Paul Saladino Added Rice & Potatoes to His Diet (and this happened!?)

All right Paul salino I I had to bring you back on man because you're you're irritating people with like flip-flopping on things and stuff like that and now like I saw recently you you added rice into your diet like people people are like Paul what's next man people that don't actually look into the content they just see the the headlines here like what's next Paul you going to you going to start doing Snickers too Like what's what was this whole rice thing about like what happened there you know I I used to be named carnivore

MD on social media and I changed it to Paul saladino MD I don't like to be dogmatic I like to experiment with things and I was curious and I've been incorporating more carbohydrates in my diet recently we talked about that the last time I was on the podcast right and I think that I'm surfing two to three hours a day in Costa Rica I have probably two to 350 Grams of carbohydrates a day in my diet and that's all coming from fruit fruit juice and honey maple syrup although it's hard to get good maple syrup

in Costa Rica so I thought let's just experiment how do I feel with rice and I actually did white potatoes too Thomas so you get a bonus here I did rice and white potatoes let's just see you know I've talked about grains in the past and I I did some research on Rice which we can talk about but let me see how I feel With rice there's a lot of talk about fructose there's a lot of fructose hating in the world I've done podcasts kind of debunking a lot of that I think if you look

at the research fructose and sugar in whole food form from fruit honey maple syrup is not b not harmful for humans at all there's great research on fruit juice there's research on orange juice watermelon juice grape juice pomegranate juice cherry juice they're all beneficial for humans Whether it's endothelial function whether it's actually watermelon juice given to someone when they do an oral glucose tolerance test improves glucose sensitivity so you can give someone processed sugar you give watermelon juice and it improves glucose sensitivity so fruit and fruit juice I don't fear it I think people fearing

that just don't understand the literature but I thought let's experiment with rice maybe rice will Make me feel better I want to feel good right that's the whole reason I did carnivore in the first place I was eating a paleo diet that was organic five and a half years ago I had eema and it wasn't getting better I want to feel better I'm not trying to be dogmatic about this when I did carnivore I thought it was really interesting that my Eczema got better and we see so many people now who improve autoimmune conditions when

they cut out vegetables I don't think everybody needs to do this and I've often said if you're thriving don't change a thing but how interesting that some people are uniquely sensitive myself included to foods that we think about as healthy foods we'll probably talk about that a lot today foods that we think of as healthy foods that may be problematic for some people or maybe aren't as great as we think they are after today's video I popped a link down below for Thrive market now that is an Online membership based grocery store and that is

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to them down below as well but you can also just go to thrive market and you can search for like uh Thomas Del nut Butters or Thomas Del low carb truffles whatever anyhow that link down below saves you 30% off your entire first grocery order and a free $60 gift so if you're shopping you're getting groceries for Yourself you've got to check them out and they've been a big supporter of this channel for over half a decade so thank you to them and thank you to you so I cut out vegetables I felt better in

carnivore felt even better when I reincorporated carbs I want to stay you know I want to stay Cutting Edge like what if I incorporate rice and I feel amazing but I didn't just incorporate rice I knew off the bat that brown rice had more arsenic a heavy metal than White rice and when I went down the rabbit hole I found a lot more about arsenic in brown and white rice and heavy metals in a lot of other Foods so I started with white rice I started with Organic white rice and I got the white rice

and I would rinse it seven times you know in the sink I'm just rinsing the heck out of it and then I would soak it overnight in warm water cuz I live in Costa Rica so it's always in the 70s outside and I put apple cider vinegar in There and then I would cook it in the pressure cooker and I still had like brain fog I still didn't feel great on rice and then I thought okay uh there's actually a significant amount of arsenic even in white rice what we look at the literature when we

see is about 1.5 times as much arsenic in brown rice as there is in white rice and there is some evidence that you can mitigate it somehow it's called par boiling where you take the rice and it's dry you've Hopefully washed it you got a rinse off the dust off the rice you rinse off kind of like the the rice dust when you get the rice and then you can par boil it you can put it in a bunch of water and then you bring it to a boil then you dump that water out hopefully

with some of the heavy metals and then you cook the rice that can decrease the Arsenic but even when I did that decrease the Arsenic maybe 30% still a good amount of arsenic in the rice and we can talk About how much even when I did that I still didn't feel good on Rice so that's my experiment you know and and people have said to me would you eat vegetables again and the answer is yeah I would eat vegetables again I just don't feel good when I eat them I'm not trying to be dogmatic and

I'm trying to always evolve the message and learn from these things but what I find is that when I reincorporate these things in my diet I don't feel as good but I I'm always Looking for the next level right what if what if mango and watermelon juice and orange juice plus rice is even better for surfing or skating which are my main forms of exercise in Costa Rica than my current diet which is basically fruit juice honey raw milk for the carbohydrates and then the the meat and the organs so that was where it and

I had to take the rice out I just didn't feel good with it and then I tried white potatoes again not wanting To be dogmatic I know there's some oxalates in white potatoes and some people are sensitive I peel the white potatoes and I pressure cook them trying to decrease any of the lectins any of these carbohydrate binding proteins and white potatoes that could trigger any autoimmune conditions because I have a history of this atopic conditions these Eamon allergies and again with white potatoes I didn't feel great it made me feel almost too full because

I know that For me in Costa Rica I need to get calories in I'm not trying to lose weight I'm trying to gain weight I'm trying to keep my weight 2 and 1/2 hours of of exercise in the water is just I'm trying to gain weight or keep my weight where it is in Costa Rica so when I eat white potatoes and they just make me feel full and I don't really want to eat dinner it's it's like this doesn't feel right to me so they didn't they didn't they didn't make me feel as good

so I'm Just trying to experiment with these things and figure out what works for me I think this is what everyone should do but understand that what they're experimenting with always has benefits potential benefits and potential cost yeah for sure man how long were you trying out the rice how long did you do that for oh man I I did it like three or four occasions for three or four days each time and after three or four days of eating it every day and feeling like This just isn't feeling good I'm like well stop and

then I try it again yeah because it I mean I look at Rice it's good you know I I learned recently that rice has some of these morphine like compounds in it um you know milk has some wheat has some but when I eat rice it's it's like get a little bit oh that's kind of that's good but it just doesn't make me feel good do you think that I mean has rice always been problematic or do you think this is Something where it's uh the actual genetics of rice have changed are there things I

mean do you think because obviously there's civilizations that have been eating it for you know thousands of years and some civilizations that live extremely long lives eating it do you think there's like what's the situation there is is rice just not the same as it was 100 years ago who knows man I mean I'm getting organic rice but are there Contaminants is so this is the thing about plant foods that I've learned recently and animal Foods just like if you feed a cow grains versus feeding a cow grass the quality of that cow's meat is

going to be different if you feed a cow grass from the time it's you know weaned from nursing to the time that it's becoming meat it's going to have uh different nutrients you know more glutathione different things in its meat and it's Going to have less pesticides and less mold toxins that accumulate in the grains that grain-fed cattle are fed plants grown in different soils have different nutrients and can have different amounts of heavy metals there are some plants that hyper accumulate different heavy metals rice accumulates 10 times more arsenic than other plants on average

so rant rice rant so rice is a hyper accumulator of arsenic I want to talk about some other plants too because Lettuce hyper accumulates lead spinach hyper accumulates cadmium and lead and arsenic all the heavy metals so a lot of the foods we think of as healthy hyper accumulate heavy metals when they're grown in soil that has heavy metals in it so It's Tricky for people and again it's not that I think no one should eat these Foods ever it's just if you have heavy metal toxicity and we can talk about what that might look

like or issues people might have it's important To know that these might be Foods in your diet that you think are healthy that are causing problems so rice is a hyper accumulator of Arsenic and either this rice that I'm getting that's organic is has more arsenic or I'm just more sensitive to it it could also be a lectin in the rice that I'm sensitive to I could be more sensitive to mold toxins rice really all of the grains whether it's oatmeal or oats right or wheat or rice or buckwheat they all have more Mold toxins

than foods that are not dried and stored in warehouses so you look at Rice it has ochre toxin it has apoxin maybe I'm uniquely sensitive to mold toxins and the other thing is that I'm changing one thing about my diet which I think is a powerful intervention I'm eating everything else the same I still do my raw milk with honey when I get up in the morning I still eat grass-fed burger patty a little bit of heart fruit and fruit juice when I get Back from surf it's this everything else in my diet is exactly

the same I'm so regimented in Costa Rica with my life that I've got it dialed and so I do one intervention and that gives me more confidence that I'm seeing something in my life in the quality of my life that's actually related to the rice and so who knows maybe people are not a sensitive as I am to things and I think there's a lot of people that can eat rice and be fine check your arsenic levels right um But yeah it's it's just my experiment I hope is valuable for other people so if people

want to follow me and just have a prescription for how to live that's not me right if people are interested in my content or what I'm doing with my dietary experimentations hopefully they know my history and where I've come from and I and I want to be I want to be open and honest about it I'm going to show my blood work I've showed it many times I got blood work on this trip to LA and I Just want people to know like hey this is my personal experience there's some people in the health space

who say the only valid thing is a randomized control trial and I just disagree with that strongly I think that clinical experience personal experience the summation of multip people's anecdotes is valuable I'm not saying everyone needs to stop eating rice I'm just saying it didn't work for me so if you get brain fog sometimes and you want to Try cutting out rice maybe that's helpful that's the whole idea with a carnivore diet or an animal- based diet I don't think everybody needs to stop eating vegetables but man I've met and talked to and emailed with

and seen in the comments now thousands if not tens of thousands of people who can improve their life in some way whether it's autoimmune condition libido sleep um fatigue joint pain when they cut out some vegetables that's cool do we need An RCT to prove that no because there's tens of thousands of people who are having valuable unique human experiences and we don't say the USDA guidelines should say vegetables are bad no we say this works for some people everyone has different sensitivities and I've noticed your your reach has improved significantly since you've softened your

stance on some yeah we learn right yeah because I me think you've I think you've seen or at least And I've seen at least you know from the peanut gallery here that as you've been less dogmatic and S of softened your stance even soften your St even on vegetables not in your P particular take on vegetables but you're saying hey like if they work for you if you're thriving great you know I think that's allowed people to open their minds and open their ears a little bit more to understanding that hey this anecdotal experience of

this one person and oh by The way the anal anecdotal experience of these 30 people I'm seeing in the comments underneath here hey maybe it's worth a shot or maybe it's worth experimenting myself you know maybe rice doesn't bother you but maybe something else does I'm curious uh with the old thing how are you with with histamines because that's the first thing that I think about is like do you have issues with because you know rice isn't high in histamine specifically but it is Historically known to have a high amount of mold with that that

tends to affect the same mass cells that like a histamine issue would bring up so like cats mold avocados Tomatoes like how are you with the foods that are high in histamines I don't seem to have problems I mean I've eaten fermented foods um without problems that's true yeah I do a lot of fermented foods I don't seem to be that sensitive to histamines histamine sensitivity is an interesting Thing my suspicion which is just my clinical suspicion is that histamine sensitivity for a lot of people begins and ends in the gut and it's kind of

an indicator that there's disbiosis the wrong type of bacteria it's an underlying gut issue yeah and like so many things limitation of histamine containing foods can help while you address the gut issue yeah yeah yeah that makes sense I mean what is it what Is it Dao is the uh diamin oxidase in the gut right so yes yeah and copper dependent enzyme yeah some people find benefits from supplementing with Dao kidney has a lot of Dao thymus actually I believe has a significant amount of Dao so some certain organs can help with histamine sensitivity while

people are addressing underlying gut issues so would you have said if you were comparing uh that the white rice to the white potatoes was one a worse impact Than the other it was just like apples and oranges right I didn't feel I didn't feel good on either of them yeah and pretty immediate like yeah pretty immediate pretty immediate and I just I couldn't believe it with rice I just thought no maybe I'm just having an off day but it was consistent and then I get rid of it and I just feel more clear so that's

a valuable that's just a valuable data point and you know some people will say data is better than feelings but Like look an anecdote that's data you know that's a case study that's an N of one that I'm going to share that's data yeah what what is our what is our concept of data I think that there's I think this myopic perspective that if there's not a double blind randomized control you know with a study with a placebo you can't talk about it that's that's silly yeah well it's it goes too far the other direction

right then myopic you're myopic this way if you're Not willing to look at the literature yeah and your myopic this way if you'll only willing to look at the literat evidence limited yeah right so it's and a lot of things that can be scary when you're looking at evidence is like there's those are often times a lagging kpi like it's just they're real things and we should definitely take it to heart but a lot of times that's five years too late right so you have to be able to be your own Advocate and test For

yourself but speaking of like okay so rice making you feel crudy whatever I I I had a question last time that I meant to ask and that was I mean have you ever encountered any particular fruits that you don't feel good when you eat I'm trying to think um I was telling you before we came into the podcast that this is just completely my anecdotal experience maybe eating dates in the past worsened like low back stiffness For me I generally have have lots of flexibility in my back people have seen me move sometimes we put

content on the stories or something in my movement I love deep squatting I like Mobility stuff so when my low back gets tight and I feel it when I'm surfing I like being able to put my butt as close to the ground in a deep squat that I possibly can so maybe dates one time triggered some stiffness in my back but I haven't repeated it so I don't eat a lot of Dates but I think people are great with them most of the fruits I eat don't bother me I'm pretty good with most all the

fruit although I will say that mentioned heavy metals a little earlier not really your question but raisins can have significant levels of heavy metals and some of the dried fruits can have significant levels of mold toxins I don't do dried fruits I get everything fresh in Costa Rica and I make juice out of it or eat it have you heard of fgf21 Before no okay so fgf21 it's a uh it's a I think it's a receptor protein but it's it's interesting there's I just did a video on it and they're looking at sucrose right like

sucrose actually drives up this fgf21 which in a healthy person when fgf 21 is elevated it elevates essentially elevates in the brain and it essentially signals additional blood flow to I can't remember which region of the brain but basically it creates the self-governing Thing where a healthy person will not overeat sugar and there's actually this kind of increase in Metabolic Effect and in rodents of course where Brown fat is much more prevalent like you can see the impact on Brown fat in rodents much more than you can in humans obviously but in in rodents when

fgf21 is elevated it's like the amount of active Brown fat is significantly higher my point in saying this in obese people or overweight people didn't happen there was like a Feedback loop where if they were to eat sugar sure it didn't it did increase fgf21 but it didn't have the same impact it actually did not increase blood flow to the specific region of the brain that would allow them to sort of control themselves so in essence like a healthy it seems as though a healthy metabolically functioning person can eat quite a bit of sugar and

self-regulate like their body will say no we're done or it's time to move like this sugar you Know you've ingested the sugar whereas someone that's maybe metabolically unhealthy is not going to be in the same situation they might just continue to over overeat curious your take on that because like with you adding three 400 sometimes even more grams of carbohydrates per day do you think that someone needs to get thems on track before they could ever do that like you spent years doing a carnivore diet years before that doing paleo keto to sort of Correct

some of these issues you had maybe any metabolic dysfunction that may have been a result of autoimmune conditions and whatnot do you think if you had have introduced 3 or 400 grams of carbohydrates at that time ate the way that you're eating now things would have been okay or do you think going keto carnivore for a period of time sort of reset you unbroke your metabolism so you can handle what you handle now interesting it's a good question for me I don't think I've ever been terribly metabolically unhealthy I love checking fasting insulin but I've

only been checking it for probably 3 or 4 years I don't have fasting insulin levels since you know from 10 15 years ago but I've never been terribly overweight my suspicion is that I've always had a six-pack my suspicion is that metabolically my cellular energy production at the level of the mitochondria and the electron transport Chain has always been pretty good which I think is where metabolic dysfunction really that's where it happens it's in the mitochondrial electron transport chain and then it's manifested elsewhere so this is an interesting question because I think often when we're

talking Health we we in some ways it's instructive to divide it into two groups of people are we talking to healthy people and saying you're healthy don't fear fruit honey right carbohydrates From rice if you tolerate don't fear those things or are we talking to people who are diabetic as a model or overweight which is probably on the spectrum of pre-diabetes and saying how do we get you better so I think it we' start with the first group metabolically healthy I would definitely think you can eat carbohydrates and in proportion probably to the amount of

activity you do I'm not surfing three hours a day two hours a day when I'm here in Los Angeles Right now so I'm not eating 400 grams of carbohydrates I'm still eating a significant amount like at least 200 maybe 300 but I'm not eating 350 or what I probably do in Costa Rica most of the time and it's based on my activity if I have a hard workout at the gym or I'm you know walking a bunch or doing something else I went bouldering the other day at a Climbing gym for an hour and a

half maybe I will want to eat more carbohydrates so it's based on activity Level sometimes people hear me me say that right and from our last conversation you know you made the thumbnail of me like I'm eating so much sugar thumbnail of me like Mech veins are popping out I love you man you make me look bad and you know uh but it's good people pay attention hopefully because it's interesting off the bat but not everyone needs to eat 400 grams of carbohydrates a day you know if you're not come to Costa Rica and surf

with me For three hours and you'll understand that like hey give me another banana man like I feel good with this and and so like that's where we are with people that are metabolically healthy diabetes overweight let's just clarify this position if you look at the medical literature I don't see any evidence that carbohydrates makes people metabolically unwell and I will respectfully debate anyone in the ketogenic Community about that so to say that carbohydrates cause Insulin resistance no I don't see that in the literature at all it doesn't happen fruit apples bananas oranges milk honey

they don't make people obese and diabetic however once you are broken and I believe honest L that inappropriate consumption of seed oils and probably processed foods in general with a number of ingredients that kind of break metabolism and cause increased levels of lipopolysaccharide from the gut to Transit into the human body this is at The that that's at the epicenter of what's causing with metabolic dysfunction so it's breaking the mitochondria at the level of the membrane because you're eating excess linolic acid which accumulates in the mitochondrial membrane breaks the electron transport chain and or often

co-occurring you're eating foods that are irritating the gut causing disbiosis leading to over growth the wrong type of bacteria and leading to endotoxemia or Elevated levels of lipopolysaccharide in the human body we know that lipopolysaccharide is horrible for glycolytic oxidative phosphorilation metabolism fruit honey no I don't see it it doesn't happen it doesn't happen that's not what caused it the problem is that if you look at people who are metabolically unwell you're raising your eyebrows we'll see if you disagree with me the problem is that if you look at people who are metabolically unwell they

Don't handle the fruit and honey as well meaning they get more blood sugar spikes and so yeah they should probably limit those things completely eliminating those things I think is a bad idea and I'm not saying a diabetic person needs to eat honey but there is at there are at least one or two randomized control trials with up to 150 grams of honey per day in diabetics showing improved insulin H and all that's pretty interesting Stu yeah improved insulin Sensitivity improved insulin sensitivity now blood sugar goes up a little bit but not much but I

don't think a diabetic is going to you know be have a have a horrible time if they have one tablespoon of honey per day my concern is that it's it's good for people to limit carbohydrates to some extent when they are metabolically unwell but I think if you limit them too much and you're not paying attention to things like a full thyroid panel cortisol Glucagon epinephrine you'll see the stress hormone start to go up on the other side right and this is my learning from my experiences my Evolution my missteps that I share with people

like for me going strict carnivore after a year and a half that was probably the worst I've been metabolically because I was really not doing that good my electrolytes were kind of messed up I'm not having an insulin bump when I eat which helps you hold on to electrolytes Sodium potassium chloride calcium magnesium whatever and so when I added back carbohydrates I felt much better My fasting blood sugar is lower eating 300 grams of carbohydrates right My fasting blood sugar is lower than it was on Carnivore My fasting insulin is the same or lower yeah

so this is something to consider your overweight and obese which is a lot of people fruit didn't get you there yeah limiting it somewhat is not the Worst idea but fruit didn't get you there fruit didn't cause it if you just tell people that carbohydrates are what caused diabetes because you misinterpret the literature and the physiology is misunderstood then people won't potentially address the other problems fix the gut make sure you're not eating foods that are irritating your gut causing lipop polysaccharide to move into the body and that's probably the hardest thing to address because

it's Not something you can really measure easily and make sure you get rid of the seed oils so that's did I answer your question there I think that there is room for moderation in disease States but understand that those Foods didn't get you there and that's something that's really really important because people need to know how to get back and I as I said if you limit the carbohydrates too much you end up with a stress response and that works in the Other direction you end up people who sometimes do good for a little while

on keto but plateau and then they they end up in this kind of hole they can't get out because they have so much carbohydrate fearing and I've worked with people like this I've seen it they have such bad electrolyte issues they have sleep issues palpitation sex hormones are declining they're clearly stressed from this lack of carbohydrates and they don't know what to do because They realize they got somewhat health healthier by limiting carbohydrates probably cutting junk food out of their diet and they don't want to go back there and then they're they're stuck and I

think that there is a way forward which is a little more um informed by consideration of human physiology and where we've come from as humans yeah it's it's much easier to tell someone that their insulin resistance or that their reason for being metabolically Dysfunctional is simply because of carbohydrates it's much easier to tell them that because it's a it's a line item like thing that they can say oh my blood sugar's high I eat so much sugar oh my gosh and a lot of us kind of fall victim to that way of thinking and that's

just as myopic as some of the other things we've talked about right right when a broken metabolism is a very complicated thing right I mean in the state Of what we eat typically speaking in the United States it doesn't take long to have an abundance of energy in the body right so take your pick of what ingredient or what macronutrient or what issue is actually at hand right so is it saturated fat because you're in a state of overnutrition very well could be because you're in a state of overnutrition along with Hyper palatable leather garbage

I I mean so I do feel personally that saturated fat not in Like someone that is eating sort of an animal based or even a carnivore diet is problematic but I do think for a standard American I think it is very much so saturated fat alongside perhaps sugar but definitely not sugar in its own and I don't mean sugar I just mean excess refined carbohydrates in general in tandem with saturated fat and energy abundance along with that and I'm not someone that is a deep calories in calories out thinker like I obviously Know that there's

more going on than just that but I think we've got a lot of different pieces going on that are skewing exceptionally stronger the more of a state of overnutrition and I don't know inactivity we're in I disagree with you about the saturated fat um and I I think that I would it differently I think having energy is different than having fuel that's not converted to energy so this is a really interesting this is a really important distinction In the way that we talk about these things I don't think humans get sick because we have excess

energy if you are able to ingest macronutrients protein fat and carbohydrates most of the protein goes to molecular building blocks some of it gets uh oxidized the fat and the carbohydrates mostly become energy some of it may get stored but if you can move those macr utri through the electron transfer chain so that's fuel right being made into energy energy in The form of ATP at the end of the electron transport chain so humans don't get obese because they have excess energy they get obese because they're not making energy out of fuel that's a good

point so that's really important to know that if you can move fuel through the electron transport chain that's great in fact what we see is that that mean that's a signal of abundance to the human body and a lot of times in that case if you can do that and that is in Someone who has is metabolically healthy and we talked a little about why someone becomes broken in the first place but we can rehash that if you're metabolically healthy and you can move fuel into energy a lot of times more fuel equals more energy

equals more thyroid hormone equals more sex hormones and there is you have to go extremely high to get to overnutrition and overeating this is why I don't like these ideas or I sort of bristle at these ideas of energy balance Because energy balance is different for every person depending on your metabolic health and if you can and I'll reiterate that point if you can move fuel into energy through the mitochondrial electron chain more fuel equals more energy equals better life that's really cool so the problem is not excess fuel the problem is you can't make

it into energy which is right at the level of energy production that doesn't get talked about Enough but what comes first the chicken or the egg on that like right because if someone is in order to be efficient at creating energy you kind of have to get moving first right so like what actually came first is it poor nutrition is it inactivity like cuz something in that basic balance has to be broken first right if something is inactive and not moving then you can't just force more even good quality food on it and hope that

it's going to cram in through this Little funnel and spit out energy right you got to get the wheels in motion first I would say it's poor nutrition okay and this is what I'll say is that when you get things working you want to move so I think a lot of times people they're dragging themselves to the gym you and I understand this we have to work out I have to move and if I can't I I like I'm not drag I have to go to a gym if I'm in Los Angeles because I want

Tove I know that I feel better if you Are someone that just doesn't want to go to the gym then you're not making energy properly and it's coming from poor nutrition and I think yes it's good for our discipline as humans to say if you don't want to go to a gym still go to the gym and move and maybe you can apply that discipline to the food choices you make but I think if we give people a chicken or the egg scenario and so that they understand what to focus on yes moving is great

dietary choices are King For me and that's what I would say to people before you do anything change the quality of your food and I believe that if you change the quality of your food you will want to move and that is the magic because I hear people talking about this and they say exercise is the best thing for longevity and I think no food quality is is is the foundation of this this house we're building and if you don't improve food quality it's going to affect your mental health your Sleep your hormones your micronutrient

status your production and you're not going to want to move so I think the ideal situation here is if you don't fix energy production then it's harder and if you do fix energy production it will be enjoyable to move you'll want to go for a walk you'll want to move and you'll you'll get up and you'll do it so that's what's key because I think that if we give people all these targets they get confused what do I do right so my Perspective is focus on food quality and I'll read I'll just say this again

so people understand I believe that the two or three key things that break energy production right you have ma macronutrients moving them through the electron transport chain in the mitochondria it all happens there our excess linolic acid from seed oils and lipopolysaccharide from a disordered gut and I'll just talk about each of those briefly so people really understand what They do seed oils are corn canola safflower sunflower soybean grape seed Etc evolutionarily inconsistent amounts of linolic acid are being consumed by humans today things we never would have had that lenic acid and other polyr fats

get stuck in our membranes because we don't metabolize them as humans easily some we do those specifically we don't metabolize we don't get rid of them and that there's evidence I mean there's again you can't do randomized control Trials on this you have to look at cell culture you have to look at inv vitro studies but the more polyan citrated fats there are in the mitochondrial membrane the more proton leak there is across the inner mitochondrial space and the Matrix and that is what that gradient is our battery that is our Cellular battery and if

you break that battery if you break that difference in in charge you don't make energy as well and we know that the changing stru of The mitochondrial membrane the criste the folds in the mitochondrial membrane get broken when we have excess amounts of these fatty acids and so putting Foods in our body that we have not had access to for hundreds of thousands of years as humans this is a very compelling hypothesis that I think is supported by the randomized control trials looking at polyant fats that breaks energy metabolism lip polysaccharide what foods do we

eat that Damage the gut those are the foods that cause overgrowth predominantly of gram negative bacteria but there are other types of lipopolysaccharides um even from Grand positive bacteria but overgrowth of the wrong type of bacteria leads to LPS in the human body and those studies are so clear it's just so just crystal clear that when you have a messed up gut your energy metabolis metabolism is going to be broken and then another one is Glyphosate which also appears to disorder mitochondrial respiration in vitro because we can't these are hard to do rcts so some

people will poo poo mechanistic studies but that's where we get the hypothesis from we have to do these mechanistic studies to understand understand these things and I'll just make one comment about LPS and saturated fat if you look at LPS and saturated fat I think this has been massively misunderstood people will say oh well if You eat more saturated fat the LPS moves across your gut more but it moves across your gut more because it's being taken in saturated fat lipid rafts to the liver to be detoxified so saturated fat is protective against LPS and

mono and polyunsaturated fats are harmful with regard to lip polysaccharide but if you really look at literature carefully LPS you are protected against that by saturated fat so I would say the the beginning part fix your diet and then You will want to move because you have to make the fuel into energy interesting I mean I pretty much agree with that I mean there's nothing that I do think that if if you were to take a a baby from inception from the time that it's born right from the day that it's born okay you could

control for maybe never giving that baby a seed oil right yeah but Mom can't eat seed oils either yeah go the breast milk got that what would this baby or hypothetical kid eat To not ultimately end up in serious disbiosis with LPS leaking in you know it's like how could we possibly control that I'm just kind of curious because like I'm trying to think like okay like if we were to put a human in this kind of situation and see if this human could become OB Beese okay let's say you got all the cards stacked

against this human let's say any potential polymorphism any like potential genetic I say potential because even that is still Uncharted Territory if we knew it was genetic issue we'd probably have it solved right now right so it's let's just say that all the cards are stacked against this person bad genetics uh Mom and Dad metabolic syndrome syrx whatever kids born you think that you could course correct that kid's lifestyle through life by never letting them have a seed oil or in limited amounts but I don't know what you would do to control for LPS but

you think if you could that that Kid would have an entirely different look at life absolutely absolutely yeah genetics are are predisposition but they don't manifest yeah well it's hard to quantify anything with that anyway it is difficult it is difficult so lipopolysaccharide is interesting I think that um basically eating higher quality foods either plant or animal origin is how you limit LPS and I think that the research here is just beginning To sort of elucidate some of these things but this is why I worry about things like kerogen and this sulfated polysaccharide from algae

that looks really inflammatory in most animal models in the gut and there's all sorts of additives and and look if people avoid Ultra processed foods and we all know what these things are it's all the fast food out there with ingredients you can't pronounce it's any ingredient you can't pronounce on a label and it's it's These Ultra processed foods this these are the main issues with lipop polysaccharide in humans and that is also causing issues in humans and so in in the whole body systemically so I think that you could do that fairly easily now

you bring up a fair point most humans are never going to be the boy or girl in the bubble and we don't want them to be we need to live our lives but I think it's also every human has unique genetic susceptibilities some Of us are more susceptible to certain things than others and we just have to make individual decisions I'm more susceptible to this I have more leeway with this some people can eat these foods and be okay but I want people to know that if they're suffering from metabolic dysfunction diabetes and the Continuum

here is long and there are many manifestations of this there is a way out I mean I was just looking at the aha so the American Heart Association Statistics in 2024 the AHA is now admitting that over 150 million Americans are either Di itic unknown diabetic pre-diabetes like hund like more than like half of our population the AHA is saying now it's metabolically dysfunctional that's crazy that the AHA admits that because some of the studies I've seen suggest 88% or 93% of the population has some indication of suddenly being on this slide toward metabolic dysfunction

and That to me is like yeah most people in our society eat foods that are pushing them in that way at the level of the mitochondria and at the level of the gut contributing to that mitochondrial dysfunction so it's pretty tricky but it's crazy to me that the AHA is showing over 150 million Americans are there and then we wonder why studies get skewed right where's the where's the control group of healthy people for sure yeah and I you know I just recorded something Today because I was talking about uh the you know contained sort

of uh energy expenditure model have you have you seen that like where constrained constrained P model yeah it's uh so when I was looking at that I mean it was just really mindboggling for me and it kind of echo of the stuff that you were saying right it's like along with some of the other literature we've seen it starts raising questions right okay if I'm obviously an exercise fanatic but so Does that potentially mean that when I'm exercising a lot my body's sort of downregulating how much energy I am expending when I'm just at rest

or hanging out the rest of my day even if it's completely unconscious to me like I'm just I'm doing less of this you know and I don't realize it and that's where certain Wheels do get turning in my head starting to doubt some beliefs that are out there that are that are really loud beliefs you know where I Still believe calories have a place I'm not a calorie denier I'm making that clear but I I also look at this and I say well it seems as though we have a little bit of a set kind

of margin that our body wants us to be in and it seems to make sense like if we exercise a lot in a I'm going to call it an unnatural way because if I go out and I squat 315 for reps or something that that's unnatural right I'm going to call that unnatural my body is going to say well We're going to try to conserve the rest of the day because that was a little bit unusual Thomas and we don't want to make we want to make sure you don't die right um which for then

the way that I look at that I perceive that as well shoot I guess nutrient quality matters then because if it's going to constrain me to a certain amount of calories that may or may not have a you know 2 or 3,000 calorie margin you know who knows that's that's really not that many calories in The grand scheme of things right like it is but it's not like even if that is the Delta then makes me believe that wow okay the quality of my protein and what I can actually assimilate the effectiveness of my gut

and ability to absorb and the ability to hydrate insulin all these things become really important so and there's not even literature to talk about that right now it's just we have to kind of Blue Sky territory put things together and the Constrainted energy Theory or model that's not something that people call quackery that's something that is fairly legit it's legit yeah and I think that the benefits of exercise are Beyond calorie exertion right exercise for weight loss doesn't work real well exercise for mental health for brain derived neurotropic Factor this is we need to exercise

there's no question humans are better when we move exercise is not how we lose weight it's how we Become mentally healthy you know humans that are vital and that sleep well and have mental Clarity that's why we exercise because yeah but we don't exercise to lose weight so you see a lot of people in the gym trying to lose weight and it's like great the the discipline that you're exercising here when you're exercising right the discipline that you are manifesting when you're exercising will translate into all other areas of your life and you're Going to

feel better and your brain exercise is more for your brain than it is for your belly yeah right than it is for your butt and you know how you look there and yes you can build muscles which will then have a metabolic rate at rest for you but the constrainted energy model is compelling and it's interesting to say that if you do intensive exercise you are going to be more chill the rest of the day and it says okay there is more to it than calories in calories out There are laws of thermodynamics but what

gets left out of the equ equation and I'm glad you bring this up is food quality and I've always said okay look the asterisk in the calories in calories out equation is what are the quality of the food what's the quality of the food you're putting in because that affects how many calories go out it just it does and not all like and the calories inside you have it's so it's so basic it's so Elementary you have protein fat Carbohydrates and we're saying all fats are N9 calories per gam and calories is a poor metric

anyway calories is a heat measure and we're not making heat we're running enzymes you know we're maintaining cell membranes we're we're having we're having cellular processes in the human body if you ate more calories and you became hotter we would all just incinerate right if you I mean look at how obese people are we would just burn ourselves up right so this is This is also like if you look at a package well hopefully people aren't looking at packages but say you look at a block of raw cheese and it says there are 700 calories

in this black of raw cheese that's assuming your body can take that fuel and make it into energy and and someone that's has broken metabolism you can't even get the quote calories out of there so there's the potential to have energy from a food an apple 90 calories right you potential You can get this amount of ATP from the Apple but a lot of us can't even do that and so then it's just it's totally different so how do you say calories in calories out when you don't even know what's in the middle there that

arrow that goes from calories in calories out that's your mondri electron transport chain in some ways and for some people it's big and you can move a lot of calories out for a lot of people you can't even move a lot of calories out And then you then you gain weight a lot of people that are obese don't eat a lot of calories you know they're not eating 4,000 calories a day a lot of people I know that are obese eat 1,500 calories a day and you're telling me calories in calories out come on yeah

the the arrow going from calories into calories out that's the problem and that's the energy production does that make sense no it makes sense for sure yeah and it's and I think once you have this I'm seeing a Lot more people that over the last I'd say 10 years have gone from being it's simply calories in calories out and I say that again bold underscore people that would say it's simply calories in calories out because neither of us are denying thermodynamics here but it's I've seen many of those people soft in in how you can

talk to them about this and I mentioned this in a video today because it was just um a matter of reference like uh I posted something on Instagram uh it was like just a tweet that said uh perhaps moving more and eating less isn't the answer uh and that was just one of like five things and like four of the other things like people totally agreed with and a lot of people were like I agree with all but number one and like well I'm talking about like energy flux first of all I'm talking about like

if you eat more and move more you're going to burn more in general like people have talked about This a million times you know adnasium but basically like eating 2,000 calories and burning 2,000 calories is not the same as eating 5,000 and burning 5,000 like just the pure fluxing capacity of that in the first place but flux is a difficult thing for people to to Really grasp but the reason that I think that's so important so Greg duet had commented on it and Greg Greg and I are friendly so it's not like he was like

well if it's not move more eat less then what is It and I didn't even want to get engaged publicly so I just sent a voice DM afterwards and was explaining I was like no the idea here is that like if people eat more wholesome Food they'll have energy and they'll move more and then they'll move more and they'll eat more and thus begins a beautiful cycle of people having abundant energy and like wanting to eat and like hey what do you know food as who would have ever thought fuel you know not just a

storage system So it's like and he was even he like he is probably the king of calories in calories out and he was like ah I get what you're saying yeah cuz then their their neat will increase and this and that like even the people that are serious calories in calories out people if you position it but you still tell them that your calorie model is still we're not saying it's not true but we're saying that calories as energy versus just uh a heat measurement right and Then of course it makes sense and almost everyone

tends to agree when you explain it to them logically um I mean I get excited about that because I look at like my kids now I know it's a little bit of a different situation with like sugar but like if I give my kids who are pretty darn healthy kids if I give them like sugar in the way of fruit isn't it interesting that they want to go run around the block yeah they want to move they want they just They want to bur burn it and it's kind of funny like they're almost that way

with any food it's not just carbohydrates like I give them Fuel and like they become vibrant and they're just like and when they're like not hungry or when they haven't eaten they're just kind of like yeah and they eat and they're like Dad let's go run around the block go tag play tag like this is interesting like how come most you know people aren't like this you Feed them food and they're like because they can make energy out of it because their energy because the arrow between calories and calories out is broken because their mitochondria

don't work because they eat poor quality food so Greg to said if it's not eat less move more what is it it's eat better food you know it's the food quality matters it's that yeah like and the problem I have with this if it's you know eat less move more is there's no attention to food Quality you you can eat 1,200 calories of Weight Watchers full of seed oils full of things that are going to increase lipopolysaccharide trans you know Transit into your body you're you're basically breaking your energy metabolism with these calories and there's

no attention to that and yeah you could lose weight in the short term but long-term studies what is it 85% of people gain the weight back when they do calorie restriction and a lot of them Gain back more because we have adaptive thermogenesis and if you give your body less fuel your thyroid hormone goes down and your sex hormones go down and your body goes bam Y and your RPMs go down and that's not what you want and there is this magical place that humans can get to where they eat more food and actually become

healthier and burn more energy and your RPMs go up and that's what you really want I tweeted about this I said you are not fat because you Eat too much food you are fat because you eat the wrong foods and I really think that the coraly of that is that if you are eating good quality food and everyone is going to like this is not really something that's rocket science unprocessed Foods unprocessed plant Foods if you eat that you can eat a lot of food and your satiety mechanisms in your brain when you're full are

going to work and they're going to tell you when to stop and then you're done totally and Then you're done it's so easy but nobody wants to admit that a cookie isn't the best way to lose weight but you don't I mean I guess and I don't have a dog in this fight one way or the other and I'm curious your take on it to challenge that a little bit if we are burning hot you know are we essentially dying young right so it's like if we're so is there what's what's the answer to that

yeah we're not machines this is really important I'm actually writing a book About this um because I think that the mainstream idea around longevity is is wrong there's this conflation of humans as machines if your car Burns hot it burns you know you burn it out but we are self-regenerating organisms we're not machines and if you look within species if you look within a species those organisms that have the highest metabolic rates live the longest so it's the opposite in humans if you burn hotter you live longer and you live Better it's completely different but

we we always think I'm a car right I've used that metaphor a lot yeah well was the RPM analogy that put po that in my head right yeah yeah you're a machine if you burn you the candle that burns you know twice as bright Burns half as long except when you're an organism that's self-regenerating how does the body repair itself that takes energy yeah so this is the point that gets left out if you want to fix your DNA if you want to Repair cellular processes if you want to do autophagy that requires energy you

better be making that fuel into energy if your mitochondria don't work you don't have the substrate which is ATP to do the cellular repair processes this is in my mind where a lot of longevity thinkers go wrong they're saying eat less do less fast calorie restrict and we can talk about why there's confusion there but imagine this you need energy your body needs usable energy which is ATP which must be made through the electron transport chain in the majority of cases um and that means you have to have healthy mitochondria you have to be able

to convert that fuel to energy and then you use that energy to do cellular repair we are not machines we are self-regenerating organisms so burn twice as bright Live Twice as long I mean obviously you get the analogy there no I think that's well said man yeah Paul where can everyone find you man Paul saladino MD on all the socials that makes it easy that's it right on thanks brother thanks brother