all bad if it was all bad even the dumbest person on earth would have figured it out right it's that it's it's like anyway i i've i've i've uh rambled on on that topic enough times before what other psychological as i wrap up here other psychological and behavioral changes so food obsession we met we we mentioned depression and social withdrawal uh prolonged food deprivation led to emotional instability including depression, anxiety, irritability, and social isolation. So again, this just remember, this food deprivation, a lot of people are doing the dieting thing. They are trying to eat less. This is huge, the dieting culture. So dieting, restricting calories, dieting, ah restricting carbohydrates, intermittent fasting or fasting, these are all very similar things in terms of
01:07:13
chrisyzen
the stress hormone response so they will all depending on the person of course they will all lead to some sort of mix of these things like emotional instability that's very much driven by the stress hormones depression cortisol is is a big issue there's high serotonin is actually a big issue there not it not low serotonin anxiety that's also got a lot to do with the cortisol ah potentially estrogen because cor cortisol can increase estrogen even in men irritability likewise and anxiety they're kind of very similar um cortisol serotonin adrenaline can also make you anxious right and social isolation again those that's kind of probably higher serotonin which the reason by the way the reason the reason serotonin increases
01:08:08
chrisyzen
when you fast is the kind of smarter people much smarter people than me have elucidated this um role for serotonin which is super complex like extremely complex i don't think any human understands it to a very high degree what it does and stuff like that it's super complex but it seems like serotonin's role is when you are in some kind of stress be that starvation or or whatever else it's like a metabolic regulator so it kind of shuts down certain things so that that energy can be utilized for more fundamental things like you know keeping you alive and heart rate and brain function and stuff like that so that's that's uh just a little side there and um yeah so the long-term effects
01:09:02
chrisyzen
So although most participants recovered physically over time, some psychological after effects, particularly around food persisted. um Yeah, I mean, I think i think um i think that is that is a very interesting study into into um how stress affects us, right?
Advising Against Harmful Diet Strategies
01:09:35
chrisyzen
What's the moral of the story? Let me kind of finish off. I already mentioned that if you want to live a long healthy life or you have a health issue that you want to resolve and then live a long healthy life after that, it's probably a good idea to find better strategies
01:10:00
chrisyzen
on in terms of diet, in terms of weight maintenance, management, or even weight loss. And rather than resorting to these short term, they give results short term these strategies.
01:10:22
chrisyzen
But in the long term, they screw you over royally in terms of your metabolism, right? So there's much better ways and it really all revolves around cleaning up the diet, intelligent supplementation, ah reducing stress is a big one and not adding additional stress on the body because that is again a signal for the body that the times are tough and it has to become thrifty and lower its metabolic rate in order to survive with as little energy as possible. So that is I think the moral of the story. Don't let yourself be loud into this
01:11:05
chrisyzen
mainstream stuff. It is becoming super mainstream. like yeah you I already thought it was pretty big in 2018, the carnivore diet. and low carb and keto and intermittent fasting, but we abandoned it with my wife in like late 2018, early 2019. And all the time now it's everywhere. Everyone's talking about it even more, even more. So that that's telling me that it's becoming proper mainstream. The problem is when things become, when they get ingrained, it can take a very, very long time for that to kind of subside just as an example.
01:11:43
chrisyzen
In 2008, that's when I ah kind of start ah ah started studying um personal training, fitness instruction. That was my first foray into kind of health and fitness, whatever. And at that time,
01:12:00
chrisyzen
boosting nitric oxide was was already a thing. There were these supplements, these bright red pack box ah packages and NO boosting to get sick pumps, bro and stuff. So this boosting of NO nitric oxide was already becoming a thing then because the the shops had like the the supplement stores, even not just online ones, but even the the ones you walk in there in in Ireland.
01:12:28
chrisyzen
Had those supplements and guys were talking about that kind of stuff that I was talking to so now
01:12:36
chrisyzen
I ah can't I think at least half of men that I start working with are on some kind of nitric oxide boosting sort of stack or whatever with like let's say arginine or beet root bollocks or some other combination of those maybe else citrulline and even had one client went to like a pretty decent cardiology clinic in the states maybe one of the top ones and they're kind of more natural and whatever functional and they're giving him this bs nonsense to to boost nitric oxide so it this means this over the last 15 16 years since 2008 this has become a part of it's just what we do we boost nitric oxide to increase you know to to to um for vasodilation and and all that stuff and it's apparently it's even good if you're
01:13:31
chrisyzen
ah at risk of whatever a heart event or if you wanna for cardiovascular health. And it's nitric oxide is ah is a reactive oxygen species. It's like a free radical. It's not something you wanna really, nearly be boosting. And I'm gonna do a separate episode on that ah probably later today. um So anyway, the point is that these things are, the more mainstream something becomes,
01:13:56
chrisyzen
The more you have to start raising your eyebrows and be like whoa whoa some some fuckery may be afoot here folks ah Just remember the seed oils if they were there for decades they were Talted as heart-healthy and that the saturated fat was bad and and this is there's still remnants of this in the zeitgeist they're still remnant to this especially folks that grew up with this nonsense they are i i sometimes talk to people 60 plus and they're like my cholesterol this you know you know how like i said before and i'm like that doesn't matter ah that that was all lies you you unfortunately
01:14:38
chrisyzen
were led to believe a bunch of lies like we all were just like the moon landing and then they're like what the hell the moon landing uh yeah the moon landing too sorry to tell you sorry to to burst your bubble about cholesterol and the moon landing in basically the same sentence at the same day must be a hard day uh but that's that's just the way that's just the way things are you know those are the facts those are the cold hard facts So anyway, I hope that you found this interesting. I think this Minnesota starvation experiment, it's very it's a very interesting and sort of, it's a very good example of what has happened to to humanity ah since the the it was done in the 40s.
01:15:25
chrisyzen
what has happened to to our metabolisms you know like guys were eating 3200 calories some 60 70 plus years ago and now some guys are eating half of that and maintaining their weight or even gaining weight So there's definitely, in general, our that that that's just a proxy for health, really, the the metabolic rate. Because think about it this way. Do you think, if you take two people that are maintaining their weight, they're the same weight, let's say, and say whatever, 100 kilograms, 220 pounds, two people.
01:16:07
chrisyzen
They're maintaining their weight with the same amount of calories, on the calories that they're eating. One of them is eating 1,000 calories a day. The other one is eating 5,000 calories a day. right Imagine those two people. They're the same weight and they're maintaining their weight. Who do you think is going to be functioning at a higher level and be a happier, healthier human being? The one that's maintaining their weight at 1,000 calories,
01:16:37
chrisyzen
or the one that's maintaining their weight at 5000 calories. I think logically it just means ah you don't have to be an expert or anything but I think most people logically be like I'm sure that the one on 5000 calories because they're they're burning more it means that they're they're functioning at a higher level right now the calorie restriction people the ah the rate of living theory believers that religious belief that the faster you you metabolize the the faster you expire right like a machine the more use the machine it it will ah the the faster it will wear out but what about these macaws the parrots those gorgeous red and yellow parrots that can live to
01:17:26
chrisyzen
80 plus years, they have a super high metabolic rate. Bats that are the size of like a squirrel or or a rat live like 20 years. They have a much higher metabolic rate than their counterparts in size on the land, like most mice and rats and stuff like that.
01:17:46
chrisyzen
So the there's clearly animals with high metabolic rates that live a way, way longer than similarly sized animals. right So that that theory is bunk because you have to remember that.
01:17:59
chrisyzen
when you When you have a high metabolic rate, you you're consuming a lot of calories, a lot of that energy and nutrients that you consume, they don't just go towards function, but also to to maintain and repair your structure. right All of the structure in a human being, like the even the bones and the skin, all of those cells are alive, they have metabolic processes going on inside them.
01:18:23
chrisyzen
have mitochondria, most most cells do. They ah you know they they they they have ah these quote unquote sort of walls and organelles and all of these all these things require energy to maintain, to repair, rebuild, they're constantly being remodeled and stuff like that. And the more of that you have, the more of this energy that you consume, and that's clearly not being stored as fat, right? So you're using the energy.
01:18:48
chrisyzen
The more of this sort of structural complexity you you can actually build and maintain over time so that's that's kind of something when when i when i learned these ideas it so it started making more sense to me and.
01:19:08
chrisyzen
that really solidified my my position in in kind of not doing all of these crazy intermittent fasting low carb diets and even cutting calories you know you don't even if you want to lose weight it's a crazy bad idea to cut calories I think 500 calories or more cutting more than that is insanity but even 500 calories for more than I guess I don't know a week or two I would say even a week is too much right if you're gonna be if you want to lose weight you better be smart about it or you're gonna suffer just seriously because not only
01:19:52
chrisyzen
not only is a big caloric deficit going to hurt you metabolically speaking, right? I think paint yourself into this metabolic corner. But if you drop a lot of pounds very quickly, it means a lot of fat is being liberated from your stored tissues. And all like it's very, very likely that a lot of that fat that you have stored is going to be polyunsaturated fat. So that's gonna do damage as it peroxidizes on its way out and on its way to the liver and then not only that but you also have a lot of persistent organic pollutants stored in your fatty tissues that are also gonna get released potentially go to organs and kind of do damage there including the brain right so if you don't have a plan on how to deal with all of this
01:20:46
chrisyzen
you you are going to actually get yourself into trouble. So it's really, really a bad idea to cut calories fast. I know it sucks to have to do it slowly and play the long game, but that's why people that think long term about longevity and health and weight loss as well, or anything else, they're the ones that succeed. And the ones that try for a month in January,
01:21:11
chrisyzen
they feel horrible and then what happens is just all they did was in January they lowered their metabolic rate and then when they resume their normal diet they gain gain even more weight that's how people over the years gain more and more weight you know and it it there is a better way to do it okay i think i'll stop here because if you're still listening ah Well, amazing. Thank you so much. I really appreciate the fact that people want to listen to me ramble about topics and I'll see you on the next episode.