How to Hack Your Metabolism and Power Your Energy | Michal Mor, Ph.D. | 962 | Dave Asprey

You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey. Today we are going to talk about metabolism and what you can do about it and even how you can measure it. I promised this year that I was going to tell you what you get out of an episode so that you know that it's worth your time to listen to it. Because you have an hour or so we can spend together. So why don't we make it the most valuable hour? There's only almost a thousand other episodes full of all the knowledge of what you might want to know to be a better human being. Turns out having more energy because your metabolism works is fundamental to everything you do. Which is why I focus on metabolism for a long time as one of the big building blocks for just being the kind of person you want to be. And our guest today is Mikal Moore. I think I said that right. She's a co founder of Lumen, which is a company that measures metabolism in a different way. You've. If you've read my books or listen to the show for a while, you know that many years ago in my early 20s, when something wasn't right, my doctor couldn't tell, said maybe you have high blood sugar. So I'd stick little pins in my fingers and gather blood like I was diabetic even though I wasn't, just to see what was up. And I've talked about ketone meters over the years of making cyclo ketosis kind of a thing. But there's other interesting ways of just knowing how your body's doing that fundamental job of turning food and about 30 pounds of air into electricity that powers everything you do. And I wanted to interview someone with a different take on that. So Bachelor of Science in medical laboratory sciences, Master of Science in physiology and a PhD in physiology with an emphasis on cardiac arrhythmia. Someone who's maybe kind of qualified. What do you think, Mikhail? You have an interesting background.

Yes. And the truth is that I started, I mean working on Lumen that at the time, it was almost 10 years ago, I didn't thought about Lumen as a company. But the things that brought me is actually not all those stuff that you just said. The things that brought me is the fact that I compete in Ironman competition. And I don't know if you know, you're familiar with this type of competition.

Tell me more though. I don't think all of our listeners are.

So it's like a long triathlon, right? So you need to compete between 12 to 16 hours. You needed to swim, bike, and then run a marathon. And one of the challenges of that type of competition is usually we. Most of the competitors are doing amazing, the swimming part, the cycling and half of the marathon. But after 20 km, their body is starting not to have enough fuel and they crash and not able to finish.

Yep. Happens a lot.

It happens a lot. So for me, and also for my twin sister, both of us founded Lumen, it was very clear that in order to be able to finish such a competition, we need our body to work efficiently. We need our body to be able to rely on fat as much as we can in order to preserve our carb source, which are pretty limited to the time when we need them. For example, when you are climbing a hill. So all what we did during our training sessions is to improve our metabolism, which means to become more metabolically flexible, being able to use fat more efficiently and carbs. Now, you know. Yes. We are talking on 2011, the term metabolic flexibility and what you can do in order to improve was not a common term.

No. The ability to either burn fat or burn carbs. People thought you had to do both. But the speed of switching is the thing. That's why I went from atkins in the 90s where I could lose half the weight I had to lose to being able to cycle in and out of ketosis to keep the metabolism able to do that. So you don't get maybe insulin resistance, which is a common thing that happens when people go all keto all the time. So how do we know how good you are at burning fat, even though sometimes you're also good at burning glucose, which sort of your body does that really naturally. And I don't think you want to say I never am going to eat a carb again, because everyone I know who does that, with the exception of maybe 20 people who have epilepsy, eventually are realizing that maybe that wasn't good for them. So. But I want to go back to your cardiac arrhythmia research. So you're doing this kind of masochistic exercise and competition regimen, but you studied cardiac arrhythmia. I would have kind of wondered, aren't you causing arrhythmia? There's lots of studies around heart damage from marathons, not to mention ultra marathons. So were you, like, what kind of bad things can I do to my heart just so I can fix it? Like, what's going on here?

It was good to my soul. Yeah, you're right. Maybe not. You know, the best thing I can do to my heart but it was good to my soul.

Now, cardiac arrhythmia, you've done all this endurance exercise, you believe as I do when I've talked with marathoners and Ironman people, it's like you should be running on fat as long as you can. And then I have some sugar in your water bottle and some L glutamine and probably some MCT oil and maybe even some ketones to get the endurance you want. And maybe some ribose for ATP creation. That's kind of my recipe in electrolytes. That's what I would do if someone was going to torture me and make me go do some long cardio thing. What am I missing or what's wrong with that Thinking, if anything, I think.

It'S not about what is wrong or not. I think it's about what is the cause. I mean what enable us to perform at our best. I mean the solution to perform at our best is within us is basically how healthy our metabolism is, how metabolically flexible. So someone that has a healthy metabolism that knows how to switch between using fat and using carbs will perform much better. So during long cycling you will be able to shift and rely on is fat stores which you and I know are almost unlimited sometimes it's very sad that this is the case, but they are unlimited. And we'll be able to pull carbs from glycogen stores for example, or from energy drinks when we are consuming them. So this ability to shift between them, it's not only good for athletic performance, is also improving, you know, our quality of life. It enable us to enjoy life from to our fullest potential. It's about longevity, it's about being able to achieve our goals, not having those mood swings. This is so much more than for improving athletic performance. And I wish that this awareness of how important it is our metabolism to our quality of life, I wish it wouldn't be, you know, just a conversation between you and I. It will be something that everyone will know and not only your listeners that probably are the, the term metabolic health is not new for them.

I, I believe we all need to understand our metabolisms way better than we do. Because if you wake up and you feel like trash in the morning, is it your metabolism isn't working right? Is it toxic? There's, you know, five or six things that could be a, a cause. But if you have low energy, which is a major thing, it's one of the five things that upgrade labs we're working on solving. You don't know why you have low Energy, you just know that you don't have enough. So how do you define metabolism? Because you've studied it both as an endurance athlete and just academically. Right. I say it's air plus food equals electricity, but it's probably a little bit more academic than that. So what's your take on it? How would you tell my mother her metabolism works.

So, metabolism. When we are saying the words metabolism, there are two parameters. One is the amount of energy our body needs in order to sustain itself. Those are the how much calories I'm burning. This is the kilocal coin. But there is another terms, which is what type of fuel our body is using. Meaning what type of fuel? Carbs, fat or some ratio in between I'm using in order to produce that energy. Now a healthy body. Yes. A flexible, that has the metabolically, that is metabolically flexible will wake up on fat burn and will shift to use carb burn after he's eating a carb, a high carb meal, for example, after eating a pasta. So, and today we know that. I mean until today, even not until today. I think until six years ago, the term energy expenditure and all the focus was on how much energy my body is burned, how much calories. This was all the language and we all. And this lead us also to talk about how much calories I consume versus talk about quality food. Calorie. It's not a calorie. Yeah. So today the focus is much more on what type of fuel my body is using because we know this has a high correlation to metabolic health and quality of life. You're laughing.

I'm laughing because I love the way you're saying it. You're very well qualified. And I'm just thinking of like all the Twitter wars and all these like 27 year old people who've never been obese who are telling you calorie deficit, calorie deficit. And I'm just laughing at saying that the type of fuel. Well, it turns out candle wax and coal are high calories and you could eat those. Or uranium is actually one of the highest calorie things on the planet. Right. So you could put all that stuff in your mouth and calories in, calories out. And it's such obvious nonsense to think about calories the way that so many of us have, the way I did when I was obese. And you're sitting here going, well, just in the last 10 years we've shifted to what kind of fuel. Because anyone who has a fireplace knows if you burn garbage in your fireplace, it does bad things. If you burn wood, it works better and different wood does different things. It's so basic. But I just love it that we have this PhD on the show and you're telling us no really, we've shifted. So everyone there who's ever said you can out exercise a potato chip, we have a PhD in physiology telling you that the type of fuel matters. So I'm just laughing because I'm just going to take a clip and we're just going to just play it on loop every time somebody and goes, but Newton's law thermodynamics. What do you say to people like that?

So you made me laugh. You know, you're not the first person that says to me, come on, Michal. But don't speak like a scientist.

No, I'm not saying that at all. You're a scientist, that's awesome. So speak like a scientist. Like tell those little, you know, little calorie people out there telling you to eat like diet soda and whatever, pizza and lose weight. Okay.

How do you, how do you speak to them? I spent hours on hours with a girl named Kyla. She's helping me to bring the messages out there because I'm so sometimes it's very hard to understand me because I'm speaking like a scientist. So don't stop trying to communicate.

Don't stop speaking like a scientist. You're smart, like own that and you can translate this. So this isn't a criticism at all of that. I love that you're a PhD because when the people who are not PhDs are the saying, I studied physiology in sports training. Like yes. And you've never once had an obese client who got healthy because you keep telling them to torture themselves by eating low amounts of sugar and no fat and getting on a treadmill. So what's wrong with that advice? Like science me out of that kind of thinking.

I want to share with you that my PhD was in cardiac arrhythmia. I focus on where we should implement a pacemaker in order to avoid the desynchronization between the electrical puzzle pulse and the mechanical pulse in the heart. And it was, it was amazing study. And the things that what was hard for me is that at the end of this study, which made a lot of noise in the cardiology community, this study was still stuck in the, in the research. I mean it didn't was able to move forward into our day to day, meaning it wasn't move into creating a real impact on, on people. So even today I finished my PhD. I don't know. Almost 13 years ago, even today, doctors are still implemented the pacemaker in the wrong pace. And over time, people that have cardiac arrhythmia, so they solve the problem of the cardiac arrhythmia, but over time they are suffering from heart failure. So when I started Lumen, it was about closing this gap between the science world, the technology, the insight that you can have there, and into the day to day. So this is how everything started.

So Lumen is a fascinating device for figuring out how your metabolism works, but I didn't realize that your motivation for starting it, because, I mean, you're smart enough, you could have done all sorts of things and. But you. You zoned in on it partly because of the endurance athletics. But that frustration, I have a lot of it too, where we have all this knowledge and this huge gap between knowledge and what we do. And it. It actually hurts when you see stupid happening around you because. But we know better. Like, we already learned this. And in your case, you actually wrote the paper and then you see people walking around there. It's like, like driving into posts, like. But the post is clearly labeled. Yeah, I just never bothered to read the sign. So I just drove into it again. So you were frustrated and you knew some stuff. So why did you pick metabolism? Tell me what Lumen does and why you chose that. I didn't realize that your cardiac experience was a motivator, but I see it now. It's the gap between what we know. So what do we know about metabolism? Or what do you know about metabolism that you want other people to know because of Lumen?

So first of all, metabolic measurement. And it's something that's being used. Yes. In hospitals and top clinics since the 60s. It just been stuck in hospitals because every measurement is taking 45 minutes. You need to lie down covered with something like an astronaut. You need a physician to read the data in order to provide you insight. So you understand that this type of measurement is not accessible to any one of us, at least not on a daily basis.

And what you're gathering there is you're looking at what people are breathing out in terms of exhaust gas, because the amount of carbon dioxide and oxygen, and that tells you about your metabolism. And you're looking at the heat put off by the person. Is there maybe the amount of water? What else do you look at in a medical setting like that?

So we are measuring the type of fuel. So cells that use fat release less carbon dioxide versus cells that use carbs for energy. So by Measuring the oxygen consumption and the carbon dioxide release. By analyzing this ratio, we know what type of fuel your body is using. And as I said before, a healthy body is a body that on fasting condition will rely mostly on its fat stores. So Mehravi and I, Meravi, she's my twin sister. So we thought, wow, if we would be able to measure our metabolism on a daily basis, we will be able to understand how metabolically healthy, how metabolically flexible are we. Also, this measurement is extremely sensitive to lifestyle, meaning to nutrition, to sleep, to movement and to our mind.

You mean to biohacking. You might be able to biohack your metabolism. Who would have thought, right? I'm really interested in lumen because it's a quick change for what you did last night is going to affect how you would score on lumen today.

Exactly. So imagine that by understanding what you did yesterday today you're being able to see the real impact on your body. So now instead of waiting, I don't know, I think that today, how today we are measuring different things that we are doing. If today, I don't know, I want to test fasting or I want to test low carb or carb manipulation, whatever. Yeah. So the way I was able to measure it is probably by, I don't know, subjective questions or by standing on a scale if it was, if my intent is to lose weight. So the time that you would be able to see that impact to have this self validation is very far away. And until you're going to have this self validation, you're all the time going to feel like you are in the dark. Am I doing the right things? Is that working for me? Maybe I should do more, maybe I should do less. I mean, it's very hard to keep motivated like that. And it's very hard to understand what is working for you in order to make smarter decision. So by measuring your metabolism by a daily basis, you actually being able to see what is the impact of your sleep, whether you're having enough sleep, maybe you're having your last meal too late at night and this is what holding your body from shift into fat burn. Or maybe you know, you're just in stress, you're doing everything amazing. But you know, our day to day is busy and sometimes we need a bit to relax because we have too much cortisol in our body. This is by the way, one of our main problem today.

So that's true. Stress is a, is a major thing. I've. I've been so fascinated with mitochondrial function, which is what drives me. I know it's. It's like for maybe since the late 90s when we first really started learning about them, because I realized I had a problem with energy. I was just tired all the time, brain fog, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue. And I did fix my metabolism. And I mentioned, you know, showing up at my doctor with like a hand drawn graph of my blood sugar from, from back then from pricking my fingers, which sucked. And then I got into it a few years ago, doing it again for ketone levels, right? So then I could say, all right, what's my blood sugar look like? How many ketones am I making? How many ketones are present? What can I do with MCT oil versus other kinds of ketones versus fasting versus caffeine, which doubles ketone protection, all that kind of stuff. And I'm just gonna say I'm kind of tired of sticking stuff in my fingers all the time. In fact, I sort of quit doing it and I switched to more heart rate variability. Okay, what's my, you know, what's my readiness score or my heart rate variability like? My readiness score this morning was 94. It was the highest it's actually been ever that I can think of, which is cool. And I think that was as a result of light therapy and nitric oxide. I don't really know. Tell me why lumen is useful compared to heart rate variability. And I know why it's better than sticking stuff in my fingers because that hurts. But why does lumen beat heart rate variability as something that I should do every day for my metabolism.

So I don't know. You might not gonna like my answer.

But you only said it.

I don't think it's about who is better than who. I'm fine with that. Yes. And you know, I don't think it's okay. So metabolic measurement, this is the only thing that we should do. I think that eventually, and this is where lumen is going, it's all about integration. And by having this holistic, you know, picture of our body, if it's HRV and resting heart rate and even continuous blood glucose and metabolic measurement, all of these together would enable us to better understand how our body is working and guiding us towards better nutrition and lifestyle choices. So it's not about one or the other, it's about all of us. All those trackers in the world will combine together. We do a joint forces, creating a hub of data and enable us, yes, the consumer at the end, enjoy the values of everything, integrate. So I think we should go on integration, everyone.

You are such a good scientist. I agree. I want all the data from all of us put into an AI engine so we can actually figure out what works. In fact, one of my companies is working on that to get as much data as we can to understand if this is your goal and this is you, what's the fastest path to that goal. That's what Upgrade Labs is doing as like in a facility. But here's the question. Someone's listening to the show, they're saying, I am thinking about getting a sleep tracker that may include heart rate variability. And I'm thinking about tracking my metabolism with Lumen. How do I know which one to buy first? Tell me. I agree they're both useful and I think most people will want both. But what does Lumen do that heart rate variability doesn't do?

So metabolic measurement is, think about it like the end of the funnel, right? It's being affected by your hrv, your resting heart rate, your nutrition, your movement, by everything. It's an aggregation. It's like everything, all your lifestyle is being aggregate into one result, which is your metabolic measurement. So if I were that person that can decide what to buy, I would choose to measure the top of the funnel. So having a measurement that is an aggregation of everything and starting to understand, making sure that this measurement is going on the right trend and doing my self analysis to understand what is working for me better. So having that metabolic measurement on the right track for better metabolic health. So I would go and buy Lumen. Otherwise it was weird for me to be here.

Well, of course you believe in Lumen, which is why you started the company.

I believe in metabolic health.

You believe in metabolic health. So compare and contrast it. So you've got an audience here. There's a bunch of people who are saying, I just wanted to lose weight and upgrade myself, so I'm just learning. And then you also have a set of people who are in my mentorship group who go to the biohacking conference. By the way, guys, biohackingconference.com, september 15th through 17th, Beverly Hills. It's going to be amazing. Oh, is Lumen going to have a booth there? I think you guys are, aren't you?

You know, Wow. I don't know.

I know I would. Someone from your team is going to be there, but we'll find out.

I would ask Kyla.

Okay, good. Good deal. So what? So that group though, they're going to say, look, I can prick my fingers and maybe I'm even willing to do it. And I can get my tracking of this. So okay, someone who's willing to prick their finger and get ketones in the morning, what is lumen telling me that I don't get from those other measures?

So for the biohackers and we have many of them, so they use lumen in order to optimize different things. For example, they want to optimizing their fasting duration. And one of the problem with fasting is that fasting is a great tool, but you need to manage it. So if you are pushing your body too much into the frost, your body will respond with a stress response will actually do exactly the opposite. So during the fast your body started to shift into fat burn. And then if there is a moment when you are pushing your body for too much, so your body will start to shift back into carbo burn. So biohackers that using lumen are measuring their metabolic fuel during the fast and they want to optimize it. They want to find this sweet point when their body is now starting to shift back into carbs. And then they know, okay, this is the right time to end my fast. So this is one scenario also we have biohackers that use lumen in order to optimizing their workout. So they're taking a measurement before and after the workout. They want to see their body shift from using carbs to using fat. And some of them is also use lumen in order to know whether they have enough fuel for intense workout or strength workout. In those workouts, do they want to have enough carbs? So they take a measurement before they work out. And if they see that their body is using mainly mainly fat. So I don't know, they take a banana or something in order to fuel themselves. So those are like different scenario in which biohackers use lumen. By the way, the fasting we have an amazing insight. We saw lumen is like we have more than 6 million metabolic measurement within context. And I think this you will find it very interesting. We see that women that are obese, their body starting to shift back from using fat to using carbs after 12 hours of fasting. So for them it's better not to over the 12 hours. And for women that are overweight they need 14. And for women that are normal weight, it's not an issue. I can shift into fat burn after 10 hours and after 12 hours and I can also fast 16 hours. So it's super personal.

So this is why the title of my book on fasting was called Fast this way. Because I got tired of people saying, what's the right length of fast? Like, you can't say everyone should fast 18 hours. And there's a study out of Australia that showed in funny enough, overweight middle aged women in particular, that 12 hour fasts three days a week shifted their metabolism towards ketosis. And that was the minimum effect of fasting. And the problem is over fasting is more of a problem in women because it hits women before it hits men. And so there's a bunch of stuff in the book about that. But I wish I would have known a little bit more about lumen to include this ratio in it. Because if you wanted to be precise, to know, am I over fasting? Like, as a woman you don't over fast because it actually harms weight loss. And as a guy it also harms weight loss. And in both of them it breaks your hormones right after it starts to mess with your weight loss. So you're like, yeah, fasting is great, I'll do more. And then you hit a wall and you wonder why. So it's like a powerful scalpel, It's a tool you get to use. So, okay, now let's say that someone buys a lumen and now they want to know how to use it. With fasting. Is the app gonna guide them through that? Like, how would you even know to do this?

So there is a lumen after you're taking your the usability with lumen. Yes, that every day you wake up and you take a morning measurement. And based on your metabolic measurement, lumen provide you with what you should. What is your nutrition for that day? And we also have the ability to pull different strategy, for example, to pull fasting as a strategy. And then they can log their fasting and they can take a measurement and log the amount of hours that they fast and is going to save in the lumen data in the metab, whatever. And they can actually track after their metabolic fuel during an overnight during the fast.

Okay, so then you're fasting, you do it before you go to bed, but you wake up and it's going to give you a lumen score. And then what do you do with that in terms of your fast? Does that tell you fast for two more hours? It fast four more hours. How do I actually use this for fasting?

So currently not lumen not recommended to you to continue your fast. This one is like a tool for biohackers so they can track it on their own. So at the moment we are not guiding you to do more fast. Or less fast in overall. Yes. The recommendation with Lumen, we needed to do a better guidance. Right. Because currently we are very focused on nutrition. But as I just said, and you know, eventually it's not only our nutrition that impact our metabolism. It's about also about our sleep and our movement and our mind. And currently Lumen is guiding you only towards nutrition plan and providing another different tools that you can manage your workout and your fasting on your own. But this is something that we are now going to change and we are looking everything. It's a balance. So based on your nutrition, for example, if you ate too much. Yes. I can suggest to you to prolong your fast or to increase the amount of steps.

So we're getting there is the basic answer. But the short algorithms are things that you talk about even in the literature with, with Lumen. And it's. It's kind of cool. You have 20 million metabolism measurements from Lumen so far, which is an enormous data set to be able to figure out what's going on. And the validation that you have. Earlier you mentioned this ratio of how much oxygen are you basically are you using and how much CO2 is it producing? Use a lot of oxygen, don't produce a lot of CO2. You're burning fat, you use a lot of oxygen. Use and produce a lot of CO2, you're burning carbs. And it's kind of like that. And in metabolism research that's called rer. Right. Did I define respiratory? What's the E stand for?

Respiratory exchange ratio.

Thank you. Respiratory exchange ratio.

You're welcome.

Did I define that well enough or am I missing a piece there?

No, you did good. The way that Lumen is able to take a technology. Yes. That take 45 minutes in the size of a table and shrink it into a portable device and into single measurement is basically by very simple principle. Yes. As I said, when our body use carbs for fuel, they release more carbon dioxide, and when they use fat, they release less. But if I will measure the carbon dioxide in a normal breath, I will not see any changes in the carbon dioxide, because when my body release more carbon dioxide, the way to get rid of that carbon dioxide is by increase my ventilation. So the Luhmann maneuver, it's not a normal breath. You need to inhale a specific amount of air. You need to hold your breath for 10 seconds, which is exactly the time in which the carbon dioxide in the blood will reach to equilibrium with the air in your lungs. And then we asked the users to exhale and then the CO2 in your exhale breath is actually in correlation to what is happening in your blood. And by having that maneuver, we was able to hack the measurement and being able to measure it with a single measurement in a single breath versus 45 minutes off.

Wow.

Yeah, it's very cool.

Have you completely pissed off all the people who make those expensive hospital 45 minutes pieces of equipment? Are they heavy? Because you have the study from San Francisco State University that says that your device, the lumen device, has similar results to the hospital grade stuff. It seems like you've just completely disrupted a big market because here's a very affordable handheld lumen. Just do that and it's going to give us the same data.

So the truth is that many of academic institutes are using Lumen for their own studies. So Mehravi and I are extremely passionate about research. So we created like a science mode for those academy and researchers that interested in better understand metabolism. So they use Lumen as a measurement tool and they provide many studies if it's about workout women that work out on fasting versus before after a big meal and they see the impact or about fast and slow carbohydrate on metabolic health. So they're using it for their own study. And Mehravi and I enjoy from increase or increase the understanding of metabolism in the world. So this is how we want to give back to the research community. So for us it's extremely exciting for them using lumen.

This really is something that's new in the world of biohacking. It's different than measuring ketones or glucose or hrv. So it's a fundamental signal that it's really important and it changes on a regular basis like you said. And most people don't know this, but yes, you should wake up in very mild ketosis and you can increase that ketosis dramatically. There's this weird thing called caffeine that'll do it and another thing called MCT oil. And I used to measure with a finger stick that I could go from eating carbs at dinner like sushi with rice, so definite carbs and then waking up and my ketones are at 0.1. And then I drink magically coffee with butter and MCT oil and my ketones are at 0.6, which is the entrance to ketosis. Now if I woke up and I breathed in lumen, it would've said because I had carbs the night before that I was still burning mostly carbs. And it would've shown that I had a higher amount of carbon dioxide and Then after I chugged the coffee and the MCT and waited till my ketones went up with all the blood, then the lumen would have shown at that point when my ketones were up, that suddenly I was burning less carbon dioxide to make energy. Am I saying this right?

Yes. I have to share with you a funny story about the mct.

Okay.

When Mehravi and I started and we built the first prototype of lumen, we need to validate it. It was important for us to say that what we are measuring is equal. The same as you would take the same measurement under the gold standard. This indirect calorimetry. This is the name of the gold standard that is used in order to measure metabolism. So how we can do that, we needed volunteer to take a measurement to the prototype of lumen and to take then a measurement into the gold standard. And we wanted to compare between them. But a single measurement in one metabolic state was not enough for us. We needed in fasting condition and we need after consuming carbs. And we needed. We needed everyone to use fat as much as possible. So we asked them, we asked them to drink MCT in order to see their body shift into fat. But I got wrong with the doses.

Oh, no, you got disaster pans, didn't you?

So instead, you know, I don't know, teaspoon, it was, I don't know, I gave them like 10 tablespoon and they had like, everyone has need to go to the vessel.

10 tablespoons, that's like feet up on the stall screaming kind of zone. Oh, my God.

And until today they remember it. You've told me to drink MCT because you needed to validate the lumen. It was funny.

Wow. So you probably also didn't have the research. There actually wasn't research when I created the C8MCT and I said, guys, you need to use this because it works better. Because you could feel it work better. And then a while later, Cunain down at UC San Diego came out with a study showing C8 was far more ketogenic. But what I knew was that C8 was far less. I'm going to run to the bathroom than normal MCT oil. So I switched to that because at the very first biohacking conference, it was a hundred people at a bar in San Francisco and we didn't have. I didn't make MCT oil. So we were using kind of street grade stuff that had a lot of impurities that would make it even worse. So there was only two bathrooms at the bar and there's A hundred people there drinking a ton of bulletproof coffee, and we had a very similar problem to what's happening there. So warning to everyone. Number one, MCT oil really will put you in ketosis. Put you in fat mode. Yes. Lumen proved this.

I think it's well validated.

Yeah. There's an upper limit. So it was validated through pain. I did not know that till this interview, but I love it. Well, let me ask you this then. As an expert in metabolism, when you have some MCT oil during a fast, does your metabolism still look like you're fasting?

Yes, but. But it's shifted.

Make one of those fasting apps. Keep doing videos with this young guy who doesn't know what he's talking about, saying that if you have fat during a fast, it has calories, therefore, it breaks a fast. I guess, metabolically, the type of fat and the amount of fat might change things.

But Lumen measures your metabolic fuel. Yes. So when you are consuming the mct, so your body will use. Yes. Those free fatty acid in order to produce energy. So we want. We won't know if you are now using body fat in order to produce energy or the fat from the mct. So it's very important to. To mention it.

I. I totally love it. You won't know metabolically. I'm not sure that it matters if you're looking for fasting metabolism, where MTOR is suppressed and insulin is either suppressed or at least didn't rise, which are the hallmarks of fasting. So I've gone through so many people saying, but there was a calorie.

And so what is gonna leave?

Well, like I said, you could take some uranium during a fast, you'd still be fasting. It wouldn't be good for you. But there were calories in there. So it's like, what did the calorie do to your metabolism? And what does fasting look like metabolically? And it looks like burning fat.

So, yeah, I mean, you know, it's all about improving your mitochondria functionality. Yes. So now. Okay, your mitochondria is now practicing in using fat for fuel. This is a good thing.

Yes. So I'm. I'm. I'm all over that. And I wish that we could remove suffering from fasting, because when people are first starting to fast, it can be really hard to get into fat burning mode. So you feel like crap for a while, or you could have a little MCT oil and then be in fat burning mode right away as your body adapts. And then what do you know fasting without suffering? And the fact is, if you wake up and you're like, oh, I feel like garbage this morning and you just don't know why, maybe you just stopped having carbs for the first time ever the night before. When you use your lumen, what's it going to show? Because you're not yet switched into fat burning mode. You haven't had coffee, you haven't had mcts, so are you just going to be having less oxygen and less CO2?

So someone that is not yet practice on using fat for fuel. So it's someone that is metabolically less flexible. It's like you will be stuck in the middle. So it's not. You're going to see that you are using 50% of carbs and 50% of fat. Of fat. So gradually, when we are getting better, meaning when our metabolism has become flexible and we are gradually pushing our body to be able to use more fat for fuel, so you will be able to wake up on fat burn. So it's like, right, because metabolic flexibility or metabolic health is. It's a range. It's not whether you have it or whether you don't. So in the left side, yeah, it's going to be someone that is extremely not flexible. Those type of people even might have, are pre diabetic, have high risk to stroke and heart attack. This is all the kind of metabolic syndrome. And in the right you have people that, you know, enjoy life for their fullest potential, that are able to lose weight and to maintain it, which is the main problem with losing weight. You not be able to maintain it. You have high energy, you don't have those mood swings. Yes. So metabolic flexibility is a range. So the more you are metabolically flexible, you are able to wake up on February and the less you are more waking up on carbon. And there is a range in the middle.

I absolutely love that. So you can, you can tune yourself in that way. And I should mention too, listeners know that whenever someone comes on with a product, they're making, number one, you have to be exceptionally well qualified to talk about stuff, which you are. And number two, you have to give something to the audience. So besides knowledge and information, which is interesting anyway, so lumen me L U M E N me use code ASPREY50 and you're, you're giving them as a gift a $50 discount. So there you go guys. That's something that's worth checking out. So you probably, if you're overweight, would like to know how to control your metabolism. And if you're not overweight, you may be really tired at certain times during the day, especially in the afternoon or maybe in the morning. It depends. People have these craterings. So what's going on with your metabolism then? And since we're taking essentially a one minute window, you're getting a ten second breath hold. It takes what, about a minute to do a lumen reading?

Even less? 30, 30 seconds.

I figure it's like a minute by the time I get the lumen, turn on the app and then do the 30 second breath hold thing. So quick check is what I'm saying.

Yeah, I think I'm so in joy of thinking my lumen measurement that the time just pass. So maybe it's one minute and I feel like it's 30 seconds.

There you go. Right, right. I mean you're supposed to have like a stopwatch. You're a scientist. Come on. What we can do though is we can wake up and say, how am I? How did I do when I was sleeping? And you could say, I'm going to do something in the morning. I might take some supplements, I might have coffee or Matcha or whatever and see what the difference was. Maybe a half hour after, after it's had a chance to take action. The studies I've seen show that the amount of caffeine in two small cups of coffee will double ketone production. So after your coffee without sugar in it, you should see a slight improvement in your fat metabolism. And then if you're still intermittent fasting up, like maybe you're gonna have lunch at one o' clock the way I'm going to today.

Wow, this is super cool. I didn't know it. I will try it.

Oh, absolutely. The black coffee and also prebiotic fiber that turns to butyric acid also will be pro ketogenic. So you can put those in your coffee and then all of a sudden, like coffee mct, prebiotic fiber, all of those increase fat metabolism during a fast, but suppress hunger. So you're like, oh, that's better. But you can test anything I'm saying here with illumin. And so maybe you just have water because you think you're a mouse in a lab study like those guys who run one of those dumb fasting apps. And what you would do in that case is you would test and see what worked better. And if you're more in fat burning mode and you feel better, that's great. And then maybe the next morning you're saying, you know what, maybe I can just burn my own fat I don't want to do the mcts. And then you don't. And then you can test it with lumen. And then right at say noon, if you're following my advice, you should exercise fasted so you'll actually blow out the glycogen in your muscles and you turn on your metabolism. So then you get your lumen score and then you can exercise like, what am I burning right now? And you're going to be burning more fat. And then you can eat lunch and you can have the ribeye steak and be like, I'm so carnivore right now. Except that you had coffee, which is good for you even though it's a seed. But anyway, so you did that and then say what worked? Did it work for me? And I promise you that if you are one of these middle aged obese women who benefit from only 12 hours fasting a day, you might see that you've over fasted on your lumen. And then maybe you wanted to have some sweet potential potatoes with your steak. Like this is why it's interesting to me. And then a half hour after you eat lunch, you get your lumen again and say, am I burning carbs? What percentage of carbs and fat? So now you guessing is gone and you can say, is what I'm doing working? And it's that real time score. If you were to do heart rate variability with an aura ring or a whoop or any other sleep scoring system, like sleep space, you're going to wait till the next morning to know whether your stress went down. But that's not a real time signal. And with biohacking, the quicker you can get a signal based on a behavior, the faster you can change. And that's why at the very high end, neurofeedback, that's why 40 years of Zen exists. Because, oh, a thousand measurements a second as I'm trying to change, I can do that quickly with lumen many times throughout the day, whenever you feel like it, Whenever you have a question, you can check, what's my body doing now? I feel like whenever you have a question, you can check what's my body doing now? But now here's my question for you. After all that rambling, can you, when you, because you're the inventor of lumen.