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Low-carb and ketogenic diets are HORRIBLE for longevity
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Transcript
Why Low-Carb Diets Aren't Optimal for Longevity
00:00:00
Speaker
Hi, Christian Jardinov here. Today I want to talk to you a little bit about why low-carb and ketogenic diets are not good for longevity. They may
00:00:16
Speaker
allow us to achieve certain short-term goals. But when it comes to long-term health, increasing your longevity and so on, they're very much sub-optimal diets to utilize on a constant basis.
Christian's Book on Longevity
00:00:32
Speaker
And I'll explain a little bit why. I go in quite a bit of depth on this topic in my latest book, How to Actually Live Longer, Volume 1.
00:00:45
Speaker
So check the link around either the episode description here or if you're watching this on the website, there'll be a link to the book. I highly, if you're interested in this topic, if you've been on low carb diets and they didn't work well for you, well, there's a reason why they didn't work well for you. I highly recommend checking out the book. You will learn a lot.
00:01:11
Speaker
about how to improve your health and by virtue of that, increase your longevity. So let me start with the keto diet. Now, one thing you have to understand is the keto diet was designed to mimic starvation, literally. So that already tells you kind of intuitively is that if you signal to your body that it
00:01:39
Speaker
is in a state of starvation, do you think that would be conducive to good long-term health? I doubt it. So the keto diet was designed to mimic starvation in order to help children with basically drug-resistant epilepsy. So that's what the diet is still used for.
00:02:03
Speaker
And it has now in more recent years, it has they are researching it for other disease states. And this is what you have to understand. So it does have therapeutic value. But if you're healthy or in okay health,
00:02:22
Speaker
It's likely it's not the optimal diet for many reasons, which I'll go into in more depth now.
The Keto Diet: Origin and Concerns
00:02:30
Speaker
But even if you listen to somebody like Dominic D'Agostino, he is a low carb or keto diet researcher. He's a PhD. And I've heard him on podcasts say that he's more interested in its application in disease states
00:02:51
Speaker
And he said he doesn't recommend using the diet long term. So if the freaking researcher that studies this stuff and is part of the group that popularized it, if he himself says it's not to be used long term and he's more interested in it being used for disease state, what does that tell us about going on this diet for months at a time?
00:03:18
Speaker
It's very much a bad idea, which again, let me get right into it. Again, I go into more depth into this in my book. I explain a little bit about the physiology, just an overview of how
00:03:35
Speaker
How does the body survive and operate on a low carbohydrate diet? So the first thing, like I mentioned already, you have to understand is restricting carbohydrates sends a signal to the body that is very similar to just the fasting, completely starving, not eating at all fasting. So just tweaking the carbohydrate,
00:03:58
Speaker
content of the diet down has that effect, right? But what happens then? So you go on a low carb diet and during the first two days or so, two, three days, depending on how replete you were with glycogen, you know, the way glucose is stored on the body is in glycogen form. So you might have overall maybe 500 grams of glycogen, which
00:04:24
Speaker
of which about a hundred grams are in the liver that's used to maintain your blood sugar level keep your brain alive and so on and then you have your muscle glycogen that's used for basically muscular work activity and then the muscles tend to they tend to
00:04:44
Speaker
preferentially burn fat at rest. So that spares glucose for the central nervous and the brain. So you listen to some biohacker podcasts like I did back in 2018. You're listening to all these guys and keto is so amazing. So you're like, oh my God, this is amazing. I need to get ketones
00:05:07
Speaker
in my body, you know? So you go on a keto diet, cut the carbs out. The first couple of days, you're still using up all your glycogen, right? So at some point when you deplete your muscle glycogen, depending on your activity levels, your liver glycogen will become depleted. You start cranking out more glucose.
00:05:32
Speaker
in the liver. So this is kind of the part people gloss over when they talk about the diet. So when you don't have glucose coming from the diet, the body must produce a bunch of glucose. So a normal brain is estimated to consume about 120 grams of glucose a day, right?
00:06:01
Speaker
And then your red blood cells, they consume about 30 grams of glucose per day.
00:06:06
Speaker
to get into the ketogenic state, you need to kind of reduce carbs down to about 50 grams or perhaps less per day. Some people can remain in ketosis with higher amounts of carbs, but generally, you know, a very low carbohydrate diet is considered to be either under 50 grams or under 20 grams of carbs per day. So think about it like this, right? If your brain and your
00:06:37
Speaker
red blood cells, which by the way, the red blood cells, they don't have mitochondria. So they can only use glycolysis to create energy. So, you know, they don't have any other way. They can't burn fat or ketones,
Impact of Low-Carb Diets on Stress and Aging
00:06:55
Speaker
right? So this is what people have to understand. Even if you go into ketosis, you are still producing glucose every day. It's just the burden is lessened by the liver now creating more ketones, right?
00:07:07
Speaker
So let's say you're on 50 grams of carbs a day. For the first few days, especially if this is your first time going keto, your body sort of has to upregulate the machinery. So for fat oxidation, burning fat for fuel, these processes take time to ramp up. So creation of new enzymes and so on and so forth.
00:07:35
Speaker
so during that time you're in overdrive your glucose your liver is creating glucose in overdrive and that is a very stressful process by virtue of the fact that it is itself driven by stress hormones right this is what people like have to understand a lot of these things that which is what i talk about in the book
00:07:56
Speaker
A lot of these things nowadays that are considered healthful or whatever, they are actually putting us in a state of stress. So to create glucose, the liver kicks or rather uses a process called gluconeogenesis.
00:08:15
Speaker
that uses amino acids which the amino acids they need to be deaminated right this process releases ammonia so if you do a lot of this gluconeogenesis it creates toxic byproducts that have to be detoxified which costs you energy so you know it's it's not like gluconeogenesis is sort of some low carb proponents talk about it as if it's
00:08:45
Speaker
the best way for the body to create glucose on demand when it needs it. But they seem to gloss over the fact that the process is driven by cortisol, glucagon, and so on. And these are, again, stress hormones.
00:09:04
Speaker
So the other component that you can make glucose from is the glycerol backbone from the fatty acid. So the triglyceride or the triacylglycerol as it's also known now, that contains a glycerol backbone that kind of holds together three fatty acids.
00:09:29
Speaker
So they get broken down. The three fatty acids can be used to create ketones or to be burned for energy by the cells oxidized. They can also be used to create signaling molecules and be used in cell membranes and so on and so forth. So the glycerol backbones of those, if not used to create new triglycerides, they can be joined together to create glucose. So that's another pathway to create glucose. But here's the thing.
00:09:59
Speaker
That's a very negligible pathway to creating glucose. Some low carb proponents say that, you know, that glycerol will turn into glucose and everything will be fine. You have enough substrate to create glucose. But again, I think something like a kilogram of triglycerides has enough glycerol backbones for like 10 grams of glucose. In fact, I have it in the book somewhere here. So wait, sorry.
00:10:27
Speaker
3000 calories of fat in a day or 3000 calories of triglycerides, which is about 333 grams of it, will only make 33 grams of glucose. So, you know, 333 grams of fat for the 3000 calories, that's a stick and a half of Kerrygold butter. You know, nobody, nobody's eating that much fat.
00:10:52
Speaker
you know, on a keto diet. And even if you do, you're only going to make 33 grams of glucose out of it. So the fact is that
00:11:04
Speaker
your body, even when you reach ketosis, which takes several days during which time you're in very much a high cortisol state, high catabolic state, you're breaking yourself down. You're literally breaking down your body to give amino acids and other substrate to the liver to create glucose. So you are
00:11:26
Speaker
The keto diet is a catabolic state because again it is designed to mimic starvation and the way you create glucose when there's not coming in from the diet is through stress hormones.
00:11:42
Speaker
a few days into it you start making ketones and people think all is well you just have to reach ketosis and happy days you know everything is dandy but here's the thing again uh it's only i think about 60 or so percent 60 to 70 percent
00:12:02
Speaker
is sort of the contribution that ketones can give in terms of a substrate for energy creation. So you're still going to be burning some fat and you're still going to be producing glucose. So think about it this way, just go to go back to the example at the start.
Weight Loss vs. Health Improvement on Keto
00:12:20
Speaker
If you have just for your brain and red blood cells, a need of about 150 grams of carbs a day, and you eat 50 grams of carbs,
00:12:33
Speaker
That's a hundred gram deficit. So for the first, the first few days that hundred grams, you know, you need to break down a lot of tissue. If you, here's the other thing, right? They say you can use the protein from your diet, right? To create the glucose, but
00:12:56
Speaker
That's again another, it's a toxic process somewhat because the deamination process releases ammonia. Then you're wasting precious protein, which could have been grass-fed steak, expensive food. You're just wasting that to create glucose, right? And there was a study I cited in my book.
00:13:18
Speaker
that, let me just get the citation. So these guys are fairly, I think Jeff Volek was one of the lead author on this one, I can't remember off the top of my head now, who's a big low carb guy or keto guy. So the quote from their paper, I think it was like from the early 2000s,
00:13:41
Speaker
casein and meat protein can be converted to glucose at about 50% efficiency. So approximately 100 grams of protein can produce 50 grams of glucose via gluconeogenesis. This is what they state in their paper. And they just gloss over it as if it's nothing, right? So think about it this way.
00:14:07
Speaker
What is it? Seven, seven ounce steak, about 300 grams steak that, or let's do it this way. Like let's say about a pounds of meat or half a kilo of meat. Roughly that would be roughly, let's say about a hundred grams of protein. Okay. Roughly.
00:14:32
Speaker
If you eat that, there's a chance your body will basically convert that 100 grams of protein to glucose on a low carb diet or a keto diet. So how wasteful is that? You know, that's a few tablespoons of 50 grams of glucose. That's like three tablespoons of honey.
00:14:55
Speaker
It's preposterous. We are wasting so much high quality food on these low carb diets. Just thinking about how much good quality meat I wasted and protein I wasted in my low carb days.
00:15:14
Speaker
By the way, there was another paper, I didn't cite it in the book, but if it's your own muscle tissue, let's say, or your own lean body mass, the metabolic cost to turn that into glucose is about somewhere around 30%, 33%.
00:15:33
Speaker
So 100 grams of your own, let's say muscle being broken down, that will yield around perhaps maybe 50, 60, 70 grams of muscle tissue, because obviously some of the amino acids will be used for other purposes and so on. But keep in mind, this is a catabolic process that is driven by stress hormones. So cortisol signals tissue to break down. That can be
00:16:04
Speaker
anything up to including parts of the brain. So joints, skin, bone, muscle tissue, or parts of organs, right? Because it's well known that when you fast, where you starve, your organs become smaller because the body is consuming itself to stay alive. And it's the same story with the keto diet, because again, it's designed to mimic starvation.
00:16:30
Speaker
So, not optimal so far. Now, if you're an Olympic level mental gymnastics champion, you may come up with some bullshit theories about why and how low carbon keto can be beneficial if you're young or whatever. But when it comes to longevity,
00:16:53
Speaker
this diet, these low-carb diets are not optimal for longevity. Because again, a lot of the physiology of how we survive when fasting, as I've mentioned before in other episodes, and low-carb diets, the way we produce the glucose to keep our central nervous system and our brain operating,
00:17:17
Speaker
Subpar, by the way, is through stress hormones. And stress hormones, as you will see if you read my book, stress hormones ages prematurely.
00:17:28
Speaker
They contribute to disease. They're associated with increased mortality, increased incidence of death in older age, and they precede and are a component of disease. Most any disease you can think of has a cortisol component, right? From cancer to depression to, you know, just name anything, diabetes, whatever.
00:17:56
Speaker
So why in the hell would we want to go on a diet that the way we operate while being on the diet is through stress hormones? Why? What is it? Why? If our goal is longevity, it's really a bad idea, guys.
00:18:18
Speaker
And then the studies on keto, god damn it, this is another thing that's so annoying. So all this, okay, yes, there's hundreds of studies on the keto diet and they're all high-fiving each other. It's such amazing things, right? But here's the thing, most of the studies are one to three months long, right? So you can design and get a lot of benefits from a lot of interventions. If you have a bunch of,
00:18:46
Speaker
Overweight people that are eating the standard American diet and you put them on a plant-based diet If you put them on a carnivore diet if you put them on a freaking fruitarian diet Right, they're gonna see a lot of benefits. But here's the thing a lot of the benefits of the ketogenic diet Studies are
00:19:09
Speaker
confounded by the very substantial weight loss that the people, the study participants experienced. So you cannot, what I'm trying to say here, you cannot say that the keto diet intervention
00:19:39
Speaker
is what caused the benefits if there was a bunch of different things that happened to the person. Let's say someone did a keto diet, but they also took a bunch of supplements and they also lost a bunch of weight, and then they did exercise. You cannot say that it was the keto diet if there was a bunch of confounding variables or factors. Let's say if someone loses 20 kilograms, 45 pounds,
00:20:05
Speaker
while doing a diet. Was it the diet? Was it the vegan diet? Was it the carnivore diet? Was it the keto diet? Or were all those benefits that they got from losing the weight, right? Their insulin resistance improves, their snore less, so they breathe better, so they sleep better, so their partner sleeps better, so then they fight less, so then they're happier during the day because their mood is better, because they're better rested, so their blood pressure decreases because they lost weight,
00:20:35
Speaker
And so on and so on and so on, right? The people like, people are like, oh, pay them more compliments on all the weight they lost. So that's the thing, you know, that's, that's the magic of keto that is not so magical when you actually break it down. People, because they're reading a high fat diet,
00:20:56
Speaker
they feel more satiated. So they tend to eat less. That's why people lose weight on the keto diet. And because low carb diet doesn't allow, you know, Twinkies and Doritos and crap like that, or the ultra processed high carb garbage with that also has seed oils, because
00:21:19
Speaker
People switched to more butter, cheese, meat, maybe some some low carb vegetables that they may not even have eaten before. So you're reading better. You're reading a lot less inflammatory garbage like seeds, nuts and so on.
00:21:38
Speaker
Well, maybe you might eat nuts because they're low carb, but you're eating less grains at least. And these are very inflammatory crappy foods. So you remove the stuff out of your diet. You feel more satiated because of the higher fat content. You eat less, you lose a bunch of weight, which by the way is not very healthy to lose a lot of weight quickly. I talk about that in my book as well.
00:22:02
Speaker
So it's actually very important to learn that if you have weight to shift it's really You have to play the long game because it's actually very dangerous losing a lot of weight quickly is Associated with increased mortality and stuff like that. So I'll probably do a separate episode on that, right? so that's kind of the the magic of keto, excuse me, the magic of keto is eating less and Eating better high quality food. Well, you know, you know what?
00:22:30
Speaker
You can do that without restricting carbohydrates. Eat real food. Don't buy ultra-processed garbage. Cook your own meals. Buy grass-fed meat. Buy organic cheese, dairy, fruit, honey, white rice, basmati white rice. Get some organic oranges. Make your own orange juice or eat them
00:23:00
Speaker
whole, just eat real food, eat all the macronutrients in relatively balanced ratios and removing the garbage from your diet, the inflammatory stuff and just the junk and the seed oils, that alone for many people is enough to help them start getting healthier and lose weight without having to restrict various sort of macronutrients.
00:23:28
Speaker
But here's the thing, right? So it goes beyond this. So we already kind of touched on the fact that keto mimics starvation. So what does the body do if it perceives to be in a state of starvation, of famine? Well, naturally and quickly, very promptly, the body
00:23:53
Speaker
begins to lower its metabolic rate. And the reason it does it very quickly is, let's say you're starving for a month. If your body only got the message and started doing something about it on week three, well, we wouldn't have survived however many millions of years or whatever we have. So the body is very quick to respond to nutrient deprivation.
00:24:22
Speaker
starvation, famine, whatever you want to call it, lack of food, because that will ensure its survival. Right. So let me just see the study here. So there was one study where the researchers had the participants on a ketogenic diet without a reduction in calories. I'll add for four days. And this is the quote.
00:24:53
Speaker
from the from the paper that I cite in the book so the hormonal pattern switched toward a catabolic mode with the following insulin levels arising glucagon which is stress hormone
00:25:06
Speaker
A significant fall in triiodothyronine and rise in reverse triiodothyronine were observed while thyroxine levels remained unchanged. So triiodothyronine, that's T3, that's kind of the most active thyroid hormone. And basically catabolic mode means breaking yourself down. You are cannibalizing your body to remain alive. It's literally,
00:25:33
Speaker
what happens when you fast or are nutrient deprived or starving. You're cannibalizing your body, breaking down bone tissue, joints, skin, organs, muscle, mostly to create glucose. And at the same time, you're also shutting down
00:25:59
Speaker
non vital for survival functions, right? So fertility, you know, joy, mood, creativity, higher thought, future planning, because you just, you're, you're, you're going into survival mode. So this is what I, this is kind of when I got the, when I understood all of these things, when they clicked for me, I'm like, do I want to be
00:26:23
Speaker
Do I want to utilize a diet modality that works by signaling my body it's starving? Do I want my body to be forced to triage the small amount of glucose that it has to create on its own? Because here's the thing, if you have a lot of glucose coming in from the diet,
00:26:47
Speaker
There's plenty for the brain, the blood cells, so your immune system, all these functions have plenty of fuel to go, to allocate to everything, right? The testes, for example, the testicles, they need glucose. So if you remove the glucose, let's say someone my size, you know,
00:27:14
Speaker
something like 200 to 50 grams of glucose per day would be like a fair amount, a moderate amount, wouldn't be too high, wouldn't be too low. So if you remove that and you go on like a 50, 100 grams of glucose a day, the body has to
00:27:33
Speaker
create whatever deficit there is, it has to create that glucose and it won't go above and beyond what's truly necessary because there's a lack. It's like if your expenses are 2000 bucks a month and suddenly your income is 500 bucks a month,
00:27:58
Speaker
When you get that 500 bucks, you're not going to spend whatever amount you used to spend on your Netflix subscription, going to a restaurant or whatever, going on a weekend trip away. You're going to spend that money just on the rent, just on the food, just on the bills. So it's very similar in the body. I think that's kind of a good analogy. The body would triage and shut down
00:28:23
Speaker
lower any functions that are not absolutely essential for survival right and then I think
00:28:35
Speaker
So the Inuit, some people, I talk about the Inuit in the book, some low carb proponents are like, well, look at the Inuit. They just ate seal blubber and seal meat for centuries and they're totally fine and they survived. Yeah, well, they may have survived, but did they thrive? Are they thriving? When you look at the Inuit or the Eskimo,
00:29:01
Speaker
around Canada, well, their life expectancy is something like 12, 15 years shorter than the average Canadians. So they're not a good example for a low carb diet being so optimal for longevity.
00:29:19
Speaker
I know there's a lot of other variables and factors and hardships that they go through, but it's clear that the low carb diet is not magical when it comes to longevity and performance or whatever.
00:29:35
Speaker
Another thing that's interesting about the Inuit is they have a mutation in a gene, CPT1A, which actually impairs their ability to create ketones. So even with all that meat and fat, they were actually not in ketosis.
00:29:53
Speaker
Right. So they were basically surviving a lot of the, if it was a low carb life, a lot of, they were turning a lot of, they were increasing fat oxidation and they were turning a lot of the protein day eight into glucose, which again, it's the gluconeogenesis process, which again,
00:30:15
Speaker
is driven by stress hormones. That's what people have to understand. Gluconeogenesis is the body's response to a lack of exogenous dietary glucose coming in. So it revs up this process in the liver. It creates glucose out of amino acids and glycerol backbones and so on. And the signals for that process to be upregulated
00:30:42
Speaker
are stress hormones and obviously a lack of glucose coming in from the diet, upregulates cortisol,
00:30:51
Speaker
And when cortisol goes up, other stress hormones tend to go up. So adrenaline can go up. And, you know, if you add, let's say you're not in ketosis and if you're fasting and on a low carb diet, well, Jesus Christ, it's, I've been there, you know, I've been there and it was horrible, but only, the only, the reason I survived it is because of, you know, when you're young and healthy,
00:31:17
Speaker
you can plow through a lot of these stressful activities and I remember I would intermittent fast while doing low-carb keto and then I even would try to do a couple of days water fast and I would try to go for walks while on them and the whole process was horrible but you plow through it and this is what I'm trying to to help people right now my clients are not
00:31:47
Speaker
I have some clients in their early 30s and a couple of clients in their 20s, but most of my clients are on the older side. And this is what I'm trying to educate people is these things that quote unquote work when we're younger.
00:32:05
Speaker
And by work, I mean, we suffer through them because we have so much vitality and reserves and health to draw on still. But these things are a terrible idea now for longevity and just for general health. But actually, as I alluded, they were a horrible idea even back then when we could stand them, when we could plow through them.
00:32:29
Speaker
because once you understand the mechanisms, and that's why I wrote the book, I want to, so when I sign on a client, I want to give them the book so they can have a resource to understand the reasoning behind my recommendations to a greater extent, so that they understand that some of these things, the transition might be uncomfortable,
00:32:58
Speaker
It might feel counterintuitive because we are bombarded with this horrible health advice in the mainstream.
Diet Quality vs. Macronutrient Restriction
00:33:07
Speaker
But once you understand the very high level physiological mechanisms, things make a lot more sense. So that's why I wanted to write the book. The first volume is more about these things, about reducing our stress because stress diminishes longevity.
00:33:25
Speaker
and low carb and keto diets are associated with an increase in stress hormones.
00:33:36
Speaker
So let's talk about weight loss. Actually, I think I already talked about weight loss. So the keto diet is not really a magical fat loss tool. In fact, there was a 2022 Cochrane review of 61 randomized controlled trials.
00:33:55
Speaker
with a total of almost 7,000 participants that compared low-carb and balanced carbohydrate diets' efficacy in reducing weight and cardiovascular risk." And this is what I cite from that paper in the book.
00:34:14
Speaker
There is probably little to no difference in weight reduction and changes in cardiovascular risk factors up to two years follow up when overweight and obese participants without and with type 2 diabetes mellitus are randomized to either low carb or balanced carbohydrate weight reducing diets. So here's the thing.
00:34:41
Speaker
If you compare a low carb diet to a, let's say balanced, whatever, a macronutrient ratio diet, or even a low fat diet, the low carb diet will result in the most weight loss in the first, let's say six months. Probably no question about that.
00:35:06
Speaker
keto diet, low carb diets will result in the most weight loss and very likely the most fat mass loss, right? It's very, very likely that both of those will be, there'll be greater loss of those, which tell people are like, well, there you go. It's more effective. But here's the thing. This is what you have to understand.
00:35:29
Speaker
First of all, I already explained that losing weight very quickly is actually associated with increased chances of death or increased incidence of death to be more correct. But why here, you have to think about it like this. Why?
00:35:46
Speaker
does a person lose a lot more weight and fat mass on a low-carb diet than the other diets? And when you think, when you actually, when it clicks, you're like, oh, okay, it makes sense. So the reason why is because why do you lose weight? Why are you losing weight? Because you're in some kind of energy deficit, not enough fuel is coming in for your energy demands. So more weight
00:36:16
Speaker
off of your body has to be converted to energy. And that weight will include fat mass and lean tissue, bone muscles and organs and so on. And again, here's the thing, the process is facilitated by stress hormones, cortisol, growth hormone,
00:36:41
Speaker
glucagon, adrenaline and so on. So what does that tell us? Well, the reason why people lose more weight on a low carb keto diet is because it's a hell of a lot more stressful. So there's because there's a lot less glucose coming in from the diet.
00:37:07
Speaker
a lot more glucose has to be made by the body, by the liver through this process of gluconeogenesis, which also happens in the kidneys to an extent. So more stress, which means more stress hormones, more catabolism, more breaking down the body
00:37:26
Speaker
more lipolysis, more sort of breaking down fatty acids, more circulating toxins coming out of the fat stores, more circulating polyunsaturated fatty acids causing organ damage, causing vascular damage.
00:37:42
Speaker
just causing inflammation and so on. So you lose more weight, but it comes by virtue of the fact that you were a hell of a lot more stressed. So when that makes sense, it's like,
00:38:02
Speaker
It really should make us just stop and think for a second. Is this why the keto diet is now being promoted in the mainstream and even doctors and everybody is recommending low carb diets and keto diets? Is this why?
00:38:22
Speaker
because it gets results fast. It's exactly the paradigm that we've been indoctrinated into of treating symptoms and getting rid of the symptoms as quickly as possible. So if you go on a low carb diet, you shift a lot of weight quickly. In the beginning stages, it's mostly water glycogen. There's a lot of intramuscular water that is released.
00:38:51
Speaker
So that looks like that symptom starts to improve very quickly. And then over the months, yes, you lose more fat mass, but again, it's because of the high stress of the diet.
00:39:10
Speaker
And the other reason that people go on a low carb diet is because it reduces their high blood sugar. So people with diabetes and insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome might see a benefit there, but here's the thing.
00:39:25
Speaker
you're reducing the high blood sugar, not because you fixed the metabolic problem, but because you have taken one source of glucose from the diet out of the equation. So now it seems like the numbers on the test look better and your doctor might be happy. You might feel relieved, okay, my blood sugar is in a more normal range now.
00:39:54
Speaker
I've lost a bunch of weight. I lost five kilograms this month and whatever, or five kilograms last month, three kilograms this month, and you're thinking everything is getting better. I'm getting healthier, right? But are you getting healthier? That is the question. Your body is being signaled you're in starvation mode. It's lowering your metabolic rate.
00:40:24
Speaker
It's upregulating stress hormones to create the glucose that is in deficit that's not coming from the diet. There's all that lost weight, all those toxins and polyunsaturated fats, they cause damage to organs and tissues and the vascular system and so on.
00:40:45
Speaker
So yeah, you might in the short term, let's say three months or whatever, you might feel like you're getting a benefit. And some of that benefit could be from the weight lost. Some of the benefit could be from removing starchy grains, ultra processed foods, eating more real food, you know, more meat, more cheese, more dairy, less, you know, grains and garbage and whatever other
00:41:15
Speaker
seed oil laden garbage is available nowadays which is you know it's everywhere pastries blah blah blah cupcakes whatever else so there's a lot of things that are happening to give you the the perception that you know things are going well but you know it's not
00:41:37
Speaker
optimal. This is what I'm trying to tell people. Yes, if you want quick results, it could work, but you were paying the price with a lower metabolic rate, all those toxins being released, the body being signal starvation mode, all the stress hormones that are aging you prematurely. So this is what people have to remember. If
00:42:03
Speaker
If those are the benefits, if the keto and low carb diet benefits are the weight loss, improving the diet, being more intentional with the diet, well, let's just start focusing on diet quality first, right? Removing the best carbs, plain white rice, basmati is good, fruit, honey, maple syrup, milk is meat, dairy, just real food.
00:42:31
Speaker
just minimize the out-of-process garbage that will take in all the grains and all the stuff with the emulsifiers and the chemicals out, that will also give your gut a break. So a lot of immune and inflammatory things that seem to be cured by the keto diet, it's not necessarily the keto diet, it's that eating just more plant, just plain plants
00:43:01
Speaker
meat, just really one ingredient, single ingredient foods and no ultra-processed garbage, that is really the benefit. You can achieve that benefit without starving your brain and your nervous system from the glucose that they require to function, right? So this is I think where we kind of conflate the benefits of keto and low carb with
00:43:29
Speaker
with a lot of other stuff that can be achieved without necessarily being so restrictive, right? So that's kind of a little bit of the story. This chapter in the book
00:43:42
Speaker
The section in the book is about 10,000 words. I think it's about a fifth of the book, which by the way, this book, the reason I have it, it's a couple of hundred pages, small format. You could really, I read this book in, when I was editing it, I could read the book in two days. I could read the entire book while editing it. So you could read this book very comfortably in one week and all the,
00:44:10
Speaker
All the benefits of reading it, you could implement very quickly. I have an appendix with some of the supplements or all of the supplements that I mentioned in the book. There's an appendix where you can get them and implement them into your routine and they can help out a lot.
00:44:29
Speaker
It's not just about supplements. It's about what you don't do and just dietary stuff, etc. But it's a fast read. That's kind of my intention so people can read the entire thing and apply all of its advice because you can... That's the beauty of it. You're better off reading a short book and implementing the advice.
00:44:49
Speaker
than getting a 500-page monster that you get lost in and it has a lot of stories and beautiful prose, but relatively little in terms of actual applicability to our life, especially when you're busy and have kids or business or a busy job. I want to give you things that are quickly actionable that will make a truly
00:45:17
Speaker
They will make a true impact on your lifespan and health span and help you achieve the best health that your current genetic potential can express. So that's the book, get the book, highly recommended. Looking forward to coming out with the second volume, there'll be more stuff there. I'll be focusing on detoxification and other stuff like that.
00:45:39
Speaker
in the second volume. So yeah, keep an eye out for that. Also, if you need personalized help, I offer health consulting for folks that want to optimize their health and longevity, look under the hood with some advanced functional lab testing, figure out where the metabolic blockages are, what can be improved, any subclinical sort of deficiencies or yeast or
Christian's Health Consulting and Tips
00:46:08
Speaker
pathogenic overgrowth and stuff like that, nip those in the bud. Because these things can, over time, they can lead to more inflammation, more oxidative stress, depleters of nutrients, signal stress state to the body that increases stress hormones. There's a lot of little, these little things
00:46:27
Speaker
one of them, two of them, they're minor, very minor, but it's like the death of a thousand paper cuts analogy. So these little things, each one of them might age you half of a, you know, a tenth of a percent or whatever over like a few years, but they add up and some of them compound. So catching as many of them, ameliorating or mitigating or eliminating as many of them,
00:46:54
Speaker
The earlier the better is best. And then I also help people navigate chronic and complex health issues that they've not been able to get help from other means. So if you need help with either of those two, please go to my website christianjordanov.com.
00:47:16
Speaker
and schedule a free consult, free discovery session so we can meet and I can hear you out here, see where you're at, explain how I can help you out if I can, if we're a good fit to work together. That's on christianjordanov.com. Book is on Amazon. Link will be down below in the description.
00:47:35
Speaker
And yeah, thanks for listening. And yeah, listen, go in. If you haven't got honey, go get yourself some honey or maple syrup before bed tonight. Eat about three tablespoons of honey, half an hour before bed.
00:47:55
Speaker
I'm sure you will sleep better, especially if you're like on a low carb or a lowish carb, moderate carb diet. So many people that try that. I've had clients that it completely resolved their health or their sleep issues, right?
00:48:12
Speaker
just the honey before bed. We never had to discuss sleep issues again after that, right? It's because when you take some, especially honey, because it has a mixture of fructose and glucose and fructose seems to replenish liver glycogen really well. So when you eat
00:48:43
Speaker
let's say dinner at eight and you're going to bed at 11, that's three whole hours that you have a gap, right? So by midnight, 1 a.m., you could be in a pretty depleted state in terms of your liver glycogen. And that's gonna cause stress hormones to go up, glucagon, cortisol and so on. So when you take some honey, some clean carbohydrate,
00:49:12
Speaker
before sleep, you're adding, you're topping off your tank, you know, if your tank is your liver. So you have more fuel during the night to keep your brain alive, to feed your, keep your blood sugar stable and feed your central nervous system and so on. So the more topped up you are prior to bed,
00:49:35
Speaker
the longer you go without kicking into what I call in my book, stress mode.
00:49:45
Speaker
This is kind of, in hindsight, I used to have a lot of sleep problems and they were completely resolved by just eating a bit of carbohydrates closer to bedtime and, you know, stopping the low carb madness, right? So I used to think like, why the hell can't I sleep? There's so many, and my blue light game would be so good. You know, we have red LED bulbs in the
00:50:10
Speaker
in the apartment and my blue blockers and just supplements like GABA and all this other stuff and I still would wake up at night or I couldn't fall asleep and it's because the stress hormones are keeping you awake so if you wake up very early and you can't fall back asleep and stuff like that or in the middle of the night
00:50:31
Speaker
it's because most likely because of the stress hormones in some people it could be a hormonal issue and in some people it could be parasites or some type of other gut dysbiosis but it's usually more most often it's some type of blood sugar dysregulation or
00:50:49
Speaker
Just a lack of a lack of such so the the body must kick into glucose creation mode which Again to drill it in is driven by you know cortisol stress hormones So these stress hormones amp you up adrenaline cortisol these amp you up keep you up So if you're if you're you know in this kind of hostile irritable
00:51:16
Speaker
A lot of the day or sometime during the day, think about what did you eat last? When was the last time you ate? Did you eat enough carbohydrates? Are you eating enough? Because if you don't eat enough or if you skip on certain
00:51:33
Speaker
macronutrients like I explained your stress hormones go up and it's gonna it's gonna mess up your your mood and your whole overall disposition and I'll tell you that's no way to live that's no way to live it sure as hell is not a good longevity strategy okay so hope you found that useful and I'll catch you on the next episode thanks for listening and watching