Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
He Lost 18 lbs Without Even Trying...
0 Plays2 seconds ago
Are you following health trends that actually harm your health? In my eye-opening masterclass "The 7 Popular But Deadly Health Fads," I reveal how common health practices promoted by influencers and gurus might be ravaging your gut, accelerating disease, and shaving years off your life.
Discover which popular diets, supplements, and health rituals are secretly sabotaging your health and learn what to do instead. I explain why these seemingly healthy habits are damaging your body and provide actionable alternatives for true longevity.
Register for free access to this essential health information at https://www.livelongerformula.com
-------------
Check out the first volume in the How to Actually Live Longer book series on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4dDXjxc
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.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Live Longer Formula Case Study
00:00:00
Christian Yordanov
Hey, it's Christian Yordanoff. Thank you so much for joining me today. have a very interesting case study to discuss briefly. think you find
Client's Weight Loss Journey
00:00:08
Christian Yordanov
this interesting. So this client of mine, he started the Live Longer Formula program with us in January of this year. night it's now May as I record this, so about four, four and a half months ish.
00:00:22
Christian Yordanov
He started with me and I just saw him last week on a call and he he just looked super different. And until he told me that he had lost 18 pounds, 17 to 18 pounds, depending on the day since we started working together, i couldn't quite put my finger on it because I hadn't actually seen him in a while.
00:00:47
Christian Yordanov
He hadn't been to many of the coaching calls that we have every week. a support and accountability and guidance sort of mechanism that's super important to help clients get the results they want.
Health Improvements and Challenges
00:01:00
Christian Yordanov
So I haven't seen him in a while. So that's why when I saw him at first, i was just like, he's he looks different. And then he told me ah he lost 18 pounds without, by the way, without really trying that's that's the key here that's why it's such an interesting case study and then i realized oh yeah i was i was like oh yeah yeah your face looks a lot thinner he's like yeah i hold my fat in my belly and in my face so but when you lose it you lose a lot so he looked definitely he looked
00:01:34
Christian Yordanov
to me at least, he looked happier. He looked less stressed. He looked less... He probably had a bit of a tan because it's now springtime. But he definitely looked healthier to me. And, you know, one of the things that I think most most practitioners know this, but the way a person looks really tells a lot about their level of health.
00:01:56
Christian Yordanov
Right. So you look at when you meet a person, whether that's online on zoom or in person, there's a lot of there's a lot of information on the face, the skin. and just the whole ah overall overall disposition, you could even say the aura, the energy emanating from the person, all that good stuff.
00:02:14
Christian Yordanov
And, you know, I see people, a lot of people that have some health challenges. So you can see bags under the eyes, you can see just wrinkles from years in decades of stress and just the overall skin complexion, stuff like that. So when you see a person that I haven't seen in months, I haven't seen him maybe since February on the call,
00:02:36
Christian Yordanov
because he was just so busy with family and work and all that stuff. So when you see so you don't when a see a person every day, you don't really or every week or once a week, you don't really notice these changes as abruptly as when you haven't seen someone in a few months. So so that's why I was like, at first I couldn't put my finger on but then he told me.
00:02:55
Christian Yordanov
so the The funny part is that when we started working together, when you do my intake forms, I ask you, what are your three main health challenges or health goals that we're going to be working on together?
Neurotransmitter Imbalances and Implications
00:03:12
Christian Yordanov
And the main ones, there's always ancillary ones we we address, but they get automatically addressed, if you know what I mean, because If you improve the body's health and functioning, a lot of just niggling issues, they just dissolve, they disappear, they melt away.
00:03:28
Christian Yordanov
So his main goals slash complaints were she was getting sick a lot, basically every month. So he to not get sick as often was one. To feel less fatigued, he had a lot of energy problems, right?
00:03:41
Christian Yordanov
Low energy. and to feel better mentally, right? So lot of stress related to work and family, but he also felt basically depressed. Like I genuinely think if if he would have gone to any, almost any doctor, any psychiatrist, he would have gone out of that office with at least a prescription for an SSRI.
00:04:05
Christian Yordanov
withint minute Within minutes, within 15, 20 minutes, they would have been, oh, no, you're just perfect candidate for a SSRI. Here's the thing. He had already tried that strategy naturally of increasing serotonin.
00:04:16
Christian Yordanov
So he was taking 5-HTP, which is a precursor to serotonin. So 5-hydroxy tryptophan, which is basically a metabolite of the amino acid tryptophan, which we get from the food that we eat, the protein.
00:04:31
Christian Yordanov
And that's turning to 5-HTP, but we can actually get it as a supplement. And I i and my wife, we actually used to take this a few years ago. so I, ah we all, we're all, we've all been duped about serotonin being the happy chemical that if you're feeling depressed, you need to increase serotonin. So he, he had been doing that for 10 years and and to no real avail, like it seemed to help, but what I've discovered over the.
00:05:00
Christian Yordanov
over the years and kind of interacting with people that have been on or are on SSRIs is that increasing serotonin, taking an SSRI, boosting serotonin naturally, what that does is it it's more numbs the person rather than actually makes them feel better, you know?
00:05:17
Christian Yordanov
So I told him just look at this 5-HTP, I would throw that out, never even think about touching it right.
Metabolomics and Early Disease Detection
00:05:27
Christian Yordanov
even don't even think about touching it ever again would be my recommendation so he stopped that you know and we did this staple test that we now do on a lot of clients that join the program which is the metabolomics test where it's just a simple urine collection that you collect at home and then the courier comes and picks it up on a Monday morning ideally get almost 200 markers
00:05:49
Christian Yordanov
almost two hundred markers related to the metabolism. So it's a very wide, but also quite deep look into a person's current metabolic state.
00:06:00
Christian Yordanov
So I love this test. It's probably would be like one of my top two tests that I run on clients at the moment because it's so affordable. but it's so powerful. So we see a ton of interesting markers around gut function, malabsorption, dysbiosis, candida.
00:06:18
Christian Yordanov
We can see a lot of vitamin deficiencies, right? We can see all the B vitamin deficiencies. We can catch those, but we can catch other stuff around mitochondrial function. So any you anyone that tells me they have energy problems, fatigue type stuff.
00:06:36
Christian Yordanov
We always have to think about, of course, nutrition is like, it's a no brainer that we analyze nutrition, what they're eating, optimize the diet and give them dietary guidance.
00:06:47
Christian Yordanov
Of course, you know, that's just, that's the bread and butter of any health program. But the metabolomics test, it allows us to see is there any mitochondrial dysfunction, right? so So there's a bunch of markers related to fatty acid metabolism, carbohydrate metabolism, just in general, the energy production cycle. So the citric acid cycle, if you've heard of that, the Krebs cycle.
00:07:10
Christian Yordanov
So we can see if there blockages? Are there any particular areas of that cycle ah that are blocked because some of them can be blocked by certain toxins, certain toxic metals.
00:07:22
Christian Yordanov
They can be blocked because of certain deficiencies in minerals or vitamins or cofactors, right? So we can catch things like that as well. But what's interesting is,
00:07:34
Christian Yordanov
We can also catch certain neurotransmitter metabolites. For example, if there's a high serotonin turnover, we can catch that. There's a marker for that.
00:07:46
Christian Yordanov
It's called 5-HIAA, 5-hydroxyindoacetic acid. And that marker, when when elevated or somewhat elevated, it indicates that there's a lot of serotonin being broken down in the body.
00:08:01
Christian Yordanov
And then we can also catch a dopamine metabolite marker, which if low, corroborates the case. So this is, this of course, on this particular client's test, I expected to to be representative of him taking 5-HTP for a long time.
00:08:19
Christian Yordanov
And yeah, indeed, his dopamine marker, it's a dopamine metabolite marker that was low. in the yellow sort of range that wasn't like super low but it was kind of low beyond outside of the the the lab range of what's normal right so that already indicates low dopamine which can indicate high serotonin because they're somewhat antagonistic to each other and of course his serotonin breakdown marker was elevated now what's interesting here is that i actually see this pattern on a lot of clients that aren't
00:08:56
Christian Yordanov
boosting trying to boost their serotonin and stuff like that but i and this will make a little bit more sense later but a lot of people are in this state already and i can actually already sniff this out on my my intake form before we've even met right on my metabolic function assessment that i offer for free to folks i can already sniff out who's gonna be you know, this kind of, let's say phenotype of a low dopamine, a high serotonin, and all the concomitant health problems
00:09:31
Christian Yordanov
that come part and parcel with it. And these will these will include, of course, depression, low motivation, low libido, just lack of joy in life.
00:09:42
Christian Yordanov
And it's a pretty horrible state to be in, right? So this this is what we caught on the metabolomics test, but we can also catch a bunch of ah a bunch of other stuff on this test. So there's always something for us to find and optimize and improve in a person's metabolism so that In many cases, they feel better, of course, when we do that. But even if, let's say, you you address something that a person cannot feel the difference, we are we are plugging in leaks, we're filling in cracks in the dam or or in the boat, whatever analogy you want to use.
00:10:18
Christian Yordanov
We're filling in holes and gaps and leaks and cracks that if left, to continue to fester for years and decades will absolutely turn into serious health problems down the line.
00:10:34
Christian Yordanov
So we can catch things like neuroinflammation. And i actually on this test, we catch it quite often. It's ah ah surprising how many people have genuine neuroinflammation.
00:10:45
Christian Yordanov
We caught it on on another client a while back and incidentally, one of his parents is at the moment basically dealing with like really pretty bad Alzheimer's dementia type stuff.
00:11:00
Christian Yordanov
So there could be a genetic predisposition, sure. But I just told the client, look, here are some ways to prevent neuroinflammation from happening, you know, or to abate these processes and to to to basically address this vulnerability that may be genetic, may be hereditary.
00:11:23
Christian Yordanov
It doesn't matter. The fact is we we've spotted it early, relatively early in the person's life. decades before they're gonna start showing signs of dementia, this kind of Alzheimer's, which is, I think probably one of the most terrifying of of the
Serotonin, Dopamine, and Weight Loss
00:11:39
Christian Yordanov
diseases. you know It's one thing, healing over from a heart attack or dying in your sleep.
00:11:45
Christian Yordanov
But i like to to have this happen to you or one of your loved ones is pretty pretty horrible. So the fact that we have we actually have tools nowadays, not to diagnose, not diagnosing it, right? It's not about, I truly believe this diagnosis of disease paradigm, we can leave that to conventional medicine because they they own it.
00:12:06
Christian Yordanov
They use it to basically cut, irradiate, blast with radiation and and poison people and make a bunch of money right so to me it's we shouldn't be trying to diagnose the disease because if you diagnose a disease that means for months years or decades dysfunction and degeneration has been happening to the point where now it spills over into symptoms that are visible noticeable causing trouble for a person and now at this point
00:12:37
Christian Yordanov
they you know They seek help and here we are now to suppress those symptoms. So the idea, my whole sort of philosophy that I teach clients is we have to catch these things decades, ideally, ideally, at least years, but let's say decades is a ah ah an order of magnitude better, if not more ah of a thing.
00:12:57
Christian Yordanov
So we have to catch these things way, way, way, way earlier than they actually become problems that the body can no longer regulate and maintain homeostasis and then it's then it's symptoms that are kind of the end result there so with this test we can catch if a person is basically having problems with detoxification so they could be under a lot of toxic exposure which a lot of people are even people that think they're not we catch catch these these things and we also with some people
00:13:30
Christian Yordanov
we can catch if they're not detoxifying well. So you could be under normal amounts of toxic exposure, But if you're not detoxifying well because you have some kind of antioxidant deficiency, glutathione deficiency, certain cofactors that are needed, minerals, vitamins, energy, et cetera, you could, with a normal toxic exposure level of today's in today's world, which is you know pretty pretty damn high to begin with, you could be having long-term health challenges manifest down the line if if this continues unaddressed, basically, so we can catch toxin detox markers.
00:14:04
Christian Yordanov
With this client, he was actually, yeah on On that side of things, he wasn't doing all that badly, but we did catch oxidative stress somewhat elevated. So there's a couple of markers on this test for DNA damage.
00:14:22
Christian Yordanov
There's another one for lipid peroxidation, which is a primary driver of disease. That process of lipids of of basically fatty acids type molecules in the body getting damaged.
00:14:34
Christian Yordanov
because they're part of stuff that's important, brain cells, heart cells, blood vessel cells, organ cells, all kinds of stuff. When those, it's like the the bricks in your in your house, let's say there's damaging processes outside the elements, if they damage a brick, now you have a hole in your wall.
00:14:52
Christian Yordanov
And over time, as more holes in your wall ah ah appear through this these damaging lipid peroxidation processes, your your whole house structure functions less well, you can retain heat, you can retain cool, it will eventually become unstable because of all the damage to the roof, the the walls, et cetera, et cetera.
00:15:13
Christian Yordanov
So this lipid peroxidation process is another thing. We actually catch this just way too damn often for my liking and people. And it's, you have, it's a spectrum, right? So you can have very low lipid peroxides in the urine. Usually everyone has some, right? We always have some of this going on.
00:15:33
Christian Yordanov
That's urine the green then. But we don't have the yellow zone they have the red zone. And I'll tell you, I've only seen it in the red zone with one client so far. and He was off the charts in the red of the slip with peroxidation a marker and He when I explained all the stuff on his test and Know the toxic metals he had and all the the deficiencies and all the other stuff Candida, etc. etc Serotonin mega high and he told me
00:16:06
Christian Yordanov
oh That makes sense now because now I understand why last year, which was a few months before we actually ran that test, before he came to me, he said, that's why i felt like I was dying last year.
00:16:20
Christian Yordanov
Like, yeah, yeah, it's a lot of bad stuff going on in this test, which we were, we were already on the way to addressing because we were working together a few months by the time he actually was able to get the test. Cause we had to ship it out to like different countries and the logistics were were really difficult in that case.
00:16:37
Christian Yordanov
So by then he'd already done a lot of good work and was feeling better, but he had this like super nasty. infection, yeah traveling in Asia, and he was stuck in like a hospital there in India.
00:16:50
Christian Yordanov
And it was just like, it was super bad. So I've just, that's just an example of like super high lipid peroxidation. and of course other bad stuff going on in the test, where it corroborates with how bad a person feels. But what I've noticed is this when these lipid peroxides are approaching the yellow zone, kind of the warning zone, or even at the the top of the green zone, so within kind of the normal quote-unquote range,
00:17:17
Christian Yordanov
Even when they're that's in the yellow, people don't really feel them per se. Like, you you don't you don't wake up in the morning and say, I feel very, ah a lot of lipid peroxidation is happening in my body.
00:17:29
Christian Yordanov
It's the same, like, i don't, you don't wake up and say, I feel like my oxidative stress is higher than yesterday. Like some people might say, I feel inflamed, which kind of is part and parcel with all these processes.
00:17:41
Christian Yordanov
But, you know, usually when someone says, I feel really inflamed, they got a lot of problems already. So point is a lot of people could feel good, relatively speaking, feel okay, and not know the slipic peroxidation is kind of in this yellow danger zone.
00:17:56
Christian Yordanov
And again, it's not problem if this is just for a day, you know, okay, you I flew on a plane, I ate a bunch of McDonald's at the airport, So for a week, my lipid peroxides were super high because I was exposed to toxins and like living, like partying and like, you know, sniffing lines of coke off a dirty toilet seat in the local club and hidden shooting shots of Jägermeister or something like that.
00:18:20
Christian Yordanov
If that's just a week or a weekend away, it's no problem. The problem is when these lipid peroxidation, these oxidative stress processes are just like in a person's normal environment, they're just elevated, somewhat elevated for a long time, for years and decades.
00:18:38
Christian Yordanov
That's when we have accelerated aging, diminished basically vitality and just a person gets closer and closer to disease that way, right? So this is the kind of stuff we wanna catch.
00:18:50
Christian Yordanov
So with this client, we called that his toxic metals were not like super elevated, which is another thing we can catch on this test. But a lot
Role of Supplements in Health
00:18:59
Christian Yordanov
of, well, I don't wanna say a lot, but several of the minerals as well were very low in the urine and usually when they're low in the urine it means that the body is holding on to them so much that it's excreting barely anything and that's usually indicative that there's very little coming from the diet so the body's somewhat uh so or significantly deficient in those minerals right so we caught a bunch of these so it's always great
00:19:27
Christian Yordanov
to catch these things again decades before you actually have an overt symptom of a deficiency. Because that we've we're like you think vitamin C, all that means I'll get scurvy from deficient. No, there's a lot there's a massive spectrum of degeneration and dysfunction between being sufficient in a vitamin or a mineral and then being deficient. You have subclinical deficiency, marginal deficiency, all that stuff.
00:19:52
Christian Yordanov
So the idea is if you're in a marginal state, if you're in a subclinical state of a deficiency, Let's catch that early, as early as possible, so we can we can address it with in simple ways, right?
00:20:05
Christian Yordanov
Diet, nutrition, supplementation, all that stuff. And never allow that to become ah and an actual problem like it would in a specific deficiency.
00:20:17
Christian Yordanov
So the interesting part of this case, as I said, is the the whole serotonin piece. And i probably took me way too long to get here. to get here Sorry about that. you know, brevity is not my strong point.
00:20:29
Christian Yordanov
But what happened with this client is I gave him some supplement, of course, diet guidelines and supplement guidelines on how to just boost a bunch of things, detox and dopamine and energy production and all the all the stuff that we normally do, you know, address deficiencies, improve digestion,
00:20:52
Christian Yordanov
All that stuff, right? So he the the interesting part is when talking about the initial health challenges, he never, ever throughout the process mentioned anything about his weight, right?
00:21:05
Christian Yordanov
not no Not a single thing was said because I have a lot of clients that weight loss is one of their three main objectives. So get healthier, lose weight, improve gut function. These these would be like the the kind of things or improve brain fog, lose some weight, sleep better.
00:21:21
Christian Yordanov
This is the kind of stuff that people will will, if it's important to them, they will absolutely raise it. So I guess when you're feeling depressed and fatigued and tired and stressed, I guess people are like, well, okay, so...
00:21:35
Christian Yordanov
this, this, some excess weight I have is not really ah ah such a big problem when you're, you know, frigging depressed and stuff like that. So what happened was when we spoke last week with the client, he said he, he has not actually been able to follow my diet guidelines, super to the that he's doing his best, you know, but the fact that he's, he, he works out of home, changing shifts every month,
00:22:04
Christian Yordanov
it can be difficult to maintain a routine. And, you know, we we have a lot of support that we help clients kind of establish some routines and transition into healthier habits and optimize the diet side of things. That's, of course, super important.
00:22:17
Christian Yordanov
But he did say at least, though he wasn't 100% with the diet stuff, he was taking the supplements really well. And the cool thing is that we There's a lot, especially when we find significant imbalances with certain things like this on on a metabolomics test, there's a lot of things that supplement support can help with, right?
00:22:40
Christian Yordanov
This is why I love supplementation. This why I'm such a big big geek about it is because it is so powerful. Of course, it is nothing really, it's never going to,
00:22:53
Christian Yordanov
be enough. We always have to dial in the stress, the the gut, the detox, like all the the the dietary stuff is super important. But the supplementation component is just so incredibly powerful.
00:23:05
Christian Yordanov
a I think a lot of people have no idea how powerful a lot of these very basic supplements that we use in specific dosages, timing of the day, combinations, they're just so powerful, you know.
00:23:19
Christian Yordanov
So we were we were trying to help the client boost dopamine, you know, but address deficiencies, improve digestion with supplementation, improve energy production, improve detox, lower the lipid peroxidation to reasonable levels, lower inflammation and oxidative stress, right?
00:23:38
Christian Yordanov
And this is this basically leads into the whole serotonin thing, right? So this is the big scam that we have been slammed with basically since the 60s that serotonin is the happy chemical, right?
00:23:55
Christian Yordanov
What is the actual truth is that serotonin becomes elevated in a person under stress, under various forms of stress. It could be psychological stress.
00:24:08
Christian Yordanov
It could be physiological stress. It could be starvation, stress, you know, fasting. ah When an animal...
00:24:19
Christian Yordanov
wants to hibernate, its serotonin will be high. If a person is fasting, their serotonin will be high. And what's actually been found is that in depression, serotonin is actually often elevated, not low.
00:24:31
Christian Yordanov
The way they sort of spun it is that the the marker for the breakdown product of serotonin being low, they equated that with a low serotonin. But what that problem means is the serotonin wasn't getting broken down well, that there was no sufficient co-factors so the the strategy i gave my client and i actually have to do this with a lot of people because lot people have high serotonin a lot of people benefit from improving the metabolism and sort of the supporting the creation of dopamine and and breaking down serotonin. So a lot of really what we we did here, that one of the major things I was kind of trying to help the client is to break down the serotonin that's in excess.
00:25:14
Christian Yordanov
And I honestly believe that one of them, of course, cleaning up the diet and all the other stuff is helping. But I think one of the major reasons he lost all of this weight basically on autopilot without even trying, without even really like cutting calories, stuff like that, is because, and if you go on chat GPT, you can type this in yourself to verify for yourself, but serotonin is actually a metabolic inhibitor.
00:25:44
Christian Yordanov
So when it's elevated, this can cause weight gain. And I'll explain why in a second, but this actually makes sense because yeah as you probably know, one of the main side effects of SSRIs, you know, the quote-unquote antidepressants, right?
00:26:04
Christian Yordanov
Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. One of their major side effects is weight gain. A lot of people report weight gain. And that is because they increase serotonin. So what what does serotonin do to the metabolism?
00:26:18
Christian Yordanov
So actually, if you think about it, if it's a stress, actually a stress hormone that day they spun as the happy chemical, right, to sell their poisons,
00:26:30
Christian Yordanov
If it's a metabolic inhibitor, in times of stress, it's actually a beneficial thing to stop, or to inhibit your metabolism. Let me explain. So if you're stressed, let's say there's no food, right?
00:26:44
Christian Yordanov
You don't want to be running on all cylinders in in your body because you're gonna plow through all your fuel stores, your energetic reserves, and then you're going die faster. So it's actually very beneficial for the body during times of stress to start turning off non-vital for survival functions.
00:27:05
Christian Yordanov
And this is what over the last... 10 or so years researchers are more and more bringing to the surface is that this is actually much more likely one of serotonin's main roles. It's, as one, group, uh, called it, it's a.
00:27:23
Christian Yordanov
they call it a metabolic regulator. So another, other folks call it an inhibitor because it's really regular to regulate the metabolism when during times of stress means to lower the metabolism in certain tissues that are not vital for vital for survival.
00:27:39
Christian Yordanov
Right? and So it actually serotonin has been shown to suppress mitochondrial function mitochondrial respiration, which is what, how we produce the bulk of of the energy molecule ATP, he you know, in a normal day.
00:27:56
Christian Yordanov
So we produce, they say, our body weight's worth of ATP adenosine triphosphate, right, via mostly via mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation.
00:28:10
Christian Yordanov
So serotonin inhibits this mitochondrial respiration, which is basically how we produce energy. We turn fat and glucose into this ATP energy carrier molecule.
00:28:22
Christian Yordanov
And so because serotonin inhibits it, the mitochondrial respiration, it lowers our metabolic rate. And this is one way we can actually start storing fuel as fat instead of burning it, right? Because your your yeah you burning capacity for for the fuel in the body is basically lowered.
00:28:46
Christian Yordanov
The other thing that serotonin does, is why a lot of people on on SSRIs and various other serotonin-increasing drugs, that's why they feel agitated.
00:28:58
Christian Yordanov
So they might be numbed. But they also feel like and it's called akithisia. It's like an internal inner restlessness. It's pretty horrible. Like a lot of people, I think that could be one of the reasons some people even like commit suicide, you know, after starting these chemicals in the first several weeks, it's their higher risk for suicide as is pretty well known.
00:29:20
Christian Yordanov
think even on Wikipedia, they talk about it, but basically one Probably one of the reasons for this is because serotonin actually stimulates the production or the increase of cortisol.
00:29:33
Christian Yordanov
And cortisol, although we know it will make you feel like crap, but what it does is, apart from breaking down our our muscles and our lean tissue,
00:29:45
Christian Yordanov
It decreases thyroid hormone conversions from t four to T3, which is the the more more active thyroid hormone, but also long-term cortisol elevation increases fat storage. This is another one of these, in an emergency, very ingenious safety mechanisms. So if you're stressed out, no food and all that stuff, right?
00:30:09
Christian Yordanov
the serotonin will slow down the metabolism and then the cortisol increase because of the serotonin increase, that will also slow down the metabolism by decreasing thyroid hormone conversion.
00:30:22
Christian Yordanov
And it will also stimulate fat storage around the organs and actually the face. That's another interesting tidbit there. so that is that is why I believe with this client just lowering serotonin and of course boosting dopamine at the same time, it's kind of upside effect.
00:30:50
Christian Yordanov
And of course, giving the nutrients required for energy production, all that stuff, like improving the diet, because he didn't did improve the diet considerably still. It wasn't just the supplements that did this, of course, right? Cleaning up the diet.
00:31:07
Christian Yordanov
alone is great for a lot of this stuff. A lot of people actually lose weight without trying to lose weight just by cleaning up the diet, you know? So, but I think that the major thing here was just getting, because remember, he was taking this 5-HTP for 10 years.
00:31:25
Christian Yordanov
So it's not like, oh, I took it for for two days or a week to help me sleep during whatever. busy, stressful time. This was like 10 years of mostly on, sometimes off, but mostly on the damn thing, you know?
00:31:39
Christian Yordanov
So that's a lot of, over time, that's a lot of so a lot of peripheral serotonin that is inhibiting energy production, causing fat storage and causing cortisol. And it's kind of wreaking havoc in the body because the other thing cortisol does is can actually increase insulin resistance, which then the food you eat it it can become a little bit more difficult to deal with the carbohydrates coming in so that that can further exacerbate metabolic problems. So we this is why we have things like stress induced diabetes is a recognized thing. Like i was talking, I was on somebody's podcast
00:32:17
Christian Yordanov
a year or two ago and he told me about this story about his, I think he's had a lot of family stuff, like his brother died, his mother died. And then this was like a fitness guy, fitness coach all his life.
00:32:29
Christian Yordanov
And then month or two later, he was like, he went to the doctor and the the the doctor diagnosed him well with diabetes. And his diet was like, you know, and unchanged, his fitness and all that stuff.
00:32:43
Christian Yordanov
was unchanged and he was doing all the stuff. So what was causing the diabetes, it was the increased blood sugar through so cortisol, increasing blood sugar production in the liver, gluconeogenesis, and also increasing
Stress, Hormones, and Metabolism
00:32:56
Christian Yordanov
the insulin resistance because when you have so cortisol and adrenaline, they kind of will rise in tandem. So one will will elevate the other.
00:33:06
Christian Yordanov
So adrenaline will increase fat, circulation into the bloodstream which would then inhibit the uptake of of glucose into the cells and and their utilization as fuel so there's a few factors here that increase this insulin resistance and uh it's actually a in times of crisis it is actually a very protective thing because if you're starving again the one of the most primordial of stressors starvation because you know
00:33:37
Christian Yordanov
didn't have Uber Eats back in the day. So you would you would, the insulin resistance during this starvation period and thereafter would then make sure that as soon as, let's say you found some food, for example, and you started consuming, let's say some fruit or whatever, as you start consuming the the food and it starts being broken down and, you know,
00:34:05
Christian Yordanov
down to glucose amino acids that glucose when it gets into the body because of the insulin resistance caused by the cortisol and uh the adrenaline and so on, that that will not be able to get very easily into the fat cells and the muscle cells.
00:34:20
Christian Yordanov
It will be preferentially uptaken by the, basically by the central nervous system to a great extent. So the brain, the nervous system, like just really vital for survival functions in the body because they don't actually need, the brain doesn't need this ah ah glucose transporters to uptake glucose, like the way the muscles and the,
00:34:41
Christian Yordanov
the fat cells too so again these are protective things that in the current environment because we have so many stressors nowadays they become basically pathological, right? They become harmful.
00:35:00
Christian Yordanov
So this is why improving little things, the seemingly little things like that, like the the balance of serotonin and and dopamine in the body, like the person increasing their dopamine, helping them excrete the serotonin, break it down, you know, those those enzymes needs cofactors and stuff like that.
00:35:20
Christian Yordanov
that's why things like this can actually have such profound effects because again this client did not even like start tracking his his diet so we don't even know was eating more was eating less it's it may be that he was eating less but he said he'd really he really wasn't eating less he wasn't trying to eat less you know and what happens is when you normally when you lose weight by eating less you get cravings so you start at some point craving the food and then at at another point so so the body's always trying to like maintain homeostasis so it always wants to keep things as they are so if you cut calories by 500 per day it's gonna suck you're gonna feel hungry uh you're gonna be hangry you're gonna crave stuff and so you might go a week two like that but you won't be able to go four months
00:36:10
Christian Yordanov
without something happening, something has to give. And usually then what happens is if you do this for a long enough time of cutting cutting calories and kind of being in this sort of diet state, the body's going to downregulate things like dopamine, leptin.
00:36:26
Christian Yordanov
It's going to increase serotonin. Cortisol is, always of course, going to be increasing. And that will lower the metabolism. And that will also, that should lower energy expenditure so sort of find an equilibrium to the new, ah ah to the new, let's say you go for two, let's say 3000 to 2000 calories.
00:36:47
Christian Yordanov
That's a big jump. Sure. But the body eventually will settle there. So sooner or later, you will stop losing weight. Even with that thousand calorie deficit, it might be quite a long time.
00:36:59
Christian Yordanov
But eventually the body will find an equilibrium.
00:37:01
Christian Yordanov
So I truly believe, and based on what we know about serotonin now, it's not really in the mainstream. it's really fudged well in the mainstream still because they're selling one of the best sellers is these SRIs. was like 43 million Americans were on antidepressants in 2020.
00:37:20
Christian Yordanov
If I recall correctly, it was about 43 million. And two two million of those were like under the the age of 18, you know, just like horrific, horrific numbers, right?
00:37:30
Christian Yordanov
So I think this could be one of the main reasons where or this client lost a bunch of weight without even trying. And the reason I say that is because this discussion with him last week, it actually reminded me of a study I saw. And let me just pause for a second and pull it up.
00:37:48
Christian Yordanov
Okay, so here it is. And it's interesting that it was published in the journal Nature Reviews Drug Discovery. So nature.com, massive, massive publication, right?
00:38:00
Christian Yordanov
So the study... uh or this i'm sorry this was an article this is a bunch of studies that this researcher that i i follow shared but this this article was called inhibiting serotonin reverses obesity and the it starts with serotonin is involved in the regulation of energy balance and increased peripheral serotonin has recently been linked to obesity so this was 2015.
00:38:26
Christian Yordanov
so basically the the study that the researcher shared was a study where they they they had this was a mouse model right because obviously you can't do a lot of these things with with humans uh at this level basically they use the monoamine oxidase b inhibitor right which basically inhibits the breakdown of dopamine and they were able to reverse the the the obesity in the mice. So this was a diet induced obese mouse model. So they make the mice obese and then they do stuff to see what will make them not obese or less obese and make them lose weight and stuff.
00:39:07
Christian Yordanov
So in this case, they used a monoamine oxidase, monoamine B, MAOB inhibitor.
00:39:19
Christian Yordanov
Right? They use that and it yielded this drug, which again, it just stops dopamine from getting broken down.
00:39:33
Christian Yordanov
And I quote, the new drugs, this is ah like an experimental MAO inhibitor, but there is other ones, you there's stuff already on the market for a while that inhibit MAOB inhibitors, but The drug, this is quote, the new drugs yielded remarkable results demonstrating a substantial reduction in fat accumulation and weight without any impacts on the amount of food intake.
00:39:59
Christian Yordanov
So basically, they were able to make the mice obese with the diet and then by giving them a chemical that stopped the breakdown of dopamine, it allowed them to basically lose weight without any impacts on the amount of food intake.
00:40:22
Christian Yordanov
And the whole sort of premise here is that dopamine and serotonin are antagonistic to each other, right? So if you boost one, the other one will drop. So if you have high serotonin, let's say you're taking um um SSRI or 5-HTP, that will over time lower your dopamine levels. And in general, stress,
00:40:41
Christian Yordanov
because it raises serotonin, in and of itself, stress can lower dopamine, right? So this is stress reduction, i sometimes say, equip that my method of stress reduction is aggressive. I use aggressive stress reduction in my protocols on myself, with my clients and with my wife and so on.
00:41:00
Christian Yordanov
It's because stress reduction When you look at it, it's basically one of the major causal factors of disease in the generation, as I discuss in my book, how to actually live longer.
00:41:11
Christian Yordanov
So you can raise dopamine in a much healthier ways. Of course, we don't use any of this kind of crazy experimental stuff, but it's just an interesting, I wanted to kind of discuss this case.
00:41:22
Christian Yordanov
think I'll kind of wrap up here because It's getting long winded, but there's a lot of stuff floating in my head. There's a lot of different directions you can take this discussion.
00:41:32
Christian Yordanov
But I think it's important to understand that, you know, a lot of the weight gain. People are dealing with today. It's not just about they have to eat less.
00:41:47
Christian Yordanov
and exercise more, or it was because they were eating so much and they were not moving a lot because there's, they seem to always, these discussions seem to always forget the role of various hormones, toxins, certain, certain foods quote unquote or say quote unquote foods right that are implicated for example polyunsaturated fats we know and i discussed this in my book how to actually live longer volume one we know that polyunsaturated fats lower the metabolism they are actually interfering with thyroid hormone production transport and uptake right so that's why
00:42:29
Christian Yordanov
A squirrel eats a lot of nuts and is able to enter a hibernation state because it's using the polyunsaturated fats in those nuts to lower its metabolic rate.
00:42:42
Christian Yordanov
So for that squirrel, it's a survival mechanism in nature. These things have physiological roles. but The problem is if you have a lot of stress lowering your dopamine.
00:42:53
Christian Yordanov
If you have, know, if you're brainwashed by mainstream and pharma that, or you have to boost serotonin, the happy chemical. If you have a lot of, you know, polyunsaturated fat intake, so a lot of those are in your body, that the those will have negative effects on the metabolism. And then we're not even talking about the whole, how stress and cortisol actually will decrease the protective hormones, for example, in men, testosterone.
00:43:19
Christian Yordanov
And then that, can also then contribute to, you know, loss of muscle mass, lowering of the metabolism, increase of fat mass. And potentially it can, when a person has a higher estrogenic level or a lot of phytoestrogens from the diet or xenoestrogens from the environment, they can also have these signaling effects, which estrogen we know also can stimulate fat, fatty, fat gain, fatty tissue synthesis.
Sustainable Lifestyle Changes for Health
00:43:46
Christian Yordanov
So there's a lot, it's a much bigger discussion than just, taking care of, you know, eating less and and exercising more because, know, we used to have a lot of, like just back in the day, you know, like we used to have a lot of people that would not do a lot of movement, you know.
00:44:05
Christian Yordanov
i know people used to be more active, but there was definitely parts of society that didn't move a lot, but they still weren't fat. and they were they they had all the food they wanted. So there's clearly some some deeper deeper levels and and discussions to be had here. It's not just about exercising more and dieting because as we know, dieting in and of itself, because of the stress it imposes on the body, you're gonna increase cortisol, you're gonna increase adrenaline, you're gonna increase the stress hormones, probably serotonin if you fast. That will inhibit the metabolism, it will lower dopamine, right?
00:44:38
Christian Yordanov
It will lower leptin. It will increase cravings. It will just just destroy the person's quality of life. So there's we have to find better ways than just cutting calories.
00:44:50
Christian Yordanov
We should use calorie reduction strategically. there isn't that That's not to say like you can only manipulate you know hormones and...
00:45:02
Christian Yordanov
you know neurotransmitters and stress and lower stress and that's gonna move the needle entirely right because they on remember a lot of a lot of these people that are in this state they've been eating polyunsaturated fats all their life so they're loaded on these poofers polyunsaturated fats so that that's another thing that's gonna take a long time with diet to to replace all those polyunsaturated fats that are metabolic inhibitors causing inflammation and oxidative stress and so on.
00:45:33
Christian Yordanov
So it's a long-term thing. the The diet absolutely must be dialed in, must be cleaned up. And there will come a time in this sequence where strategic caloric reduction on and off, it shouldn't be once off until you meet the goal because not one person has seen, I don't think, I mean, a few public cases, but many people have actually been able to lose that weight and keep it off long-term with just trying to like from January 1st until whenever I hit my weight goal. You don't see many cases of that being successful, you
00:46:10
Christian Yordanov
So strategic caloric reduction and then you know back to maintenance should absolutely be used at a certain point in time but to me it's that's the because that's the hardest part why don't we just figure out the other things that let's get the low-hanging fruit first let's create a healthier environment in the body the in terms of neuron transmitters, in terms of detoxification capacity, in terms of nutritional status, in terms of stress, sleep, all that stuff, hormones, lowering estrogen, boosting T, lowering cortisol, lowering adrenaline, lowering serotonin, boosting dopamine, all that good stuff. Let's do that.
00:46:54
Christian Yordanov
And then let's see how let's see how far that will take us cleaning up the diet. a lot of like I said, a lot of people, They just lose a bunch of weight just by cleaning up the diet. And in this in this particular case study, this client cleaned up the diet, some added some supplements to help with stress and dopamine and serotonin and and you know all that other stuff, hormones.
00:47:18
Christian Yordanov
So we we haven't even discussed even tracking the diet and and cutting calories and and and manipulating the macros and the and the all the other stuff yet.
00:47:29
Christian Yordanov
And maybe the time will come, maybe that in this particular case, he's happy enough with with this result. But you know some people have more than 18 pounds to lose. And for sure, then we have to talk about calorie reduction for strategically for some time.
00:47:46
Christian Yordanov
But let's, again, let's get the easy stuff done first. Because if you can get the easy stuff done and get you half the way there and then have a final push for the rest, right?
00:47:58
Christian Yordanov
And then during that time, if we can actually teach you all the habits that will maintain your results, including the the healthy weight loss, then you're much more likely to actually maintain that weight loss after and instead of rebounding back up like most people will tend to do.
00:48:14
Christian Yordanov
oh So I would rather something suck half as much and I have to do a bit more prep and sort of low-hanging fruit related work initially and only go through like half of the the tough stuff like cutting calories and stuff as opposed to go hard Burn out, gain weight, get frustrated, say fuck it, I'm gonna eat whatever the fuck.
00:48:39
Christian Yordanov
A week later, feel horrible, feel guilty, hate yourself, start that cycle again and by the time you know it, decades have gone by and no real results have been accomplished.
00:48:50
Christian Yordanov
So we need to get our ducks in a row first, get the the low hanging fruit, start building the habits that will maintain our eventual you know, result that we're going to attain and then just dial it up, kick it up a notch strategically.
00:49:10
Christian Yordanov
And then before burnout sets in, let's dial it back down. Then take a break, make sure, you know, dopamine, leptin levels, everything kind of is normalized.
00:49:22
Christian Yordanov
The fatigue from the dieting, you know, the kind calories, is recovered from and then you can do that again and some people might have to do that multiple times to get the the actual true result they want but I think putting in a little bit of effort to do this right once to the prep get it done do it right is a much better way because as I also talk about in my book how to actually live longer people that just lose a bunch of weight
00:49:54
Christian Yordanov
They have higher levels of various diseases and mortality in some studies, right? And then people that fluctuate, their weight fluctuates in their life a lot, they also have worse health outcomes.
00:50:06
Christian Yordanov
So if if if we've painted ourselves into the sort of corner, we have to just really tiptoe our way out, not just power through like most people try to do and try to get it done. Actually, just yesterday, ah friend haven't spoken to in a couple of years, he told me, he just saw my video on intermittent fasting.
00:50:27
Christian Yordanov
He said, oh, shn snap. that's what I've been doing for the last two months he told he lost like I think he said 14 kilograms that's like 14 times 2.2 that's like 30 almost 31 pounds in two months and he was like kind of happy about it, I'm like, oh damn, you don't want you know the data around fast weight loss, actually how bad it is for you because all the toxins and volume and saturated fats getting released from the fatty tissue circulating and damaging organs and stuff.
00:51:00
Christian Yordanov
But then he's like, oh my God, i was about to buy fish oil because I shared with him my free masterclass i on livelongerformula.com. Like, you're probably doing other stuff. You better go and watch this fast.
00:51:11
Christian Yordanov
So he's like, oh crap, I was about to buy fish oil too. So, you know, it was, I guess, sort of good timing that he he messaged me. But yeah this is what most people would try to do.
00:51:22
Christian Yordanov
Like he was ah probably, because he was, you know, a bit overweight. He was just fed up probably and he probably they had a baby with his wife so then he must have gained a little bit more weight and then at some point he's like, oh I'm fed up with this, I'm done with this, I'm gonna lose it. And he goes online, goes to some Instagram guru or YouTube guru and like, oh, keto fasting, intermittent fasting, one meal a day, whatever, you know, or whatever the case may be.
00:51:49
Christian Yordanov
and It's like, then how quickly can I lose this weight? And then what happens is you get a quick win. You lose a bunch of, let's say, low carb, whatever. You lose a bunch of water, glycogen.
00:52:00
Christian Yordanov
ah ah You get this sort of hit. You get a big hit of like, oh yeah, this is working. So then you double down then you very quickly reach diminishing returns and then you step into harmful effects with these sort of interventions.
00:52:17
Christian Yordanov
And this is what we want to avoid if longevity is the goal, which I think if you're listening to this podcast, it's probably one of your main goals as well. Not just to be healthy and get get your health challenges addressed as quickly as possible, although we all want that, you know, as quickly as possible.
00:52:34
Christian Yordanov
But you
Conclusion and Farewell
00:52:34
Christian Yordanov
you probably also want to do it in a sustainable way, you know. So anyway, hope you found this discussion interesting. And thanks for listening. And I'll see you on the next one.